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Shop Like a Foodist

Anybody have any questions at this time about nutrition or anything I could clarify yeah, I'm on your plate which I find incredible you you had the section with meat on diamond vegetarian I'm not true what should I use in this section? Great questions so right so everybody is going to have to for sort of recon reimagine the fittest plate for their own benefit. So for a vegetarian I would say instead of me just you got the rest of the plate go ahead and let that spread down so maybe instead of either having a grain or having a lagoon like a beaner lentil maybe both have both of those in there, you know, mix them up and whatever you feel comfortable with, you know, if you like temp a or tofu or something like that that's fine as well, you know, whatever makes sense for you any other, any other quick questions? Yeah, yeah, could we define what moderation means? Great question, what is moderation? So moderation, I think, is an overused word. I think I think what they're trying to and the p...

eople I think what like doctors and nutrition that they're trying to get out when we talk about moderation is making those value based decisions and we've been talking about this whole time, so we talk about not moralizing food, not demonizing food as bad and the answers lie as well, eat it in moderation to me, that means when does it matter to you? You know, I I am of the opinion that if it's a habitual action something you're doing every day at a certain time, that is not a special occasion that is not moderation, that is not the time to indulge if you're just bored or if you're just, you know, at work and you're just trying to get a little more energy to get through the rest of your day um, where as something that you do all the time ah, habit big impact habits we've been talking about those are the things you really want to focus on and that's not moderation, right that's all the time normal so I think it from for for the foodists it's really about making those value based decisions and saying yes, this is a food that might not be quite unhealthy for me but it's definitely worth it at this moment right now and maybe maybe later it won't be but right now it is all right cool, great questions, everyone. So we have spent a lot of time talking about the types of how we make decisions, how we choose certain foods, why we should choose some foods over other foods and we spent the last couple of segments talking about what actually does healthy eating look like? Because it could be really befuddling for us, you know, people looking around the internet like trying to figure out how to make heads or tails of what's going on. So now we have a good handle that we're going to focus on real food. We're going to focus on keeping process foods to a minimum of two special occasions I don't like the word moderation that much, because I find it overused, but but one thing that we've emphasized a lot is how difficult it is to make good decisions when you're stressed, when you're hungry, when you're in those hot states, we talked about yesterday that's when decision making is really hard, and that is for a lot of people, the biggest single challenge and healthy eating is like, you kind of know, what's healthy food, you kind of know what you should be eating, but, you know, when you get in that moment, you like, gosh, I would no, I should choose the, you know, the efficient broccoli, but I'm starving, I just want a pizza, and so we have seen how we can plan ahead, anticipate those moments and give ourselves a fighting chance to actually make better decisions when that comes up, so that's, what this segments about today, this segment, we're going to talk about some some how to build the types of habits that prevent you from getting in trouble down the road. You know how what you can do to plan ahead and make sure that europe prepared in those moments of intense cravings or intense exhaustion when bad decisions happen? Cool whom shopping? We've talked about this before. Now we're going to get get really, really into what good shopping looks like, how to do it, how to tackle it, and why actually shopping itself is one of the most important habits of food is condemn elop because, you know, even though it's not eating, unless you have healthy food in the house, it's really difficult to eat it? Um so, like I was saying, for so many people not having food of the house is the single, single biggest barrier to healthy eating like that's. When bad decisions come, I want to emphasize again, you can never, ever expect yourself to make a good decision when you're under pressure, when you're either under stress under a time on hungary, in any of those states of panic, this hot states, good decisions do not happen, and so you need to make that decision beforehand make it easier on your future self having your present self who's well rested and because it's a weekend for instance well rested filled with energy totally motivated to be healthy that's when you need to make those decisions for yourself and that's when shopping comes in and that's when you should be doing it so if you aren't in habit of shopping on a regular basis you need to be um and I'm gonna talk about how we can do that and one one thing I recommend actually it is if it's new to you I needed to kind of needs to go directly on your calendar you know, because if you're just hoping you'll get around to it at some point and it's not something you particularly enjoy like here likes grocery shopping I'm aware that what kind of lycos or something if you don't you know yeah, most people don't know