SALT PIG
Lukas and Ellie really hate washing greens. We may be two professional cookbook writers, but when the aprons come off, we eat quesadillas for dinner more often than we might like to admit. Real home cooking is improvisational, intimate, surprising, creative, sometimes mundane, sometimes memorable, and always best when debriefed with a pal. Topics include: dried mushrooms and where to use them, making stock out of arguable trash, the joy of broccoli pancakes, what not to bring to a dinner party, how we really clean our cast iron pans (even when people say not to), gauging the lifelessness of one’s sourdough starter, and a seemingly neverending discussion on how to pronounce fricassee. Join us as we get together to break down the flops, the good enoughs, and the pleasures and hilarity of home kitchen life.
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Elinor Hutton has been a writer, ghostwriter, editor, and publishing and culinary consultant since 2010. She’s worked on more than 25 books to date, including four New York Times bestsellers, most recently as the co-author of Gisele Bündchen’s Nourish. She’s also judged the James Beard awards twice, ran the test kitchen for a meal-kit company, and has worked in book packaging and design.
Lukas Volger is the author of six cookbooks, including Start Simple and Bowl, and has collaborated on numerous other cookbooks, including two New York Times bestsellers. Previously, he co-founded the award-winning queer food journal Jarry, and created a line of premium, fresh, and locally made veggie burgers called Made by Lukas. He lives in Brooklyn. www.lukasvolger.com
SALT PIG
Food for Resetting
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Welcome to Salt Pig! Given our perpetual professional exposure to wellness culture, this week we discuss what healthier cooking means in our kitchens on a day-to-day basis. Topics range from food hangovers in your 40s and the power of data from wearables, to the pleasures of raw vegetables and the previously scorned superfoods we now consider everyday ingredients. Even when you are enthusiastic about healthier eating, making it stick can be challenging. It comes back to the question we ask ourselves after every vacation: how can we feel nourished but still enjoy every bite?
Discussed in this episode:
Welcome to Salt Pig, where two cookbook writers chat about the ups and downs of actual home kitchen life. What are we talking about this week, Ellie?
SPEAKER_03We're talking about reset foods, the foods that are super nutritious and the type that you crave after maybe celebratory weekends or some vacations, some time away from the kitchen. Sometimes you just want to get back and eat some really nutrient-dense stuff. Yeah, and how how our idea of what healthy food is and how that's changed over the years, I think I definitely think about it differently than I did even like 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I feel like it's become much more of a focus for me as I've gotten older.
SPEAKER_03Definitely. Yeah. Supporting those 40-year-old 40-somethings 40-somethings.
SPEAKER_00Take whatever we can get.
SPEAKER_03For sure.
SPEAKER_00You can find new and old episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. And check us out on Substack2 at saltpig.substack.com. And there you can sign up for our monthly newsletter, The Chomp. All right, let's get started.
SPEAKER_03So I know you were away this weekend too, and I want to hear about your weekend, but um I wanted to, you know, we had this wedding to go to in Virginia this weekend. It was like such a blast. It was so fun to see all these people. This is this my best friend from preschool who were still friends, and we went to her wedding to this wonderful guy, and everything was great. Um, and we ate so many treats all weekend. I mean, it was just like, you know, platters of cookies and cake and late night pizza and like, you know, like sitting around the fire and like have another slice of pizza and like just all this treats, so many treats. Um, and the kids, we dropped the kids off with um my in-laws, and I think they just had a weekend of like total treat euphoria. It's amazing for them. They have so much fun. But yeah, by the time we all got home yesterday, I was like, man, we need Tom and I were like brainstorming. We were like, we need some reset food, we need some like some serious vegetables, we need some, you know, everything, everything we can throw at it to like get ourselves back in the swing of things.
SPEAKER_00What did you fix?
