Hi there! My name is Gonul Johnston and I am a civil engineer based in Los Angeles who wants everybody to fall in love with the Mediterranean cuisine & vegan food.
My Story
I was born and raised in a Turkish city along the Aegean Sea coast. I followed my heart to the U.S. for a Bachelor’s degree and brought my love for vegetable-forward food along. After discovering the vegan lifestyle a few years ago, I realized how much of my diet back in Turkey was already vegan— and delicious. This led me to specialize in Mediterranean plant-based recipe development.
As much as I love food and creating recipes, fitness and mental health also are big passions of mine. That is why I spend a lot of time keeping up with studies on happiness, nutrition, and exercise. Being a registered engineer, I must have the ability to back up my professional decisions with science, else I risk lawsuits. Extending this principle of valuing evidence-based research to other areas of life has helped me find inner calm as well as not to fall for fad diets or ineffective training programs. I’d love to help you do the same. As a first step— check out the “optimizing nutrition” section included in most recipes.
Aegean Delight
Aegean Delight is where I share things that bring me utter joy (aka delight), mainly food. Although you will find many of my favorite traditional Turkish Mediterranean and Middle Eastern recipes like zerde and acuka, you will also come across some of my go-to American veganized classics like this miso mac & cheese.
All recipes are 100% vegan. I usually also include whole-food-plant-based, gluten-free, or nut-free alternatives in the “optimizing nutrition” section of my posts.
You can say hi by commenting on any of my posts here on the blog, on Instagram, or by sending an email! If you would like to receive my (quite infrequent) newsletter, make sure to sign up on the side menu. Have Pinterest? Pin my recipes to enjoy them later.
Thank you for being here!
With love,
Gonul
