Summer of 2009, I dropped a then barely five-month-old Eleanor Rigby off for her very first grooming appointment. I had no idea that it would take nearly five hours, but I'm glad it did.
In the time I waited for her to be returned to me a clean puppy, I browsed a bookstore, grabbed some coffee, and found myself sitting in the warm summer sun with a copy of Skinny Bitch in my hands. By the time I picked my pooch up, I had devoured the book and made the decision to adopt a healthy vegan diet.
The decision came fairly easy since I gave up red meat in high school, ate vegetarian majority of the time, and avoided dairy as much as possible. I cleaned out my fridge, marched myself down to the local health food store, and began learning how to be vegan.
In the process I fell in love with cooking.
My mother studied culinary arts and is an amazing cook. Growing up, I was the lucky kid who had hot off the griddle chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and came home to some amazing dinner that would put Donna Reed to shame. Honestly, ever since moving out after high school, I had been missing big, delicious meals. I certainly wasn't going to start living off salads just because I was becoming vegan! I still wanted to experience pot pies, fresh waffles, stir fries, homemade breads, and baked goods- oh my goodness, I couldn't be vegan if I couldn't have baked goods! I had to learn how to be a vegan chef.
Good news though- there's this little section in your local bookstores that houses vegan cookbooks. Did you know that was there? Neither did I until two years ago. Crazy.
I have now discovered beautiful things like Ener-G Egg Replacer, vegan butter, vegan cheeses, and several ways to make tofu seem like the most delectable thing you've ever put in your mouth.
I am over the top infatuated with vegan cooking. So much so, that I was inspired to start my own little cooking project right here on Tea & Audrey!
Remember in Julia & Julia when Paul asks Julia what it is that she really loves to do? She laughs and exclaims, "Eat!"
And do you remember the part where Julie says, "I'm not a real cook like Mario Batali or Julia Child"? Her husband responds, "Julia Child wasn't always Julia Child."
Well, I may not be Mario Batali or Julia Child either, but I do love to eat like her. I may have those incidents like at this recent Thanksgiving when my vegan pumpkin pie wouldn't set properly (even though two weeks earlier I made the same recipe and the pie turned out perfectly, of course). Or occasionally get so frustrated with myself for not adding enough water to the skillet and have to spend extra time scraping charred tofu off the bottom.
But I am a cook.
To prove it to myself, I'm starting my own Julie & Julia project.
Kim Barnouin co-authored Skinny Bitch and recently came out with her own cookbook, Skinny Bitch, Ultimate Everyday Cookbook. I was delighted when I flipped through her book to discover that it was unlike any other vegan cookbook I owned. I have some wonderful cookbooks too- three great vegan baking cookbooks, a book on Latin vegan food, vegan entertaining, vegan brunches, and more. But Kim's book is different. It's my mother's cooking veganized. It's literally the everyday cookbook. And starting February 1st, I'm going to cook and blog my way through it. It's not as ambitious as blogging through Mastering the Art of French Cooking (there aren't even 200 recipes in Skinny Bitch), but I'm giving myself until the end of the year to finish the project.
I hope you'll join me for this crazy ride!
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