SPEAKER_03I mean, uh last night I made some stir fry where I was just like perfect, yeah. Piles of broccoli, peppers, onions. I put in a tiny bit of steak, which isn't really especially in that realm, but it was actually such a small amount, and I was like, it sort of got everyone over the line. But I was like, I just want to be like scooping piles of vegetables onto like this bed of brown rice and just be crunching through it. Like there's also something about the vegetables not being like super cooked, yep, that felt really satisfying. I was like roughage. Yeah, the roughage. I was like, I want to be like crunching through this and feeling like the sort of sparkle of all these vitamins like distributing through my body. So that felt a lot better. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I just crave a salad. I want like raw, crunchy lettuce, I want the radishes, I want like bitter flavors and stuff.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00And that's that's what feels so nourishing in those moments when you need like the the reset.
SPEAKER_03Yes. I remember once Tom and I were in New Orleans for um, I think it was actually for my birthday, like years ago before we had children. And I mean, New Orleans is like so fun to eat. It's such a great eating town, and we were just like going for it. And I remember um like after, you know, a few days in New Orleans, and then we like went like sort of into the bayou, and we were like in I think we were in Lafayette or one of the towns like instead of western Louisiana. And I was like, enough is enough. I need a salad. I need a salad like more than I've ever needed in my life. So we went to this restaurant that was like not a salad restaurant, but I was like, I'm just I'm really gonna try not to be tempted to get like the Cajun pasta or the whatever gum like bowls of gumbo and all this stuff. I was like, I'm just getting a salad. And it was like sort of a jazzy salad, so I was like, this is gonna be great for dinner. And it came and it literally had these, you know, like when you get like walnuts in like a ice cream sundae?
SPEAKER_00Oh, like where they're like with the brown sugar, praline, praline sort of coated.
SPEAKER_03But it's it's also like literally in like a syrup.
SPEAKER_00Oh, wow, no.
SPEAKER_03These this salad was like, it was like iceberg lettuce and some other like some grated cheese, like a bunch of stuff where I was like, this is not exactly what I had in mind. It's like grated cheese and pieces of bacon and like some pieces of like fried chicken on it, but then it also was topped off with literally these like wet walnuts in sort of this syrup on top of the salad. And I was like, this is the craziest thing I've ever eaten. And it's absolutely not the like cleansing salad experience that I wanted. But was it good? You know, it was kind of too much. It I was like having a piece of lettuce with like some syrup on it is pretty weird. Turns out. Yeah, it felt like it was I mean, I I guess I my guess actually is that someone was trying to candy them and they just didn't do it exactly right. So it it it was a little looser than they wanted it to be. Yeah. So it was just like sort of this sludge sort of s slipping into my salad.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh gosh. I was like makes you yeah.
SPEAKER_03They're not I mean, it who goes to Louisiana and eats salad? It's just a bad move. Of course. It's just a bad move.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I feel like some of one of the interesting things about our line of work, or at least for the types of projects that I've worked on, is you start to realize like how subjective health is, like what a healthy meal is, or what a sort of reset meal is or what's nourishing and how regional it is. Like there's a project I have been working on for a while now. I'm still working with this person, but it's like Gulf area food, like Gulf, the Gulf of America, or what no, what Gulf of Mexico. My god, did I just say that? We're editing that out.
SPEAKER_03Gulf of You're like, I do not subscribe to that.
SPEAKER_00I was just gonna say Gulf food, and then I was like, well, let me just specify which Gulf we're talking about. But um in my mind, it's like there's just like so much cream and everything, and there's always it always kind of like begins with rendering some smoked meat and um like that. It's just so meaty in general. Yeah. And then like a reset meal, or what what in the context of this project might be like a healthy meal is like some kind of soup, but it's like a really cheesy cream-based soup. And in my mind, I'm like I'm kind of on the same page as you where I just I want like I I my mind goes like Mediterranean, I guess. Yeah. Where it's like a lot of fresh vegetables, uh lightly dressed, um, get like a hard-boiled egg in there, maybe some kind of like some poached chicken or shrimp or like tofu or like a lean type of protein.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's kind of what I want.
