baking – Power Plants

After being a vegetarian for 2 years, I announced much to my family’s chagrin, that I am going vegan! My family’s reaction was not hard to decipher. There was terror written all over my wife’s face. My kids were concerned too. It wasn’t completely a shock as I had been watching videos and discussing my findings with anyone willing to listen in my household. I explained that I was willing to go it alone and that nobody needed to make the drastic move with me.

After a day or two of mulling this over, my wife and kids agreed to join my decision. I was relieved as this was now also their own decision. However, they reminded me that their food choices would remain flexible outside the home. My wife also wasn’t ready to give up milk in her coffee. This was a win all around. I was also doing this to be an example of change for the better for our entire family, not just myself.

Giving up milk was not a big issue for our family. My son has had an allergy to dairy products since childhood, so we were used to cooking with oat milk or coconut milk for those creamy sauces. We used to buy non-dairy yogurt for my son. But now the rest of us were giving up dairy yogurts too. No more eggs either! More questions! How would we eat cereal? How do you bake without eggs or milk? What about deserts? What about my sweet tooth? What will we eat at someone’s home? Perhaps we won’t be invited for a meal ever again!

We learned that the term vegan was not as well known as we thought. Is it like being gluten-free, was a common question everyone asked. Explaining that I was a vegan by choice and that it had nothing to do with dietary allergies or celiac disease became a usual reaction. Some thought that going vegan was part of a snobbish lifestyle looking down on others when this was furthest from the truth. I came to learn that some vegans try to convert others to adopt this lifestyle in a grand gesture to save everyone. I am not one of them! I prefer to convince myself based on research and data and let others do the same.

The purpose of creating this blog is not to arm-twist you into becoming a vegan but to walk you through my personal journey in this transition. Clearly, it doesn’t just affect me, it also affects my loved ones. You may be curious or grappling with the same questions or issues in your life. To each their own. I respect that we are all on our own journeys of life. My goal is to provide my perspective and experience which you can use as entertainment or valued input.

So, becoming a vegan had consequences both good and bad!