Podcast Episode #156: Pumpkin everything, starting on Paleo, and self sabotage

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Topics:

1. What’s new for you. [3:01] 2. Shout out: Nom Nom Paleo – Annual kids lunch guide [11:59] 3. In the news: Everything pumpkin spice [15:02]; Paleo cookies in the mainstream media [19:29] 4. Listener Questions: New baby, fibromyalgia, and getting eating back on track [29:38]; Failing 30 day challenges and self sabotage [41:38] 5. Liz’s Homesteading QOTW: dealing with predators [54:37] 6. Diane’s Kitchen Tip: when to season food [57:37] 7. This week’s hashtag details: #firstpaleopic [1:03:55] [smart_track_player url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/balancedbites/BB_Podcast_156_Final_mix.mp3″ title=”#156: Pumpkin Everything, Starting on Paleo & Self Sabotage ” artist=”Diane Sanfilippo & Liz Wolfe ” color=”00aeef” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” ] Click here to listen online

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Liz Wolfe: Hey everyone! Welcome to Balanced Bites podcast number 156. I’m Liz. Hey! And that’s Diane.

Diane Sanfilippo: Hey.

Liz Wolfe: Hey. And, first up, a little word from our sponsors. First up, Pete’s Paleo, bringing fine dining to your cave. If you’d like to make eating paleo a little easier on yourself, check out Pete’s meal plans. Great for those nights when you need real food fast. Pete’s Paleo is now offering 21-Day Sugar Detox friendly meals . They’re also making Wahl’s protocol meals. Both very exciting, to make your life that much easier on the 21-Day Sugar Detox or the Wahl’s Protocol. Check out http://petespaleo.com/ for all the details, and be sure to check out chef Pete’s new beautiful cookbook, Paleo By Season, which has recently released.

Chameleon Cold-Brew. Their new ready to drink single serving bottles are hitting store shelves all over the place. They have a black coffee, a vanilla and a mocha, and those are both black but just very slightly sweetened with organic can sugar. They’ll have three new flavors coming out soon, so stay tuned for details on that or check out their website. You can link to the website from this podcast blog post.

Y’all also know we’re very excited about our newest sponsor, Splits59. It’s a high performance and high fashion active wear company based out of LA. They are launching their new pinnacle line, I think it’s already launched, actually. I’ve been seeing it on Instagram. Noir de’Sport, which is innovative, with a hyper modern aesthetic, featuring things like welded seams, contrast geometrics, textural blocking, and other intricate details. Very fashiony but still functional. We like that. The main collection is two concepts, Mod City and Space Race. They’ve generously offered our listeners 15% off any regularly priced merchandise with Promo Code: BALANCEDBITES, one word, not case sensitive.

Diane Sanfilippo: Woop, woop!

Liz Wolfe: Woop, woop! Cool.

Diane Sanfilippo: Love it.

Liz Wolfe: Alright. So, what we’re working on. Diane, whatcha working on these days?

1. Diane’s update [3:01]/b<>

Diane Sanfilippo: Oh! Well, first things first. Mediterranean Paleo just went to print, so.

Liz Wolfe: Ahhh! So excited!

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Huge weight lifted off my shoulders, and I’m so excited about this book. It’s been a long haul working on it. Caitlin and Nabil, who anyone who has been following what I’ve been doing, mostly over on Instagram, I’ve been posting tons of pictures over there. If you’ve been following the work back from early in the spring through now-ish, we’ve been working on the recipes and the content. The recipes are all developed and created by them, and I shot all the photos for the book and helped work on directing and organizing a lot of the content so that it would be just that much more richly involved, and give you guys all the information you need on how to modify recipes, which Caitlin tested tons and tons of versions of all the recipes. She’s done a lot of work on that.

I’m just really excited for people to get the book, because we have so many paleo cookbooks, and as you know, we’re talking about Paleo by Season, and of course I have my books, and all our friends have these amazing cookbooks. This one, for some reason, I feel like it’s filling a really different void in what we’re seeing in cookbooks that are out there, because it’s really bringing robust, rich, different flavors to people’s kitchens. So I’m excited for you to get it. I know that the type of food that she’s cooking in the book is stuff that you’re really interested in.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: Like sort of stewed meats, but on the bone so they have a really good texture still, but the bones are kind of infusing the liquid in the dish with that amazing gelatin, collagen, and it’s kind of creating a broth as it cooks. Which I know so many people want to make broth, or drink broth, but making it on its own or drinking it on its own isn’t their favorite thing. A lot of these recipes are kind of killing two birds with one stone, so I’m excited for that. And that released officially October 28th. And we will be doing a short tour for it, so stay tuned for details on where we’ll be hitting with that tour.

A couple of other things that are new for you guys. Shopping lists; so if you’re on my emailing list, getting those emails every week. Which, I’ve switched to Sunday’s because I asked you guys what day would be best, and I was very surprised to hear that Sunday was the day. So, everyone apparently has the time and headspace to check an email on that day. Although Monday was a close second, so email Monday’s is still your winning day there, Liz.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: But, the shopping lists. We’ve got new shopping lists. They’re just the healthy shopping lists that we create. They’re not paleo perfectionists, but it’s to help you guys find the best choices that we’ve found in a lot of stores out there. So we’ve had Costco, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Wal-Mart. We recently released a BJ’s shopping list, I think a Sam’s Club list, and the newest one that’s going to be, no Safeway already came out too. Maybe the BJ’s one didn’t? Anyway. If any of those stores are in your area, and you’d love to get those shopping lists, just hop on over to my emailing list.

And the very last thing that I’m working on {laughs} at least that I’m going to announce is the 21-Day Sugar Detox Coaches program. So, if you’re someone who has completed the program, and you are also maybe a nutrition coach or you’re a trainer and you’re constantly helping people, and you really want a little bit more of a formalized way to help people move through the 21-Day Sugar Detox. Perhaps you’re already organizing groups, but you would really like that stamp of approval. Hey, Diane has said that I definitely know my ins and outs of the program. And also, I’m giving you a little bit more of a formalized way to help guide people through the program as well as information on what I think is a good way to coach smaller groups, perhaps on Facebook. Maybe it’s a private Facebook group, or different ways that you might be able to work it in a live setting that’s local to you. So if you want to check that out, we’ll link to it right from the blog post. You can also go right on Facebook and do a search for 21-Day Sugar Detox coaches, and I think you’ll be able to find the group, and we’ll just add you to the group. So that’s what I’m working on.

Liz Wolfe: Fun!

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. Always something.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. And when I say “fun” I mean, I was checking Facebook while you were talking.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughing} You were joining the coaches group.

2. Liz’s updates [7:22]

Liz Wolfe: Yeah I was. So, here’s what I’m working on. Well, this is not really what I’m working on, but I’m really excited, and I want to share with all my podcast friends. Because I feel like we’re all friends.

Diane Sanfilippo: {singing} All my best girlfriends! {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: {laughs} My book, Eat the Yolks. I just found out it’s a Wall Street Journal best seller.

