About VS

Vegan Sonoma is a repository of recipes I’ve modified in order to omit animal ingredients. This, as you probably can appreciate, is not always an easy thing to pull off successfully, and often requires multiple experiments to achieve a respectable alternative. So I thought I’d share the frooitts of my labor.

Vegan Sonoma draws its name from my profound and entirely prosaic love of Williams-Sonoma. I’m still dreading that eventual cease-and-desist letter for riffing on their name, but so far so good.

Not all of these recipes are vegan, some are vegetarian.  Their designation as vegan or vegetarian will always be clearly distinguished in the title. Tbh we are actually not vegetarian anymore, which is a long story I’m not going to get into because haters gonna hate. But we still cook mostly meat-free meals.

ANYHOO, for the vegetarian recipes, I will do my best to include instructions for modification to vegan. But the truth is, some recipes just can’t abide without dairy, and if you’re unable to compromise occasionally, then you should probably skip the recipe altogether. I learned this the hard way when I tried to make a vegan version of Will-Sonoma’s Creamy Pearl Onions. Don’t even waste your time trying to make it with soy, rice or almond milk. All it will bring you is a pot full of chalky roux and broken dreams.

Thanks for your time and happy cooking!

About Z & J

We live in Philadelphia with our child and two cats who are rescued Philly strays and will mess a brutha up. We moved here from Lawrence, Kansas  in 2016 for professional reasons. Prior to that we lived in San Diego until we moved to L-K to be closer to family. But here we are now.

J is a musician and web developer, and I am in product marketing for BIG DATA (cue dramatic chipmunk). We love traveling, going out to restaurants, cooking, exploring small towns and historic sites, checking out train museums and old battleships, and playing in parks, and romping around the world. Also I like to run marathons because I am insane. Recently we’ve started a family band and have a huge fanbase consisting of ourselves.

Thanks for visiting the site!