EFR 803: Scrappy Cooking - How to Eat Healthy, Save Money, and Save the Planet with Carleigh Bodrug

00:00 - Speaker 2 The following is an Operation Podcast production 30 to 40% of the entire US food supply ends up in landfills. When people hear the statistics, they're like it's the restaurants, it's the grocery stores. The largest percentage of that percent is consumer homes. It's such a massive issue primarily because people buy groceries well-intentioned and usually whole foods that they plan to eat and then they end up wasting them and then they end up relying on takeout convenience foods, which is all leading to poorer health.

00:33 As a society, I think we tend to overcomplicate healthy eating period, and I'm not here to tell anybody that grocery shopping nowadays is going to be affordable, because it's not. However, whole foods are typically the most affordable in comparison to something like meat and cheese, and scrappy cooking really is about utilizing commonly wasted foods into delicious recipes. But where it's really cool to me is like I think it erupts a conversation about food waste that we're not having. You quickly realize when you watch somebody's health deteriorate that your health is literally everything. Hey, it's Carly Beaudrug from Plant U and we are getting scrappy today talking all about food waste on Ever Forward Radio.

01:25 - Speaker 1 What's going on? Everford Radio listeners, thank you so much for tuning in with me here today. I am your host, chase Tuning, certified health coach, army veteran wellness enthusiast and, honestly, a guy that loves to eat. I do enjoy getting in the kitchen, cooking up familiar recipes, new recipes, but I got to tell you I've never done a scrappy recipe. So thank the scrappy gods.

01:49 We have Carly Bodrig on the show today, so let me ask you have you ever found yourself tossing out a bag of seemingly useless vegetables or fruit or leftovers that you think is just past its prime or you absolutely cannot do anything with it? Carly is here to completely revolutionize the way that you look at scraps, leftovers and so much more. But it's so much more than learning how to get creative in the kitchen. It hits home on larger topics such as global health, waste management, even taking care of good old Mother Earth. In today's conversation, we dissect the staggering 30 to 40 percent of the US food supply that never makes it from farm to fork, and how our well-meant grocery hauls often end in the trash, taking both our hard-earned money and the environment down with them. Carly and I don't just point fingers. We offer a slice of hope and practical steps toward a greener, healthier kitchen. She dropped some amazing insight in today's podcast, not to mention a few amazing recipes. Make sure to tune in for the banana peel, bacon strips yeah, you heard me right. And if you want to learn more about how to take care of your body, get more creative in the kitchen, get more scrappy, as Carly calls it, make sure to check out her Instagram. It is just blowing up. Over the last couple of years I think she's surpassed 5 million followers now Some of the most incredible food accounts I've ever seen, not to mention her amazing new book Plant you Scrappy Cooking 140 plus plant-based, zero waste recipes that are good for you, your wallet and the planet. It was such a fun episode. I had Carly in town in LA. She sat down with me in studio. Make sure to check out the video. It's always available at everfordradiocom or smash that thumbs up and subscribe button. If you're following along on YouTube, I'll have it linked for you, as always down in the show notes, to connect with Carly, get her book, watch the video and anything else and everything else we talk about on today's episode under episode resources and if you're like Carly or just are getting more curious about going more plant-based in your life.

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04:31 If you want to learn more about Legion Athletics and their plant plus vegan protein powder, head on over to legionathleticscom. At checkout, use code ever forward. You're going to save 20%. That's 20% off of your entire first purchase when you use code EVERFORD at legionathleticscom. And then every time you come back because I know you will, because you're going to love it and you're going to need and want more keep using code EVERFORD, because that actually is going to give you double the loyalty points towards future savings and deals Linked for you, as always, in the show notes under episode resources. But again, that's legionathleticscom code Everford for 20% off your entire first purchase. Welcome to the show, everybody. Let's dive into today's episode with Carly Bodrick. Well, carly, the most excited welcome, scaring you half to death. Welcome to Everford Radio.

05:19 - Speaker 2 I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

05:21 - Speaker 1 You're very welcome and we have a lot of information to dive into around the world of nutrition, finances, plant-based and kind of weaving all of those together. But I would like to start out of the gate, kind of going through the lens of economics nutrition through the lens of economics. Are we in poor health actually because of a poor money mindset? Do you think?

05:45 - Speaker 2 I think it definitely ties into it. I would have to think that the reason a lot of us are in poor health is because we're short on time, which ties into money. We're short on time because we're all chasing money. We're all short on money, so we're filling our time with nine to fives that turn into seven till six o'clock at night, and we have no time to make any fresh food, which really is the crux of the issue. And I mean, I know I'm on here to talk about food waste, but it's such a massive issue primarily because people buy groceries well-intentioned and usually whole foods that they plan to eat and then they end up wasting them and then they end up relying on takeout convenience foods, which is all leading to poorer health as a society. So the time and the money thing is really, I think, where we're falling short.

06:41 - Speaker 1 How would you kind of crawl inside the head of somebody that is already there thinking I value spending more money maybe than I would, or maybe other people might, on the foods that I put into my belly, meaning my groceries, my going organic, am I going regenerative? Am I going farm raised? You know, when I go out to eat I'm very selective of where I'm going, or even going out to eat at all. What do you think is going on in the mindset of somebody that has that value already sunk in?

07:12 - Speaker 2 I think we tend to overcomplicate healthy eating period. When you talk about organic grass fed, all of these things. At the end of the day, I see so many people looking for quick fixes and really going down a road like, okay, I'm going to juice celery and drink that every morning, but they're not focusing on the actual basics and low hanging fruit that's going to make the most impact, which is actually just eating whole foods. So what I mean by whole foods is like, rather than buying sweet potato fries, buy a whole sweet potato and make it yourself. So like when you're heading into the grocery store shopping the perimeters, looking at your broccoli, your sprouts, your sweet potatoes, your, if you're a meat eater, looking at buying the raw meat as opposed to something that has like a rotisserie chicken.

08:04 - Speaker 1 Oh, don't take away my rotisserie.

08:07 - Speaker 2 I truly don't know much about the meat, and really I think that's where we all get a little caught up in kind of this minutia that when really what is going to matter is actually cooking for yourself at home.

08:22 - Speaker 1 Now what about the opposite? What about someone who is choosing to invest maybe a little? Now what about the opposite? What about someone who is choosing to invest maybe a little bit more if I'm hearing you correctly a little more money than necessary to enjoy and to have quality food? Compared to the person that believes that their money should not be invested beyond just whatever they can afford at X amount of budget, they're not wiggling at all.

08:46 - Speaker 2 So I think somebody who is just really strapped for cash and wanting to eat healthier but needs to do the bare minimum. Again it goes back to whole foods. We always hear this kind of stigma and it can be frustrating in someone who's vegan, because you hear the stigma that eating vegan is expensive, and I'm not here to tell anybody that grocery shopping nowadays is going to be affordable, because it's not. However, whole foods are typically the most affordable in comparison to something like meat and cheese. So if you're going to the grocery store and you are trying to eat healthier but you're strapped on a budget, canned beans, dried lentils, rice, whole grain pasta all of these things can be foundations that really lead to a healthier diet. And then I think I think about this a lot, because I am that type of person who I feel like I have the health part dialed in from cooking from home. I eat all whole food.

09:40 And then if that person you're somebody who has that dialed in if you can take it one step further, then I think it's time to start thinking about like organic and juicing and whatever else kind of like elements you want to build on. But at the end of the day, what really matters is eating the majority of your food from whole foods and cooking for yourself. I always say that one of the best investments that you can make in yourself or for your children is teaching them to cook or learning to cook yourself, because it's a real problem, like if, 99% of the time, if you go out to eat, that meal is going to be a lot unhealthier than the food that you're cooking at home. It's just reality. There's a lot more oil, fat, sugar. You can control everything, whether you're making a burger at home or you're cooking at home. It's just reality. There's a lot more oil, fat, sugar. You can control everything. Whether you're making a burger at home or you're making a or getting a burger out, it's always going to be healthier if you're cooking it at home.

