Tara Pelette sent this interview over this week and I was blown away. My serious lack of journalist skills are now laid bare for all to see! Hahaha. This is a great interview with Ross Corder from the blog Vegan Eats. Check it out, check out Ross’s blog, make some rad food and let’s all keep our fingers crossed that Tara keeps pumping out content!

Interview with Ross Corder (Vegan Eats)

The Internet has been an amazing platform for development of a global vegan community. Forums, outreach websites and recipe blogs are all infiltrating the web.

VeganEats has recently joined the ranks of the many vegan recipe blogs.

University of Toronto history student, Ross Corder, 25, created the blog about a year ago in December 2009. He was inspired by vegan food blogs like Vegan Dad, Vegan Yum Yum and Hot Knives.

“I wanted to contribute some recipes to the vegan online community and share them with vegans and non-vegans,” explains Corder. “Just to sort of do my part in spreading the word, in however small a way, that food can be delicious without the animal products.”

Going Vegan

Corder was 17 when he went vegan. He was one of two kids in his high school to do so. Much of the reason for going vegan was due to his good friend and to Canadian punk band, Propaghandi, that are known for their activism off the stage and in their lyrics, about “the exploitation of animals in our culture.” After discovering Propagandhi, Corder found more information within literature and in videos through animal outreach organizations.

“At the time, that was enough for me; knowing that that was happening to animals in agriculture and knowing that there were other people as disgusted as me that attempted to remove themselves as best they could from that system of exploitation through veganism, it was apparent what I had to do.”

When he went vegan he was living with his parents who were supportive, which is not always the case for other teens, who have made such a decision while still living with their parents. “Some youngsters aren’t so lucky due to the persistent nutritional myths that their parents hold on to.”

His parents were worried that he would not be getting enough calcium since he would no longer be consuming milk.

“As long as I was eating breakfast in the morning with my fortified soy milk, they were cool,” explains Corder of his parent’s relaxed take on going vegan.

Corder recalls that his mother would use veggie ground round in her spaghetti sauce rather than ground beef.

The only struggle Corder has faced since going vegan is the knowledge of the treatment of animals and “the depressing realization that animals don’t matter; that their lives can have such little value to humans.”

However, the diet physically has been proven to not be much of a struggle.

“The ‘too expensive’ concern I’ve never even fully understood, since I really don’t see how a vegan diet costs more than an omnivorous diet by default,” says Corder. “I make very little money as a line cook and I consider myself to eat quite healthfully.”

Corder offers up tips on maintaining a vegan diet for cheap; learning to cook, not dining out too much and making smart shopping purchases.

“I think that everyone, whether vegan, vegetarian, or omnivore, should learn how to cook,” he explains. “It’s an important life skill to be able to cook good, wholesome meals for yourself and those you care about, especially considering what an utterly toxic industrialized food environment we’re surrounded by. Making the time, and knowing how to cook for yourself, becoming self-reliant in that regard should eliminate any potential struggle regarding not having enough vegan-friendly options.”

Cooking

Corder first worked in a kitchen when he was 15 years old as a dishwasher at a fish and chips restaurant in his hometown of Oakville, Ontario and then became a fry cook there.

At the age of 18 Corder worked at a “fancy” French restaurant and at the time he never thought he would have the interest he had in cooking that he has today.

“It was through veganism that I really got into it.”

He began to get sick of eating the usual mock meats after two years of being vegan and decided to learn how to cook. Through cookbooks and vegetarian part-time cooking classes at George Brown College in Toronto Corder began to develop a passion for cooking.

He had a job at East Side Mario’s at this point and was not enjoying it, “all I was doing was cooking dead animals everyday without any real life direction.”

Corder then moved out of Oakville to Toronto to finish his degree at University of Toronto and began working at the vegetarian restaurant Fresh, which was his first vegetarian cooking job.

From here he began to develop VeganEats.