those people are like it's it's overwhelming right? The store's chaos uh a lot of people get easily derailed but you know, they go in with the intention to do one thing and you know, they start looking down the aisle in there like here's what I want but that looks good to, you know, grab some things they don't intend to get and then next thing you know, you'll end up with a big couple pints of ben and jerry's is freezer and other problematic things, so by the way, you don't want to be grocery shopping in the hot states either ok, I guess you want to be grocery shopping in the most rational, um, nourished and rested state as possible, but it's really essential to understand that when you so when when you do go shopping like that is when those decisions are happening. So it's not it's, not that simple, but the good news is it gets easier so as and we'll go through this, but basically one of the reasons I think a lot of people don't like grocery shopping is that if you aren't in the habit of cooking and let's say, this is your, you know, you're like, ok, I watched this creative lives show and I'm going, I'm going to start being a food ist and I'm gonna go to the grocery store in, like, start cooking dinner if that's how you approach shopping the first time and you don't normally make a habit of it. There's a very good chance you're going to go to the store, end up there and be, like, really overwhelmed, really confused that you know, maybe you found a recipe before you came and you're like trying to find all those ingredients or move your like gosh, I need to make for dinner, so I like, what should I eat? You feel like you have to come up with four meals all at once, plus snacks plus breakfast? It could be really it can be really hard if you're not used to it, but but I'm going to give you a systematic way of building the in layers, so basically there's like a starter kit, so we'll talk about how to get started stalking your pantry on ben the very, very basics of shopping and then how to get a little more specialized. And what you'll find is that once you get through step one and the end step two becomes a regular habit, you'll be going to be mainly in a place where, when you go to the store, you're going to know exactly what to get. It'll be calm, you know you'll be, you'll be cool and collected and it's not going to be nearly as hard as when you walk in there for the first time, you're totally overwhelmed, it's, not some great s oh, so that's the goal and I like I'm at the place now, and most people who cook regularly are in a place where we we are pantry stocked we've got everything we need a home we know exactly what we can do with what we have we've got the basics of onions and garlic and lemons and things like that and then we walked into story like I need you know this main course this main course and you don't have to worry about the peripherals and that's way easier because you can walk in there and ten, fifteen minutes and out the door let's start with the pantry they may have a pantry have any of the country I kid you not we do not no, you don't have a country so it's not you don't have to have covered you know this is a thing now back in the olden days which was, you know, twenty years ago everybody had a pantry that was where you kept your food and it's a really interesting thing I went you know, two years ago my husband and I bought a home together and when we were shopping for houses so many houses didn't have pantries and I would say, where do you put the food and the like? Well, there's covers and I can put the plates go in the cupboards like air like and I have gear like I have cutting boards and I have kitchen gear and I just realize it's because people don't cook anymore it's not funny so first of all, you need a pantry. You need at least a place to put a certain number of dry goods. I have a huge, like a walk in pantry like that's how important it is for me. And I actually had to turn a coat rack and arco closet in my house into a pantry. So there was a place to store food crazy. I know, but there's lots of really great. Ah, divide like you can go toe like the container store places like that. They've got great organizing things, and you can actually be super creative and turn drawers and cabinets that are in your kitchen now into very well organized, very efficient little pantries. But basically what your pantry allows you to dio is your pantries basically all the food that you could possibly want. That doesn't require refrigeration, right? So, that's, where you gonna have your olive oils? Your vinegars, your stock, you know, but you got boxes of stock on specialty items dried things like dried tomatoes, dried mushrooms, pastas, grains, beans. That told me when we talked about and having a well what? What it means when your pantry is well stocked that almost any night of the week. Even if you're feeling super lazy and even if you don't have any fresh food in your house, you can probably whip something up out of your pantry and and that's really powerful, because even that might not be, you know, the best meal of your life at least, is that you didn't. If you're not really in the mood to have, you know, if you're just feeling like thing, you just want to eat and get some calories and you you don't have to resort to something really, really bad for you. You could just make something in your pantry, so I keep a very, very well stocked pantry kind of crazy about it think it drives my husband that's a little bit, but I think it's really important, and he really appreciates it when it comes down to it, because we always have good food and we could make anything delicious out