The Liz Moody Podcast - Healthy Cooking Secrets—15 Minute Dinners, Saving $$$ On Healthy Food & The Truth About Air Fryers ft. @thekoreanvegan, @justine_snacks, and @feedthemalik

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

I’m so excited to kickstart a new series, which is all about healthy cooking secrets. Each time I do one of these episodes—and I’ll just sprinkle them in occasionally—I’ll invite on some of my favorite friends from the food world—influencers, chefs, cookbook authors—and I’ll grill them about all of their healthy cooking hacks and secrets. On this episode Joanne Lee Molinaro from @thekoreanvegan shares: her trick to making a delicious, healthy dinner in under 15 minutes the three pillars to her health what she eats when training for a marathon as a vegan how she gets her protein and a wide variety of nutrients on a vegan diet why she switched from a paleo to vegan diet how her going vegan impacted her relationship with her korean family her 3 Korean secret ingredients to make any dish more flavorful her favorite make-ahead work lunch the easiest, most delicious pantry-staple meal Then Justine E. from @justine_snacks gets into: her history of disordered eating and how it impacts her relationship with food now how she stopped being afraid of certain food groups why people are making oatmeal wrong (and how to do it right!) how to love tofu even if you think it’s gross the truth about air fryers why you should be adding corn starch to your cookies (and other baking science secrets) her favorite alternative baking flours the best secret to saving money on healthy food the 3 kitchen appliances that are worth the money and the 3 that are overrated what “impact minimizing” is and why it makes plant-based eating WAY easier her go-to work lunch a foolproof easy dinner for when you’re tired from a long workday Finally, Anela Malik from @feedthemalik gets into: the secret to finding the best restaurants in any city how to pick the best menu item at restaurants what she learned about cooking living in the middle east her best tips for reducing food waste (even if you eat out a lot) how to make salads actually taste good her go-to weeknight dishes how to save money on healthy food the one food she preps when she’s feeling hangry I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the episode! Screenshot and tag me—I’m @lizmoody— and my guests and share your thoughts, feelings, and reactions. I’d also love to know any foodies you’d love to see on future episodes! PS: Have you snagged my Foodie preset pack? You can get all 8 presets, designed to make your food pics look as good as they taste, at lizmoody.com/presets. PPS: Healthier Together is officially a number one best-seller! You can get your copy on Amazon or at lizmoody.com/cookbook. Please keep sending me your creations on Instagram—they make me so happy! This episode is sponsored by Organifi, the makers of my favorite caffeine-free energy drink, Red Juice. You can go to www.organifi.com/healthiertogether and use the code “healthiertogether” for 20% off your order. This episode is also sponsored by Kyoto Botanicals, the first CBD brand I’ve recommended on this podcast! Right now, I’m loving their Warmth tincture, which has turmeric and cinnamon, and the Warmth balm, which is so helpful for headaches and sore muscles. You can get a whopping 25% off your order (AND they always have free shipping!) by using the code “HEALTHIERTOGETHER” at kyotobotanicals.com. Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the healthier together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a cookbook author and long-time journalist. I am so excited to kickstart a new series here on the pod, which is all about healthy cooking secrets. I love the wide range of things we talk about on here, but also like, I'm a cookbook author. I was a food editor in the magazine world for years. Food is my bread and butter. See what I did there? And I thought we should create a space to talk about it more here together. Enter Healthy Cooking Secrets. Each time I do one of these episodes, and I'll just sprinkle them in occasionally. I'll invite on some of my favorite friends from the food world,

influencers, chefs, cookbook authors, and I'll grill them. Sorry, sorry, the food puns just keep coming about all of their healthy cooking hacks and secrets. On this episode, which features the Korean vegan, Justin snacks, and Feed the Malik, we get the trick to making a delicious healthy dinner in under 15 minutes, how to get protein on a vegan diet,

the best make-ahead work lunches, why you should be adding cornstarch to your cookies and other baking science secrets. the three kitchen appliances that are worth the money and the three that are overrated. How to find the best restaurants in any town you go to. Pantry staples that will make any dish wow worthy in seconds and so much more. And of course, because it's the healthier together podcast, there's a lot of fun life stories and overly intimate questions along the way.

My goal with these episodes is to help make food an affordable, enjoyable, and not at all intimidating part of your healthy, beautiful life. And I can't wait to hear what you think about them and what tips and tricks you want to try in your own life. My guests all share their IG handles throughout the episode. And I would love to hear what's resonating. So definitely tag them and at Liz Moody in screenshots with thoughts, feelings, and reactions as you're listening.

I would also love to hear from you. So let me know, do you like this new series? Are there any guests that you want to see on future episodes? Without further ado, let's get right into the episode. All right, Joanne, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me, Liz. Can you start off just by telling us a little bit about who you are and what you, I feel you like you do so many things, but just tell us in brief what you do.

Sure. I'm Joanne Molinaro, and my day job, I am a trial lawyer and litigator at a large law firm in Chicago. And on the side, I do the Korean vegan, which is a food blog that does a lot of things, but primarily veganizes Korean food and tells stories about my heritage. I love that. So we're going to get into a lot of elements of what you said, but let's start with the time thing because that just mentally messes me up every single time I think about the concept of being a lawyer. And you are a partner in your law firm, right? Yes. And doing this incredibly successful food business. So what is your time situation and what, like, how do you work, produce your food and feed yourself in a really healthy, delicious way. That is a very good question, Liz. And to be quite honest, I don't always do it successfully.

I wish I could do better at all of these things. But what I try to do is prioritize my various buckets, right? And I think at, you know, first is my family and, and, you know, my loved ones. Second is my job and my clients. So, you know, when I was a junior attorney, it was my job. Now as a partner, it's my clients. And then third on that list is my health and fitness. And health and fitness sometimes, you know, can compete between my clients. But generally speaking, my clients usually went out. If I have to reschedule a run or, you know, eat takeout because I've

got a trial or I've got a deposition, then that's what happens. But generally speaking, those two are very much on par. And then fourth on that list is the Korean vegan, which is, you know, what I get to do when I have some time left over. Usually what that means, I was just thinking about this today, Liz, while I was walking my dog, I have no time. I have negative time. You have no like down time for just doing nothing. Do you miss doing nothing? I do. I remember what that was like. Because it wasn't too long ago when I used to have. of that. It was probably about six or seven months ago when I could do things like that. But now I, every minute of every day is occupied by something. The only time I have that's really my own

is when I'm running or when I'm eating. Those are the two times when I have, or sleeping. That's it. And I assume that your partner is probably in bed with you. Yes. Yes, that's true. He's usually in bed with me. Solo time. Yeah, really solo time is hard. You say that your health and wellness is false to third, but clearly you do some things that are critical for your sanity. You mentioned running.

A lot of people are looking for those health and wellness pillars, but in very limited amounts of time. So can you speak to a few other things that make you feel your best in that really short window of time that you have? So I think for me, there are really, I love the word pillars. There are really three pillars to my health. And I do view health as a very, you know, total definition. I don't view it merely as physical health.

So I believe my health is composed of number one, food. You have to have good nutrition. That is fundamental to, I feel like you can't have the other two without that first one. So good food is and good nutrition. is incredibly important. Physical activity is very important to me. And physical activity, I feel like, is as much a boon to my physical health as it is to my mental health, which is the third pillar of my definition of health. And for me, you know, what I do is when I'm running, or sometimes when I'm, you know, cleaning the kitchen after a shoot or a recipe test or, you know,

whatever, if I'm just doing laundry, you know, or something like that, tasks around the house, I'll have my AirPods in and I'll listen to a book, my mystery novels. That's like my vice right now. That's really the only time that I have where I get to do something that's totally not work related and not the Korean vegan related. And so when I'm running, I'll usually do half listening to a book or a podcast or something interesting. And then the other half I will listen to listen to music while I'm thinking about a cross-examination, an outline that I have to prepare, or what I'm going to do for my next TikTok video. Sounds like a lot.

You mentioned that food is the most important thing. And if you don't kind of have that in order, nothing else can be. There's a lot of different opinions about what having your food in a healthy order would mean. So what does eating healthy mean to you? Well, that's a really good question, Liz. And I think that's a very smart question because I think it gets at this notion that food is purely a physical phenomenon. It is largely a physical phenomenon. It, of course, fuels your body.

And for me, as an athlete, it fuels my runs and it fuels my racing and my training. So that's all very important. But as someone who's had a really fraught relationship with food, basically her whole life, You know, food also nourishes your soul and your heart and your emotional wellness. And food can also hurt and injure your emotional wellness. And so food has to be, it's like a constant evolving relationship that I have with food. And I think that part of it, yes, you have to look at it as, is this going to effectively fuel my physical activities. That is absolutely an important component. And is it going to maximize my

fitness potential? So I run a lot of, I run a lot. And most of the time when it's not, you know, COVID outside, I'm training for a marathon. And when I'm doing that, I really do have to pay attention to what I eat because so much of my recovery and my ability to run long and run faster is a function of what I put into my body. But on top of that, I think it's also important to save space in your nutrition for the things that bring you joy. And that is so important to me. So for me, it's trying to find a balance between what's going to physically fuel me to do

the things that I have set as my personal goal, like running a PR or running, you know, running, you know, a faster marathon, while also making sure I have space for ice cream or, you know, chocolate cake or, you know, takfokki or something like that that may not look quite healthy on paper, but is going to feed my soul. So can you, you gave a few examples of food that fed your soul. What foods make you feel the strongest and healthiest in your body on the flip side of that? For sure, when I am eating, so I, again, again, I don't want to like suggest that this is going to be the way that anybody else should

eat. This is just what has worked for me. When I am training for a marathon and it's about two months out, I cut out all refined sugar. And I generally cut out all gluten as well, not by design, but just because that's what I'm eating, you know. So I cut out all sugar and it feels fantastic. I know it feels so good, but the soul side of me is like, wait, what have you? all of these things that make you legitimately happy all the time. I know. And it is, and that's why I say it's a balance. And I'm not training year round. So I only, I think I've run at most two marathons a year. So I'm not training year round. There are usually at least a couple months a year where I'm like, you know, not training at all. And I'm just recovering. And those are the months where I get to

eat chocolate cake once a week or something like that, you know. But I think that cutting out sugar makes such a huge difference for me. Again, I'm not saying there are other people maybe who have a better tolerance for it, but my body clearly likes it when I don't do that. And I replace all the refined sugar with fresh fruits and berries and, you know, grapefruit salads. And you know, it's amazing, Liz. I used to get so annoyed with people who'd be like, no, just trust me, if you cut out sugar, your body will adapt to it and you actually won't miss it. And I'll be like, you just shut up. I think that's just crap. You know, I used to think that. But it's. true. Like, I cut it out for like two weeks. And all of the sudden, I was like, I actually don't want

to eat chocolate cake. I just want to eat my fruit. And I'm very happy. But then, you know, you run past the finish line of a marathon. You're like, I want chocolate cake. Well, I think it's interesting that your body very much craves what you give it. I always say that about vegetables. If you start eating vegetables, you will start to crave vegetables. But if you sit around eating McDonald's and waiting for that Brussels sprout craving to just. strike you out of the blue. It's never going to happen. Totally. So for people who are listening and being like, wait, this woman is vegan and she runs marathons and they have, they're wondering how you fuel yourself on a vegan diet. I'm not going to say, how do you get your protein? But I am going to say,

how do you get your protein? Because I know that it is a question that a lot of people still to this day have about the vegan diet. So can you talk a little bit about keeping your diet balanced while keeping it in the vegan realm? Sure. So again, I think a lot of this is you have to do a fair appraisal of your own body. You know, I respond incredibly well to carbohydrates. And so a high carb diet is not something that is really problematic for me. And I never really focused on my protein. I just ate the same amount that I would normally eat.

