Love and What I Ate

I'm back to blogging, y'all!

After documenting a tumultuous year of personal discovery (which is still going on) in my first blog, I've decided that there's a huge part of who I am and what I love to do that I've only really briefly touched upon: food.

Now that I'm settled (or as settled as I can be) back at NYU, my life is pretty boring: I'm in class, I'm reading mountains of textbooks and articles, I'm writing papers, I'm trying to be social, and I'm glued to Netflix and Hulu at the end of the day. The most exciting part of being back in New York City for me is the plethora of amazing vegan food options. From all types of restaurants imaginable, to food trucks, to farmer's markets, to grocery stores, being a vegan in this city is pretty amazing.

I figure that my day-to-day life is much more boring than my amazing adventure last fall, so it wouldn't make for an entertaining blog anymore. BUT! My love for vegan food can't be suppressed, especially now that I'm back in NYC, and I find that there's so much that I want to share and talk about. My light at the end of the tunnel when I'm stressed and overwhelmed is thinking about what new restaurants to try, reading recipes, and sharing all this love with the people in my life.

I'm going to try not to get all preachy or corny, but here it goes: for me, eating a vegan diet is about consuming compassionately. I'm hyper-aware of the food that I eat, and the quality and backstory of the ingredients I am consuming. This does not mean, however, that I am a perfect, uber healthy spokesgirl for nutrition. I eat junk more often than I'd like - I'm not perfect. But even when I devour more than my fair share of Thin Mints (ahem, like I did this afternoon) I think about what I'm putting into my body, and for me, I've reached a point where I am not comfortable consuming any animal products. There's no one simple reason for this, and maybe I'll elaborate more at a later date, but this is what it boils down to for me: I want to live a life full of love, and over the years I've found so much joy and peace and inspiration by getting rid of meat, seafood, dairy, eggs, etc. from my life.

My goal with this blog is to take what I've learned and what I feel and show people that a vegan diet can be really kick ass, and it definitely isn't just lettuce and sprouts. Cooking and baking delicious vegan food is about putting a little love back into the world. How can you argue with that?