Vegan | The Dinner Special podcast

100: Ali Maffucci: Getting Inspiralized

December 16, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Inspiralized

Ali discovered the spiralizer in March 2013 and since has created Inspiralized, which is a blog, a community, a product, and a book. She lost 30 pounds by eating Inspiralized and she aims to inspire others to always feel their best, in part, by helping turn vegetables into healthy, creative, and satisfying meals. Ali wants to show that eating healthy is fun and doesn’t have to be boring.

I am so pumped to have Ali Maffucci of Inspiralized here on the show today.

*(All photos below are Ali’s.)

On What a Spiralizer Is:

A spiralizer is a small kitchen tool that turns vegetables and fruits into noodles. So, at its most basic level, that’s what it does. And then, what you decide to do with those noodles afterwards is where the fun begins. But it’s just a basic kitchen tool.

My mother is actually a type 1 diabetic. She had gestational diabetes with her pregnancy and it stuck. She was trying raw veganism as a way to help manage her blood sugars. And she discovered zucchini noodles in a restaurant, and then did her own research and discovered the spiralizer; and found out that the spiralizer can make zucchini noodles. She bought one on Amazon and she loved it. And it was really, really helping with her health. And her knowing that I love healthy cooking and I love pasta, she said, “Come over one night. I’ll make you dinner so you can test the spiralizer out.” I was like, “Mom, what is this veggie noodle stuff?” Months later, I went over. It was sort of like a light, Asian vinaigrette on it, just a total raw noodle dish. And I took one bite – and I still remember that bite, it was just like, “Wow, this tastes like pasta.”

I was blown away. I was like, “How have I not heard about this?” So, I asked her that night if I could take her spiralizer. My poor mother was so excited about hers and I took it. That was on a Sunday and the next night was a Monday. I made dinner for my husband and he had the exact same reaction. He was blown away. It was such an easy way to make dinner and I had never used it before, and it just came so naturally. So it’s definitely great for a basic chef. I was blown away, so that’s how I first discovered it. And then obviously, once I got my husband’s approval, that was the big moment.

On Starting Her Blog:

What happened was I found myself in my desk job, sitting there writing recipes on napkins at lunchtime, and typing on my phone things to test out. “So, oh, can I spiralize this?” I was finding that at work I was dreaming of spiralizing, which kind of sounds corny, but it was the truth. I just felt so creative. And I was looking online at night searching spiralizer recipes and resources for spiralizing and there was absolutely nothing. There was no community. There were a couple of recipes. One was a simple pesto recipe in the New York Times and very basic vegan, vegetarian, raw vegan sort of recipes. There was just no community.

I was looking at the hashtag for spiralizer and there was really nothing. So basically, overall, I was so blown away by spiralizing that I wanted to tell everyone about it. And now, it being 2015, the best way to get out there is to launch something online and be on social media. So, I basically walked into my boss’s office one day, after like, two months of trying to build up the courage to quit and start this dream. So I walked into my boss’s office and quit. The next day I went to a Starbucks near my apartment here in Jersey City, and I just started from scratch. I just wanted to build a community. That’s really what I wanted to do at first and build this buzz around spiralizing.

On Being Conscious of What She Eats:

It sounds bad to say, but like any other girl in her early to mid-20s, I was very conscious of my body and being healthy. I think I always grew up with, sort of, healthy intentions, because, as I mentioned, my mother was diabetic. So, a lot of the things we had in the household were diabetic-friendly whether it’s obviously, low sugar, low carb. We always ate whole wheat everything. We weren’t allowed soda. I was just very interested, but I never actually started cooking until my senior year of college when I decided to become a vegan. Veganism was starting to be trendy and I was, like, “You know what, I really need a reboot. Let me try this.”

I was vegan for about two years and ever since then, I would say, “I’m an omnivore now. I eat everything. But I’m an omnivore with a vegan mindset.” I think it really helps you balance everything.

On Her New York Times Best-Selling Book, Inspiralized:

It’s actually a funny story. I self-published the first year that I was starting Inspiralized. I was getting a lot of emails and notes about it and people were asking, “I want a little something to include with the spiralizer I’m gifting to my friend, because of you. Do you have anything, do you have a recipe card I can include, or something like that?” And I was emailing people, “Oh, just print this out.” And I wanted something to hold onto and so people could spread the word that way. So I self-published just a small little cookbook and it was really, really successful and people loved it. People were sharing it over the Holidays. I actually got approached by a publisher who made a publishing offer to me. And I was like, “Wow, this is real. Wow, this is real.” So, I got a literary agent and then she took me on that journey and I finally selected Random House.

That felt like I finally made it. I got a cookbook deal. It’s like every food blogger or foodie’s dream to really have a cookbook. It’s like your first big milestone. I was saving my best recipes I wanted to post my blog, I’m like, “I’m saving it for the book.” But that was just an incredible experience. I learned so much as a cook. I became a better cook. My recipes on my blog are now better because of it. I learned different things about the spiralizer that I incorporate in the book. New vegetables I discovered along the way of writing the book I included.

It was a big discovery and a big proud moment in my life to write that book, and I put everything into it. I wrote it during the summer, so I didn’t go to the beach that year. I just wrote the cookbook, but I’m so proud of it. It’s an amazing book.

On Her First Product, The Inspiralizer:

The Inspiralizer is obviously my own branded product. And I wanted to make something that people could use on a daily basis like I do. So if you really love spiralizing, you’re probably spiralizing like three to four times a week, if not more. I wanted to make something that people could display proudly on their countertops that sort of have that effectiveness where you could use it constantly. You wouldn’t have issues with it; make something more sturdy.

I was spiralizing every single day. The product that I was using, I was noticing, like, “Well, if this was just a little different, and this was that…” So I basically went to the drawing board and sketched my own design for what I imagined to be the perfect spiralizer. I got a business partner, obviously. He guided me through the process based on my design of what I wanted. And then when it came time to name what it was, obviously, Inspiralizer sounds pretty good.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I love Chopped. Chopped is great because I always learn about new ingredients and I find that I learn a lot just from the fast thinking that the chefs have to go through. And I love Giada.

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

I love Molly Yeh. She is out in North Dakota, I think. She’s sort of mostly recipes. Her photography is beautiful. Her cooking methods are really fun. I really love her. And then if we’re thinking about healthy blogs, I love Gina from Skinnytaste. She’s a friend of mine and she just has the most reliably, healthy, tasty recipes.

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

I follow a lot of people on Instagram. I like NomYourself. She is a vegan blogger. RobinNYC. She is a spin instructor and a running coach. She started an urban running community, and she has great Instagrams, super motivational, and my favorite way to exercise is spinning. I spin with Peloton Cycle and she’s a head instructor there. All of her images are just very raw and gritty, but she shows her hustle and she shows it out there for people. I’m really inspired by her, especially in a fitness element. She’s an entrepreneur as well, but the fitness element, she always gets me in the gym.

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

I actually have a good one for this. So, my first day of college, my father said, “Oh, you know one of the fun things you can do is have your friends over and watch movies and make popcorn.” And I was like, “Dad, I want to go to parties and have fun. I’m not just going to sit in my dorm and eat popcorn. But, of course, I did. I sat in my dorm room and ate popcorn, and he gave me this bowl. It’s like a ceramic bowl and it has the emblem of the college I went to, Wake Forest. I got it my freshman year of college and I’ve lived in five different apartments since then, and I still have it. And I still use it every single day. Not for popcorn…well, I do use it for popcorn, but I actually use it when I cook, as like a mixing bowl.

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

Broccoli rabe. I used to think it was really bitter, but I learned how to cook it and now I love it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I have to say, I don’t cook from cookbooks. A goal of mine is to cook more from cookbooks, but I don’t cook from any cookbooks.

Except for my own. I’m too busy developing recipes. When I was vegan, I definitely used…I liked The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone. I used to cook from her book, but other than that, I don’t really.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, I’ll say this. My husband is very good with curating music and he curates a playlist on Spotify. My name’s Ali. He named it Ali’s Mix, and he updates my music all the time. So, that’s what I put on every single day when I cook. And it just makes me happy.

On Keeping Posted with Ali:

Definitely Instagram or my mailing list.

092: Emma Galloway: Learning to Cook with Food Intolerances

November 18, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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My Darling Lemon Thyme

Emm went to culinary school and worked as a chef for almost eight years in restaurants, the pastry section of cafes, and catering companies in Australia and New Zealand. She left when she became a parent and discovered that not only do her children suffer from gluten and lactose intolerance, but so does she. Emm started her blog in 2010 to share gluten-free vegetarian real food recipes, and stories and tips on organic gardening. Since then, she has written a book, My Darling Lemon Thyme – Recipes from My Real Food Kitchen, and her blog was the 2014 Saveur Blog Awards Winner for Best Original Recipes Blog.

I’m so excited to have Emma Galloway of My Darling Lemon Thyme here with me today.

(*All photos below are Emm’s.)

