About Me

Hi, my name is Jennifer (Hi, Jennifer) and I'm married to a vegetarian. It's been almost 10 years since we've regularly used knives at our table...

ABOUT ME

I was born and raised in Belmont, MA just outside of Boston. I have a twin sister and we are the youngest of seven children. (Yup! That's a big family!) I went to BYU and received a BS in Sociology and an MPA (master in public administration). I met my husband (a.k.a. the vegetarian) in the summer before my senior year as an undergrad, and the next summer we were married. After we finished school in Utah we headed back to Boston to find jobs. I worked a large health system, in the Boston area, as a Project Manager in their finance department. I worked there for about 3 years until I had my son in April of 2011. Shortly after that we moved to Ann Arbor, MI for my husband to pursue his graduate education (MPH and PhD). In 2014 we welcomed our daughter into our family. After 7 wonderful years in Ann Arbor, we moved our family back to UTAH (10 years later) for my husband's job. I stay home with my two beautiful kids and they keep me very busy. I love to sew and am teaching myself how to construct clothes for myself. If only I had an unlimited budget for fabric!


ABOUT MY FOOD

So I titled this section "my food philosophy" and now that I'm reading it, it sounds a bit pretentious. So...now I'm just going to talk to you "about my food." My husband started his adventures in the world of vegetarianism in 2009, and he's never looked back. At first I was a little perplexed about his choice, but soon came around and started cooking mainly vegetarian dinners in our home. Six years, two kids, multiple apartments, and two graduate degrees later and we're still going strong.

Now, I will admit, I am NOT the best cook, but I try my hardest to come up with yummy meals for our family (and sometimes we just have cereal, because cereal is a major food group..). Sometimes it can be hard trying to do this on our meager budget as my husband finishes up his Phd, but I think I've found some really great, inexpensive meals that we love.

I like food that's simple, not fussy. I want the preparation to be straightforward and uncomplicated. Ingredients should be readily available at all major grocery stores. None of those exotic (i.e. expensive) items that can never be tracked down. And most importantly, it has to taste good. I will NEVER post a recipe on here that we didn't like. All dishes will have the VH (vegetarian husband) stamp of approval.

ABOUT MY BLOG

There are many reasons why I started this blog. The first, is to have one central place where I can "store" all the recipes I love to cook. No more bookmarking, pinteresting, or google searching. They'll now all be in one central location. The second is to share my recipes with other people. I have received many emails asking for vegetarian recipes. I even shared a few and got rave reviews. I had two lovely friends one night tell me I should start a blog and that they'd read it. That was very flattering. Thank you lovely friends (you know who you are). Lastly, I wanted something that was "mine" that would feel fulfilling. Adjusting to motherhood has been hard for me. I know, four years and I'm still trying to get into my groove. I felt like I lost a little bit of my own self when my time and attention turned to my children. I'd always been in school or working full time so the transition was abrupt when I decided to not go back to work. Now I spend most of my days cleaning up messes, changing diapers, washing hands, ignoring tantrums...the list goes on. I needed to have something to help me feel like I was making a contribution and sharing my talents. So this is what I came up with.

A LOT of people are confused about the title of my blog. It may not be the greatest name, but it's sort of a play on words. We almost never use knives at our table because of the lack of meat to cut. We usually only bring out a knife if we need to spread butter on something. Plus, I liked the word "rarely" kind of a play on "rare", like meat? Get it? I know. It's not funny. I thought about naming it "Jen's Vegetarian Recipes" but that seemed so BORING. I like The Rare Knife. It has a nice ring to it.