Mark Bittman | The Dinner Special podcast

102: Erin Alderson: Moving From Fast Food to Healthier Eating

December 23, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Naturally Ella

On her blog, Naturally Ella, Erin shares seasonal vegetarian recipes that are pantry-inspired and favorite recipes that are simple, fresh and exciting for her family. She’s written two cookbooks, The Homemade Flour Cookbook and The Easy Vegetarian Kitchen.

I am so happy to have Erin Alderson of Naturally Ella here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Erin’s.)

On Her Journey From Fast Food to Fresh and Seasonal:

It’s definitely been a long journey, but one I’m glad I took. Through high school and part of college, we were a middle-class family who was always on the go. Had a lot of activities after school, during school and it just seemed like we never really had time to cook. Looking back I think we probably did have time. But like most people it’s just convenient to eat out and grab food as we go.

It wasn’t until in between my freshman and sophomore year of college that my father had a heart attack and had a quadruple bypass. He survived it all but it was definitely a wake-up call for my entire family. After that we changed our diets and we haven’t looked back.

On Getting Started to Eating Healthier:

Baby steps. Definitely baby steps. Instead of eating out every day I’d eat out three times a week. I just stepped back slowly but surely. There were things I didn’t like at first. I didn’t always eat a lot of vegetables as much as I should have. It took time. It took time to really grow and get the process down.

I thought it might have been easier than I expected. I definitely had it built up in my head thinking that, “Oh, I’ll be able to do it. It won’t be that hard.” But it definitely was a day-by-day experience and there were a lot of temptations and challenges around every corner.

I feel like a lot of time people think, “Oh, health food. That must mean salads.” And really I don’t know. I love eating whole grains I do a lot of noodles. Again everything in moderation. You can have a lot of fun with it.

On Some Good Resources for Starting to Eat More Healthy:

I think blogs are awesome. A lot of the healthier food blogs because there’s just so much inspiration. And a lot of times those I feel like are recipes that people can really dig into.

Any of the Michael Pollan books are really a kind of good, swift kick in the rear. Because you read them and think, “Okay. This is why I should be doing this.” Mark Bittman is also a good resource. I think he’s the one that has the cookbook, How to Cook Everything.

I feel like those books can really be go-to references. They don’t have to be something that you read cover to cover. It’s just something that you can say, “Hey. I feel like trying this.” And you can go and dig into it.

On Her Blog:

Originally I started as a healthy baking blog way back in 2007. This was towards the beginning of my healthy eating journey and I wanted to share. For whatever reason I thought blogging sounded like fun even back then.

But I soon realized I didn’t like baking. And I fell in love with cooking. And that really took hold when I joined a CSA. And it was one of the ones where I could go out and pick. Every week I’d go out to the farm and I’d get to pick the produce that was ready. So I was getting my hands dirty.

It just really felt like connecting me to my food more. And forcing me to… instead of making a list of recipes and then going grocery shopping it was forcing me to say, “Okay. This is what I have. What can I make?”

It definitely opened my eyes to different varieties of things. I tried new things. Like kohlrabi was something that I would have never bought at the store but because it was there I tried it. And you learn about it and while sometimes at first you don’t like it. You can try it a different way and prepare it a different way. I think it’s a lot of fun.

In fact in the early days I would come back from the CSA and photograph everything. And I’d say, “This is what I got from the CSA this week.” And then the recipes would be based on that. That’s when my blog really turned seasonal.

On Essential Pantry Items for a Healthier Diet:

I always say that people need a couple, two to three, different kinds of grains. If you’re a grain-eater. Obviously I know there are some diets out there that people don’t eat grains. But for my purpose I’m going to say a few grains. Quinoa’s always a nice one to have because it’s quick-cooking. I love brown rice. That’s a good base for things. I usually have some millet and oats on hand.

And then you need some legumes. I love black beans, chickpeas and lentils. I usually have one of each of those. When I say pantry-inspired, those are really the items that I’m thinking of.

On Her Cookbooks, The Homemade Flour Cookbook and The Easy Vegetarian Kitchen:

The first one the publisher actually reached out to me and said, “Hey, we think that you would be a really good fit for this concept we have. Would it be something you’re interested in?” At first I’m, “Oh my gosh!” I’ve talked about milling flour. I had a lot of grains but I’ve never really put the two together. The more I thought about it, I was like, “No, this is a really good extension of my brand because a lot of times these are the ingredients I have in my house anyway. So what a cool way to show a second use for them.” So that concept was interesting for me.