Diane Sanfilippo: That’s amazing.

Liz Wolfe: Which I was like, what?

Diane Sanfilippo: That’s awesome. Congratulations!

Liz Wolfe: Yeah, so that was really exciting.

Diane Sanfilippo: That’s huge.

Liz Wolfe: And what was funny is, you kind of have to keep track of this stuff for yourself. So my husband had to tell me about that.

Diane Sanfilippo: Wow.

Liz Wolfe: I was like, shut up. Shut up. You’re being a jerk. What?

Diane Sanfilippo: Because he’s smart and he reads the Wall Street Journal?

Liz Wolfe: Yes. We’ll say that’s why.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: We’ll say that that is why. So for me, like I said last week, {Jersey accent} I’ve just got a lot of balls in the air right now.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughing}

Liz Wolfe: Working on just initially developing stages of the skin care line. I have this one ingredient that’s just the one that I’m chasing. And I want to use it so badly, but I have not found a producer that can do it without the use of some kind of funky preservatives within the very initial stages of producing it. I’m not going to say too much now, because I don’t know if it’s going to work out or not. But, I’m dying to use this one particular thing, I just have to find somebody that can produce it without synthetics. So I’m excited about that.

I’m also working; I tease this. I didn’t even tease it, I just kind of mentioned it an episode or two ago, and I got a ton of tweets and messages about it, so apparently people are kind of hungry for a fertility/preconception program of some kind. Obviously, I’m not a parent at this point, but since I first opened my nutritional therapy practice when we lived in New Jersey, I’ve been working with women who wanted to get their nutrition in line for fertility, just to get that all ready to go before they conceived. So that was always kind of a passion of mine, because I had so many friends that were dealing with issues in that realm. So, just kind of getting together my thoughts on that, since I’m not able to take clients anymore now that we live in Missouri. I think that will become a reality in early 2015. I’m talking to this amazing midwife that I know. She’s got years of experience and she’ll be contributing. Not contributing, she’s going to be half of the team that puts that project together. I’ll keep everybody updated on that.

Finally. I have this really sad news, which is that I got a review on Amazon for Eat the Yolks, and somebody said that they liked the book, but they didn’t get the humor, “I don’t know, maybe I’m more of an Andy Griffith type.”

Diane Sanfilippo: Wait, what?

Liz Wolfe: Ok. So you know.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: You know that Andy Griffith is my favorite show of all time.

Diane Sanfilippo: I do know.

Liz Wolfe: I’ve watched it.

Diane Sanfilippo: I don’t even understand that review? How’s that even possible?

Liz Wolfe: I, I, I didn’t put any Andy Griffith references in my book!

Diane Sanfilippo: Oh, what’s wrong…I didn’t even realize that.

Liz Wolfe: I know!

Diane Sanfilippo: Because I don’t know Andy Griffith the same way you do.

Liz Wolfe: So somebody left a comment that said “I really liked the book, but I just didn’t get the jokes in it, I guess I’m more like an old-school, Andy Griffith type.” {laughs} And oh my god! I died.

Diane Sanfilippo: Did you reply? With an Andy Griffith quote?

Liz Wolfe: No. No, because it was a nice review. I mean, they weren’t saying anything wrong, but I was like.

Diane Sanfilippo: Well, I reply to nice reviews, as well as ones that maybe are misunderstanding me.

Liz Wolfe: I might have to do that.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: I just want to assure people that I love Andy Griffith, and I’m an Andy Griffith person, too!

Diane Sanfilippo: You are.

Liz Wolfe: I am.

Diane Sanfilippo: We almost; where did we almost stop just because you’re an Andy Griffith fan? Didn’t we almost stop in a certain town when we were touring? Where were we?

Liz Wolfe: Oh yeah! When we were in North Carolina, I wanted to go to Mount Airy, because that’s the town that Mayberry is modeled off of. But luckily, my husband and I took a special trip there.

Diane Sanfilippo: Ok.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: If we had gone, it wouldn’t have been quite as special.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. I didn’t miss anything. We got to go to Mount Airy, and it was the most exciting vacation I have ever taken. So.

Diane Sanfilippo: So there you go.

Liz Wolfe: So there you go. So that’s that. That’s what we’re working on.

3. Shout out to Nom Nom Paleo [11:59]

Liz Wolfe: Alright, so next up, next segment, our shout out this week. We’re shouting out to Nom Nom Paleo for her paleo lunchboxes 7 part series. Have you checked this out?

Diane Sanfilippo: I’ve looked at a few of them. It’s so artistic that you can’t help but just want to check it out, even if you don’t have kiddos that you’re packing lunches for.

Liz Wolfe: I know.

Diane Sanfilippo: And I think she actually also did one for adults, grownups, whatever you need to take to work in a lunch box or container {laughs}.

Liz Wolfe: She uses those stainless steel, what are they, Lunchbots?

Diane Sanfilippo: Lunchbots, like a, yeah, lunch robot.

Liz Wolfe: They’ve got big ones, too. If you don’t want to pack your lunch up in plastic, there are these Lunchbots, and I know I have some stainless steel wares that you can use to pack your paleo lunches in for work or for your kids. Just don’t put them in the microwave.

Diane Sanfilippo: Oh my gosh. I can’t imagine.

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: Well, I think what’s cool about those containers, and nobody is paying us to say this {laughs}, I always want to caution people, even if we’re sponsored, we only take sponsors that we really love their products.

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.

Diane Sanfilippo: But I think one of the cool things about the Lunchbots, which I’m just thinking about this now. I don’t really travel daily with my food, as I used to when I went to an office to work. But I used to bring my food in glass containers. Which, if I did want to heat something up, I actually could put the glass containers I had even into the toaster oven there, which was great.

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.

Diane Sanfilippo: They were, I think they were called glass ware, or snap ware, or something like that. They were glass, and they had a plastic lid, and I would just take the plastic lid off and put the whole thing. It could go anywhere from the freezer to the oven, but the cool thing about the stainless steel is that they’re much lighter weight, and so I think that’s why they’re really kid friendly, too, is that you can put them in kid’s lunch box and be good to go.

She’s done this, I feel like she’s done this for a couple of years. If anybody doesn’t know that Michelle Tam was an overnight pharmacist at the hospital, until just about maybe a month or two ago, she decided to leave that gig and focus full time on what she’s doing with Nom Nom Paleo. Which, I feel like I need a round of applause sound effect. {applause}

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: From the beginning, I remember saying, Hey Michelle, when are you going to do this blogging thing full time? Or, you know, leave the overnights behind. She’s got a good thing going, and I’m so excited that she’s now able to continue to deliver a really rich and, I don’t even know, amazingly … she just delivers great content very regularly. I don’t think any of us can keep up with her. But the fact that now she left the night job to come into this full time, It’s just getting better. So, if you haven’t checked out Nom Nom Paleo, absolutely go check it out. For sure if you’re a parent, she has tons and tons of tips on that. How to feed your kids. Yeah, her lunch box posts are amazing, so check those out.

