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Topics:
1. Liz’s updates [8:49]
2. Diane’s updates [12:56]
3. Differences in flavor and nutrients of animal livers [17:08]
4. How to make bone broth more palatable by itself [23:19]
5. Tips on electrolyte replacement during the summer heat [27:57]
6. What do you feed your paleo pets? [31:11]
7. Diane’s kitchen tip [54:36]
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Liz Wolfe: Hey everyone! Welcome to episode 146 of the Balanced Bites podcast. Oh my god. 146. Diane?!
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} What?!
Liz Wolfe: What? What! I’m Liz, and I’m here with Diane, who’s going to do the immense job of introducing our sponsors today. Take it away, Diane.
Diane Sanfilippo: I’m being trusted with this job and we’re both present?
Liz Wolfe: {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: Crazy! Ok. You know, I do this when you’re not here. Right? You know that I do uphold this end of the deal?
Liz Wolfe: Yeah. Because I listen to all of the episodes that you record without me. I listen to them obsessively.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Why wasn’t I there?!
Liz Wolfe: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: Ok. Well first of all, I want to congratulate our friends, Pete and Sarah of Pete’s Paleo.
Liz Wolfe: Yay!
Diane Sanfilippo: New baby Lois. Yeah, check out their social media. Actually, there are two new babies. Paleo By Season is releasing pretty soon, which is their new book. So, check it out if for no other reason than I wrote an amazing forward for it. {laughs}
Liz Wolfe: {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: No, there are many other reasons. Actually, a really cool book will help you answer that ever {laughing} stressful question. What do I do with 40 pounds of greens in my CSA?
Liz Wolfe: {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: No, I know that people get CSA boxes, or you’re thinking about signing up, and you have no idea what’s going to come in that box, and that book will actually really help you figure it out. It’s organized by season, as you might guess. The recipes are just really creative and interesting, but also totally approachable. There’s meatballs and hamburgers. I think there’s one called beer-butt chicken. Something like that.
Liz Wolfe: Sold.
Diane Sanfilippo: Which you can make with cider, which I was like, yes, sold. So anyway, check out Paleo by Season, I think you can preorder it. Anyway, have Pete’s Paleo, bringing fine dining to your cave. If you want to make eating paleo a little bit easier on yourself, check out their meal plans. They are great for those nights when you’re on the run or you need real food fast. And, as you may have heard in our previous episodes, they now offer 21-Day Sugar Detox friendly meals, so they have a whole meal plan situation for the 21DSD so it will make the 21DSD that much easier for you. They’ve also got a bunch of other special diet-friendly meal plans coming up, so check out their website, petespaleo.com for all the details on that. And, Chameleon Cold-Brew… are you dropping everything? What just happened? {laughs}
Liz Wolfe: {laughs} That’s my dog.
Diane Sanfilippo: The whole world just fell over. Chameleon Cold-Brew, our favorite cold-brew, organic and delicious. Their new ready to drink single serving bottles are hitting store shelves all over the place. I actually just found some recently here in New Jersey, and they are quite delicious. {slurps} {laughs} That’s my slurp.
Liz Wolfe: Ha-ha.
Diane Sanfilippo: They have a black coffee as well as vanilla and mocha. The black is unsweetened, and the vanilla and the mocha are just a little bit sweetened with some organic cane sugar, I think it is. So check those out. Those are what they call the ready to drink, they are like grab and go. You can put some coconut milk or something in there if you want, or just enjoy them as is. So if you’re somebody who’s not always just looking for the, what do they call it. The intense, I don’t even know what its’ called.
Liz Wolfe: Bold?
Diane Sanfilippo: They call it…
Liz Wolfe: Umami?
Diane Sanfilippo: Here I am. We’re not editing that, by the way. It’s the concentrate. Honestly, I like to mainline the concentrate, but if you {laughs} just want to get something you can grab and go. A couple of updates on where to find Chameleon Cold-Brew, because their online ordering has been kind of on and off, and that’s because the demand is so amazing that as soon as they put it back online, it tends to sell out really quickly. People in New Jersey, I just found it in my Whole Foods, so check that out. New York folks, that’s New York City and state, Whole Foods, Khim’s Millennium market, Fairway, Westside Market, Devices, Deviches? I don’t know how you say that {laughs} And a bunch of other small retailers and bodegas, etc, so just keep looking around in your local stores. Anyone in Hawaii, Papaya’s and Down to Earth, Atlanta look for them at Earth Fair, Fred Meyer if you’re in the Pacific Northwest in addition to Whole Foods. And their adding lots of retailers in regions all the time. Actually, I just spoke to one of their representatives, and they said that sometimes the website doesn’t tell you every store that’s selling it, so just kind of peek around for it. I think they’re usually sold near ice teas and other things like that. Super Target in a bunch of states is carrying the concentrate, and I think that’s it. So keep your eyes peels. Ok, one more, I’m really excited to announce this new sponsor. Some of you who follow me on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or wherever you might follow me may have seen me posting about this company for a while now, and it’s just because, I actually really love their stuff. One of the employees over there has been a big fan of Balanced Bites and listens to the podcast all the time, so I just have started wearing their stuff and have loved it. It’s Splits59. They are a high performance and high fashion athletic ware company, active ware. Based in LA, so they are based right here in the country. I actually just really love the styles. I think they’re really different and fun, stuff that doesn’t just look like you’re going to the gym. One of my favorites is, they have a sweatshirt that has a little racer-back cut out, and I just think that they’re so cute. Especially because I like to…
Liz Wolfe: So cute!
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. I like to make them match all my bright colors, and Scott will be like, did you dress yourself today, dear? {laughs}
Liz Wolfe: {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: Because I’m wearing all the colors. But I just love them, and actually I’m really loving their pants lately. I think a bunch of people have probably seen, I had this pair of white pants with like splatter paint on them. They’re really cool and fun. So anyway, they are generously offering our listeners 15% off any regularly priced merchandise. Just use the promo code BALANCEDBITES at checkout. Visit them at http://www.splits59.com/. You can sign up for their email updates, make sure you get any promos that they’re offering. And then, check out their website for July 7th for something really special. So, that’s pretty much it. That’s all the updates and excitement around here.
Liz Wolfe: If I may just throw out a personal endorsement for Splits59.
