Cooking Up a Storm at Tecnológico de Monterrey

By Katia Rodríguez, Mexico Campaigns and Spanish Media Coordinator

A few weeks ago, Vegan Outreach’s Mexico outreach team—staff and volunteer—visited one of the most important private institutions in Mexico, the Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey. Together with the university’s student animal rights group, Comprometidos por el Cuidado Animal (CCAN), we organized a vegan cooking class for approximately two dozen students. The turnout for the class was amazing! In fact, CCAN had to limit the number of people that could be in the lab because of the high demand and the lack of space!

To help teach the class, we invited Sergio Carreón. Sergio is one of our wonderful volunteers who also happens to be a cook. At the beginning of the class, we all shared our personal vegan stories, discussed the benefits of a plant-based diet, and described how delicious vegan food can be. This got the students inspired and anxious to start cooking! And we were surprised to find out that there were already three vegetarians and one vegan in the class.

The students made lentil chili, black bean burgers, and vegan nacho cheese. We chose these recipes because the ingredients are easy to find, reasonably priced, and super delicious. Most of the students had little to no experience cooking, but that didn’t prevent them from making delicious vegan food!

We had a chance to talk to the students about what inspired them to sign up for the class. One of the most interested students, Samantha, told us she’s been vegetarian for years and had tried going vegan without success. After the cooking class, she said she’s never been more inspired to go vegan. She sent me a long email later on to thank the VO team for being so positive, patient, and inspiring.

Thank you CCAN for helping us host such a successful event and for all the great work you do on campus!