SPEAKER_03Unadulterated, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And then other ones, I've other things I've worked on where it's like it's a it's a raw foods diet, where the reset meal is like raw foods, or it's like very, it's very specific around and and this is in the scope of what I would think is already a pretty exacting, like health-oriented type of diet. Yeah. So like there's a reset meal within this scope of like already what everything feels like a reset meal, you know?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. And then it has to be raw, like then it's a very good thing.
SPEAKER_00And then yeah, then it's like taking it to an extra extreme, exactly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. I mean, raw food, I love raw food and I do crave it after these rich meals, but the idea of having an entirely like a raw food diet.
SPEAKER_00I I don't think that it's actually the science holds up to it either, from what I've well, what am I talking about? But I I feel like it was sort of a fad for a little while, but yeah, yeah. You know there are like a lot of vegetables that the nutrients become more available to us in their cook state, so it's not like um it's always the best way to be consuming certain vegetables.
SPEAKER_03Right. That's true. Yeah, like what what are those vegetables that you know of?
SPEAKER_00Like carrots, for example. Oh the um I don't know if it's the beta-carotene or which is like what converts to like vitamin A in our bodies. Um I think it's they it's more bioavailable in its cooked state than it is in its roster. I wish I could just hold on to this type of information. But it goes I like I have it as long as I need it, and then I'm like release. I don't need to I hear that.
SPEAKER_02Especially if the takeaway is like, oh, cooked carrots are good too. You're like great. Exactly.
unknownCooked carrots.
SPEAKER_00No, and I was just reading something because I was thinking about you last night. I was making these like a veggie meatball sort of thing that involved a full package of frozen spinach. Yeah. And um I squeezed it dry because it was gonna be going into this meatball thing, and I didn't want, you know, I needed to hold its shape and everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so we talked about that before, and I think this is even on a project where one of your notes on my recipe, I instruct it to like squeeze the moisture out, and then this was going into a soup. And so you're like, why are you squeezing the moisture out if it's just going into a wet soup? And also, like, are you losing a bunch of nutrients that way? Which I was not able to find out in the last like you know, since this happened and and right now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00If there are nutrients lost, but I did learn that cooking spinach does make some of its nutrients more by it. Well, no, it doesn't necessarily make them more viable. It's a specific oxlaxic acid or something that it removes by cooking. Oh. So it not it's not to say that it's like healthier or less healthy in one way, but there are certain advantages to cooking it.
SPEAKER_03So that makes it more available for us to maybe accessing those vitamins or something. Yes, exactly. Interesting. So what were the veggie meatballs?
SPEAKER_00So I'm um wanting to make a meatball, it's like a turkey meatball, but it's like half turkey and then half vegetables. I used to do this sometimes when I had this veggie burger company, um, like a packed veggie burger mix that you could shape them into patties and then cook them off. And um, I would recommend to people that they take a package of this veggie burger mix and then a pound of ground meat or whatever and mix them together, and you have like a veggie-oriented hamburger meatball, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_03Great idea.
SPEAKER_00So it's kind of um building on that idea.
SPEAKER_03Oh, cool. That sounds great. I should do that more because it is like every time you add veggies to meatballs or any like ground meat thing, it's it's such a great way to insert some nutrition and no one really notices. And in fact, it could sometimes make it a lot better because it's a little bit like a little less dense, a little softer, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00In fact, that was my note from the recipe. I was like, how do I make this so that it's got a little bit less of a soft texture? It was it held its shape totally fine, but it was a little bit soft.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, could use a little more texture. Huh. Interesting. Well, yeah, so healthy foods. So we're I know with you particularly, your definition of that has really changed over the years, too. I don't know if you want to talk about that.