Diane Sanfilippo: You may. {laughs}
Liz Wolfe: I really love their stuff. I weirdly really love their stuff. It’s probably a little bit unhealthy.
Diane Sanfilippo: They actually told me they heard the episode with Julie that you did, and Ranit is the woman who I’m kind of in communication with for the whole sponsorship, and she was like totally nerding out at the gym listening, and she’ll be listening to this one too, and she was like, oh my goodness, they’re talking about us! Like, super excited about it.
Liz Wolfe: I don’t even remember talking… that whole podcast, it was just like talking on the phone to my buddy Juli. Totally forgot we were recording that.
Diane Sanfilippo: {singsong} Talking best girlfriends!
Liz Wolfe: {laughing} Love it.
Diane Sanfilippo: So, yeah. Well, for anyone listening, when I told Liz that they were our newest sponsor, she was like, Yes! I love them!
Liz Wolfe: I drove off the road. Not that I was on my phone when I was driving.
Diane Sanfilippo: No.
Liz Wolfe: But I was. And I drove off of the road.
Diane Sanfilippo: Ummm…
Liz Wolfe: It was a country road, though!
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} There’s nobody there.
Liz Wolfe: That’s fine.
Diane Sanfilippo: Just me and the chicken.
Liz Wolfe: Plus I drive about 10 miles an hour, anyway.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} I can vouch for that. {laughing}
Liz Wolfe: {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: With both hands on the wheel.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: Gripping tightly.
Liz Wolfe: Put both hands on the wheel. Oh, you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Diane Sanfilippo: I don’t know.
Liz Wolfe: It’s a public service announcement from Dexter McCluster about not texting and driving.
Diane Sanfilippo: Oh, that’s a good one.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: Do you want to give your updates first, because I’ve been talking for so long?
1. Liz’s updates [8:49]
Liz Wolfe: Yeah, totes. So. This is the most important one. I did a cooking demo on Better Kansas City.
Diane Sanfilippo: I’m nervous for all of Kansas City now.
Liz Wolfe: I am too. I’ve foisted myself upon the Kansas City Morning show crowd. So, I’ll probably be back here and there to do different various food related things. But I {laughs} it was really fun.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Liz Wolfe: But you know how nervous this stuff makes me, and what’s funny about it is, you know Diane how nervous I get to present to people, but with our workshops and everything like I always am really, really nervous at the buildup, and then we get started and it’s fine. You get some feedback from the audience that’s sitting right there in front of you, and it’s a great time, and you get to connect with people.
Diane Sanfilippo: It’s just because I slip muscle relaxers into your tea.
Liz Wolfe: Oh thank god. That’s why I’m having such a problem with this live TV stuff!
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughing}
Liz Wolfe: That’s so smart. But really, what’s so funny about it is I know it’s live TV, but we’re in a room with nothing but a camera man, and the host, and a bunch of bright lights. I know, I don’t get unnervous. I can’t unwind myself. For some reason, even though there’s nobody there. But I know, at least 5 or 6 people in Kansas City have that channel on.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Liz Wolfe: You know, probably on mute while they vacuum or something like that, I don’t know. But at least a few people are watching that live, and I can’t assess their reactions, and feel what they might be enjoying or not enjoying, and cater my presentation to that. So anyway, what ends up happening, I get nervous, I forget what I’m doing, and then I tell the host to, “kick back, Turbo”
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughing}
Liz Wolfe: Which is exactly what I did. {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: I don’t even know what that means!
Liz Wolfe: You don’t?! I guess it’s a pilot joke, or something.
Diane Sanfilippo: Oh. Is it?
Liz Wolfe: I guess so. But, so it was a cooking demo, and I did my 10 minute apple crisp, and I had to condense it into 3 minutes. And they told me before hand, they were like, you don’t need to talk fast. People talk faster than they think they need to. So of course, I’m sitting there, in my head.
Diane Sanfilippo: brrrp brrp.
Liz Wolfe: Like the metronomes that we used to use in piano lessons, like tick, tock, trying to slow my talking down. And then the host is like, so, we have 15 seconds left. So what are you going to do? And I go, Kick back, Turbo!
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughing}
Liz Wolfe: And then I just slopped all of the {laughs} all of the apples in a dish and topped it with paleo crunch, and I gave it to him. {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: You’re like, and this is how it’s done.
Liz Wolfe: Boom, that’s how it’s done! But I realize now you have to do stuff like this to get used to it and be ok. And I realized the reason I had such a hard time this time and the time before that I went on to talk about Eat the Yolks it was because, I mean, both clips turned out great. They are totally fine. But of course, I’m in my own head, like, you stupid! You are the worst at being on live TV! But really it’s because I think I was trying to, I don’t know, be whatever I thought I was supposed to be for Better Kansas City, but really I just need to be myself. And if that means saying kick back, turbo…
Diane Sanfilippo: Don’t be yourself! That’s terrible.
Liz Wolfe: {laughs} That’s the worst advice you could give!
Diane Sanfilippo: The worst.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah. But that was that moment where I was like, wait a second, that’s totally something I would say in real life. And that part just happened to have been the best part of the whole segment.
Diane Sanfilippo: Ta-da!
Liz Wolfe: So, from now on I’m just going to be myself. {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. I mean, I can’t be myself.
Liz Wolfe: {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: Because I’m just not funny at all. But you should definitely be yourself. And I’m excited. I want to see this clip!
Liz Wolfe: I gotta put it up. But I just felt, when they asked me to do a cooking demo, of course I was glad to do it, but as you know, Good Food for Bad Cooks. Hello, I’m not a chef. I don’t even know how to hold a knife, and I was almost like, do you know how many trained chefs are going to be offended that I’m on live TV doing a cooking demo? But it was a blast. It really was fun. And I’m excited to build my relationship with Better KC. They seemed excited about it. And they keep inviting me back, so.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yay.
Liz Wolfe: Yay! That’s about it.
Diane Sanfilippo: I’m glad they put the clips online so that we can all watch it and enjoy.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah. And I take a screen cast of them, too, so if the clips ever go away, I still have them.
Diane Sanfilippo: That sounds fancy. How do you do that?
Liz Wolfe: I’m not telling, it’s a trade secret.
Diane Sanfilippo: Oh my goodness.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah. What are your updates?
2. Diane’s updates [12:56]
Diane Sanfilippo: Besides my new hair color, I’m flipping my hair as we speak.
