Hey 🙂 it’s great to have you here on our blog!
We are Imke and Georg. We created this blog because we want to share our passion for cooking and good food with the world, and we want to do our part for a better world. And the best and easiest way to do something for the animals, the environment and yourself is through our plates.
Cooking is our passion, hobby and a way to relax after a long day in the office. We love good food and are happy to share our creations with friends and family.
And what else?
When we are not cooking or inventing new recipes, we enjoy being out in nature. We love the mountains and spend as much time as possible in the Alps hiking, climbing, skiing or snowboarding.
But of course we still have a “normal” job to earn some money. Georg works as a software developer and I work as an aviation engineer.
Every time we have saved enough money, we travel the world and capture it with our camera. That’s because you can get the best ideas for new recipes while traveling.
Why did we choose a vegan diet?
Imke: At the age of 16, I decided to go vegetarian and eat no more meat or fish, primarily for the love of the animals. However, I’ve never really thought much about where my food and especially milk and eggs actually come from. No animals die for milk and eggs, and drinking milk is the most normal thing in the world – at least that’s what I thought back then.
However, this changed in 2017 from one day to the next. I had a lot of free time during this summer and took all the vegetarian cooking classes the community college had to offer. Among them was a vegan cooking class. At that time, I thought vegans were extreme, because who in their right mind would voluntarily miss out on cheese?
For a long time I have been a veritable cheese junkie. I lived in France for 6 months in 2015 and basically fed only on cheese during this time. In this vegan cooking class, the lecturer asked us if we were already vegan and if not, what stopped us from going this step. And I said,
“I could never live without cheese!”
Today I have to laugh about my response because as a vegan you hear that phrase so incredibly often of other people trying to explain what keeps them away from veganism. Funnily today, of all the products I don’t ear anymore, I miss cheese the least. Now it even grosses me out.
The teacher of our cooking class then explained the science behind my cheese “addiction”. Turns out cows produce an ingredient called casiomorphine in their milk. These peptides are related to opioids, hence the name morphine. The morphine in the milk serves to strengthen the relationship of the calf to his mother, because when suckling the casiomorphines have a calming effect on the calf. So milk and cheese are addictive? That was the first time I heard about that.
“Why have I never heard about this before?”
This made me ponder and I started to read more about the subject. I watched documentaries about the dairy and egg industry, including chicks being thrown in a grinder and babycalfs being slaughtering for no other reason than that they were male. I was shocked how cruelly the animals are handled in factory farming. And organic eggs and milk were unfortunately no exception, as I had hoped. That’s because for organic eggs the male chicks are also of no value and are shredded alive. And for organic milk calves are still taken away from their mothers and the male ones get slaughtered.
The lecturer in the cooking class also reminded us that cows are mammals and as such only give milk when they have just born a calf. The milk is therefore logically intended for the calf.
Did you know? Man is the only species on this planet that still drinks breastmilk in adulthood!
And to make matters worse, we drink breast milk from a foreign species, a milk which is made to transform a small calf into giant cattle within a year.
So I decided that I wanted to do my best to stop supporting this practice. The same day, I decided to change my diet to vegan.
Georg: For me, the first steps towards a vegan lifestyle were not as easy as they were for Imke. Because at the Imke decided to go vegan, I was still a meat eater. At home I mostly ate vegetarian or vegan, but when I went to a restaurant or ate in the canteen I often chose the meat dish. I thought, like most people probably do, that vegan food was boring and very restrictive. Above all going vegan or even vegetarian was not as easy for me as it was for Imke, since she had been a vegetarian for over 16 years and was used to the restrictions. I had only been more or less intensively dealing with the subject for about half a year.
“But what do you eat then?”
But Imke stayed true to her word and we agreed to baby steps. Our first step was to eat at least one vegan dish per day. And we slowly build from there.
Imke: In the beginning, cooking without milk products, cheese and eggs was very unfamiliar and difficult for me. Because of all my standard dishes 80% were covered with cheese or contained eggs, milk, yogurt or butter. Therefore, I started to read a lot of vegan recipe blocks and cookbooks to get a hang on this new vegan way of cooking.
I discovered so many new ingredients and products
Some ingredients I’d never heard of before: tempeh, jackfruit, seitan, yeast flakes, kala namak, liquid smoke and so many others.
Before going vegan I’ve never really spent much time in the kitchen. All that was important was that cooking was fast and the result satisfying. But now I suddenly had tons of delicious recipes at hand that I wanted to try. I discovered my love of cooking and experimented with new ingredients.
A vegan food and great taste do not have to be mutually exclusive!
Georg: I ​​liked the food Imke was cooking a lot and I realized that a vegan diet and great food do not have to be mutually exclusive. I also noticed that Imke suddenly had much more energy. Before going vegan, she was a total Couch Potato. Now she suddenly proposed to do sports and was really energetic. When climbing, she increased her performance tremendously and I was worried that she would be better than me. Hiking routes and climbing trails in the mountains, which would have been unthinkable before, were suddenly well feasible.
Positive changes
I noticed the positive changes that such a change of diet can bring. And after Imke and I had talked a lot about the abyss of factory farming and the impact on animals, the environment, and our own health, I decided to eat vegetarian food and slowly get involved in vegan life.
So we finally completely rid our pantry of all animal products. Since then you will only find vegan food in our home.
Imke: In the very beginning, I made exceptions when dining out in the restaurant or with friends. I sometimes ate vegetarian, if there was nothing vegan on the menu. But at some point my own inconsistency aroused me and in the spring of 2018 I decided to go completely vegan from now on. Good for me, at the same time it was Lent and so my environment responded well to this change. Because of the Lent, they were probably more understanding than they would have been otherwise. Therefore, I stayed vegan even after Lent and have not once regretted it to this day.
Living the vegan life
Since then I have also considered other areas of my life. Now I make sure that cosmetics and household products contain no animal products and have not been tested on animals. Furthermore I do not buy clothes made of leather, wool, silk or down.
Of course, you will never make it to 100% vegan in all areas. At work for example I have to wear the leather safety shoes provided by the company. And recently, I got pills prescribed by the doctor containing lactose.
But I do my best and try to keep the animal suffering as low as possible. And that’s what veganism is all about. It’s not about perfection; it’s about doing what you can do. For the animals, for the environment and for yourself.
Activism
By now I am also getting active for animal rights. For example, I participate in the Cubes of Truth by Anonymous for the Voiceless. This is a form of protest during which we activists form a cube and hold up laptops or showing videos from factory farming. We then reach out to the people that stop to watch the videos talk with them about our everyday choices and what this means to the animals. I feel as if I can make a difference and help other people to open their eyes and consider going vegan.