ABOUT

Mission

The mission of this site is simple: to provide vegan recipes that tastes good and leaves you satisfied. 

I realize that doesn’t sound novel, but it’s become harder and harder to find good vegan recipes that don’t come with additional qualifiers, namely ‘healthy’ or ‘comfort food’ i.e. unhealthy. I have equally as little desire to eat grain bowls everyday as I do tempeh ‘bacon’ cashew ‘cheddar’ melts. I just want vegan food that’s satisfying and actually tastes good. Sometimes that might include a grain bowl or tempeh bacon, but there’s a whole spectrum of styles, tastes and degrees of healthiness that I want to eat. So for the record, health will not be a concern here. There are many other sites that can offer healthy. This one is strictly about sating the vegan.

On food blogs

I hate food blogs. There I said it. Then again, sometimes, I love them. But mostly I’m not a fan. All the pretense and self-aggrandizement supported by a foundation of my-life-is-so-great-ism generally turns me off. So why would I start one? First, I hesitate to even call this a food blog; it sort of is, but I'd say it's more of a recipe collection than anything else. Second, as an avid home cook I'm constantly searching the internet for recipes, but I struggle to find the type of site that I want to visit and return to time and again. So I'm creating my own. I realize it’s an impossible task to do away with everything I don’t like about food blogs—I imagine there’s a healthy dose of pretense here already. But let me get out a few food blog gripes and how I hope to avoid them. 

The biggest gripe I have is with the photography. I hate when I come across a beautiful photo—with lovely lighting and perfectly propped pieces of gorgeous produce and just the right framing that it might as well be hanging in a gallery—but then scroll down to the ingredients list only to find that it’s comprised of a few roasted veggies and some hummus. Sure, it’s the most beautiful, exquisitely garnished hummus and veggies I’ve ever seen, but after reading the recipe I have absolutely no desire to make it, and even if I did it wouldn’t turn out looking anywhere near as good as the photo. My goal for this site is simply to post nice photos that honestly portray the recipes. The food should taste as good as it looks.

Along the same lines as fancy photos, I also get annoyed with a reliance on fancy ingredients. I enjoy a truffle as much as the next person, but I absolutely cannot afford them. To that end, I’ll always try to keep the recipes attainable or at the very least offer variations. Every once in a while I can’t help but splurge on some spring morels but shiitakes might work too. Alternatively, I will include recipes with seasonal ingredients that might not be available everywhere. But it’s what’s at my farmer’s market and is certainly affordable. I’ll try to offer variations whenever possible. 

Brevity is a virtue. I get so annoyed when I see a blog post for an interesting recipe and am subjected to a dissertation on the history of the dish or a lengthy explanation of every iteration the recipe went through or whether or not their 3-year-old liked it. Similarly, if I have to scroll past a dozen photos of every last little step before I actually get to the recipe, I’m probably never going to visit that site again. Here, I’m going to keep things simple: a short description and a photo or two, that’s it.

Finally, I have a bone to pick with authenticity. I’m one of those people that has trouble understanding what constitutes an ‘authentic’ dish. Is it a dish that’s been around for 50 years? 100? 200? Is it comprised with only ‘native’ ingredients? What’s a native ingredient? Haven’t produce and spices been traded and propagated throughout the world for thousands of years? My point is that labeling a recipe or dish as ‘authentic’ raises more questions than it answers. My recipes make no claims of authenticity; those can easily be found elsewhere. I simply like to cook a variety of cuisines from all over the map without any apologies. As I stated above, I just want to eat and cook good vegan food, ‘authentic’ or otherwise.

About me

Hello, I’m Andy. My background is decidedly not in food. I have no formally training as a chef, but, you guessed it, I love to cook. A familiar tale these days, I know. But what I lack in originality I hope to make up for in quality. I do have a background in fine art, which maybe lends itself to cooking but certainly explains the typos. Perhaps it's just that cooking scratches a similar itch. Who knows? What I can say with confidence, however, is that I don’t half-ass anything when it comes to food. I am obsessive in the kitchen, about trying new ingredients and techniques and perfecting recipes. I’ll often make a recipe a dozen times, sometimes two or three dozen times or more. My wife calls these hours I spend in the kitchen my ‘experiments.’ And that’s not far off. I like to methodically test an idea over and over until I get it just right. Like I said, I’m no chef. I can’t just whip up a recipe and call it done. It takes me awhile. But in the end I think I wind up with pretty darn good recipes. My tastes generally lean toward the savory, salty and spicy, but dishes that utilize and find a balance with all tastes are my favorite. Apologies to the sweet tooths; I’m not a big fan of desserts, although I’m working on it. Thanks for visiting, and I hope you enjoy.