From the Heart of Jake, Co-Founder of 2 Broke Vegans:
Time has a funny way of catching up with us, even when we act like we are too busy to notice. Sometimes it’s important to take a moment to stop and smell the roses.
Nearly 10 years ago now, in July of 2013, I was a 29 year old American about to embark on the journey of a lifetime. I didn’t know what to expect but I was excited for the possibilities. I had met a woman from Greece on December 26, 2012, if I remember right. We developed a lot of chemistry very quickly and the rest is, as they say, history.
We both decided I was going to move to Greece. I made the move in July of 2013. Believe it or not, my trans-Atlantic flight was the first time I had ever been on an airplane in my life. I had been to a lot of places but always via an automobile. This planet is a beautiful and rewarding place, I regret not spending more time seeing it before I was nearly 30 years old.
I’ll never forget landing in Athens as Athanasia met me at the airport with her father and sister. They had a big sign they were holding, I wish I still had that sign, or at least a photo of it. It was adorable.
As soon as I saw Athanasia, my lips lit up with an instant smile. We embraced and both had so many observations about what it was like to see each other in person for the first time instead of over a screen!
Well, I had finally landed in Greece. Now, I needed to find work in Greece and that’s where the real world problems began while the honeymoon phase slowly began fading away. To make a long story short, everybody in Greece wanted me to be certified if they were going to hire me. On top of that, most Greek business owners were not willing to hire an immigrant.
This was quite the culture shock for me. I was coming from managing my own e-commerce business at the time, from the United States, where you can prove you can do something without a certificate. I quickly began realizing that is not how things work at all in Greece.
Working as a freelance copywriter in Greece came with its own complications. When I wanted to author a cookbook, I was met with a lot of resistance in the form of bureaucracy. If I knew then what I know now, I could have made it work. However, at the time, I did not have the platform in place to start my own copywriting service business in Greece, let alone get the approval necessary to publish a book.
I’ll never forget my experience as an immigrant trying to find work, fit in, and adapt on the fly. It’s quite the experience and it really opened my eyes, mind, and soul to being a more understanding human being.
So many people have blindfolded opinions about what it’s like to be an immigrant. Let me tell you, it’s no picnic. Next time you want to make a comment or feel some kind of negative emotion toward somebody who is not from your country, stop for a moment and put yourself in their shoes.
The bottom line is really simple to understand. They are human, they are struggling, and they are trying their best to make it work. Give them a fucking break.
2 Broke Vegans Is Born
My epic failure to find work led us to create 2 Broke Vegans in October of 2013. I can still remember our first recipe, sitting out on the balcony of our small Patras apartment after making this smooth cheddar dip and realizing we should start a vegan food blog. Looking at that photo brings back such a rush of memories and emotions, I can almost transcend to that time and place in my mind as I close my eyes.
It was in that moment that 2 Broke Vegans was born and we sure learned a lot on the fly, adapted quickly, and worked tirelessly on the blog. At the time, I was obsessed with finding a way to convert all the non-vegan food I had known growing up as an American into vegan options I could share with Athanasia, and eventually, the world.
When I met Athanasia, I had already been plant-based and gluten-free for almost six years. I became a vegan in January 2007. Athanasia decided to try veganism, so, once I arrived in Greece, it was my goal to learn how to cook great vegan food for her using ingredients we could actually find in Greece.
In some ways, I really wanted to bottle the entire American experience up and share it with Athanasia. Since that was impossible, I strived to share the memories and reasons why the place I came from was special to me. I chose one of the world’s few forms of communication you can understand no matter what language you speak: food.
When people gather, they always get together around food. That is one of the things that makes our memories so remarkable. The same can be said about my time in Greece. Some of the ways Athanasia or her mom made food, such as yemista, are nearly impossible to reproduce.
Do you want to know why? Because love is the secret ingredient in every beloved family recipe. Every recipe that ever gets shared or handed down is next to nothing without the love somebody pours into the meal as they prepare or cook it.
That love is real. When a person cooks for family or somebody they love, they go out of their way to do the little things that make that food so delicious for the people who are eating it. If you like your onions diced up into tiny pieces, a person who loves you will do that for you, every single time they cook.
Then, there is the other side of love that makes cooking for family and cherished ones so special. It’s the love you all share for each other as you enjoy your meal. It’s the jokes you tell, the laughs you share, and yeah, it’s that old squeaky door hinge you hear every time somebody enters or leaves the room you dine in.
The funny thing about that squeak is, you take it for granted. At times, you are even annoyed by it. Then, somebody leaves for the final time and you don’t think about it again for nearly a decade. Suddenly, you really miss that old squeaky hinge.
Sometimes, the only way to travel back to those memories is through food, the scents that come with it, and the flavors you remember. That’s the beauty and magic of food and it’s something that’s so easy to take for granted.
There’s parts of those moments that stay with us forever, even if we try to forget them or escape them. Deep down inside, there they are. That’s where love likes to reside, or in some cases, hide.
In the end, things didn’t work out with Athanasia. She informed me of her desire to break up with me on September 26, 2015. I still remember it like it happened yesterday. We made our usual Saturday mid-morning stroll to downtown Patras for some grocery shopping.
On the way back, we were holding hands and eventually shared our last kiss. I wish I had not taken that cute little kiss for granted at the time but that’s what we always do when we are in relationships. You always think there will be another “kishy”. In my case, there wasn’t.
We got back to the apartment. Then, we prepared some pasta, if I remember right, for lunch. While eating lunch, we watched Athanasia’s favorite show, Friends. After eating, Athanasia went to take a nap while I finished washing dishes.
