My first post!!!

Hi! Welcome to my blog dedicated to experiments in totally vegetarian food- don't worry, I'm only going to post the successes!  Since I'm still figuring out this whole blogging thing (and it's 2 am...), this first post won't have a recipe.  Instead, I thought I'd ramble on for a bit about how much I love cooking and being vegetarian!

I grew up vegetarian and remember years ago when eating out was extremely difficult.  Restaurants used chicken and beef stock in foods, fried in lard, and generally didn't understand the concept of being vegetarian (by the way, I don't consider fish, seafood, or white meat vegetarian...).  Anyhow, it made going out to eat kinda tough.  Solution: start experimenting at home!  Thanks to my Mom and Dad, I was exposed to really good veggie food since I was young.  So, while my friends thought being vegetarian meant I ate boiled/steamed veggies, corn on the cob, and mashed potatoes, I was actually enjoying all kinds of Indian food, veggie enchiladas, cannelloni, tacos, and so much more! Once I realized how much fun food can be, and how great it is to see people really enjoy food, I wanted to learn how to cook.  The whole idea of starting with individual ingredients and manipulating them in some way to end up with something tasting totally different fascinated me.  I literally started playing around with food, mixing things in different ways, adapting other people's recipes to fit my taste, trying to duplicate things I ate in restaurants, etc. Luckily, I have a wonderful family, which is  full of people willing to be guinea pigs for me.  =) Anyhow, over time I have recipes that I always fall back on, and even more that I'm still experimenting with and developing.  As I make dishes, I'll post them on here and hopefully some of them will sound appetizing and worth trying! Hope you visit again and happy cooking!