Liz Wolfe: {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: But you can’t see it. {laughing} It went a little too blonde yesterday, and I was like, hold up. Hold up. I have to go back and fix this, because, I can’t all of a sudden be a blonde again. Nobody’s going to know who I am. They’re going to get even more confused. So anyway. {laughs}
Liz Wolfe: {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: Look, I live in New Jersey. You just never know what’s going to happen when you walk into and out of the hair salon. But no, she did a really good job. So I don’t know, we’ll see. New hair color. It’s summer; it’s a little blonder. That was my most important update, but
Liz Wolfe: I’m so glad you told me.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} I know. Other important updates. Mediterranean Paleo Cooking will be available this fall. Again, for people who have been following me all over the Instagram and whatever else, been watching me post updates. It’s a book I’m working on with my really good friend Caitlin Weeks, who is a fellow nutrition consultant, and she’s based out of San Francisco/Nashville. She’s got a house in Nashville, that’s where she’s from, but they’re pretty much living in San Francisco, which I’m pretty stoked about, that they’re staying there. So anyway. We’re working on that. Amazing recipes, really easy stuff, but just great flavors that you have not seen in a lot of other paleo books. There are a bunch of Mediterranean cookbooks out there that are pretty new and popular, but a lot of them have a vegetarian focus. Which is totally not Mediterranean. There’s a ton of meat, and seafood obviously, but a ton of meat in Mediterranean cooking, so. Just really interesting innovative stuff, and notes on what to do if you can’t eat nightshades or eggs, and nuts and seeds, and all that kind of stuff. That’s one of the things that’s been sort of my influence on the book is helping to, not only take pictures and do art direction, because that’s the fun part, and I love doing that, but just encouraging Caitlin to spend the time, which she’s done an amazing job at, to put in notes about, if you can’t do certain ingredients or if you need, I think she even has low FODMAP notes and low-carb notes, because she’s got a really big low-carb following. Just a ton of extras in this book that will make it really, really useful, which I know is one of the things that people love about Practical Paleo and the Sugar Detox books, it’s not just a recipe. It’s a recipe with a ton of other tweaks and ideas of what to do if you can’t just do every ingredient that would be considered paleo friendly. So, there’s that. And I guess, basically stay tuned for information on a book tour, because we will be doing that, probably mid-October when it releases. Just kind of stay tuned for that, it will probably be 3-5 cities to start out. I will definitely announce all of that right here on the Balanced Bites podcast. I think the last thing I want to tell people is if you have been following me on Facebook, you may notice that there’s also an update there. Instead of being the Balanced Bites page, it’s just my name. So the URL is Facebook.com/TheDianeSanfilippo. I couldn’t take Diane Sanfilippo, so it’s not me trying to be officially the only one. {laughs} But it wasn’t available.
Liz Wolfe: {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: So I had to come up with something else. So, anyway. You can find me there on Facebook, if you can find me ever on Facebook. Grumble, grumble.
Liz Wolfe: Grumble, grumble. Awesome.
Diane Sanfilippo: So there’s that. Are you in chipmunk mode? What just happened.
Liz Wolfe: No! That’s a Saturday Night Live quote. Awesome.
Diane Sanfilippo: What?
Liz Wolfe: Awesome.
Diane Sanfilippo: Is that Gilly?
Liz Wolfe: No. Gilly! {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: Sorry.
Liz Wolfe: {laughing} I used to think people that watched Saturday Night Live on Saturday night live were such losers, and that’s me. Every week.
Diane Sanfilippo: Should we answer some questions? It’s been 15 minutes.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah. Do you have a kitchen tip today?
Diane Sanfilippo: Oh. Well, I thought that was supposed to be at the end? We’re so prepared.
Liz Wolfe: Oh. Ok. No, we got it. We got it. At the end. Everyone, stay tuned for Diane’s kitchen tip.
Diane Sanfilippo: At the end.
3. Differences in flavor and nutrients of animal livers [17:08]
Liz Wolfe: Alright, first question. From Mark the trucker. We love Mark the trucker. Let’s talk liver. “Liz, thanks for the liver smoothie recipe.” By the way, everyone, I posted my raw liver smoothie recipe to the blog. “it’s on my list to try, especially the liver prep method you detailed. Could you go over any nutritional differences, if any, of different animal livers. Taste-wise, my experience has taught me thus far that CAFO, aka factory farmed beef liver, tastes pretty bad. Grass fed liver is much better, and milder. Still nowhere near dark chocolate.” This is true. “Finally, pasture-raised chicken livers seem to be downright palatable. I use the term mild here, because you can still tell it’s liver in your mouth, you just gag less with the chicken liver. I’ve taken up Angela Coppola's from Latest in Paleo podcast fame method of cutting the liver with bacon. Yes, bacon can even make liver taste better. I’ve yet to taste swine liver, and I know Liz will be slaughtering her hogs eventually. I’d be interested if either of you know if the flavor profile is as good as grass-fed beef. Thanks for your time and hard work in putting together Balanced Bites. I subscribe and enjoy every episode.” Never go in against a Sicilian when liver is on the line!
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Liz Wolfe: And yes, I am Sicilian. I hope our friend Mark the trucker enjoys the way I quoted that just now.
Diane Sanfilippo: What’s that from.
Liz Wolfe: Are you kidding me?
Diane Sanfilippo: What? Is that from the Princess Bride?
Liz Wolfe: Yes.
Diane Sanfilippo: Oh, good.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah, you got it. Good girl.
Diane Sanfilippo: I was almost just disowned, right there.
Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.
Diane Sanfilippo: And I’m Sicilian too. Well, half.
Liz Wolfe: {laughing} What is dead may never die. Ok. So, I don’t have a whole lot to say here. I haven’t paid that much attention to the differences between chicken liver and beef liver, always pasture raised, that’s the only thing I would ever eat raw is something that is 100% appropriately raised. Chicken livers have the highest levels of folate to any other meat, any other liver, any other organ. So if you’re really looking to up your folate intake, then chicken livers are an amazing way to go. So, that’s one difference. So I suppose if you were working on some fertility stuff, or you wanted to eat a lot of really nutrient dense food in place of a prenatal, for example, that might contain folic acid, which is the synthetic and poorly converted form that’s usually in prenatals. I don’t think Mark is probably taking prenatals, so there you go. But if folate is a concern, then chicken livers are the way to go. As far as swine liver, pork liver, I think we’re probably going to do some charcuterie. {laughs} Some “chartuerie”.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Liz Wolfe: With our
Diane Sanfilippo: Facials?