I just replaced chicken and, you know, mostly chicken. and I didn't really eat most other sources of protein with tofu, which I grew up eating my whole life anyway. So it wasn't a big thing. I just ate more. So I just ate more tofu. Or, you know, I started incorporating a lot of beans into my diet. Black beans, chickpeas, lentils, these are things that I loved eating anyway. So it really wasn't a big problem.

For long-distance running, you really don't need to focus on protein. What you need to focus on is complex carbohydrate. because that's the glycogen that's going to fuel you after you hit the wall at mile 20, right? That's when you need the glycogen. So for me, it was like eat more potatoes, eat more pasta, eat more rice. It's like, are you kidding me? This is the best diet I've ever heard of in my life. And so it was great.

Now, I did spend about a year when I had injured myself trying to build lean muscle mass in lieu of running. And there I did have to pay attention to my protein intake. And it's completely doable. I just, again, increased my tofu by, you know, 100%, which meant an extra serving a day. And I, you know, did drink some protein shakes here and there when I was on the run because everybody's busy. I still worked as a lawyer at that time. So couldn't always cook my lunches. But yeah, it's absolutely doable. Was not actually very hard at all. But I focus on carbs, complex carbohydrates now just because I am more interested in long distance running than I am in bodybuilding or something like that. What inspired you to go vegan in the first place?

That's a very good question. There are a lot of different pieces to that puzzle. You know, my husband's father had just passed away from, you know, an autoimmune disorder. And my husband, as a result of that, became very interested in, you know, really turning around his diet in a way that ensured, you know, kind of maximum longevity for his health. And that turned him to a book called Finding Ultra by Rich Roll. And, you know, he was very inspired to completely cut out meat and go vegan. My husband was actually vegetarian for half of his life just because he has a natural distaste for meat. So for him, it wasn't a big deal. For me, I was paleo at the time. It was a huge deal. I was like, I don't think you know what vegan means. And I don't think it's healthy. That's what I said.

I was like, you don't know what healthy is. You need to eat meat and protein to be healthy because I was a paleo girl at the time. But, you know, Anthony is very persuasive. He had me watch all the movies like, you know, forks over knives and, you know, food, ink and all these movies that made me. really question whether my notions of nutrition were science-based. And, you know, I soon discovered, particularly through forks over knives, that some of my assumptions were just that, assumptions. And I, you know, my ultimately, after a couple of weeks, my own father came down with cancer, and it was a little bit too, like, on the nose for me, after having watched all these movies that tied meat consumption to cancer. And when he was diagnosed with cancer, I kind of took it as a sign.

I was like, I need to stop eating meat. Like, I can't do this anymore. Like, this is weird that right after I'm looking at all this stuff about cancer studies and meat consumption that my own father would come down with cancer. So I stopped eating meat. And shortly after that, cut out all dairy and all other animal products started the Korean vegan. And at that point, I was like, well, I can't not be vegan now.

So, but no, it was a lot easier than I thought. And did you feel better when you, I mean, it's interesting to talk to somebody who's done both the paleo diet and the vegan diet because they are so diametrically opposed. I would say this, Liz, and I'll be candid. I'm not one of those persons who's going to be like, oh, once you go plant-based, you know, your whole body feels amazing and da-da-da-da. I would say cutting out sugar had a much more dramatic increase on, you know, my physical nutrition than, you know, cutting out meat per se. However, I will say this. I was emotionally a wreck on any low-carb diet. It just didn't work for me. I was always so stressed out. And I was always like a little nudge. You just had to flick me to go over the edge because I was so not happy. I don't even know how to,

I don't even like to think about it. I can feel like the tension in my body just thinking about, you know, what it was like restricting my carbs to such a degree. And that was the big difference was being able to eat rice again and, you know, sweet potatoes and pasta, like eating those things and bread, being able to enjoy those foods again made such a huge difference to my emotional wellness that. even the thought of going back to that is frightening to me. It's just, it was like traumatizing. It was really not a good experience for me. Well, and I think beyond the emotional element of food,

a lot of doctors have talked about how carbs are particularly important for women and how sometimes men can even thrive on lower carb diets, but women's hormones really do need carb to feel good often. I'm not saying universally, but often. I totally agree with that. I've heard you talk about be nervous about coming out as vegan to your family and how that would affect your ties to your food cultural traditions. Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure. So my parents and my family when they realized that this vegan thing was not going to be a phase, I think they assumed it was just another one of Joanne's diets. I've been dieting my whole life. I mean, there's no question about. I have been on an endless pursuit of somebody that really doesn't exist in my,

except for in my brain. And that's, that's what I, you know, was referring to earlier as my fraught relationship with food. And that's just something that I, it's a truth in my life and it's one that I need to, you know, fight with a lot. But that's what they assumed. Oh, she's just doing this to lose weight. And, you know, after about a year of it, my family was like, you don't need to lose weight anymore. Just stop. Just eat meat. Please, you don't need to lose weight anymore. And it was very hard for me to explain to them that this is not a diet. This is, you know, an ethical choice for me. It's partially a dietary choice, but more it's, you know, about the animals and I just,

I don't feel comfortable eating animal flesh anymore. So it was a little bit difficult. My mother is a very Americanized woman. And I think that speaks to her ability to adapt to any given situation, including adapting to the fact that her daughter is now vegan. And so she started just veganizing all the foods for me. And it was wonderful. And I think she really understands that this for me is a fundamental part of my identity. and, you know, like, you know, the Korean vegan, she's not going to allow it to undermine our relationship.

And it's certainly not going to be undermining my relationship to my culture. So my family has been pretty cool about it. I think the Korean-American community at large probably still views me somewhat on the fringe as like, oh, you can't really be Korean if you're, you know, veganizing everything. And whatever, F that. Fair. Are there some ingredients that you always keep on hand, Korean or otherwise, that make all of your food taste really delicious, that if you wanted to just spice up a dish, you would add to it?

Well, literally to spice up a dish, I would add cochu caro, which is Korean pepper powder. And that is in my fridge at all times. I would also use cochu chang, which is Korean pepper powder paste. It looks like tomato paste, but tastes more like a thick serracha, if you think about it that way. And then dengeng, which is a fermented soybean paste, which, and again, I'm trying to like explain to people who may not have tasted it, tastes like a very pungent miso paste. So those are like the three things. And then, of course, soy sauce. I have like five different kinds of soy sauce in my house at any given time.

Those are the things that I can't live without. Where do you get these ingredients? Or where, maybe where could I? I don't know if you get these ingredients by one of them. So it depends on where you live, but H-Mart is probably the most recognized Korean grocery chain in the United States and, I think, in Canada. So you can certainly find H-mart's pretty much all over the country. I was in New York City. They have like five of them. In the Chicago area, they have like four or five. I was in Boulder, Colorado, and they had one there. And I was like, oh, random. So

H-Mart is a great place. Otherwise, I would. would encourage you just to like Google Asian grocery store. And a lot of times, you know, your local Asian grocery store will have products from many different Asian countries and not just one. And, and cochucaru and chou and teanjong, those are like staple, staples. Like, you would be, you would probably find those not just even at a Korean grocery store or even at an Asian grocery store. I would hazard to guess you could find something very similar to that, at your local jewel, marianos, your Western grocery store. It's just a matter of like knowing to look.

I mean, there's so many ingredients in our normal grocery store that you're like, oh, wow, I can't believe this is here. Absolutely. Kuchukaru, which is Korean pepper powder, I know you can find that at a whole food. It's a little bit harder to find something like super authentic in Kuchakaru in terms of Kuchakaru. My mom usually brings it over from Korea. That's usually like one quarter of a suitcase is,

It's a nice service that she offers. That's lovely. Sometimes, yeah, when she goes to Korea, she goes to Korea about once a year or twice a year, obviously not recently. But when she does, she usually brings home some really good kutjapu. Otherwise, you can find that on Amazon. You can find some really good brands on Amazon. Hmart also delivers. So you can go to their website and find things there as well.

Amazing. Okay, so let's talk about some time-pressed cooking. If you get home from your, or I guess you're still at home because of these days, but you get home from your lawyer job, you stop your incredible amount of work and you want to just get a delicious healthy dinner on the table as quickly as possible. What do you make? Okay. So here's my trick, number one. I have this sauce that I make in bulk that is wonderful as a dipping sauce and also as a brazing liquid. And so what I do is it's actually going to be in my book, but it's just a compilation of a lot of different ingredients that is just delicious. And I stick that in my fridge and it lasts for like two months. In fact, it gets better as it ages, right? It's one of those things.

And so what I'll do is I'll have that in my fridge. And when I get home and I'm super tired, I'll bust out a box of tofu, usually medium, medium firm tofu. And I'll chop that up until like eight or nine pieces. I'll, you know, take out a non-stick pan, add a tiny, tiny little bit of oil, and then I'll fry that up. And it's great because you literally put it on the pan. You walk away, right, for seven minutes, eight minutes, and it's nice and brown on the bottom. You flip it. And then you add two tablespoons of that sauce, half a cup of vegetable broth or just water.