10:31 So such a skillset that I think we're lacking nowadays. And it kind of goes back to your first point about are we short on money. Are we short on time? The reality is both right.

10:47 - Speaker 1 It absolutely can be both. I think that's a great question for somebody to think about right now. Maybe you're not where you want to be in your body composition, your weight, your energy. Maybe you got some wild labs that came back and you're trying to manipulate something for your overall health. Where is the excuse? Where is the lie? Where is the misunderstanding that is keeping you from really living a healthy life? Is it the food or is it the money? There might be a mindset shift in both.

11:07 - Speaker 2 Well, here's the thing. I think we're all chasing something in life, but at the end of the day, if the vessel you navigate life with is not healthy, you have nothing. You quickly realize when you watch somebody's health deteriorate that your health is literally everything. So I think if somebody is listening to this and they haven't been investing in their health, maybe they've been chasing, maybe they're an entrepreneur. I mean, I've been there. I am an entrepreneur, but I've been there where I'm sacrificing my health in the name of, like, pursuing a business. It um, it's not worth it because you can drive yourself into the ground and, in some cases, really pay for it later in life. So I think I think the greatest investment we can all make for ourselves is to is to invest in our health.

11:59 - Speaker 1 How would you convince somebody I can't afford to eat healthy to you, can't afford not to.

12:05 - Speaker 2 Exactly. I think, at the end of the day, if you don't have a healthy body, whatever that looks like for you like I don't want to uh to there's people who deal with chronic illnesses and whichever else that don't have a choice, Right. But if you are in a healthy body, or one that that can be with the, with the right choices from a nutrition standpoint, you are already so fortunate and, at the end of the day, it means everything to take care of that. And also, you know what I find as a business owner, I definitely have been one of those people who have sacrificed my health, thinking like, okay, if I I'm not going to go to the gym this morning because I'm going to work, and if I don't work I'm not going to be successful and I'm not going to gain this many Instagram followers and my book's not going to be a bestseller and whichever else. This mindset is so screwed up because I find when I'm actually going to the gym I'm more productive.

13:03 - Speaker 1 I think if you nourish, more energy, less brain, brain fall, getting better sleep. You're recovering. It's this like slippery slope that we can very easily justify as other than but once you've had a little bit of taste of what good feels like, you know exactly, and it's a means to an end.

13:19 - Speaker 2 It's to what you talked about earlier. If somebody is, if somebody's short, or maybe they're not productive or whichever else, so they're they. They can't afford to eat healthy, whether that's short on time or short on money. By nourishing your body with whatever way you can, you're going to then see that payoff, I think, in the work that you do, cause you're going to have a lot more energy, right.

13:38 - Speaker 1 Absolutely.

13:38 - Speaker 2 Yeah.

13:39 - Speaker 1 All right. So I know that my body feels great, feels the most I hate to say normal, but feels the most normal for me when I regularly consume meat. But I also love vegetables and I know that I also feel great when I'm having a lot of vegetables in my life and getting good quality fruits, vegetables, and consistently. And I've even tried I think a lot of people have tried a lot of things trying to find the best diet more of this, less of that and I've even tried I think a lot of people have tried a lot of things trying to find the rest best diet more of this, less of that and I've tried everything. You know as a health coach and you know person who's been in the industry for many years for myself but also working with people I felt like I needed to, like, I need to be able to kind of report on yeah you know, just kind of have, you know, a little bit of toe in the water of everything.

14:22 And so that's me and I only say all that background information because I'm an N of one and I've tested a lot of things and I've arrived at what is true and feels great for me, and I know this to be true. How can someone else who maybe doesn't have that experience and hasn't tested a lot of things or even a thing, how do you think they can realistically arrive at that same confirmation that this is for me and this is not for me?

14:47 - Speaker 2 It's exactly what you said trial and error, I think. For me, when I started eating a plant-based diet, I just immediately felt great and I had spent so many years feeling really sluggish, really slow digestion, to the point where, when I was 13, was prescribed laxatives yeah, so it was between 11 and 13 and I had a really like slow digestive system was a major issue. And it's funny because as a society, we're so focused on protein right, which I'm not saying is wrong but 99% of us meet the daily recommended intake of protein, but 95 95 of the population does not meet the daily recommended intake of fiber hold on one second yes I know, I know people slack it on fire.

15:35 - Speaker 1 Hell, I'm even slacking on fiber. But nine, you say 99 of barring a unique barring a unique health condition.

15:41 - Speaker 2 You're meeting the daily recommended intake now I am not saying I think it's per gram of body weight it's like 0.8 per gram point.

15:49 - Speaker 1 Usually it's 0.8 per kilogram of body weight because every food contains protein.

15:55 - Speaker 2 So like every food contains some element of protein. So if you're eating enough calories in a day, typically you're going to at least meet that bare minimum. But almost none of us are meeting the fiber intake.

16:05 - Speaker 1 I feel like. I feel like some kind of I got some beef with that stat okay, I feel like you want to confirm with me, but I would love to look at that data point that's. That's very intriguing to me I am not a dietician.

16:16 - Speaker 2 I'm not going to sit here and argue that, um, we all couldn't benefit by more protein or whichever else, but the. It's interesting to me because all we ever hear about is protein.

16:27 - Speaker 1 You're right, yeah, but we never talk about fiber. Protein is more sexy, right?

16:30 - Speaker 2 Yeah, protein is more sexy. We think about muscle, we think about collagen and whichever else, yet nobody's talking about fiber. And where does fiber come from? It's devoid in meat and cheese. So absolutely no fiber, and that's a lot of what the standard american diet is made up of. So we have a society that is walking around like if you have issues with constipation or slow digestive or even the opposite, which a lack of fiber can cause, you need to start looking at eating more plants. So that's where I come from from. My work is like I am not telling anybody to go plant plant based, fully plant based, fully vegan. We need to get more plants on the plate and I think it's undeniable that more vegetables and plants barring again a unique health condition is not going to be beneficial for your longevity and your overall health. Barring a unique health condition is not going to be beneficial for your longevity and your overall health.

17:26 - Speaker 1 Barring a unique health condition, is there a unique health condition that somebody might not actually benefit from by going more plant-based?

17:34 - Speaker 2 I think there's some people who have like IBS, where they can't tolerate certain vegetables, and that can be a really big digestive issue. I think there's also, I know, benefits to the ketogenic diet with people who have epilepsy, I believe. So there's like these unique health conditions where one train of eating that might be low fiber could benefit you. But I think we're talking about the average American right or Canadian in my case and we're not eating enough. We're not eating enough fiber at all.

18:07 - Speaker 1 Why do you think that is? Is it because of just we're not getting enough whole foods fruits, vegetables or it's just the diet overall? The most common average adult diet is just void of of anything that's going to have fiber.

18:20 - Speaker 2 I think it's both. And I think when we think about palatable foods, they're typically high in calories, high in sugar, um high in fat, and that's where, like, we are drawn to naturally, and those foods are so readily available these days, so we're avoiding and typically cheaper cheaper.

18:39 Yeah, so like you can go and get a really cheap like burger, right that probably has no fiber in it, between the white bread and the patty of meat and then French fries, and I mean, oh my gosh, I feel like when I'm talking I sound like this judgmental person. I am so not like coming at it from that perspective. I just think if I have any message that adding more fiber to your diet can be life-changing and like shifting the focus like protein yes, shifting the focus to encompass fiber I think could be really a game changer for a lot of people's plates could you explain to me why you, carly, are plant-based that is your choice in your diet, without trying to convince me to do the same?