Liz Wolfe: Yeah. With our swine odd bits. Because that’s just kind of the way I prefer to do it. I like pork, but I like cured pork. I’m not big on pork chops. Sometimes we’ll do pork recipes. I have a recipe for kind of an Asian inspired pork meatball on my blog, but that’s just kind of my preference. And I just don’t know. I don’t know if I would do raw pork liver.
Diane Sanfilippo: Hmmm.
Liz Wolfe: Do you have any ideas?
Diane Sanfilippo: I think, I don’t know if I would do it raw. I guess it just depends, like you said, on the source. But the taste of different livers is definitely a thing. Chicken liver is definitely milder. I think the smaller animals are just milder.
Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.
Diane Sanfilippo: I found out when I was making my chicken liver pate, my grandma said she always used to make either pate or chopped chicken liver, or use goose liver. That was a big one they would do, and I guess it just depends on what you can source pretty well. We have organic chicken livers I can get here in the grocery store just at whole foods. I can’t get the pastured ones there, so I’d probably just have to ask my farmer. But I’m fine with eating the organic ones. They’re pretty dark. I just basically only buy them if they look really dark. I don’t buy them if they look too light. I probably won’t be doing them raw; probably still cooked. But I would probably do the same thing if it was 100% pastured, go for it with the raw. In terms of just making it taste better, bacon, yes. The pate recipe that I have uses a ton of butter. Which if you don’t do butter, you can use bacon fat or you can use ghee. That really helps the taste, but it’s still a ton of liver. It’s not like hiding an ounce of liver in meatballs or burgers or something. You’re still eating mostly liver, so that can definitely work pretty well. But that’s pretty much all I have to say about that, I think. I think the liverwurst I was eating is pork liver.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: I do think the taste of it was better than the turkey liver, so that’s just kind of me. I think the pork is what I grew up eating, pork liverwurst was what I grew up eating. So the taste of that is kind of more palatable to me.
Liz Wolfe: You know what’s interesting? I think I’ve had pork liver mousse before at a really cool restaurant in Nashville; maybe it was called silo or something. And I thought it was pretty mild. But here, I googed it, and it seems to be that pork liver is a little bit, it says it has a very strong flavor, so it’s not as popular as other kinds of liver. But I don’t remember that.
Diane Sanfilippo: Maybe that’s like CAFO pork.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah, yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: I don’t know.
Liz Wolfe: I wonder.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. But I definitely tell people who are a little scared of liver to start with chicken liver.
Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.
Diane Sanfilippo: Or even duck liver or goose liver, something like that, because I do think that the poultry liver is easier to eat, a little bit more palatable. I think it has, to me at least, a less metallic taste, so it’s probably lower in iron. It’s a much smaller organ. I think it’s just, I mean obviously a much smaller animal, too. I don’t know, I just think it’s easier to deal with, and then I think you can kind of work your way up.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: And that’s what I have to say about that.
4. How to make bone broth more palatable by itself [23:19]
Liz Wolfe: We appreciate you listening to us, Mark. Tips to make bone broth tastier. Brittany says, “Hi Diane and Liz. I’ve been a listener of your podcast for a little over 2 years.” Now, have we really been doing this for over 2 years?
Diane Sanfilippo: I want to say we’re rounding out 3 soon, if we’re almost at episode 150, right? I mean, there’s 52 weeks in a year, and we almost do every week.
Liz Wolfe: Wow. {singing} Friends forever!
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughing} Oh my god.
Liz Wolfe: Ok. {laughs} “I’ve always heard the rants and raves about the magical bone broth and the gelatinous goodness it is. I’ve tried making this dozens of times using several different recipes, however I cannot seem to choke the stuff down. I always end up throwing it into a soup with some homemade chicken broth to calm down the flavor. Is this magical broth just an acquired taste? Am I doing something wrong? I use grass-fed bones and local veggies. I so badly want to enjoy the benefits of a cup of broth every morning, but I just can’t. I don’t think I’m a picky eater; I’ve managed to actually like the taste of fermented cod liver oil/butter oil cinnamon tingle, but bone broth still smells like something my dog would drag in from the creek.” {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Ok. I have two quick things to say about this. Number one, my broth recipe uses garlic in it. So if you’re just putting bones and salt or bones, salt, and vinegar into your Crockpot, or wherever you're cooking it, it will sort of smell like dead animal or gym socks or something kind of not great.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: I don’t know what that is. I think it’s just the bones; it’s the minerals kind of breaking down collagen and all of that, and so it has this weird, less than meaty chicken or beefy kind of smell. If you use some meat on the bones, it will probably have a little bit richer of a taste or smell, and even more so if you use roasted meat. So if you have meaty bones, you roast them first, and then you cook it, I think that will all contribute to the smell being a little bit better. As well as, again in my recipe, especially for beef broth, I always put a whole bunch of garlic in there, and I think that does make it a lot more palatable. That being said, there’s absolutely no reason why you have to drink a cup of it in the morning. We’ve had this question a few times, I’m like, I don’t understand why people are worried that if they mix vegetables into it, it suddenly becomes less nutritious. There is nothing wrong with doing that. I don’t drink broth, broth by itself. I like it as soup if I’m going to use it. Or I’ll use a little bit of it to, wait for it, deglaze a pan. If I’m cooking some kind of meat that I’ve seared and I want to make a sauce, just a little splash of broth will go in there. It’s kind of a chef’s secret that they don’t use water for almost anything, because they’ll use broth. So, you can read about that in Paleo by Season, I’m sure chef Pete wrote a ton of stuff about that. But anyway, you’re not doing anything wrong. The only thing I would say is if you are going to make soup out of it and you’re going to reheat it, I wouldn’t reheat it in the microwave. I don’t know if there’s any legitimate concern there, I just maybe read a couple of things about it, and so I’m like, well look. I’m not going to nuke my broth, because that may ruin something about the protein structure that I’m trying to get from the collagen or gelatin that’s in the broth. So, there’s nothing wrong with doing it that way. Maybe it’s an acquired taste. If you haven’t added, again, any kind of flavoring like garlic or onion, or if you haven’t added enough salt, it’s just going to be like bone water.