Then the second book was an idea that I had been playing around with for a while. Because it kind of goes back to that seasonal, “I have these things, what can I do with them?” And so for The Easy Vegetarian Kitchen, it’s 50 base recipes that you can build upon with whatever you have. And so I keep it really open-ended but I do give some examples of what to do per season.

On Being in the Kitchen as a New Parent:

I don’t blog full-time. I have never actually blogged full-time. Naturally Ella has always been my secondary thing that I do and I’ve kept up.

But as of January it’s going to be my full-time because with having Mack around I’ve found that I can’t continue to do about three different jobs. So I’m going to focus solely on the blog. I have been spending quite a bit of time in the kitchen. Primarily during nap times and on weekends when my husband’s home.

But he actually loves being in the kitchen. I put him in the bouncer and I set him up on the kitchen island. And he loves to watch and really enjoys just being there. So that’s nice. It’s been very helpful.

My husband and I’ll even put food up to his nose and say, “Hey, this is mint.” And there was one time that he accidentally got parsley in his mouth and that was a really funny experience. Because he was, “Wait a minute, what is this?” We’re really looking forward to when we can start solid foods and have him experience all of that.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

We don’t have cable. We only have antennae. AI still watch shows like MasterChef. I love Junior MasterChef just because I love seeing the eight-year-olds and the 10-year-olds just get in the kitchen. I think it’s really inspiring for kids to see other kids be in the kitchen. And hopefully grow a generation that’s used to cooking.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I love blogs. I’ve met a lot of friends through blogging. But the blogs I’m loving right now, who are doing some really creative vegetarian cooking, are, The First Mess, With Food + Love, Cookie and Kate, Love and Lemons. I’m sure there’s about a dozen more I could name, but those are the four that I really love.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

So on Instagram, I love following The Fauxmartha. She has a two-year-old at home who sometimes you see little hands in her shots. And I just love that.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I have a giant stoneware bowl that is made from a company where I used to live. And it’s a pottery place that’s no longer in business. I just love it. Because I feel like you can’t buy bowls like that anymore.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Oh. So many. I’m going to have to say goat cheese. For the longest time I was scared of any cheese that was white because I thought it was goat cheese. But now I love it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

First and foremost, The Vegetarian Flavor Bible is pretty much how I develop recipes. It’s so great because you can look up an ingredient and get other ingredients. And I love both of The Sprouted Kitchen’s cookbooks. There’s a new cookbook out called, Rose Water and Orange Blossom. That’s a Mediterranean/Lebanese cookbook and it’s just wonderful.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Yo-Yo Ma did a collaboration with a few bluegrass artists. And it’s called, The Goat Rodeo Sessions and it’s my favorite one especially this time of year. It gets me in the mood to get in the kitchen and cook.

On Keeping Posted with Erin:

Instagram. I am all about Instagram these days.

094: Sarah Nevins: Cooking and Eating with Celiac Disease

November 25, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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A Saucy Kitchen

Sarah moved away from everything familiar in Arizona to Sheffield, England in 2014, and busied herself in the one place where she was always comfortable, the kitchen. She feels strongly that the food we eat has a huge impact on the way we feel in our daily lives. This really hits close to home for her because her husband was recently diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Sarah created A Saucy Kitchen to share their journey to better health through their stomachs.

I am so excited to have Sarah Nevins of A Saucy Kitchen here with me today.

(*All photos below are Sarah’s.)

On the Role Food Played while Growing Up:

I was really lucky because both of my parents are really good cooks. My mom more so just regular, everyday meal cooking, and my dad’s really great on the grill. So I was pretty spoiled with that and I guess that’s why I got into it because I always had good food around me. If I wanted that to continue growing up, I needed to figure out how to do it myself.

For local foods, being so close to the border, I think we were spoiled with Mexican food. That’s something now, that I live in England, that I really miss. But other than that, I don’t know if there is anything… just lots of really cool coffee shops. That was probably my favorite part, going and just finding different things that you’d see featured on the Food Network and trying their cupcakes and the coffees. All that was really great.

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

It started really young. I was thinking about it and I remember having an Easy-Bake oven when I was really little. That’s the little microwave sort of thing where you just make single cookies and I loved that. Then my mom actually got me into baking quite young to help me learn fractions. I’m a very visual, kinesthetic learner and I felt it was really helpful to measure things out and figure how it adds up to a whole. I’m not good at math, but I am good at baking and it’s stuck with me since then.