19:28 Okay. So when I was 11 years old, my dad was diagnosed with stage two colon cancer and that was a very traumatic experience. At the time he went through surgery, chemotherapy, the whole bit, and during that time period, nobody ever once mentioned mentioned to him that we should at all shift our diet. And I was very much eating. I grew up on a little hobby farm with my parents. The Canada food guide at the time had these big sections for meat and dairy, so like that was the cornerstone of our diet, like with chicken wings on Thursday nights, ribs on Fridays, like very much meat based, and so we continued eating like that past my dad's diagnosis. And he is still here. He is cancer free 20 years later Amazing, yeah, which is incredible and it was in 2015 that the World Health Organization announced that red and processed meat were now classed as group two and group one carcinogens carcinogens yes okay, now somebody doesn't know that word.

20:29 Please define that yeah so carcinogens is that there is a proof that it can cause cancer. So this is red meat and processed meat, specifically processed meat being a group one. So that was like, oh my goodness, especially because there's such a tie to um to colon cancer with your diet Right. So that was the catalyst that made my family and I shift to a plant predominant diet. My dad is like plant-based, but still still eats meat on occasion, and I always say that going plant-based is like opening Pandora's box because you have, like the one thing that kind of ticks you and then you sort of get drawn in and I say I stayed vegan because of the animals and then, as well, animal agriculture.

21:20 So the impact that animal agriculture has on the environment is just massive. People go on about it's so funny. The thing I hear the most as a plant-based or vegan person is you eat soy and the Amazon rainforest is getting destroyed because of soy farming. Well, the majority of the soy that is being farmed in the Amazon or elsewhere is used to feed animals. And it's funny because people are always up in arms like, oh, the soy is going to cause, you know, like a man, to grow boobs or whichever else. And I'm like first of all, it's not true, but second of all, you're getting it anyways because the animal is consuming it.

22:03 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it's definitely naturally going to be in our food yeah supply pretty regularly yeah it's pretty surprising how much and where soy is in the diet that you wouldn't think unless you're. I'm not eating tofu, I'm not eating edamame, you know what's up, friends. So no doubt my conversation with Carly today is helping you elevate your cooking, elevate your creativity in the kitchen and elevating your mindset just around food and food waste in general. Well, let me shift gears a little bit. Let's keep elevating, let's elevate yourselves, let's elevate yourself. Let me bring your attention to fatty 15, the C15 essential fatty acid that is truly sweeping the nation and has been an incredible asset to my daily wellness supplementation.

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24:26 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it's. It is crazy the impact that the food we have on our plate has on everything.

24:35 - Speaker 1 Really really let's go there a little bit more, please. I think one of the most powerful ways I have ever heard people who have made a very conscious and hard shift into this is the way that I eat. It tends to come from a pretty emotional reason you had a health scare, or even somebody close to you, like in your story, or you learn something about where our food comes from, the food supply chain, whether that's an animal, whether it's a plant that just strikes you to your core, and that's a deep shift that most likely is not going to go anywhere. Where do you think I hate to say the word should, but where do you think we should be directing our attention? That warrants such an emotional response for us to begin to care more about not only our own health but our ecosystem.

25:25 - Speaker 2 I always say people need to find their why right, like for me, it was health originally and then, like I said, I stuck to probably veganism from an animal perspective. But you need to find that thing that makes you and we can zoom out and not look at this from a vegan or plant based perspective and kind of go back to earlier in our conversation. You can't change somebody's mind to eat healthier, to go vegan, to do whatever. You do whatever in a dietary perspective unless they want it. So they have to dig deep and either look at their health and the impact that that's having on their entire life, the environment, which is a huge one. I mean there was a study that showed reducing. The single biggest way an individual can reduce their environmental impact is by eating a predominantly plant-based diet. So I mean not to put the climate change um burden on individuals, but if you're conscious of the environment, it could be a good idea to eat more plants and I've heard composting too.

26:33 Yeah, that is a huge. We haven't even gotten into the food waste thing, but buying the food and being more intentional about it like especially if you're, if you're eating animal products or whichever else is a huge part of this Cause we don't want to be throwing away the food either. So, yeah, like you need to dig deep and find out why it matters to you, and I think that comes down to health in general.

26:58 - Speaker 1 Why should we care about foodways right now, Carly?

27:00 - Speaker 2 Yes, so 30 to 40% of the entire US food supply ends up in landfills, which is astonishing 30 to 40%. Yeah, and when people hear the statistics they're like it's the restaurants, it's the grocery stores. The largest percentage of that percent is consumer homes.

27:20 - Speaker 1 You and me people living at home- yeah, which is shocking.

27:24 - Speaker 2 And again, I don't want to put the burden on individuals, maybe not you anymore.

27:27 I'm not perfect, oh my goodness. I am no monolith for being zero waste. I'm a food blogger. This is the reason that I wanted to reduce waste in the first place, because I created a lot of it. So, of course, number one, this is an issue because of the environment. So the food ends up in the landfills. It emits a really powerful greenhouse gas called methane and, to put this into perspective, food waste actually creates more emissions than the entire airline industry.

27:56 - Speaker 1 So please say that again.

27:57 - Speaker 2 Yeah, food waste creates more emissions than the entire airline industry. So all of us up. Yeah, food waste creates more emissions than the entire airline industry. So all of us up in arms about, like Taylor Swift's flights, which she probably has no choice over anyway.

28:07 And then nobody. I just felt like nobody was talking about food waste. And then, with like to our conversation earlier, is it the money, is it the time? I mean, if we're throwing away hundreds of dollars of food per month, that is like a health crisis in and of itself. Like you can save so much money, I think in Canada especially, we've probably seen grocery prices jump 20, 30, maybe even 40 percent in the last five years and you can really kind of squeeze and narrow that gap with the inflation by being more cognizant about food waste. The average Canadian family wastes $1,700 of food per year, if not more, so that's over $100 per month.

28:51 - Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a cell phone bill, exactly your internet. That's something that you use every day. Most likely I was going to actually bring that stat up. You beat me to it, but I want to define food waste. Are we talking you know the packaging and stuff that food comes in? Or is it talking I accidentally made too much, I'm just throwing it away? Or the little bits and pieces of food that you know might be a vegetable that we're probably eating anyway, but we're not going to eat parts of it?

29:17 - Speaker 2 yeah, so we're talking specifically about the food wastage that could encompass, like the scraps, which we can talk about more about, but it is the actual food going. And then there is a discrepancy between food waste and food loss. So food loss is not even encompassed in this stat, but that's food that doesn't make it past harvest, right, it's just inevitably it never even reaches your plate yeah, it never even reaches the grocery store.

29:41 So there's like this whole food loss which, uh, the thing about it is, we're very I think it's very shocking to hear that consumers are wasting a lot, especially compared to grocery stores and farms and and um restaurants. But if you think about it at the end of the day, these places have like a bottom line. They have systems in place. They are checking to see like, okay, we lost this much. I don't think we're doing that in our homes, which is part of the crux of the issue, right.

30:13 - Speaker 1 Where might be an area someone, seemingly, is already more food cost conscious and food waste conscious that maybe through the research of your book or just doing it yourself for so many years, we you can maybe help them realize. Actually like good effort, but that's actually not as beneficial as you might think. Or here's a way, better way to do it, to put you on the path of your original goal.

30:36 - Speaker 2 So the thing I always say about food waste. I launched my series Scrappy Cooking on Instagram probably two and a half years ago, and this really started because I was looking at the food waste in my home and I'm like, how can we start a conversation about this? So I started posting really easy recipes that utilized food scraps. But really what I was trying to do was erupt a conversation about food waste and beyond being scrappy and like making pesto with radish tops and whichever else, which we can go more into the low-hanging fruit of reducing waste is actually not bringing the food into your home in the first place.

31:13 - Speaker 1 That what do you?

