Who I am

Maybe it's easier to start by saying who or what I am not, as the poet Montale taught... somewhere.
 
So. I'm not a "healthy vegan".
 
I'm not a chef: they still make fun of me around Treviso for a cake with ricotta and limoncello that years ago I prepared and brought, full of satisfaction and pride, to my family. I can only add that it has gone down in history as "quagmire cake".
 
I'm not a career woman with the hobby of blogging and a thousand commitments on the agenda. That is, a thousand commitments I have them too, like everyone: I have a job in the field of communication that takes care of the whole day, I play bass, I do yoga, trekking ... but I struggle to juggle.
 
I'm not a mother, but I have a dog that is like my son.
 
I'm not married, but I have a partner who used to say to me "if you become a vegan you're stupid" and now he's stupid too.
 
I'm not an artist, but I like writing, and I play the bass the best that I can, but only for fun.
 
I'm not an animalist manifesting in the squares (and this is my limit). I don't live making sermons to carnivores / fish-eaters / vegetarians friends (although some of them would deserve it, for all the times they have done it to me).
 
But I'm still an animalist, if we want to use this label. I grew up in a "zoo family", including cats, dogs, birds, minnows, hamsters, dwarf rabbits (I can not forget my beloved Cosetta, who lived 9 and a half years), and passing guests, like hedgehogs, barn owls, sparrows, blackbirds.
 
At 17 I became a vegetarian, vegan at 34.
 
Today I think that anyone who is vegetarian for ethical reasons, as I was, sooner or later will take the next step, becoming vegan. But I also think that none of us can be 100% coherent in our society. And that the important thing is that everyone does his best.
 
My passion for cooking has come for a "survival issue". At the umpteenth wedding where the main course of the menu, prepared especially for me, were grilled vegetables (which I hate), at the umpteenth dinner where friends binged while I filled my stomach with taralli and bread, at the umpteenth question "what can I prepare you? You don't eat anything!", I decided to prove to myself and to others how many good vegan stuff can be eaten. And how easy it is to prepare them, even for simple, sometimes clumsy persons, like me.
 
And then I have to add that every time I prepare cookies or cakes, I take them out of the oven and smell their fragrance, I remember my grandfather, when he was a pastry chef in the small town where I lived: every Sunday he baked delicious krapfen, "diplomatica", "francesine", strudel, and the "amaretto", a cake with almonds that I loved ... He revealed me some of his recipes, that I tried and tried again, as a child. I do not know where they ended, unfortunately, and I forgot them. But if I will find them, one day, I could try to propose them in vegan "sauce". I wonder what he would think of it smiley