SPEAKER_00I'm I mean, I feel like I just also became aware at some point, people sort of see my work as being in the world of like healthy recipes, which that wasn't necessarily something that I set out to do or that I did intentionally. And so it's over the past couple of years I've had a little bit of a reckoning of like what what am I doing here and like what what is my food really about, or what am I trying to achieve with my recipes, and I realized like, oh, I actually am into this sort of stuff. And I think it all just comes down to like wanting to like feel good as much as possible. And I wrote something recently about how influential the omnivores dilemma was. Oh, yeah, definitely and the whole like eat food, eat real food, mostly plants, not too much, or something like that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And um, so that has always shaped my my approach to like day-to-day eating.
SPEAKER_03Oh, me too. I mean, and my mom was sort of before her time, maybe in I think that was very much her philosophy too, in like definitely cooked sort of exclusively whole foods, had a lot of vegetables, um and wasn't that concerned with fats or calories, certainly, but really was about like if you're eating whole foods and a lot of them are vegetables, then probably you're good to go. And that's my idea too, with it. But but then it's interesting, like like after this weekend or a trip where you feel like you've really just done some damage to yourself in terms of just going overboard.
SPEAKER_00My my thing is like bowls and big salads. Yeah. I love a grain bowl, bunch of different vegetables on top, some kind of protein.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Or yeah, same thing with a salad, but greens instead of the that's and I have to actually just like crave that. I could eat that probably most days, some some meal like that.
SPEAKER_03Well, it is funny, once you get into that type of eating, also it starts to feel you start to crave it all the time. It's not like your body's like, get me back to the fried chicken platter necessarily. I mean, I know.
SPEAKER_00I know. I was just so Vincent and I haven't really been drinking for the past since the start of the year.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And we've done this like every year we do like dry January or something, and then this year we're just kind of like keeping it going a little longer. And it's crazy how first there's just not that like I'm sorry, just as a caveat, like I we're not going out on benders every night, but like it I feel like as the year sort of builds towards the holidays, it ends up becoming kind of an everyday thing. Yes, um, and your baseline is just waking up a little bit hungover every morning, and you that you you think that's just kind of like morning grogginess, and then you stop drinking, and after a couple of weeks, you're like, wow, I feel really well rested, and this is amazing. And um, I didn't realize that it was just the two glasses of wine or whatever that were causing this. And of course, this is something that has become more and more pronounced the older I've gotten. Yes, but of course now I also notice it with food, and so if like it's if we go out to eat, like the other night we went and got ramen for dinner, and I was like, I don't I don't know if it's the salt or what it is, but you just wake up and you're like, wow, that really kind of like threw me off kilter.
SPEAKER_03Really? So I can totally see that. Yeah, I could totally see that. Do you have one of these like whoops or like an Apple Watch or any of that? Vincent has one.
SPEAKER_00It's a big topic of of our life.
SPEAKER_03So what are his what is he like hoping to get from it?
SPEAKER_00I mean, it's I I think it's kind of fascinating. He gets like the the main topic of conversation is the sleep score. Yes. So every morning is an update on the sleep score. And for Vincent, our joke is that anything below a 97% is a poor night's sleep for him.
SPEAKER_03And has he identified like what are the things that because for me, I guess I'm asking a very leading question. The main thing that it's really taught me is that if I have like one drop of alcohol, one drop of alcohol, my sleep is terrible.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's crazy. And like, and it's like not even I don't even notice it.
SPEAKER_03I know it's my I have high sleep stress. And I'm like, it's not that I'm feeling stressed when I'm sleeping, it's not that I have like I can't tell that, but for sure, it's like, oh yeah, something terrible is happening at night after you have one drop of alcohol. And it does give me serious pause now before I drink. It's actually like an incredibly effective way to cut down on drinking.
SPEAKER_00Uh it's truly, truly, truly. And you see the graph of like the past seven nights' sleep, and it's like what you're talking about. There's it's like a bar graph and it's sectioned into three parts, and the bottom is like sleep stress, like your sleep stress rating. And so we go back through until like January 1st, and you can see the five times we've had drinks in the past three months, the sleep stress is like up through the roof, and then every other night it's almost not even noticeable.