On Her Interest in Cooking:

I grew up on quite a large property, where my parents grew heaps of vegetables and fruit that we had. And being vegetarian, my mom used to put a lot of time and effort into preparing most of what we had from scratch. So it was part of who we are, and my family, I mean, we’re all into cooking, and from a very young age, I knew that I wanted to be a chef. So, even though a few people told me not to, because that’s a pretty crazy profession, long hours and stuff, I didn’t listen and I just followed my heart and did what I wanted to do.

On Working in Restaurants, Cafes, and Catering:

My preference was working in smaller cafes, so that’s where I worked in New Zealand, mostly it was smaller cafes. Smaller cafes, you generally have only a couple of you in the kitchen, so you’re basically covering all bases yourself, you’re doing everything. Sometimes, even doing the dishes as well, which is actually how I started off in the industry. Restaurants tend to be divided into sections, so you’re only in charge of the one section. And catering companies are quite similar. So I was in charge of the pastry section when I worked for two catering companies in Sydney years ago.

They all have their challenges. It’s a pretty high stress environment, working in the kitchen. Especially when, like I said, if you’re working in a cafe, where there’s only one or two of you in the kitchen and you’re doing two, three hundred covers a day, it’s a lot of work and a lot of stress and a lot of running around. So, yeah, they’re all pretty high stressed.

I think cafes in the winter time generally are nice and calm and that’s when you have your time to play and be a little bit more relaxed. I don’t know if it’s the same in the States, but in New Zealand in summertime, if you work in a cafe, it’s extremely busy, especially if you’re in a cafe anywhere near the ocean, which is where I used to work. People are always going to the beach in the summer and then they’re wanting to go and eat, so it’s pretty busy.

On Starting Her Blog:

When I left the kitchen when my daughter was born, I didn’t even know what a food blog was. We’re a little bit behind in New Zealand and Australia. Five years ago when I started my food blog, there was probably only two of my friends that had ever heard of a food blog before. Even though, I mean, there’s people like Heidi Swanson in the States, who have been blogging for well over 10 years. We’re a little bit behind here, so I had no idea when I left the kitchen at all. And it was actually from finding Heidi Swanson’s cookbook in the library and then getting onto her food blog that I even discovered what food blogs were. So that was only five years ago.

For years I’ve always recorded recipes. If I find a great recipe in a magazine, I was always the crazy person who would be frantically writing out recipes and trying new things. And after I got onto food blogs, I thought, “Well, I’m at home.” Just looking after my kids, my kids were four and two at the time when I started it, so I wasn’t working professionally. And then I missed that creative side of cooking, where you can just experiment. So, at the start I had no clue of what I was doing, didn’t really know how to take photos, but just started.

On Recognizing Her and Her Children’s Food Intolerances:

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had basically just a sore tummy the entire pregnancy. I just thought that’s just what happens when you’re pregnant. Being my first pregnancy, I had nothing to compare it too. And then when my daughter came along, she was extremely upset 24/7, wouldn’t sleep and was just in a lot of pain, basically. And so, my midwife at the time suggested that maybe I try cutting out some of the foods in my diet that might be affecting her through my breast milk. So, that’s when I cut out gluten and dairy, but I’d always been interested in alternative food. Being vegetarian, I’d always look to vegan foods and loved seeing how people get creative with vegan food, but the whole gluten-free thing was quite a challenge at the start.

I didn’t really know what I was doing and I don’t think I was 100% gluten-free, because I hadn’t figured out that it’s in basically everything at this stage. So, when my son came along two years later, and showed a lot of the same symptoms as my daughter had, I got quite serious and went and got us allergy tested. That’s when it showed up that we can’t handle any gluten. We can handle small amounts of dairy, and more so as the kids have gotten older, but yeah, gluten is not our friend.

On Tackling a New Approach to Cooking and Food (with Food Intolerances):

I think the easiest way to approach it, is to focus on what you can eat, rather than being all upset that you can’t eat that donut in the store. Although, there are a lot of gluten-free donuts and things around these days, but I think focusing more on what you can eat, and naturally gluten-free and dairy-free things.

I’m very lucky in that my husband is Vietnamese, and so, all of our night-time meals are based mostly around rice, which is gluten-free and dairy-free. So I find that eating a more Asian-inspired diet or a Mexican diet, where the core ingredients are naturally gluten-free is usually the easier way to go to begin with, until you get your head around working with different gluten-free flours and dairy-free alternatives.

I’ve never really used the pre-packet gluten-free flour mixers, I prefer to just use my own individual flours. I think, when you’re first starting out, by all means, if you’re overwhelmed by gluten-free, then going that way is totally acceptable. You’ll probably get to a certain point where you would love more flexibility to add different flavors or different nutritional qualities to what you’re making. So that’s when you can use your own flours, but it’s totally acceptable at the start. When it all feels too much, I just think, do whatever you can do to make it easier for yourself.

On Some Good Resources to Learn More About Gluten-Free Cooking:

The main one that I have used over the years is glutenfreegirl.com. Shauna’s recipes are extremely well-tested. I guess with her teacher background, she’s extremely good at explaining everything, and why she uses certain flours, and for all the basic things that you’re missing, like pizza and bread and all those things. She has brilliant recipes on her site and in all of her books as well.

On Her Book, “My Darling Lemon Thyme – Recipes from My Real Food Kitchen”:

After a couple of years of blogging, I pretty much had made up my mind that I wanted to try and get published. Over the years, there were a lot of recipes I had been holding back from putting on the blog, because I thought they’re too good to share in this capacity and I wanted to save them for a book.

And so, I spent about a year trying to approach publishers and see if they were interested. And I got turned down by every single one. Basically, at that stage, this was probably going back at least three or more years, probably four years nearly even. At that stage, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian food was a little bit too specialized for most publishers, so they turned me down saying, “It’s just all too hard.” And basically, I was in talks with one publisher in New Zealand at the time, who said, “We’ll publish a gluten-free baking book if you’re interested in that.” But that’s not really what I wanted to do for my first book.

And so, I was extremely lucky when I was nearly giving up hope, Harper Collins, New Zealand, who I hadn’t approached, because you had to have an agent to approach them and I didn’t have one at that stage, they actually approached me from seeing my blog. So it all worked out well in the end – very, very happy and thankful.

The book is filled with a hundred of my favorite recipes. Most of the recipes in there are recipes that I have been making for a long, long time. Some are inspired by recipes my mum made when I was little and I’ve adapted them to be gluten-free. And there’s a lot of base recipes, which is what I wanted my first book to be, so that anyone can pick this up, that’s new to gluten-free, and it covers all the bases.

There are numerous breakfasts to choose from. There’s pizza. There’s a homemade sourdough. There’s how to make your own yogurt from scratch. Tomato sauces, everything like that. The whole book is vegetarian and gluten-free, and then most of the recipes are dairy-free also. There are little bits of yogurt and butter, which is what my body tolerates, so that’s in there.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I do watch MasterChef.

There are a lot of professional chefs that think cooking shows like that are just slightly embarrassing, but there’s a lot of talented people that go on MasterChef. Some of the dishes they make a lot of professional chefs would struggle to make. So, I quite like it.

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

I’m terrible, I don’t actually read heaps of food blogs. So, 101 Cookbooks is the number one, I don’t think I’ve ever missed a post of hers in the five/six years that I’ve been reading it. I love The Vanilla Bean Blog, Oh, Ladycakes, The First Mess and With Food and Love. All of those blogs, they make food that I want to eat, even if I can’t, like The Vanilla Bean Blog, my friend Sarah writes it. Most of it I wouldn’t even be able to eat, because it’s not gluten-free, but I just love looking at her gorgeous photos.

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

Green Kitchen Stories Instagram’s feed is amazing, absolutely amazing. Tara O’Brady, Seven Spoons. Luisa Brimble, Australian food and lifestyle photographer, her stuff is always amazing, and both on Pinterest and Instagram, she has amazing stuff on there. And Sarah Kieffer as well, from The Vanilla Bean Blog, her Instagram and her Pinterest even more so, it’s just amazing.

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

That would probably have to be all the vintage props that I’ve acquired over the years. I have a wee thing for bowls and plates and glass jars.

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

Mushrooms. That would probably be one of the vegetables I didn’t like as a kid, but now I can’t get enough of them.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I love, I’m not sure if it’s available in the U.S., but it’s called Vegies, by an Australian chef called Simon Bryant, that’s one of my favorites. Heidi Swanson’s book, Super Natural Every Day is another favorite, and Afro-Vegan by Bryant Terry is another good one. I have so many cookbooks it’s hard to choose. I have stacks of them all around my house.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Anything reggae. So, I really love listening to Burning Spear, any of his albums when I’m cooking, it just makes me happy.

On Keeping Posted with Emm:

Instagram is a daily update, so probably Instagram. On Facebook as well, but yeah, Instagram is probably the best one.

053: Abby Thompson: Veganism and Vegan Baking

June 24, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Frosted Vegan

On The Frosted Vegan Abby showcases recipes that show that even if you’re eating a plant-based diet, you can still enjoy delicious desserts, and that it doesn’t have to be a hassle.

