Michael Abramson - From the Kitchens of YamChops North Americas Original Vegan Butcher Shop: Mind-Blowing Plant-Based Meat Substitutions

Mind-Blowing Plant-Based Meat Substitutions Chef and Founder of YamChops The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: http://us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. This cookbook is dedicated to three amazing women who joined in the dream called YamChopsmy wife Toni and my daughters, Jess and Leyaand to dreams coming true! What the heck is a vegan butcher anyway? More than any other question, were asked, What are you? Yup, even more often than, Where do you get your protein? In the simplest of responses, YamChops prepares center-of-the-plate protein alternatives that are all plant-based, and we do so in a butcher shop format. Some might say that a vegan butcher is an oxymoron, but we believe plant-based proteins can (and should) be staples of any kitchen or diet.

Our recipes appeal to all types of eaters: vegans, vegetarians and flexitariansthose who are choosing to reduce their meat and dairy consumption. As youll see, we have had a lot of fun and take some creative license when we turn a commonly understood animal protein on its head by recreating it as a plant-based protein instead. Let me take you on a bit of a trip back in time to describe how YamChops came to be. Growing up, I vividly remember countless weekend visits to my grandparents who lived in Regina. My grandfather immigrated to Canada from Romania in 1928. Among the many things he did to build a new life, my grandfather was a livestock trader.

Hed travel to the remote flatlands of Saskatchewan, bargaining with farmers for a cow to bring to Reginas livestock auction. Being religious, he wouldnt travel on the Sabbath, so my grandparents often had a cow as their guest for the weekendmany times on the same weekends that we were visiting. All of the cows, coincidently, were named Bessie. For years I believed that it was the same cow, until my grandfather thought that it would be a great experience for his nine-year-old grandson if he took me to a cattle auction. I didnt quite understand what was going on at the stockyards, but I remember feeling his pride when he was showing me around the yard, his excitement when Bessie was being paraded around the auction ring, and his elation when he was handed a check. This is my first memory of what it means to bring passion and celebration to what you do.

In later years, it also became my first memory of animal consciousnessbut at the time, all I took in was his unbelievable spirit in doing what he did to provide for his family. I fully embraced a plant-based lifestyle when I was nineteen. At the time, I was pursuing a special education degree at the University of Windsor and working at a residential school for autistic children. Prepared plant-based choices back then were pretty sparse, as was my food budget, so I figured I best learn how to cook a few dishes, because living on French fries was not going to work long term. It didnt take long for me to discover that cooking was not only a joy, but that I could make stuff taste great as well. While preparing great tasting food was the ultimate reward, I found that I was falling in love with the whole process: going to the farmers market, discovering and experimenting with stuff Ive never seen before, fusing multiple cuisine styles and creating food that made people smile.

After two years in Windsor and a stint at the University of Lund, Sweden, I moved back to Toronto and met Toni. For our first date I took her to The Cow Cafone of Torontos few veg restaurants at the time. Then, when she found out that I could cook and was pretty manic about cleanliness, she knew I was the man for her. Time went on, we married and we opened our advertising agency theadlibgroup in 1985an agency that we ran for almost three decades. Along the way we were given the two greatest gifts of our livesour daughters Jess and Leya (who have since given us the gift of our grandkids Kaya, Ollin and Rayne). From the time the girls were old enough to stand on a stool, they joined me in the kitchen and we cooked and we cooked and we cooked.

This was, and thirty years later still is, the ultimate daddy-daughter time for me! Around 2009, I decided it was time to see if I could take my cooking to a new level, and I completed my first professional certification in Natural Foods, Vegetarian and Vegan. It was a good and a bad thing. Good in that it really did give me the confidence to take my cooking up a notch; bad because it made me itch to get more seriously into food from all aspects. A year later, this crazy idea of opening a food business started to dance around my mind. Three years later, we were approached by another ad agency, and we ultimately struck a deal to sell theadlibgroup. The stars were aligned.

All that was left to do was to convince the love of my life that fifty-nine was the perfect age to open a plant-based business. The concept of a plant-based butcher shop offering prepared foods was born. And on June 9, 2014, YamChops opened its doors. Ill never forget Toni, Jess, Leya and I staring in disbelief at the line of people waiting for us to open our doors. We felt pretty confident that Torontos vegan and vegetarian world would give a plant-based butcher shop a shot, and we hoped that we would appeal to flexitarians as well. Now, more than half of our guests are flex.

Fact is, we dont judge peoples choices when they visit YamChops. We fully understand that some people take a little longer to adopt a plant-based diet than others. For us, we figured that the easiest way to convince them of the merits of a plant-based diet is to feed them, to show them that vegan is delicious and to demonstrate that compassion not only feels great but tastes great too. From day one, we were (and still are) humbled by the media attention that we received and continue to receive from around the world. We are proud to raise the plant-based messagefor our health, for our planets health and for our animals health. Among the many highlights of all this media attention was an invitation we received nine months after we opened to appear on Canadas number-one-rated Dragons Den, an investment-style reality TV show.

We were being invited to appear on Dragons Den! We knew we didnt even have a full year under our belts. We knew we didnt have a growth plan in place. We knew that we didnt know the answers to many of the questions that the Dragons commonly asked. We knew that we werent profitable at that point. And we also knew that there was no possible way that we would turn down the opportunity to appear on national television to spread the plant-based message and the YamChops message. So we got busy.

We had only fifteen days to prepare for our filming, and we had lots to do! We got our books in order with projections for the remainder of the year. We devised a growth plan that culminated in fifty YamChops franchise locations in North America within five years. We agreed on what we were going to ask for from the Dragons and what percentage we would be willing to give up. We decided on what we were going to feed the Dragons. We invited friends and business colleagues to play the role of Dragons and held a mock filming. We designed a set that emulated our store.