Liz Wolfe: {snorts} {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: There’s nothing palatable about that! But it’s magical when you then make a soup out of it. I’ve got chicken backs cooking in the slow cooker now with water to make some broth, and I’m probably going to roast some sweet potatoes, and then I’ll cook some onions, and put the sweet potatoes and cooked onions and the broth in a blender, and that’s soup. No big deal. Totally fine, you just don’t need to feel badly for not being able to handle it on its own, and you don’t lose any of the benefit by adding vegetables to it. I’m not at all trying to make you feel silly for the question, but I don’t understand why people feel like that might make it worse for you, or not as beneficial. And we’ve gotten the question a few times, so I’m like, there’s no magic here. Just make it into soup. It’s cool. It’s all good.
Liz Wolfe: {laughs} It’s all good.
Diane Sanfilippo: Right? I don’t know.
Liz Wolfe: Totally. {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: Make the soup, people! It’s good for you. I’m not quoting anything there, I’m just being silly.
Liz Wolfe: Ok.
Diane Sanfilippo: So there you go.
Liz Wolfe: So, there you go.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.
5. Tips on electrolyte replacement during the summer heat [27:57]
Liz Wolfe: Yeah. Best way to stay hydrated. This is from Megan. “Hi ladies! You’ve continued to inspire me for 2 years.” Another one! Another one, with the 2 years thing. Wow.
Diane Sanfilippo: They’re still listening!
Liz Wolfe: Time goes really fast. Thanks for being here with us the whole time, guys. “And help me along with this paleo journey, and I thank you for your hard work and compassion. I’m a newbie farmer, Yeah, Liz! And also run a large school garden. I’m new to the south and the incredible humidity here, and also I have always sweat a lot. When it hits 90+ degrees, I may as well douse myself with a hose, because I’m already drenched in sweat. My friend, who is a paramedic, cautioned me to up my electrolytes on these really hot days, because I’m losing so many minerals via profuse sweat. However, I refuse to drink Gatorade, as he suggested, or any sports drink of that kind, and I’m wondering if you have any suggestions for hydration and electrolyte boost. Thanks so much! Keep being awesome.” Well, if we hadn’t just answered a question and told someone they didn’t have to drink a cup of bone broth, I’d totally say drink a cup of bone broth.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Liz Wolfe: One of the really important things to remember, and something that Gatorade actually gets right, at least in theory, is having a little bit of sugar with your salt, or with your minerals. Because that’s going to help your body assimilate and use the salt better and more quickly. So, one thing that I like to do is keep a little bit of salt, and you do this too, Diane, you just always have a little shaker of salt in your purse, pretty much.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Liz Wolfe: So things like kombucha with a pinch of salt, or you can make some lemonade, some sweet-salty lemonade. You don’t need to overwhelm yourself with salt, but just make sure you keep some around. Because it really is important to get a little sugar, a little salt, and your minerals. You can add some lemon juice. I think I’ve seen some homemade electrolyte drinks that involve lemon juice, and a little bit of, I can’t remember now, salt. Just Google homemade electrolyte drink. But I think in those kind of situations, especially as a newbie farmer, I mean I have turned to basically eating pinches of salt and drinking a ton of fairly sweet kombucha that we brew here at home, because it is so hot. It’s like 95 degrees, and I’ll be outside all day long. And you are just drenched. And you know, at one point I was getting a little bit light-headed, and I was like, this is just not working. I’m going to have to slam something a little bit sweet along with my salt, and that’s kind of the way I’ve been handling things. Definitely go with sea salt, if you can get some extra bone broth and things like that in, just during the day, just to stack the cards in your favor, I think that’s a good idea. But, you can kind of make… Gatorade doesn’t have anything all that earth shattering. They just make things in bright neon colors so you get the kids addicted, and then people just keep buying it. But you can pretty much make that type of stuff yourself. But don’t be afraid of a little bit, even simple sugar. I mean, I don’t even care if it’s organic white sugar, these are special circumstances. Something easily digested. Thoughts, Diane?
Diane Sanfilippo: No.
Liz Wolfe: Ok.
Diane Sanfilippo: I like it.
6. What do you feed you're paleo pets? [31:11]
Liz Wolfe: Cool. Feeding paleo pets. What’s paleo kitty eating these days? And Liz, what do you feed your pups? Katie says, “I absolutely love the podcast, and listen to it on the reg. You ladies have enlightened me so much about health and wellness, I’m so grateful. I have a question that might seem silly, but it’s something that I’m becoming more and more concerned about. It’s the ingredients in pet food. Now that I’m an ingredient snob, I decided to take a look at what’s in my cat’s food, and it’s a huge long list of horrible things I can’t pronounce. I can only assume that if I can’t digest all that junk, my cat can’t either, and I’m wondering if you have any recommendations for pet food that’s actually healthy and not loaded down with chemicals and animal byproducts. I’ve even checked into some of the frozen or refrigerated food at pet stores, but a lot of them have ingredients that don’t seem like they’d be part of a cat or dog’s natural diet. Would a raw diet be best? Diane, what do you feed paleo kitty? Again, thank you both for sharing your knowledge with us all.” You start with this one.
Diane Sanfilippo: I think Carly, who was our other question, she’s basically asking kind of the same thing.
Liz Wolfe: Oh, yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: So we can just kind of lump it together. So Carly, this one is for you too, if you’re listening!
Liz Wolfe: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: So, what I did. I had the same exact experience with my last cat, Weezer. I don’t remember how old she was when she passed, I want to say she might have been 12. It wasn’t that she was super young, but she got kind of sick, had fluid building up around her lungs. It was idiopathic, they didn’t know what was causing it. But it was really strange, because it was at the time that I was getting into studying nutrition, and I had the same realization; what am I feeding this cat? And not that what I was feeding the cat maybe caused or didn’t cause whatever was going on with her, but it was that light bulb that, hey wait a minute. I care about this little animal that I adopted, and I probably shouldn’t be feeding it the cheapest food that I can find. Which is what I was doing. Granted, for a long time when I had the cat, I was in college, and I just didn’t have the means or the education or information to figure out something different. I was probably buying the cheapest food at Trader Joe’s. It was probably $5 a bag, and just did not take a lot of responsibility for it in that way. And so, when she passed away and I adopted paleo kitty, Mason, who is sleeping over here right next to me. When I adopted him, I had done some reading. You can check out Pottenger’s Cats is one book you can read. I checked that out, and also looked up BARF diet, and I think it’s, oh shoot I forget what the acronym stands for, something and raw feeding?
