So here it is! Oy Vegan’s first post! This is very excit­ing for all of us here at oyvegan.com. This is a blog for veg­ans and veg­e­tar­i­ans every­where. Look out for recipes, restau­rant reviews, men­sch of the month spot­lights, inter­views, tikkun olam projects, and more.

Why am I embark­ing on this jour­ney of blog­dom? I should first say that I am a life­long veg­e­tar­ian — I was raised veg — so I’ve never eaten meat or fish/seafood in my life. Peo­ple ask me if I miss meat or if I was ever curi­ous grow­ing up. It’s a valid ques­tion, I sup­pose, if you eat meat. The thing is, I never looked at it that way. I never cared to try meat because, in short, I knew what meat was.

If you think about it most kids love ani­mals. All of our favourite car­toons grow­ing up fea­tured talk­ing ani­mals. If kids actu­ally knew that those ani­mals were going to be stuffed full of hor­mones, fed their own meat and blood in many cases, and shoved into tiny cages where they would live in tor­ture, amid feces and dis­ease until the day they were slaugh­tered for human con­sump­tion, I’m sure they would run scream­ing from their plates. Sim­ply put, I wasn’t lied to. From day one I knew that meat equalled ani­mals and that I loved ani­mals. I was com­pletely happy with my lifestyle and, sur­pris­ingly, most kids didn’t really care or say any­thing about it. The peo­ple who gave me the most crap about it were their par­ents! Peo­ple didn’t know what to feed me when I came over to play. I was a served a whole lot of peanut but­ter sand­wiches in my day. Oy!

Over the past month I have become vegan. I’ve made the switch for a num­ber of rea­sons: health, the envi­ron­ment, and treat­ment of ani­mals. I hope to explore all of these in upcom­ing posts. Luck­ily, I have a boyfriend who, in the begin­ning, was even more gung-ho about mak­ing the tran­si­tion to veg­an­ism than I was. Together we have embarked on a jour­ney towards a hap­pier, health­ier, and more peace­ful life. I have to say… I feel great! I’m not bloated any­more (cheese made me bloated) and I have a lot more energy!

This blog is about mak­ing the world a bet­ter place one oy vegan at a time. We’re all con­nected. Every liv­ing being on this planet. If we think that we can sys­tem­at­i­cally tor­ture and kill mil­lions of ani­mals and it won’t have an impact on the envi­ron­ment and the health of those con­sum­ing the prod­uct, we are sadly mistaken.

In these days of awe, between Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kip­por — we can look at our life and our world and see it as a whole. We need to start look­ing at the big­ger pic­ture and guess what?! That big­ger pic­ture is NOT money. It’s our health, our hap­pi­ness, and our earth.

So let’s keep it real and keep it veg! Oy Vegan!

Jamie

We would love to hear your feed­back, so please e-mail me with any ques­tions you might have at jamie@oyvegan.com.

(please note this entry was writ­ten the week of Oct 3rd 2011)