...drum roll, please!!!

Ladies & gentlemen! After a few months of contemplation and with the help of my Facebook friends, I introduce I Can't Believe It's Not Dead! As many of you may know, I made the decision in April 2007 to stop eating meat. It was a decision based on several thoughts: "I love a good challenge...", "It's healthier than how I'm eating now...", "I love animals!". For the entire summer, I omitted meat from my diet. In doing so, I lost almost 30 pounds! I was thinner, eating better, and still getting the nutrients I needed to be healthy.

Almost a year later, I've made another decision to adopt a Vegan lifestyle. Here is an excerpt from www.wikipedia.com:

Veganism is a diet and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose. Vegans endeavor not to use or consume animal products of any kind. The most common reasons for becoming a vegan are ethical commitment or moral conviction concerning animal rights, the environment, human health, and spiritual or religious concerns.

To sum it all up, I still don't eat meat...I'm also excluding bi-products like milk & eggs. I only use unbleached flour because bleached flour is bleached with chlorine and filtered through animal bones (I know...GROSS!). It's only been a few days since I made the choice to go Vegan. It's not that hard when I'm cooking all the time. It's when we go out to eat that it gets tricky. However, it forces me to order the good stuff on the menu (and more often than not, 86ing the cheese).

This blog is going to be dedicated to sharing the recipes I finagle with my friends and family. I'm fortunate enough to have a hungry husband who will eat anything as long as it tastes good. I'm also lucky to have inherited my mother's cooking skills. The way this is going to work is simple: I'm going to cook something Vegan and delicious, be it breakfast, dinner, or dessert, and I'm going to share the recipe and a picture of the finished product. We'll have a Cody Seal of Approval AND a Deidra Clean Plate Club rating. When I learn some new, crazy trick (like flaxseed instead of eggs for baking!), I'll share it. I'm also up for suggestions, so if you have any, please send them my way!

I hope this blog helps me keep track of my progress in my newfound Vegan lifestyle. I also hope that it will inspire at least one person to cook up something tasty, sans meat. Cheers!