About Us

When you visit this blog, you get the whole spectrum of Korean vegan food. You’ve got Sunnie, your authentic, born-and-raised-in-Seoul Korean, dispensing not only knowledge about yummy vegan Korean food, but also some of the seemingly endless Korean sayings.

Then you’ve got Bill, a Chinese-American Hoosier, who married into Korean cuisine but was a big kimchi fan long before meeting his wife.

The result is a blog dishing on our experiences recreating our favorite Korean recipes as vegan. We’ll also be throwing in the occasional Midwest recipe and serving up our thoughts on the vegan life in Indiana, and the kpop and kdrama scenes as well.

Since we decided to adopt a vegan life style due to our rejection of the factory farming system that has made the meat and dairy industries inhumane, unhealthy, and bad for the environment, we will also now and then be sharing news on the animal rights activism front.

Our journey to a vegan diet progressed a step at a time. Sunnie first decided to become vegetarian after viewing a film, Koyaanisqatsi (Life out of Balance), in a graduate class discussion about human systems. The film, a montage of stock video footage set to music, showed new born chicks being sorted and having the tips of their beaks burned off  on an assembly line. While the film was not about animal rights, Sunnie was struck by the reality of how she had never thought about the inhumane processes behind the food on our table. That day, she decided she did not want to participate in the factory farming approach that dominates modern meat production.

Bill had previously thought that he would like to be vegetarian but would never be able to handle it, so he agreed to be a vegetarian while at home. After a few months, he then adopted a pescatarian diet (the only meat eaten is seafood) before becoming fully vegetarian within a year. We transitioned to drinking soy and rice milk instead of dairy, and we only bought eggs that were humane certified.

Only a few years ago, we felt that we could never adhere to the realities of a vegan diet. How would we be able to eat out? Wouldn’t it be a lot of effort and inconvenience? And most importantly, how in the world could we give up cheese?! Ultimately, we became vegetarian because of our rejection of factory farming, and the realization of the inherent cruelty in the dairy industry and its connection to veal led us to commit to becoming vegan.

After four years of being vegetarian, the transition to a vegan diet was actually incredibly easy. We had told ourselves it would be so hard, but we found that we enjoyed cooking, and we liked knowing what was in the things we ate. We found lots of great recipes, and at first, we found Daiya, a non-dairy cheese that helped us transition away from cheese. Once we broke that addiction, and yes, it is a physical addiction, we really don’t miss cheese at all.

We also quickly realized health benefits. Bill lost 15 pounds, and Sunnie’s immune system improved amazingly. Her frequent migraines, heart burn, sinus infections completely disappeared. Both of us saw our allergies completely disappear as well.

The switch to a vegan diet has been so positive for us, that we wanted to share our experience. Hello and welcome (annyong haseyo, hwangyoung hampnida), and don’t hesitate to ask any questions or share your own experiences!