I am so pumped to have Abby Thompson of The Frosted Vegan here on the show today.

(*All images below are Abby’s.)

On Growing Up in a Home Where Food Was Enjoyed and Shared:

It was obviously awesome and delicious. In our house my mom was either making brownies on the weekend or my dad was making cookies after school, stuff like that. It just became a part of how I grew up, and when I moved away and started on my own that kind of fell off because mom and dad weren’t making them for me.

I loved baking, but I didn’t keep up with it. And especially when I turned vegan it became a little bit harder. I didn’t know if I would be able to keep up with all the baking and stuff like that. So, I just integrated it into my life and realized it was something that was part of my childhood and part of who I was.

It shaped how I looked at food, and treats were always an everyday thing. For some people they didn’t grow up with that, but for me it was just always something that was there.

On Being in the Kitchen:

This is kind of a weird story to remember, like baking and cooking, but I remember in middle school I did not make show choir. And I was so sad, but I was like, “I just need to make a pie.” So, I made a pie and I remember from then on it was like baking kind of solves everything. It feels awesome, I do it, and then I get a slice of pie at the end. So, it was great! It just started evolving from that.

I discovered in high school, you know, boys really like when you bring them cookies, or everyone is your friend if you bring them cakes! So, when I figured that out and I enjoyed it at the same time, it just started, like I said, becoming part of my everyday life.

I’ve always had a huge sweet tooth, and for some reason cooking doesn’t come easily to me. I have to have a recipe, I’m not just improvising dinner or anything like that. When I do it turns out not so great, so my fiance prefers I don’t improvise. But, it’s always been baking, I can kind of make up a muffin recipe and it’s no problem. I know that’s a little bit harder because baking is a little more scientific and exact, but for me it has just always come naturally. I can feel when it’s right, when it’s going to come out okay. It doesn’t always work, but most of the time it works.

On Veganism:

A vegan diet generally means you’re not consuming any animal products. So, not only no meat, no fish, no dairy, so cheese, eggs, that kind of thing are out.

You can go from one extreme to the other.

Some people just stop at cheese and eggs. Others avoid all gelatin because gelatin has animal-dried products. Fish sauces and a lot of Thai dishes, stuff like that. Then, it expands into a vegan lifestyle so some people choose not to consume leather goods or have anything with animal-dried products. It’s a sliding scale of what extreme you want to go to. And then, on the other side of it, I kind of try to also approach it with a plant-based diet, so that’s also avoiding excessive oils, super-fatty products.

Some of the vegan products out there are not necessarily healthy, they’re vegan, doesn’t mean they’re healthy. So, it really depends on what extreme you’re on or what part of the scale you’re on. It means something different for everyone.

On Becoming Vegan:

I went vegan about three years ago.

I always grew up in a household where cheese is on everything, we had chicken, fish, all that kind of stuff. But, I had never been a huge meat eater, I never really liked it.

I was starting to slowly phase out the meat in my diet just because it didn’t really matter to me. Then, my dad actually went cold turkey vegan about three years ago. He watched Forks Over Knives, which is a documentary, and he just decided that he wanted to make a change. He wasn’t really feeling great, wanted to feel a lot better, and eat a lot better. Nothing had ever really stuck for him. So, he did that and then I was still living at home at the time so it was kind of a natural thing to follow along with it.

When I moved away from home I just kept following it because I realized I felt a lot better. My body just felt better when I didn’t eat certain foods, and I’ve just slowly gone more vegan over the years.

The meat part wasn’t as hard, but the dairy is hard. A lot of stuff like grilled cheese or things with cheese in them, you have to figure out what works if you want to use vegan cheese or cheese at all, stuff like that. I’m still figuring it out.

I’m sure it will be a lifelong journey to figure out what works and what tastes the best, to me. That’s what I like about it though because it doesn’t feel very stagnant. I’m always finding something new. It’s awesome what people are doing with vegan food now.

On Baking Vegan and Her Blog:

I originally started it because when I moved away my dad was still wanting to make all the baked goods that I grew up making, but he didn’t want to necessarily include all the vegan butters, or oils, and extra stuff like that. He wasn’t really sure how to approach it, so I wanted to start figuring it out, not only for him but myself, too.

It just progressed from wanting to share those recipes and figuring out, “Hey, maybe other people are looking for these, so I’ll just start a blog!” I kind of just had to figure out what egg replacements work, or what kind of oil replacements, or can I get rid of the oil? Stuff like that.

It’s really relearning because up until I went vegan, I was making croissants from scratch, and things with a lot of eggs in them, and I loved it, but then trying to relearn what’s going to work in place of those things was a challenge.

On the Biggest Misconception of Baking Vegan:

I think the biggest one is that it’s going to be gross. I know some of the commercially made vegan, baked goods I’ve had have not been great. They’ve come out dry, or too oily, or it’s just not the same.

I really want to make it so that if you give someone a cookie and they eat it, they’re not like, “Oh, is this vegan? I can tell.” I want it to be, “Oh, this a cookie and it’s great. I had no idea.” So, I think it’s fighting that misconception that things are automatically going to be disgusting because they’re vegan.

Coconut oil, more people are becoming familiar with it, but that’s a big one that I use a lot, especially in place of butter or different oils. I know it’s more of an up and coming ingredient, but I use that quite a bit.

Ground flax seed, I had never used until I started baking vegan and that, when you combine it with water and let it sit for a little bit, it becomes sort of a gel and makes a really good egg substitute in a lot of things.

Those are two of the main ones that I hadn’t really heard of. I try avoid using weird things or things that are hard to find because I know not everyone lives super close to Whole Foods or anything like that. So, those are my two main ones that I use quite a bit.

Then, just using high quality flours or agave nectar and stuff like that just helps substitute for some of those common ingredients.

One of the first food blogs that I followed that helped a lot was, Oh She Glows. She’s really well known, she has everything from cooking to baking. She goes more in-depth into some of the things when she makes vegan baked goods and it has helped quite a bit.

Dairyfreebaking.com. Dairy free might still include a few eggs, but more milk substitute, stuff like that, she goes into that. I’ve had her site come up a lot when I’ve looked for different things.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t watch a ton of cooking shows, but when she’s on, Giada De Laurentiis. I watch her, I think she’s pretty inspiring.

Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, usually late at night it makes me really hungry so my fiance and I watch that quite a bit on a weekend night. Alton Brown shows when they were on, and I think those are the main ones.

I like Chopped too. It makes me think, “I can do anything in the kitchen!”

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

The First Mess, Laura writes that one and she’s awesome and totally inspiring. Vegan food that just, if you have it, again, you wouldn’t really know it’s vegan. She has an awesome writing style and I absolutely love it. I love her.

Cookie and Kate, she does amazing stuff with seasonal produce, and whenever I get my produce of the week, I know that she always has something that I can do anything with.

Cake Over Steak, Sara is awesome, I know she’s been on your podcast. And I love that she’s doing something different with using illustrations. I know she’s starting to do photography, but she does illustration and they’re awesome and amazing, so I love her things as well.

Then, let’s do one more, Joy the Baker, oh my gosh. She’s one of the first blogs I ever read. I would love to be the Joy the Baker of vegan baking.

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

Floating Kitchen, Liz over at Floating Kitchen, she lives on the east coast and she posts really awesome pictures. She lives by the beach and takes her dogs on walks and stuff like that. When it’s snowing here or really crappy, it’s cool to see her pictures of that.

Laura, again, of The First Mess, she does a lot of gardening and I love when she posts pictures of pulling radishes, or carrots, or anything like that. I think her dad does weekly deliveries to her, berries and things that he grows. So, I love seeing those things because it’s really cool. I think those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

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

My most treasured one at the moment is my Vitamix blender. I just got it about six months ago, and I use it almost every day, all the time. I’ve always wanted one so I’m glad I finally sprung for it.

Then another one is, it’s a measuring cup, which sounds weird, but it’s a tin measuring cup that my grandmother passed down to me. She grew up baking with it, I think it was her grandmother’s, and it’s really cool to use it. It’s super functional, and I love using it because I know it’s been passed down through baking generations in our family.

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

Tomatoes. I use to not eat tomatoes in anything. I hated them. I hated chunks of them in anything, and I still wouldn’t like, eat one whole like some people do. But I’ve discovered that really good tomatoes, like fresh, summer tomatoes are amazing, and I love it now!

Then spinach too, I used to hate spinach. I grew my own spinach a couple years ago, and I loved it. So, I think the freshness really makes a difference.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

The Bountiful cookbook which is by the White on Rice Couple, Todd and Diane, is awesome. Again, really focused on seasonal produce. They grow a lot of their own stuff, and it’s made it so much better because I’ll get something from the grocery store and think, “I don’t really know what to do with this. I’m going to look at this cookbook.” They have something amazing, very accessible, very easy, love their cookbook.

