The joy of (vegan) cooking
Former Allentown principal moves to the head of the class
Teaching has been his passion for more than two decades.
But for Jason Sizemore of Allentown, what he taught took a big shift toward the end of 2019.
Sizemore stepped down as principal at Allentown’s Muhlenberg Elementary School in 2019 and embarked on a new journey to teach others the joy of vegan cooking.
He opened Butterhead Kitchen, a vegan food business offering cooking classes as well as some small-batch cheese and pepperoni, just as the pandemic began to take hold.
With some quick thinking, Sizemore’s business went virtual, which as luck turned out, presented a whole new avenue for his customers, who found him in droves through social media.
“People are looking to connect with other people through food,” Sizemore said. “They are asking ‘How can I cook a few meals a week?’ ”
A vegan for nine years, Sizemore had started his business on the side and has been hosting interactive dinner parties on the side while working in elementary education. He’d show guests in their homes how to make popular holiday dishes vegan such as a Thanksgiving feast.
“It took off and did really well,” Sizemore said of the dinner parties.
He decided to take his parttime side hustle full-time. Of course, Sizemore’s business was
built around the idea of hosting in-person vegan cooking classes, which he would take to guests’ homes or at businesses.
Then the pandemic swept through the Lehigh Valley, just as his business started rolling. Everyone suddenly was stuck at home, faced with cooking for themselves with no idea how to do it.
Sizemore pivoted quickly, shifting his classes to an online format. He found an unexpected audience of new students, who wanted to learn how they can cook vegan at home and do it in a pandemic-friendly way. His virtual classes were a new opportunity for folks to learn more about vegan cooking, which strictly eliminates all animal products including dairy and eggs.
Through social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, his posts of beautiful vegan dishes and plugs for his classes attracted attention here in the Lehigh Valley as well as around the country.
“It’s mostly people who aren’t vegan,” Sizemore said of his cooking class students. “I get a lot of parents whose kids have gone vegan. There’s also a huge interest from people who are eating more plantbased. Once and a while I’ll get someone who wants to be vegan and wants to know where to start.”
His approach: Make vegan cooking accessible and enjoyable.
“I’m replicating all the non-vegan foods I used to enjoy,” he said.
From Korean Bibimbap and seven-layer taco dip to pizza and other Italian favorites, Sizemore seeks to show through his classes that cooking vegan doesn’t have to be intimidating. You just need a bit of creativity and a few “meat-like” ingredients.
His next class will show how you can go vegan for Passover and Easter, featuring a menu of potato leek soup, Middle Eastern quinoa salad and chocolate toffee matzo. The class will be held at 6:30 p.m. on March 26.
For Sizemore, the shift to online classes has opened his business up beyond the Valley.
“I’ve met a lot of new people all over the Lehigh Valley and in Pennsylvania but it’s expanded to many different states,” he said. “I was just planning a class yesterday with people in California.”
Throughout the pandemic, Sizemore has hosted private Zoom cooking classes, which have connected people with something fun to do and learn. He gave an example of a party he was working on for a family with members in 18 different places across the country.
He also makes smallbatch vegan soft cheeses, mozzarella and pepperoni, which you can buy through Green Earth Marketplace in Emmaus and at the Easton Public Market. (His cheeses are cashew-based for the most part.)
As the region begins the slow process of starting to recover from the pandemic, Sizemore thinks he’ll continue to host his online classes.
“I don’t know that I would have thought of doing these online classes if I didn’t have to but now I’m going to continue to offer them,” Sizemore said.
Sizemore said he hopes people continue to cook at home.
“Some of the guests have become cooks in their own homes,” he said. “I can’t imagine them abandoning that. There will be a time when life will get busier but I hope that we all realized that it doesn’t have to be that way and that we can carver out a little time cook.”
Cooking classes
Here are some other classes Sizemore will be running in the coming weeks:
■ More Vegan Mexican: 6:30 p.m. April 16; sunflower seed taco “meat” Mexican salad; jackfruit, spinach and mushroom tacos; pineapple mint salsa
■ Classic Vegan Italian: 6:30 p.m. April 22; white bean rosemary bruschetta; lasagna with cashew ricotta; and caesar salad with oil-free vegan caesar dressing
■ New Vegan Italian: 2 p.m. April 18 and 6:30 p.m. April 30; gnocchi (glutenfree) with vodka sauce; bruschetta with walnut Parmesan; and lemon cream raspberry tarts
■ An Evening of Cooking with Seasons of Bethlehem & Butterhead Kitchen:
6:30 p.m. April 23; citrus, fennel and farro salad with pistachios and Seasons’ citrus mint white balsamic; chocolate raspberry bread pudding with Seasons Italian raspberry balsamic condimento and an optional dusting of Seasons spiced coffee premium spice blend
Register for a class through his website, https://www.butterheadkitchen.com/.
Once you register and pay the fee ($25), within a few days you get a Zoom link. He posts a shopping list for his recipes and you can either choose to cook along with him during the class or just watch and learn.
“I get a lot of parents whose kids have gone vegan. There’s also a huge interest from people who are eating more plant-based. Once and a while I’ll get someone who wants to be vegan and wants to know where to start.” — Jason Sizemore