Hello

Welcome to my blog!

This year I became passionate about two things: being vegan and Toronto. Add that to my passion for writing and it seemed only natural to start blogging.

I went vegan in March. It was a sudden change, but a surprisingly easy one. And it’s all because of this book:

I’ve always been interested in nutrition and health so when my mom asked if I wanted to read a book she’d gotten about dieting, of course I said yes. It’s called “The End of Dieting: How to Live for Life” by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. In it, Dr. Fuhrman talked about how a plant-based diet was the healthiest diet out there and went through its various benefits. It only took a couple chapters before I was sold. After reading the last page, I closed the book and reflected on my diet. Could I switch to a plant-based diet? Would it be a huge transition? Mentally running through what I ate on a daily basis I realized that 80% of my diet already was vegan.

Dairy? I had made the switch to almond milk a year earlier when I realized it had less calories than cow’s milk and didn’t taste too bad.

Cheese? Unless it was on pizza, it didn’t make many appearances in my diet (too many calories).

Eggs? Butter? Too many calories, so yep, those items were also rare (pre-vegan Erika was very calorie conscious, as I’m sure you can tell).

Meat? I was never a meat lover. Poultry was my favourite but steak, pork and any other animal I could take or leave (usually the latter).

Seafood? By far the most difficult subtraction. Seafood was always my favourite. And how can you have sushi without seafood?! You can but, I won’t lie, it’s nowhere near as magical without it.

So yep, just like that I decided to no longer eat anything with animal products in it. It was a bit drastic, but if you know me you know that’s how I am; all or nothing.

And now, 7 months later, I can honestly say it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. It makes me happy. It’s taught me to be a better cook. I feel good knowing I’m not hurting animals. I like that my carbon footprint is smaller. I love that my grocery bill is cheaper. In summary: it’s great.

The next best decision I made was to move to Toronto, which I did in May.  If I thought the transition to a plant-based diet was easy, Toronto proved it could be 1000x easier. Vegan bakeries, vegan ice cream shops, vegan restaurants, vegan festivals and a vegan option on almost every menu… It’s like I moved out of my parents’ house and into (vegan) heaven.

So here we are. This blog will be all about my vegan experiences, many (if not all) of which will take place in Toronto. I’ll write about restaurants, recipes I attempt, and anything else that relates to being vegan in this lovely city I call home.

Happy reading!