I was around them cooking a lot, and I’d see what they did. When I was little, my mom had a shelf of cookbooks in our pantry that I’d often go to and pull them out and I just did it. Most summer vacations in Arizona, it’s really hot. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to turn the oven on in 110-degree weather, but that’s what I would do. I’d just spend time trying out different cakes and things like that just getting my hands dirty and doing it myself.

On the Difference in Food Between Sheffield, England and Arizona:

I feel like in Sheffield or in England, in general, they have more of their staples that you recognize. And I don’t know if it’s just because Arizona doesn’t have anything that’s specific to them. But here you have a lot of fish and chips, and you get the classics like Yorkshire pudding, which I really love. There was a lot of different food. it was the same but very slightly different, which is kind of confusing.

We went to Liverpool, which is not at all like Mexico, and we went to this pub, which is not where you should buy Mexican food. And I was just really curious because I saw taquitos on the menu so I’m like, “Hmm?” And they were really nice but they were not taquitos. I feel like there’s a lot of things that they say is something like enchiladas and they’re great, but they’re not enchiladas. It’s funny seeing how different it is not having that influence there. But then they have a lot of really great food here. They’ve got a lot of Indian food because there’s a large Indian population. So you can get great curries. That’s something that’s unique to here, I think.

On Celiac Disease and What it Means:

Celiac Disease is an autoimmune disorder which is basically when your body confuses itself or things inside your body as being foreign invaders and attacks itself. With Celiac Disease, what happens is when you eat gluten, which comes from wheat products like bread. When it gets to your small intestine, your body kind of freaks out and starts attacking itself because it doesn’t know what to do. That just leads to a whole host of problems. When I looked it up last, there were about 300 symptoms of Celiac Disease. Which can be really difficult because, for the most part, people only think of the stomach issues when, in reality, you can have arthritis that you got from eating gluten and not even know it.

It is because he was diagnosed only a couple years ago but sick for about 10 years without even realizing it. It can take years and years for people to finally get a diagnosis.

It’s difficult too because it just affects people in so many different ways. His dad actually found out when he did that he also had Celiac Disease because it’s a genetic thing. But with his dad, he goes through his entire life not really realizing that there’s something wrong. Whereas, with Mike, when he was about 10 years old he got sick and he just never really got better from it because of the same exact thing.

On Learning to Cook Without Grains and Refined Sugars:

It was a lot of trial and error. A lot of research went into it because I used to just bake anything. I would use real sugar, real butter, real eggs, everything. Then we found out that he had Celiac Disease. It’s like, “All right, take out the gluten.” And then as we started uncovering more health problems, it felt like it wasn’t quite enough, so it’s like, “Okay, maybe cut back on the sugar, cut back maybe even on the eggs sometimes.” Really, I think with something like that, you just have to try it yourself and figure it out. One thing that helped me, I think, is just reading other blogs and seeing what they have to say. That helps you piece it together.

On FODMAP Foods:

FODMAPs is an acronym. It’s Fermentable Oligo-Di-Monosaccharides and Polyols. Basically what that is, is they’re carbohydrates that your body doesn’t fully digest. For most people, like me, I can eat garlic and I can have no problem. But if you’re someone with a lot of stomach issues, what happens is it sits in your small intestines and it just sits there and ferments, and it causes a lot of IBS problems. High FODMAP foods can be anything from apples to garlic and onions and things like that. A lot of people have found that their symptoms of IBS pretty much go away if they take out these foods. For some, it could be that you have a problem with apples but not onions. It’s one of those things where you just have to take it out for a while and see how it is and then slowly, over time, add it back in.

I think a lot of people are turned off by the idea of doing the elimination diet, which is where you get rid of food for a period of time and enter it back in. But I think the people who have gone through so many different health problems, it’s almost just too easy for them to do something like that because if it can give you your life back, it’s really not that difficult of a thing. Because it doesn’t have to be forever, it could be until your body gets back to health.

On Eating Out with Celiac Disease:

It’s so difficult because the thing is it’s very difficult to be completely gluten free. Just because you take the burger off of a bun doesn’t mean that meat is gluten free. By just touching it, it’s got gluten residue on it because it’s such a sticky thing. So we haven’t really been eating out lately because it’s been such an issue. But whenever we do, we call ahead and we tell them the situation, and we’ll talk to the chef. Either they’ll tell us, “I’m sorry, we can’t guarantee this,” or they’ll say, “We can set something aside for you,” which is really great when that happens.

