This is officially my first post! I'm excited. This is something I've wanted to do for a while now and just never got around to it. I get asked a lot for recipes as I cook all the time. Like my introduction says, the kitchen is my favorite room of the house! My oldest daughter has always wanted me to write a cookbook. I guess we'll start with this, Nicole!

I am a recent vegan. I was vegetarian for a very long time but never made the leap to vegan. To me it would be a giant leap and I would have to leave my best friend, Cheese and my other best friend, Eggs, behind. It was just too sad to think about. Cheese was my protein. Yup, even as a long time vegetarian I was misguided and uninformed about the protein myth. I didn't do enough homework. Shame on me. I had been brainwashed. Brainwashed by the USDA's food pyramid and all the diets I'd been on throughout my life, including prescription diet pills. Brainwashed by all the pretty packages with delicious pictures on the grocery shelves. Brainwashed into thinking their were regulatory systems in place to protect me from unclean, unsafe, chemical-filled foods. Brainwashed by the dairy board and meat producers. Brainwashed by all the things we learned growing up. Not out of maliciousness, but because our parents thought it was the healthy way of eating, too. Yikes, I wish I knew then what I know now. I'd have been a lot better to my body and mind.

Ok, I knew how animals were raised in horrible conditions, pumped full of hormones, steroids and antibiotics and I did not want that in me. (The rest of my family still ate meat. I had to cook two meals most nights. That was a giant pain.) How could it not occur to me that all those things were also in dairy cows and chickens ? Because I didn't want to know is my best guess. Habits are habits. When we don't have a real reason to stop a bad habit, we don't. Plain and simple.

How did veganism happen to me? I was browsing through Netflix one evening last Spring. I love documentaries and found Netflix has quite a few in their list when I saw the funniest title. Can you guess what it might be? "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" That's the one.! I turned it on and started watching. I was quite distracted but the premise was interesting to me. Then I lost internet connection about 10 minutes into it. After that I forgot about the film for a while. Two weeks later I ran across the title again. This time I watched it in its entirety. I was forever changed. This made me crave more information about the foods I put in my mouth. This led me to, "Forks Over Knives", "Food Matters", "What's on Your Plate", and "King Corn" to name just a few. Then to the library for "The China Study" and book after book about veganism and vegan cookbooks.

I started changing the way I ate slowly. When I had a fully stocked kitchen geared toward one vegetarian and a pack of meat-eaters, slowly was the only way it was going to happen. I became paranoid about chemicals and packaged foods and treatment of animals and what was in our meat and dairy products. I almost became afraid to eat for a bit. I think I drove everyone insane. I had information overload and I was spewing information everywhere to everyone. I only succeeded in making people defensive and sometimes angry with me. The more I found out how our diseases and foods were related the more I flipped out. I've heard it related to this before, so I can't claim the analogy as my own, but I felt unplugged like Neo was in "The Matrix". Once you know, and I mean really know, you can't turn back. Down the rabbit hole I went. Warning! Warning! Do not go ape-shit crazy on people with all your new information. Once upon a time we didn't know. Think about some hippie, crazy, treehugger coming at you armed with alfalfa sprouts , hummus and a big slab of tofu telling you the woes of cows and chickens when you weren't unplugged. Yeah...you're laughing at that picture, right?

November 1, 2011 was the day. I started a juice fast just as Joe Cross did in the film, "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead". I had planned on going for 60 days but it ended up being 24 days. I caved on Thanksgiving Day. I had cooked all day for the family and had a moment when it came time to serve the family feast. I was a little disappointed, ok a lot disappointed with myself, but I had lost 24 pounds in those 24 days. I had learned a lot about myself in those 24 days. I had made progress and had begun my journey to a new way of eating and living my life. I lost two pant sizes in 24 days. I really had nothing to complain about and nothing negative to say about those 24 days. Ok, that's a lie. The first few days were awful. Once my body got rid of the toxins I had packed into it I started feeling much better.

I am currently on day 13 of my 4th juice fast. I love the way I feel. No, I don't feel yucky when I first start a juice fast now. That's a good sign that I'm eating right inbetween juicing. When I'm not fasting I still drink juices in the morning to start the day. Yes, I still cook for the family while I juice fast. It can get a bit hard when I'm making some of my favorite dishes or when it comes time to season things and you can't taste it.

I think I will finish up this first entry. I just wanted to give a brief story of how I got where I am now. I'm not heading to a destination. Becoming vegan isn't a stopping place. It's a journey to a healthier mind, body and soul. It's a way of living.

I want this to be a place of sharing stories and recipes, news and information to help all of us learn what is going on with our crazy world of food makers, biotechnological nightmares, the lack of food labeling, Big Pharma, and more than I could possibly list. If it can contribute to this lifestyle, this journey into natural foods that heal our bodies and our minds I'm all about having it in my blog. My hope is to be half as inspiring as I have been inspired by others. - Chyrl