31:14 - Speaker 2 mean so just being way more intentional about the food that you're bringing in. So, sitting down on a sunday writing out your breakfast, lunch, dinner, what you're going to eat for the week Okay, I might have overnight oats for breakfast this week. I might have a curry, make a curry on Monday and then I'll take it for lunch Tuesday and then, before you head to the grocery store, shop your fridge and pantry, see what you have already on hand. Third step now create a shopping list, and what this is going to do is avoid that circumstance where you head into the grocery store. You've had a really exhausting, busy week. You're looking around, you're trying to buy fresh food because you're trying to be healthy, and then you don't have a plan for any of it. That is where we're running into issues. If you are going to start meal planning and being more intentional about the food that you're actually bringing in in the first place, you're 90% of there. You're the low hanging fruit, for lack of better, better term.

32:06 - Speaker 1 That's incredible. I wouldn't have even thought that to. To go idea, map out what you want to think, make a grocery list that's a thing where most people go and then you go grocery shopping. But I love that moment beforehand of go into your pantry, go into your fridge already. This is what I want for the week what do I got? What can I maybe get more creative with? I mean, that's a food waste. Great win. But also you're spending less money before you even get to the store.

32:29 - Speaker 2 Yeah and listen, like I was the worst offender before. I kind of put this into my own because I was constantly heading out. I would be recipe testing, right. So I would be like at the grocery store like, oh man, I want to make that an overnight oats recipe. Do I have oats at home? Meanwhile I had like seven bags of Bob's Red Mill oats already at home.

32:47 - Speaker 1 I feel like that is everyone.

32:49 - Speaker 2 I know the amount of bags of oatmeal.

32:51 - Speaker 1 I love oatmeal. I'm like, oh, I think I used it all. Then I have two bags.

32:55 - Speaker 2 Yeah. So another helpful tip is like if you're an organized person to have a nice pantry, you can even just snap a picture of your pantry or your fridge, so like you don't have to do it in the moment, but you can look. Okay, yeah, actually I do have oats or I do have this, because we're just we're overbuying and then what happens is the food goes bad and then it needs to get wasted and it sucks. It sucks even from a personal level because you're throwing money down the drain.

33:20 - Speaker 1 I love the aspect of organization. Walk us through briefly, please. How can becoming more organized in our refrigerator and in our pantry help us save more money and increase our health?

33:33 - Speaker 2 I mean I am so bad. I'm like not an organized person, I'm very much like a creative mind, so my pantry can sometimes be a huge mess. But I think one thing that has been helpful for me personally is when I do get my groceries home for the week, or I get, like my pantry items home for the week, I'll move anything I already have in my pantry to the front so that you're using the stuff that has already been sitting there for a while, rather than your your freshest food to use it up. The other huge tip to reduce food waste that I utilize in my home and to kind of clean out your fridge and start start anew is I'll make recipes that I like to call clean out the fridge recipes, and I actually have like 25 recipes in my new cookbook that are marked with kitchen raid badges and what this does is uh, enables you to kind of throw. They're like clean out the fridge like a stew you're gonna throw like a kitchen sink.

34:24 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, have your bell pepper.

34:26 - Speaker 2 Okay, this recipe calls for white beans, but I have chickpeas. That's fine. I think where a lot of people get stuck cooking is they want they don't know how to cook and then they want to follow a recipe to a tea, and the stakes are really low when you're cooking plant-based. 99 of the time you can make substitutions, especially if you're making like soups, stews, pastas, and I really want to empower people to be able to use up what they have, because that's a huge key here. So I would find a recipe that you really love and make it once a week at the end of the week and hopefully it's like a super stew and you're literally throwing every vegetable that you have that's about to go bad in that thing and then and then getting the nutrients from it, because there's a whole piece to this.

35:12 I always say, if you're going to start reducing your food waste, hopefully you start meal planning. You do. The tip I said you don't need a fancy cookbook for this. You literally just need a pen and paper to like write down a meal plan in a grid. Hopefully you start meal planning. Hopefully, when you get the food home, you start maybe doing a little prep. All of this is going to tie into a healthier you, because you're eating the food that you actually bought.

35:34 - Speaker 1 If we didn't have refrigeration, would your approach to nutrition change? Let's say, right now, refrigeration goes away. How would you go about reducing food waste and cost?

35:48 - Speaker 2 That's a question I've never been asked in my life.

35:51 - Speaker 1 That's what I like to hear.

35:53 - Speaker 2 Yeah, let me think on that. If we didn't have refrigeration, I'd have to grocery shop a lot more, because there's there's definitely items in my fridge that, like rely on the refrigeration to be safe, right? So I think then you would be. I don't know why I think of this, but I think about being in like Italy and like heading to the market every day and picking up items.

36:15 - Speaker 1 I was thinking the exact same thing. I feel like a lot of European, small town European countries still do, that they go to market every day for the food they're going to eat that day.

36:21 - Speaker 2 But isn't that kind of great? Because they're not buying a massive amount. They're not going to Costco. You know which? I love Costco. But you're going to Costco and you're like man, I'm going to buy, like this, three huge things of spinach.

36:37 - Speaker 1 Well, I'm just going to get one head of spinach. You're going to get one head of spinach, well-intentioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned, tensioned.

36:53 - Speaker 2 But it also creates barriers.

36:55 - Speaker 1 Wouldn't that be great. I'm thinking very idealistic here, you know, if we all had that choice, we all made that mindset shift to incorporate I mean, that's a whole lifestyle we're talking about To incorporate then you're ideally in an area where you can walk. You're walking to the market, walking to the farmer's market, walking to the grocery store, so you're getting more steps in which we all know is incredible for healthy composition, lowering blood sugar, reducing stress. You're outdoors so you get to connect with nature, get some sunlight, vitamin D. You're so much more conscious of your time, your resources, because you're having to map out everything for the day, and I feel like that might be the secret sauce right there.

37:35 - Speaker 2 So what you're talking about actually reminds me a lot about the Blue Zones Absolutely.

37:39 - Speaker 1 Yes, centenarians, they reminds me a lot about the Blue Zones. Absolutely yes, centenarians, they really do a lot of this.

37:42 - Speaker 2 And Dan Buehner, who's the founder of the Blue Zones, talks a lot about this that you need to build an environment around you that your default is like living a healthier life, so kind of exactly like walkable community farmer's market nearby.

37:57 - Speaker 1 I'm sure you carpool on the walk.

38:05 - Speaker 2 You probably meet and hang out with so many people on the way, exactly, exactly. All of that is like an idealistic environment, but the reality is that some of us do not live in places like that, like personally in Ontario, canada, it's it's, it's completely unpleasant to go outside for four or five months of the year.

38:19 I have to drive everywhere you know. So it's tough. It's tough to achieve that, but I think there are things that we can introduce in our lives that maybe make it easier. He even talks about how we have like everything we do like even down to having a Keurig in your house is so dialed in where you don't even have to get up to like turn on the lights. You're clapping now, and these micro movements that you built into your day really like help with your physical health, and now we're kind of like engineering them out, you know where we could just literally sit on the couch all day.

38:59 Order Instacart um clap to turn the lights on and off.

39:03 - Speaker 1 It's the movie Wally.

39:05 - Speaker 2 No.

39:06 - Speaker 1 Oh, it's what it's kind of about. Classic Disney Pixar animated movie about long story short. It's this robot that's rebuilding the world after humans have had to leave earth because we trashed it. And it's because of these, as darren would say, fatal conveniences yeah, these things that are we create to make our lives easier, but then we just get lazier and we get more overweight and we just then rely on machines to do everything for us. It's so adorable you got to check out the movie and I mean food.

39:33 - Speaker 2 Food ties into this huge like it's the convenience foods right. We've made it so easy to uber eats drive through a drive-thru. It's like so simple and and accessible that it makes you not want to sit down for 30 minutes and make a home-cooked meal I like to justify uber eats because I select the healthy category there you go. I know I look for the vegan category there's convenience and health.