If you don't have vegetable broth, you walk away for another seven, ten minutes. You come back and you have brazed tofu. It's absolutely delicious. Do you eat it with anything, like rice or vegetables? Yeah. So, I mean, I'm Korean-American, so basically I have rice every single day. In my family, like, it's the coffee, you know, how most people drink a pot of coffee. Like, that's the first thing they button that they press in the kitchen.

In my parents' house, the first button that they press is the rice cooker. They got to have rice going first thing in the morning because it fuels them for the rest of the day. It's a similar situation at my house. We have rice almost every single day. So almost everything that we eat unless it's pasta. My husband's Italian-American. So we do have pasta about once or twice a week is with rice. So everybody's definitely going to buy your book, which I believe comes out next fall, right?

It comes out this October, actually. Yeah. Yes. This fall. Can you, for people listening now, though, can you give us a little sneak preview of what in the sauce if somebody wanted to just do eat like Joanne at home right now? Sure. So the sauce is obviously going to have soy sauce in it. So it's largely soy sauce, but for me, I tend to like a little bit of tartness, like or sweetness to most of my sauces. So it's soy sauce and then a sweetener. And you can use whatever sweetener you want. I use usually maple syrup. That's like my go-to sweetener at home for savory dishes. So it's going to be like soy sauce, sweetener. And then a bunch of like aromatics, like, you know, garlic or onions. If you like heat, you can add, you know, jalapenos to it. You know, it's kind of like whatever you kind of like. But, you know, I've got a bunch of stuff that goes in there that makes it,

you know, both salty and a little bit of sweet and then a little bit of heat. And it's just fabulous. And like I said, the longer it's kind of out there, it just everything gets really concentrated. And then the vegetables that you put in there, they start to get pickled. And And it's just fabulous. And you're just chopping everything and putting it in the like fine chopping. It's fine dice. Everything is just finely diced or minced, depending on what the vegetable is. You throw it in there and you just mix it up and you throw it in your fridge and it's wonderful.

I mean, if you make dumplings or pot stickers, it's a great dipping sauce. If you make savory pancakes like scallium pancakes, wonderful dipping sauce, it can be a glaze for your sweet potatoes or your potatoes. It's great for roasting, whatever you want. It's such an like all purpose sauce. I've thought about like doing a cookbook just on like sauces. Like here are like 50 sauces and, you know, different uses for them or something like that. I was just going to say, I think sauce-based cooking is so underrated because you can eat anything if you have a delicious sauce on hand. And you can make sauce like you said in large batches.

So you just always have it on hand. I think it's one of the best healthy cooking secrets. But not that many people utilize. Absolutely. It's, it's, it's a very, it's a very, it's, I think it's a style of cooking that's very functional and convenient. And it's also, it takes the intimidation out of cooking. Because like, for example, when you're making a rich stew or a soup or something like that, you know, Korean cooking is very much, you just make a sauce.

Then you bring all of your, you know, you bring your broth to a boil, you put your protein in there, usually tofu. And then instead of, and then you add soy sauce. and then you add this and then you add that. You just already have the sauce pre-mix. You just dump the sauce in there and you're good to go. I love that. What about a make-ahead work lunch?

Make-ahead work lunch. So I really enjoy kale salads, which is not a Korean, traditional Korean ingredient. And it's one that I used to sneer at before going vegan. I used to be like, who eats kale salads? But after about a year of going vegan, you know, you do kind of push yourself to try foods that maybe you weren't as comfortable with. And kale was certainly on the menu a lot because my husband really loves it. And after eating curly kale and Lassanato kale a lot, I started to really like it. I much prefer it to spinach, which is a very popular Korean green.

And so what I like to do is I like to make kale salads the day before because I always feel like they, taste like so much better the day after. So I have a, I think I have a couple of kale salads in the book, but, you know, just generally like a kale salad, but I like my salads really crunchy and hearty. So I like them to have, like, for example, lots of fruit. So I'll put a lot of apples or pears in my salad. I usually add like walnuts because I love walnuts. And I think that they're such an underrated health food because they're so cheap. So I love to put walnuts in my salads. I usually don't worry about adding protein because I don't really think about it very much.

If I feel like I need extra protein, I might throw in some like papita seeds in there or, you know, protein dense like nut or a seat as opposed to like, you know, tofu or something like that. And then, you know, again, I always like a little bit of tartness. So I'll usually add like dried cherries or, you know, dried fruit in there. to give it that little like, oh, what's that? And then usually dressings are like super simple. I usually like to use nut fats as opposed to refined oils. So I'll use like an almond butter or a sunflower seed butter. And that will be like the fat for my dressing.

And then I'll usually add like maybe gochujang or like a tenjang, which is the fermented soybean paste. And then a tiny little bit of lemon juice and, you know, something like maple syrup or something. something. And while we're walking backward in time, let's hit me up with breakfast. What's breakfast look like? Breakfast is almost like identical since I went vegan. Like it's one of those meals that I have not changed for five years. If it works, it works. It works. And it's something that you look forward to like at night when you go to sleep. You're like, oh, I can't wait for breakfast. I feel that way about my green smoothies. It's like the thing I, I'm not sure I would get out of bed in the morning if I didn't have a green smoothie. I think that's, I think that's,

That's kind of the way it was. I mean, there was a time when I experimented with, what is that, fasting, intermittent fasting. And that was one of the most difficult aspects was I had spent so many years looking forward to my breakfast. But my breakfast is very simple. We usually have like whole wheat toast of some kind. And then it's with some kind of nut butter, although I switched from almond butter to sunflower seed butter in the past year and a half. And then it's usually sunflower seed butter with some sliced fruit. So like sliced bananas and sliced strawberries. Sometimes we'll switch it up and we'll add raspberries or booberries or blackberries if they're in season. And that's it. You mentioned that you love walnuts because they're really affordable. Do you have any other sort of making, cooking and eating well more economical secrets? For sure, black beans. I mean, we have like 20 cans of black beans in our house at all times.

And, I mean, I have this really easy recipe that my husband just adores because he can make it himself. You just cook the black beans. You add some, you know, paprika, some, you know, smoked paprika and chili powder, a little bit of cumin, some turmeric, black pepper, salt, and then just the tiniest little pinch of maple syrup. And he loves it. And he just, he eats that with rice for lunch all the time, particularly after a workout, if he's had a tough workout. He makes a whole bunch in advance. He just sticks it in the fridge. And then, you know, he can just portion out whatever he needs, microwave it for like 30 seconds, have it with some rice.

And it's such a really healthy meal. And if you want to jazz it up, add some, you know, fresh tomatoes, a little bit of cilantro and some avocado. And it's just such a great healthy meal. Yeah, that sounds delicious. I'm definitely going to try that. Okay, so bring us home. We're all about trying to get people to eat and enjoy as many vegetables as possible here. So what is your favorite vegetable and what is your favorite way to prepare it? I love broccoli. Broccoli is hands down my favorite vegetable of all time. I'm a huge fan of Michael Greger. I don't know if you know Dr. Greger. Oh my gosh. So he wrote this book called How Not to Die and that like radically changed the way that I view food. He's the founder of the website called Nutrition Fact Stuff. which is the only place that I ever go to when I'm like, how do you cure cancer? NutritionFacts.org. But I mean, his chapters on cruciferous greens and what it can do for the human body, particularly bodies that are ailing from chronic illnesses or even like deadly illnesses

like cancer is absolutely pivotal, I feel like, to anybody who truly wants to make a commitment to longevity and living as long as long as. they possibly can. And so for me, I was like, okay, well, out of these cruciferous greens, which are like kale, you know, and broccoli, cauliflower, like, what do I really enjoy eating already? Broccoli, for sure. I love broccoli. The way that I cook it, like this is like a really simple way, but my mom did it about a year ago, and it's just so easy and it's super healthy. So she quick steams the broccoli so that it's like soft. You can also just boil it to like really blanch it. So it's just slightly soft. It still has bite to it. And then she makes this phenomenal

sauce, which is basically just a spicy dressing. Again, it's going to be in my cookbook, but it's, it's, you know, nothing too major. It's just poochung, a little bit of sweetness with whatever sweetener you want. And you just mix that with a little bit of water to kind of slack in it so it's not such a thick paste. You drizzle that over your broccoli. It is so good. Like my mouth is watering. Just thinking about it. I'm like, I'm literally planning when we hang up to go and order those ingredients so that I can start cooking these things. It's good, too. I like that you've given a few different ways to utilize them because sometimes I feel like

people get, they add a new ingredient to their repertoire. You only have one recipe to do it with. And then they're just kind of like, well, was this worth it? How do I actually incorporate this, et cetera? So I like that you've given us a few options. If people wanted to find you and find out about your book and the rest of your work, where's the best place is the best place to do that? I would say the best place is either my website, which is the Koreanvegan.com.

You know, you can sign it for our weekly newsletter, which just, you know, kind of gives you a new recipe each week and then, you know, updates on what's going on. But other than that, Instagram is sort of like my hub. I feel like that's where I'm most connected with my community. You know, TikTok, obviously I have a much larger community there. But unfortunately, because TikTok doesn't have like a stories. component, it's a little bit harder to provide information regarding, oh, you know, whatever, I'm going to be doing a cooking show here or I'm going to be, you know, this is where my book is or blah, blah, blah. So Instagram is a really great place to kind of keep up to date. And it's also

just a fabulous community. And you're just at the, I feel like you have some dots in your name. I do because the Korean vegan, it's so funny. The Korean vegan was taken, but I have the trademark to it. So I, you know, filed something with Instagram being like, I have a trademark to this. Can't I just have the Korean vegan? And instead of that, they just like got rid of it so that nobody could have it. So now it's the dot Korean dot vegan. That's the only one that anyone's allowed to have. All right. It works. It works, I guess. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to fill all of these incredible secrets. And really, I'm inspired to go cook something. So thank you. Oh, that's awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me. And thank

your audience for listening to us. You're listening to the Healthier Together podcast. The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like, if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life. And most conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics, and more. Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing and turning. You're going to be really hot. And sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important. Because of all of this, if I were not going to, going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress. And in fact, I have four years well before I had much money to spend on any of these

things because it is such a big needle mover. The birch mattress is incredible. It is made with organic cotton, natural latex, and ethically sourced wool. So it has literally no off gassing. You can not smell anything right when you unbox it. It has no microplastics, no synthetic foams or flame retardants. And the wool makes it so breathable, which if you've listened to this podcast for more than five minutes, you know that I run very, very hot. Like I am a furnace. Zach has basically accepted that sleeping next to me is like sleeping next to like a little fire. And the birch mattress has been a game changer for that. It's made me sleep so much better. Like I can see my sleep score going up because I'm not hot all night long. It's also hypoallergenic, which is really worth paying attention to

if you find yourself waking up stuffy or congested. Dust might be. in a conventional mattress can actually impact your breathing and your sleep quality without you even realizing it. And again, we need to be able to breathe to get good sleep and getting good sleep is the foundation of our health. And then comfort-wise, Zach sleeps on his back and then I sleep on my side and my stomach. So we have two completely different sleep styles and we both wake up feeling really good, no aches and pains. CNN actually named the Birch mattress, the best mattress for side sleepers and wired named it the best organic mattress period. So there you go. Birch has options for every kind of sleeper in your household. They have three firmness layers.