4. Everything pumpkin spice [15:02]

Liz Wolfe: This week in the Paleosphere; pumpkin everything! I started baking some pumpkin stuff.

Diane Sanfilippo: What’d you make?

Liz Wolfe: Where’s the pumpkin? I made some pumpkin, of course pumpkin. I’m trying to think of a new name for it. But I made some basically pumpkin spice muffins. But they’re not; let’s think of something that’s not pumpkin spice. What’s another good name. Autumn…

Diane Sanfilippo: No. Nobody wants to call it anything else.

Liz Wolfe: Ugh. Ok, fine, pumpkin spice.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Nobody will ever stand you if you call it something else.

Liz Wolfe: I know, oh man. So have you seen all this controversy about the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte? Do you drink those? Have you drank them?

Diane Sanfilippo: I think I probably did in the past.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: And I remember actually seeing it last year when I was quickly trying to come up with a recipe for myself. I think we were; we were probably drinking our Chameleon Cold Brew last year, and I know we are able to heat it up, just kind of warm it up a little bit, either on the stove or, you know, if you want to put it in the microwave, do what you’re going to do. But I remember thinking, how could I make my own little pumpkin spice latte. And there’s no actual pumpkin in a pumpkin spice latte that you get from Starbucks.

Liz Wolfe: Are we really surprised about this?

Diane Sanfilippo: No, but here’s the weird thing. I don’t know why anybody thinks putting pumpkin in your coffee is a good idea? It’s pumpkin spice, so it’s kind of like a pumpkin pie spice thing.

Liz Wolfe: Yes.

Diane Sanfilippo: And actually, if you make it with some sort of creamer, so whether that’s grass-fed heavy cream, or grass-fed butter, or organic coconut milk, or whatever your using, a little bit of pumpkin pie spice really does the trick. And then maybe, if you want to go for half a teaspoon or a teaspoon of honey or maple syrup, I feel like that is going to give you the most bang for your buck in terms of flavor and not getting a whole bunch of the gnarly ingredients. Have you looked at what’s actually in the pumpkin spice latte?

Liz Wolfe: I skimmed it. It was in my Facebook newsfeed. I was just kind of like, how can we possible expect that basically the McDonald’s of coffee.

Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm.

Liz Wolfe: Is not using all natural, perfect ingredients {laughs} in their drinks?

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: It just did not shock me at all.

Diane Sanfilippo: I think. Oh, I was trying to do a quick search on the Starbucks website to get the ingredients. I think, you know who’s got a ton of information on this, if anybody has not already heard of The Food Babe. She’s really big into ingredients, and trying to expose companies who are just putting really harmful or toxic ingredients in their products. You and I don’t really tend to like to share a lot of more alarmist type things, I guess, on our pages. But it’s not just there to kind of scare you or be alarmist; it’s really true. There are ingredients that are allowed here in the United States that are not allowed in a lot of other countries. They’re actually illegal. But she kind of goes through some of the caramel coloring, carrageenan, natural flavors, artificial flavors, preservatives and sulfites, possible pesticide residue. I mean, that’s just because they don’t use organic coffee. It really kind of goes on and on.

I understand sort of the emotional feeling we get from the change in season and that delicious flavor, but I do feel pretty strongly that we can just kind of make this stuff at home or, if you’re going to have one for a season, please don’t make it a daily habit, because this stuff is really kind of loaded with horrible ingredients. I think the thing the Food Babe is trying to do is get her crowd to tell Starbucks they want better ingredients in this type of thing. And I’m all for that. You know? Where we can affect a lot of change is having some of these huge retailers, huge food companies, make different choices about what they’re putting into their products. That actually affects food production on a much bigger scale. I don’t know if I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but even companies like Chipotle using organic cilantro, for example. Do you realize how much more cilantro Chipotle uses than either of us on a daily basis?

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: So, the impact that that has on our whole farming system is so huge. So if we can push some of these big companies to use better ingredients, to ditch the GMO ingredients, all that stuff, I think it’s worthwhile. It’s a worthwhile cause to be fighting for.

Liz Wolfe: I like it.

5. Paleo cookies in the mainstream media [19:29]

Diane Sanfilippo: So, what did you make that was pumpkin?

Liz Wolfe: Yeah, speaking of pumpkin things, and the next thing we’re going to talk about, which is treat related. I made some muffins, but I figured out a really good base for almost anything muffin related.

Diane Sanfilippo: Do tell.

Liz Wolfe: I can’t remember what’s in it right now.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: But I made some apple crumb muffins that were insane, and even better then next day out of the fridge, and I’m super proud of myself. Because it’s hard for me. Really hard to come up with recipes, especially baking recipes without.

Diane Sanfilippo: Is there nut flour involved?

Liz Wolfe: There’s a little bit of almond flour, I’m sorry.

Diane Sanfilippo: I can use cashew flour.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah!

Diane Sanfilippo: I need your recipe. Give me your apple crumb muffin recipe.

Liz Wolfe: I’ll put that up next. Because we still are kind of in the tail end of apple season out here. So right now it’s relevant.

Diane Sanfilippo: Ok.

Liz Wolfe: And it is, as far as I know, it’s original and I made it up. But that is hard, man. People have an amazing talent for putting stuff together that works as dough, like grain-free dough and who knows what my influences were in figuring that out. But, speaking of which. Did you see the article in the Huffington Post, the paleo cookies?

Diane Sanfilippo: I didn’t until {laughs} it was brought to my attention.

Liz Wolfe: My favorite part was the first line, which was something like, If caveman could have had paleo cookies, they probably would have. And I was like, yes. That’s what this is about.

Diane Sanfilippo: You’re like, that’s my line! Well the article is called 27 Paleo Cookies You’ll Want To Inhale, and it was actually published on September 3rd, so it just recently got published. What’s your take on this? We’ve talked about treats kind of up and down, a few different ways. But, I want to know specifically your take on this article being something that is circulated and is very much in the public eye in terms of what’s being talked about in paleo, perhaps outside of the Paleosphere. Right? Most of us who do this stuff, we don’t really pay much attention to these articles, except right now. But, you know, if you had a friend who said, hey I saw this article in Huffington Post, and I don’t eat paleo but this said…

Liz Wolfe: I could eat cookies!

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah! There’s all these paleo cookies, and is that what I should do to go paleo? What’s your take on that?

Liz Wolfe: I just think….I’m fine with it, bottom line. Juli Bauer, PaleOMG, who is featured in that article, I think, a couple of times. We had a discussion about this on the podcast recently. It was just her and I, and I just think BFD. Big freaking deal. But I understand that people are, “huh! When people Google paleo and then a bunch of cookie recipes come up, it just ruins everything for me!” And I just don’t think that we can prescribe peoples journeys in a way where we can say, if you’re going to go paleo, you have to only eat meat, vegetables, nuts, seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. That’s just not how the world works. We have too many choices, and these paleo treats. I mean, they are popular. They get traffic. They’re delicious. And they’re fun to make as treats, but the thing is.