I went to our living room area and when Athanasia woke up from her nap, she came in to see me. It was at that time she broke up with me. No big fight, no real reason why she made the decision at that moment. It was never really made clear to me, at least. She just wanted me gone as quickly as possible and she didn’t really want to talk about it.
It’s probably a lot of things. The big things, the little things, it all adds up. For example, I always wanted to wash dishes right away. I still do. I hate dish crust, it’s fucking evil.
Hey, you can actually save time in the long run by simply rinsing or washing your dishes before they get crusty. At times, Athanasia would just beg me to let the dishes pile up. I’m a stubborn man, I never listened.
Sometimes I wish I had. Sometimes I wish I had just let those damn dishes pile to the fuckin’ ceiling until I never heard the end of it. I didn’t though. That and a million other mistakes I made would spell the end of our relationship.
I tried to make it work but as is always the case, now I wonder if I should have made a lot more of an effort. Hindsight is always 20/20, right? It’s always too late to live in the past but the memories remain and can even haunt for quite some time.
Now, I realize, I can no longer just walk outside the apartment in Patras to stroll down by the sea. It’s a place that was so close that I could walk there every day but now it is nothing more than a fading, distant memory. The sounds of the farmer’s markets in both Athens and Patras, as much as they make me smile in my memories, I can barely remember them.
I loved spending time at the beach and swimming in Greece during the summers. I miss it so much! It was where my soul was calm and always at peace. It felt like home, almost like I had lived there in a previous life. From that experience, I learned a ton and even started my journey as a food blogger.
Over the years, I had always planned on updating this blog but I never got around to it. Now, to be honest, as outdated as this site is, I kinda like it. It’s like a time capsule of nostalgia for me.
Every page, every recipe is a piece of the magic Athanasia and I shared during our brief time together. To change it would be an absolute shame at this point and a complete disservice to the foundation of what we were hoping to build.
I reached out to Athanasia about doing this post but as of the time of writing it, I still have not heard back from her. It’s funny how somebody you lived with and shared every day with can become somebody that you used to know. Now it’s like we are strangers. We don’t know anything about each other anymore.
With that being said, the time we did share together is in the record books. We had some crazy adventures together and I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world. She was my sidekick and I will always have a very Athanasia-sized hole in my heart.
Thank You Notes
It was an absolute honor and a privilege to go on this journey with all the people who helped make 2 Broke Vegans possible. None of what 2BV achieved is possible without the readers who made it worth our while to keep blogging our recipes from that small kitchen in Patras, Greece.
Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart, to every single person who ever read any of our posts! I can only smile, from ear to ear, thinking about the fun and creativity we all shared over the time 2BV was active from October 2013 to December of 2015.
On top of that, thank you to Athanasia’s family. Her parents and sister made a lot of sacrifices for me to be with Athanasia and have this food blog. Thank you so very much, I will cherish my memories of the time I spent as a part of your family, in Greece, forever.
I’d also like to thank all the people and other food bloggers I met while living in Greece and running 2BV. Thank you so much for making me a part of the Greek and food blogging community. Thanks to all the shops who worked with 2BV as well, you helped us find everything we were looking for and sometimes went out of your way to help us even more!
Finally, I would like to say a very special and heartfelt thank you to Athanasia Gkros. I told myself I wasn’t going to cry but that just didn’t happen. In some ways, they are tears of joy.
Athanasia, watching you grow and develop your skills as a food photographer was amazing! You took this shitty page design I was so stubborn about keeping and actually made us look like a professional food blog thanks to your incredible vision, creativity, and talent as a photographer!
Thank you, Athanasia, for tasting my recipes and sharing your recipes with me. Thank you for the bonding, the laughter, and all the times you put up with my shit. Thank you for playing Monopoly on PlayStation with me and translating everything for me.
Athanasia, I’m sorry for everything I am and I’m sorry for everything I never was. We really were a disaster waiting to happen after all, huh toots?
What’s Next For 2 Broke Vegans?
Well, hell would probably freeze over before 2BV gets back together at this point. Them’s the breaks, kid. However, time moves on and it’s up to us whether we try to adapt or not.
Since moving back to the United States in December 2015, I’ve been working hard, non-stop, as a freelance copywriter. I continue to expand my portfolio as I begin my next chapter as the founder and CEO of Content 4 Hire. The site is still under construction but I do my best to lay a few bricks on it per day, when time allows.
As for vegan food blogging, I ain’t done with that shit yet. I’ve been so busy working but I have some new plans brewing. I’m still making vegan pizza every week, Athanasia! Here is one I made, I only wish I had Athanasia’s food photography skills to showcase it better:
It’s a vegan sausage and pineapple pizza and it’s fucking delish. I have fine-tuned a lot of my favorite recipes since 2BV and I’m thinking about sharing them with the world again soon. I have decided to start a new food blog called Vegan Blogfather. It’s still under construction but eventually it will be at veganblogfather.com so bookmark it for future reference.
I hope to have it ready to launch at some point this year, in 2023. For now, you can follow the Vegan Blogfather Facebook page. As you can see, I have a vision for the logo I want but I’m a writer, chef, and musician. Not a graphic designer.
If anyone out there wants to help me with a logo, let me know. I’ll give you portfolio credit and we can discuss compensation. I plan on sharing some delicious vegan, gluten-free recipes, even if my photos are never as amazing as Athanasia could take.
All our readers here at 2BV are invited to join me on my next vegan cooking blog adventure. At the very least, you all deserved a long overdue farewell from 2 Broke Vegans. Thank you so much for helping make 2BV a mild success. All things considered. I’d do it all over again if given a chance!
Athanasia, I hope you are doing well. I always wish you and your family the very best! Maybe we’ll catch up in the next life, I can’t wait to hear all about everything you’ve been up to!