As a child I learned to love baking through many hours spent in the kitchen enjoying the tastes and smells of cookies, cakes and pies with my mom and my sister . A lot of the basic technique I use to create new recipes today comes from things my mom taught me in the course of changing or adding to recipes to suit her own purposes. She still gives me her two cents and sometimes a hand when I am working on something new.
In 2003 I went vegan after having been vegetarian for about 5 years. Initially I was unsure of myself in the kitchen and I tried vegan cookbooks without much success. It wasn't until I returned to what I had learned as a child and started adapting recipes from conventional cookbooks to be vegan and creating entirely new vegan recipes through trial and error that I was able to enjoy cooking again. After a few years I found myself getting much too excited about creating new recipes and sharing them with friends in person and on social networks to the point that I am pretty sure it started to get on their nerves. That was when I realized I needed to start a cooking blog so I could share recipes with other vegans who would be excited about them too. In May 2009 I started The Vegan Kitchen blog and that is pretty much the story of The Vegan Kitchen!
I've called Pennsylvania home all my life and my parents homeschooled me up until I attended college. In addition to writing this blog I homeschool my son, whom I am raising vegan. When I'm not busy being "mommy" I like to read mystery novels, take photographs, and spend too much time on a guilty pleasure: nail polish (vegan, of course).