Maybe focusing on these things makes the journey a little bit longer, but for some people, maybe switching to grain free stuff and eating a few more “paleo treats” is all that they needed to do to be well. But for other people, if it’s not working, eventually they’re going to have to figure out that they’re going to need to switch to a diet based around whole real foods and not paleo treats. It’s just like, it’s just not my business to prescribe people’s journeys like that. All I can do is talk about how maybe I think it’s probably most effective to go about that journey and hope that people stumble across that and are able to kind of edit their choices in a responsible way. But I just don’t like this tendency to point fingers at people who are ruining stuff for other people, and you shouldn’t be doing that because this guy sitting in his basement Googling paleo in Warrensburg, Missouri, is going to think he can eat cookies all day. Because to me, it’s common sense.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. Pretty much everyone knows you can’t eat cookies all day to be healthy. Even if you’re on; isn’t there a Hollywood cookie diet? {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. I’m totally with you on that. And where I think the responsibility lies here is definitely on each individual, and I do think kind of what you mentioned. I think where we stand in the community in terms of what we contribute on our blogs, for example. I have recipes that are, you know, I’m posting recipes pretty regularly. I know you’re posting recipes pretty regularly. And I know that we kind of both make it a point to only share a treat recipe if we feel like it’s, I don’t know, somehow contributing or it’s just really amazing, we enjoyed it, and we want to share it with people. I know that for what I share on my website, they’re either treats that are 21-Day Sugar Detox friendly, which anybody who just stumbles onto my blog and makes one of those without being on the detox will {laughs} never come back for a treat recipe again.

Liz Wolfe: {laughing}

Diane Sanfilippo: Because they’re not sweetened. But one of the things I try and do if I do post a treat is have a really specific goal in mind; for example, it’s egg free. Or it’s nut free. It’s something that really helps people in a specific area of their journey, because I think that the people who are doing something where they have to be paleo and egg free, that’s hard. It’s really hard. I trust people individually to not make cookies every day and think that that’s their healthiest choice. And I also trust them to, as you said, have their own journey, and perhaps they do that for the first couple of months, and they learn their own lesson. I’d rather them learn it themselves than me just have to preach to them not to make cookies every day, or even every week. And yeah, I’m with you. Everybody’s got their own journey.

And it’s these foods that are the toughest for people to find a way to enjoy them without wrecking their health. Because we can come up with lots of real food recipes, meat, vegetables, all that good stuff. But there are lots of those recipes out there already, too. And I understand that people want to come to us for new ideas that kind of fit into the guidelines they don’t have to worry that there is soy sauce in it, or flour or anything like that. But truthfully, the hardest recipes to make are the ones without all these common ingredients and allergens. So if somebody comes into paleo and finds a way to make their kid not feel like the strange one on their birthday because they know how to now make a cookie or a cupcake for the class, then there you go.

So, yeah. I’m kind of with you on that. I do think it’s a little bit, I don’t know, annoying perhaps when an article like this is, you know, this is what they’re presenting as paleo. But I really think that the media is doing a lot of back and forth on paleo, and they really like to create articles that get people talking. So they like to create an article where just as much as 27 paleo cookies are not what most of us do, eating raw meat all day is also not what most of us do. And they might present an article like that, and I feel just as strongly that that type of presentation is off kilter, as this might be in terms of what we’re doing all the time. So, I think that responsibility falls to those of us who do have blogs and create recipes that if it’s your niche to create these allergen-free recipes, rock it.

Brittany Angell does that; I think she does an amazing job. She has an egg allergy, lots of other allergies, so she wants to help people enjoy their food, and do so without worrying about those allergens. And folks like me or our good friends Bill and Hayley; you know, we still create some treat recipes, but in the overall context of 80-90% not treats. So I think that that’s kind of the important thing for us to all keep in mind. What’s each of our own responsibilities, and what do we want to feel like we’re doing or contributing, and feel good about that no matter what.

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm. And not to throw another dimension into this whole thing, but when I share a recipe for honeydew jalapeño salad, it gets 4 shares.

Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm.

Liz Wolfe: And when I share something for something more treat like, it will get 250.

Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: So, I’m going to keep doing the honeydew jalapeño salad recipes, absolutely, but there is an interaction there where you want people to get something that they want from you.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: And if you feel like people don’t care about your honeydew jalapeno recipe, you know, probably not going to share it again.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. And I think if people listening are of the mindset that they’re irritated or annoyed by all the treat sharing, don’t like, comment, or share those posts. Don’t interact with those posts, because you interacting with them just propels that whole situation, and if you like them and you want to share them, then do it, and don’t expect what’s happening out there in the community to change if what you’re reacting to and are excited about are cookies. I’ve no problem with cookies, but I’m just saying, if that’s what people respond to, that’s what people will continue to create. So it is what it is. You know?

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: We’re all responsible for that situation in our own way, so we do what we want to do with it.

Liz Wolfe: And if you don’t like it, start your own blog, and only make recipes with meat, vegetables,

Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm.

Liz Wolfe: Nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar. That’s Crossfit, I know. That’s the Crossfit nutrition thing

Diane Sanfilippo: We don’t have 100 words right now, so.

Liz Wolfe: I guess.

Diane Sanfilippo: Alright. Well, maybe we’ll tie up this section of the podcast and roll into listener questions next.

Liz Wolfe: Sounds good.

6. New baby, fibromyalgia, and getting eating back on track [29:38]

Liz Wolfe: Alright. Listener questions. We have a couple here that are slightly similar in nature, but they’re actually quite different I think in the way we’re going to end up tackling them. So, I like how we have these put together here. This first one is from Crystal. Need to eat better, but where to begin?

“Hi Diane and Liz. I’m loving your podcast. I’m not a new listener, but I haven’t listened in a while because I had a baby boy last August, and he’s kept me super busy. Now that he’s a year old and eating everything that he sees me eat, I’ve got to clean up our diet. He’s still breastfed, and we want to continue. He isn’t very picky for now, and will eat veggies, but I don’t want to keep giving him unhealthy foods. That being said, I have some questions on best strategies for changing diets, and also the best approach. I have fibromyalgia, and use medical marijuana under supervision of a doctor, please no judgments, and that won’t change. But I get the worst munchies, and evenings are when I eat everything in the house. Nursing also makes me crave sweets like nothing else. I also don’t have a lot of free time to prep and cook, so fast and easy meals are a must. Would doing a 21-Day Detox be best for starting out, or should we ease into it? I don’t know the best strategy for dealing with my munchies, either.

My diet is embarrassing and awful right now. I eat Taco Bell almost daily, drink an XL Dr. Pepper or two every day, I don’t share that with the baby. I rarely cook anymore because my little one is not a huge fan of me not holding him at all times, which is how my Taco Bell habit started. The other part of this equation is I have a lap band, which makes eating many foods difficult. Ironically, junk food goes down so much easier than chicken breasts. I’m tired, hungry, and sick of being addicted to Dr. Pepper and junk food. Help!

