By Ruby Sturm

I’ve been vegetarian my whole life and vegan for about a year. I had only been a vegan for a few months when I entered The Vegetarian Resource Group video contest with my video, “Eat for the Earth.” I was so surprised when I won and Charles Stahler offered me an internship. I was only in 7th grade at the time and didn’t realize I could be an intern, so I was extremely excited by the offer and immediately said “yes.” 

When I started the internship, I realized it was going to be challenging. I received a large packet of VRG articles to read as background preparation before my internship started. I also had to plan out a schedule for the year. Planning your own schedule is actually very helpful, because you are able to choose how much work you want to take on, and also what you’d like to do. It’s been a lot of fun choosing things I’d like to work on, such as vegan cooking, writing, researching, vegan product reviews, and even photography. It feels like I’ve learned a lot during the first half of my internship. This even includes basic things, such as how to make an email sound “fancy.” 

I worked on database entries for the VRG online restaurant guide. (See: https://www.vrg.org/restaurant/index.php)  It was interesting to learn about vegetarian and vegan restaurants around the country, but the restaurant websites didn’t always give enough information. I enjoy researching and writing but there was something intimidating about the idea of calling restaurants on the phone. I guess I’m more of a writer than a reporter. But I did do several database entries, so I’m proud about that. In the Spring, I will take on the different task of writing a book review of Making Vegan Meats, by Mark Thompson (one of my favorite vegan YouTube chefs!).

So far, one project I’ve had a lot of fun with has been writing an article about living as a vegan during my recent trip to Germany (my dad’s from Germany, so we go there to visit the family every year). What surprised me the most was to see how the large German grocery store chains were competing (with magazine and billboard ads) to have the most vegan and vegetarian products. Germany is a very meat, cheese, and yogurt loving country, so the amount of vegan Brot-Belag they had was tremendous. Knowing in advance that I was going to write an article really helped me remember details about that trip more than a lot of other vacations. 

It has also been a lot of fun to test vegan recipes for Rissa, Senior Editor of VRG’s magazine. Some recipes were straightforward. For example, when you put broccoli in an air fryer … it gets crunchy! With other recipes, like the breaded vegan Cajun chicken, it was surprising and almost magical to see how the food turned from doughy blobs into having a really chicken-y texture. I definitely want to test more vegan recipes in the future, and someday also write a few of my own. 

Writing product reviews for Veggie Bits was also one of my favorite assignments. I got to test out some tasty snacks and write some honest opinions about them. One of the things I tested was chocolate bars. It was incredible that they even had plant-based caramel in them. I also tested Rio Good Che-easy Bread mix. When I baked it, it came out very gooey on the inside and crunchy on the outside. Usually when I eat food I don’t think too much about it, I just decide whether it tastes good or not. Reviewing for Veggie Bits helped me to really think about what I was eating … and enjoy the flavor a bit more.

With Love Plant Based is a great vegan restaurant in my area that I got to review. The food there was delicious and getting to do a write-up on this restaurant was incredible, I’d only been there once before, but it felt like a restaurant that needed to be written about. So I was excited when I got the chance to. Sadly, you couldn’t eat inside! Due to Covid they were only doing pickup and outdoor dining. The outdoor dining was next to a main road, which was not the most convenient spot. So I took the food home and it was delicious. Another new challenge was taking food photographs for my review. The broccoli chedd’a soup I ordered tasted delicious, but it was hard to take a photo that caught the flavor for the reader. I had to take about 30 pictures of the soup before it finally looked as good as it tasted. 

In the second half of my internship I look forward to writing an article on vegan thrift store fashion and also doing some research and writing about vegetarian dog foods, on a quest to finally convert my very picky dog to vegetarianism. I may end researching and writing about other things. Whatever they are, I’m sure it’ll be an adventure!

For more information about VRG internships, see https://www.vrg.org/student/index.php