The Inaugural Address...I Mean Post

Who am I, and what is my intent with your time? There's this phenomenon called "media overload" that has likely caused a good 80% of our population to exhibit signs of ADD, so why would I want to add to the information overload by adding more words to the page? I've always believed if you're passionate about something, it's critical to share. How you share doesn't much matter, but being passionate helps fight apathy in my book. It makes the world a kinder, livelier, more fascinating place. I love to write, so here I am. It also doesn't hurt that I'm a Leo, and, well, I love an audience. It doesn't have to be big, and it can certainly disagree with me, but a listening ear makes me feel charmed.

What am I passionate about that I would like to share with you? Food, in all it's many forms and purvues. I love, and this is just stream of consciousness......cooking, planning to cook, devouring cookbooks, going to restaurants, checking out cookbooks from libraries or spending inordinate amounts of dollars at Barnes and Noble. I love planning menus, planning fake menus (more on this later), gazing at food, perusing farmers markets, grocery stores, and ethnic food stores that smell like a weird combination of feet and meat, reminescing about food, etc etc. If it has the "f" word, I heart it. Food is my friend; and not in an overeaters anonymous sort of way. It pretty much rocks my world. A creative heart at my core, the planning for my and my family's daily food allows me to participate in utilitarian art: artistic expression with a purpose; nourishment.

Enter in being vegan, which is a challenge that just makes things spicier and requires more creativity from me. I can't count on things being served to me on a golden plate. I have to depend on others who have paved the vegan road, constantly reinvent and call upon my creative self daily to make sure I don't end up dining off of the shrubbery outside my house. I love it. I really, really do. One of my last Facebook updates said these exact words: "Can somebody please pay me lots of money to just read cookbooks, cook and eat all day? Please?" I didn't get any takers, but I'm still trying to figure out how I can make that happen.

Thanks for reading, and here's what I hope will end up being a long, luxurious conversation in food....

Heather

PS. Why Vegan Deluxe for the title? Mostly because I love the word "deluxe". What's not to love about this word:
de⋅luxe  /dəˈlʌks, -ˈlʊks/ (adjective) special elegance, sumptuousness, or fineness; high or highest in quality, luxury, etc.

And Vegan Deluxe sounded a little less pretentious than The Sumptuous Vegan, or Fine Vegan, so....there.