39:59 - Speaker 1 They're damn sure isn't economics because I feel like the healthier an item that I purchased on Uber Eats and you know I'm sure we could get into it. You know we kind of did at the beginning about trying to eat. Healthier usually means you're spending more money.

40:11 - Speaker 2 Yeah.

40:12 - Speaker 1 It'll cost me more money to order a sweet green salad than to get something down the road, but I was going to ask you have you ever farmed or have you?

40:26 - Speaker 2 ever gardened. Um, can we get into that? Maybe a little bit Cause, then you can make the argument, you could go.

40:28 - Speaker 1 One could get away from your, even a step further of away from the grocery store, to just you do it all at home.

40:35 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I think I mean that's like so idealistic to me I was just when I was even driving around California, like in Ontario it's so barren, like we have a growing season of like a month and a half to two months and I just imagine like being able to go out in your backyard and pick like an orange or a lemon from a tree.

40:54 - Speaker 1 here come on down incredible, I know.

40:57 - Speaker 2 That's why I'm here yeah, I mean, in an ideal world we would all be in. It's such a. This all ties into kind of like a fallout of community right, because we were so individualistic and the keurig is a great example like one coffee, like we. If we were like communally helping each other and cooking meals and one person does the shopping whichever else, we would all probably be healthier. But we're very individualistic, we're very like go, go, go, go go and our health is sacrificed in the in the end turn.

41:30 - Speaker 1 Have you ever heard of Lettuce Grow?

41:32 - Speaker 2 Yes, this is Vertical Farm.

41:34 - Speaker 1 Yes, it's incredible we had Jacob on the show last year. Is he the founder?

41:37 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, we had Jacob on the show last year. Is he the founder? Yeah, yeah, I've heard. It's amazing, I have one at home.

41:40 - Speaker 1 It's great.

41:41 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I need one. I'm a little bit worried how it would fare in the winter, Because I even tried to have you ever sprouted before.

41:48 - Speaker 1 No.

41:49 - Speaker 2 Oh my gosh, you should have Doug Evans. He's a sprout king on this show.

41:53 - Speaker 1 I love sprouts, love sprouts, love, love I will introduce you.

41:57 - Speaker 2 You will be obsessed with him thank you would love to anybody.

42:01 - Speaker 1 I'm gonna give you a life-changing hack right now. You make a sandwich at home. You go get a sandwich, you put sprouts on that I know it's immediately like a game changer and they're so good for you.

42:11 - Speaker 2 Oh, so good so and sprouts are so easy to make, so I always tell people to start with lentil sprouts. So when we're talking about sprouts for anybody who, like doesn't know, if you think of like a hippie sandwich with those like broccoli or alfalfa sprouts, you can actually grow those at home and they're very cheap and it's so easy.

42:30 So I always tell people to start with lentil sprouts, because to me they're the easiest. So what you do is you just soak them in water overnight in a jar, then you drain them and rinse them and then you kind of like have to have the sprouts, draining and rinsing them every day and they'll start to sprout, literally sprout, and that is so nutrient dense and they have like a beautiful kind of nutty, bitter flavor. Great for sandwiches, great for salads. But the reason I was talking about this is I was trying to sprout in the dead of winter this year and like I just couldn't even get them going. It was so cold. So I worry about the lettuce grow.

43:06 But it's like it would work for yeah, it would work for like nine months of the year.

43:10 - Speaker 1 They have. Uh, you can do outdoors, which is where mine is, and they have an indoor. It's the same yeah, and they have like a special light ring you put on the top that shines down.

43:17 - Speaker 2 You can keep it inside yeah, I know that would be cool to be like.

43:21 - Speaker 1 It must feel good to like pick your greens and make a salad for yourself and it happens pretty quickly. You're like damn, like I did that.

43:29 - Speaker 2 It's pretty cool that's one thing I want to mention in this part of this conversation is like we are talking about. It reminded me when you said, like taking the leaves right off. The thing that is so underrated are frozen fruits and vegetables, and the reason being that a lot of people assume that frozen fruits and vegetables are less healthy than the fresh. And it might be in a place like California, but if you live somewhere where your food is imported, oftentimes it will happen when somebody harvests the berries or they harvest the vegetables, they'll be flash frozen right away, whereas your food, your fresh food, is often transported for days and days on trucks so it loses some of the nutrients. So that frozen food less food waste because you're keeping it in your freezer. It can taste great, depending on the meal that you're making. It's really accessible and often cheaper and just as nutrient dense, if not sometimes more.

44:24 - Speaker 1 So thus far we've been talking about some great ways to get more well, getting into the creative aspect of food, but just helping us understand the economics and time and mindset around the food choices we make. What you do is incredible, the way that you sourced seemingly random things and bringing them together. First of all, your Instagram account is just straight up food porn. It just I look at this stuff and I'm like, oh, like, what is that? I need that in my life. And then you, you, I dissect and you break down kind of I had this, I was cooking that and you know I threw this stuff together and then boom, boom, boom, it's this wild outlandish dish or something that looks so familiar and I can just tell it tastes so amazing. But just how you got there blows my mind when did all this come from?

45:02 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I grew up with no cooking experience. My friends from college laugh at me because I was a girl who came to college stocked with a freezer full of tater tots, mini pizzas, love to drink, and then I turned into this like health freak. And then I turned into this like health freak, plant-based vegan. So I think that is a testament that most people can do this like you can go from from not eating healthy food to being somebody who is very passionate about healthy food, and I always so my background's in journalism. So I've always been very curious person and I think I applied that when I started cooking to food. I would look at things and be like, okay, what can I do with this?

45:45 It really started with this desire to like look at my food. I grew up eating and make it plant-based and make it taste as good, in my opinion, as the meat versions. And then it's sort of. Once I heard about food waste, like that statistic that 30 to 40 percent of food goes to waste. Especially being passionate about the environment, I thought no one's talking about this. So that's where scrappy cooking was born, and scrappy cooking really is about utilizing commonly wasted foods. So I'm talking like broccoli stems, orange peels, radish chops all sorts of stuff into delicious recipes. But where it's really cool to me is like I think it erupts a conversation about food waste that we're not having.

46:25 - Speaker 1 A lot of what you share thus far has been very alarming, and I think, should someone choose to become more scrappy to your point with the food choices and recipes they're putting together, no doubt they're going to become a lot more aware of where did this come from, how much did it cost?

46:44 - Speaker 2 Man to think I used to just throw this away.

46:45 - Speaker 1 It's kind of that, that aha moment we're talking about. What was another aha moment you had when you started this journey? Maybe a recent one of this is something that is just seems so stupidly obvious and easy. Why isn't everyone doing this? What is one of those go-to dishes?

47:00 - Speaker 2 Yeah. So when I think about the one of the first scrappy recipes I made was with broccoli stems and I had been brawling broccoli, for like broccoli stems, oh no I confession on air.

47:13 - Speaker 1 I, when I'm making broccoli not if I get the florets I still cut off the little, any little stems I throw them away.

47:19 - Speaker 2 So I was so shocked and that was like a light bulb moment. I'm like what are we throwing out elsewhere that I don't know about? You know that that as a culture, we're just discarding without knowing so. The broccoli stems is a big one. You should try broccoli stem fries. I have a recipe on my page. They're very good. So you cut them into like matchsticks, you put them in breadcrumbs. Everything tastes good in breadcrumbs. They almost taste like asparagus.

47:42 - Speaker 1 Everything tastes good in breadcrumbs. I love that. The other thing you can do with them.

47:46 - Speaker 2 Which you might prefer is you can grate them into like a slaw.

47:50 - Speaker 1 So if you're having like a, like a coleslaw.