Additional info. I immediately have two large cups of coffee with flavored creamer and milk daily. I don’t like to eat breakfast. Lunch is usually something from Taco Bell with an extra large Dr. Pepper. Dinner is the same or some other sort of fast food. Snacks are fruit, chips, chocolate. It’s not pretty, I know, but I want to be brutally honest. We walk daily for about an hour.”

This just sounds like survival mode to me.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: It’s almost like a feed forward thing, where you don’t eat breakfast, you start with the coffee, and you need the Taco Bell, it’s going to digest quickly, it’s fast. The Dr. Pepper; it’s just like feeding into itself continually.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. I think, for a situation like this, and I think we have a sort of similar question after this one, but with a very different background, so I’m going to give my 2 cents on some ideas on where to go on this one, and then definitely want to hear what other ideas you might have, too. I think that considering going all or nothing is too hard. I don’t personally think, in this type of situation where every hour of your day is a little bit of a struggle, when it comes to not being able to put the baby down, or make that decision about what to eat, especially with the processed foods being easier to digest. And I think one of the reasons for that is they’re sort of predigested. When they’re processed, it’s not a whole chicken breast that you have to chew really well, and then your body has to work pretty hard with digestive enzymes to break that down, versus something like ground meat that’s also, perhaps, I don’t know how whole it was in the first place. I don’t know how reconstituted it might be from powdered meat. I have no idea how Taco Bell is making their meat. I used to eat there when I was in high school, and I just haven’t in a really long time, so I haven’t really looked into the way that the food is being made.

This is the means of your diet, and you understand that because the food is so processed, it kind of lessens the impact on your digestive system. So two things here; one with the coffee. If you just need one thing to change for a week, go slowly. Do this one thing first. Instead of using your flavored coffee creamer and the milk, find a recipe. I think our friend Danielle Walker of Against All Grain has a recipe, I’m not sure if Primal Palate has a recipe. I think I had one years ago for a vanilla coffee creamer that you could make with heavy cream. If you can get grass-fed, great. If you can’t, just get some regular heavy cream at the grocery store. Get some of your own vanilla extract; real vanilla extract, and maybe a little bit of honey or maple syrup. Maple syrup dissolves better. Blend it together, make your own, and keep it in the fridge. Because at the very least, your starting to get rid of some of the toxic ingredients that are in these premade flavored creamers; and that’s ok. It’s one first small step, and if you can get that going and make that a habit, where each week maybe once a week you make your coffee creamer, and you keep that in the fridge. It’s just step one, and I don’t feel like people need to beat themselves up for taking it little by little.

I think the next step might be to find some foods that you can keep in the house that are quick and easy that you don’t have to cook. One really good idea that I would have for this; my assistant, actually, Charissa, she started an Instagram page called No Cook Paleo. I know she’s going to be sharing with you guys more information and more ideas and recipes of things you can literally just put together that are great healthy foods, but don’t require any cooking. It’s like grabbing things, dumping it in a bowl and mixing it is as complex as it gets. Or not even mixing it; maybe just cutting one thing.

So I think that that might be something; even, Liz I don’t know what your go to, in a pinch, I can’t be bothered with cooking or finding the time meals are, but for me, it’s Applegate deli turkey and avocado. And I’ll roll up the avocado in the turkey, maybe I’ll dip it in some paleo mayo if I have some mayo sitting around, or I’ll use some hot sauce or something to give it some flavor. And that for me I could eat that almost every day if I had to, just as long as I keep something like that on hand, then that I think makes the situation easier. So I wouldn’t worry about going to something like the 21-Day Sugar Detox. I think that is way too hard from where you’re at now, to what will help you kind of get healthier and dealing with just making the dietary change.

In terms of dealing with the munchies, it’s the same advice I have for anybody who is dealing with snacking issues that have to do with stress. As you work on alleviating stress more and more, and I honestly think changing some of the food will help that, because as your body starts to get nourished, it does start to help with cravings. Obviously some of these are induced by the medical marijuana, which I’m absolutely not going to judge that at all. I would just keep the healthy snacks on hand. If you have it there to eat, and you have the munchies, eat some fruit. I love frozen cherries. That’s a great sweet kind of carby thing to eat. At night, you can get a little bit of that frozen texture but you're getting a healthy snack in. What kind of tips do you have?

Liz Wolfe: It’s so tempting. I really feel for this person, because it’s tempting to feel like, when you’re way off track, and you’re just, my diet is embarrassing and awful right now, and you feel that way about yourself, to feel like you can’t feel good about yourself until you fix all the things. And that’s just not the mindset that’s needed here. You’re so right.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: You don’t have to just make these sweeping; alright, I’m fixed now because I’m on the 21-Day Sugar Detox. It’s a great program, but I think it’s really cool that you’re like, that’s too much probably. Because, I think it’s Crystal?

Diane Sanfilippo: Yes.

Liz Wolfe: Crystal can feel good; number one, she can feel really good about the fact that they walk every day for an hour.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah! That’s awesome.

Liz Wolfe: That she even wrote into the show in the first place! She’s eating some fruit for snacks. There’s some stuff to build on there, but like you said, just making a change or two and sustaining it; feel really good about that! Sometimes, it’s those little things, going through the motions of something every day, and feeling really good about it, because that I think will probably shift this mindset from, my diet is embarrassing and awful, to I’m doing what I can and I feel really good about it. I also think that she’s probably a candidate for some kind of shake in the morning. If you’ve got the lap band, and you’re having trouble digesting more whole, dense food sources of protein and whatnot, and at this point all you’re doing is coffee and creamer, maybe you want to get some good, high quality whey protein, some coconut milk, throw some egg yolks in there, and do a shake in the morning to get some kind of whole, more nourishing type stuff. Maybe some of that collagen hydrolysate, I always say it wrong.

Diane Sanfilippo: Hydrosylate.

Liz Wolfe: Well, I say hydrosylate, but it’s hydrolysate.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: I know.

Diane Sanfilippo: It’s like my mom saying, chipolte.

Liz Wolfe: Chipolte. Yeah, exactly. So they might be something to look into. Generally we don’t recommend shakes if you have another option, but right now I don’t think there necessarily is the perfect option when your digestion is a little bit compromised.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: So.

Diane Sanfilippo: I still think that’s a really good call out.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: And one of the things that I think is important for people to recognize; if everything is so off track, a shake is really easy to make.

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.

Diane Sanfilippo: And, if that means that you’re body is going to get some nutrition, especially some good healthy fats first thing in the morning, you would really be amazed at how much that shifts what you do all day. Because a lot of people start making poor decisions later in the day because their appetite is just out of control, and that’s one of the things where I know you and I agree that breakfast is, you know, maybe it’s an important meal and maybe it isn’t. The rule, you know, breakfast is the most important meal, it’s not the same for everyone.

Liz Wolfe: Uh-huh.