SPEAKER_03And we were just at this wedding, and I wasn't drinking that much, partially because I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what it's do I want to do this to myself. Yeah, what it's really doing for me. So I had like, you know, maybe a glass of wine, maybe two over like, you know, a six-hour long experience.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And still my sleep was like, nope, you're not getting away with that.
SPEAKER_00Like it's so crazy.
SPEAKER_03I was I was shocked by it. So I'm curious if I mean, if there are any doctors out there who listen to this podcast who have any opinions about sleep stress, please let us know.
SPEAKER_00I know. Well, the thing that we keep talking about too is how powerfully addictive alcohol must be.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That we have this data. We mental clarity is there's a marked difference.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and I just like love the way our nights, it's just like I'm I read more, I'm just doing you know, like I just feel more alert and more sort of enjoy. And yet, almost every day there's that point around like 6 15, 6 30. I'm like, oh, it would be really nice just to have like a cocktail or like a glass of wine with this meal or something. And it still sounds good, even though I have I've I've been like living and breathing this incredibly persuasive case to like never touch the stuff again.
SPEAKER_03I know. I know. That's true with food too. It's true with smoking cigarettes, it's true with like all the stuff where you're like, you know it's not good for you, and then somehow you can sort of justify it or you still crave it.
SPEAKER_00You just touched on sort of one of the challenges that I always encounter in talking about healthy, quote, quote unquote healthy cooking, is you know, first off how subjective it is, but also like how important pleasure is in the experience of food. And yes. And I think it's probably true for both of us that that's what brought us here, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Like the pleasure of of you know, the multi-sensory experience of of food, and then also just our interest in sort of the history and the culture and the technical aspects of of food creation and stuff that like I don't want to practice anything, and I definitely don't want to advocate for anything that in any way like makes that all not feel so important, you know.
SPEAKER_03Right. I think that's absolutely true. And it's funny, like, I know you've worked on some health books, I've worked on some health books, and it's always interesting to like you know, you learn new things working on these projects and working with different authors, and people have different expertise, and um it's really interesting to be totally submerged in that content and then still have an inkling to not eat that way all the time. I mean, like there have been projects that I've been like very influenced by, and especially in terms of like maybe adding on certain like really nutrient-dense foods, like that's one thing that I think has evolved a little bit from the Michael Pollen idea. In addition to what you're not eating, maybe there are some things that you can be eating that are like especially good for you, and that I find very appealing. That I'm like so into. So it's like if someone's like, Oh, chia seeds are amazing for you, I'm like, great, let's find a way to eat some more chia seeds.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, or and fermented food. Yeah, no, I but I'm kind of with you there where you like I feel like it's the what I have the project I have worked on, and maybe some of the ones that we've worked on together are they've opened my mind to ingredients that I hadn't really thought of except for as these niche superfoods. And suddenly when I'm thinking of them as like ingredients I can incorporate into my cooking and that I find to be kind of delicious, that makes it really fun. It opens my culinary uh scope more than it like narrows it.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. And I think for people like you and I who are so enthusiastic about eating that that's that's definitely the approach for me. If someone's just telling me a bunch of stuff not to eat, then that doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_03I remember um a book that we worked on together, almond flour featured like really prominently. Everywhere. And and that was an ingredient that I had never played around with. First of all, I was like, I think it's probably really expensive and it goes bad quickly. And like, do you have to keep it in the freezer? And you can't do a one-to-one swap with flour, it sounds complicated, then you have to use a special recipe and blah blah blah. Um but I did buy some because we were working on that book, and playing around with it actually has been really fun. And it's one of those ingredients now that like I use all the time. Um like it it feels like an additive nutritional thing where I'm like, oh, I'm making pancakes, I can add a little bit of almond flour in there. It's I don't have to like exactly figure out how it works perfectly um to know that it will if you're if you're not swapping all your flour out for it, it's probably gonna be fine. Um or similarly with like, you know, cookies or I make these broccoli pancakes for the kids, which I think I've talked about, and like use a ton of almond flour in that. And it's been such a fun ingredient in those ways to just play with and feel like, oh, this this feels a tiny bit um more improved than it could otherwise.