48:00 - Speaker 2 So I have like a citrus and you would not even know there's broccoli stems in them. The other one that I was throwing out before I pursued my scrappy journey was beet tops and radish tops, which is so weird to me now because they're just like a chard or like almost like a kale, so you can chop them up, put them in salads, but you can also make them into sauces. So I have this great I call it scrappy pesto and it's basically replacing the basil in like a vegan pesto recipe with cashews, nutritional yeast garlic and you put any green in it. So radish chops are delicious and you just blend it up and I think it's just a great way to use up greens. You can put that on pasta, you can put it, use it as a dip and which else?

48:34 Coffee grounds. So I make a great, like I. I'm a coffee, I'm obsessed, so we make coffee every morning and there's so many things you can do with the spent coffee grounds. So one of them I have a great coffee ground granola recipe. So spent coffee grounds actually enhance the flavor of chocolate. They're totally edible. But the other thing, if you don't want to eat them, you can put them in your fridge in an open bowl and it will act as a natural deodorizer no way, really, really.

48:57 - Speaker 1 So just like baking soda.

48:58 - Speaker 2 No more baking soda, yeah, so we'll like suck it up and you could do like you could be using them constantly. You're going to end up composting them, but I think it's like nice to have new life. The other thing you can do, and again back to our earlier point of, like me, not really growing my own vegetables. I'm not an expert, so, but they will also grow some plants, so you'll want to Google.

49:25 - Speaker 1 Do your research.

49:26 - Speaker 2 I'm sure your area depends.

49:28 - Speaker 1 I've also heard that used coffee grounds make a good kind of make a little perimeter outside your house and it kind of helps repel a lot of insects.

49:34 - Speaker 2 Oh, I haven't heard that one.

49:35 - Speaker 1 Yeah. So you kind of just make a little mound like a tiny little perimeter or maybe depending on how big your yard is, and I think it's supposed to kind of help thwart certain insects, particularly the ants.

49:45 - Speaker 2 It would make sense, and then it's just like the flavor. It can really enhance flavor if you're wanting to and you can really you can do the same thing with tea leaves. So a lot of people like. If you drink tea, you can like cut open the tea bag and then use the leaves in like cakes or whichever else.

50:00 - Speaker 1 Especially Earl Grey is delicious right, all right, all right, I like that. Okay. So now, what about the most outlandish dish? What is one, maybe, that you still haven't been able to conquer? You've been trying? Have you got something you can share, or one that is just wow. This is what we're really putting the elbow grease in.

50:20 - Speaker 2 I'll give you two. So the one that people are always like most shocked by is banana peels. So what?

50:24 - Speaker 1 can I do?

50:24 - Speaker 2 yeah, so you can make banana peel bacon. What? So? What you're gonna do is marinate your banana peels literally the peels. You're gonna cut them into like bacon strips, scoop out some of the flesh and marinate them in like a soy sauce, liquid, smoke, maple syrup marinade, and then you're going to bake them up and I'm telling you it is a great vegan bacon substitute. If you're not somebody who eats wants to eat their banana peels, I don't blame you. Again, this is really to facilitate a conversation about food waste is.

50:59 You can also soak the banana peels in water. They're rich in phosphorus, potassium and they again can act as a plant fertilizer Not sure which plants, not the expert, but I know that some people do that. And then the one I haven't been able to conquer is avocado pits and peels. So you can't eat the avocado pits, I don't think, and you can't eat the peels. And before I eat any scrap, I always do like a thorough Google search to make sure it's edible, because I don't want anybody getting sick. And so we've tested a couple of things, but I don't think it's edible. And the one thing I see people do with them the pits and the skins is they'll soak them in water like a huge stock pot and they'll make a natural food dye. So, interestingly enough, the skins and the pits of avocados will dye things pink, pink and purple.

51:51 - Speaker 1 Isn't that weird? No, isn't that weird yeah wow I got more.

51:56 - Speaker 2 Let me think about what else we've been. Mango skins are really hard. You can make date coffee. So if you're somebody who eats dates a lot, this is like a ancient recipe from the Middle East. But what you can do is I bet my wife's family knows this.

52:10 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, potentially A lot of dates. Yeah, so you can bake up the date seeds and then grind them.

52:15 - Speaker 2 So you can bake up the date seeds and then grind them. This can break a crappy coffee grinder. So you want like a heavy duty or you can use like a grinder hand, do it and then you can make tea from it. So it's kind of reminiscent of coffee, kind of reminiscent of tea. It doesn't have caffeine in it, but great use, interesting, yeah, great use of the date seeds.

52:37 - Speaker 1 I'm going to go home, open up my refrigerator and what do you think me and most other people probably have waiting for them in their fridge that, let's be honest, they're probably just they're trying to do the right thing and tell themselves I'm going to get to this later, it's a leftover, but you're never going to get to it and you're going to throw it away. What do you think are the most common things in the fridge that I we can actually do something with today?

53:00 It's always the wilting box of spinach in the back of the fridge.

53:02 - Speaker 2 It's always, and I mean I'm guilty as well. Like it's, it's hard, but the number one thing I say to people is like, if you've got that wilting box of spinach in the back of the fridge and I always like to talk about this on podcasts I am not a proponent for eating food that has mold or has spoiled- Of, of course.

53:19 - Speaker 1 Look, I love mushrooms, but not that kind yeah.

53:22 - Speaker 2 So like you, once there's once your spinach stinks like it's time for it to go, you know. But if it's like you know, you're not going to get to it the next day. You're like, oh, it's about to go off. What I tell people is you can chuck it in the freezer and you can use it for smoothies, or you can take it one step further blend it up with some coconut water and some chia seeds, put it in an ice cube tray and then you have smoothie bombs so then you can just add them to smoothies and they'll actually act as like a thickener.

53:47 so that's a really great way to utilize your spinach. I mean, spinach is a great one, too, for cooking anything like a stew or a soup or curry. It will, like shrink down into nothing if you want to put handfuls in it. So if you're wanting to get rid of it, thinking about that as well, I think, what a lot of people often have, so bread is actually the number one world's most wasted food, really, yeah, and it's often, I think, because people buy bread and then it can go hard really quickly. So there's a million ways to use stale bread, and you'll often even see recipes call for stale bread but breadcrumbs.

54:20 - Speaker 1 I was going to say it's got to be breadcrumbs, right.

54:21 - Speaker 2 Breadcrumbs you can make like a panzanella salad, so that's like a delicious bread salad where it's basically like a crouton salad Delicious you can make croutons with it. And then one thing I love to do with it I have this stale bread French toast casserole. I call it last week's loaf breakfast casserole. It's like French toast. You'll make like a custard out of vegan yogurt and almond milk, a little turmeric, and pour that over the stale bread and then bake it and you've got like a meal prep situation for the week and the bread's rehydrated.

54:52 - Speaker 1 Wow, I've heard you mentioned a couple of times. You know you're putting things into a blender, we're grading something where we're changing the entire look and feel of the food, which I think is a great point to make, because, odds are, we look at food. We're like what I see is what I think I can get, but that's not necessarily the case.

55:09 - Speaker 2 Yeah, you can transform it. One great one that always shocks people is onion and garlic peels. You can dehydrate them and then grind them up into a powder and make a seasoning just like garlic or onion powder.

55:20 - Speaker 1 And seasoning is expensive.

55:22 - Speaker 2 Seasoning is expensive. My grocery bill goes through the roof anytime I need to buy new seasons.

55:26 - Speaker 1 I know it's crazy.

55:27 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. And the other thing you can do, which I recommend to everybody who is just cooking in their kitchen and I learned this from Rachel Ray is every time you're making prep, you put a bowl beside you and you add all of your scraps to the bowl. So your onion, your garlic peels, whatever else you're cooking that day you want to stay away from cruciferous because it can change the flavor. But then, once they're in a, once you've got a full thing, put them in a freezer bag, put them in your freezer and then, once that's full, you can make your own broth. So you literally just dump all your scraps into a pot, you add a whole bunch of water I like to add a little turmeric seasonings and you can make your own like really mineral, dense broth out of the scraps. Of course, you're ultimately composting these at the end, but I think it's adding new life and also, broth is not cheap either no.

