Happy 2010!

Though I've got a full day until the countdown, my Sydney-sider friends will be rocking in the new year in just a few hours, so I thought I'd go ahead and post my look back at the year that was 2009.

This year Veg Table and Vegan@Large were born! I hope to have a bit more time to do some community building on Veg Table in 2010, but in the mean time I sincerely thank everyone who has contributed to the site, as well as all my readers here, followers on Twitter, and just the awesome vegan community in general.

In personal news, Tim and I witnessed some of our closest friends and family members get hitched! Lots of love to Amy and Stewart, Ali and Quinn, Brad and Becky, and Karen and Craig! And although I sadly lost a dear family member this year, there was still MUCH to be thankful for. Our travels for weddings and other events took us to Sydney, Long Island, Los Angeles, San Diego, Napa, New York, Orlando, Las Vegas, and Arizona. I've got the travel bug for sure and can't wait to explore a whole new part of the world next year.

I worked on three amazing bakesales, the first as part of the World Wide Vegan Bake Sale which led to the creation of the ongoing SF Vegan Bake Sale which continues to blow my mind in terms of funds raised, not to mention community building and some of the best vegan outreach there is.

Some other great strides were made this year in terms of mainstream vegan acceptance. Jonathan Safran Foer and Alicia Silverstone brought animal rights and veganism to new audiences through their books. Ellen Degeneres started doing easy vegan cooking demos on her talk show and Oprah welcomed chef Tal Ronnen (whose book The Conscious Cook I got as a Christmas gift and is food porn like WOAH) to show that vegan cooking can be gourmet and delicious.

Vegansaurus has an awesome wrap-up of the decade in veganism. I've only been vegan for half of the decade, but I'm so excited for the coming years for vegans. If you're itching for other year-end lists (because they're very hard to come by on the internet right now) I suggest really the only other essential list: The 30 Most Important Cats of 2009. Other than the glaring omission of Tony Danza, it's pretty much spot-on.

Lastly, I hope you all enjoy wonderful New Year's Eve and New Year's Day celebrations. I'm not doing anything of particular vegan note, but I may make some Texas Caviar. As a one-time Texan and lover of black-eyed peas, it's a New Year's tradition I can get behind. VegWeb has a great round-up of other black-eyed pea recipes to bring you all sorts of good luck.

Happy 2010, y'all!