Before VeganMoFo begins......

Before VeganMoFo begins, I'd like to cover some background.

My name is happy vegan #1, and I live on an island in the Florida Keys. Actually I own the Deer Run Bed and Breakfast with happy vegan #2, on Big Pine Key (that's about 30 miles give or take from Key West). We are both vegan, but were raised conventional (meaning yup, we ate meat, and unwittingly participated in the exploitation of animals).

I don't like to say that not much effort was put into our meals when I was growing up, but looking back, I think there is some truth to that. My mother was primarily responsible for meal planning and cooking, and I don't think she liked to cook. I think she liked to bake since I remember her smiling a lot more when cake was involved. I am exactly the same that way. When I was in my very early teens, somehow I began to take over a bit in the kitchen. Mom taught me basic kitchen skills, but our kitchen was usually in a state of disrepair, as dad was renovating it, so it seems, for almost the entire time I was growing up. One thing that kitchen did have, however, was a double oven. To this day, I've only lived one other place that had 2 ovens, and it's not here. It figures.

Growing up we had what I consider typical, for the times, meals. We always would sit down together as a family for dinner. We almost always had a salad served at every meal, and I still follow this practice. We had a special bowl to serve the salad in, in fact my brother still has the bowl, and I'm pretty sure that is a cherished item. We would have meat at my house maybe 3 times a week. I never liked cooking it, I never liked touching it, despite the fact that I had a HUGE disconnect of where my food really came from. This is hard to believe for so many reasons, much of which is boring anyway. I remember my specialty dish as a teen was pepper steak. The recipe was modified by me out of a penny-pincher's cookbook. It had red and green peppers, onions, spices and sliced meat. I served it over rice on a giant platter. When it came time for my portion, I would slide the meat to the side, and indulge in the peppers & onions with rice. I would do the exact same thing with sausage and peppers (which was a pretty big deal in my house, considering that was dad's favorite). I didn't realize at the time that even on a subconscious level meat was torture on a plate, but I think looking back that's exactly what was going on with me.

My path towards being vegan began the way it does for so many others... education. Somehow a PETA pamphlet made it's way to me. At the time, I was in my very early 20s. Mind you, this was decades ago, the Internet didn't exist and information was much more difficult to acquire. I read something about veal and baby cows, and what goes on to get veal. I was horrified. I stopped eating veal immediately. Not that it was something I'd eat often, but for me at the time, it was a "luxury" I'd "indulge" in occasionally. I still feel shame admitting this. After I learned about veal, there was a natural progression as more information made it's way to me. By process of elimination, I removed veal, beef, poultry, fish, then dairy and all by-products from my food choices. Dairy took me the longest, and it's mostly because I bought into the dairy industry propaganda that dairy wasn't cruel. Epically wrong. I found myself relying on dairy for everything, despite the fact that I was completely lactose intolerant. Back when all this was going on in my life, vegan was relatively "fringe." Meat substitutes really didn't exist, and forget about dairy substitutes. I remember going to the health food store and blowing the dust off a shelf stable box of soy milk, then making that purchase. I got home, opened the box, poured it on my cereal, and after tasting the combo, proceeded to toss the entire lot into the trash (more shame... food waste).

Finally, I was invited to a "Fur Free Friday" event on Black Friday in NYC's Fashion District. I dragged a bloody fur through the streets with a friend, and afterwards there was a gathering in a park. There was food, and lots of literature. One thing is for sure, once you see something, it's impossible to unsee it. I got an education that day in animal cruelty that changed me forever.

It took a while longer for me to get rid of the animal products that were in my closet. I was torn between not wanting to throw items away that an animal's life had been taken for (i.e.: belts, shoes, blah blah), and the shame I felt in wearing them. I stopped wearing those items, but they remained in my closet for a very long time. Finally, I found appropriate charities and ways to more respectfully deal with those items. For many years I am now, what I consider to be, an ethical vegan.

Happy Vegan #2 has a different story, but I prefer he share that on his own time. I will say that there has been a lot more harmony in our household together once he decided to go vegan too. I don't think either of us totally realized just how much a) resentment I felt that he wasn't vegan and b) pressure he felt from me, even though I never spoke my frustration to him.

When we bought Deer Run, it was a major life change for us both. We moved thousands of miles from friends and family to come here. He wanted to move here much more than I did at the time, and the "compromise" was I would do the B and B if, and only if, we did it vegan and as a true "green" business.  He agreed and here we are.

Very few people supported our business vision as far as the "vegan" part. In fact, so much negativity came forth from others that we actually stopped telling people what we were planning. Remember, this was close to 10 years ago, vegan was still more "fringe" than it is now.  When I say I never had a doubt that we'd hit the ground running, that's the 100% truth. And, I was right.