I like the Lux Natural, which is the medium one. And then parents, they even have a Birch kids' natural mattress. Burch ships right to your door. It sets up in minutes and it comes with 120 night risk-free trial. So if it is not for you, they will pick it up for free. You have nothing to lose here. I want all of you to enjoy a deep, restful night's sleep with a new mattress from Birch. Go to birchliving.com slash Liz Moody for 20% off. That is birchliving.com slash Liz Moody and you're going to get 20% off, birch living.com slash Liz Moody. I feel like everyone pretty much knows by now that I don't drink caffeine and one of the top questions I get is, what do you do instead for energy? People are very, very concerned. And while I have a

few things on my list, getting enough sleep in the first place, meditating, keeping my blood sugar stable, one of my top tricks is the Organify Red Juice. It has absolutely no caffeine, only two grams of sugar, and it does wonders as a jitter-free pick-me-up. I can hear you asking, how, Liz, how does it work? Well, I will tell you, there are 13, 100% organic superfoods in the blend, including beets, freeze-dried berries, that's where the small amount of sugar comes from, cordyceps, Siberian ginseng, Rishi mushroom, and rhodiola. All of these plants are powerful in their own right. Corticeps is a type of mushroom that's incredibly energizing. Siberian ginsing is an adaptogen found in Asia that's been found to increase mental alertness and acuity. Rishi is another mushroom

that gives you this very clear, anxiety-free boost, and rodeola promotes physical endurance and increases mental clarity and focus. But together, they give you the most amazing feeling, kind of like you get post-meditation, grounded and calm, but alert-focused and ready for action. I'll often do a scoop in the morning when most people would reach for their cup of Joe, and then I also love it when that 2.30 slump rolls around, it perks me right back up so I can get back to being productive and enjoying every possible moment of my day. And did I mention that it tastes so good? It's gently sweet and tastes like actual berries at their best, which makes sense, since Organify only uses the highest quality freeze-dried ingredients for optimal benefits.

Organify has a ton of other products. Zach loves their green juice, which has macha, maringa, spirulina, chlorella, wheatgrass, and more. And they have a hormone balancing hot chocolate, which like, hello, sign me up. I've looked into their sourcing practices and I am confident when saying that the ingredients and their blends are among the highest quality around. Of course, I have a code for you. You can go to www.orgonify.com slash healthier together and use the code healthier together for 20% off your order. Again, that's organify.com, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I-I-N-I-N-I-N-I-N-O-R-G-E-E-A-N-I-A-N-E-E-N-E-E-N-E-E-N-E-E-R-E-R-E-R-R-E-R-R-E-R-R-E-R-R-R-E-R-R-R-E-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-E-R-R-R-E- Yeah, absolutely. So I go by Justine Snacks on TikTok and Instagram and I'm a video editor,

recipe developer, and I guess the new words content creators. So I'm one of those as well. And then you have a day job as well, which I'd love to just bring up because this is going to be talking about all about cooking. And I think what's fascinating to you is you're doing all this cooking, but you're doing it in very minimal amounts of time, which we're going to get into. So can you say briefly what your sort of day job is and what your hours look like? Yeah, so I'm a publicist for a pretty major television network, which keeps me very busy. So during the weekday, I have a pretty standard schedule of like 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. I'm kind of doing that work from home on my computer. And then I've developed all my recipes on the weekend when I film. And that's kind of gone into my recipe development is I've wanted to make recipes for people who are like me who have those schedule limitations but still want to eat really well during the week.

Yeah, schedule limitations and then also apartment size limitations. So we're going to get into all of that in a second for sure. Oh, God. My tiny kitchen. I think people, though, I developed my second cookbook in a teeny tiny kitchen. And I actually think it's such a utility to readers regardless of the size of their kitchen because you really narrow in on the essentials and what's the minimum amount of appliances and tools and whatever you need for something rather than just assuming people have, you know, a kitchen island or more. than one square of counterspace to work with, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And it makes me, like, think about, like, what do I actually need in terms of pots and pans? I just did my spring cleaning, and now I'm, like, down to, like, three pants. That's amazing. Okay, so we're going to get into your kitchen tools later. But let's start off at the very beginning slash the beginning of your food journey. What is your healthy cooking or just your cooking philosophy in general? Like, how do you approach food? This is a little bit tricky, and I think I do have to talk a bit about my

history with food to get it right. I come from a past where I had a really tumultuous relationship with food that started with adolescence and I kind of fell into disordered eating pattern. And that gave me a rough relationship with food for many years. And then I had a kind of an epiphany in my early 20s of just realizing that I don't want to feel tied to food anymore in a negative way and I just want to feel good. So my philosophy about food is really just eating to feel my best. And that can mean a lot of different things from energized or satiated or calm or connected because I think food is such a connecting force. And so that's kind of how I approach like healthy eating and healthy living is it can't be defined as one thing for anybody, but it can be something that we strive towards

in a way that will make us feel really, really good. You say that you had that realization, and I think that's a phenomenal realization to have, and if I could wave my magic wand and have everybody have it in the world, I would. But I think a lot of people maybe read something or hear something or they have that thought, and then they have a hard time sticking to it in practice. So when they're faced with a cookie that has butter and flour or pasta or something like that, there's that little voice in their head that's like, this isn't healthy. you shouldn't eat this, these are the rules, whatever. Did you have a hard time breaking free of that

little voice? Is there anything that helped you do so? So my biggest hurdle that I had to get over was truly I had a crippling binge eating issue. And so when I decided I had finally had enough, it was actually after a really like scary experience with that. And I don't want to go into too many details in case it might be harmful to any listeners. But after that experience, I realized I can't put a label on food that will make me afraid of it. And like, it's really easy to go into the back of our minds and be like hydrogenated fats are bad because of this and this and this reason. Because for me, that just led to a spiral, if that makes sense. And so it took a lot of work in those voices were definitely in the back of my head for the first, like, months that I was in recovery.

But I really just, every time they creeped up, I had to remind myself that I was neutralizing my approach to food because in the long run, that would be best for my mental health and then later my physical health. So it was really prioritizing my mental health first. And then after it took, I would say, two years of doing that to then feel comfortable. introducing physical health aspects back into my diet, if that makes sense. No, that totally makes sense. And then what foods, like, are there foods that make you feel your best? Like, I know for me, after I have a green smoothie, I feel phenomenal. I'm like,

I have all the energy in the world. I can take on the day. So in practical reality, when you're filling up your plate, what foods are sort of making you feel your absolute best? Yeah, I think it's kind of funny because after like experimenting with food and figuring out what I liked, I've definitely fallen into like, I have my favorite meals and then I kind of make, I throw a little variety into them. So my version of a green smoothie is oatmeal. I think like a big bowl of oats that you can like add different seeds or nuts or fruits too is the best thing in the morning. And then in going throughout the day, I do like to keep it like very plant-based, a lot of vegetables, a lot of fruits. But I think this is

where I say healthy is different for everybody. I like never eat a raw vegetable that often. I'm very much. I think healthy. So healthy is different for everybody. I just had a woman on the podcast who says she's a gut health sort of expert and written a lot of books on that subject. And she thinks that a lot of people have digestive issues. They could benefit hugely from not eating raw fruits and raw vegetables because they're really hard on your digestion and they're a lot easier on your digestion cook. So science could agree with you. See, and that's crazy because like when I used to go into the office, I'd get these huge sweet green salads every day, which no shade to sweet green. It's the best. But I like-

Shade sweet green because they got rid of their falafel, which were my favorite things on the planet. They were these baked falafel and I love them so much and they got rid of them. And I'm happy to shade them all over. Okay, then we can shade sweet green. I like, I feel like their whole menu is probably different now. I have not been in the office in a while. But what I used to go, it would be like a huge salad. And I was like, this is the best. And then at 1.30, I was like, like I might die because I was just so bloated. And so I'm kind of like now that I can work from home, I like batch cook vegetables and kind of like throw them on a plate with some tofu. And that makes me feel really good. But then dinner is where if we're going back to like how food makes you feel,

dinner is where I really like to feel connected. So my boyfriend Nile Cook and like that's more of a intuitive like social meal for us. I love that. I think it is. I think it is. that's why it's so important to listen to how your body feels because I think a lot of people feel great after a salad. A lot of people feel really shitty, but they continue to eat the salad because they've been, they've internalized that the salad is the healthy choice. And so I think it is important to step back and be like, is this the healthy choice for me? What is my body saying to me about this? Okay. So two things. I think oatmeal is super boring. And I think that tofu is super boring. Can you convince me otherwise? Okay. My heart is broken. And I think people are doing

oatmeal wrong because if there's not like a decent amount of fruit mixed into it, I don't want it. And contrary to popular belief, I don't think it needs sweetener to be good. I think you can just mix in fruit, dried fruit, nuts for texture, and then it's the best. And also when you cook your oatmeal, you can just throw chia seeds in there. They hydrate while you're cooking the oatmeal. And it's so good and like so good for your digestion. I don't know if I convinced you. But I just like that there's so much variety in it.

