Wow. One whole year Girl Eats Greens has been in existence. Where do I even start? It has been a crazy roller coaster of a year. I never ready had a “first post” style first post. There was no introduction post, nothing really to explain why I started on this journey. Yes there’s a casual “about me” section. That may or may not share a ton “about me.” The more I think about it, the more I think I should probably update that… Now that we’re at a year of blogging – this technically means I’ve been vegan for over 2 years! Where does the time go?

I wasn’t so sure what to even say or do for this “blogiversary.” I thought about baking a cake, because that seems pretty celebratory. But I don’t have a cake pan and I’ve made a whole lot of things in my cupcake tins recently that I thought that might be a bit redundant. So instead I decided to share a story with you all – the story of why I decided to start Girl Eats Greens.

In the spring of 2013, I was happy as a clam, working at a job that I loved, on a career path that I thought was on the up and up. It was something I had been working toward for my entire post-college career. I had a ton of really awesome experiences, traveled a lot (often with little notice) and felt really proud of the work I was doing. Then, the day before my birthday, I was on a conference call and I was told the show I was working on was cancelled. As in, no longer on TV. As in, when it went off the air, I no longer had a job. It felt surreal. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure where I was or what I was doing or even what I wanted to do. I struggled for months trying to find a place to land. There were false leads and hiring freezes, and it was a really stressful and difficult time. I started to feel like I lost myself. I wasn’t yet unemployed, I was lucky enough that my company kept me employed through all of this turmoil. I recognize how incredibly lucky I was. But it was still an emotional roller coaster. As my last day at my company was coming up, I took a step back and I thought to myself what would I do if I didn’t have to worry about money? What would really make me happy right now?  It might sound strange, but that answer was food blogging.

I was always interested in food and recipes. But when I decided to go vegan, cooking became even more fun for me. It was a challenge to figure out what to do with new vegetables and new grocery items. I learned about things like nutritional yeast and soaking cashews in water to get them soft for use in creams. I found a whole lot of interesting ways to replace the (mainly dairy) favorites in my former diet.

This hilarious shot was taken by my good friend who happened to sneak up on me photographing a recipe. Yes, it often looks like this.

So a year later when I was on the verge of unemployment, I decided to take a leap into food blogging. I made an investment in a good camera, because I knew I wanted to have the photos be a major part of the site. I figured if my recipes didn’t turn out right, I could at least take some good photos of them. I came up with Girl Eats Greens on an hours-long gchat conversation with one of my closest friends brainstorming to come up with a name. The early iterations were hilarious. But then “girl eats greens” came into our chat. And the domain was available. That was it. On July 24th, 2013, I started with  my very first post. Looking at it now makes me giggle a little bit to see how far I’ve come. I’ve loved trying new recipes and realizing vegan cooking isn’t as daunting as I thought it would be, even if I do still burn things or drop food on the floor (which happens quite often).

But the truth is, it isn’t just me on this journey. It wouldn’t be such a great experience without all of you – those of you who read my posts and leave comments really do brighten my days. It wouldn’t be the same without all of you, so thank you. Thanks for making Girl Eats Greens what it is, and thank you for coming along on this journey with me. I hope you’ll still be with me this time next year… until then I’ll keep writing as long as you keep reading.