So I was nominated for a Liebster Award by the Judgmental Vegan. Thanks! I like the idea of this.

Here are the rules:

• Answer the questions provided by the nominator, then come up with 10 new ones to ask your nominees.
• Nominate 8 other blogs, let them know you have nominated them and put a link to their blog in your post.
• No Tag backs (i.e. you cannot nominate the blog that nominated you)
• Nominees must have under 200 followers on any platform.
• You must tell all the blogs that you nominate that you have nominated them.

Why did you decide to go vegan?

I originally went vegan because I saw a documentary about the carbon footprint of food and how much food we produce that is of animal origin as a country and as humans and it really disgusted me. I had already been toying with the idea of it for awhile, but that’s what set me over the edge. I have slipped and stopped being vegan a few times, and have currently been vegan for a year and a half as of October 24 of this year. It’ll be 2 years April 24. But I plan to stick with it permanently now. I recommitted to veganism this time around for all the other reasons I have before (environment and animals) but also my health this time.

Is there any non-vegan food that you miss?

Not really. If there is something I miss at this point then I’ll try to veganize it myself, and usually it comes out pretty awesome. I was missing cheese Danish awhile ago and then made them myself after that, and it was amazing. Also I made chocolate filled croissants…OM NOM! Here is a picture of me eating that! I was pretty excited.

What vegetable do you feel like you should like, but somehow, just don’t?

Raw grated carrots. Whenever I have them in salads I avoid most of them. Actually maybe all raw carrots…They’re not that bad really, just too crunchy and hard to chew fast.

Is there a recipe that you’re dying to try, but haven’t gotten around to it yet?

Some of the new Chloe Coscarelli recipes from her new book that she emails to her email list. Except I was going to make the carbonara but then I was disappointed to find that a pound of shiitake mushrooms would cost me around $10. 😦

Who is your favorite cookbook author? Why?

Chloe Coscarelli again. I have tried so many of her recipes and she cannot create something that tastes bad. I especially love her book “Chloe’s Kitchen” and cannot wait to obtain her new Italian food book. I don’t own the dessert one because I don’t need the temptation for that! haha. But yeah. There are a lot of vegan cookbooks I’ve bought where I’ve been disappointed that they had so much hype around them and then there’s hardly any recipes that look appealing to me. Sometimes I’ll even make a recipe thinking it sounds so good and it’ll taste gross. Not with Chloe.

What was your first vegan cookbook?

Vegan with a Vengeance. I think that was the book that had me make seitan one of the first few weeks of going vegan for the first time like in 2009. I didn’t actually realize how impressive me making it from scratch was as a new vegan. In fact I met up with some vegans for the first time and told them “I made seitan” and I think they assumed I bought store bought brands, looking back on it now…I didn’t even realize when they asked me whether I made it myself from scratch or not. I hadn’t realized there was kinds you could buy in the store yet, so I was confused if maybe there was another process to making it or something (I think actually you can make the gluten part from flour and it’ll take even longer and be more complicated? I can’t remember if I did it that way or with vital wheat gluten and I’m too lazy to look in the book right now…) but yeah, it’s something I think is funny that I associate with my first vegan cookbook.

What was the best meal you ever made for yourself or someone else?

So this recipe coming tomorrow for Vegan MoFo is definitely the best brunch meal I’ve ever made. That’s all I’ll say for now!

Do you find it easy to be vegan in the area you live in? How do you make it work?

Yeah, there’s a Stop and Shop grocery store nearby me that has so many vegan items in their organic/natural food section. They even sell vegenaise, all kinds of vegan yogurt, daiya, earth balance butter and snacks, silken tofu, nutritional yeast, all kinds of tofurky products, daiya pizza, ice cream, etc! I recently bought the new Dr. Praeger’s Asian burgers there and they were so good! If they don’t have something I need I have to travel into the City (which is only 15 minutes away by car) to go to Whole Foods. I’d say it’s easy and there are lots of new vegan friendly restaurants and restaurants with vegan options here too. Providence is the first city to have a vegan soft serve truck, too!

If you could only eat one processed, vegan product (with the rest of your diet being whole foods). which would it be?

Hmm, I dunno really. Some type of vegan mayo, probably Just Mayo.

What’s one thing about yourself that you feel has very little to do with being vegan?

I don’t really understand this question but I’ll attempt to answer it. My love of arts and crafts. Not that my arts and crafts aren’t vegan themselves, but I don’t usually make arts and crafts that have a vegan message or anything related to that.

Okay, that’s all done and was very fun!

Here’s who I nominate (sorry if you have more than 200 followers, don’t be offended if you have more, some of your blogs don’t actually list that for me to double check if I’m nominating the right people for this). Also my apologies if you’ve been nominated before…It got to be too much to try and double check.

Ellen’s Vegan Kitchen

Evolution of Jill 

Vegan Chai

Easy Vegan

Miss Muffcake

Busy Vegan Mama

My Apologies for the Novel

Deerly Beloved Bakery

And your ten questions to answer (please draw my attention somehow to your answers because I can’t actually follow all of you who don’t have wordpress and I may not look in a timely manner. I’m really interested in your responses to these, though):

1. What is your all time favorite vegetable?
2. Pick a holiday you celebrate. What would you like to make for the meals you eat for it this year?
3. Do you care about giving veganism a positive example through your life and what you put out into the communities you interact with? If so, how do you strive to maintain that positivity?
4. Do you have a favorite vegan type of saying? For instance, I really like what my Compassion Company shirt says “Anything you can eat I can eat vegan?”
5. Are you interested in other types of ethical/philosophical justice issues? What are they and how do you involve yourselves in them?
6. What would you tell someone who confided in you they were thinking of going vegan but felt overwhelmed about it?
7. What was the first thing you cooked for yourself when you went vegan?
8. How long have you been a vegan for?
9. Do you celebrate your veganniversary?
10. If you could travel to any vegan friendly city in the world, where would you choose to go?