“I had got into the habit of compiling some of my recipes for about a year before that (starting VeganEats) and they had no place to go. It was just sort of for my own reference.”

VeganEats Catering and the Future

Corder has begun to offer catering alongside his blog, studies and work. Albeit the catering is still is fairly recent. He has had one catering gig so far and the future looks promising.

“I just wanted the excitement of doing something on my own,” he explains.

Monthly, Corder and a friend have cookouts for 15 to 20 of their friends and since he enjoyed taking part in putting such gatherings together, he decided to try making a project out of it.

Currently, Corder offers small lunches to the downtown area of Toronto, but for larger events would cater to the entire Greater Toronto Area.

VeganEats will continue to be a place where Corder will update with a new recipe every week or two, but he also hopes that it becomes a platform for his catering venture.

There is no denying Corder is a busy guy. He is a full-time student at the University of Toronto and works at Live Organic Food Bar at Spadina and Dupont.

Add to that list maintaining a vegan blog, to spread word about the benefits and excitement behind a vegan lifestyle.

“There’s kind of a bogus assumption that vegans are depriving themselves, that we’re self-deniers when it comes to eating. Not true.”

A bit more about Ross…

Soy milk, almond milk, rice milk or hemp milk?

Almond milk, for drinking and putting in coffee and cereal. Soy milk, for baking. Hemp milk, I haven’t really given a try. I tried it once and wasn’t blown away. Almond milk is often my go to milk, because I can easily and quickly make it on my own. All’s I need is my blender and a cheesecloth. It’s cheaper than buying a carton of it too; because I got a place near my apartment that sells raw almonds in bulk for four bucks a pound, pretty good deal.

Tofu, tempeh or seitan?

Too hard to answer, they all have their place and time! I honestly don’t eat a ton of any of them regularly, but they can all be delicious and each are fun to cook with. Making seitan from scratch with gluten flour is so fun because there are so many different flavours and textures you can impart in it depending on how you prepare it. I will say this about tofu though: sometimes I crave tofu in a way that I have never felt for tempeh or setian. It can be a powerful lust, haha.

What is your favourite vegan cookbook?

That used to change often, but for the last solid year or so, it’s definitely been Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry. He’s a pretty rad eco-chef that has a lot of great things to say about industrialized food systems, while actively campaigning for inner-city fresh food programs. What I really like about his cookbook, his food, and his culinary style, besides being tasty and inspiring, is that he is very conscious about using every ingredient and piece of food to it’s fullest extent. For instance, he’s got a guide to making preserves in Vegan Soul Kitchen, which includes a pickling recipe that calls for leftover rinds of citrus fruits like lemons and oranges. He also suggests saving your leftover vegetable scraps in a bag in the freezer and making broth with them weeks or months later.

Who is your biggest inspiration in the vegan/animal rights community?

I really like Jeffrey Masson. He’s an author and psychologist who, for the past ten or fifteen years, focused primarily on animal behaviour, specifically their emotional lives and cognitive capabilities. His research for a book on the emotional lives of elephants, lead him to be vegetarian and he later became vegan after examining the lives of farmed animals. I really like his writing, it’s extremely well researched and he draws a lot from both his own experiences and from his profession as a psychologist. He’s pretty funny too. He writes with purpose and his books always have extensive footnotes and a large resources index, which I’m always into.

Another source of inspiration is all the sanctuaries that exist to rescue farmed animals who would otherwise be leading miserable lives in conditions that in no way resembled their natural habitats.

What is your favourite place to go to eat?

That depends on what I feel like eating! I like getting rotis from Gandhi Roti at Queen and Bathurst. There’s another good roti shop, a West Indian joint, on Bathurst just south of Bloor that has great stuff too. If we’re talking veg. specific eateries though, my favourite right now is probably Calico near Bloor and Dufferin. It’s a cool little place with a good atmosphere, a vegetable garden on the back patio, and a tiny chalkboard menu that changes a lot. Great sandwiches at lunch time.
Photo credits: Warren Hyrcun