New Beginnings!

After months of neglect, it’s about time I breathe new life into this blog of mine. A lot has happened since I last wrote: I moved to Las Vegas, started an MFA program in poetry, went through some pretty big life changes, and moved into my first very own little apartment under the glow of the Stratosphere and the lights of The Strip.

One thing about my life hasn’t changed one bit, however; I’m still absolutely dedicated to my now nearly five-year strong vegan life and I am still fervently holding the sour cream (especially when dining at one of the many yummy Mexican restaurants in my area of Vegas). As such, this will still be a vegan food blog, dedicated to all things deliciously animal-free.

I was thinking earlier, however, that I want this blog to have a real direction and not just be about my general vegan cooking hijinks (although I could fill a blog with such things).  My previous focus of this blog, living vegan in Ukraine, where I spent seven months teaching English in 2010, gave this blog a real direction. Writing, therefore, became a little harder for me once I left Ukraine and couldn’t keep with my original theme.

That’s why I have decided to restart this blog with something specific in mind. I intend to focus my blog on vegan adaptations of traditional—and not so traditional—Jewish cooking. Some of my earliest and fondest memories I have growing up are in my mother’s kitchen as she whipped up a batch of matzo ball soup, or with my grandmother putting salad plates together for one of her epic Passover dinners. I’m sorry to say that since going vegan, I haven’t had one bite of matzo ball, kugel, potato latke, tzimmes or cholent. And dare I say I’ve never met a vegan shmear I liked. I hope to change all this and cook my way through some favorite Jewish recipes with a vegan spin. I also hope to continue blogging through the Jewish holidays as I’ve done here and here in the past. If this blog serves to help me reunite myself with all my favorite childhood dishes (and perhaps meet some new ones along the way), then hooray!

Also, I can’t think of a better time to start blogging about vegan Jewish food than right now. In less than thirty-six hours, I am flying to Eastern Europe to spend two months in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. What better place to revive this blog than in the “Old Country” as my dear bubbe—may she rest in peace—would call her place of origin?

Over the next couple months as I explore Vilnius, Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk and Riga, I hope to glimpse some of the roots of my favorite family recipes, successfully navigate what I know to be an otherwise very meat and dairy-heavy cuisine, meet wonderful and inspiring travelers, and blog along the way. When I return to Vegas, I’ll have my kitchen simmering with the smell of carrot tsimmes, savory borscht, and—baruch hashem—my Grandma Molly’s divine mandel bread (with some substitutions of my own, of course).