Liz Wolfe: Biologically appropriate raw foods?
Diane Sanfilippo: Something like that. BARF diet or you can just look up raw diet for cats or raw diet for dogs, whatever you want to look up. So that’s what I did with Mason, is that when he was just a kitten I got him, I think he was 4 months old, which if you’re looking to start a pet on raw food, it is easier if they’re a kitten or a puppy. Because they haven’t spent years and years eating something else. And I know a lot of people have trouble figuring that out. So I’m just going to address what I would do if they’re a kitten or a puppy, and then what I would do if you have a full grown dog or cat from there. So, for a kitten or a puppy, basically I would research this information. Look up these websites, see if we can get some links to them from the show notes. You need to figure out what percentage of meat, muscle meat, organs, and meaty bones you need to be feeding the animal. I remember for cats I think it was about 80% muscle meat and 20% meaty bones or raw bones and organ meats. So, paleo kitty eats, usually chicken. I’ve fed him beef before, but I kind of had a weird moment, where I was like, I don’t think that’s appropriate. I feel like that animal is just too big. That doesn’t seem species appropriate. He’s definitely eaten his share of beef, just because if I’m lazy or out of food and I have ground hamburger meat, like human food, I will give him some of that. But he actually eats human grade chicken most of the time. A lot of times it’s just boneless, skinless thighs that I cut up. Sometimes I’ll mix up thighs with the bone in and then I’ll cut the meat off of it. And I know my cat very well, so I can leave him with a raw bone, he’s fine with that. I actually can give him a bone from a chicken thigh that I’ve already eaten, and he will only eat the cartilage and leave the middle. It’s not generally safe to give pets cooked bones, because they’re more splintery. So you can give them raw bones where they’re more pliable and soft, especially smaller animals like chicken, and you shouldn’t have a problem with that. But generally giving cooked bones isn’t recommended, so just kind of a heads up there. But I’ve watched what he does with them, and I’m not too worried about it. I also give him raw egg yolks, which is probably his favorite thing next to liver. So he gets liver, he gets chicken gizzards, he gets chicken hearts, just whatever organs I have around, I’ll cut up. I don’t make a giant batch of food where I’m weighing and measuring 80%/20%, I just kind of average it out over time. I don’t know if that’s ok, if it’s going to be the right thing to do over time. It remains to be seen. He’s 5 years old now, and much the same way I don’t go to the doctor myself for the most part unless there’s something really specific I need to talk about, then I don’t take him to the vet. He doesn’t go outside. He went in the very beginning when he had his initial shots, and that’s really it. He’s healthy, he maintains a healthy weight. His coat is awesome. His eyes are clear. Everything about him seems totally fine to me. So, at this point, it’s a bit of an experiment. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But he seems to be doing just fine, and I think I’m doing the best I can by him now.
Diane Sanfilippo: Cats are carnivores, so they don’t need any plants in their diet. In fact, it generally causes them digestive upset. You may notice if cats eat grass outside or, I’ve had chives growing inside before, which the one time I ever grew anything it was chives, and the cat ate it anyway. So, yay for my brown thumbs. But he’ll vomit that up, because they cannot digest it. They don’t have that capability whereas, Liz if you want to talk a little bit more about what you feed your dog. I can talk about what we feed Harper, too, but dogs can eat vegetables. It’s totally fine, not a big deal for them at all. So I don’t know what the balance generally should be, but I know that cats are just carnivores, so there’s no reason for them to eat anything other than meat. There’s a couple of nutrients that you need to be sure their getting. I think taurine is the biggest one. If you’re feeding organ meats, you are getting those in. So that’s pretty much the one main thing with cats. One thing I did for a while with paleo kitty was, I saved egg shells. I would boil those to purify them or kill any bacteria that may have been on them, and then I would grind them up. So I might do that again sometime. I don’t stress over it, or worry about a certain nutrient. I kind of in this place where I’m hoping that by not feeding him the junk, he’s way better off than if he hadn’t been fed this way from the beginning.
What I tend to recommend for people who have a pet that they’ve been feeding pet food to is not to go cold turkey. It’s pretty dangerous for cats if they’re not eating regularly. They can go easily; I only feed him once a day, so they can easily go 24 hours, or probably a couple of days without food, but I know a lot of cats are finicky, and people, you know, you want to hold out and force them eat something but they won’t. They will just starve themselves. So it’s really not safe to try and force a new diet upon your cat. What I’ll generally recommend is starting to introduce something little by little. If you’re not sure how sturdy the pet is; if they’ve had a lot of bacterial infections and things like that, you may not want to introduce raw food. You may start with cooked chicken, or cooked salmon or something like that. Canned salmon, which paleo kitty gets his share of canned wild salmon when I’m lazy or just don’t have any chicken in the house. But that’s something you want to do. This is kind of the way I usually help people wean off of caffeine. Where it’s like, you incorporate a little bit of decaf, you incorporate a little bit of the real food versus the kibble, or whatever it is you’re feeding, and you just consistently change the ratios of what you’re offering so that it becomes more and more of the real food. Now, if you want to do it with raw, you can try that. I think there are a ton of places that offer pet food blends. Some of it is already ground. I just use human grade food. I don’t always get pastured chicken for him; I’m getting whatever step 2 air chilled chicken at Whole Foods, it’s just what’s accessible to me. Sometimes I’ll get it at Trader Joe’s. So, I generally try not to get just the basic cheapest one. I usually try and get something that I’m like, I feel pretty safe giving this to him raw. Again, I know my cat pretty well, and he won’t eat something if it’s off. So every now and then, it’s been where the chicken, I was like, I don’t know if this is still good, and if I put it down and it’s not still good, he won’t eat it. I don’t know if that’s true of every cat, but I think it’s an instinct that most of them have.
So that’s kind of what I think. I do think a raw diet is best. I do think if you can’t feed a raw diet, for whatever reason. If they’re just not accepting it, or they’re not interested. We feed Harper cooked food. That’s our little dog, she’s also lying right here next to me. She has a little bit more of a delicate system, so switching her over to raw at this point was just not really something we were looking to do. But she eats cooked ground up meat, usually beef. Sometimes turkey. Liver mixed in there, other organs mixed in, and then she’ll get carrots or sweet potatoes. That’s pretty much it. We’ll mix bone broth in there too, sometimes, just to kind of get her some extra goodness.
