{"id":25639,"date":"2020-02-24T00:15:39","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T08:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/closedloopcooking.flywheelsites.com\/?post_type=feature&p=25639"},"modified":"2022-11-27T12:51:01","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T20:51:01","slug":"food-curious-with-jen-hung","status":"publish","type":"reads","link":"https:\/\/closedloopcooking.com\/reads\/food-curious-with-jen-hung\/","title":{"rendered":"Food Curious with Jen Hung"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
When Jen Hung first enrolled in culinary school in 2017, she says it was simply to learn more about how to be herself. She has since turned her passion for food into a deeper exploration of where food comes from, cooking as a connection to heritage, and how and why we assign meaning to certain things we eat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jen\u2019s blog, Root Fare<\/a>, embodies her resolve to not accept something as truth just because a label or tradition says it\u2019s so. And her playful approach to plant-based cooking makes us want to spend the weekend massaging heads of cabbage for homemade kimchi.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n We got to hear Jen\u2019s perspective on how dietary choices impact identity, why spending time on an organic family farm led her to go vegan, and how she grapples with eating a plant-based diet as a Taiwanese American woman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My journey in food began when I read Jonathan Safran Foer\u2019s <\/em>Eating Animals<\/em><\/a> <\/em>seven or eight years ago and it made me not want to eat any factory farmed meat. Having that restriction on how I was going to feed myself actually led me to get a lot more interested in food. I started cooking so much that people were asking me why I wasn\u2019t doing it as a side job\u2014friends would want me to do meal prep for them, or offer to pay for me to bake them a cake for an event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I moved to New York in 2017, I learned about this plant-based culinary school called the National Gourmet Institute<\/a> (NGI) and thought I would maybe enroll, but I wasn\u2019t thinking about it as a career switch that I would ever actually make. I also started baking a lot more when I moved to New York as a way to form connections with people. Making food and bringing people into my home was a way foster new relationships, and the more I did that the more I noticed how happy I was in the kitchen. I eventually decided to enroll in NGI to get a culinary education, just to learn more about how to be myself. I figured I would continue in my advertising career and switch over to a food related agency or do food media. But during the program I realized I needed to make the switch\u2014I just feel so much more alive being in a kitchen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What really bothered me was the idea of factory farming. A lot of the things we know now about factory farming still weren\u2019t widely known when that book first came out. I didn\u2019t necessarily care about the animals or environmentalism at the time\u2014it was more selfish like, \u2018I don\u2019t want to eat something that has been sitting in its own feces for days.\u2019 At this point I was still in college and I couldn\u2019t afford to shop for non-factory farmed meat, so I just didn\u2019t eat meat at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In choosing to stop eating meat I was scared that I was going to lose my connection with my culture. I\u2019m Taiwanese American, part Hakka, and a lot of our food centers around cooking meat in clay pots. Even though I immigrated when I was five years old, I grew up in the U.S. and I really didn\u2019t know anything about Taiwan. If I was going to stop eating animals I would not have that tie to my culture anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of those fears I started to think maybe I could eat animals if they were sustainably raised and responsibly sourced. So in the summer of 2013, in order to get to the bottom of that, I went to live on an organic farm through WWOOF<\/a>. I chose purposely to go to a farm that both grew vegetables and raised animals for meat. I had a great time learning about vegetable production, and I saw how this family of farmers treated their animals with love, but I couldn\u2019t do it. I thought that I would go and see how happy these animals were and it would make me be okay with eating them again, but it didn\u2019t even feel like an option. I couldn\u2019t fathom the idea of being around a happy animal and then killing it later in the year. So that cemented the decision for me to be vegan and continue living that path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being on the farm also opened my eyes to the wonders of agriculture, and I realized that you can\u2019t produce food without caring for the earth. I became really interested in environmentalism and conservation, and I kept that in the back of my mind when I went back to the city and started my advertising career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was working with nonprofits like Conservation International and this food education program that taught people about veganism, and I enjoyed that for a while\u2014I felt like I was doing some good in the world. But the more I worked with nonprofits to tell their stories, the more I felt like I needed to actually have my boots on the ground. The work was heartwarming, but at the end of the day I was creating a commercial. Maybe I wasn\u2019t going to be the one out there literally replanting mangroves to protect shorelines, but if I was able to impact individuals by feeding them a different way, and open their eyes to taking care of themselves and the planet, that felt much more substantial than telling stories for these organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I left my job in May of 2018 and pursued various cooking jobs. I didn\u2019t think that I ultimately wanted to be a chef, but this was midway through culinary school and my instructors convinced me to try interning at a restaurant. I cooked in a couple of kitchens before I knew for sure that it wasn\u2019t for me. I had fun and learned a lot, but I think that my philosophy on feeding people fundamentally contradicts with the idea of working at a place where you\u2019re constantly turning out the same thing, regardless of individuals\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It also physically broke me down, even though, ironically, <\/strong>I was working at a vegetarian restaurant that people think of as healthy. Of course this doesn\u2019t happen to everyone, but I started to develop carpal tunnel, my sleep was terrible, I was never actually cooking for myself, and I gained a ton of weight\u2014that type of lifestyle was not a holistic one for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I left the restaurant I knew I wanted to focus on how I could impact people on a personal level, and that\u2019s when I started the blog<\/a>. I cook with what\u2019s in season and what\u2019s in my pantry rather than follow recipes, and I wanted to give others the tools to do that too. I know so many people in my life who are scared of precise measurements and I want them to understand that the joy of cooking is that it\u2019s not supposed to be about precision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also wanted to get deeper into why I went to that farm\u2014my fear of losing my last touchpoint with this culture that is important to me even though I don\u2019t know much about it. I\u2019m trying to figure out ways that I can continue to participate in and enjoy what it means to be Taiwanese American as a vegan. That\u2019s where the name Root Fare comes from, it\u2019s about my roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHow did you first get interested in food?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What was it about Eating Animals<\/em> that led you to change how you ate?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Was it challenging to make that shift?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I realized that you can\u2019t produce food without caring for the earth.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
Tell me about your career transition from advertising into food.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I cook with what\u2019s in season and what\u2019s in my pantry rather than follow recipes, and I wanted to give others the tools to do that too.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
On your blog, you write about using plant-based ingredients to make Taiwanese dishes, and the tension within that. Can you tell me more about that?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n