As a kid I wasn’t even allowed near the microwave without supervision, mostly because my family was scared of it. I didn’t learn how to cook much until my late 20s. I had a baby and it dawned on me that I couldn’t feed my kids Lean Cuisine dinners and Cheez-It lunches. So I had to learn how to cook actual food. Wild, right? Thankfully, this was about the same time that cooking blogs were becoming a big thing. I credit their hard work for showing me that I could cook meals without getting totally overwhelmed.
Fast forward a few years and I have developed some, okay, a lot of food allergies. Then I went vegan over 5 years ago. In 2021 I learned my kidneys are mutinous and am on a low-oxalate diet as well. Now I want to share what I’ve learned and hopefully help people feed themselves and their families healthy (and tasty!) plant-based and gluten-free recipes without spending a lot at the grocery store.
We are still covid-cautious and only shop early in the mornings and much less frequently than we did before covid. This means more planning and less spontaneity. We go (masked) to an outdoor farmer’s market once a week. We mask up and go shopping and we order some of our groceries from online retailers.
Outside of cooking, I have 2 teenagers (who are constantly eating!) and am married. We homeschool/unschool and believe learning is a lifelong journey. We have a large and sometimes cranky orange cat named Lulu. I also enjoy knitting, reading, sewing, and trying to keep plants alive.
I have an MA in Sociology so I’m not a dietician or anything remotely medical (insert the standard tag line here about not taking anything I say as medical advice). I earned a certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition in 2019.
Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate, Completed
October 2019, eCornell and T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies