My Story

Who we are


We are a small family of three who try to eat healthy most of the time. Putting a label to our diet gets complicated. I like the idea of being vegan, but I like cheese and my daughter could live on yogurt. That takes us to being vegetarian...but then we sometimes eat fish. So that would make us pescatarian, or as I recently heard, veg-aquarian. That gets complicated too as my husband eats chicken and beef occasionally when its offered or when he goes out. That would make him an opportunivore, or my favorite label, freegan (vegan unless it's free).  


Add to those labels health restrictions we've added to our diet. We try to avoid highly processed foods, sugars (including honey, agave, and other refined carbs), soy unless it's in a traditionally used form (tofu, tempe, miso, soy milk), wheat, and dairy (except cheese and yogurt of course). 


Despite all the labels and health restrictions, we actually aren't very strict about anything and believe in staying flexible. These are just guidelines. So while many of my recipes are vegan, sugar free and wheat free, I will sometimes sneak in an egg, a little wheat (did you know spelt is wheat?) or some brown rice syrup.

How it all got started

When I first became vegetarian at 19, I was full of youthful enthusiasm about the environmental and social benefits of a plant-based diet, but lacking in experience at cooking a balanced vegetarian diet. By the time I was in my early twenties, I was anaemic. My doctor said my iron levels were at third world levels and I needed to get iron injections for weeks just to get my iron count up to normal. This happened as I was heading off on a three-month bicycle tour across the Australian Outback. I still felt very strongly about being vegetarian, but at the same time my body needed iron and protein if I was going to be riding 100 kilometres a day for three months.

I did some research, packed my bags with quinoa and lentils and flew to Australia with my bicycle and a tent. While this was a step in the right direction - in that both lentils and quinoa were high in protein and iron - I had failed to consider the cooking time and the water needed, or even how to cook them. These are important things to consider when riding across one of the driest countries in the world and cooking on a lightweight, single-burner camp stove without an adjustable flame. Needless to say, the quinoa and lentils went unopened and after three months of eating pasta, chocolate, and taking daily iron supplements, I promised myself I would learn not only what a healthy balance vegetarian diet was, but how to make that diet practical, enjoyable and satisfying.

A year later I moved to Southeast Asia, where I was faced with new challenges. I knew the ingredients of a healthy, balanced diet, I knew how to prepare them, but how would I find them? I was used to North American health food stores, where rarer foods like quinoa were fairly easy to find. Living in Asia, I couldn’t find quinoa. However, I could find 12 different kinds of rice, each with its own unique taste and nutritional profile. Living there taught me how to be flexible and enjoy the challenge of finding ways to meet my nutritional needs with the available foods around me.

I was even further challenged when I met my husband, who throughout his time in Asia had been hit with various forms of Bali Belly from the food. He had taken so many heavy duty antibiotics that his digestive system was a mess. He had developed a number of food intolerances. Through various cleanses and elimination diets - and creative cooking - we have managed to improve his health.

No sooner had his health improved I became pregnant and was faced with yet a different kind of challenge with food – morning sickness. And not just in the morning, but all day. And not just the first couple months, but the first five months. I had the kind of morning sickness that I had to eat all the time, but I couldn’t even look at all that healthful inspiring food that I was used to. The colorless foods (white bread, potatoes, cheese) seemed to be the only foods I could eat. I gained a whopping 50 pounds eating bagels and cream cheese.  Pregnancy was followed by the need to change my diet to meet the needs of  breastfeeding (which helped me lose the 50 pounds), and now to feed a toddler. 


Through all these challenges I have had to learn how to feed myself and my family yummy foods, while avoiding many of the ingredients in yummy foods. But every once in awhile we eat pizza and Ben and Jerry's ice cream (the family favorite is mint chocolate chunk).