Hello food lovers!

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When I was nine years old I decided that I wouldn’t eat meat anymore because animals were my friends. I think helping my mom as a child marinate meat in the kitchen was what really turned me off. Twelve years later I’m still a Vegetarian. Not because animals are my friends, but because it has become natural for me to find meat as unappetizing.  Living with and Italian mother and three other carnivores have caused my vegetarian lifestyle to be difficult. For the entire eleven years of my veggie lifestyle my mother and other family members complain that they never know what to cook for me!

They are absolutely right. Vegetarians eat more then salads and tofu. The problem was, even I the vegetarian for twelve years is still unsure of interesting and healthy foods I can eat. But that’s all about to change. Two summers ago, I went to visit a friend at LBI (Long Beach Island) on the Jersey Shore.  One day we stopped to grab lunch at a deli, where I would normally get a roll with muenster cheese, lettuce and tomato, when I suddenly saw my soon to be inspiration across the street.  It was a big sign that said “Living on the Veg.” This was the first vegetarian restaurant/juice bar I had ever seen or decided to go to. To make it better, all the food was obviously catered to people like me. I finally had a complete vegetarian sandwich that didn’t consist of my usual three ingredients. What’s also crazy is that my carnivore boyfriend also tried one of the sandwiches and thought it was absolutely delicious. For the rest of our stay at LBI, we had all our meals there and even grabbed sandwiches for our drive back to New York!

I never forgot about “Living on the Veg” and decided that I should learn how to make my food taste as good as theirs and then share it with all the other people that struggle with finding new foods, vegetarian or not. Every week I will experiment with new ingredients and vegetarian/vegan recipes. When I master something I will let all my follow readers know and hope they try it for themselves!