About the Vegetarian Blogtress

Born in New York City in May 1977, Rajul Sanghani grew up as a first generation Indian American to her fairly recently married and immigrated parents.  She is fluent in both English and Gujrati, not recalling which was her first language.  Her experiences with food growing up the first several years included home cooked, traditional, Indian/Gujrati food.  Her parents appreciated some of NY's most known culinary fare: falafels and pizza both of which Rajul grew to love and later seek healthier, tastier ways to make on her own.  She often moved with her family due to her father's job in the business world and therefore in addition to NY, she lived in GA, MI, and VA. Her family began branching out more either out at restaurants or at home, and Rajul was introduced to Mexican, Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern, Thai, and Chinese foods.  Mexican was the all time family favorite.

By the time Rajul was ten years old, it was more than expected to help her parents with housekeeping duties including preparing meals.  If it was someone's birthday or anniversary, Rajul was more than happy to cook up some enchiladas or eggplant parmesan as these she had witnessed both of her parents preparing many times.  There was never a recipe book in the house and this was probably Rajul's greatest influence on developing her ability to taste something and then replicate it or even improve it at home.

Through her college years, Rajul continued to explore cooking for herself more than the average college student.  However, although she knew she had a love for eating food, she had not yet recognized one for  any talent in cooking.  She made simple things such as pasta, salads, and sandwiches.  But she wasn't whipping up any homemade sauces or dressings.

After college, she moved back home to Fairfax, VA to start her career as a cardiac registered nurse and to save money for a house down payment.  During this time, in 1999, she met her future husband.  He was a vegetarian as well and also very much enjoyed tasty food.  Shortly after marriage, in 2001, now Rajul Parekh, she enrolled in graduate school.  She soon realized that over the previous 2 years from dating her husband to being in graduate school, she had gained a significant amount of weight.  She knew that she had nearly cut all exercise from her life while trying to balance her demanding full time job and a long distance relationship.  Rajul did a lot of research and realized three things: 1. Ways to incorporate more protein into a vegetarian diet 2.  The need to exercise again and 3.  Keeping a diet diary.  For the first time in her life and thanks to the internet, Rajul began preparing structured recipes that fit into her goals as well as experimenting with tofu.  She also attend a Young Jains of America convention and decided to follow a vegan diet for one year.  Rajul eventually lost 40 pounds in the next year.

Following graduate school in 2003, she was recruited to be a part of the School of Medicine faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill in the Division of Cardiology as a nurse practitioner in their electrophysiology department.  Her husband pursued his graduate program there.  Upon moving to Chapel Hill, Rajul and her husband realized that it was a much quieter area than Northern VA.  There was not a good place to eat on every corner.  In addition, Rajul shared her office with a nurse practitioner who was the Director of the Lipid Clinic.  It began to dawn her that not only to maintain her weight but to be an example for her cardiac patients, that she needed to prepare more healthy vegetarian meals.  By now, she had a slew of vegetarian cooking books but they didn't contain the foods she so missed at Washington D.C. restaurants.  This inspired her to start taking more chances and preparing more entrees from imagination and experience than from book or web pages.

The one culinary creation that consistently daunted Rajul was homemade pizza.  It was aggravating to wait all day for the dough to rise and then 45 minutes for it to bake not to perfection.  She then caught Pizza Week on the Food Network and after watching and reading about a hundred recipes, she attempted it again with it this time resulting very successfully.  She had an epiphany that if she could master pizza, she could make anything.  This gave her confidence as did the fact that she started to notice that veg and non-veg guests alike seemed to genuinely enjoy her cooking.  Around this time, Rajul also created several of her own created sauces and salad dressings.

During the Summer of 2004, Rajul took a cake decorating class.  This motivated her to learn more eggless baking and she so liked the class that at the end of that summer, she made her sister's engagement party cake for 60 people, her grandmother's birthday cake, and assisted her husband's aunt who was an informal master baker and decorator.

Over the next few years, Rajul continued to cook more from scratch with no written structure.  By the time she had her first child in 2005 and had relocated with her husband to Charlotte, Rajul thoroughly and without a doubt, had developed a true passion for making international vegetarian cuisine.  

(Las Vegas)

A few months after the birth of her second child in 2009, Rajul decided to establish this blog to document and share her delicious journey.  Today she continues to appreciate living in Charlotte with her husband, daughter, son, and Bichon Frise dog.  She has pursued a mostly organic and very clean diet with the elimination of processed foods.  She works part-time as a cardiology nurse practitioner and in addition to cooking, continues to pursue exploring dining establishments and emulating her favorite finds!