Aloha, my name is Janelle and welcome to my plant-based food and travel blog! I’ve always had an interest in food, especially good tasting food. At a young age, I learned about the importance of food. Whether it’s cultivating the land and all of its amazing offerings, nourishing our bodies to live the life we want, bringing friends and family together over a meal, or sharing our cultural roots and traditions, food is a vital component of everyone's life.
Growing up in Hawaii, there is a special sense of pride of who you are, where you come from, what you live for, and how much you appreciate the land, one another, and most importantly your roots. I graduated from an amazing high school called Kamehameha Schools, which is a school dedicated to educating the Hawaiian children of Hawaii. The last princess of Hawaii, Bernice Pauahi Bishop, left everything she had to build a Trust Fund dedicated to the Hawaiian children’s education. The Hawaiian culture holds a special place in my heart along with my other nationalities (Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Irish); and going to an all Hawaiian school for years left an imprint on my heart and strongly influenced who I am as a person.
Moving from Hawaii to Colorado for college, I slowly adopted a plant-based diet after being vegetarian for 6 years and became more inspired to cook, bake, eat, and enjoy plant-based foods. I decided to fully adopt a plant-based diet first for health and environmental reasons, but I’ve grown to acknowledge the positive effects of living a vegan lifestyle for everything, especially the animals. I am fortunate to now be living in Denver, where a plant-based/vegan lifestyle is fairly acceptable and common; however, I’ve noticed that this isn’t necessarily true in Hawaii.
This brings me to where I stand today. I want to share and develop a more plant-based lifestyle based on my experiences from living in Denver by incorporating my own roots, whether it be from my Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, or Irish background. The food scene in Hawaii is heavily weighted on fish and plate lunches featuring meat. Therefore, I am excited to create and share some of my own plant-based recipes inspired from being born and raised in Hawaii along with some recipes sparked by my own creative cravings. I will also be sharing all of my travel vegan eats because food is such an important component of one’s culture and I love being able to immerse myself into all the different cultures of the world.
Long story short, I hope to inspire others to look back at their own roots and look to learn more about others roots through the fascinating influence of food, most importantly plant-based food of course. For those curiously considering, newly adopting, or currently living a plant-based diet, I am excited to show you how easy it is to make quick and tasty swaps to “veganize” all of our cultures one recipe at a time.
Just a few facts about me:
- I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii
- I currently live in Denver, Colorado
- My nationalities include Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, Irish, and Portuguese
- I graduated from Colorado State University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering and a minor in Business Administration
- I started on the Division 1 Women’s Varsity Soccer team all four years of college
- I currently work as a Water System Design Engineer at Black & Veatch
- I went vegetarian in 2012 and fully switched to a plant-based diet in 2018
- I couldn’t possibly live life without my weekly consumption of donuts and ice cream
- My favorite color is olive green
- My hobbies include yoga, climbing, hiking, skiing, and running
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