I think every Chinese household thinks that
on the table you must have meat. 
We grew up having our father tell us
that every single granule of rice needs to be finished in your bowl.
We go travel in China and,
if there's pig's brain on your plate you have to eat it.
Veganism was not even heard of. 
Being vegan was a choice that I made,  
which obviously my dad still does not think
 is the right thing, 
because having meat on the table equates to having money.
My name is Peggy and I'm the executive chef,
owner and founder of Grassroots Pantry. 
So Grassroots Pantry is plant-focused.
We focus on supporting our local farmers,
on raising awareness on what organic means
and also what sustainable ingredients are.
Well, clay pot rice is a very traditional,
Guangdong style, southern Chinese style of dish
that you would get on the side streets, dai pai dongs, and such.
The lap cheong that we make, the cured sausage, is a raw form. 
Raw meaning we don't heat up our ingredients over
117 degrees Fahrenheit.
This retains all the nutrients in the original ingredients.
So inside the lap cheong,
there's zucchini, flax seeds, binders,
Irish moss, and also smoked paprika, some fennel seeds 
to make it smell and taste almost like cured sausage.
It's a fun take on it.
It's obviously not the same thing
but it's our raw form of creating something
that would mimic the same flavor and experience.
I think there are at least 50 to 60
different ingredients on this dish.
So, first we start with the rice. 
Very often they're called forbidden rice,
like black rice, red rice, 
which are so much more nutritional 
for our bodies because of the fiber that it contains.
We want to create more like a meat texture using jackfruit
and we add in konnyaku to make some kind of fatty texture.
The soup takes about eight hours.
 I think it's like 16 different
traditional Chinese medicine ingredients,
which, when it's boiling, it just reminds me of home 
you know, I grew up drinking this type of soup
because my mom would be cooking it.
So the ingredients are super healing for us
and very warming as well. So it's perfect for winter.
Well, I have been not eating red meat for 16 years
and vegetarian for about that time as well. 
 I grew up partially in Canada. 
We moved to Montreal when I was five. 
At home, veganism was not even heard of, really,
 because someone like my father,
who grew up with nothing,
during the 50s, 60s in Communist China,
had to eat whatever was there on the streets.
 It's a personal lifestyle of mine.
When I moved back from Canada to Hong Kong,
I realized that it was so difficult
to find the foods that I was accustomed to.
That was one of the reasons why I felt that 
Hong Kong was really missing that market.
It was necessary, it was ready for it, 
but the education still wasn't there. 
My motivation to change the world and
create impact in some way
is much higher than being a chef who wins awards and accolades.
But now we need to change the methods
and we need to change the system
and we need to change the way that we set up kitchens.
Because we can all reduce in the ways that we operate.