SPEAKER_00And then that's an that's an example where I feel like the leap is very easy to make because you're like, this is just ground up almonds.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00It's nothing it's it's already familiar to me, but I just hadn't thought about it that much in this format.
SPEAKER_03That's right. Right. That's right. I was thinking about making some bowls sometime this week. And I like I get a little pushback from the kids in terms of like if I make like quinoa, no one's like that psyched about it. But I do think if I just keep exposing them to it and maybe put some really interesting stuff on top of it, like that's the kind of thing where I'm like, oh, this we could just have white rice, which everyone loves. But I'm like, and I mean it's so good. And we eat it all the time. But I'm like, it it is nice to swap some of the stuff out where you do feel like, oh, this is this little extra hit of protein and some other stuff, and it feels nice to do that for yourself, especially when you're trying to do you know what I just did last night for I made in my rice cooker, I did one part white rice and then one part like some quinoa, some buckwheat groats, some uh bulkur.
SPEAKER_00It's like other just half quick cooking grains and half white rice on the white rice setting of the rice cooker, and it was great.
SPEAKER_03Really?
SPEAKER_00It's like chewing.
SPEAKER_03Because it doesn't matter if they get over as long as they're so they're all quick cooking ones.
SPEAKER_00They're all quick cooking. It uh it did kind of seem that the white rice broke down a little bit for some reason, but it was still fluffy and chewy, and I mean it was delicious.
SPEAKER_03A great base for things.
SPEAKER_00And it had that you know, sometimes when you do the whole grains, if you like cook spelt or faro uh or brown rice or something, there's just I know that the fiber is really good for you, but it just doesn't have the same kind of satisfying chew as white rice.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it doesn't. Although have you ever you have a pressure cooker, right? Are you dying?
SPEAKER_00Um I have an instant pot that has the pressure cooker thing, but I don't use it that often.
SPEAKER_03Um lemons recipe. I mean it's pretty basic, but it's making brown rice in your pressure cooker. Wow, interesting. I think it's like two cups of brown rice, two and a half cups of water, some salt in the pressure cooker for 20 minutes. It's the type of thing. It's the perfect type of recipe for me because I'm like, if I can't memorize it, then I'm probably not gonna go back to it. But it makes such delicious brown rice. Wow. It's kind of a game changer. I'm sure your rice cooker can make really good brown rice too.
SPEAKER_00It takes more than 20 minutes, though. Usually brown rice takes a while, yeah.
SPEAKER_03It takes a really long time. This is short grain brown rice, and it That's my favorite one too. It's my favorite one. Um, it does take longer because it takes a while to get up to temperature and then it takes a while to like do the natural release or whatever.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, this is the thing with those pressure. Like nobody ever factors in the 30 minutes of natural release after the 20-minute recipe.
SPEAKER_03I know. And it's one of those things like I remembered yesterday at like five o'clock, I was like, oh, I was gonna make brown rice for the stir fry, and I was like, thank God I'm thinking about it now, because that always catches me where I'm like, oh, I only have half hour, it's too late to make it, everyone's gonna complain, and I'll just make white rice. But um, yeah, but it's it's really it's really good. The kids still don't like it as much as white rice, but um but it's a nice I like it, it's a I like it better than white rice now.
SPEAKER_00I do too. Well, that's kind of the thing with all these types. I remember on that book that you mentioned with the almond flower, there was so like chia pudding was something that was in there that I had made some like overnight oats that I put chia seeds in, and I had like tried chia pudding here and there, but I never really liked it, and I definitely framed it as one of these kind of woo-woo-eyed foods of that were just not gonna appeal to me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that book, I don't know, it's just like the process of like making it a few times and like iterating on it that I was like, oh, chia pudding is actually delicious.