I think in England there are so many people who are getting diagnosed recently that it’s pretty easy. It can be difficult because it is also, to eat gluten free, a very trendy thing right now. So people say it’s gluten free when it’s not. But because there are many people who have this issue as well, restaurants are really needing to learn about it. We’ve got a couple of restaurants I can think of where the owners are Celiac, so they get how serious it is and those ones are great.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I quite like to watch Chopped. That’s one that I used to watch with my family. That one’s really fun. And I haven’t kept up this season but I really like The Great British Bake Off. For anyone who likes baking, that show is amazing. It’s just great.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I really like Not Without Salt. I think Ashley Rodriguez is a really great writer, and I really admire her. And I quite like Bev Cooks because she’s the opposite of her where she’s just completely zany, but it’s just so bright and fun, and I love it.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I follow so many people on all of those. I quite like following people with really great photography because I’m so jealous of it. So I like following Half Baked Harvest. She has such beautiful photography. Local Milk’s another good one. And this isn’t on any of those channels, it’s on YouTube, but my husband and I often watch someone called Greg from Ballistic Barbecue. It’s just fun because he just goes out and he just grills all these crazy things and makes these amazing hamburgers, and we quite like watching that. So I’ll add him to the list.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

It’s not very unusual, but I treasure my coffee pot. After I moved to Sheffield last year, there were a few dark months when we didn’t have a coffee pot because they drink tea. So they had tea kettles and instant coffee, and I find instant coffee offensive. So I didn’t have coffee during that time, and I got one for Christmas and it’s amazing. It gets me through the day.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

You know what’s funny? I cook almost exclusively now with coconut oil, and I hated the smell of it. I hated the way it made things taste. I don’t know if I just started off using really strong coconut oil, but now I really quite like it. I think it adds an unusual flavor to the dishes and it smells nice, makes your skin soft. So, probably coconut oil.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I don’t own as many cookbooks as I’d like to because I tend to be on the more minimalist side, but I have Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything and that is a really great resource for anyone. It pretty much covers the basics. I grew up on the Taste of Home cookbooks, so those ones are always special to me. I think they’re just great and fun.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I like listening to more upbeat things in the kitchen. And it depends on the week, but what I’ve found I’ve done lately is I just go on Spotify, and I find a Motown playlist and I just do that, and it’s a lot of fun.

On Keeping Posted with Sarah:

I keep my Facebook and my Instagram updated the most consistently so probably on one of those, and on both of them you can find me @ASaucyKitchen.

069: Danguole Lekaviciute: Being Adventurous and Playing with Food

August 19, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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10th Kitchen

Danguole believes in adventurous eating and drinking. And her kitchen is her ultimate playground. Although she appreciates the classics, she truly tries to bring something creative and original to her blog, 10th Kitchen.

I am so delighted to have Danguole Lekaviciute of 10th Kitchen joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below are Danguole’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

What happened was that a good friend of mine moved across the country, and she had a personal blog that she was doing a project 365 on, which is where you take a picture everyday and write a little blurb about it. And it’s meant to get a good blogging habit going.

When she moved away, I jumped on board. I got my own blog, and I started doing the same thing. It was a fun way for us to keep in touch. I don’t think anybody read it besides us. But what I found eventually was that I was mostly interested in talking about food and cooking. So when that wrapped up, it was just a natural transition for me to start a food blog.

I pretty much immediately bought my domain and started taking some crappy pictures and telling awkward jokes. And about four years later, I’m still doing the same thing.

I had a personal WordPress blog before, just your basic template. I had no idea how a website works. Those templates make it so easy for anyone to put up their website without really having to do a whole lot of work. Since then I’ve learned a lot about HTML and CSS and all the intricacies with hosting and stuff like that. So I’m at the point where I put it on my resume now, because it is such a valuable skill that I never had before.

I think the most challenging part was trying to switch hosts halfway. And I just lost my website for a day and a half. And it was terrifying, even though at that point, not that many people read it. So I just went back to my old host, and was like, “Please take all my money. I’ll stick with you. Just make it work again.”

It’s a terrifying thing when your website is down for some reason. It’s like an extension of you. And even though you know it doesn’t matter, it feels so strange.

I think all of it felt pretty natural to me. I’ve always played with recipes a little bit and developed my own. I’ve written before. And I’ve done photography as a hobby before. I don’t know if you can tell from those early shots because they’re just not great. But I always dabbled in artistic things like that. So all of it made sense, except the technical part probably.

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

I cooked since I was a kid. And I remember trying to make things work from an early age. I definitely helped out in the kitchen a lot. And I definitely have memories of being 10 or 12 and just playing in the kitchen and seeing what happens.

In my family, it was more of a chore. And I actually really liked it. So my sister would always do the dishes if I cooked, so I always enjoyed that arrangement. To me, it was fun.

