I discovered the library a couple years ago. I believe I've mentioned it a time or two. I remember back in college my friend Aaryn came up to me freaking out - literally freaking out - because he had just discovered the public library and could not contain his excitement that so many gazillions of books were at his fingertips free of charge. I mean, it's not like we'd never heard of a library before or anything. It was just that neither of us had ever really been in one, unless it was the university library which we tried to avoid like the plague. I distinctly remember the excitement on his face, him pulling my arm across the parking lot into the library, exclaiming in every section how many amazing books were there that we could just take and read whenever we wanted. In my head, I was like, 'Yeah, it's cool. That's great, Aaryn,' without really catching his enthusiasm. And then I discovered it for myself two years ago and ever since I've had that library-perma-grin that shone so brightly on Aaryn's face that first day.

But this isn't the point of the my story. It's just the little seed that planted my story. You see, ever since the dawning of my personal Library Age, I have immersed myself in more literature than I did in all my growing up years combined, which is saying something because I may have been something of a bookworm growing up. During the past couple of years, I've read a mass of things I never would have thought I'd read, random subjects, new genres, and a plethora of healthy nutrition books. Gotta love those, right? So, I'm reading all these health books, while being married to Mr. Healthy Eating himself, and obviously my eating lifestyle is going to take a change, right? Right. And at this point, two years down the line, you'd think I'd probably honed in on a consistent pattern of healthy eating that I could stick with from here on out, right?

Wrong.

I ended up reading The Face on Your Plate a couple months ago. Have you heard of it? If I recall, it has an adorable little lamb placed neatly in the center of a crystal white dinner plate. And the little baby lamb's huge black eyes are staring imploringly into your face because he knows you're about to slice him open and eat him for dinner. Okay, I could be making that last part up, but just work with me here. The book, as you can probably guess, gave a nice case for Veganism, and while I don't have any moral objections to killing an animal for one's food, I did succumb to the other health and environmental plights made in the book. And it didn't help that we watched Food, Inc. about two seconds after I finished this book. And to be completely truthful, I had been thinking about veganism on and off for the past year or so, but just didn't think I could ever live without cheese.  Which is a good reason to not go vegan, I might add.  But in my evolution of healthful ways, I decided now was the time for me, so I took the plunge and joined the vegan ranks.

What was Isaac's response to all of this, you ask? My sweet husband just shook his head and said, 'So now you're gluten intolerant and vegan? No one's ever going to invite us over for dinner again.'  Isn't he precious?  And in case you're wondering, people do actually still invite us over for dinner. 

 

So in light of my new little lifestyle, I've made it my personal goal to learn to bake gluten-free/vegan goodies that taste amazing and have the texture of a glutenous treat.  It's one thing to bake gluten-free, and it's one thing to bake vegan, but baking with both is quite the experience.  So I loaded up on baking books (from the library, of course) from places like Baby Cakes, and The Flying Apron who are known for baking these kinds of treats, but nothing I baked following these recipes satisfied me.  So last night, I had this epiphone.  I realized that I knew how to bake, and I knew enough about the properties of g-free flours to experiment, so I tossed all the cookbooks aside and tried a batch of cupcakes made totally from the vast recesses of my mind.  And you know what?  It was the best batch I'd made yet!  

Take that professionals. 

That's all I really wanted to share.  This ridiculously long story just to let you know that I baked a batch of cupcakes on my own that was better than all the professionals' recipes.  But it made me feel so good, you know?  So accomplished.  And now when Oprah reads this, she'll know I have mad skills and invite me to become her personal baker.  Yes, changing the world one cupcake at a time...