And do you put the fruit in while you're cooking? And is this like frozen fruit? Is this fresh fruit? Is there a better or worse kind of fruit? Okay. So my top three are apples, frozen strawberries and frozen blueberries. And I dice up the apple really small, but I leave it raw because,

it just like gives a lot of volume and like a nice crunch to oatmeal. You leave it raw like you top it or you leave it raw when you put the oatmeal in to cook. Once the oatmeal's done cooking, then I throw in the diced apple and like mix it up. So I don't, but if you're doing it on the stove top, I think throwing apple in there and letting it like bake would make like a really nice like apple pie kind of situation. Put some blacks meal on top. I think that'd be really good. And then when I throw in frozen strawberries and frozen. blueberries that's before I cook and that becomes kind of like a fruit jam. It's really,

really good if anybody's like a big oat fan. That sounds more appealing to me. Don't you also add egg whites to your oats? I've seen you do that. Yes. Okay. So I'm like flip-flopping with the egg whites right now because I think they're so great for like satiation and they keep me full forever. but honestly, people kept sliding into my Instagram DMs, like, chastising me for the egg yolk situation. So I just stopped posting it for a while. But I love to, after oats are like hot out of the microwave, whisk in some egg, like two or three egg whites. And what it does is you don't taste them. It just becomes super creamy and super thick. And then it's just like, it's like free protein. I love it so much. You're also almost making like a custard a little bit. Could you

do it with the yolk? Just so a curiosity, so then we aren't food wasting at all? Yes. Okay. So to be, to be transparent, I keep the yolks for baking, eggwash, and soup thickeners. So I do use my yolks and then sometimes a carbonara because like, you know, you got it. But I do sometimes throw a whole egg in there and then it kind of becomes like egg drop soup. And then I add soy sauce, chili oil, scalyons. That's a really good savory breakfast. too. Okay, and I have to ask, because you said you saved the yolks, can you just save the yolks in like the fridge or do you freeze them or what's the process there? So I have like a little like a glass ramekin and I put them all in there and they stay separated for the most part. But if you're worried

about like it becoming like one big yoke thing that you can't really work from, you can't store them individually in glass ramekins and a little bit of water. That's my yoke storing hat. And then I was making like some, it was like a mix between carbonara and udon noodles and you just add an egg yolk on top and it becomes like this really rich sauce. And then I'm a big egg yolk person. Never waste the yolk. Yeah. I'm, I love egg yolks as well. I just didn't know. I think saving one feels very intimidating to me. Okay, tofu, can you talk me into tofu? I've seen them on your page, but I just like, it's the texture for me. And not like good. Like it's the texture for me. No, It's like, it's disgusting looking, the texture.

Okay, have you seen the tofu nugs? Those are my, those are my, like, pride and joy recipe. No, I don't think I have chalked me through them. Okay, so I think the biggest roadblock that, like, non-tofu eaters have with tofu is when people are trying to convince you that the texture's not bad, you just have to press it within an inch of its life and then freeze it and slice it. It's just, like, so much work when you could just, like, do chicken. Not eat tofu. So what I do is I take like a firm block of tofu, lightly press it with like a paper towel, but don't do anything crazy.

You just make sure it's dry. And then cube it and then take nutritional yeast mixed with you can do whatever spices you want. But I do rosemary time, red pepper flakes and salt and pepper. So you have like a bunch of nutritional yeast. I'd say like one fourth cup, those spices and your cube tofu. And then you, um, coat each piece of tofu all around in the nutritional yeast mixture and then air fry it into an inch of its life and it becomes super crispy or you can bake it if you don't have an air fryer and that it makes such a good crispy tofu and you don't have to go through all the work. All right. I don't have an air fryer in my nomad life, but I do have an oven. So I will potentially, I will not promise to try that, but I will potentially try it. How do you feel about scrambled egg texture?

I'm okay with that. I like, I like like a French soft scramble. Then I feel like have you had people try to like talk you into tofu scramble before? I haven't. I think because I eat eggs, I've always been like if I eat eggs, why? I'm, I'm all about tofu and plant-based proteins and all of that. I hate replacement things. Like I think we should celebrate things for what they are rather than trying to

trying to, like, I'm never going to be a fake chicken, fake beef person. I'd rather just eat a carrot or cauliflower and, like, love that carrot or cauliflower. I agree with that too. And I also, like, not to sidetrack us too much. I think that's a thing I see all the time is people take a recipe that would be like an amazing recipe on its own, but then retitle it to kind of be like a different version of this. And it just, it doesn't, it doesn't sit right with me. And I, it doesn't feel right. So I'm trying not to do that in the recipes that I make because I think it's just so much easier. It's tricky, though. I agree with you in theory, but in practice, having that you have like one or two seconds to get people's interest and attention on social media and on blogs when they're scrolling and

all of that and having them be like, oh, this is a version of something that I recognize helps with that enormously. But principally, I agree with you. And if I were a better person, I would stick to that probably. Oh, my God. No, I do it all the time. And I'm, It's because the name recognition. Like I just made a cookie and I called it a thin mint when it's not a thin mint. It's just like a Dutch cocoa mint situation. So, okay, one of my favorite cookie hacks, the thing that I think first got my attention to your page and I was like, oh, this chick knows some interesting shit, was when you talked

about adding cornstarch to cookies to make their texture different. So first talk me through that as a hack and then I want to know how you learned these cooking hacks, cooking secrets. Yeah, absolutely. So I think those were the macha cookies, which are another one of my favorites. And I think if you're a big baker and you're making cookies, cornstarch needs to be your new secret ingredient because what it does is it inhibits gluten formation when you're mixing it together, the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients because you know when flour meets moisture, then it naturally just grows a gluten structure. So what corn starch does, and you only use a little bit of it, like depends on the recipe, but like one to two, tablespoons. It just takes away some of that gluten formation making a really soft cookie, like the kind where you just like break them open and it's just so melty. So that's why I like using cornstarch. It does get a little tricky because like let's say we're using almond flour or an oat flour. It doesn't apply there. But if you're using a normal all purpose flour

in a traditional cookie recipe, cornstarch will change the game. So anything with gluten essentially. Yeah. And where did you learn the size? behind cooking? So the cornstarch was actually from my family. That was a family secret that nobody ever explained to me. But then I went to school at Cornell for their hotel administration program, which sounds like boring front desk school. But it's actually a really great hybrid of a business school and hospitality and then like a culinary arts school. And when I was in that program. My style of food and what I love to do is like very approachable and kind of like chill. And I was surrounded by all these foodies who were very like foie gras wine tasting gung ho.

So I would sit in the culinary lectures and I would learn, but I didn't embrace it until years out of college. But there was a class that we took that was just culinary basics. And we had this textbook where you could dive into baking basics. And I kind of became. a little obsessed. Do you have any other like secrets off hand that that you kind of rely on on your cooking at home? I think people underestimate the power of eggs in baking. And I do like to do a lot of plant-based baking. I think it's a nice challenge. But whenever I use an egg, it is because it is critical to a recipe. And that's because eggs provide the power to emulsify, give structure, give moisture, they can do so much with one ingredient. So if you're making a muffin and you're like

something here is not right, I guarantee you add an egg, see the difference. Is more eggs, does that tend to be better? Or is there a time when there's some indicator that you should scale back your egg content? There is definitely, there's definitely such thing as too much egg. And that's when you get such a, I feel like you've probably been through this. Like when you get such a tight spring and you're baked good and it's like kind of, I mean, for lack of a better word, it's just like incredibly like dense and eggy. That's where you have too much egg. But I've always noticed that when I'm making breads or cakes or even cookies, if there's like

something that's missing in terms of like I want more height or I want more moisture, usually an egg is, is like the key to that next step. When you're approaching plant-based baking, are there any rules that you rely on? Like, people are always asking me, can I sub almond flour? Can I sub oat flour? When you're sort of developing these recipes in the first place, are there rules that you're going by to know when a flax egg is good or a chia egg or which flour you would reach for? I'm still really experimenting with flax and chia egg because they both work really differently. And if anybody's just like a casual home baker, definitely like play around with flax and chia egg because you'll find a preference.

I prefer chia egg personally. I prefer flax strongly. See, I think I do a lot of pancake recipes and a flax egg really messes with that. So I think that's why I prefer chia right now. Messes with it in what way? It just, it becomes just a flax pancake. It doesn't provide like that springy structure. Yeah.

Interesting. That's interesting. But then going back to things that I've learned, I've learned a lot about what flowers are interchangeable and what flowers are not. And I'm still a gluten-free novice. I definitely am dabbling in the gluten-free arena. But I found that oat and almond flour can be substituted one-to-one. But then coconut flour has such a drier crumb. Yeah, you have to use like half of it, right? Coconut flour is insane.

Like when people are like, oh, this didn't work, the first thing I asked them is if they use coconut flour because it's a sponge, it sucks up liquid like nothing else. Yeah. And it's affordable, which is great. But it's just iced. I have not gotten the hack of like a good coconut flour ratio. I have fallen in love with arrowroot flour if you're a fan. I love arrowroot.

What do you use it for? Pancakes. And also I'm developing like a few muffins. with it. And I really, really like how, like, soft it gets. Yeah, it's the finest grind. It's, like, powdery versus other flowers. And I think that that's hugely beneficial. It's also great for breading and coating things, I think, for that reason. Yeah, I haven't gotten into that. I'm still stuck in my panco breadcrumbs. I like to, I like to try to use up everything in my pantry and then, like, buy more things, which is why people will see me make a recipe for three weeks straight that's, like,

use coconut oil. And I feel really bad. But I'm just. I'm just got to get the ingredient out of my house. I love that, though. Like, I love the low-waste consciousness, and I love the affordability consciousness. Are there any things you think about when you're trying to kind of cut back on the amount of money you're spending on food or that you would recommend to people when they're trying to do so? Yeah, I think about this a lot because I still, like, I still am trying to keep a budget in mind while being a recipe developer.

And that's really hard, especially, like, I have now made one cook. I'm going to upload it soon, but I've now made one cookie six times, and it just like breaks me inside. But in terms of my favorite affordable items, I think if you're using a gluten-free substitute, if you're trying that in your diet, oat flour is the way to go. Like almond flour is amazing, but it's so expensive if you're looking for like that initial sub. And then also, I think people, when they're looking to cut back on spending their money on groceries, plant-based options from whole foods are so affordable. And I think it gets a stigma because, like, fake chicken and the fancy, like, what's that grocery store in California called Irwan option?

Aron. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I think there's that stigma there when really you can create so many affordable meals. from like rice, beans, the right spices and the right vegetables. I love that. Are there pantry staples that you rely on? Like I always have chickpeas, garlic powder, onion powder, and smoke paprika. And I feel like, and then some frozen veggies. And I feel like if I have those, I'm good to go. Do you have stuff like that?

