— Vanessa LaBranche

You know ask your Administration your lead Chef instructor. Whoever that entry point might be, you know about the idea of doing some extra curricular courses, you know ones where students might stay after class or or come in whenever that might be, you know, when the kitchens are available. I realize that could be a concern as well and in some schools, but see if you might start, you know with these smaller opportunities to to introduce again this idea of the goodness of plants and how one might add plants first of all to your own diet and then also to offer, you know more plants on one's menu, right especially if you're if you're a chef instructor, I'm guessing that most of your students have some professional aspirations. And most certainly in the professional realm of education and and teaching and cooking. There is a demand and there's a need right? So there's a push in a pool in the marketplace for more plant-based offerings. And you know, it's a challenge my I've been down a similar path and you know, I understand that, you know, many students will come especially to a conventional culinary program with meat on their mind and you know, there's a lot of excitement around Butchery. There's a lot of you know gender stereotypes around me cookery and meat consumption and it can be difficult sometimes to sort of get past that barrier but think about you know, I think about it as a speed bump rather than a barrier and you know slowly reach out through your examples, right your demonstrations. Really tasty food, that's colorful. Right? It looks good. And you know the the it's good for you message can be secondary quite frankly. I mean, I think that you know after all the the typical consumer is going to Go to your restaurant right or the restaurant or of your students because they heard that it tasted good and then they're gonna come back because they experienced the delicious food. and you know whether it was good for them or not is often a secondary thought but but again, I realize that many consumers are also motivated primarily by the healthfulness of food, you know, I don't want to close the door to any of those audience members, so You know think about that in. Okay, I'll sure an experience of mine. This was a handful of years ago. You know when I was teaching at the Art Institute of Portland and you know, I was lucky enough. I think to have a department director that was open to the idea of offering elective courses for our students and I had the opportunity to teach ayurvedic cooking courses. And those were that was a course that I designed. I had a hundred percent, you know academic freedom and again lucky enough that the academic director was open to putting that on the schedule offering it for for credits. That would go toward, you know, the toward graduation for the students. And so if you're in a setting like that app You know your director and see what sort of opportunities might be available for you. Okay, you know, but you know, otherwise You know as I mentioned it with the earlier question, you might also look out in the community for opportunities to combine, you know your two. Sort of passion plays or or you know loves so to speak right? It's the it's the education piece and it's the nutrition piece and you know, you're you're bound to find some traction either in the community or hopefully on campus. All right. Thank you.