For the most part, the food you'll find on this blog will be vegan, but there may be times that actual cheese appears, say, or an egg might be used. Hence, "veganish." While there are many great substitutions for cheese these days, sometimes I would rather just use a quality cheese, especially if it is local.
Please note that I am not really interested in having big debates about this. I have seen far too many bloggers get "hate comments" if they post a recipe with animal products in it. I assume if you are coming to my site for recipes, you have common sense enough to make substitutions if you choose not to use an ingredient. I'll do my best, too, to offer suggestions on substitutions. If you want to use a recipe that I've posted but don't want to use a specific ingredient, go for the alternatives. You're welcome to comment and tell us how the substitution worked out.
A lot of folks who eat a plant-based diet these days avoid the word "vegan" because of the negative stereotype of vegans as being a bit high strung or political.
Why I went veganish.
My story seems to be a pretty common one. The food choices I make now are based on my health. My parents both were prescribed statins, as was one of my older sisters (although she is weaning herself off of them by switching to a plant-based diet). My partner and my other sister were both being persuaded to go on statins, but neither wanted to. I have not had elevated cholesterol, possibly because of leaning heavily toward flexitarian eating for years. When I lived on my own I was vegetarian for quite some time, and slid into cooking with more animal products as the years went by and I cooked for other people.
So, when it looked like we were going to have to start thinking about statins, I decided to try cutting out animal products and see if that brought numbers down, and of course it did. First one sister (the one not on statins) decided to try it, and it worked for her, too. In fact, it worked so well her doctor asked what she was doing because she'd never seen numbers drop that dramatically that quickly without intervention with statins. Then, my other sister followed suit, and even though she's been on statins for a long time, her doctor has suggested she stop taking them. She's cut her dosage in half and they are going to look toward cutting them out completely if the numbers continue to look good.
I am a pet parent, and I do love animals, but my reasons for eating and cooking the way I do have to do with wanting to avoid statins and other medications. While we started the shift in the way we eat because of cholesterol, we found out that some of us are lactose intolerant and others in the family are sensitive to gluten. As a result, you'll not only find "veganish" dishes here, but you'll find some gluten-free experiments as we go.