Diane Sanfilippo: Some people can easily not eat breakfast, and do just fine. But when it’s a situation like this where not eating breakfast leads to a lunch and dinner that somebody is not feeling great about, I like that idea a lot. Make some kind of a shake in the morning that puts a lot of nutrition in something really easy for you to consume and just don’t worry that that might not be that end, some “perfect” think that you think you should be eating, if that’s what helps get you back on track.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. One other thing I wanted to say, dealing with fibromyalgia. A couple of things to explore. Obviously, any time there’s any kind of issue like that, it’s always worth exploring what these changes in your diet can do for that particular thing you’re dealing with. I also want to throw out there; I was working with a gal who was dealing with fibromyalgia, and one of the things that she got into was the idea that, and there are a ton of theories, a ton of ideas around fibromyalgia, where it comes from, mitochondrial dysfunction, just across the board. But one of the things that really helped her was to look into some support groups for emotional trauma. And this idea that emotional trauma is showing up in other places in the body, maybe in the form of fibromyalgia or chronic pain, that type of thing. So, if that sounds like something that would be worth exploring, get into that too. Because I think there could very well be that kind of component, too, to fibromyalgia. So just wanted to throw that out there. Cool?

Diane Sanfilippo: Awesome. Yeah. And let us know how it goes, and hop over to the blog or send us a tweet or Facebook us, whatever, to just kind of let us know how it’s going. I think it’s a good way to also dig in for different recipes and things like that on what you can make and making small changes.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: Feel good about small changes.

7. Failing 30 day challenges and self sabotage [41:38]

Liz Wolfe: Yes. Alright, next up, from Sarah. Do I have to cold cold-turkey or 30-day challenge paleo, or can I ease in? “Hi Diane and Liz. Love the podcast, love you two, love the books for both of you; long-time listener, first time questioner. Do you have to start with a cold-turkey, elimination type diet approach to paleo? I’ve been learning as much as I can about nutrition and ancestral health for about two years now. But every time I try one of these 30-day challenges, like Whole30 or something similar, I seem to slip, usually gluten, get discouraged, and then eat crappy foods for a few months to soothe my sadness. I know, it’s my own fault! These challenge are great for helping me to see quick progress. I lost like 15 pounds in 2.5 weeks on a Whole30, and helped me get gluten out of my system to know I’m sensitive to it, I think mostly mental health and digestion issues. But I get so crazy about failing at them. Is it ok to do a more slow and steady approach? Will I still be able to see success? For example, if I just try my best to be 100%, even if I never get there? I love your talks about paleo perfectionism, but I feel like everyone recommends at least 30 days to start, and then take a more “it’s a lifestyle” approach. What if I can’t keep it perfect for 30 days, but can only make it to 20, or whatever. Do you have tips for battling the crazy diet mentality of all or nothing. I get so discouraged when I fail, that I just throw in the towel for months at a time, convinced I’ll never be healthy. To be honest, I never really have, I’ve always been obese. People say it’s so easy, but…”

Sorry, I got tripped up. “People say it’s so easy to do, it’s only 30 days. But for me it’s not. I was a vegan for 2 years, and it was easier than giving up bread. Do I feel 1000% better when I’m paleo than when I was a vegan? Sure. But for whatever reason, I really struggle to stay on point. Maybe you have tips for newbies, or people who aren’t so new but lack willpower for staying on task, at least long enough to see some real changes. Or, maybe just a pep talk for someone who has failed challenges in the past.”

Diane Sanfilippo: I don’t know if we need to read all of the extra deets here.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. I think we’re good.

Diane Sanfilippo: I don’t think they’re super relevant to the question. I don’t know if folks who are just tuning in and maybe haven’t listened to every single episode that we’ve ever done, because at this point, I do realize that 3 years in, we may have people who tuned in this week for the first time. So, as much as we may feel like we’ve said this stuff before, I think it’s worth mentioning that the first time I learned about going gluten free, from the first time I learned about it until I actually did it, was at least 1 year, if not 2. So, that being said. I dabbled for a long time, even with just giving up gluten, because I never really saw that it was helpful for me, or I just didn’t see how it applied to me. It didn’t really connect with me, and for me it took until I fully understood the connection to go ahead and say, ok I’m not going to eat it anymore. And that’s a different path than what we’re talking about here, where Sarah’s saying she goes whole hog, and then she never gets through the challenge.

I have two schools of thought on this. One, I don’t think that a challenge, as we just mentioned in the last question and answer, I don’t think a challenge is the only way to do it. I think for somebody who is struggling with a severe health condition, who wants to know, what do you think is the ideal approach, that may be it. That being said, if it’s not working for you because you can’t stick with it, then it’s not ideal for you. So you need to find a way to make small changes that you feel good about, that get you feeling better, and then just stick with them until they become what you do. I think part of it really is a mindset. This is where, if you feel like somebody else is making the rules for it; if it’s too difficult because of that, and you’re not going to stick to it, then that’s not something that’s really the best approach for you.

I just wanted to kind of touch on one other thing. I think the mindset here, and I definitely want to hear your take on this too; I usually just kind of jump in to let your voice get a rest after you ask the question.

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: I think that when we’re talking about this idea that, we can’t stick to a challenge that someone else has created, that we give up and feel like we’re failing, that’s the last thing I want somebody to feel if they try the 21-Day Sugar Detox, for example. And somebody asked me last night at the library. After you do this challenge, are you supposed to change what you do for forever and eat that way for forever? Do people go back to what they were doing before? Does this just stick for forever? My take on it is, everything that we do with any of these challenges is there to teach us something about what works for us and what doesn’t.

I think she’s learned what foods work for her and don’t, but there’s something about the way that she’s trying to approach it, with a challenge, that doesn’t work for her. Either it’s giving up on a commitment that you made to yourself, there’s something perhaps emotional in there if you don’t want to commit to yourself to make changes for a certain period of time, and that doesn’t even need to be prescribed by somebody else. Whether it’s 30 days, 21 days, whatever it is. If you decide on a commitment that you’re making to yourself, and you let it go, what’s going on there? What is it that makes you feel like something that you’ve decided to commit to, isn’t worth it for you, or you’re not worth following through. There is something going on there, and I know, this is really true for a lot of people.

I think sometimes there’s self sabotage involved. I know in the past when I had a lot of struggles with this stuff and just was not in a very even place, and was eating foods that didn’t really support my mental health, and I was still eating gluten and things like that really didn’t help me have that mental clarity, it was a lot harder. I think if you get to a point where you really figure out the core of what’s keeping you from committing to making healthy choices for yourself… I don’t want you to beat yourself up for a slip, but at the same time, what is it that’s really getting in the way of that commitment, and I think intellectually, she’s there, she gets it, she knows what to eat, and I think a lot of our listeners have that experience where they’ve learned, and they get it, but there’s something emotionally that keeps them from staying with it.

