Hi, I’m Deirdre! Welcome to my little corner of the internet, The Fiery Vegetarian. First, a little about my life and why I’m so into food and recipes that I made them my full-time job!
I grew up in Ireland, living mainly in Dublin. I loved my mam’s and my nan’s food but had no interest in cooking until I went vegetarian at the age of 14. Even then, for several years I survived on sandwiches and pasta with premade pasta sauces.
I began cooking and experimenting with food more at university. I then moved to Valencia, Spain, after finishing my degree.
In Valencia, I missed the vegetarian restaurants and the wider range of vegan and vegetarian products in the supermarket from back home.
It did have cheap, plentiful, and high-quality fruit and vegetables, lovely weather for al fresco dining, tapas… but back then you couldn’t find premade sauces, which were what I lived on. So I began learning how to make my own.
I spent about four years living it up there, before moving to Madrid. I met my future husband and partner-in-crime, also known as HH (Handsome Husband). Although we met in Madrid, he is Zimbabwean. I’ve had great fun trying to make Zimbabwean food like sadza for him (it’s not as easy as it looks!).
We had a baby boy, and got married. Due to HH’s job, we were expatriated to Bangalore, India, for two years. We moved there when I was eight months pregnant with our second child and I gave birth to our daughter in India.
I loved beautiful Bangalore. The colors, the spices, the amazing food…I could go on, but suffice to say there are things I miss about India. It was an amazing experience living in a place where there was so much vegetarian food available.
It was all so well cooked and spiced, and I learned so much about cooking there and attended several cooking classes.
After India, we returned to Madrid for a few years. I love love love spicy food so you’ll see it featured often on this blog, but it’s not common at all in Spain.
In 2022 we moved again, this time to Paris, France, for HH’s new job. I had just settled in there and was learning a lot about French food and cooking and eating beaucoup de patisserie when we got the news we were being expatriated!
Since August 2023 we’ve been living in Luanda, Angola. While not very vegetarian or vegan-friendly, the fruit is fabulous. Even better, there is a huge variety of hot chili peppers, especially scotch bonnets, and even more spicy sauces and piri piri dips. So you can expect to see even more spicy goodness coming soon as I find my feet here and get back to writing recipes!
What kind of recipes will you find on The Fiery Vegetarian?
On this blog, you can expect to find:
- Mainly vegetarian and vegan recipes.
- Plenty of spicy recipes (well I am the FIERY vegetarian).
- Some sweet treats and appetizers, side dishes etc.
- A mix of easy recipes and entertaining recipes.
- Pasta dishes and sauces are my jam.
- Very little egg. I developed a severe egg intolerance later in life and can only tolerate tiny amounts of it. So you’ll very rarely see eggs on here.
- Useful emails from me about new recipes, as well as a free mini cookbook of mine and a series on how to take vegetarian cooking to the next level.
More about Deirdre and the blog
It took forever to decide and I tried out lots of combinations and used online blog name generators. In the end, I went with The Fiery Vegetarian both because of my love of spice and my, ahem, super even temper!
I would say easily this vegan gluten-free tomato soup recipe. You just need a few spices, a can of coconut milk, and a can of tomatoes, dump them in the pot, walk away (you don’t even need to stir!), and let it cook until done.
Truly, there aren’t any very complicated recipes on the blog! i would say this one-ingredient crepe (not my recipe), as the technique is tricky and it requires lots of patience.
Yes! Well, probably. As long as it’s not caterpillar and custard toast or something like that. I love helping people out with recipes, my readers often suggest dishes they would like to see on the blog. Just contact me and we’ll discuss it and I’ll work it into my blogging calendar.
Many vegetarian recipes are also vegan, but in this case, it’s because my son was very (dangerously) allergic to eggs and dairy until he was 10. He couldn’t even tolerate traces of it. So we needed to eat at home most of the time to make sure he didn’t have an allergic reaction. Hence, I had to learn how to make more vegan recipes and study up on vegan baking. We still actually eat a lot of vegan recipes at home nowadays.
Featured on
I’ve been fortunate enough to be featured on many well-known websites, some of which may ring a bell for you, including CNET, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, MSN, Yahoo, Medium, Noticias del Mundo, Well+Good, SheKnows, Tasty, Brit Mums, Today Living, and City Lifestyle.
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My Favorite Recipes
This is so hard to choose. I obviously made all of my recipes to suit my own tastes, so they all taste good to me! Having said that, here are some tasty meals we make on repeat at my house.
