Hello VRG. It’s been really great at culinary school so far. Everyone in my class is professional and kind. I am the youngest student in our class of eleven. One of my classmates already owns her own restaurant. I’m learning a ton about running a restaurant and vegan cooking methods. The plant based program I’m in started with a class on restaurant operations where we all learned food safety and got certified to become food safety managers. The certificate looks really cool and is kind of a big deal. We also learned how to cost out recipes, design a theme for a menu and make a menu. Now we have been in the kitchen for almost 6 weeks and I get to practice cooking and learn new techniques every day. It’s a lot of fun. Up until now I’ve been taught how to sauté, make soup, make the perfect rice every time, cook grains and lentils properly, fry, make stock, make sauces, make risotto, and make really good veggie burgers. Not everyone in my class is fully vegan but they all eat mostly vegan now because they are learning how to make good vegan food instead of not so good vegan food. “It makes people not miss the meat because they are getting something better” – Chef John Percarpio, my chef teacher. I think I got the quote right he says it a lot in class. A really great outing my classmates and I took together was to The Vegan Holiday Market in Boulder, Colorado. I treated myself to a special vegan hot sauce.

I honestly think that so many more people would eat vegan if they could get past the mindset that all vegans are rude or the what do vegans even eat mindset. If only they knew that we can eat a whole lot better and healthier than them with only the knowledge of how to cook properly. My first chef, Chef Jesper, likes to remind us all the time during classes how we eat better than the traditional classes he teaches. It’s really cool how into the plant-based eating and lifestyle my Chefs are even though for most of their lives they haven’t been vegan or vegetarian and even thought same way other people do before they tried it.

Honestly I wouldn’t have been able to be in the apartment I’m in with my new roommate friends if it wasn’t for the VRG scholarship. It’s definitely helping me through school which has been exhausting. We have to get up at 4:45am! My grades have been As and A-s so far and I’m proud of that. Next week I am applying for jobs though since I feel I have a good grasp on the flow of my courses and living away from home. I even got to drive to the meet the pigs at the sanctuary run by the man I met at the Denver VRG networking dinner. I’m attaching photos of some of the best things I’ve made in class. My favorite was the burger bar! The picture of the sushi is from a volunteer gig I got with the school being the assistant chef for the Escoffier Home cook classes they offer to the public. I get to learn what they learn, eat all the food and all I have to do besides help during class is all the dishes after. I’ll continue this volunteer gig in the new year.

Thank you again for trusting me with this scholarship.

Gratefully, Coda Blue Spier

To apply for The VRG College Scholarship. go to https://www.vrg.org/student/scholar.htm

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