I have a baking cookbook from Williams Sonoma that I got several years ago that doesn’t have any vegan baking recipes in it, but it’s a super solid foundation for if I need a good jumping off point for a cake recipe or anything like that. I know that it’s going to be reliable, and even if I tinker with it with all my weird vegan stuff, it will probably come out or make a good foundation.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

So, I’m a big fan of Pandora and I’ve really been into the song Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars. I think that song makes me say, “Okay, I can do this. Let’s get some cooking done. I am ready to go.”

On Keeping Posted with Abby:

I would say probably Instagram and Facebook. Those are the two biggest ones I am probably most active on.

049: Julia Gartland: Being Self-Taught and Going Gluten-Free

June 15, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Sassy Kitchen

Julia is a self-taught cook and baker, photographer, food stylist and recipe developer. On her blog, Sassy Kitchen, she shares gluten-free seasonal recipes and is always on the lookout for the best gluten-free version of everything. Sassy Kitchen was a finalist in the 2014 Saveur Blog Awards for Best Special Diets Blog and is a finalist again in 2015 for Best Photography.

I am so happy to have Julia Gartland of Sassy Kitchen here on the show today.

(*All images below are Julia’s.)

On Her Interest in Cooking and Food:

I liked to always cook and bake as a kid, I think it wasn’t anything too crazy but I loved having independence, being able to do that. I got more seriously into food later when I had health and digestive problems and I had to find a way to feed myself.

I found out I was gluten intolerant and decided to go vegan at the same time, so my options were very limited and I felt kind of inspired by those restrictions. It gave me the opportunity to try so many new foods and stuff.

I was always into food. I liked eating really healthy. I was raised in California. I loved hippy food and Mexican and I was always really into it, but it took a turn when it became more about health.

I don’t know if I had any real cooking mentors in my early days. I definitely think I was inspired by the issues that I had with western medicine. I remember the first time I went to a western doctor with all of my issues and I had all these PDF printouts of everything I’d been eating. He didn’t even want to look at it and just said, “Here’s some medication. You have IBS,” and sent me on my way.

I just felt like there’s something bigger going on than this. I totally believe that food is an opportunity to heal yourself and that was what got me into it in a really real way.

On Learning to Cook:

I was definitely forced to learn to cook it a new way because of my dietary issues. But through that, I really fell in love with food and I wanted to be completely absorbed in it. That’s a really good way to learn anything.

I find such inspiration from cookbooks and food blogs. Like finding someone who’s really committed to a certain way of cooking, whether it’s a cultural or otherwise, someone like Ottolenghi who has a very specific sense of food that’s so seductive and wonderful but it’s also really easy when you’re really into it.

Obviously, most of us are trying to feed ourselves. I feel like a lot of home cooks are super worried. How do you cook it? What do you do with it? They forget the aspect of play, it should be fun. It’s also not that hard.

I think generally not taking yourself so seriously. It’s okay if you make something that’s a disaster although it probably won’t be. Don’t be afraid, try new things, read cookbooks, follow recipes, pay attention and cook as much as you can.

I’m a fan of things like give yourself parameters on certain nights. Have a taco Tuesday, so you’re like, “I know I’m making tacos tonight” and you can just decide what kind of taco and then that can be the fun aspect.

On Kitchen Experiments Not Going as Planned:

I have a really good infamous one.

The first time I decided I was going to cook a whole fish was for a pescetarian Thanksgiving that I was hosting. Martha and Ina are scowling at me right now because it’s the cardinal rule of hosting to never test a new recipe. But I decided to do it and I took the fish out. It’s perfectly cooked but I had no idea how to de-bone it. I was like, “I can’t serve this to people,” and I literally just left it on the stove top and I was like, “Sorry, guys. We’re actually not having fish tonight.” And I just went on.

I was just like, “Well, I guess it’s just vegetarian, so sorry about that.”

I mean, with gluten-free baking, there’s so many. It’s just like too many to know but it always happens. It happens to everyone.

On Some Go-To Resources for Learning to Cook and Bake:

When I first started cooking and baking, I was vegan and gluten-free so my sources were super specific. But in general, I think I would recommend sources like Bon Appetite, Epicurious, The Kitchn, and Food52. They seem to have really good articles that demystify cooking and they go over actual techniques in a way that teaches you the fundamentals.

A few of them have a lot of articles about cooking without a recipe and stuff like that. It teaches you how to cook on the fly. I just think those are really helpful resources for sure.

On Starting Her Blog:

When I first went gluten-free, the best and most helpful sources were definitely food blogs. That was where I was finding all of my recipes and information. They were such a godsend at the time and through the process of changing my diet and trying new things, I craved to have the same platform to share my experiences.

I went to school for photography. I went to Parsons in New York. I was not shooting food or even still life at the time. Food or food photography was not on my radar at all, in any professional way. But through doing the blog and loving it as much as I did, I found people were really responding to that work.

The first time I ever showed food work in a class at school, the guest teacher offered me a job shooting for a magazine. So I thought maybe I should pursue this a little further.

I started in photography but I will say food photography is completely different. I was not immediately good at it. I had to work. It’s a total learning curve and it’s a lot harder than it looks I will say.

On Gluten-Free Foods:

Well, I’m sure everyone’s heard of it by now. It’s a big buzz word since it’s on every product now, even hummus, which has always been gluten-free says gluten-free on it. But it’s technically the elastic protein in wheat, it’s what makes pizza and croissant so lovely and it can also be in all of these other products like soy sauce and dressings, which it doesn’t necessarily need to be there.

That’s when I think it gets tricky for people and they don’t understand what it is. But there’s also a huge variety of gluten-free grains and products to choose from. I just saw the other day a quinoa kale puff popcorn product.

Now is the time to be gluten-free because there’s just everything. Rice is gluten-free, all rice products are gluten-free. A lot of people don’t know that. I get asked that all the time.

When in doubt, a piece of meat is always going to be gluten-free unless it’s battered. It’s like there’s a certain aspect of logic to it, but it is tricky for sure.

I do feel a lot better than I used to. Eating this way definitely suits me. I have some moments where I’m reminded of all the pain and discomfort I used to feel all the time. So I’m definitely happiest when my diet’s pretty strict and pure. That being said, it’s still not perfect. I don’t feel absolutely amazing and energized every single day, but it’s constantly evolving with what I feel best eating.

On Gluten-Free Ingredients:

There are so many, especially with the baking. I’m obsessed with gluten-free baking flours.

My favorites of all time are definitely sorghum flour, which I discovered super early on. Brown rice flour, almond flour, buckwheat flour, garbanzo bean flour, anything like that. There are so many.

Even cornmeal, things that you wouldn’t think of as being gluten-free are so amazing to cook and bake with. And then things maybe you wouldn’t have heard of are things that you use kind of to mimic gluten like xanthan gum and potato starch and tapioca flour.

But they’re so fun. Even if you’re not gluten-free, baking with buckwheat or something like that, it’s just a new thing you wouldn’t maybe go towards.

Buckwheat is this dark grayish tint and it’s very beautiful when you bake with it. And I love almond flour. I buy five pound bags of it off of Amazon. I use it very quickly. I love anything with almond flour. It’s super good and they all have a very lovely different flavor.

On Some Good Gluten-Free Cooking and Baking Resources:

I love La Tartine Gourmande and Cannelle et Vanille are both really amazing sources of inspiration. I highly recommend both of their books, especially Small Plates and Sweet Treats by Aran Goyoaga. She’s a trained pastry chef and she has this amazing Basque influence on all her recipes. They’re super great.

Also, Bojon Gourmet. She’s another ex-pastry chef and she has a ton of super great gluten-free recipes as well.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Well I don’t really watch any shows besides Ina obviously, but I need to stop name dropping.

But I’m the biggest podcast person, I love America’s Test Kitchen. I’ve such a soft spot for them and I feel like no one gets how great they are. I love Splendid Table and Heritage Radio Network and Good Food on KCRW, and obviously, The Dinner Special as well.

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

I am in love with Amy Chaplin. I recently got her book and went through like a food renaissance ’cause her recipes are just so lovely. I so recommend her and her blog is amazing.

And you know, I keep coming back to Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks. She’s still so relevant and amazing and I’m always inspired by her essence. She’s living my dream life.

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

Well, I’m huge into Instagram. That’s my favorite thing. So on and Instagram, I recently followed the chicks from Broad City who are super fun.

I’ve mostly been loving non-food ones lately, like Sight Unseen and Academy of New York. And Niche is a great one where they just post quotes from creative artists and all that stuff. And Official Sean Penn, which is just funny and great.

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

I love everything in my kitchen.

I’m constantly trying to get rid of stuff because I live in New York and that’s just the life, but I love everything in my kitchen. My favorite things are probably . . . my boyfriend has gotten me ceramics as gifts over the years. That was one of the first things he ever bought me and they’re definitely my treasured pieces.

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

Capers and olives I hated until I was probably 20 years old, but now, I almost always have them in my fridge. I love them.

I think I was not into that brininess and then I went to Spain with my family and they served green olives on every table like it’s bread. I kept trying, thinking if I keep trying it, maybe something will click and it did. So keep trying!