Yeah, I have, I'm trying to think into my pantry right now. It's a little haphazard. I always have turmeric. I always have coconut milk, which I used to never have those in my, pantry, but now I just think they're such a good additive to like meal meals. But then if we're talking like baking staples that I always have, I always have eggs, I always have almond milk. I always have ripe bananas on hand because those can be used in so many things. And also like if they're turning ripe, right, right, ripe, you just throw them in the freezer and then you have

smoothies, you know? So I think they're just a super affordable ingredient that you, no shame in stocking up on that. And I always have, you know, a box of Oreo O's because it's not budget-friendly, but it's very important to me. A good box of cereal, I think is critical to life. Now that we, like, we, I think during the pandemic at some point, we were just like, we're always going to have some cereal on hand. And it's been a game changer for us. And it's like, I tell my partner, I'm like, it's not like I'm going to eat it every day. I just like to know it's there. 100% and sometimes I will eat it every day and that's fine too. Yeah.

You mentioned you have three pans. So what cookware appliances, tools, what do you think if you're stocking a small apartment or you just want to buy a few things? What's like maybe two or three that are definitely worth it and you should for sure have and maybe two or three that you think are not worth it and are overrated? Oof. Okay. So before like three weeks ago, I would have put cast iron in the overrated.

it. I know. But now I got the most amazingly seasoned cast iron pan and it's small. It's like an eight inch. I would die without it. It's so great. You can do so much with it. You can put a fish on it and then put it in the oven. It's amazing. So that I've done a hard turn towards the cast iron team. But then I still think there's value in a small nonstick pan. I know a lot of people have a lot of thoughts about nonstick. I think if you're a a small apartment place and you're like just a regular everyday cook. It's just so convenient to have. And then, well, the three pans I have is my cast iron, my small nonstick and then a pot for boiling water or anything in. And then a colander, of course, which I also use for sifting flour. It's a multifunctional kitchen over here. Love that. Okay. And what is there like you have an air fire. It sounds like from your tofu. Is that worth it? Not worth it? Do you think a blender's worth it? Do you think an instant

pot? Okay. So what's funny is our air fryer is actually, we have an instant pot, which has this attachment on top that is an air fryer attachment. It's hard to explain. But so we have like a two and one. And my partner uses it a lot more than I do. I like it for like if I want to bake something or air fry something. I don't have to turn. on the oven, even though, like, I feel like it's a common misconception and genius marketing that, like, an air fryer is just a convection oven. So you don't need it. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. Well, what bothers me?

And again, no shade to anybody because it's marketing that did this. But when I, I have like a hush puppy recipe, cauliflower hush puppies, they're so good. And people equate deep frying and air frying is the same thing. where I wish we could. That's 100% of the marketing has been. You can quit frying things. You can just stick them in your air fryer. And the results, if you're going in expecting that, I think you're just going to be disappointed.

But if you're going in, you're like, I have this small apartment. I don't want to heat it in my oven. It's summer. I want to not waste the energy or something like that. Then an air fire is great. Exactly. And also, I think going back to the marketing thing, if we're talking affordable, you can buy a toaster oven or a small convection oven for a quarter of the price.

and still get like the results of an air fryer. Just tell your friends it's an air fryer. Hot, literally hot tip. Okay, let's talk about plant-based eating for a second. You said that you eat largely plant-based, but not entirely plant-based. But I do think you have really interesting ideas for how to incorporate plants into your diet. So if somebody came to you and they said, Justine, I want to start eating more plant-based.

I don't know how. Where would you have them start? This is my favorite thing to talk about because I call it impact minimizing. all your recipes. Because for me, plant-based eating is important for an ethical and environmental standpoint. Like, that's really important to me. But with my past, like, disordered eating history, I know that there are certain, like, I just can't cut out food groups.

It just wouldn't be healthy for me where I am right now. But there are so many amazing swaps we can make now that we have all these, like, products out there. that can take a recipe, make it slightly more plant-based, not 100%, but still do your duty to kind of, or just do your due diligence to kind of take small actions in voting with your wallet to make more plant-based choices. So like a case in point is I make a lot of baked mac and cheeses. But when you're making a bechamel, you can so easily make it an olive oil-based bechamel, which is untraditional, but it's just as delicious.

And then you can also throw in almond milk or like an almond type of cream and then still keep that cheese. So it feels like you're getting all that baked mac and cheese amazingness. But a recipe that would be using a lot more animal products is now using about two-thirds. And that's why I call it impact minimizing is you're not completely making a plant-based switch, but you're making choices that could minimize the impacts that you're making when you buy those products at the grocery store. I love that.

Yeah. And the example I always go back to is like almond milk was not trendy when I was in high school and like look at it now. And it's just those tiny swaps. So by that you mean that like by people, by consumers getting an interest into this thing, it's grown in the national, international psyche and now people are producing it and you see it on shelves and all that. So you're kind of saying every time you're voting with your.

dollar, it actually does add up cumulatively and it matters. Yeah. And I think that's what people think that, oh, I'm not going to go plant based because it won't make a difference. And I think there's, we should all recognize that it's not doing a drastic life change that'll make a difference. It's doing like tiny super manageable choices. I love that.

I love that so much. All right. A few final things. What's your go-to sort of work lunch, make-ahead lunch that, feels good that'll energize you for the rest of your work day, but that you can bring to work or make ahead of time since we don't go anywhere. See, I don't know if you're like this, but I get bored if I do the exact same thing every day. So what I do is I, this is what I used to do before COVID. I would make a big batch of about four to five servings of rice and then put a can of beans in there

mixed in with the spices I would switch up every time, but it would usually be like zatotiv. tar something like really flavorful and then you could add cumin and coriander and that would be like something that I could portion out to take to work but then when I was doing all that prep I'd prep some roasted broccoli some roasted carrots different vegetables and then I could kind of pick and choose what I wanted that day and then it wouldn't get all gross but then I'm also a huge fan of making I do this nowadays I make just big servings of one thing and I portion that out throughout the week. But then I've been getting a lot of messages on my socials about people who are like,

that gets kind of gross and gets kind of repetitive. So I've also been looking into how to make like things that are just a bunch of ingredients you have in your bridge that you can assemble right when you need it at lunch. So. I also think if you make that one big thing, like one big pot of chili or something, jizzing it throughout the week in like a different direction, like one day maybe you're adding harissa to it to make it more spicy and Middle Eastern vibe and then the next day you're having it with some cornbread.

Like, I think varying even a base thing is nice. I think I'm so, I don't know if I'm impressed is the right word, but I can't believe the people who can actually eat the same thing for lunch every day because I just cannot. Yeah. And I used to be one of those people strictly out of like budget and just exhaustion, but I agree. It's like, it's all about the josh. Okay. So speaking of budget and.

exhaustion. If you have 15 minutes, you're like, you worked a long day, you're tired. You have 15 minutes to make dinner, but you want your dinner to make you feel good. What are you making? I just posted a recipe about this and I love it. It's a like a chili salmon. And then with that, you can do, I put it on avocado toast, but I also think it's a great way to, you can take like avocado and a grain maybe that you have. And that turns into like, it's a super flavorful dinner. And salmon, it's not hard. Just put it on a baking sheet, top it with some lime juice, bake it 425 for 13 minutes. We're overthinking fish. Yeah, I think people are really intimidated by fish at home. So you think that has the results that are sort of the best for salmon?

I think for that particular, like if you need a foolproof, like you just worked a nine-hour day recipe, I think that's a great way to make salmon. Like, you're not going to get that crispy skin that you would from searing it first and then putting in the oven. But it's like a one step. So I have no active labor. Exactly. I'm such a fan of like throwing things on a sheet pan and letting the oven do the work for you. Oh, I'm a huge, a huge fan of that. I think when people are looking at recipe times, it's so important to differentiate between like the active labor time and the cook time because you can do whatever you want where your stuff's in the oven. You can cuddle your cat. You can have sex, read a book. It's like your free time.

Man, I need to start cooking like you cook. Good God. All right. Final question, because this is all about, I'm all about trying to get people to love vegetables and incorporate vegetables into their life in any way possible. What's your favorite vegetable? And then what's your favorite preparation of that vegetable? Oh, man. Okay.

Better nut squash. I think it's like getting a sweeter potato for free. Yet you would choose it over a sweet potato. 100%. 100%. It's got the best texture. And what I like to do with it is toss it in some olive oil, toss it in a little bit of balsamic vinegar, and then put it, cube it up, put some shallots with it and roast that at 425 for 30 minutes. So good. That sounds amazing. Do you do that all year? No, only in the winter. And it's like, I'm always curious when people find their thing they love. Like, I will do Brussels sprouts out of season because I'm just so obsessed with them. even if they're not as good and whatever. And I know the environmental impact is definitely worse, but I love them so much. I feel like there are like there are some vegetables that you're like,

this is a winter thing. But then other vegetables are year-round. And I feel like Brussels sprouts. They throw that line. They make the pass. Yeah. If people wanted to find more from you and all these delicious recipes that you've mentioned on this podcast, where should they look?

Yeah. Well, you can follow me on TikTok and Instagram. at Justine underscore snacks. If you're into Pinterest, I also am loving Pinterest lately, Justine underscore Snacks. And then I recently launched my website, which is my pride and joy, where you can get all my recipes, and that's Justine Snacks.com. Your website is beautiful. You hyped your website up a lot, and then it lived up to the hype.

So congratulations on the launch of that. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to share. I mean, you have so much wisdom. I feel like I could pick your brain forever, but we'll have to have you back on. and thank you for sharing all of your gorgeous knowledge with us. Thanks for having me on. This was so fun.

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I love your page was like a relatively recent find for me. I feel like this year. it's become quickly one of my favorites. And on TikTok, too, I just, you make me so hungry every time I see your content. Then I'm doing it right. And it helps that I live in D.C., which is such a dynamic food city. It really is. One of my favorite restaurants in the world was in D.C., but then they closed, but Obama took Michelle there for her birthday, I guess, and they told me that when I was there. And I was like, oh, like, it's perfect. It's perfect for me. But it was my favorite meal I've had in a long time. And then I close, which was really sad. I think a lot of restaurants obviously have been suffering with the past

year. Can you start up just by telling us a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do? My name is Anella Malik, and I blog under the handle Feed the Malik, which is a play on my last name. And I'm based in Washington, D.C. right now. But hopefully after the pandemic, I'll be traveling a lot more, which has always been a huge part of my life. And I focus on highlighting food from black and other marginalized communities and I also am a sourdough baker. Love that. Sourdough is my, Zach got into sourdough during the pandemic like everybody else. And it has been the highlight of my pandemic, like 100% just getting to have freshly baked

bread. The best thing in the world. How did you get interested in highlighting black food culture and the food culture of marginalized communities? So I started my blog when I was living abroad. I was living in Amman Jordan. and I had studied the Middle East and spent a lot of time there. And then when I moved back to Washington, D.C., I wanted to continue blogging.