of it, so just going to give you some essentials. This is by no means a comprehensive list. This is just to give you a basic idea of how to get started. S o obviously needs some sort of oil to cook in. Yes, you had mentioned earlier that some olive oil is better than others, um, are there some key words that we should look at for the olive oil? And is there is it can you look at price and really know what the more expensive is better? Is that sometimes just overpriced great questions so I there there's many levels of olive oil I don't recommend cooking regularly with the most expensive kind of olive oil that stuff is designed to be very flavorful. It's really more for yourself eds you know you're you can cook with it, but you're sort of wasting it to some extent because that all that flavor isn't going to be lost in the in the rest of the food my my number one concern is general I just want it to be cold pressed on and not very processed I particularly really like the flavor of california olive oils but that's a that's a personal choice s o I get like like I have two or three olive oils at any given time one is going to be a bigger like hefty that I just use all the time and I get through one of those every two weeks you know very big thing of it and then I'll have something a little fancy or maybe from the farmer's market or from some specialty farm that I used to dress a salad or something a little more I don't know foodie if you will not answer a question great good point, what I s o one a great test that you, khun dio often when you and when you're concerned about an oil quality, the issue is that some oils when they're highly processed can go rancid really easily or sometimes I'll be sitting on a shelf for a long time and you don't want to be cooking with rancid oils. It tastes awful and b it's not good for you to eat rotten food for various reasons and on oils can go back, so this sniff test is a great place to start use you can usually smell a rancid oil it smell bad on dh if you aren't sure like even a little taste testes find what I found is a lot of the bigger jugs from, like big discount stores I can I can snap smell a little bit, but it's not the freshest oil, and I don't I don't know exactly how his process but for me the sniff test and, you know I try to get, like a middle of the road olive oil to cook with regularly. Great question, so seasoning is step to, uh, almost anything you cook in olive oil with some salt on it, a little pepper is going to taste pretty good um one I think there's also there's really nothing more important than seasoning, especially when you're talking about vegetables, you know, we the goal is to taste good right? We want really to be excited about vegetables and people get super scared about sodium quick fact about sodium seventy five percent seventy five percent of the sodium that we eat comes from processed food so if you're wondering why sodium is a problem, that is the problem if you get rid of those from your diet if you're no longer eating a lot of processes, then you consult your vegetables all day long just to taste so they taste good. It really helps of the flavor quite a bit and if you're trying to get people to eat vegetables or training yourself to eat vegetables, don't be scared of a little salt especially a nice high quality salt that really tastes good so salt pepper and just basic spices whatever you like, you don't have to get fancy here I don't use the town of dried spices honestly, I like to keep some cinnamon around from home mail I like some curry powder every now and then, but you know whatever you like no biggie, jim, you just need something the flavor your food. Similarly, you need a good vinegar um it's going to balance a lot of flavors and also you can't make a good vinaigrette without a good vinegar, so I like a good white wine or red wine vinegar feel like both solomon that's ok too you don't have to go crazy fancy, but if you pay a little more, it'll probably taste a little better chickens, beef or vegetable stock something some sort of stock is really like amazing for adding flavor to food that you're cooking. Um, try it sometime, just throw a little stock. I'm sometimes you get concentrated, uh, like pasty is type stock or, like even a little cube, try adding that to some of the food and see what happens to the flavor of vegetables and even meat dishes, people all of a sudden things you're this amazing chef it's great, and you're like, yeah, I know and and then relations just like at a little stock, because it adds that it's a flavor called umami, that flavor of of sort of protein and satisfaction in food, and it can really, really transform a dish I always keep like you probably figured out lots of grains, so rice. I've have four kinds of rice, five kinds of rice in my country, like white rise, short grain brown rows, medium grain brown eyes, long green brown eyes, forbidden rice like all sorts of crazy rise and saying with beans, I have all kinds of different dried beans, and we'll be talking more about those and lentils as well, these air this basis of a lot of meals and if you've got a good supply of beans and rice or any other kind of grains, you always have the meal really always have a meal I would like to keep some jarred tomatoes around as well you can whip up a tomato sauce at any time and I like other canned foods can fish even canned beans are ok if you you know for emergencies oh yeah so that's just a really really basics of a pantry next so so once you have your pantry stock so that should be like step one like choose one put it on your calendar go to the store this week if you don't have a stocked