I went vegano

Yep, I chose to become mostly vegan (I still eat eggs) in August/September of 2018, this is after Rony made this choice back in February of 2016. For him it was easy, literally overnight. For me it was a struggle, working out and having the ingrained knowledge of having to eat meat and animal-based protein was the only way to go… was this lifelong choice of eating animal products wrong? Yes… somewhat.

My mom and I when I was about 12

I was raised eating meat, potatoes, some vegetables and for some odd reason shit tons of corn syrup (i must admit I did love this stuff… lol!) This was cheap and what my parents could afford (we never starved, let me assure you of that). Mom was a master in creating food from scratch (actually everything from scratch… one day I’ll account the story of my mom going to buy used business suits to cut out smaller suits for her 3 boys). Dad was raised on a farm with 10 brothers and sisters, long hours tending to the animals, the gardens, some long walks to get to school and then some rest, this was his life for most of his childhood till he left the nest to pursue a career in construction (to this day, at the age of 68 he still works in that field). Mom was raised with 3 brothers, and ate very similar to how dad ate growing up.

Why I chose a vegan lifestyle; back in January of 2018 I had a medical scare with my diabetes. This scare was serious enough to make me start evaluating: my life, my eating habits and the sometimes (mostly) crazy moments of running my own restaurant. Emphasis on “start”, I’m a creature of habit… it takes me a while to wake the fuck-up most times about certain things or to make changes, my husband can attest to that. Based on Rony’s experience, I now knew something that had been eating at me inside (pardon the pun); I had to go vegan as all these animal products I was consuming were slowly killing me. This may sound blunt to some of you, but it’s the truth.

I started slow, removed dairy from the equation, then red meat (that was easy enough), then chicken went out the door. Yeah, there’s one meat product missing from my list of “ya got to go meats” PORK! Why the fuck was this so hard to stop eating the all loving, non judging bacon! I came to the conclusion it was the taste I could not get away from… until I found a plant based replacement for it. Believe me it took a while. The solution was veggie bacon from LightLife. There, I was now vegan!

It’s been a few months now, I feel great, I don’t crave meat in anyway… but I do need a lentil burger once in a while. I won’t lie, there’s a learning curve when becoming vegan. If you like to cook and bake like me, then you have a good advantage… but if you have the unique skill of burning water, then I suggest you get yourself a copy of the How Not To Die Cookbook from Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM. I’ve started to read this book and it’s great! Step by step, and easy to follow.