SPEAKER_03Oh, delicious.
SPEAKER_00And I'm completely into it, and it's so easy. And then come to find out, it's actually like incredibly nutritious. So it's like a great thing to be eating every single day.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah. I make that, in fact, I made some when we got back the other day. Um, I made like uh overnight oats with a ton of chia in it, but like also like a can of coconut milk and some maple syrup and salt and water. Um I think that was basically it. And it is so good with some fruit. I'm not into like sweet things for breakfast, but there's something about it that's it doesn't have to be incredibly sweet. Um, it has that sort of natural sweetness from the coconut and just a little bit of maple syrup and some fruit and stuff. It feels like feels great.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I'm I think one of the reasons that I never opened my mind that much to chia pudding is that I'm not a coconut person. And every single recipe I'd see, or every time you'd see it out, it's like coconut chia puddings with coconut milk.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But then when I realized you can just use yogurt, which in my protein journey, this has been great. So I basically make it with like half Greek yogurt and half water as the liquid. And so it's it's kind of got it's an all-in-one breakfast.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. And do you just do chia or do you add oats or depends on the day?
SPEAKER_00Uh kind of yeah, I go back and forth.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, I was trying to think of other foods that I lean on in these moments of wanting something more nutritious.
SPEAKER_00I'm big on broth. That's something that when the uh when the weather gets cold and I kind of think if you ever if you taste homemade broth, whether it's vegetable broth, bone broth, whatever, there's just no way to go back to the canned or box stuff. It's just not the same.
SPEAKER_03It's not the same. I was shocked how muddy and yucky this tasted. I was just like, this is it sort of had too much history. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Too much history.
SPEAKER_03Like it felt just like it was sort of telling me a story that I didn't want to hear, you know.
SPEAKER_00This simmered too long, you let too much happen.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. It just like no one was sort of at the helm. I was just like, this is this is yucky.
SPEAKER_00Not good. Yucky. But when it's freshly made, that to me is that's something that I find to be incredibly nourishing. It's so good for you. What are you fixing for dinner tonight?
SPEAKER_03Well, on this note, I'm I was thinking about making some quinoa, and I have a bunch of somehow I have a surplus of cauliflowers in the house. I think I didn't realize I'd bought one. Anyway, I'm juggling cauliflower. So um I was gonna roast some cauliflower and make like a bowl. Okay. I guess. I don't know what the protein. I was like, I could roast some chickpeas. Then it starts to all feel very starchy. Um so I might, or maybe I'll get some chicken or something, but um do that and then maybe make like a yummy sauce to drizzle over it, like a green spicy sauce or a tahini thing.
SPEAKER_00This is right in line.
SPEAKER_03I know. It's right in line. And I think I think the the like make your own factor of it can be appealing to the kids. I was gonna also make like a quick maybe a quick pickle, like some pickled onions or some pickled cabbage or something that adds some crunch and some do you make your pickled onions? I slice them up and then I heat up like equal parts water and vinegar on the stove. And then add like a couple tablespoons of sugar, maybe, and maybe a tablespoon of salt. I mean, I basically sort of like. Like a full jar.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for a full big jar. Um so maybe not that much salt and sugar, but I just sort of toss some in, basically, and ster it until it dissolves, and then just pour it over whatever raw veggie.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and let it cool. And do you slice them thick or thin?
SPEAKER_03I have them pretty thin, just because that's sort of more the texture I want at the end. But yeah, I should I mean it usually seems as long as you've got some sugar in there, it seems like it balances out. It definitely needs some sugar. And it definitely needs the water too. Like if you do if you were to do it all vinegar, it would be yeah, way too strong.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um but how do you do yours?