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I love anything by Nigel Slater, Alice Waters, The Canal House Cookbooks. And as I mentioned before, Amy Chaplin and I love Mimi Thorisson’s new book.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

It’s gotta be something on the up-side.

There’s always music in my house. My boyfriend’s a musician. He’s constantly manning the record player. But for cooking, I think Elvis Costello always puts me in a good mood.

On Keeping Posted on Julia:

On my blog, Sassy-Kitchen.com and Sassy Kitchen on all handles I guess. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, I’m on it all.

047: Kylie Antolini: Baking and Eating in Portland, Oregon

June 10, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Baking Bird

Kylie started her blog in 2008 when she was experimenting with vegetarian and veganism, and through her journey, discovered her love of baking.

Apart from showcasing her baked goods on The Baking Bird, she also shares her favorite places and adventures around where she currently lives, the lively food city of Portland, Oregon.

I am so happy to have Kylie Antolini of The Baking Bird joining me here on the show today.

On Finding Her Passion for Baking:

When I was at home and I was a teenager, my parents were meat eaters. I just became vegetarian because it interested me. I thought it was a healthier lifestyle and I had to fend for myself. So I first started out with getting cookbooks. Maybe you’re familiar with them: How It All Vegan! and The Garden of Vegan by Sarah Kramer and Tanya Barnard. They were my main inspiration.

I first started making some of their savory recipes. And then I decided to experiment with some of their dessert recipes. I just really love the idea that you can bake awesome stuff without using traditional ingredients like butter and eggs, and you get similar results.

I love the process of experimenting like with flax egg replacer or applesauce and bananas. So that was really the thing that caught on to me, and I really just enjoyed experimenting. I felt like a scientist in the kitchen. And to this day, I don’t bake vegan really anymore but one of my favorite vegan baking hacks is putting apple cider vinegar and non-dairy milk and making a buttermilk with it because it curdles the milk, which is awesome because I don’t like going to buy buttermilk because it usually goes to waste. I only use like a cup of it. That’s one of my favorite things that I’ve carried into my regular baking style now.

That was how I found my passion for baking. I just really enjoyed it and I combined my love for photography and started taking picture of things I made and thought, “Oh, I started a blog.”

On No Longer Being Vegetarian:

To be honest, it wasn’t really by choice. I had gotten into running quite a bit around the time that I became a vegetarian, and my body just couldn’t keep up with the nutrition I was getting.

Unfortunately, there were some signs that showed up here and there. My doctor encouraged me to start eating meat. I also suffered from a lot anxiety and insomnia and I noticed the correlation from eating to vegetarian and running too much. So it took a lot of convincing and my parents were really adamant about it. They’re just trying to get me meat all the time, and I was like, “Uh!” But I ended up feeling a lot better once I did and I started sleeping a lot better. My anxiety really went down. So that was really basically it. I wanted to keep being vegetarian but it just wasn’t best for my life.

On Her Interest in Food:

I know that after I was going to being vegetarian, I really got an interest in collecting a lot of cookbooks. I became really obsessed with food because when you have to start combining certain ingredients to have the right nutrition, the right balance, you really have to look at a lot of different resources. So I became obsessed about collecting lots of cookbooks and reading recipes. That was what really got me into cooking.

And my mom was always a really avid cook when I was younger. She kept all the vintage Bon Appétit magazines and was really into that. And my grandmother on my dad’s side is also a great baker. And so I would bake with her.

She’d always have a homemade pie or something for dessert when we come over to eat. I guess they were my inspiration and I grew up in a family that really loved food, so that had a big part of it.

On the First Thing She Baked:

Well, I remember the first thing that I bragged about. It was this vegan chocolate peanut butter pie with bananas, and no-bake. It was so easy and so delicious. I think it was actually from La Dolce Vegan, the cookbook from Sarah Kramer.

Fabulous recipe but terrible photos if you go back and look in the blog. It’s the very first one but it’s delicious.

On Things Not Going as Planned in the Kitchen:

I can think of one or two instances. But fortunately, it doesn’t happen very often which is great. That’s why I think baking is more of my thing than cooking.

I was trying to make a vegan chocolate cake. I turned the pan upside down and it just completely disintegrated and crumbled into pieces. I was like, “Okay.” I think I baked two things that day and they both didn’t turn out. I was like, “This is just not my day.”

Sometimes you have the baking energy and sometimes you don’t. There’s just something in the air and it makes your work shatter. But for the most part, I’m pretty lucky.

It always depends on your oven too. I had to get used to my oven in my apartment. It runs a little bit warmer. So I found over the years that it’s best to play it safe and subtract a little bit of time from your baking time and check it so it’s not too done.

On The Food Culture in Portland, Oregon:

Portland is crazy with food. There are so many people here that love food and have a passion for it. It was the number one reason I actually decided to move here. Because when I first visited, I spent a week here and had a list of places I wanted to go. I was just amazed with how people love food here and get such a wide variety.

You can go to a specific shop just for cupcakes or just for pie. I think the food culture is very experimental and it’s very inspiring. Sometimes it can get a little predictable.

There’s a lot of repeat comfort food here. A lot of pork belly, I see that left and right. So people really love that kind of Southern style. I see that quite a bit. But it makes sense when it’s overcast a lot of the time and it’s raining. So people really enjoy that kind of food here.

There are a lot of donut places. I’m sure you’ve heard of Voodoo Doughnut.

I will drive by and the line can be an hour long. It’s pretty nuts. But there have been a few places that have popped up that you can get donuts now. Pip’s Doughnuts is really amazing if you’ve ever had a chance to check them out. And my personal favorite is Coco Donuts.

On Special Places to Eat in Portland:

I would have to say as far as dinner places, my favorite, favorite place is Tasty ‘N Sons. They’re at North Williams and they’ve opened another location Downtown.

And I really have been loving Ox. I went there for my birthday. I had a fabulous birthday meal.

LucLac has an amazing happy hour. You can get like a huge variety of different small plates for just $15. They make amazing cocktails too. So they are really awesome. Sweedeedee is my favorite brunch place that can get really crazy busy though. A lot of people have caught on that it’s amazing.

For really good vegetarian/ vegan food, Harlow is wonderful too. They make great smoothies.

Levant is also really nice. They have Mediterranean food and they just started doing a brunch. And Scott Snyder who’s the owner, he’s actually from Santa Cruz where I’m from. So we have some ties to that in some ways. He’s really great. His food is awesome.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Well, I don’t have a television, so I think that makes me the odd one out. But I did just finished watching the last season of Top Chef.

Two of the chefs on the show were from Portland and that was all over the Portland news. I had to watch it.

I actually had an opportunity to photograph Doug Adams who was on the show, one of my freelance jobs for the Portland Mercury. So that was really awesome. I got to meet him in person and that’s made me more interested in watching the show.

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

I definitely have a lot of favorite bloggers I follow on Pinterest and Instagram or what-not. My three favorites of late would be Half Baked Harvest. Perhaps you’re familiar with her. And my latest obsession, Twigg Studios. I think she’s from England or Australia. I forgot. Anyway, I contacted her because I just fell in love with her photography and wanted her to know that her stuff is amazing. So definitely check her out. Her photos for just her recipes are genius.

I also recently discovered Broma Bakery and I really like her recipes.

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

I would say Instagram, I really love following Izy of Top with Cinnamon. Her recipes and photos are amazing. I really love Call me Cupcake. She is lately @linda_lomelino. She is amazing too. And then also, the Twigg Studios gal with her blog.

As far as Pinterest, I don’t really always know who I’m following.

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

I wish I could say I had some really cool hand-me-down spoon from a great grandmother or something.

I would say my most treasured item, because I use it so frequently, two metal mixing bowls, my small and large. I bought them a few years ago when I started making macaroons. The recipe I was going off of said that it was best to have metal bowls just for keeping the coolness and protecting it from too much heat. And I love them.

I just use them for everything, so I couldn’t bake without them.

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

Cardamom did not sit well with me at all. But now, I love it. I want to put cardamom in every single thing I bake. A lot of recipes on the blog have cardamom in them. I almost have to stop myself because people are going to get tired of using cardamom now. It’s really weird. I don’t know what it was. I don’t know if it was becoming vegetarian and experimenting with spices, but I love cardamom and also ginger. I used to hate ginger and I use it all the time now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I think my number one favorite go-to resource book is The Flavor Bible. It’s pretty awesome.

If I want to tweak a recipe or I have an idea, I can go to that and it will list a bunch of ingredients that go really well with it. It’s pretty spot on.

They also recently released a Vegetarian Flavor Bible. I haven’t looked at it. But Flavor Bible is amazing.

I also really love the Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book because they have just the basic pie and cake recipes that you can make your own. They’ve been tested by the best of the best bakers and scientists. And that’s what they do all day long. So that’s a really great resource to have too.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love music so much and I always try to put on a record when I bake. It’s really tough. I would have to say Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A.