Now that I run a vegan business, my life has become much more food-centric. The bulk of my culinary training (which was desperately needed, refer to long ago "lentil loaf" blog post.....) has been conducted privately either in chef's kitchens/homes, or in my own home. My first culinary course started with the basics including a health and safety program called "Sani-Safe" which was also taught privately to me. From there, I learned basic cooking techniques, and recipes. Back when I started, baking was a very small slice of my training.

I am not a chef, rather I consider myself a cook. I am, however, a professional baker, and have had much more training now in that regard. That is truly where my passion lies. My other passion is eating food. Like a majority of other vegans out there, I love good food. My trips are planned around food, my days are focused on food, and basically there is almost no part of my life that isn't somehow touched by food. Because I spend so much time in the kitchen, I make it a point to watch my own eating habits closer than probably the average person, and I make fitness a priority. I took up running a few years ago when nothing else seemed to be working holding me at a stable weight. Running has mostly done the trick. Although I don't run fast and I only do a few miles every day, I get it done.

I face many challenges being a vegan living in an area in which being vegan puts one in the minority. The Florida Keys have a long history of fishing, both for sport and for eating. People take lobster, crabs and other sea creatures for eating. I find these practices difficult to deal with on a personal level. Not only do I cringe when I see these things occur, but I am constantly subjected to the environmental damage these activities do. Driving up and down the Keys, simply look at almost any power wires on a bridge and you will see massive amounts of monofilament line and lures from people who cast poorly, then simply cut their lines. I am constantly picking up the trash that washes in from commercial and recreational fishing/lobstering activities, and also frequently pick up broken traps that some fisher people do not collect. There are some people who pay for "x" number of trap licenses, but then throw "y" number instead (more traps). Then if a storm hits, very often they will not collect the disabled/broken traps that litter the shorelines and flats because essentially they were illegal anyway, they don't have their tag #s on them, no way to track them. To them, it's just another "cost of doing business," but to me it's a torture chamber for animals, an eyesore for me, and an environmental hazard to people and animals in the area. I also happen to be a certified wildlife paraprofessional, and have been involved in too many rescues, and recovery efforts, of animals that have suffered from this type of careless disregard. Poaching is also a problem, as there's never enough enforcement available, and sometimes people will just take a chance and see what they get away with. Thankfully, there has been a pretty big uptick in cracking down on illegal activities and I've rejoiced anytime there's been convictions with jail time meted out for those committing crimes against the environment.

Shopping for food in the lower Keys really isn't difficult, and I'm going to talk about that through MoFo. Dining out in the lower Keys also isn't difficult, many more places are vegan friendly since we've put Deer Run on the map. Yet, the only other 100% vegan commercial kitchen that I'm aware of in the Keys belongs to Sugar Apple in Key West. So, although places are vegan friendly, they aren't vegan. This usually is something I can cope with relatively well, but not always. Imagine being a vegan in a beautiful restaurant, dining on delicious vegan food, all in Paradise. Then, it all comes crashing down when kitchen staff parades live lobsters through the restaurant on a "you catch it, we'll cook it" theory. It's happened, and very recently. It brings me to tears of sadness, frustration and anger because I realize we have so far to go.

VeganMoFo is a month long celebration of vegan food. I will be tossing some of my ethics into some posts, most likely because you see I am what I consider an ethical vegan. I'm not vegan for my health reasons, although that's been a really great by-product. No, I'm vegan for the animals. I'm vegan because I made a conscious decision to do the least harm to animals. Anyone who comes here and is "surprised" by our beliefs must not really look at my web page, my Facebook page, my reviews, or my blog. I completely "outed" myself from the vegan closet a very long time ago. I hope to change people's minds one vegan bite at a time.

I weep when I see animal suffering. I choose to make the kindest choices I can. I educate myself at every turn, despite the fact that much of what I've seen, read and heard through the years has at times been so violent and devastating that I've taken to be physically ill. The fact is, if I am not part of the solution, I am part of the problem.

I hope you enjoy my VeganMoFo posts. I want to have a fun-filled month of posts, while I tell you about life on my island as a vegan. Hopefully this little blurb about me has helped you understand a little bit more about me. If you don't like me, that's just fine as not everyone likes everyone else. If you don't like me, but are interested in becoming vegan, that's very cool because all it takes is one "click" on your computer and you can find lots of other great people and sites.

Fasten your seat belts everyone, VeganMoFo starts tomorrow! Thanks for joining me!