About Allysia

Vegan chef and food enthusiast

Hey there! Welcome to the newest incarnation of my food blog. “Oh Waffle” comes from an endearing nickname I was given by a close friend back in the day, but I also happen to quite like waffles, so here we are.

My culinary journey started as a way to impress a boy. I didn’t know the first thing about cooking, but picked up some vegetarian cookbooks and started cooking 5 recipes from them each week. It took me a year or two before I felt like I was competent in the kitchen, and I had so much fun with it that I started my first food blog to join a community and share my eats with others. The blog was called “The Real Meal”, and I maintained it until about 2015. Along the way, I developed something of a following and even had the opportunity to be a cookbook recipe tester. That blog is now defunct, but sometimes it’s nice to start again from scratch.

My first culinary school experience was at Living Light in northern California, a raw food school led by the wonderful Cherie Soria. Later, I spent six months going through the culinary program at The Natural Epicurean in Austin, Texas. It was rigorous and creative and immersive and I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.

After finishing school in 2013, I decided to move to Toronto, Ontario and got a job at a vegan catering company. Though I massively improved my veggie-chopping skills through this endeavor, I realized that working in the food industry was not something I was passionate about, and have since hung up my apron.

Ever since, I’ve been cooking and experimenting at home, sharing my eats on Instagram and with my family. I’ve been collecting winning recipes and experiments in a cluttered binder on my counter with the idea that eventually I’d get back in the game and share my experiments with others – with the long-term goal of eventually releasing a cookbook.

My plan with this blog is to keep everything incredibly simple. I have many hobbies and interests, which you can read more about on my personal website allyvb.com – life as an entrepreneur and mom keeps me quite busy. I wanted to create a blog with no ads and no fluff – just easy, delicious and oftentimes healthy recipes.

Thanks for visiting!

-Allysia