Los Angeles based Spork Foods is a gourmet vegan food company owned and operated by sisters Jenny Engel and Heather Goldberg. They offer live vegan organic cooking classes in Los Angeles at Spork Foods and an online video cookbook at SporkOnline.com. Their cookbook, Spork-Fed, is currently in stores, with a foreword by fellow fans Emily and Zooey Deschanel. Heather and Jenny are Chef Ambassadors for two major corporations, GO Veggie! Foods and Setton Farms. They teach all over the country and the world reaching over 10,000 people a year. To learn more about Jenny and Heather, click here.
How did you get started in the plant-based food movement?
We studied environmental science in college, and we made the connection between the environment and our eating choices, and bigger issues, such as deforestation and factory farming. So, we started cooking vegan cuisine that was delicious. We’ve always wanted to have a business as sisters together, and what better way to empower people and to educate them, by showing them that it’s easy and delicious. Our food is modern, delicious, and easy to do at home, you can sustain this eating style for a lifetime. We’ve been vegan for 15 years now. When we were both in college, there weren’t many vegan options out there. We started cooking, and empowering people to take their health into their own hands, and take care of the planet and animals at the same time. So we opened the cooking school in West Hollywood. We worked with restaurants, private chefs, and found this path was most fulfilling. We’ve had the cooking school for 8 years now. We grew up in the Southern California area, in LA, and we stayed here. We went to college in Santa Cruz, San Francisco and LA. We were vegetarian in high school, but in college we moved to being vegan.
What is your plant-based philosophy?
Our philosophy is that it’s our choice to be vegan; it’s our over-arching reason for what we do. We are passionate about the environment and health. So our diet is connecting those dots. Plant-based is a newer term, but we like using the word “vegan,” which describes our lifestyle. For example, we use no wool, silk, or leather. We have an emphasis on whole ingredients, such as unbleached and organic. We also talk about the aspect of medicinal qualities of food, and the history of food. There is a connection between food and the plate and how it impacts the body. We don’t present food as “bad” or negative. Most of our cooking school students aren’t vegan or vegetarian. They come to our class and have a good time and have a good meal. But we are vegan through and through. We don’t use animal products, and that includes everything from cosmetics to purses to cars. We work on every aspect of being vegan. It’s a lifestyle choice. We hope to help people make steps to a healthier lifestyle, and we get so excited about it.
What are you working on now?
We have lots of new projects. We’re going to be doing work with PETA, shooting videos that will come out in the spring. We are ambassadors for Pistachio Chewy Bites, we are working with them to create recipes, and we go with them to trade shows, and other fun projects.
Every cooking class we teach is new and different cooking class; we don’t repeat our menu items. Last night someone was there for her 100th cooking class.
Tell us about your cookbook?
In Spork-Fed Cookbook, we created a picture for every recipe in the book, which is a huge drive for us. As chefs, we love to see pictures of what we’re making. Our recipes are comforting, fun and easy, and do not contain too many complex ingredients. That’s kind of the drive for our style of cooking. Because we have the experience of teaching cooks with all skill levels, we try not to have people run around to specialty grocery stores to get ingredients for our recipes.
What are the five foods you can’t live without?
That’s a hard question, because we eat everything. We eat differently all the time; we try to mix it up, it’s the nature of what we do we.
But if we had to choose, it would be:
• Leafy greens, we eat it every day
• Avocado, being from California it’s a staple
• Start each day with fruit, anything in season
• We drink almond milk in a smoothie, or we make it into a sauce
• Nutritional yeast; we use in all different contexts all the time
What new trends do you think are hot in the vegan world?
People are super into cauliflower, such as Buffalo Cauliflower. Just because it’s white in color, it doesn’t mean it’s lacking in nutrients. Another big new trend is juicing. People are drinking fruits and vegetables, and we think they’re doing a great job. We are thrilled to see people drinking fruits and veggies. We’re seeing more juice places.
What are your tips for moving to a plant-based diet?
We know that it’s intimating to go full throttle into this lifestyle. Doing it in increments is the way to advocate. People can do what they can, such as substituting almond milk for dairy milk. And then after a week, supplementing another product, one at a time. Try incorporating more veggies into the diet more often. Have a buddy do it with you; look for a support system—someone to talk to with and go through this with you. If you have a support system it will be easier to stick with it.
3 tablespoons neutral tasting oil or virgin coconut oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup Setton Farms shelled pistachio kernels, roughly chopped*
1/2 cup dried cranberries*
Instructions
Pre-heat oven to 350°F.
In a mixing bowl, combine oats, vanilla extract, sea salt, cinnamon, allspice, cloves oil, maple syrup. Coat evenly.
Spread mixture on a greased, walled cookie sheet.
Bake for 10 minutes, then open oven and stir, bringing granola on edges towards center. Repeat every 5 minutes, until mixture has baked for about 20-22 minutes. Moving granola around during baking, prevents burning.
Fold in pistachios and dried cranberries or chop all 6 chewy bites into 12 pieces per Pistachio Chewy Bite, and fold into mixture.
Let cool completely before serving or storing.
Notes
*6 Setton Farms Pistachio Chewy Bites (1 bag) can be substituted for pistachios and cranberries
** The granola can keep for up to 2 weeks if stored in an airtight container. No need to refrigerate.