Liz Wolfe: It’s so hard, because there is no one size fits all. We just don’t, we don’t want that because that makes it harder for people to change their lives and get on track. But maybe it doesn’t. Maybe what we need to recognize, each of us, individually, is that whoever we are is for us to determine. And I know that sounds really obscure, but this idea that I’m supposed to be the type of person that is successful at this, done this way, for this end. I think maybe the larger, super meta, let’s talk about the universe problem, is that we are not very good at self defining. The way I mean that is so many of us are not ok with the way we deal with things. We think we’re supposed to be able to deal with something the way our neighbor does, or whatever, rather than just saying, ok I’m this type of person, so what might work for me then? What might really play on my strengths, and help me overcome my weaknesses.

The reason I think about this is because for a long time, I really battled with the fact that I’m really an introvert. I thought that meant there was something wrong with me. I didn’t want to talk to people in certain scenarios, and I was uncomfortable in certain scenarios. And rather than just saying, ok, how do I function most effectively in the world in a way that makes me comfortable, happy, and proud of my progress, rather than being, ok I’m just going to have to force myself to be in this situation and figure out how to be the kind of person that thrives that way.

So I think that maybe some self-reflection is maybe what will give people the right tools to pick the protocol, or the routine, or the challenge that’s going to work for them. This kind of feeds into exactly what you were saying. But at the same time, I think this is a Buddhist thing, or I don’t know. This idea of being with your feelings, and acknowledging them, and feeling them. So if you’re sitting there thinking, I’m a failure. Or, I can’t do this. Or, if you’re even thinking I can do this, and following up immediately those instinctive feelings, whether positive or negative, with something contrary to that. Which would be; oh I can do this challenge, but I’m probably going to fail. Or, I’m probably going to fail; no, I can’t fail! That kind of self talk where we say one thing about ourselves and then immediately contradict it because we feel we must be wrong in some way.

Rather than doing that, and kind of immediately responding to yourself as if you’re wrong, or bad, or pathetic, or a failure, you’re not going to be able to do something. Just be, ok, I feel like I’m going to do really well with this challenge. How am I going to set myself up based on my personality traits and how I handle things, how am I going to set myself up for success. Or, I’m a huge failure. Ok, that’s fine. I’m going to acknowledge that, and not make myself feel wrong for it, but I’m also going to try and think of a productive way to pull myself out of that mindset. Am I making any sense at all?

Diane Sanfilippo: Yes, you are. I definitely think that the sort of self talk, or I can or I can’t do something, and thoughts become things, and you become what you think about; I believe in all of that stuff. So I think what you’re saying is totally true. And I really think there’s different kinds of people out there. Some people really like a structured approach and do well with it. And some people don’t. And if you don’t, you’re not wrong, or bad, or less than. So I think that that’s just a really important thing to keep in mind. Maybe deciding on small changes, pick one thing to work on for the week. One small change, and don’t try and go all or nothing. That’s what we said in the previous answer, too, and I definitely stand by that.

Liz Wolfe: Challenges are really popular, and really, really helpful, and you know that I had a change of heart that we talked about on this podcast at some point about 30-day challenges and things like that. They can be really useful. But they also, they have to realize that the reason that’s all you hear about, is these kind of strict challenges, is because they kind of play to that sweeping frenzied change, like that kind of popular thing that you like to see in the media, and that people like to cover and they like to buy impulsively. So there’s a reason you hear more about that than gradual changes, because gradual changes are boring.

Diane Sanfilippo: And gradual changes are how both of us really made our lifestyle changes.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: I also had some sort of a challenge at some point; it wasn’t like I did the challenge and everything was perfect thereafter. It was gradual for more than a year before that.

Liz Wolfe: yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: And, you know, truthfully, it’s been gradual for years and years. When I first started paying attention. Everybody’s journey with this, you have to consider it actually starting, whatever the day was that you started to pay attention to your nutrition. That’s the beginning of your journey. So, a 30-day challenge, a 21-day challenge, that’s not your journey. That’s just one small part of it. And if you find that those don’t work for you, don’t do it. It doesn’t work for everybody. That’s a good point; when it works for a lot of people, it’s the kind of thing that people talk about, because it is easy for people to understand, what exactly did you do. But when what exactly you did is very specific to you and what works for you and your lifestyle, and it’s maybe a little bit off-kilter from what mainstream folks might want to do. If what works for you feeling great, Liz, is a liver shot smoothie every morning.

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: Really tough to get that Huffington Post talking about the liver shot smoothie, but I bet one day!

Liz Wolfe: {laughing}

Diane Sanfilippo: So I think that’s just something to kind of keep in mind there.

8. Homesteading; dealing with predators [54:37]

Liz Wolfe: Alright, so homesteading question of the week for me is, how do you deal with predators? And this question kind of makes me sad. Because we do the best we can, but sometimes there’s just not a lot you can do. Our pigs stay outside at night, and they are enclosed within a cross fenced area of our property. They seem to really well. The goats we put in at night. The guineas just happen to roost in the barn at night, which I would not recommend anybody train your guineas to do; lesson learned, but a little too late for that for us. In particular, our chickens and ducks. They free range all day long, and we’ve been losing quite a few chickens lately, and it stinks. We do what we can, we’ve done things like put up flashy CDs, we’ve hung CD’s and I’ve hung a disco ball outside of my chicken coop to catch the glint of light from the sun and reflect them back on sky predators. But you really just have to hope that, number one the chickens are smart and observant and will get themselves under a tree or along a fence line during predator heavy parts of the day, or I guess survival of the fittest. Which may seem cruel, but that’s just kind of the way it goes. We’ve got them safe from night predators, because they do go into the coop.

But I’ve got to say, you can’t always cage, put free-range cages, around as many chickens as we have. So if you have two or three, you can kind of pull a covered cage around the yard so they get different spots of grass at different times during the day. But having 18 chickens, that’s a little bit more different. We really do just let them free-range, and hope that at the very least, they’ve had a really nice free-range life.

For a while, we were losing chickens to stray dogs, and that was terrible. So, really you just do the best you can with your situation. It depends on the landscape, how many chickens you have, and that type of thing. We’ll have to talk about this on the Modern Farm Girls podcast, which is the half-hour podcast I do with Diana Rodgers, who has a much larger scale farming operation.

Diane Sanfilippo: She’s like your farm big sister.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah, totally.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: She totally is. So we’ve been doing that. Right now it’s just a monthly podcast, because how many podcasts can a person keep up with? For me it’s not that many. So, right now, we’ve got 2 episodes out. One of them is keeping chickens 101, so I can’t remember if we talked about this on that podcast, but definitely tune in for that if you want a little bit more on homesteading stuff, because we did talk about chickens in episode 2.

Diane Sanfilippo: Awesome.

9. Kitchen tip; when to season food while cooking [57:37]

Liz Wolfe: Yep. Alright. So, kitchen tip of the week. This is not me.

Diane Sanfilippo: No. Do you want to read the question?

Liz Wolfe: Yes.

Diane Sanfilippo: I probably should have read your question for the homesteading thing. Next time. You guys, we’re still trying to figure out this whole, we’ve got segments thing.

Liz Wolfe: Which I’m really liking having the segments, by the way.

Diane Sanfilippo: I like it too. It feels organized.