56:18 So it's another great way to make your own.

56:21 - Speaker 1 I've also heard you mentioned now a couple of times turmeric. Is that your go-to spice? What are some go-to spices you think we could get to really help enhance the flavor or to zhuzh up these scrappy recipes?

56:31 - Speaker 2 You know why I use turmeric a lot is the color and it's so good for you Like if you pair it with black pepper.

56:38 So I do use it a lot, but like it can go a long way for something like this broth that we're talking about, like to add a yellow color that almost looks like the broth that you're buying from the store. Other spices I use all the time would be like paprika, garlic, onion powder. Those are like the main four turmeric, black pepper, salt. I mean people undersalt their food often. I mean it's so personal. It's really funny because inevitably I read, like the amazon, reviews of my cookbooks and there'll be one person who's screaming like you didn't use enough salt, or another person like too much salt.

57:11 I feel like salt is such a personal thing, but oftentimes if you like get to the end of a dish, it comes down to salt, fat, acid, heat. And if you get to the end of a dish and this is a great cooking tip that I truly did not invent but you you taste a soup and you're like it's missing something, you want to probably start with salt. Maybe add a little lemon juice, add a little spice, maybe some like chili flakes and in fat. So so either olive oil, sesame oil is a great garnish and it will enhance the flavor by spades.

57:44 - Speaker 1 My family growing up for a while was in the restaurant business. We had coffee houses and a steakhouse.

57:49 - Speaker 2 Oh, that's cool.

57:50 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and so I really I got to do everything. I was around the coffee grounds, I was picking up trash, I was in the kitchen bus boy, you name it. I did it. And in our steakhouse it's a pretty high in steakhouse we had a great chef and he taught me this amazing trick. I still use a lot today to desalinate, to pull salt out of a dish like a soup or stew or something you put a potato in. Yes, I've done that before It'll extract. It's crazy yeah.

58:11 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it can save your dish and this is the thing that made me fall in love with plant-based cooking is you? The steaks are so low because you're not worried about like overcooking your steak, you're not worried about like salmonella from the chicken. You make a soup and it's like too salty, add a bit more broth or add a potato, like you just said. If it's undersalted, you can add more salt, like you can usually save it.

58:36 - Speaker 1 You know there's going to be some mishaps, but the ste low and I think it can be a great place to start if somebody's never cooked a meal, to try plant-based cooking, because it can be a lot of fun. What is your go-to dish for total satisfaction, and by that I mean it satisfies a craving. But also we all kind of have those dishes that just man just feels like home or makes you just feel so happy. Do you have have one or two that are yours?

59:00 - Speaker 2 Yes. So my number one that I make like probably every week I love red curry, and this love affair with red curry started I went to Thailand in about 2016,. Right when I had really like started getting into plant-based food and I took a cooking class there with my husband my now husband and the cooking class instructor was so great because there's usually fish sauce and red curry, but she helped me like make it vegan and ever since then, oh my goodness, I'm just like love the flavors, love the fattiness of the dish, love that you can utilize like a look in my fridge and see like half a bell pepper or spinach or kale and like you can put that all in like a bell pepper or spinach or kale, and like you can put that all in like a red, beautiful red curry dish. So that's the number one. I also am a huge pasta lover, so I'll make like a vegan bolognese or a ragu a lot.

59:51 - Speaker 1 And my body weight in spaghetti last night. Yeah, like I love pasta.

59:55 - Speaker 2 Um, we make that every week and I always recommend that as a good kind of clean out the fridge dish. So what I'll do is add all the veggies to a food processor. So I'm talking garlic, onion, carrot, celery, bell peppers. Grind them up into mushrooms are great for this too. Even if you don't like mushrooms, you'll never detect them in this dish. Grind them up, add them to a pan with some tomato paste, little broth, little spices, and then saute it down to like a veggie ground. I'll even sometimes throw a block of extra firm tofu in the food processor as well and add that for extra protein and then add a jar of tomato sauce and you've got like a beautiful vegan meat sauce and you've just utilized like so many different vegetables and I see a lot of people do this with meat as well Like you can.

01:00:42 - Speaker 1 That sounds amazing. I would love to add that to my ground beef.

01:00:45 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, but like what a great way to get veggies and fiber Fiber man, absolutely.

01:00:50 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it's your last dish. Oh gosh, there's an asteroid coming to Earth tomorrow and you've got dinner to cook that's like choosing a favorite child Um well, we all know there's one favorite child.

01:01:08 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah, my last dish you know what, for some reason right now, like if I had to choose, I'm really craving pesto. So I think I would do like a pesto pasta, lots of basil, and I would bake it with cashews to make it kind of creamy. Oh, my favorite recipe in my new cookbook is a lemon peel pesto. So you replace the basil with lemon peels.

01:01:33 - Speaker 1 Oh, it's so good, I'm a pesto girl. Pesto life, pesto life, yes.

01:01:37 - Speaker 2 And pasta. So that would be. It would be some sort of how about you, I'm going to guess a steak with mushrooms?

01:01:44 - Speaker 1 Yeah, that would either be a fat nice steak or a pasta dish.

01:01:48 - Speaker 2 Okay, or both.

01:01:50 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, if it's the end of the world, why not? Let's have it all. So I mentioned earlier my wife's Persian.

01:01:55 - Speaker 2 Yeah.

01:01:56 - Speaker 1 And I have fallen in love with Middle Eastern cuisine. Persian food is so good I would probably go steak with a pasta, and my wife's grandmother makes this dish called halim and it's basically glorified oatmeal. But it takes forever to make properly because it's stewed with like minced and shredded.

01:02:15 - Speaker 2 I feel like I've seen this before. Yeah.

01:02:17 - Speaker 1 I'm a big hearty guy. I see oatmeal, I got oatmeal at the wazoo I would love that dish.

01:02:21 - Speaker 2 It's like a savory oatmeal Very, very, very cool.

01:02:24 - Speaker 1 Yeah, they normally put a lot of sugar on it. I don't use any sugar I douse it with cinnamon. So good.

01:02:31 - Speaker 2 That's like an interesting flavor combination.

01:02:34 - Speaker 1 It is. I love rich, hearty meals, oatmeal, stews, rooted vegetables. I want to kind of help the audience out in a couple of ways. A first date dish Someone you got. Oh yeah. A first date dish someone you got oh yeah, you're just significant. Other new person, first dates coming over to your place. You're cooking. You're like crap, I don't have time to go to the grocery store, only got common things in my fridge.

01:02:53 - Speaker 2 What's a great first date scrappy dish great first date scrappy dish, so one I would recommend is vodka penne, so that includes just tomato paste. I use coconut milk. If you're not vegan, you could use cream and vodka or lemon juice and penne pasta and it's amazing. And one scrappy tip for that one is I like to use broccolini in it. And if you're ever somebody who's adding broccoli to pasta or broccolini, what you can do is just add it in the pot with the pasta while you're cooking it, two minutes before you're done, and it will like blanch the broccoli. Yeah, so it'll cook the broccoli, so you're not having to use a separate pan and you're not using more water or whatever else and then drain it, add it to that sauce and you're good to go All right.

01:03:39 - Speaker 1 What about a scrappy dish for the parent that is really trying to get their kid, their young kid, to eat their vegetables and to eat a healthy meal? But also time is a huge concern.

01:03:49 - Speaker 2 I have this rock, your Brock, mac and cheese. And what you do is you actually grade an entire broccoli stem and the florets into the, into the mac and cheese, and you can. I have a mac and cheese powder that you can make and it's actually made out of oats and nutritional yeast, so you can have that in your cupboard and then, like, add it to just some cooked pasta with some pasta water, little vegan butter.