SPEAKER_00Well, I was gonna ask because um I always get a little bit put off by the amount of vinegar it it takes. Uh and maybe I just need to buy larger containers of vinegar, but it just seems like every time I make quick pickled vegetables, I go through a quarter or a half bottle of white vinegar or rice vinegar or something. So I one of my friends, um Manny, he was telling me that he makes pickled onions by slicing them up kind of thinly, putting them in a jar with like a couple splashes of vinegar, and then pinches of salt, pinches of sugar, seals the jar, shakes it, and then just lets it sit.
SPEAKER_03Really?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I so I tried that uh recently, and they were I mean, it's kind of different from onions in the traditional.
SPEAKER_03So they're not submerged.
SPEAKER_00They're not submerged, but then as it sits, they release water, so they end up sitting in some liquid.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um so and it kind of worked, and it definitely helped to solve the problem of wasting vinegar. Yeah. Do you end up using the vinegar again?
SPEAKER_03I've tried well, and that's one thing, it's interesting that we're talking about this, because I I've tried doing that. I think just adding new onions, like if you got through all those onions, for example, and then you just added new onions, it doesn't seem like that quite works as well. Like there's something about having the hot, yeah, the hot brine. So then I've tried reheating the brine and pouring them over onions, and that seems okay. Yeah, okay. Um, but it's not um that feels also kind of weird, but I've I've definitely done it.
SPEAKER_00Um and but they taste fine. They taste fine. Different?
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. No, no, they taste they tasted fine. I think I just was like I guess if you bring it to a boil, any weird residual stuff in there would I would never have worried about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I mean it is and it's vinegar, right? I mean it seems like yeah, yeah. I think that's so yeah, I have done that, but I would rec I mean, I just use like like supermarket brand white vinegar for that kind of stuff. I too wouldn't probably waste good vinegar on that because it does just plow through it. And then you're not like drinking it at the end or anything.
SPEAKER_00It's not like you're yeah, we should talk at some point on this podcast about white vinegar as an ingredient. That would be an interesting. I love it.
SPEAKER_03That would be that's a good one. We should add that to the list. What are you making for dinner?
SPEAKER_00I am making some tofu meatballs. So last night was those meatballs that I told you about. And then I'm working on a tofu version right now. That uh I think I'm gonna do it for my newsletter, but I'm thinking of taking them in like a charred scallion direction. Yum. You know? So we'll see how that goes. And then put that over some of these mixed grains, figure out some kind of yogurt y sauce situation.
SPEAKER_03Sounds yummy. That's it. Yeah. Like firm tofu, you're thinking?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The firm tofu you just kind of blot dry, crumble it up. I'm gonna use an egg to bind it. I'll try it out with Yeah. I mean, this is a question I always get. It's like, I don't need eggs, and um, so in recipes like these you have to have an alternative ready. Yeah. And I think a flax egg egg would probably work totally fine.
SPEAKER_03I think it probably would too.
SPEAKER_00That's another health healthy quote ingredient that I'm all about now.
SPEAKER_03Oh, really?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love flax. Just like sprinkling it in like uh more like baking these crackers that I make all the time, or I like I'll put flax seeds in well, it's mostly baking, but there's like a loaf of bread that I've been making that has a lot of flax meal in it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But sprinkling it over stuff too, yeah. Though I don't think that you digest them if they aren't ground up.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's right. That's right. And then if it is ground up, then they go bad really quickly. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but I just keep all that stuff in the freezer.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's good. I keep it in the fridge, but the freezer would be better. My freezer's just so full.
SPEAKER_00It sounds like we both have some pretty virtuous, virtuous dinners happening tonight.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we do. Perfectly on topic, yeah. Yeah, exactly. We'll enjoy it. Hope the meatballs turn out well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you. Enjoy your your bowls. Yeah, thanks.
SPEAKER_03See how they go. Okay, I'll talk to you soon. Okay, bye.