pantry, go and buy those few basic things once you have those then you can start cooking and you can start doing other things so the second level the second step of really efficient shopping is fresh stuff right? So you're going to need some fresh stuff and there's going to be some basic staples that you need along the way, for instance all right, you said that you uh oh, this is not the list yet this is the reasons why you need ground tio so basically when you you're going to need to grocery shop for fresh things about once a week you know that's a good rule of thumb so what I I recommend doing is taking a day in your mind where you drive by the store naturally or or you have a little more free time on a saturday morning or sunday morning or afternoon and make sure that that's worked into your daily routine because if you're just hoping for the best when you'll get around to it it's not going to happen but it needs to happen regularly um I tend to think once you've got your pantry stocked then you just need to buy ah sort of the regulars onions, garlic things like that will discuss and then main courses right and then so that's all you really have to think about at that point and then always a cz we talked about in the last segment just for the best quality for the best shopping experience just make sure you get stuff the seasonal you know let's hike what is going to be taste better it's gonna be higher quality and and that's really going to transform the experience you have in the kitchen it'll make it will make it to me that you'd need a lot less talent to make your food taste good when you start with really really good ingredients and and I actually also recommend stalking some frozen stuff uh you know, I have no problem with frozen foods and a lot of the times they actually have higher nutritional value for some of the veggies and they're just crave tohave for emergencies you know you're not always going toe be able to make it to the store and when you've got something in your freezer that gives you an out from having a leg go go get takeout great so I'm just a quick quick british brush through of things that I buy regularly unlike sort of a weekly basis at the store I always make sure to get onions garlic ion announces was like the aromatics write something to add a lot of flavor especially the veggies and meets I always get lemons and limes one of the other both because acidic balance of your dish it can really take sort of flat tasting dish and elevated to a really amazing place like think about you know fish is ok and then you like scored a lemon on it like completely changes it so on this acidity that these ad is really actually essential for flavor and then just in basic veggies whichever you like you know and you can start basic and work your way up I you know I buy what what what do some of your guys his favorites like I'm actually I might kind of weird somebody asked me once with my favorite vegetable is and I thought about it for a long time and I finally came up with cabbage and it sounds totally boring I like you're so blame but actually I love cabbage because it's really versatile it's good ross kind of sweets it's really crunchy I like it in this in like a salad but also I have you can cook it so easily and it tastes amazing when I have fried up with some source us then I put eggs in it and it's like this amazing egg and cabbage dish the recipes on summer tomato gonna look it up and I just could never get enough of it and like a whole cabbages like two bucks and it's literally four servings like four full vegetable servings like such a great deal so I love cabbage but you know kale spinach whatever's in season is great too I'm a big fan of brussels sprouts and I was saying that I eat a lot of cabbages well I I know it's not something that people really like they find it terribly boring but it's incredibly good for you so good for you and delicious it's just when you boil it if it can get a little bland but when you could cook it with little oil little salt maybe a little garlic really delicious totally underrated we have an edge going to get a shirt that just as cabbage um eggs and dairy or another one of the staples I go through a lot of eggs like we mentioned earlier and then just some sort of main course you know, some sort of protein dish that makes you the rounds out your meal or your vegetarian options already in your pantry looking in the last step is customization so once you're sort of you know so I want youto don't act like this is the same day, right? Like the first day if you're ever just stocking your pantry and you're just learning to cook start with just doing the pantry items don't stress out the next time go get the onions, lemons things like that and you can start doing basic cooking as you get more advanced though you're going to want to branch out you know you're going to want toe what does a stir fry taste like? Maybe I'll try some soy sauce and something and you know at that point what's great is that you already have such a basic uh stock of what you're gonna what you can have what you can work with that adding something a little new isn't so scary, you know, because I feel like if you're going if you're starting from scratch and you try to make this big fancy dish, it could be really overwhelming. But if you if you if you already have your basics down and you just want to try a little something new it's not nearly as daunting anybody how down experience maybe it'd be here really a cook? Yes cook and for your shopping experiences have you found that once you have ah stocked kitchen that like the grocery shopping isn't such a big deal yeah, we