So this is the page where I tell you a little bit more about myself! My name is Jennifer, I’m the foodie that refers to herself as the partially vegetarian vegan food blogger (more about that below). I live on a ranch in a farmhouse up in Canada with my boyfriend whom I’ve been dating for over 3 years (and have been in love with for 8). There is always something happening here.
I will try to showcase my love for food and especially my love for cooking on this blog. As you will see; I love all types of cuisine which means I love eating out, especially abroad, unfortunately that can’t happen as often as I would like. My solution for that is to experiment with food, trying out new techniques and new spices. I love what cooking entails; I love planning meals in advance and sourcing out seasonal ingredients (whenever possible), making recipes from scratch, even having cooking adventures (like making my own feta cheese, and now trying my hand at vegan cheese!).
Why Parsley Vegetarian?
First of all, before I even started thinking of having a food blog, I faced a certain dilemma in my life. To put you in context, I’m the biggest animal lover out there, who happens to be madly in love with a guy who could live only on bacon strips. Up to a few months ago, eating meat was not out of the question for me, I would eat it here and there; maybe once a day. It was okay, I mean, this is what I was brought up to consider as normal. Although I often found myself wasting half of it, I kept cooking it, eating it, ordering it when I went at restaurants…But why? Why did I keep eating something I rarely truly enjoyed when it has so many dark sides to it?
Well there you have it, the dilemma I mentioned earlier. I then tried to envision cutting out meat entirely…it wasn’t a pretty picture. I could easily see myself making some good vegetarians meals, but what about those perfectly cooked steaks when we visit the in-laws; what about my favourite Thaï dishes from this restaurant I have been going to religiously for about 20 years (I did the math, that’s 87% of my life).. Clearly I was having a hard time imagining saying goodbye to meat entirely.
So the alternative I came up with is: take it one meal at a time. I’m by no means saying this is the way everyone should live; I’m saying this is a system that has been working for me for the past several months. I eat vegetarian meals during the week, and the weekends are more flexible. Sometimes I’ll eat meat everyday during the weekend; sometimes I’ll skip it entirely.
I’ve always had a mindset that if you’re going to do something, you have to give it your 100%, and for the longest time I associated that with “doing it 100%”, especially for something like this. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong; think about it… If 100 people decide to adopt a vegetarian diet 5 days a week, it equals to 71 people (out of the same 100) who would be full-time vegetarians. I had it all wrong this whole time…thinking that since I can’t fully commit to being a vegetarian that it’s not really worth it for me to do it at all.
Since then, I have decided to start this food blog, where I will be documenting some recipes I make for myself, my family and friends, and most importantly, my bacon-eater of a boyfriend. I will try to point out options for people who are in the same predicament as me, to offer meat and meatless alternatives to different cuisines.
Update: Why Parsley Vegan?
Since I first started this blog in 2016, I have grown my love for vegetarian foods and healthy eating habits. To be honest, it was not hard at all, I took it one meal at a time, and easily found myself adopting the vegan lifestyle. Now, as I have mentioned in this post, I am still not a “true vegan”, which means being vegan in every aspect of my life, I am not one today, and may never become one. For instance, I don’t read every label of the food I buy, which I am okay with. My car has leather seats, yes I did purchase it before even becoming vegetarian, but you won’t see me head to the dealership to sell it for that only reason. In my opinion there is no one right way of doing everything, and I believe that since we are all different, we can all eat different variations of diets. Being partially vegan, being vegan 99.9% of the time is what works best for me.