On Keeping Posted with Kylie:

I think I’m most active on Instagram, The Baking Bird, and Pinterest. I’m also on it quite a bit. Yeah, Instagram and my blog.

040: Sherrie Castellano: Wellness Through Plant-Based Eating

May 25, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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With Food and Love is a seasonally inspired vegetarian and naturally gluten-free food blog. Sherrie is a certified health coach and is training to be a plant-based chef. She also has an online three-week veggie-powered program called 21 Days to Lean and Green.

I am so thrilled to have Sherrie Castellano of With Food and Love here on the show today.

(*All photos are Sherrie’s.)

On How Food Played a Role in Her Health and Wellness:

I guess I’ll start when I went to get my undergrad degree. I studied sociology and women’s studies. I was a typical grad. When I was done, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was really into myself and just living young and not worrying about too many things.

So I moved out west and I lived in Denver, Colorado for about five years. Through the time that I spent there, I didn’t always feel my best. I probably partied too much and made some bad decisions along the way but I also didn’t treat my body very well with food. I was on a very high, refined, super-processed junk-y diet and energy drinks and all of that. Through that, I was not feeling very good. I was struggling a lot with digestive issues.

Towards the end of my stay in Denver, I started teaching special education. I worked at a school that was mostly specialized in helping children with autism and on autism spectrum. Through that experience, I realized that most of these kids were on specialized diets. That was something that was new to me. This was before the whole gluten-free explosion.

When my physician suggested that I go on a gluten-free elimination diet, and I did, I felt a little bit better. But I was still not eating really healthy foods. I was eating gluten-free alternative foods; gluten-free breads and pastas and processed crap. I was really just switching crap for crap.

It did seem to do something or at least it ignited a spark inside of me that I started realizing that what you’re putting in your body really does make a difference.

Shortly after I first went gluten-free, I moved to Philadelphia with my then boyfriend who’s now my husband. The road trip across country, I went back to eating gluten just because it was really convenient. We were eating fast food and I was still not feeling great. So then when I got to Philly, I probably went maybe a week or two and something happened where I was really indulging and I got really ill. So I knew at that point, I needed to make a life-lasting decision.

Around that time, I started also really getting into food documentaries. Forks Over Knives came out shortly after that. I also had a good friend that was just finishing school at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York. She introduced me to that.

I guess it was all these little pieces of the puzzle that finally came together. When I enrolled in nutrition school, I started my blog as a way to document my journey.

On Basic Ways to Start Eating Healthier:

I think the first thing for someone that’s really new to this is that it doesn’t have to be complicated. I think that there’s just so much information out there right now that it just oversaturates everyone’s mind.

You don’t know where to start and should you be paleo or vegan or whatever. Everyone is just so different. I think what’s most important is finding what works for you, eating real food, mostly plants, mostly vegetables, and work your way from there.

I’ve always really loved veggies so I don’t think that I’ve ever had to struggle at that. I feel lucky for that. Well, there are two things. You could just really start getting out of your comfort zone and go to farmer’s markets and trying new foods that you never had before.

Really, when in doubt, just roast vegetables with some olive oil and some sea salt and it’s amazing. So really, just step out of your comfort zone and push yourself in that direction. Or something you could do whether you love it or you hate the idea of it, but by drinking a smoothie in particular, a green smoothie every day. That’s a really great vessel to pack the nutrients in. You can put flax seeds and hemp seeds and chia seeds and all these healthy omega-3 and then also leafy vegetables.

On the Biggest Misconception of Having a Healthier Diet:

Something I hear a lot from clients or from potential clients who contact me and who might be apprehensive about signing up for my program or have more question is that it’s more difficult and more time-consuming.

That might be true. But I think the bottom line is you make time for the things that are important to you. So if you want to eat better, then you’ll make time for it. If you’re really not into it or ready for it, then you won’t and you’ll just keep finding excuses.

On What a Plant-Based Diet Means:

I think it’s just a nicer way to say vegan. I think that plant-based is just that. It’s mostly plants, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, basically a vegan diet. I think that vegan can be a little alienating to most, and I think it has a little bit of a negative stigma so I think plant-based is a nicer way of saying that.

But overall, plant-based eating, so I don’t eat 100% plant-based. Realistically, I shoot for 90%, but sometimes it doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, maybe, it’s more 80 or 70 depending on what I’m doing at that time in my life. So I think eating plant-based or striving to eat plant-based is eating mostly plants or all plants and minimizing your animal consumption.

I think it’s not as hard as most people think. As far as protein goes, there are plenty of options that you can choose that are plant-based. My favorites are any kind of bean or lentil.

In the beginning of the week, usually on Sundays, I do a food prep power hour too. I prepare a big batch of lentils that I’ll have all week. I’ll be able to throw dinner together easily because I have that cooking out of the way.

Healthy plant-based proteins are really key to feeling nourished and full, I guess. As far as dairy is concerned, that’s a touchy subject. But I don’t think really as adults, we need it in our diets. That, you can do without if you want to.

There are some concerns of eating strictly plant-based like getting enough vitamin B12. I actually had a vitamin B12 deficiency not too long ago. It was during a really stressful time of my life when I was moving to St. Louis. Your body depletes B vitamins, I guess, more easily when you’re stressed and worried. So I didn’t realize what was going on. Through maybe my diet and my lifestyle at that time, I was more susceptible to becoming deficient in B12.

You can only get that in animal products. So if you’re a strict vegan, that’s something to be aware of and that you would want to supplement.

On Some Resources to get Trusted Information on Health and Wellness Through Plant-Based Foods:

There’s so much information online. Some of my favorites or a good place to start maybe would be forksoverknives.com which is a complement to the documentary. Kris Carr is a great source of knowledge. I like her a lot. I like what she’s doing for the plant-based community. There are so many vegan blogs. On my website actually, I have a links page and the vegan ones are marked. That would be a good place to start.

On Her 3-Week Online Program, 21 Days to Lean and Green:

Lean and Green is the program I launched after graduating from nutrition school.

I was originally coaching mostly in person one-on-one. But I found that through the community of my blog and the community I had already built, I was meeting a lot of people more virtually than anything. The really cool thing about Lean and Green is that you can be a client and live anywhere in the world. I’ve had clients anywhere from South America or Germany or Sweden. That’s been a really cool thing for me that I’ve been able to connect with all of these people on this common ground of health and wellness.

The other thing is that a lot of my clients come to me for totally different reasons. Some people will come because they want to go gluten-free and I have personal experience doing that. That will be maybe their motivation. But others might come because they’re overweight and they want to shed some pounds, and this is a good way to kick-start that. So it really depends on why you’re coming to me in the first place.

The program is three weeks and it’s plant empowered so everything that you eat is plant-based. So lots of legumes and beans, seeds, veggies, smoothies, soups. I don’t really focus too much on counting calories and that thing. It’s mostly just counting nutrients and nobody goes hungry.

It’s not a juice cleanse. It’s really gentle on your body. The other bonus of the program is that through the program, I open up this confidential Facebook group. Anyone that’s in that month’s program can be a part of that. That provides a sense of community and accountability that you’re going through this thing with other people and you’re not alone. That’s another aspect of it.

For about the last year, I’ve been doing it about once a month. I have some new spring and summer projects coming up soon so I might take a break for the next few months. But yeah, my goal is to launch one every month. And so far, I’ve done that.

The program itself is structured in the way that I have all of their learning resources and information already put together. Each week, they get sent a packet of information. It’s accumulative so it builds on itself. But also, since they’re all coming to me for different reasons, I work with them individually so they’ll each get a 45-minute Skype session or phone call. During that time, we personalize what their meal plan generally will look like and what they’ll eat. If they have any dietary restrictions, we work around those.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t watch a lot, but really I love Top Chef.

I love anything also that Anthony Bourdain does. I have a crush on him. My husband and I watch a lot of No Reservations reruns.

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

There are so many food blogs that are so great. Some of my favorites right now are The First Mess. Laura’s Blog is fantastic; really great photography and sense of style.

My Darling Lemon Thyme, Dolly and Oatmeal. There’s a new blog, I think, called Sobremesa. Yeah, that’s it. I think I’m pronouncing it the right way. A girl named Amy writes it. She’s got some really fabulous photography. She’s great.

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

Most of the people I follow on Instagram are food-related. I keep it pretty simple. I don’t follow a ton of people. I follow one of my friends. Her name is Kristen and her handle is @happysleepyfolks. She is super inspirational and has a new little baby. She’s always posting super precious little moments. I really enjoy her feed. Also, Ruthie Lindsey which is the same thing. It’s not food-related but her story is incredible. She’s just also very inspirational and posts beautiful pictures.

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

Maybe this garlic press that I found in Italy that’s this vintage piece. My husband worked really hard to clean it out and make sure it’s good to use. That’s probably my most treasured.