Liz Wolfe: Ok.
Diane Sanfilippo: What’s Cal eating these days?
Liz Wolfe: I have a ton to say about this.
Diane Sanfilippo: And Scout!
Liz Wolfe: And Scout.
Diane Sanfilippo: What about Scout? Yeah.
Liz Wolfe: Scout. Ok.
Diane Sanfilippo: Oh my god, they’re best friends!
Liz Wolfe: They’re besties!
Diane Sanfilippo: Oh, they’re so cute it hurts.
Liz Wolfe: They are really cute. I don’t know if you’ve checked Instagram in the last 20 minutes.
Diane Sanfilippo: I have, while you were talking, I was just Instagraming.
Liz Wolfe: Oh my gosh, that’s crazy, because I do that to.
Diane Sanfilippo: While I was talking, I was Instagraming.
Liz Wolfe: {laughing} You’re a good multi-tasker. You’re better than me. So, I feel like I’ve been through the wringer with all of this dog food stuff. So, we started our big dog on grain free origin. This was years ago when we first got him, and we were like, we love this dog so much, we can’t feed him the normal stuff, it just doesn’t make sense. So we started him on Origin. Which we later found out; it’s grain free, and I think that’s probably the very baseline, the baseline thing we should be doing for our pets is feeding them grain free. Absolutely. Now, the thing about a lot of the grain free kibble, I’ll talk about later, but we started there, and we transitioned him to premade raw food. So the chubs, the sleeves of raw food. We did Bravo, we did the chicken patties from Tropical Traditions. We did Darwin’s Pets, which they autoship to you. The premade raw has mineral supplements in it, too, which I’ll talk about again, later, too if I remember. But none of that stuff is 100% straight out of nature. It’s raw, so maybe it’s a little bit better, but you’re kind of dealing with some added junk with the premade raw. And it’s just harder. I feel like with small animals like cats, it’s like they just don’t need the volume of food, so maybe it’s a little bit easier to feed them what they need. I don’t know what it is. But just with the volume of food we deal with in this house for our dogs, it’s been difficult. Anyway, so grain-free kibble, it has a lot of supplements added to it usually. There’s only one brand of grain-free kibble I know that uses whole foods basically as mineral supplements, and that is logic. So most of the other grain-free kibble, as well as premade raw is going to have mineral supplements in it, and generally that stuff is either shipped in from China, or maybe from Utah. But most of it is from foreign sources. So I wasn’t a huge fan of that, either. The other thing about grain free kibble is that most of it is high-pressure extruded. There’s one brand that’s baked instead of extruded, but it contains soybean oil, so I’m just not into that. And then premade raw is generally pasteurized. I think that’s just a legal thing, although there’s one brand out of Orange County; I think it might be OC Raw that doesn’t do that to their raw foods, so I think that’s good. But here’s the thing. You’re just kind of dealing with different things. And to kind of learn more about this stuff gave me some clues as to what my dog, and I’m talking mostly about Cal, because we just got Scout, and we’re transitioning her right now and seeing what works. But with Cal, we had a hell of a time trying to find a regimen that worked for his body, and these are all the little details that I learned when I was trying to figure this out for him. So, it’s kind of like, well, do you want to go with the grain-free kibble logic brand that uses whole foods like brewer’s yeast and things like that for added nutrients, or do you want to go with the raw when it’s pasteurized, and how much can you afford, and how big is your dog, things like that. So these are all things that I’ve thought about.
The premade raw, which Cal was on for a while, it’s all patties usually. Or just kind of chunks. Which, unfortunately, bypasses their need to chew. Which is why there’s that meaty bones raw food movement that’s really firm about composing the animals diets from just raw, meaty bones. So they’re chewing, they’re ripping the meat from the bones, and things like that. I guess this all depends on how much research you want to do, and how much you’re willing to try to perfect things and go out of your way. And I’ll be honest, and say that I think a lot of these different camps, like the BARF camp and the meaty bones people, there are all these different people talking about what’s right for dogs, but it’s just like with human beings. Sometimes we’re neglecting to talk about the dog’s digestive landscape. And I’ll talk about that a little bit more in a second, but I’ll be really honest, and say that my dog go skin and bones thin, to the point people were making comments about it when he was exclusively raw fed. And he was being fed the patties. And we realized, you know, everyone was saying that’s normal, dogs that eat raw get really skinny, they drop a lot of weight, and whatever. But this was not just a lean strong healthy dog. He was becoming too skinny, to the point people were commenting about it, and that was not ok with us. We realized that we probably needed to bulk up his diet. So we just started feeding him more, which makes sense, right? Very slowly, we would add a bite or two over time, bulking up how much he was eating, and we also added over time some more raw meaty bones, hopefully, our intention was getting him looking healthy and lean again instead of skinny and gaunt. And of course, we thought the raw meaty bones philosophy was correct, we felt like he probably needed to be chewing and tearing and stuff like that a lot more, just for his dental health.
Here’s where things got kind of messed up. He ended up with just a heart breaking, terrifying case of pancreatitis. He was in so much pain, and it was hard for us to realize that the only thing we changed was that we were feeding him more of the same stuff. And we went to this amazing holistic vet, Mariposa Veterinary Clinic, it’s like 2 hours away from us in Lenexa, Kansas. So anybody that’s in the Kansas City Metro, Overland Park area, check out Mariposa, they’re wonderful. And what the holistic vet there told us was that from her perspective, which is a combination of Chinese medicine and conventional veterinary medicine, she said that raw food for dogs is wonderful for some dogs that have the appropriate amount if digestive fire. She said that Cal just doesn’t have that kind of digestive fire to break down his food. She said he needed some cooked food, because his body would extract more nutrition from it. And of course, if you’ve read Eat the Yolks, you’ve probably read a little bit. I talk about how cooking actually does make the nutrients in food more available to the body, and it’s the same with animals, and as much as I do believe that dogs are well built for their natural diet, I guess of raw foods, I can also say with confidence that my big dog, who we rescued as a full grown dog, may have had, who knows, several years of digestive beat downs. I don’t know what he was eating, I don’t know how his body developed as a consequence, because we have no clue about his history. He very well could have been a starving puppy, and his organs could have developed in some compensatory physiology that just makes him less able to digest food. So we started making him his food. We started cooking it in the slow cooker with some ginger, exactly what the vet told us to do. And while the pancreatitis stuff resolved, we didn’t see that come back, he was waking up in the middle of the night and pooping himself because it was overly digested for him, I don’t know what the problem was. But you can imagine, with dogs are family, that I was freaking out and crying myself to sleep for weeks while all of this was happening. We were trying to figure stuff out for him.
