Learning Curve

So the Average Vegan Dad blog site is off and crawling…….To be honest, I didn’t realize how much goes into starting a blog site.  I am not extremely creative (other than cooking) and I am not overly computer savvy.  I am comfortable on more business or functional programs, but when I started working on this blog, I realized I had a lot to learn.

If you haven’t noticed already, the blog is, shall we say, “Block and Tackle”, “Black and White” or to be honest, bland and basic…..or as I call it, Chic Minimalistic!  I am confident this will change over time, but up to this point, I am thrilled I have a site up and running, some content, a number of recipes to share and a beginning of a structure and a direction.  Maybe at some point, someone may actually see and read some of my recipes…..dare to dream (if you’re here, send me an email via my Contact Page)!!

IN THE BEGINNING

Other than my blog ramblings, my recipes are going to be the initial and main focus of my blog.  I have always had a love of cooking and it started with my Grandma and my Mom.  They always welcomed me in the kitchen and encouraged my efforts, no matter how bad they were.  This passion continued throughout my life, but for many years, my wife and I were just trying to hang on.  We had 4 kids within 5 years, we both worked full time, the kids got into multiple travel sports and we ate on the run.  Nights were spent in the car or in gyms and weekends were spent texting each other the game scores from different cities or states.  I wouldn’t trade that time for anything, but it wasn’t very conducive to developing great dishes and recipes.

As the kids got older, I started finding more time to cook.  We were vegetarian at the time, my wife is Italian and we developed a taste for pasta’s (with cheese), pizza’s (with goat cheese), creamy sauces (with cream and cheese) and about anything else with cheese!  To be honest, we still were conscious of our diet, we ate a lot of veggies, beans, fruits and nuts, but the cheese!  I did start to learn to develop great flavors in my cooking and it has helped my to this day.

CHANGE HAPPENS

Over the last few years, there have been some dramatic changes in our lives.  I lost my job and 3 of our kids have graduated college and are in the process of starting their own lives.  The days of the calendar being so full of “stuff” has ended and I have a lot of unexpected “free” time at the moment.   All of this has afforded me more time to focus on what’s important to us in the long term.  We are focused on our health, our impact on our environment, how we impact animals and the long effect we have on future generations.  I said I won’t get preachy, but this is how we see our journey.

THE PROCESS

Everything in life is a process.  You don’t start out being a great athlete, parent, spouse, business person, teacher, cook or anything else.  There is a process where you learn and build on failures and successes.  You explore new ideas, thoughts and directions.  You chart a course, vector in different directions numerous times based on new information and then you begin to find a focus based on your passion, knowledge, moral convictions and who you want to be in this life.  Whoa, that got deep.  Let’s dial back our focus a bit to living a plant based life style and cooking big, bold, flavorful food.  We can get to the rest of that down the road……I promise I will!