[sorry this is late. I had this written, I just forgot to upload it because I was so busy on Friday]

So I want to preface this with a promise. I know that's a little unusual but I'm so aware of all the jokes surrounding veganism recently and I don't want to become one of those jokes. So yeah... I'm vegan. Not full-on animal rights activist wearing hemp clothes and chaining myself to lampposts in protest of how cruel the world is to animals.

No.

I chose to become home-vegan for a completely different reason. I've done a lot of research into cooking over the last couple of months and I was really looking forward to trying new recipes once I left school and had more time on my hands. At this point, it's a fair assumption to make that I would give up before even starting. I mean, I give up on everything. I've never proven I can stick to something so why should that change now?

But the tides are changing. I finished up with school, got into the kitchen and got it done. I've been vegan now for almost a month and it's given me such an amazing opportunity for me to develop  as new hobby. I do realise I sound a bit like a self-help book but I swear to God I speak the truth.

So over the last 2 weeks, I got my cook on. I trolled through Pinterest looking for recipes that looked easy and doable with my seriously limited skill set. I started with soup. It's pretty hard to screw up soup. Really, all you have to do is throw some food in a pan and turn on the stove. So lentil soup it was. Mum's still eating meat so we roasted some lamb and mixed it through the soup for her. Not to blow my own horn, but it was delicious. It's really quite hard to describe food in writing so you're either going to have to make it yourself or just believe me. When I was thinking about going vegan,
I was worried about food not having much flavor. But adding my own spices to it, I was so surprised by how vibrant the flavors were. It was spicy, savory and bloody delicious.

Next up was pasta. Our family ate a lot of Italian food growing up. My gran's Italian and she was always cooking when we went to visit her. My mum makes a killer lasagna and at least once a week, we eat pasta or pizza. So I found a recipe for roasted red pepper soup. I'm a big dairy girl and not being able to eat milk and cheese was something that really worried me. I'm not a massive fan of nuts and I absolutely detest peanut butter and most of the recipes use nuts as a substitute for cheese. Not impressed. This recipe uses soy milk (which I was a little nervous of) as a substitute, meaning its still creamy, but still nut-free (yay!). The soy milk was actually really good. It's a little sweet and I didn't really take that into account when I was cooking it so the sauce is a wee bit sweet but I managed to fix it with a squeeze of lemon and some salt and Peri-Peri sauce. All round, another good meal. I added some fresh herbs, croutons and pine nuts when I was serving it because the sauce doesn't have much texture but with these little additions, it ended up being just as good as the stuff out the jar.

My next venture was a little bit messy. I made potato cakes. Now I've never been a fan of mushrooms. Like if I was frolicking through a field (as I do, of course) and  saw one growing in long grass, I would run. And I don't run. But I sucked it up. It would be very difficult for a vegan who won't try and persevere with vegetables. Not gonna lie, they were amazing. I chuck them in the over for 20 minutes to crisp up and serve them with some steamed veg and they're my own little personal heaven. I'm very happy, I'll be stocking up on these. They're really quick to make and really bloomin' lovely.

So yeah, I might be vegan and yeah, that might make you roll your eyes at me and hate me for being "too hipster for my own good" but I'm having fun. I'm cooking more, I'm eating healthier and I feel happier.