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

I don’t really love mushrooms. I’ve slowly been trying to teach myself to eat them but I don’t think there’s anything that I used to not like and now do. I’m working on the mushroom thing. I feel like it’s something adults like and that I should be eating.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I like The Vegetarian Flavor Bible, which is new to me in the last few months. It’s amazing. It breaks down all different kinds of flavor combinations and what goes with what. It’s a great tool and resource for everyone, but definitely vegetarians.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

The Barr Brothers are my favorite band. Their latest album Sleeping Operator, that one.

Keep Posted with Sherrie:

I like Instagram the best. That’s my most fun.

031: Jodi Moreno: An “Ah-Ha” Moment That Lead to How She Cooks

April 27, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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What’s Cooking Good Looking, food blog.

Jodi is a natural food chef. On her blog, she features healthy, wholesome and tasty foods that are proven to have the power to make us feel good from the inside out. What’s Cooking Good Looking was a finalist for Best Cooking Blog in Saveur’s 2014 Best Food Blog Awards.

More recently, Jodi is a finalist in the 2015 Saveur Blog Awards for Most Delicious Food, and she collaborated on a cookbook called Grains as Mains.

I am so thrilled to have Jodi Moreno of What’s Cooking Good Looking here on the show.

On Starting Her Blog:

I was somebody who always loved cooking. I grew up in an Italian family where food was very important. Food is always a very important part of our family. However, I wasn’t really always allowed to take over in the kitchen. I was always there helping and doing things.

When I went to college, I realized that when I didn’t have my family cooking for me anymore, I was going to have to cook for myself. So I started getting my feet wet with cooking. I was terrible. I made many, many mistakes. I exploded a few things.

When I started working professionally after college, I started taking it more seriously.

After work every day, I would come home and cook 3-hour meals for just myself. These elaborate things. I try these crazy recipes and then I bring the leftovers into the office. My co-workers were like, “Why don’t you do this? Why are you working in an office?”

After several years, I realized that maybe I should just do this full-time. So after a few years of working up to that, I left my job and went to culinary school.

On Photography:

My first job was working for photographers, so I never even had that much experience behind the camera. A lot of the work I was doing was in post-production and scanning the film into the computer, so it was a huge jump.

The photographer that I worked for really believed in me and thought that I could get behind the camera and start taking pictures. So he bought me a camera and it sat in my closet for many years, which I think I mention on my blog that it just kind of sat there collecting dust. It literally did.

Then when I went to culinary school, it was when I really started picking it up and taking it out, and realized since I have this love for food and this background of photography, I feel like it came naturally to just pick up the camera and start taking pictures of my food.

If you see my early pictures though, they’ve come a long way, so it wasn’t like they started off so great. But I did have a lot of background in photography which led me to where I am now.

On Her Shift to More Wholesome Foods:

I think it was a gradual process. I’ve always had this love of food but I also was someone who liked to exercise. I was running half marathons all the time and things like that, so I feel like I slowly started to realize that the foods that I ate really affected the rest of my life. I started to make little changes one by one. I think buying organic was the first thing I ever did.

That was really exciting. But then, I got more and more like that. Then also, a few years ago, I discovered that I had some sensitivity to foods which my doctor figured out; dairy and cow’s milk in particular. I just kept growing.

Then when I went to culinary school, I was looking at programs and I just didn’t feel any sort of connection to the ones that were more traditional, like heavy French-type cooking, a lot of sauces and things like that. I really wanted to learn about nutrition and how it affects you and how food really can be enriching. Then, when I did that program, that’s when my life totally changed.

Now, I eat mostly a plant-based diet. I allow a lot of room for exciting things to come in. I’m not dogmatic about it by any means, but it’s just how I enjoy eating nowadays.

I feel like that was the biggest “aha” moment. When my doctor said, “Cow’s milk is really causing a lot of these problems that you’re having, try cutting it out,” I was like, “Wow, that’s a pretty powerful thing.” I mean, I had a chronic cough. I had acne. I had all these kind of nagging little things that you could brush off as one thing or the other. But when I stopped, after about a month, they all went away and they’ve never come back.

Once I saw the results of that, it really changed. I wanted to change more. I wanted to feel even better.

I feel like just learning that one little thing changed so much about the way that I started cooking. Then once you get that feeling of what it’s like to experience that wellness, you crave it and you’re addicted to it and you just want more of that.

On Learning to Cook More Naturally:

It was a program based here in New York called the Natural Kitchen Culinary School. It was the only one I could find of its kind that combined traditional culinary techniques, so learning the basics like the knife skills and how to not burn things. Just to cook, follow recipes properly so that they come out really well. But in addition to that, they also taught about nutrition and these different cooking techniques like Macrobiotic and Ayurvedic. So I was really fascinated by all of that and it was the only program that I found that taught that.

On Starting to Cook More Healthfully:

One of the biggest things I think for cooking healthy is that maybe you don’t have the time. I found that a big thing for me was to set aside maybe a half hour, an hour, one day a week where you cook a batch of something, whether it’s quinoa or your beans or even just chopping up vegetables so you could snack on those instead of chips or something. Just setting aside any amount of time you can; any small or large.

If you want to spend all Sunday cooking, great. But even if you just do an hour a week, I feel like that really can impact the way that you eat for the rest of the week.

Even I will run to the nearest whatever take-out place to get something when I don’t have the time or the stuff in my fridge to do it.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I love Chopped. I feel like I get a lot of great tips from there. Top Chef, and of course I’m a sucker for Barefoot Contessa.

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

One of the ones I learned about last year was Vegetarian Ventures. That was new to me and I find her recipes to be incredibly creative. I look at Sprouted Kitchen’s website all the time. I feel a real connection to the foods that she makes. There are so many.

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

Instagram is my favorite. I love Oh, Ladycakes. She is a vegan baker and she travels a lot so she’s always got great posts. On Pinterest, Local Milk. She blows me away, she’s got amazing taste.

What is something all home cooks should have in their pantry?

Olive oil, absolutely. I couldn’t live without it.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without.

Olive oil, for everything; your sautéing, dressing your salad.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

One of my favorite books which you might not hear a lot of people talk about is The Gramercy Tavern Cookbook. I feel like there’s a lot of techniques in there. If I want a basic vegetable broth, they just have some really solid techniques. I’m constantly referring to it which I feel is a little bit unusual.

The Silver Spoon is another one that I think is a little out of the box that has great basic recipes and techniques and stuff and you can find there’s thousands of recipes.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I feel like I play this over and over again. It’s John Coltrane’s album.

I feel like when I’m really getting in the mood, I always put that on. I’ve been doing that for years and years and I never get sick of it. I love it.

Keep Posted on Jodi:

Definitely Instagram. I post all my new recipes on there, and then I feed it through all the other social media sites; Facebook, Twitter. So I guess it depends on which one you like to use most, but I’m on all of them.

Have Jodi’s Best Ever Tomato Sauce Recipe Sent to You Now:

016: Renee Byrd: Learning to Cook With Food Sensitivities

March 23, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Will Frolic for Food

Renee is a writer, photographer, recipe developer, and chocolate maker. She eats a wheat-free, dairy-free and vegetarian diet, and her blog is a reflection of this. On Will Frolic for Food, you will find recipes for creative, savory vegetarian dishes and occasionally more healthful versions of something indulgent.

I am so happy to have Renee Byrd of Will Frolic for Food here on the show today.

On The Idea Behind Her Blog:

I think the main idea for the blog came from just cooking in my daily life. I am bored very easily so I make a lot of weird, interesting recipes at home, and my now husband, then fiancé, was just really… I would make meals and he would say, “You really need to start a blog about this because people need to know these recipes. You can’t just keep them to yourself. It’s really not fair in a way.”

From my side, I was like, “No, I mean that’s so much work. I don’t want to. I don’t know.” Finally I was just like, “This is probably worth my time to share this with people,” and it totally has been. The community is a major reason I keep going.

I often have recipes that take me over eight hours to do. All in all, like recipe development, making the recipe, photographing the recipe, editing the recipe, post processing, writing; all things that go into it.

It’s so much. I love every second of it, but it’s not easy technically.

On Her Interest in Cooking and Food:

I’ve pretty much always been interested in it. I have a natural affinity towards natural foods and wanting to feel healthy and feel great.

I’ve always associated food with feeling good and being happy. I am sure the majority of that is that my mother is a fantastic cook and taught me how to make a lot of interesting foods and interesting meals out of nothing; out of like, “What’s in the fridge?” “I don’t know. We don’t have anything in fridge. I guess we’re going to make a pizza out of stuff.” She really had a good understanding of flavors and flavor combinations and how to balance meals. From that perspective, I learned all of that from her.

A lot of my inspiration has come from friends who are just passionate about food, from my friends who were basically in this little vegan, raw foods, commune situation in college, because I am just sort of hippy at heart and all my friends are like that. I love the way that they eat.

That was very inspiring to me to be with those people because they were just making these incredible curries, chutneys, and raw date brownies and it just blew my mind; so those people, and of course my mother, who gave me the foundation thankfully. I am very thankful for that.

Beyond that, so much of my inspiration comes from incredible bloggers on Internet who have been doing what they do for so long.

