Goals revisited

A year ago, my fiancé and I made the commitment to become vegan. I started this blog to document our new way of life, the things we learned and to share our trials and tribulations along the way. As I look back through my 107 posts, it's clear that we've loved being vegan! At this point, we are fully committed to veganism for life. We have both learned so much over the last year and there is certainly no way we could ever go back. I've even converted my baking service to a fully vegan operation and thus far, I've received rave reviews.

Let's revisit the goals I set all the way back on January 5, 2011:

1. Health - Although we both do feel healthier, I must say that we haven't really experienced the weight loss that many have when they switch over. This is for a number of reasons - the biggest probably being that I'm constantly baking and, well, it's just too hard to resist! The other, we don't exercise very much. I've started taking Pilates classes once a week and I'm trying to walk more and J is thinking about taking up fencing. I also bought the Forks Over Knives companion book which has some great, low-fat, low-cal recipes. Although we are cooking and eating MUCH healthier now, we tend to make things that are fairly rich and use a good amount of olive oil. So my new goal - eat simpler, more wholesome foods. Replace carbs with proteins like lentils or beans.

2. Environmental - well, no one can argue that we aren't helping the environment! But one of the biggest things we've noticed since going vegan is that the amount of trash we generate has significantly decreased. Practically everything we use is recyclable and the only things we really throw away are veggie waste after we've used it for making stock. Just think - if we had our own back yard, we could compost! I recently read an article that said you're not truly recycling unless you buy recycled products/products made from recycled materials. So true. So we are being more conscious about this now too!

3. Cost benefits - I haven't really been tracking our savings, but I know that we are. Meat and dairy products are far more expensive than vegetable based foods. J and I tend to spend a lot on groceries but that's because we LOVE cooking and buy things like morels ($20 for a few ounces) or vegan pesto ($9 a jar). We do purchase a lot of things we could be making on our own (pesto, hummus tapenade) so we recently bought a food processor and have started with making our own hummus - and it's SO much better fresh! We've also really embraced local buying and have been utilizing our local farmers market as much as we can. You wouldn't believe the money you save buy shopping at the farmers market - so worth it! And your food isn't from California - it's from a few towns away, if that!

So that's where we are folks - happy and healthy; ready to jump into 2012 and to keep learning and experimenting and I hope you'll join us for the ride! Even if you're not vegan, I hope you've learned something here and have enjoyed reading! Happy New Year, friends!