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Who the heck am I?

My name is Courtney, coffee fanatic and lover of all things rainbow. By day I’m a coffee slinging barista and by night I’m an inspiring Graphic Designer and Software Engineer. I created this blog as a personal project to dust off my skills from my two year hiatus from school (due to a promotion at work). It’s time I familiarize myself with WordPress, brush off my HTML skills (which I’m finding easier than WordPress thus far), and rediscover my love of graphic design before heading back to school and completing my degrees. While the bones and foundation of this site may be for my professional practice and improvement, the journey of this foodie site begins from a more health conscious lifestyle.

How Meatless Munchies Began

Let’s get the obvious out the way. I’m not a vegan nor a vegetarian. I’m a meat-loving, dairy-loving, kind of gal. But my quest for good tasting food has left me quite fascinated with vegan food. 

Meatless Mondays, plant-based diets, and other trends have made a multitude of companies create a ton of substitutes for traditional meals and snacks, such as meatless chicken, non-dairy ice cream, and oat milk. With an array of substitutes out there, I want to know are these meatless munchies any good? Would a non-vegan, like myself, be able to tell the difference between a real burger and a vegan burger? If not, what brands are good enough for a non-vegan to even enjoy? 

As a non-vegan/non-vegetarian, I started this journey of reviewing vegan products to see if they could truly substitute animal products. Yes, I understand that the purpose of vegan things isn’t necessarily made to truly sub animal products, but heck why not try. Maybe I’ll find enough substitute products to truly go vegan, I doubt it, but why not discover some delicious food and share those discoveries with folks. 

 How did I get warped into this meatless world of wonder? My journey began with a documentary called “Forks over Knives” that promoted more plant-based living. Have I been living a plant-based diet since I saw the documentary in 2011? Absolutely…NOT. There are days I still go to fast food joints, especially on working days when I’m on the go. My diet still consists of a meat, a starch, and maybe a vegetable. Honestly, I don’t have the greatest diet at all, but the documentary did open my eyes to another way of eating or at the very least expanded my dinner options. 

So how did a non-vegan, very much omnivore, traditional American diet person decide to make a blog about vegan and plant-based things? Well I want to be more plant based in general. While people love getting technical, I’m not going to religiously follow Forks Over Knives interpretation of a plant based diet. I’ll keep it simple for myself; eat more plants, eat less meat; and what better way to begin my plant based journey than giving up meat cold-turkey or should I say subbing it for cold tofurky. I did just that when I did the 30 day vegan challenge in October 2019 (Thanks to Ms. Tabitha Brown). The challenge didn’t turn me vegan, but it helped me discover some really tasty foods. However, throughout that month, I found myself hungry, lost, and confused on what to buy and what was actually good. Although I hunted the internet for best vegan products, I often bought food based off of raving reviews and they often just tasted horrible. To be honest, I’m convinced vegan’s taste buds are so far removed that tree bark could taste like jerky to them, no offense to my vegan friends. After my 30 days were over, I went back to my normal diet. But I made conscious decisions to continue to try to have more plant based products, as a way to find “healthier” options, reduce my carbon footprint by consuming less animal products, and just wanting to help fellow meat lovers find products that help with their transition to veganism from a non-vegan perspective; or at the very least food that doesn’t taste like cardboard. Thus, my adventure to find the best meatless munchies began.

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