always have uh some staple things that we put more vegetarian so we have our nutritionally ation like are really good salts and like see it's like hemp seeds and pumpkin seeds and stuff and then it doesn't matter what you make it just if you have those things right and when you go to the grocery store you know exactly what you need yeah like how long do you what was your average scratches trip trump take it could could take like twenty minutes or less in a big store minutes mall store like ten minutes because I know exactly what to grab right? How about you guys ten minutes twenty minutes yeah yeah and is it stressful for you not really a little bit only at russia right rush hour is different I don't I don't enjoy grocery shopping anymore I used to but it just seems a chore go instead of fun yeah you're kind of shot farmer's market you ever go to I love that I think that's one of the reasons I also encourage farmers markets is because it's such a pleasurable experience he actually excited cy going somewhere exciting instead of a chore great so right what you're comfortable you can become more adventurous a cz you could start to branch out I highly recommend exploring the world of fresh herbs, fresh cilantro, fresh parsley uh fresh chives still, these things can really take your cooking to the next level and everybody thinks you're amazing and really just there's some solyndra on there it's pretty easy but it's a really great way to add and there are also some of the most highly nutritious foods on the planet that's why they're so flavorful that like that's all like those molecules in there that are super packed filled with nutrients again if you really when you start getting adventurous branch out to things like soy sauce things like fish sauce and even like mustards fancy or vinegars oil I use me so paste who fancy but it's a great on alternative for ah vinaigrette miso is a great and most fire for vinaigrettes delicious so branch out have fun and always buy seasonal produce of course and you can always expand to more exotic spaces as well. So what do we know what you guys do the bulk of your grocery shopping our global public of your shopping at the grocery store and a pretty like any kinds farmersmarket you do shovel that's awesome definitely and larger stores like costco in costco how many of you go shopping? Is costco really common guys shot the costco a lot now what would you get shot where trader joe's yeah sure does is great I love that place okay um so you know you can find this stuff pretty much anywhere which is really nice but the grocery store I find is really great for staples and I you know, I I shot to the grocery store multiple times a week and it's great for things like oil grains, seasonings things like that one thing that I found really useful for some people especially people that don't have a lot of farmers markets in their neighborhood my dad for instance the nearest farmer's market to him is is you know, a solid twenty minute drive on a day he'd rather not drive twenty minutes soon on his day off and but he has managed to find in his neighborhood several dedicated produce markets they tend to be in a you know, sort of like ethnic neighborhoods like like he'll find a chinese market and mexican market and he'll go to these different stores and confined really really great produce like really interesting stuff at great prices and it's so much more interesting than when he confined at his regular grocery store yeah, the quality of those foods because generally they're not organic or at least I found um but I'm not sure if they just don't have the certification and it could be tougher to find like pure certified organic it places like that but you know that's one of those things it's like you can always wash it and you know I think for the variety and for the experience is worth checking them out just because I mean you get such basic stuff if you're just going to a generic like safeway or something like that where is there you confined different kinds of bok choy and really interesting fruits like mingo steins and things that you would never be able to find a grocery store? So I just think it's a good option for anyone who really has trouble getting to a farmer's market because you will find it better looking and better quality than at least in the grocery store there's also, I highly recommend finding specialties shot stores as well so for instance I prefer to get bread from a dedicated baker somebody who's doing a craft that tastes amazing and is worth every secular calorie you know what I mean or a butcher shop somebody who really knows you know, I had people asking me during a lunch break where can I get these really good organ meats you talk so much about whole butcher is where you should go because you really want to focus on high quality meats if you're going to be eating things like organ meats and the butcher is going to be able to break down where your animal came from, what each part is educate you on what to do with it and that's it's great it's great to be able to talk to somebody who knows what they're doing and of course, we've talked about it a few times now. But I I highly, highly, highly recommend everybody find a farmer's market and go at least once. You know, just pick. Pick up on a saturday and head over there because it's, such a lovely syrians and it's it's so different on than anything that you'll you'll get a sort of a brick and mortar store, for the most part, although we'll have a story about that shortly. But it's just such a lovely experience and know you'll learn so much. And once you really get hooked on it, it's really hard to go back.