And I love food. And I got here and I was really interested in learning about food that went just beyond, like what's on everyone's eaters 50 best or the Washingtonians 100 best restaurants list. Because what I found was that those lists were a good starting point, but they often basically just had the same core group of restaurants. And that wasn't the food scene that I saw when I left my house, right? D.C. is so diverse. It's so dynamic. And I realized, especially that I felt like the black restaurant industry in the region was underrepresented, given that it's still the largest ethnic group here. There's a really dynamic black restaurant scene. And I was like, well, I want to learn more about them. So I'm going to learn more about them. So how do you, I think that's such an interesting question when you travel or even when you're, in your own city and you want to find a really good restaurant, sometimes it feels like those lists

are the only way to do so. So how do you find these incredible restaurants? So it's hard because those lists are the easiest things. If you search for best date night in whatever city, they're going to come up from the major publications. But I find that social media is a really good tool if you know how to search, right? So search by location, search by keyword. And find bloggers that are working in the food space because typically they will have just a little bit different coverage than what's in legacy media. And from there, you can kind of piece together, oh, well, this place is new. And so far it seems from the community, like it has really great reviews. And it's a small mom and pop shop. And maybe it hasn't been written about yet. But, you know,

that would be a good place to start. So we're going to get into cooking in a second because this is about healthy cooking secrets. But I am fascinated by the restaurant perspective as well. So once we're in the restaurant, we found like the really cool place. How do you know what to order to get the best things? Like do you have a secret for picking out the best items on the menu? So I always, I have a rule and it kind of drives my husband crazy sometimes. But I always say that we can't order anything at a restaurant that we could make it home easily or that we would make it home. And so that that ensures that for us what we order and receive is like it has that wow factor because it's not something

that we eat regularly. And on top of that, I always ask the server. I ask, what is your favorite item on the menu? I don't ask what's the best seller, right? Because the best seller could be something that maybe isn't the best, but it's placed strategically on the menu or it has really great photos online. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's, you know, the dish that they're the proudest of. That's a good tip. Okay, let's talk about your time in a month because I love Middle Eastern in the food culture. I love the Middle East. It's my favorite, favorite, favorite place to travel to and I cannot wait to take my husband back there with me. So can you tell me a little bit about how you ended up there? And then also, I really want to know what you learned about cooking there and how it

influenced your cooking. So I was there working on assignment. I was a U.S. diplomat before I was a blogger. So cool. It's so cool. Do you feel cool being able to say that? No, not really. It's so cool sounding. It's one of those jobs that I think a lot of people have heard of but don't really understand. And like many jobs when you're in it, it's really just like, you know, nitty-gritty kind of routine. You have to do the grunt work. It's not like all glitz and glamour, you know? I'm picturing mostly like the born supremacy series being your day in life. Definitely not. Definitely just like an office job, like a really cool office job, but you know, an office job. but that experience, I think, really broadened my perspective around food in general.

I had traveled a lot before, but, you know, when you travel as a student, you don't really have very much money. At least I didn't. So, you know, like you eat the same five things that are really repetitive and often you eat street food and that's fabulous. But this was my first time traveling as an adult who had, you know, disposable income. So I found that I was able to experience things that I had never quite expected. My prior travels in the Middle East had really been limited to like hummus, falafel, shawarma sandwiches, you know, like really core foods. And then I discovered that, you know, there's this whole range of Lebanese fine dining from like the very, very, very, very fancy to more casual places. And, you know, the differences between cuisines within the region, right? So,

there are some dishes that are Palestinian dishes, some Jordanian dishes. And I also feel like this experience made me so appreciate spices, just on a whole different level, because I sometimes think now that I've moved back to the United States, that we don't appreciate the broad array of spices that exist in the world. Things like cardam, you know, using dates as a sweetener, and adding lots of, like, maybe spicier spices, things that are warming to your foods. I found that those were things that I still use in my cooking today. How do you like, what's a way that you love to use cardamom that you incorporate in your food now? So I make cardamate sourdough bagels instead of cinnamon raisin.

And I love cinnamon raisin, but I feel like date cardam has so much more of like, almost like an earthy flavor and that rich sweetness from the date syrup that, Oh, it's amazing. That sounds phenomenally good. Like, that sounds so, so good. Are there any spices other than the ones that you mentioned that you feel like people should start to incorporate into their daily cuisine that they should add to their spice cabinet and reach for more regularly? Hmm. I don't necessarily.

Okay, so this isn't a spice, but one thing I wish we used more of in cooking in the United States was pomegranate. It just, talk about flavorful. And then pomegranate syrup is a great sweetener. It has a really, like, beautiful kind of clear, almost, almost sharp flavor. So it's great on salad dressings, like where you would use balsamic vinegar, for example. And so that's something that I find myself using that I never really used in my cooking before. Yeah, I love that. Did you have any favorite dishes that you started making at that time in your life that you that have kept on today?

So there's one dish that I learned how to make in Jordan. I haven't actually made it since I got back to the United States. It's called Metluba. And so it's a layered rice dish that has fried vegetables and often fried chicken. And the variations of toppings change, depending on who's making it. And you cook it all in a pot and then you invert it. and if you do it correctly when you remove the pot it keeps this shape of the pot and it has this beautiful layer of vegetables on top right and it's just like stunning and it's i've only done it

right once or twice but that was a dish that i always had when uh when i was in jordan especially friends once they find out you like something they'll always make it for you thankfully they're like oh you know the american girl she's like obsessed with this dish so um and So they got you back. Oh, yeah. And I recently ordered a few supplies here to try to make it here again because it's so, so good. I love that. That sounds so good.

So you mentioned, like, fried vegetables and you mentioned bagels. I would love to know what is your food philosophy. Like, do you think about health when you cook? What does health mean to you? How do you think about what should constitute your diet in general? Yeah. So I do think about health when I cook, though I don't really consider it. it that way. I think about two things primarily. Balance, which I know is like kind of amorphous and for some

people is really difficult, but where I am in my food journey, that's where I've reached kind of like a happy place. And I also think about reducing waste. So I am a food blogger who covers restaurants and I eat out a lot. And to me, food waste is a really, really important issue. So if you see something on my feed, we ate it. And if there were leftovers, we took them home and we probably deconstructed them and pick them apart and figure out how to use them. And that's because, you know, food waste contributes significantly to global warming. And so that's part of my food philosophy and then balance. And what I mean by balance is that I do eat fried chicken and I do eat bagels. But I try to eat a range of foods, lots of plants and lots of colors and lots of different preparations, right?

So if I'm eating fried food at a restaurant one day, I'm probably not going to eat fried food. next day because I'm not going to like the way that it makes me feel. And it's taken me a long time in my life to get to this point where I can be like, oh, that doesn't really make me feel good. So I should probably offer something else. I love that. Let's talk about food waste for a second, because I do think it's a really big issue, both in restaurants. And then also for home cooks, I get messages from people all the time who are like, oh, I bought all of these vegetables at the farmer's market because they look so beautiful and exciting. And then I forgot about them and they turned a mush in the back of my fridge or whose leftovers to sort of die in the back of their

fridge. So do you have any tips for how you reduce food waste in your life? Oh, definitely. So I always approach it as find three or four staple dishes that are pretty versatile that you're comfortable making. Like when you're tired, when you don't have a recipe, you're truly comfortable making. So whether that is, you know, some sort of rice bowl or often I repurpose takeout for salads because I just like, you know, cut it all up and put on top and find the dressing that seems to go with the flavor profile and it's fine. But find your staples, find things you're very comfortable with and then think about how you could swap things in or out of your staple dishes and build the flavor profile

around what you have. So like the way that I make my nachos, which are totally non-traditional, right? Like half the time I'm not using chips. I'll maybe use a cashew cheese one day or I'll I really like your cheese sauce from the healthier together cookbook. I'll use that and that's totally just made out of plants, right? So but then I'll think I had curry chickpeas one week. So what flavors go with curry chickpeas? Well, I have these herbs that would probably go well with a with a curry. Hmm, I have a cauliflower that's getting kind of wilty and I could roast that with some turmeric and cumin and that would probably go well. So if you think about a staple dish and how you could swap a

few things out and then maybe tweak the flavor profile to make it all work together, that's how we approach reducing food waste in our house. Zach loves the idea. It sounds like you do it. So I think he thought he came up with it, but perhaps he did not of doing takeout intentionally so that you order like a big chicken breast or something like that that you eat. intend to take home and doctor up with your food at home. So it's like half takeout and half homemade. And that way your food goes further. But also, um, you're eating something probably that's healthier than if you just did straight takeout. Because you always get these sort of large portions and they're not necessarily fully balanced. You have like one thing left over,

but maybe not the other things. And I love the idea of being like, well, this can be an enchilada tomorrow and then the next day it can be a stir fry and using one component of your takeout in that way, I think it's really, really smart. And I mean, maybe this is just because I've had to really think about this for my job. I've had to come up with a strategy because I love what I do, but I just don't like the runway food, period. What we'll do when we're out is we'll order whatever we want halfway through the meal when we're starting to get full and we realize we're going to have bits to take home. I will look at my husband. and say, what of this will reheat well? So maybe we got a stir fry or a curry or like a

shakshuka, right? Something soft. So if you reheat it later, it can stay soft and it's really still really nice. So we'll put that aside and deliberately finish the other things that maybe after they travel won't have that same texture that you really want. It won't have the same crunch or the same chewiness, et cetera. And that way we order whatever we. Or whatever we want, but we're intentional about finishing the things there at the restaurant that probably won't travel that well. That's super, super, super smart. Do you mention having like three or four kind of go-to staple dishes? What are those in your house? So salads, which seems, I know, really basic, but you can put almost anything on a salad. Do you have secrets to make? So I think salads are like

fine, but they're pretty boring. What I do for salads is I do like half of the lettuce as herbs. and that makes it way more interesting and fun for me. Do you have tips like that to make salads actually kind of inspired and taste good? So I think of salads the same way I think of grain bowls, which I think I try to explain it to people like there are a lot of local chains here in the Mid-Atlantic. We have Kaba, right, where you can get a grain bowl that has like 50 toppings on top of it. So I try to think of salads the same way.