Liz Wolfe: Alright, so, Diane’s kitchen tip of the week. When do you add your seasoning when cooking? Tip us out, Diane!

Diane Sanfilippo: Alright, this is a really good question. You and I talked on the podcast not long ago, so if people want more info about salt, they can peek back in the archives and read more about that. But specifically, seasoning to me. Any recipe that you’ll read where it’s adding spices. Things like chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, those kinds of things, it will tell you when to add it. But, typically. So there’s two kinds of seasonings I’m thinking about here. One would be just salt and pepper, and one would be your other spices. So when I add seasonings, it depends on what it is.

So if it’s meat, I will season the meat before it even goes into the pan pretty liberally with salt and pepper. What ends up happening to the salt is it actually doesn’t leave your food tasting salty. What it’s doing, as I mentioned in the previous episode, is helping to extract some of the water from the meat, thereby making the flavor a little bit richer and bolder. So it doesn’t salt the food, it actually just seasons it. It helps to give it a better taste. And so, meat I’ll season before it goes into the pan. I’ll also season it somewhere in the middle of the cooking. Because generally, you don’t want that salt and pepper to just be added when it hits the plate, because then it just makes it salty and peppery, versus adding the seasoning along the way where when you get food, typically I would say at a restaurant. If you go to a fine restaurant, the food on your plate, you’ll find that you don’t need to add salt to it, because it’s been seasoned along the way. It doesn’t taste salty, it just doesn’t taste bland. So that’s what happens when you season as your cooking.

Obviously, you can’t always taste something like raw meat when you’re going. My rule of thumb is, you almost can’t over salt meat in the beginning. Of course, anything is possible. But usually if I’m watching someone season meat, I’m like, hmm, you could probably double that with the salt and pepper. So when it comes to spices, again chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, those types of things, garlic powder. You don’t want to add them too close to the end of when you’re cooking, because they’re not actually going get incorporated enough. So you need to add them somewhere early on, but there also needs to be some fat or some liquid already in the dish so they have somewhere to go. Because you’ve probably noticed, if you try and season meat, and there’s not enough fat in the pan, you’re basically just going to burn those spices. So you really do need to do it when there’s some coconut oil, or ghee, or fat from the meat, or there’s some liquid.

So, typically, if I’m putting vegetables in a dish. I’m starting a dish with onions. Because pretty much every good dish starts with onions. In my house, at least. So, fat will go in the pan, and then the onions will go in the pan, and I’ll add salt and pepper. I don’t know how much, I just sprinkle, grind the pepper. Then the next thing is maybe garlic, and it simmers, cooks away for a minute or two. You don’t cook garlic too long. Maybe I won’t add salt and pepper there again. Maybe I’ll add a big pile of vegetables that I want to sauté with the onions. Maybe it’s a whole bunch of chopped carrots. I’ll add a pile of chopped carrots to the pan; I’ll add more salt and pepper. I’m not adding like a teaspoon at a time, I’m just kind of sprinkling so that that layer of carrots gets that seasoning.

So as you learn how to do this, as you go through trying to cook different things, you’ll find that if you used to add a lot of salt to your dish when it hit the table, if you start getting into the habit of seasoning it along the way like this, a little bit at a time, you won’t have to do that, and your food also won’t come out tasting salty.

Liz Wolfe: It’s science!

Diane Sanfilippo: It’s science! {laughs} I can’t. I can’t curse. We had to mute your little S-word last week. We had to figure that out.

Liz Wolfe: Oohh. {sneezes}

Diane Sanfilippo: We didn’t get a bleep in… Did you just sneeze?

Liz Wolfe: I did. Sorry. I was looking for the mute button, I couldn’t find it.

Diane Sanfilippo: Bless you. {laughs} We’re going to use your sneeze as the new expletive

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: Ah-choo! So yeah, that’s kind of what I do. Salt and pepper along the way. And you know, a lot of recipes in cookbooks will say a pinch, a few pinches, season liberally, salt and pepper to taste, you know. One of the things you learn when you write recipes for a cookbook is you’re not allowed to write “salt and pepper to taste” when there’s raw meat involved {laughs}. Because somebody can’t taste it. So you guys just have to keep in mind when someone says salt and pepper to taste, and you didn’t season it along the way in the recipe, and it comes out a little bit bland, that’s because you need to get used to this process. Keep your salt and pepper right next to the stove to consistently go ahead and add a thin layer each time.

I think one of the really great ways to learn this process is to watch some cooking shows. I think that’s probably how I learned it the best was to watch cooking shows. I’ll tell you what, my mother didn’t know this lesson {laughs} because she never added salt and pepper while she was cooking, and everything always came out just a little bit bland. So just watch a couple of cooking shows, and you’ll see. They literally sprinkle salt and pepper pretty much everything they layer into a pan to cook.

Liz Wolfe: I don’t watch cooking shows.

Diane Sanfilippo: Watch them. Do it.

Liz Wolfe: There’s so much reality TV on right now that I’m trying to catch up on.

Diane Sanfilippo: The cooking shows are the original reality TV, come on!

Liz Wolfe: Oh, that’s true. Alright.

Diane Sanfilippo: I’m so nerdy in different ways from you, it’s really funny.

Liz Wolfe: I know.

Diane Sanfilippo: We both have these weird old person tendencies, but in totally different ways.

Liz Wolfe: {laughing} Pretty much.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yours is loving Andy Griffith, and driving really slowly.

Liz Wolfe: And you know what?

Diane Sanfilippo: What’s mine?

Liz Wolfe: I love that about myself.

Diane Sanfilippo: I do too!

Liz Wolfe: Your just a crotchety old meanie. {laughing}

Diane Sanfilippo: I’m a crotchety old meanie?

Liz Wolfe: Yours is that you like public access television and cooking shows.

Diane Sanfilippo: And NPR radio.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: Wait, wait, don’t tell me. It’s definitely one of my favorites.

Liz Wolfe: Oh my gosh.

Diane Sanfilippo: It’s so weird.

10. Interactive listeners hashtag assignment of the week [1:03:55]

Liz Wolfe: Alright, so we’re planning on doing, as part of our segments here, kind of an interactive social media call out. What we’re going to do, is we will ask you some kind of question, and we’re going to get you involved on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook using hashtags. So, last week we asked you about your #worstpaleomeal. We’re going to talk about that a little bit next week, but we’re going to throw something new into the rotation, and that is an Instagram hashtag contest. I want you to post your first paleo food photo, with the hashtag #firstpaleopic. So, whatever you remember being the first paleo meal that you really got into, and you were like, alright, this is my staple, I can do this. Take a picture, hashtag it #firstpaleopic, put it on Instagram, and we’ll see it, and we’ll talk all about it on the show.

Liz Wolfe: That’s it for this episode of the Balanced Bites podcast. Be sure to hop over to our websites and join our email lists. Diane is at http://dianesanfilippo.com, and I am at http://realfoodliz.com/. Thanks for listening.

Cheers! Diane & Liz