Nisha Vora’s evolution as a vegan cook sounds so familiar. When she first decided to go vegan eight years ago, she says, “I didn’t know how to make my food taste interesting.” That’s because, like so many others in her position (including me), she was single-mindedly focused on what she subtracted from her go-to dishes to adapt them to her new diet.

“So once I took out all of the chicken and the fish and the sour cream and the mayo and the butter, I was just left with the other stuff that I was eating, but it just felt so boring and bland,” she told me in a Zoom call from her San Diego home. “And I’m not someone who can just eat to live.”