How are those New Year’s resolutions to eat healthy and watch your weight going now that we’re three months into 2025?

If you’ve fallen off the wagon, the Peoria Kindness Collective is here to help with its second Peoria Vegan Chef Challenge. During the month of April, restaurants around the city will offer plant-based selections to patrons to help promote good, clean, healthy eating.

The Peoria Chef Vegan Challenge is “expanding horizons, and restaurants are really excited,” said Amy Raher, who is organizing the event. “It’s not all salads and lettuce. It’s fun to see restaurants offer vegan selections.”

Raher expects around 20 restaurants to participate this month. Food goers are encouraged to sample the selections and vote for which establishment offers the best dishes in a variety of categories. “To those who vote, there’s a little bit of competition for patrons of restaurants as well,” she said, noting there’s a random drawing for prizes

Vegan Outreach, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, started the Vegan Chef Challenge in 2010 in Durham, N.C., and it’s been expanding nationally ever since.

Raher, who says she’s been vegan for the past seven years, has some friends who maintain a plant-based diet so they started a committee and traveled to cities around the state like Rockford and Springfield to partake in their Vegan Challenges.

“Almost everywhere you go there is something vegan to eat,” Raher said. “We’re planting the seeds to sort of entice restaurants to have some vegan things to eat on a permanent basis.”

While a vegetarian diet simply eliminates meat, it may still include, eggs and dairy products. A vegan diet stays away from all that and is strictly plant-based.

Restaurants are more and more willing to accommodate all kinds of diet restrictions, and there is an infinite array of directions a vegan diet can go. Chefs around the world have innovated recipes to mimic traditional entrees. And there are all kinds of original sandwiches and plates and bowls with plant-based food. That includes sweet treats like cakes, pies and cookies.

Try it. You will like it.

There’s the added benefit of helping save animals — and even the planet. The national Vegan Outreach organization’s mission is to “end violence towards animals.”

And don’t worry, you don’t have to go cold tofurkey. The Vegan Challenge offers some guidance to eat a healthier yet delicious diet. Every meal you eat does not have to have meat or cheese to be satisfying. Vegan butters and creams and cheeses help appease the taste buds.

For example, did you know that donuts at Tadough’s are vegan? Yep. “People say they can’t tell the difference,” Raher beamed.

Tadough’s won Best Treat and placed third overall in the 2024 Peoria Vegan Chef Challenge. Intuition Coffee & Juice won Best Breakfast and was voted first overall with Tomato Basil Toast, a Matcha Smoothie Bowl, and Purple Sweet Potato Hummus. The Queen of Squash was second overall and had the Best Entrée after offering Thai Peanut Cabbage Rolls, Buffalo Roasted Chickpea Flatbread, and a Caribbean Bowl with Jerk-seasoned tofu and roasted sweet-potato, coconut-milk sauce over butternut-squash spiralized noodles.

“It was really a success,” said Raher. “Vegan plate envy is real!”