So, you just have to do what works for your dog and don’t feel like one philosophy is the only way to go. So what we do now, and what has kept Cal at a healthy size and healthy weight, and his coat is shiny, and he wants to play again and he’s happy again, maybe that’s because Scout is here, I don’t know, but what we do with Cal is we feed him some Logic, which is the kibble with the real, whole foods instead of supplements for whatever the minerals are. We feed him a little bit of that, and we feed him the rest raw patties from Tropical Traditions, the chicken patties, and then we have a little bit of OC Raw and a little bit of Darwin’s still leftover in the freezer. We do digestive enzymes, and a couple of homeopathic things that the vet gave us that seem to really, really help him. We do a lot of knuckle bones and things like that for him to chew on. So we’re transitioning Scout to the same thing, because it’s easier to keep the two dogs on the same regimen. But Cal being like 100 pounds, and Scout being like 30 pounds, it would probably be pretty easy for us to afford and to feed her only the raw. But we just tend to do the same thing together. For a while, I had been told that you shouldn’t mix the kibble and the raw food, but we’ve actually done really well with that. We tried separating it at meals, one meal of kibble, one meal of raw, but he just seems to have adjusted better to having both at the same meal.
I also wanted to go on a little tangent, quickly, and say a long time ago, when we were in New Jersey, Cal, my big dog, tore is cranial cruciate ligament in his leg. And that’s a whole nother conversation about theories that the vet told us about when they’re neutered too early, their hormonal development is crippled, and that affects their ligaments, especially in the bigger dogs, which is why I really, really lobbied to have a delayed spay for Scout, and that didn’t work out, and that’s fine because she’s a rescue, and I understand they don’t want to give away their rescues and have a bunch of puppies that aren’t taken care of, and whatever. But, just something to keep in mind. Anyway, that’s why probably his ligaments had those kind of problems. But when he was recovering from that surgery, I fed him approximately the same stuff, easily digested stuff, grain-free kibble, a little bit of raw, and a lot of sweet potato, fermented cod liver oil, butter, and a bunch of sardines. So I really kind of stacked the nutrients with whole food when he was recovering, and he recovered really, really well. Oh, and broth. A lot of broth. So there you go. I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I haven’t entirely put them together in my head. But you really do have to do what works for you, and what you see working with your pet, because Cal was so sick, and I was doing “everything I was supposed to do.” And it’s not because I didn’t raw meaty bones hard enough, or because I raw meaty boned wrong.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Liz Wolfe: Know what I’m saying?
Diane Sanfilippo: Totally. And I think that’s the thing that we always say about people and their nutrition. It’s not low-carb is the best for everyone and you’re just not doing it right. I do think; I don’t know, I saw this in my private practice, and I think you’ve probably seen it too. I do think there are people who say they are doing something, and they’re not really doing it.
Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.
Diane Sanfilippo: And you’re like, well, still eating gluten 3 times a week and saying you’re gluten free, and having all the symptoms. You’re not really gluten free. It does make a difference when you’re not doing something 100%. But I absolutely feel like, look if you’re slamming you're head up against a wall, you’re doing everything right for however much time and it’s not working.
Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s why I say, too, don’t feel like taking a pet to a raw diet is what anybody has to do. Especially given, you know, it may be species appropriate, but we don’t know what the sources of our meat all are, and maybe somebody is just not sure that what they can find near them that’s affordable and accessible is the best quality to be giving raw. I thing feeding cooked meat, and I think using some of the foods like you mentioned, I think that’s totally a legit option. And I think even considering it in the first place and making this switch, if it’s little by little or however it is, I think you’ll just do the best you can by your pets, anyway.
Liz Wolfe: Very much agreed.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yes.
Liz Wolfe: Alright.
Diane Sanfilippo: I think we’re kind of out of time for this week’s episode. We had a lot to say about all of our topics today, so maybe we’ll wrap it up until next week.
7. Diane’s kitchen tip [54:36]
Liz Wolfe: Before we go, I think Diane you have a kitchen tip for everybody?
Diane Sanfilippo: Totally, we almost forgot to do it. So, today’s tip is just about how to hold a knife. And I think this is one of the reasons why people are a little bit intimidated in the kitchen, and also can be really inefficient or just kind of slower at chopping vegetables and things like that. This is all covered in Practical Paleo, so if you have the book, any of the pages where I show you how to chop something, I actually always start it out with how to hold the knife. It’s just an important thing to learn. So anyway, what you need to do is just imagine you have a chef’s knife, so a pretty large knife. You pinch the base of the knife blade between your thumb and forefinger. So this seems a little counterintuitive and weird to people, but if you picture the knife, you’re actually going to pinch the base of the blade. Then what you’re going to do is extend you’re remaining fingers around the handle, and just wrap them around the handle. So know, your grip is actually with you pinching the blade, and the other three fingers that you have are wrapped around the handle of the knife. And that’s really it. So your thumb and forefinger should be left pinching the blade, and the rest of your hand should be wrapped around. I think the one exception to this rule is sometimes if you’re doing something like filleting a fish, you’ll sometimes see a chef use their first finger on the top of the blade, but generally that’s not an appropriate way to be cutting anything. You’ll find that your hand fatigues more easily, your cutting is a little bit less accurate, and it will just go a lot slower. It’s also not as safe of a place to put your finger, versus pinching the blade. So that’s it. That’s my tip.
Liz Wolfe: Perfect. Let’s wrap it up until next week, when we’ll be back with more questions. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please remember to subscribe to it in iTunes and help us spread the word by leaving a review. As always, you can find Diane at DianeSanfilippo.com, and you can find me at RealFoodLiz.com. Be sure to join our email lists, where we provide exclusive content to our subscribers that we don’t put anywhere else. Not even here in the Balanced Bites podcast. Thanks for listening.
Cheers! Diane & Liz