On Her Food Sensitivities:

I ignored most of it. Well, the dairy thing I ignored. Funnily enough, everyone in my family is allergic to dairy; allergic, not lactose-intolerant. Most of them just kind of ignore it and the wheat thing I developed a sensitivity to in my early 20s in college.

I started getting really painful stomach aches and was having really terrible digestive issues; it just hurt. I didn’t know what it was, didn’t understand it and it turned out to be a combination of sensitivity to peanuts and wheat.

I didn’t get officially diagnosed with those things but I essentially cut both of them out, and then suddenly, “Wow. Eating is fun again and doesn’t hurt me anymore.”

I just decided that I didn’t want to feel sick when I ate, and in my life, and I wasn’t going to compromise about that and I did for a long time. I basically was like, “I’ll eat wheat here and there. I’ll eat dairy here and there,” but then I was just feeling sick. It just got to a point where I was like, “I don’t need these things.”

I do eat goat dairy because it doesn’t have the same sugars and proteins as cow dairy. I am able to digest that fine, so you see a lot of that on my blog. You see a lot of chevre and goat cheese, goat yogurt. I think it’s a wonderful food, personally, so I do feature that relatively often.

On Learning To Cook with Food Sensitivities:

There are tons of resources. There are some books that I really, really love that are really on point for teaching you how to make exact recipes. Inspired Vegan is amazing. I love that book. I think it’s Bryant Terry, and it’s so wonderful. Obviously all of the Ottolenghi books, anything that’s naturally wheat-free in there is incredible.

Getting yourself out there and volunteering to help people cook big meals and for gatherings and things is another great way to learn.

Obviously blogs are fantastic resources. I’ve got a massive blog roll of people who are constantly teaching me with their process and their way.

I just have so many things going through my brain right now. I’m allergic to dairy, so the lactose and the casein that I’m allergic to but I eat Ghee. Ghee is amazing. A lot of people aren’t very familiar with it and a lot of people with sensitivities aren’t very familiar with the fact there is something that’s derived from cow dairy that they can eat.

Ghee is a wonderful clarifying food that is good for the joints, it’s good for the skin and helps support the nervous system. You can actually put it on your skin and it’s very calming and moisturizing. It’s an incredible food. I love it. I eat it a lot. I make it at home so that’s something that I use often that I feel like I am probably preaching about a lot.

Ghee is clarified butter.

To make it at home, I get a really nice organic butter. If I can get it from a farmer that’s local — that’s fantastic as well — that I trust and then I boil it over medium-high heat. I skim all of the froth that comes to the top, all of the lactose and casein off of the top. I discard that.

You just keep doing that until all of that frothy stuff is gone. Then you strain it and you pour it into a heat safe jar and you can use it. Generally a very clean organic butter, you’re going to be able to turn it into ghee relatively quickly and then you have this wonderful food that you can keep on your counter. You don’t even have to refrigerate it. It lasts for years — literally years — and it makes everything taste better.

Tips for Cooking Gluten-Free or Dairy-Free for the First Time:

Trust simple recipes. Starting with that, if you’re cooking for somebody who has allergies, trying to start out with doing a complicated baking recipe especially if you don’t have all of the ingredients and aren’t willing to follow all of the directions exactly, it’s going to be very frustrating.

I just remember back to when I was first learning how to do gluten-free cooking a couple of years ago how angry I was. These recipes weren’t working for me but I always want to try something that is more complicated because I want to be the best at it right now, but I don’t know what I’m doing.

Trusting simple recipes and finding a recipe developer that you really trust and that you really respect. I feel like I sorted through blogs and authors for years before I found people that I felt like I could trust their recipes. I wish I had a list of bloggers that I think are awesome and that I really trust their recipes. Actually I do have a list of inspiration on my blog of a bunch of different blogs that I love; not all of them are gluten-free but I definitely trust all of them. It’s just under the inspiration tab.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t really watch a lot of cooking shows but I could tell you that I want to watch a really cool cooking show that is all about seasonal eating but it’s fun and there’s traveling involved.

I don’t have anything that I watch regularly. I watch YouTube videos of folks sometimes doing their thing. Green Kitchen Stories has some really cool videos.

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

Oh my god. Yeah, hundreds of them. That’s a terribly hard question but what pops in my mind, let’s see. Two Red Bowls — super awesome, gorgeous photography; hilarious and just wonderfully inspiring recipes.

Dolly and Oatmeal, I love Lindsey Love’s recipes. They all are gluten-free, they are generally dairy-free, too; very creative and beautiful photography as well. I take a lot of inspiration from her recipes, so I just have to stress that.

Let’s see, so many of them. Obviously, Local Milk. I mean do I even need to say it? She’s the best ever that ever existed. I want to be her.

Eva Kosmas Flores of Adventures in Cooking has the most gorgeous photography in the world ever.

I am trying to think of other gluten-free bloggers here. I am always super in love with My New Roots. Everything is great on My New Roots, and Green Kitchen Stories, and Sprouted Kitchen. If you do not read those, you’re a crazy person. They’re just so good.

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

Also a very hard question. Instagram, I follow a lot of people, a range of folks who do everything from food to really wonderful landscapes and stuff. Again, Eva Kosmas Flores has a wonderful Instagram.

What is something all home cooks should have in their pantry?

Coconut oil, quinoa, always gluten-free pasta is a go-to for sure, and fantastic quality olive oil and sea salt are better than anything. I actually use JQ Dickinson sea salt which is a West Virginia sea salt which is very flaky. It is a little bit lower in sodium and has of mineral quality to it. I love it. When I’m out of it, I cry a little bit.

Olive oil, I use Zoe’s because it’s really affordable in large amounts and it is really good, just delicious. I just feel like with good oil and salts you can make anything taste good.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

The JQD sea salt pretty much. I bring it with me everywhere.

Pretty much anytime I say coarse sea salt, I’m talking about that salt.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi, Inspired Vegan, BabyCakes Covers the Classics by Erin McKenna is the foundation of gluten-free desserts in my mind. She is such a genius with gluten-free desserts. I pretty much owe that cookbook everything. My basic understanding of how gluten-free baking works and what you need to make it work. I’ve definitely branched off from that but that’s the foundation for sure.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Everything by Kishi Bashi. His most recent album, I can’t remember the name of it. Yeah, I just want to dance around my house and cook.

Keep Posted on Renee:

Other than following my blog, at willfrolicforfood.com, I am always posting on Instagram and Twitter. My handle is @FrolicChocolate. I have a Facebook page, too, but definitely Twitter and Instagram are the best ways.

On What a Spiralizer Is:

On Starting Her Blog:

On Being Conscious of What She Eats:

On Her New York Times Best-Selling Book, Inspiralized:

On Her First Product, The Inspiralizer:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Ali:

On Her Interest in Cooking:

On Working in Restaurants, Cafes, and Catering:

On Starting Her Blog:

On Recognizing Her and Her Children’s Food Intolerances:

On Tackling a New Approach to Cooking and Food (with Food Intolerances):

On Some Good Resources to Learn More About Gluten-Free Cooking:

On Her Book, “My Darling Lemon Thyme – Recipes from My Real Food Kitchen”:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Emm:

On Growing Up in a Home Where Food Was Enjoyed and Shared:

On Being in the Kitchen:

On Veganism:

On Becoming Vegan:

On Baking Vegan and Her Blog:

On the Biggest Misconception of Baking Vegan:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Abby:

On Her Interest in Cooking and Food:

On Learning to Cook:

On Kitchen Experiments Not Going as Planned:

On Some Go-To Resources for Learning to Cook and Bake:

On Starting Her Blog:

On Gluten-Free Foods:

On Gluten-Free Ingredients:

On Some Good Gluten-Free Cooking and Baking Resources:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted on Julia:

On Finding Her Passion for Baking:

On No Longer Being Vegetarian:

On Her Interest in Food:

On the First Thing She Baked:

On Things Not Going as Planned in the Kitchen:

On The Food Culture in Portland, Oregon:

On Special Places to Eat in Portland:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Kylie:

On How Food Played a Role in Her Health and Wellness:

On Basic Ways to Start Eating Healthier:

On the Biggest Misconception of Having a Healthier Diet:

On What a Plant-Based Diet Means:

On Some Resources to get Trusted Information on Health and Wellness Through Plant-Based Foods:

On Her 3-Week Online Program, 21 Days to Lean and Green:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted with Sherrie:

On Starting Her Blog:

On Photography:

On Her Shift to More Wholesome Foods:

On Learning to Cook More Naturally:

On Starting to Cook More Healthfully:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Jodi:

Have Jodi’s Best Ever Tomato Sauce Recipe Sent to You Now:

On The Idea Behind Her Blog:

On Her Interest in Cooking and Food:

On Her Food Sensitivities:

On Learning To Cook with Food Sensitivities:

Tips for Cooking Gluten-Free or Dairy-Free for the First Time:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Renee:

Have One of Renee’s Delicious Soup Recipes Sent to You Now: