Hello and welcome!

Welcome! I just wanted to add a little note about the purpose of this blog.
I have been vegetarian for the last 16.5 years. I always looked at vegetarians as some strange species of people, and had never imagined that something may touch me one day and make me become one.

I was never an animal lover per se. There were animals I liked, some I loved and some I loathed.
In 1999 after meeting my husband (Boone), who is a Buddhist and a meat eater, we had several conversations in regards to spirituality and the value of life. His flatmate and his then girlfriend were talking to us one night and telling us about an amazing lecture they had heard on the radio about animal intelligence. Boone's flatmate had a 19 year old cat which ruled the house.

The whole chat made something in my brain click. Then I realised that there was really no difference in the value of life from one animal to the other. If I was not prepared to kill my dog or cats for food, why was it OK for me to pay someone to kill a cow, or a sheep, or a pig for me to eat. The answer was simple. It was not OK.

For the whole time that I was a vegetarian, I did not consider the egg or dairy industry. I thought that vegan was extremism, and that there was no real reason to go there.

In 2003 I met a vegan girl, who wrongly told me that sugar was not vegan. Wrongly because sugar has been vegan friendly in Australia since the 90's when the usage of bone char in the processing was stopped. I had no idea this was not true. At the time I was tinkering with cake decorating, and had started thinking of running my own cake business from home. Veganism was not considered again.

It never really occurred to me to go and do research on the subject, I just didn't think there was anything wrong with the consumption of eggs and dairy.

I can't remember for what reason, maybe ten years ago, I tried to give up eggs and dairy. I lasted three days. I did no research and had no one to ask questions. The one thing that remained with me from those days was drinking milk, I swapped cow's milk for soy, and from then on, could not stand the taste of dairy milk.

Five or six weeks ago, I joined a vegan cooking group, as I love inventiveness in cooking. The Facebook group is about experimenting with using an egg substitute that is easily available. A meat eating friend had told me about. I started to experiment and found some vegan groups through some memes that people had posted. I joined one said group.

A person in that vegan group had posted and article debating that oysters could be classified as vegan .The person was asking for opinions. I said something along the lines of as a vegetarian, I wouldn't eat oysters as it was killing another being. Then one guy asked me, what about all the chickens that die in the production of eggs. Another posted a few stats in regards to half of all chicks (males) being killed as they had no usefulness in the industry. Also highlighted that calves are removed from their mothers when they give birth, and the cows cry for days afterwards looking for their babies. That is so heartbreaking!!!
Not only that, the majority of the calves are killed for veal not long after. It became clear that although I had not consumed meat for over a decade, I was still responsible for the suffering and murder of innocent animals. I went away to process it all. I started by saying to my husband that I would commit to cooking vegan dinners for a week, by the third day I had been eating vegan meals the whole day, and by the third day of vegan eating, I knew there was no going back. As the saying goes "What's been seen cannot be unseen".

I started making meals and sharing them in the Vegan group I had joined. I started to get asked for recipes, and thought that having a blog to document my experimentation and conversions would be good, even as a diary for myself.

Ooops this was supposed to be a "little" note, hahahaha.

Anyway, here it is, if you're reading this, and you're not me, Enjoy!!!
:)