Lots of herbs. I also love microgreens. I think they have really nice, like, textural elements that sometimes you're missing if you just do, like, larger greens. Do you have nuts? Do you have cheese? Do you have fruit? Do you have a leftover piece of fried chicken that you can crisp in the toaster oven very quickly? Do you have beans?

Almost anything is fair game for salads. And I try to think of them as just a base for a lot of fun little toppings. And so we eat a salad almost every day, but it doesn't even really feel like we're really. reaching for healthy food per se. We're kind of just reaching for something versatile that we can use all of the elements of our fridge and pantry in. What about the dressing? Is that homemade or is that store bought?

Sometimes both. I definitely like to keep a dressing that we like. But then, you know, depending on what's going in the salad, I might use pomegranate syrup. I might just do like a quick mix of mustard, lemon juice, some herbs. like a drizzle of olive oil. Sometimes, especially if there's a lot of, like, fruit or sweeter elements on the salad, I might go with just lemon juice and olive oil. And don't forget flaky salt.

Sometimes all your salad needs is a little bit of flaky salt. A chef once told me to salt your greens before you even add anything to them. And I've started doing that. And it makes a world of difference. Just a very fine coating of salt. And I'm like, oh, it livens up the entire. situation. It really does. And it'll pull everything together. What are your other go-to, like, weeknight sort of dishes? I don't want to think about this. I don't want to cook.

Definitely stir fry, which is kind of a similar approach. And I will say this. My like number one healthy hack is have easy things at home for when you're really, really tired, right? It's a busy time. People are stressed. And I used to think when I first started food blogging, I put a lot of pressure on myself to make everything from scratch, everything from scratch. All the sauces, you know, I would buy the dry beans and then soak them and then. And all that does is eat into the amount of time that you have. And if you realistically don't have that much time, don't put that pressure on yourself.

So, you know, I like stir fries and I like grain bowls. Those are two go-toes. but I'll keep pre-made like little packages of brown rice or there's often like these brown rice and, you know, seven grain mixtures or pre-made packages of beans as well. So I can build off of those two elements really easily. And I don't have to start soaking the beans the night before. You know, that's a lot of time. Yeah, for sure.

It's just not realistic. I think identifying like what your bottlenecks are, like is it going to annoy you? to make rice? Is it going to annoy you to make beans and then trying to figure out how to eliminate those bottlenecks so that you can just get right to it? Absolutely. Do you, you've talked about, you eat out clearly quite a bit. I'm curious if you have any sort of like money saving hacks. I know that we're, I think eliminating food waste is obviously a huge way to conserve money because you're not wasting a bunch of your money on food you don't

but do you have any other ways to save money on healthy food? Yeah, so buy in bulk, if you have a bulk store available to you, which, you know, that's a privilege and is not always available. Inventory or pantry before you go shopping. And so inventory, so you don't throw food away, but also inventory to see what things you have in those back corners that you haven't looked at in three months that you don't look at. want to do that. It just feels like so much work. Like it's already so much work to go to the store and go shopping and then to like go through everything. But I always intend to do it. And then I'm just like, me, do I need? I mean, I can say for us truthfully, right? We spend a lot of money on food. I develop recipes and I eat out for a living. But even when I was a beginner and I wasn't making money off the blog, like we had to figure out how to make it work with our budget. And part of the way that we did that was. was inventory before we even think about what we want to make for the next week, before we think

about going to the store. And we very rarely throw away any food, not even like sauces or, you know, the little bit of the mustard. There's like an eighth of an onion in there that I'm going to figure out how to use later. But by doing that, we have created a lot of room in our budget. So you really just view like an eighth of an onion as a source for inspiration for like how will I use this tonight? Flavor. So for breakfast this morning, right? We had, I went to an Iraqi restaurant last week.

And so it was like the last few days this needed to be used. I had maybe like two inches of kebab left with the rice that it came on and they grill tomatoes on the grill. So you get this like really nice, beautiful charred tomato. And so for breakfast this morning, we had a stir fry with that as the base. a lot of arugula, a little bit of leftover onion, and I chopped up the tomato and the kebab, and then a fried egg on top and hot sauce that was left over from another restaurant we went to. I love, so there was so much town pack there, literally just on its own. One, I think if you're looking for food inspiration and you're feeling stuck,

visiting a type of cuisine that you might not be normally eating at, I think the fact that you were eating at an Iraqi restaurant is like, oh, that's like different than going out to Mexican or going out to pizza and is so inspiring too. I think also savory breakfast are so underrated and breakfast that are a little, I mean, I'm the queen of smoothie, so I'm not going to lean into this too hard. But I do think that people very much limit what breakfast foods can and should be. And I love the idea that you're like, I'm having a kebab with arugula for breakfast and

that's fine. And it's somewhat times a way to get a lot more inspiration with your food. You can have breakfast foods for dinner, dinner foods for, like, who made the rules about that? And I'm sure you've experienced they're so different in different cultures what those rules actually are. Oh, that's so true. In our house, there really no rules. Like just try to eat what's in the fridge. Try to make sure you eat plants throughout the day.

And, you know, that's kind of it. That's how we approach it. Are there any sort of food traditions from your own childhood or in your own life that you've kept on as a grown-up? been that are meaningful to you? So I'm actually kind of rediscovering my childhood foods now. And I see that as just most of my family's recipes are not written down as most families are. So I learned how to make a few things from my parents that were like our staple dishes. But now that I'm, you know, working in this space, I've actually started reaching out to my family members and I've made them all.

They're so annoyed with me. I made them all send me these long voice recordings of their favorite dish. And over the next year, I'm working on, like, creating, you know, recipes out of them that we can standardize for other people in the family to use. But also just to preserve this part of our history because, you know, like my sister just sent me a recipe for tortilla soup. And I'm like, I've never, I don't even think I've made that for myself. I've had it.

But, you know, that's the, she lives on the West Coast. So that is definitely makes more sense for where she lives and her region. And my mom lived in Jamaica for a long time and, you know, married there and had kids there. And so she, that's where she first learned how to cook. So some of her like staple dishes, even though my mom is, you know, white and Asian, some of her staple dishes are like rice and peas. And so I'm trying. I love Caribbean cuisine. I think that it's amazing.

It's so good. And I'm trying to take all these different elements and make it so that we have them for our kids and the grandkids. Because recipes sometimes do get lost, especially I think as we often no longer live like in close family units. And so you move away and then maybe you remember one thing that your mom made or two things. But you know, you might not have that like recorded history for your family. I love that idea and I don't think they're, I mean, they might be annoyed. But like I would be so touched if somebody reached out to me and all I had to do was a voice know. I think that's such a cool idea for anybody to do within their family, within their community or anything like that. It's a really beautiful. I mean, I just feel like the moments that we realize we want to keep the history

are often too late. And so you preempting that is just a really beautiful thing. All right. I would love to end on if you have a favorite. vegetable. We're trying to get people to eat as many plants as possible on this podcast. If you have a favorite vegetable and then how should we prepare it if we want to incorporate that vegetable in a way? Like I want you to persuade people if they're like, ugh, I don't like mushrooms. I want you to turn us into mushroom lovers, you know, but maybe not with mushrooms because I don't really like

mushroom. All right, so then we're going to go with mushrooms. No, do your favorite. Do your favorite. I don't want to sway you in any direction. Actually, you know, when you asked me that question, I was like, because I don't really have a favorite. I eat and enjoy almost everything, and I don't think of a single vegetable that I really don't like. If I told you it was your last day on earth and you got to eat whatever vegetable you wanted, and would you just sit there and be like,

well, I don't have a favorite, so I guess I'll just be hungry today. I would probably say sweet potatoes. That's a good one. How do you prep them? They're so easy. Just wash them, poke them with a fork, and roast them.

Like there's almost nothing better than a slow roasted sweet potato, especially if you, you do have to roast it like low and slow. So maybe almost an hour, hour and 15 minutes. I feel like when they come out, they're so soft, but they've gotten somehow sweeter from the cooking process. And you can just eat at their plane, put salt on it, put butter on it. And then I really like using sweet potatoes as a base for other things. things. So mashed sweet potatoes with a fried egg on top, black beans and make like a little sweet

potato bowl. It's just so, so good. And honestly, like, when I'm, it's my desperation food. So if I'm same, it literally is for me too. You're never too hungry to just shove a sweet potato in the oven. And you have to wait for it, obviously, because it takes a while. But there's something about just like, okay, I'll figure your stuff out later. I'm just. so hungry. I'm just going to put it. It's 100% my hangary food. Yeah, because you only have to make one decision to just put it in the oven. And then other foods, I feel like I get overwhelmed very easily when I'm hungry. And so I just can't do it. I'm like, oh, it's too much picking takeout. But there's a sweet potato in the oven and so it's perfect. So easy. I have a girlfriend who,

if her and her husband ever start to fight, she gives them both a spoonful of almond butter and then they're not allowed to like continue the argument until they've had their almond butter so that they are not in a state of hangar when they fight. And she says they don't really fight anymore. I think anger's a very real thing. It would probably help all of us if we took that. I know my husband's like, why don't you do that, Liz? That sounds like a good idea for you.

If people wanted to follow your food journey and just find more of your food philosophy, I'm going to do a quick warning that it will make you hungry. So if you're not ready for that, perhaps avoid it. But where would they find you on the internet? So you can find me on Instagram at Feed the Malik, the same username on TikTok, and also on on my website, feed them leak.com. You'll find more recipes on my website, but Instagram is really where I'm the most

active and where I just like to meet people and chat with people. So come hang out with me there. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share a little food combo with me. Absolutely. Thank you. I hope that you loved this episode and you came away with a lot of new hacks, new approaches to food, new ingredients that you're excited to play around with.

Definitely check out all of my guests from this episode, The Korean Vegan, Justine, snacks and feed them leak. They all have amazing Instagrams, websites, TikToks, lots of inspiration there. And let me know if there's any other guests people you would love to see on this series. If you like this series in general, I'm at Liz Moody on Instagram. So shoot me a DM. I'm also Lizat Liz Moody.com if you want to send me an email. As always, thank you so much for spending this time with me. I so appreciate it. And I can't wait to see you on the next episode of the Healthier Together podcast. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years, and I'm so obsessed with it.

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