— Theresa Schroepfer

Well, that's a great question. Um, you know, I've been a, a, a plant-based chef, um, if you will, chef for, wow, almost 20 years now. And I've been plant-based for much longer than that, probably about 28 years. Um, now I kind of fell into becoming a chef, uh, you know, working at a restaurant at Whole Foods, um, just because I knew how to cook, uh, vegetarian and vegan, um, pretty well because I had been doing it for so many years beforehand. And, uh, finding vegetarian options, you know, out and about was pretty tough to be able to do when I first started becoming plant-based. Um, especially living in Texas and, um, you know, in the Chicago area before that. So, um, you know, it was a wonderful thing to be able to kind of fall into because I got to learn a lot really early and after I learned quite a bit from that. One of my favorite parts really is the answer to this is be, um, that's actually one of the, the, the best things I can, um, give to people is my knowledge from being in the industry for as long as I have. And, uh, that's one of the things that's, you know, for having so many years in the industry, I've seen a lot of different things come in and out of the plant-based world, um, and really looked to explore techniques that weren't used in the plant-based culinary world as much, um, that are becoming more commonplace today. So, you know, 18 years ago when I started cooking with no oils, um, that was before Forks Over Knives, the movie had actually come out the documentary, so it was good to be able to start experimenting with that and, um, starting to develop recipes for Whole Foods Market when they started doing a lot of foods in that style, in that time period, they don't do that as much anymore, but then they were very big on a program called Health Starts Here, and their Healthy, their, their food coaches or, uh, healthy Eating Specialists is what they call them. Um, actually might know a couple of them from Rouxbe as well. Char Nolan, who's a wonderful friend, uh, was also a health eating specialist from Whole Foods Market as well. Um, and that's I think probably one of the best things about being a plant-based chef is being able to share my culinary knowledge with people that are interested, um, through students, through Rouxbe, just through general life. Uh, it's a wonderful thing to be able to go to a restaurant. A lot of times I'll have, you know, chefs that come out, um, and talk to me and then we'll kind of talk shop about things like goes at a restaurant here in Madison, Wisconsin just a couple weeks ago where, um, I was very surprised by the dish that we had ordered. Um, had a, a tofu ricotta in it that was really, really good. And I make a tofu ricotta all the time. So of course the chef and I kind of traded notes, um, about that recipe and many other recipes actually. Um, and it's just a wonderful thing to be able to help share that knowledge. So, uh, that's probably my favorite thing about being, um, you know, a plant-based culinary chef, uh, uh, is being able to share knowledge.