01:04:11 - Speaker 1 It's really good I have one more idea here scrappy dish for that hangover sunday oh yes what is? What is something maybe that's going to really help nourish our bodies and we don't have a lot of energy to create, but we need something.

01:04:27 - Speaker 2 Scrappy dish for the hangover Sunday. So I have these great and I mean I don't know if you'd want to I have like a two ingredient magic bread that's made with you've probably seen this type of thing before, but it's made with flour and yogurt, but you I and I use vegan yogurt and you make like I'm thinking pizza. So you make like a little, uh, almost like a non and then you add like tomato sauce, vegan cheese and veggies on it and pop it in the oven. That would be like my hangover meal, but I probably would just like use a literal non rather than make the bread from scratch, although in the cookbook we're making it. I was gonna ask what's your hangover meal?

01:05:07 whenever I've got a little too excited the night before, usually gravitate towards pho, yeah soup yes what's a scrappy pho rendition yeah, I have a lot of, so I have a great clean out the fridge ramen or something like that, and it's again a turmeric broth with soy milk, so it's nice and high in protein. I we use a lot of coconut milk and plant-based cooking so I wanted to use an alternative. But you start by like sauteing some onion, garlic and ginger. Ginger is a great aromatic to add a lot of flavor to food and great if you have a hangover because you feel like it's great for digestion.

01:05:40 It'll like kind of get your eyes watering a bit. So you start by sauteing those a little bit of oil and then you add turmeric as well and then you add soy milk. So unsweetened soy milk is the base and it's like a creamy ramen and I like to do you can use ramen noodles or brown rice noodles and then you can just literally pick and choose what you want to put on top. So I like like chopped bok choy, tofu, grated carrot and that makes like a beautiful ramen that's going to make your eyes water a little bit with that ginger and turmeric.

01:06:12 - Speaker 1 I love ramen. So, kind of getting towards the end here, I just want to, you know, credit your work and everything you've been doing to kind of help bring fun, time-saving, money-saving things to the kitchen for us again. I got to ask where does all this creativity come from? Because you're not a classically trained chef, you're a journalist and it seems like he kind of just happened across all of this. Where do you get this creativity from?

01:06:35 - Speaker 2 I think I've always just sort of been this way. I remember when I was even a teenager I'd be starting like trying to start little online businesses and always a bit of a drama kid and stuff like that. So once I found an area that I could put all of this kind of creative energy into, it was just it just like took off and I felt so aligned. So the creativity I mean. My dad is definitely kind of like that as well. I remember growing up he was always like he's a firefighter, but he would always. He went to film school and he would always be like oh what if I start a business doing this? Like just ideas all the time and like wacky things and scrappy things. Like I went over to the house the other day and he was marinating potato peels and pickle juice Like he's very Potato peels and pickle juice.

01:07:26 And yeah, I do this all the time. What?

01:07:27 - Speaker 1 a mad scientist.

01:07:28 - Speaker 2 With potatoes themselves, but I hadn't done them with the potato peels. He was making like crisps and they were absolutely delicious but he's like very, so I'm sure that kind of got passed on, but that's my favorite part of my job. Everybody has a favorite part of their job and for me, like I love the almost mad scientist aspect of like creation in the kitchen. If I could spend all day doing that sort of stuff.

01:07:53 - Speaker 1 Besides picking, you're closing their eyes, flipping to a page in the book or looking at your Instagram. What would you say to the person that is going to go? I'm not that creative. Yeah, you maybe said a few things that are pretty easy to do, but putting it all together I get lost. I don't know what to do. How would you advise somebody else like that to tap into their creative side, to save money, to not waste food and to just, you know, kind of feel good about what they're doing?

01:08:17 - Speaker 2 I always say whenever I'm advising people to do whatever from a dietary perspective, it's one meal at a time. I think you can really have a lot of fun when you don't take on too much, like I see. So many people say like, oh, I'm gonna be vegan now right that's not usually a successful way of going vegan.

01:08:38 you have to look at it okay, on monday night, we're gonna try cooking a vegan meal together as a family. We're going to make a recipe out of this cookbook or this pinterest page or this instagram page and it's going to try cooking a vegan meal together as a family. We're going to make a recipe out of this cookbook or this Pinterest page or this Instagram page, and it's going to be like a fun date night or a fun like solo night or fun with the family, and I think that's a great place to start. It doesn't have to be like okay, my entire lifestyle has shifted. Like that it's.

01:09:02 - Speaker 1 it's one meal at a time, all right, right, one more question before I get to my final. Over the last year or so, how you do this and on the platform that you do it excuse me, particularly instagram has really grown a lot, and with any growth in any area, but especially when we look at nutrition and food world. I come from the health and wellness scene, so I've seen this a lot. With more growth comes more haters, comes more people that are just so kind to share with you their deepest, darkest, angry emotions around what you're doing, even though what you're providing most part is free, as you have grown and as your, I'm assuming, intention has also been to grow to provide more ways to be more cost-effective and waste less food for people. What has been some of the feedback and how you've been navigating some of the dogmatic people in the nutrition and food scene?

01:09:55 - Speaker 2 It's so funny, Like the haters I get on Instagram. They're always just commenting things like bacon, like on my posts. Just bacon, just bacon, yeah like or like I'm gonna eat more bacon to make up for everybody who's eating this vegan meal. Like stupid stuff and it's like you have to think what. Like I'm not going and like commenting on somebody cooking ribs and being like broccoli, like it's super weird, uh, so I don't know I'm gonna go eat an entire garden of broccoli for every short rib you cook so it's weird.

01:10:32 I you know, I've been doing this since 2016 and you grow a certain skin and it just, I gotta say, especially it's been a weird year for me. I think that that stuff just doesn't bug me. I'm so I also feel, so rooted in that like, at the end of the day, I just want people to eat more plants. I'm not here to, like, spread misinformation or um, it's not about me versus you.

01:11:05 - Speaker 1 It's about like this has benefit.

01:11:06 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I just want people to eat more plants and I feel so strongly about that and I feel like there's not, it's it, there's nothing that can really touch that to me.

01:11:18 - Speaker 1 So you definitely don't seem phased here with you. So, uh, everybody out there yelling bacon, just go away, but also come out of here. It's fine, she's good. Well, carly, this has been great. Thank you so much for your time and so great to finally connect with you in person. We've been, you know, getting to know each other more the last few months now, and I'm so glad you're here and congratulations to everything again.

01:11:42 - Speaker 2 This was great, thank you. You're very welcome this was my first in-person podcast for anybody who's listening and like what a great one to start with, because you were just absolutely very um, unique questions and such a fun conversation, yeah.

01:11:54 - Speaker 1 Thank you, thank you, and so now I got a race to get this out before anybody else releases their first live podcast or first in-person, first released in person. But the last question, to bring it home to the theme of the show this information every person to have sit down on the chair is helpful to me to help me move forward in an area or many areas of my life, but to help the audience keep moving forward to live a life ever forward. What does that mean to you? How do you kind of define or describe those two words?

01:12:21 - Speaker 2 I think this applies to my life right now. I think I've been going through a really tough time in life and I had to wake up and think to myself okay, what is one thing I can do today to get myself out of bed and progress my life and I think that's whatever forward means to me is that, like it doesn't have to kind of to our earlier conversation, it doesn't have to be an entire lifestyle switch. I don't need to suddenly be this like if I am vegan, but if you're not vegan, you don't suddenly have to be vegan. It's a one thing at a time and one consistent thing every day can make a massive difference in your life.

01:13:04 - Speaker 1 So true, so true. Thank you again. There's never a right or wrong answer. I say I always appreciate every one of my guests' interpretation and you know, also a goal of mine is I hope that you get to walk away from today kind of just having what you do and how you do it through a different lens, through my lens and the Everford lens here today. Hopefully you can take that and move forward in your life.

01:13:23 - Speaker 2 I love it.