I love David Lebovitz. I think his style is so classic and so refined. And he has such a good way of connecting it to his life in France as far as blogging goes. Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni’s Ice Creams in Columbus completely changed my life with her method for making ice cream, which I do regularly. And I love Mark Bittman. I have his books. I’ve read his articles. I followed his podcast. He just has so many smart things to say about food and policy and connecting it to the everyday cook in the kitchen and how you can make small changes and work toward a more sustainable food system, which is the stuff that I find interesting.

On Adventurous Eating:

I’ve always been interested in just playing with things and seeing what happens. I think if I didn’t have an artistic streak, I think I’d be some sort of scientist because I just like to see how a dish changes if you use coconut oil instead of butter or more herbs or more this or more vinegar. So to me, that comes naturally. I think it’s important to appreciate all aspects of cooking.

I love ethnic food from all over the world. I’ve always dabbled in Mexican or Thai or Vietnamese. I don’t think there’s a particular cuisine that’s the good gateway. It’s more about playing with recipes that you know and love. Like if your family is from France or Russia or wherever, I think it just comes from mastering what you know and changing one thing here or there to see how the dish changes and to see how the ingredients interact with one and other.

Fish sauce, when you first smell it, is just so overwhelming and so different from what I’m used to. But it just makes such a difference in dishes. And it’s such a great savory base for crisp, clean flavors. They all meld so beautifully together in Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. It’s a thing of beauty. I love it.

On Being Fearless and Experimenting in the Kitchen:

I remember making tacos from this leftover roast chicken, and I mixed it with a bunch of sour cream and green onion. That’s not a taco. But it was one of those times right before grocery shopping that you had to make do with whatever you had. And my family appreciated that.

One thing I was trying to do was make buttermilk rolls, which I have eventually got to making through cultured buttermilk, with powdered buttermilk. I really wanted that flavor. But I was working with a recipe that required you to heat up milk. And so I was like, “Oh, I’ll just switch it with buttermilk.” And of course, I should have known that when you heat buttermilk, you just get a curdled mess. That completely threw me off my game. That’s something that I should have know but just didn’t think about. So that happens all the time.

On Making Cooking More Fun:

I think mastering the things you know and love is a good first step to where you don’t even need the recipe anymore. Then you can play with the proportions or add different ingredients to it. Simple things like switching out parsley for cilantro or basil or something like that is a good start.

If you view recipes as a template, if you see the part that’s starchy and the part that’s savory and the part that’s fresh and the part that’s acidic, it’s like a puzzle. You can swap out the lemon juice for sherry vinegar maybe and see what happens. Just see a recipe as a whole, and then take apart the components and see what we can do with them.

It’s a balancing act, and it also makes you more flexible. If you don’t have lemon juice, you can try a certain vinegar or lime juice, things like that.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I honestly don’t watch much TV. I used to watch Top Chef back in the day. Right now, I’m binging on Orange Is The New Black. There’s cooking in that show, a little bit, prison cooking.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I think anyone listening to your podcast would probably know about Smitten Kitchen and David Lebovitz. Those are my favorites.

I also have blogger friends that I keep up with who are really talented, The Sugar Hit is fantastic, My Name is Yeh. Who else? SugarHero is a really fun baking blog. There’s tons. Any type of cuisine, any type of cooking you’re into, there’s a blog about it, which is fantastic.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

I follow Take A Megabite. I think you’ve had her on your podcast before. She is just so colorful. It’s not my style at all, but it makes me very happy.

I follow The Sugar Hit, like I said. Sarah just has great taste for desserts and a great eye for photography. Tieghan from Half Baked Harvest, she’s really fantastic. She’s really visually oriented. Kelly Beall, who does Design Crush, is also really good. On Pinterest, she always posts interesting design, interesting food, interesting style.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I have a stovetop smoker, which I don’t break out too often because it makes your house smell like bacon for days afterward. But yeah, it’s fantastic. I love it. If you don’t have a backyard pit for barbecue, it’s a good alternative.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I am really trying hard to like mushrooms. It’s the one food that I just never liked, never appreciated it. And I like the flavor of it. I do like mushroom ravioli if it’s all chopped up. I think it’s a texture thing. So I’m trying really hard, and I’ve done some things with it that I ended up liking a lot.

I actually smoked shiitaki mushrooms one time, put them on polenta, and that was actually enjoyable. So that’s where the stovetop smoker comes in.

It depends on what kind of mushroom. Big, slimy portobello, I’m still at like 1%. I’ll eat it if I have too. But yeah, shiitake mushrooms are great. I love chanterelles. So, I’m working on it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I have a lot of cookbooks. I like Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. I’m trying to cook my way through it. Mark Bittman’s books are always a great resource. I have How To Cook Everything Fast right now. It’s focused on fast food, but it is also really inspirational. His combinations are really innovative. And I think the cookbook that I like the most isn’t actually a cookbook, but I literally sleep with The Flavor Bible. I’m always flipping through it at night when I’m looking for ideas. It’s like a dictionary of what flavors go together. And it’s fantastic. I use it for inspiration all the time, and I used to have it on my nightstand. It’s like the bedtime story for me.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I’ve been branching out a little bit with my taste in music. I usually listen to indie rock or stuff like that. But I’ve been into soul lately. So if I had to pick a song, I would pick Nothing On Me by Curtis Mayfield. I love that. It’s my jam right now.

On Keeping Posted with Danguole:

I probably use Instagram the most. I’m really visually oriented. It just makes it so easy to let people know what you’re up to and what you’re drinking, what you’re eating.

061: Kris Osborne: How Pleasure is an Important Part of Wellness

July 22, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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80twenty

Kris is a holistic chef, recipe developer, and food photographer and stylist. On her blog 80twenty, she shares vibrant and delicious food and drinks that aim to healthfully nourish us 80% of the time and satisfy our cravings and wants 20% of the time.

I am so happy to have Kris Osborne of 80twenty joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below are Kris’s.)

On Growing Up in a Family-Owned Restaurant:

My family owned actually a restaurant and a motel, so we lived in an apartment above the motel and the restaurant was in a building adjacent. And so my whole life, up until I was 13 years old, I spent in and out of the kitchen or in and out of the rooms, and my life was always filled with my family feeding people. It was a really common theme. When we weren’t feeding people in the restaurant, I remember my mom and my aunt always having dinner parties and having friends over.

I come from a family of people who shows their love through feeding people and so I was always surrounded by food.

My mom describes me as being a bit mischievous, I guess. She would say that I would, even as a three year-old, I would be wandering around the restaurant and I would go up to customers’ plates and steal french fries from their plates, for example.

I think probably because I was three, people thought it was adorable. But also because I grew up in a small town, people also got to know my family and got to know me and my siblings. I don’t remember necessarily helping out in the back or anything like that, but I was always in the restaurant scene.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved food. I’ve always loved cooking and learning about food and sharing food with people.

I’ve always had an interest in healthy food. So that’s always formed the backdrop of how I wanted to live my life. And I never intended necessarily to work in the restaurant industry, because when I was a teenager, I served. And then eventually when I was old enough, I became a bartender. I had quite an entrenched life in that world and so I wanted to have a professional career.

All of my off time was spent reading cookbooks and visiting whole food producers or local farms or things like that. And so it’s always been integrated into part of my life.

I think probably a lot of bloggers that you interview, I imagine, would have a similar perspective on this. And that is that food is such an integral part of our life. We use it for, obviously, sustenance and nourishment, but we also use it to celebrate and we use it as a reward and we use it to show love. There are so many reasons that we use food in our lives. And I feel so fortunate that I get to somehow do this in a way that also involves my career and my passions. Probably other bloggers feel the same way, where we are hoping to connect people with that same meaning that we get from it.

On Starting Her Blog:

It’s not really that interesting of a story but I wanted to start a food blog for a long time, mostly just as a way to share what I was already doing. My partner kept encouraging me to start it and I kept thinking, “Well, I don’t know how to do anything. I don’t know how to take photos and I don’t know what to write and I don’t know what to post.” So literally I had a URL for a year or two before I even posted anything.

The blog name was something different and I was just talking one day and I said, “You know what? I think what I want to be able to convey to people is this idea of, I want people to eat healthy food, and I want to inspire people to eat healthy food, because I think we get a lot of the other stuff all the time anyway, so why not do what I’m passionate about?” But also if I want to eat pizza on a Friday night, then I want to be able to talk about that and share that with people because that’s also part of life and part of wellness.

And so, I was speaking about that and I said, “It’s kind of like 80/20,” and then the name came out and I was like, “That’s it, that’s the name. It’s 80twenty.” Then it evolved and when I was in naturopathic school I often thought that it was going to be a way for me to get potential patients interested in what I was doing, but then life changes and shifts and here I am today doing something totally different.

On a Kitchen Experiment that Didn’t Turn Out As Planned:

This happens regularly. I don’t know if it’s going to be interesting or not. I can just tell you the thing that comes to mind. So this was somebody else’s recipe actually that I had to modify, and it had already been modified by somebody, which I didn’t realize. I was in the third iteration of it. It didn’t make sense, there’s a lot of mistakes in it, and the ingredients were off and the proportions were off. But of course I didn’t know this until I started working with it, and I made it and it didn’t taste very good. And so then I had to go back to the person and say, “I think there’s a problem with this.” But in the end ultimately I actually had to take that recipe, the original recipe, and make it workable.

One of the components that’s involved in the recipe is, you simmer tofu in a marinade essentially, and I eat tofu pretty regularly, but I’ve never essentially boiled it or simmered it. It sounds not very appealing when you think about it.

You might have tofu in soup and then it takes on the flavor of the broth, but this was actually going into a stir fry so it was going to be simmered in the marinade and then go into the stir fry. I went through this recipe five times. I kept trying to make it work, and I eventually got to a point where I was like, “Yeah, I think this is good now. I think it’s okay. It’s not my favorite.”

If it was up to me I would have pan fried it or done something else, but this is how it’s supposed to be. So I did it and I had a ton of leftovers and I brought them to my sister’s place. My sister and her boyfriend, their reaction was, this is gross. And they actually refused to eat it. They waited for me to bring them dinner, and then when I brought it they didn’t eat it. I feel like that’s a big failure. That has never happened. Of all the years that I’ve been doing this, my family is usually pretty good about eating my creations but they ended up throwing it out.

On Her Studies in Naturopathic Medicine:

I have a passion for health and really all things health-related or wellness-related and I just decided to go to naturopathic school as a way to combine my love of food and nutrition. It seems kind of like an unlikely path and I think if you were to look at it objectively, people might think that I should have gone to nutrition school or to become a dietician, but I really believe in the philosophy that naturopathy offers, which is really a holistic approach to life in general, a holistic approach to eating. That really spoke to me.

I never intended, necessarily, to practice as a doctor. I just wanted to have the knowledge to be able to, essentially, inspire people to eat more vibrantly, I guess.

I learned things all the time that surprised me because you’re studying medicine, so you are constantly learning things that are surprising and interesting. But when it comes to nutrition, I would say that one of the nuggets that has stayed with me the most is . . . we all know that we should eat more vegetables. I don’t think that that’s a piece of information that most people would disagree with or that most people don’t know already. Even if they know little about health, they’ve probably heard that or they’ve probably considered that they should eat more vegetables. But one thing that really stood out to me and stuck with me is how beneficial raw olive oil is, and so when I say raw I just mean uncooked. It’s prescribed naturopathically for a lot of disease prevention, but also actually in disease treatment because fat plays such a critical role in so many of our body processes and, in particular, olive oil just does a lot of good things.

On Misconceptions of Eating Healthy:

I think maybe the biggest one that I see all the time still, that permeates mainstream culture, is that fat is bad for us.

There’s still an idea that we should be eating a low fat diet. And I think the research, to my knowledge, is pretty clear that that’s not really the way to go. Researchers present it in a different way and so we saw, when you look in the past, that if people were eating low fat diets they were typically replacing the fat with things like sugar and more carbs that were not necessarily satiating them and were also just giving them more calories, and not necessarily good things for their body.

It seems so simple but I just really wish people wouldn’t fear fat because fat is so good for you and it’s so critical for bodily processes but also just for feeling satisfied. When we eat a meal, when there’s fat involved or you have a snack and there’s fat involved, it’s so much easier to feel satiated.

I would also say that one thing that I come across pretty regularly is people saying that healthy food doesn’t taste very good. My challenge is always, “Okay, tell me what you want me to make. And I’ll make it taste good because I wholeheartedly disagree.”

In some ways this conversation is a bit scientific, and I want to bring a personal component to it. My opinion is that pleasure is a really important component of wellness and we never think about pleasure as a form of wellness. We talk about sleep and exercise and stress and diet. Those are very simplified but, of course, those are the main things we talk about and we never talk about pleasure. Pleasure brings us so much joy and releases endorphins and allows us to relax. There are so many things that pleasure brings us in terms of wellness.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I really like watching cooking videos online. I love watching Green Kitchen Stories’ videos and some bloggers who do videos. So I will watch those kinds of things.

There’s a chef here in Canada. Her name is Anna Olson. She’s a pastry chef. So I used to like to watch her show. I can’t even remember what it’s called. I think because she does things that I’m so unfamiliar with. Baking is something that I’m learning now, and I absolutely love baking, but it’s not something that comes naturally to me, and so I loved watching her show back in the day.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Okay, so I’m going to try to pick blogs that you probably haven’t heard about. Well actually, that’s not even true. You’ve probably heard about them.

Another colleague of mine, her name is Ashley Colburn, and she writes a blog called Butterfly Food and she has some of the most stunning photography and she is just a really lovely person. But her photography is, I think, some of the best out there. And she recently had a photo of hers used as a cover photo for a National Geographic Book.

Another blog that I just discovered within the last few months, and she’s now been nominated for a Saveur Award, so I’m sure everybody knows, but Faring Well. Again, really beautiful photography and also a nice peek into her life. She lives in Colorado and I feel like it’s always really nice to be able to see an element of people’s lives beyond that. There are also some nature photos incorporated into her blog and into her Instagram feed, and I really love that.

Kelly from The Gouda Life is one of the bloggers that I first discovered when I was starting to blog myself. And I remember linking to her blog something that I really liked and she wrote me back this really lovely email thanking me for linking to her.

I remember at the time thinking it was so nice of her because really there was nobody reading my blog and she had already had such a big following, I’m sure. But her photography really inspired me when I was starting out, and also she’s always been really supportive of me as a blogger and professionally, and now we work together on this blog called Baked. I think she’s really cool and unique. She’s got a really unique style of moody photography that you should check out.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

I don’t really follow people on Pinterest or Facebook really that much but Instagram, I would say . . . I’m sure you’ve heard of this Instagram account called Momma’s Gone City, and it’s typically photos of her children with their cats and typically one child with a dog. But I’m a huge animal lover and so I love seeing photos of the animals and particularly animals and kids. Every time I look through her feed I’m always just so happy.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

Perhaps not unusual, but treasured for sure is my cast iron skillet. I use it for almost everything. It’s amazing for pancakes. It’s amazing for pan frying anything, for making tortillas. I make fried eggs on it. And I even . . .it’s not maybe the best use of this, but because it’s always out, I always quickly saute spinach or kale or something like that for an easy meal all in the same pan. And that pan was probably $20 and it’s going to last me for my whole life.

I always recommend that if people are wondering if they should get . . . what five or ten things in their kitchen, I think a cast iron skillet is a really awesome thing to have.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Brussel sprouts and actually asparagus, anything that has a pungent, earthy flavor.

I was not a vegetable fan, ironically. When I was a kid I used to eat them, and my mom would probably put butter and sugar on things or butter and salt, things to make me like or make me eat them more often. But as I’ve gotten older my palate has fully, I think, been trained because I actually recall when I was in university in my undergrad, I would make myself eat vegetables. I was old enough to know that I should eat them. And so then I started making myself just eat more of them and eventually I started liking them.

I figured out that if I ate something three times I tended to like it by the third or fourth time. And now I just love those things. Asparagus, as an example. I just made an asparagus kimchi that I’m going to be posting for a column that I write. And years ago I never would have eaten kimchi or asparagus, so I’m really into things, I guess, with a lot more pungent flavors now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Mark Bittman’s, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, is a really good dictionary to have in your kitchen. If you’re in a pinch and you have a vegetable or you have a grain or anything in your life, you can literally open up the book and go to the word millet or to the word broccoli and it will give you several recipes. It also has this great resource of tying things together so there will be a number of sauces and then there will be a table later in the book that says, 10 things you can add to tacos or 15 ways to make a sandwich better and it will incorporate other recipes from the book. Also, it’s showing you how to make simple things, but then it’s also showing you how to incorporate them into different dishes. It’s also a great resource for just basics.

I also love Donna Hay, any Donna Hay books because they’re beautiful to look at, and also her recipes are really simple. Usually using anywhere from between five and ten ingredients, depending, and I would say 10 is rare. So they’re very simple, they’re very straightforward, and they’re really beautiful and really tasty. So those would be my go-tos.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I don’t have a particular song or album, but I am notorious for going on to Spotify now that Spotify’s a thing, and searching under the mood section, and finding anything that’s folky or acoustic. My vision of cooking is in this relaxed, airy kitchen, windows open and a breeze coming through, and you’re sipping a glass of wine and you’re laughing with a friend and you’re just casually, slowly easing into whatever meal you’re going to have.

It’s intentional and joyful and thoughtful and all of that stuff and so I feel like that music often brings that vibe to what I’m doing. So it’s not a direct recommendation but certainly Spotify has a lot to offer in that realm.

On Keeping Posted with Kris:

You can keep posted with me on Instagram or you can follow me on Facebook. But Instagram, I think, is probably the most up-to-date current.