I’ve read it all. I’ve tried it all. I’ve gone completely Eat-Clean, I’ve been vegan
for a month, I’ve tried going gluten-free, I’ve tried to eat like French women
(cause apparently they don’t get fat), I’ve tried to love juicing and join the
Crazy Sexy Diet revolution, I tried to eat according to my blood type, and I’ve
most recently fallen in love with the Tone It Up program and blogs, two
beautiful trainers from California…who wouldn’t want to try to eat and train
like them?
But the truth is all of this led me to find
and tweak my own recipes and my own style of doing my vegan-ish lifestyle. I’ve
made and modified a lot of recipes. I’ve also gained a rather ridiculous reputation with my friends. It’s
always…what eating plan are you doing now? Are you vegetarian today?
And even worse, I have a habit of taking pictures of my food, allll the time. So I figured maybe I could start a blog about
my many food adventures and actually put my food pictures to good use, maybe
I’ll get ridiculed a little less…maybe not. But either way, I want to take my
passion for health and nutrition and creativity in the kitchen and share it
with you all. I hope you find yourself a lot inspired…maybe you’ll even go
vegan for a month!
Vegan-ish
I get the question from my mom all the time
“Why are you not eating meat again?
Why are you trying to be vegetarian? I just made chicken, you want some?” I
must have explained this answer a hundred times. No exaggeration.
My answer is always the same. I am not an
animal rights activist. I don’t stay away from meat because I think it’s wrong
or because I want to save cows (no offense to the animal lovers out there). However,
I know that I just feel healthier when I eat less meat. I have more energy and
feel great on a much heavier plant based diet.
So here’s my rule of thumb…I eat meat the way I eat dessert; it’s
not something I have every day, but the occasional treat.
My second rule to live by is that my diet
will never be more important to me than relationships. I enjoy using food as a way
of building community and cultivating relationships. Aka in simple terms…I will never ever be a snobby vegetarian,
who says “sorry I can’t eat that” I’d rather enjoy whatever someone has spent
hours preparing for me than to hold fast and true to an only vegan diet all the
time.
But no
disrespect to those die hard vegans out there…I actually secretly admire you.
You wake up in the morning to your green tea and freshly juiced green veggie
delights and eat hemp seed and all organic and ride your bikes to flea markets,
and buy only fair trade. And I love it. But I’ve failed one too many times at
my all or nothing attempts that I realize I need some balance. So here’s to
attempting to stay mostly vegetarian, and almost vegan, but most importantly to
the joys of cooking and experimentation and enjoying a nutritious lifestyle.
So you may still be wondering…where does
the name come from?? Well, one of my childhood nicknames was Strawberry Pie,
apparently loosely adapted from some Stephen King book I’ve never heard of, nor
will I probably ever read. But it
also represents balance in a lot of ways….a little bit of healthy fruit & a
little bit of sweet dessert (most likely with gluten-free crust of course :P)
