About the author
Hello.
My name is Renae. I eat food. I’ve been vegan since 1998, when I made the switch from lacto-ovo vegetarian, which I’d been for ten years. Vegans are often asked, “so what do you eat?” It’s a frustrating question because I eat food, of course, just like everyone else. I simply don’t consider animals to be food. Often the question arises out of a a genuine curiosity, however, so part of the purpose of this blog is to answer it. Although veganism is very important to me, I left it out of my domain name because I want to emphasize that vegan food isn’t a strange, alien type of food. I eat food – ordinary, regular food. Food you eat, or should be eating: tons of fresh vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, beans. If it’s not an animal, I eat it. It’s really that simple.
I don’t just eat food, I love food. I love buying it, cooking it, photographing it, writing about it, sharing it, and of course, eating it. I learned most of what I know about cooking from the internet, and this blog is my way of contributing, in my small way, to all of the amazing and inspiring websites and blogs that are out there. It’s thrilling to be honing my skills during this time, when there is such a comradery amongst food lovers. Although I used the internet as a cooking and vegan resource in the ’90s, there were no food blogs, fewer, if any, famous vegans, and nowhere near the amount of indispensable information we have now. Most people I encountered back then didn’t even know what a vegan was. Things are completely different and exciting now. I am normal!
Most of my cooking is improvised. I’ll sometimes post a recipe from a cookbook, though usually only if it’s already available on the internet (because I think cookbook authors should be rewarded with cookbook sales). I’ll also sometimes link to a recipe that I’ve found on the internet and copied, with varying degrees of variation. I will always give proper credit for recipes that aren’t mine, even if they were just an inspiration. Much of what I post is the result of my wandering into the kitchen and randomly tossing things together until I think it tastes good. For these recipes, although I may post measurements like “1/2 tsp”, chances are I did not measure. I rarely measure, except when baking; I’ve just estimated the amounts when writing the recipe up later. I therefore encourage you to view my original recipes as merely a starting place: make it your own recipe by making it to your own tastes!
I’m from Baltimore, Maryland but I currently live in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to food, I love working with wildlife, reading, photography, travel, and the serial comma. You can view my photography portfolio at renae.org and read my photography blog at blog.renae.org.
And finally, yes, “I eat food” comes from the Invader Zim cartoon by Jhonen Vasquez. Zim’s an alien pretending to be a human while he plots to destroy Earth. He’s not particularly good at pretending to be human. He has a poster claiming, “I EAT FOOD” in his kitchen (right above the toilet, of course), although in fact, eating human food makes him horribly ill.
