{"id":18713,"date":"2022-02-02T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T14:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/?p=18713"},"modified":"2022-01-20T11:45:48","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T16:45:48","slug":"halfway-through-my-vegetarian-resource-group-internship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/2022\/02\/02\/halfway-through-my-vegetarian-resource-group-internship\/","title":{"rendered":"Halfway Through My Vegetarian Resource Group Internship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Ruby Sturm<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been vegetarian my whole life and vegan for\nabout a year. I had only been a vegan for a few months when I entered The\nVegetarian Resource Group video contest with my video, \u201cEat for the Earth.\u201d I\nwas so surprised when I won and Charles Stahler offered me an internship. I was\nonly in 7th grade at the time and didn\u2019t realize I could be an intern, so I was\nextremely excited by the offer and immediately said \u201cyes.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I started the internship, I realized it was\ngoing to be challenging. I received a large packet of VRG articles to read\nas background preparation before my internship started. I also had to plan out\na schedule for the year. Planning your own schedule is actually very helpful,\nbecause you are able to choose how much work you want to take on, and also what\nyou\u2019d like to do. It\u2019s been a lot of fun choosing things I\u2019d like to work on,\nsuch as vegan cooking, writing, researching, vegan product reviews, and even\nphotography. It feels like I\u2019ve learned a lot during the first half of my\ninternship. This even includes basic things, such as how to make an email sound\n\u201cfancy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I worked on database entries for the VRG online restaurant\nguide. (See: https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/restaurant\/index.php<\/a>)  It was interesting to\nlearn about vegetarian and vegan restaurants around the country, but the\nrestaurant websites didn\u2019t always give enough information. I enjoy\nresearching and writing but there was something intimidating about the idea of\ncalling restaurants on the phone. I guess I\u2019m more of a writer than a reporter.\nBut I did do several database entries, so I\u2019m proud about that. In the Spring,\nI will take on the different task of writing a book review of Making Vegan\nMeats<\/em>, by Mark Thompson (one of my favorite vegan YouTube chefs!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, one project I\u2019ve had a lot of fun with\nhas been writing an article about living as a vegan during my recent trip to\nGermany (my dad\u2019s from Germany, so we go there to visit the family every year).\nWhat surprised me the most was to see how the large German grocery store chains\nwere competing (with magazine and billboard ads) to have the most vegan and\nvegetarian products. Germany is a very meat, cheese, and yogurt loving country,\nso the amount of vegan Brot-Belag they had was tremendous. Knowing in advance\nthat I was going to write an article really helped me remember details about\nthat trip more than a lot of other vacations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has also been a lot of fun to test vegan\nrecipes for Rissa, Senior Editor of VRG\u2019s magazine. Some recipes were\nstraightforward. For example, when you put broccoli in an air fryer \u2026 it\ngets crunchy! With other recipes, like the breaded vegan Cajun chicken, it was\nsurprising and almost magical to see how the food turned from doughy blobs into\nhaving a really chicken-y texture. I definitely want to test more vegan recipes\nin the future, and someday also write a few of my own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing product reviews for Veggie Bits was also\none of my favorite assignments. I got to test out some tasty snacks and write\nsome honest opinions about them. One of the things I tested was chocolate\nbars. It was incredible that they even had plant-based caramel in them. I\nalso tested Rio Good Che-easy Bread mix. When I baked it, it came out very\ngooey on the inside and crunchy on the outside. Usually when I eat food I don\u2019t\nthink too much about it, I just decide whether it tastes good or not. Reviewing\nfor Veggie Bits helped me to really think about what I was eating \u2026 and enjoy\nthe flavor a bit more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Love Plant Based is a great vegan\nrestaurant in my area that I got to review. The food there was delicious and\ngetting to do a write-up on this restaurant was incredible, I\u2019d only been there\nonce before, but it felt like a restaurant that needed to be written about. So\nI was excited when I got the chance to. Sadly, you couldn\u2019t eat inside! Due to\nCovid they were only doing pickup and outdoor dining. The outdoor dining was\nnext to a main road, which was not the most convenient spot. So I took the food\nhome and it was delicious. Another new challenge was taking food\nphotographs for my review. The broccoli chedd\u2019a soup I ordered tasted delicious,\nbut it was hard to take a photo that caught the flavor for the reader. I had to\ntake about 30 pictures of the soup before it finally looked as good as it\ntasted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the second half of my internship I look\nforward to writing an article on vegan thrift store fashion and also doing some\nresearch and writing about vegetarian dog foods, on a quest to finally convert\nmy very picky dog to vegetarianism. I may end researching and writing about\nother things. Whatever they are, I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll be an adventure!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information about VRG internships, see https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/student\/index.php<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ruby Sturm I\u2019ve 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, \u201cEat for the Earth.\u201d I was so surprised when I won and Charles Stahler offered me an internship. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18715,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18713\/revisions\/18715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}