If you eat natural foods daily, the second you put something bad inside of you. Your body goes abort mission and it happens quick.
Speaker 2:Don't give up If your child doesn't like avocados or bananas. You need to keep trying and trying until they get used to it.
Speaker 1:Walking and running the same distance burns the same amount of calories. So if you run five miles and you walk five miles, you will have burned the exact same amount of calories.
Speaker 2:You cannot have an 11-year-old 10-year-old sit down and say well, this is a carcinogen, this is blah, blah, blah. You'll lose interest. But the way you do it is so playful, Like, come on, let's all cook together and that's what really interests children to healthy eating versus. I was never. I don't know what the kitchen's about. Let's grab Carl's Jr, let's grab In-N-Out.
Speaker 1:Everything you put in your body can affect your body in either a positive way or a negative way.
Speaker 2:If we want to fight obesity and disease and all kinds of like health issues, consuming food, we need to teach children from a young age, because it's those little girls, it's those little boys who grow up to be parents.
Speaker 1:I ran into children that thought their eggs came from the grocery store and didn't know that it came from chickens.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone. Today's guest was Ara Zadar. He's a chef. He honestly is jack of all trades. I'm still blown away with our conversation. He literally just left 10 minutes ago and I'm doing this intro, but I really wanted to kind of talk to you guys about him a little bit because I think this episode is going to be one of the episodes that win the hearts of all mothers and fathers.
Speaker 2:Ara was incredibly knowledgeable. We talked so much about the food industry. We've talked about everything from real meat, fake meat. We've talked about produce and how to properly shop, what to put in our bodies, what not to put in our body. We delved into obesity and what's happening with the United States and why we are known as the fattest country, with rates of obesity going up, mental health going up. We've talked a lot about data research on food and dairy and why we shouldn't consume milk and what really milk is about.
Speaker 2:He was just so insightful and I think after watching this episode, you guys are really going to think twice about what you put in your refrigerator and how you shop. He really did give knowledge about what to buy and some of his knowledge and insights were quite interesting, to the point where you even get to the grocery store and what you need to look for. He talked about baby food, which a lot of moms, I think, will be really appreciative of this, and you know just interesting human being, by the way, you guys. He hunts his own meat. He has chickens, so he you know chickens make eggs and he gives them organic food things that he eats. I mean, it was just such a wild conversation. I'm smiling huge because I learned so much from him and I think you guys are definitely going to be intrigued. And I think you guys are definitely going to be intrigued.
Speaker 2:So stay tuned for this episode with Ara Zadar and be mindful and open to this conversation. I know that it's a heavy topic, so sometimes you can feel very overwhelmed because it is a wealth of knowledge on food and consumption, but be open to it because once you are open, you're definitely going to learn a lot. And if you're interested in these podcasts and you find them helpful, please click on the link and subscribe, because it's immense support and I appreciate you guys watching and commenting and I am so grateful that you are here with me today. So let's go and enjoy this episode with ara zada. Hi ara, how's it going good. How are you awesome? Thank you for having me here. Of course, you are here with me today, so let's go and enjoy this episode with Ara Zada.
Speaker 1:Hi Ara, How's it going?
Speaker 2:Good, how are you?
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thank you for having me here.
Speaker 2:Of course. Thank you for accepting my invitation. It's an honor to be here with you.
Speaker 1:Awesome, an honored honor is mine.
Speaker 2:Thank you, so we got to talking. We've been talking for like a good 15 minutes.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And we're like let's just pause because it's getting serious. Yes, and we're like let's just pause because it's getting serious.
Speaker 1:It's how it goes. That's how it goes.
Speaker 2:We're just going to talk on air, so tell me a little bit about yourself. Like your Armenian background, is it Armenian?
Speaker 1:It's Armenian. So I grew up in a Egyptian, armenian household. My mom was born in Egypt, my grandparents were born in Egypt. My dad was born in Israel or Palestine, depending on the week or the day or the year. So my birth certificate says one thing, my brother says another, because there's like a divide always. Obviously, the border is always moving. My parents were separated so I was with my mom majority of the time and my family spoke Arabic a lot, so they taught us Armenian and they spoke Arabic amongst themselves. But I went to Armenian school. I went to AGBU in Canoga Park from pre-K to sixth grade and then I ventured off into public school, which was something I always wanted to do, but my mom kind of kept me in.
Speaker 2:She held my ground. Was it a different change for you? It?
Speaker 1:was a big transition. I wanted it. All my friends in my neighborhood were going to the schools that were locally, so I wanted to go with them and I did have a lot of friends in my Armenian school, which, oddly enough it's kind of crazy because those friends I might have not spoke with them for years, 15 years, and later in life. We've reconnected and we never missed a beat. So I'm still really really close with my friends from elementary school, closer than I am with friends that I went to high school with.
Speaker 2:It's always like that. I think private schools do a really good job providing the sense of family and my son's in private school too yeah and I love that family concept yeah, it's, it's incredible.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, a lot of our views were the same and I do have very close friends from my public high school that I still they're my brothers, but it's, it's. I mean even friends that I wasn't close with in elementary. I'm now really close with them now and it's, it's kind of wild. It's wild and I enjoy it. Um, you know, we have the armenian ties and it's it's just of wild. It's wild and I enjoy it. You know we have the Armenian ties and it's just all part of this circle, this greater thing.
Speaker 2:Are you a fan of private or public, since you have both experiences?
Speaker 1:So I like both. I think it's important that kids feel safe and secure at some point. I do think public school adds a lot of value to real life. So, you know, when I first went to public school in sixth grade, I mean, I was surrounded by Armenian people and I sat down in class and I was like in sixth grade and I was looking around, there's 60 people in this class and I don't know any of them, and there's Mexican people and Asian people and black people and I was like whoa.
Speaker 1:Culture shock, culture shock because I knew my friends in my neighborhood, but it wasn't anything bad, it was just different and it let me adapt in a way where I didn't know a lot about other cultures, where you're learning how to talk and maneuver and good people and bad people and groups that you want to hang out with and groups that you don't want, which is very real world. Like you know, you put a bunch of people into a pool. You know you have to learn that some people are bad and some people are good, and in private school you may have that, but more or less it's the same 25 people in a class that are, you know, getting old together.
Speaker 2:I agree with you. They are exposed to a more realistic side. Yes, I mean, there's a dark side to that too, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1:I mean, a lot of people can be exposed into bad things and they are.
Speaker 2:You can take a bad turn.
Speaker 1:And I just I don't think it's the public school's fault. I think there's direction to it and guiding children, because they're they're, you know, they're sponges, they're going to absorb what's around them and if you don't show them the right and wrong, you don't make them accountable for certain things, then you can easily take a dive into the wrong pool of friends and it's tough. It's tough, I mean I've seen a lot of crazy things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, literally, I think that your home is the first school.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Your home is your guidance. You know they need to be able to come to you. The connection you have with your children so essential.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Do you believe that public schools are doing a good job nowadays keeping kids safe, with everything that's going on? I mean, I don't want to dive into politics because I know, so yeah, just your opinion.
Speaker 1:I avoid politics absolutely I understand I think the public school system does a lot of things to appeal to a lot of people and certain things I don't agree with certain things. I do agree with um not diving too much into it but like I think it's tough for them because they get attacked in every direction, from everything, and when you have 3000 kids in a school and five people are an uproar they listen, and then a hundred people are an uproar and they listen and they try to mitigate between all of the things and it's it's it's a tough space, especially, you know, schools getting attacked and students coming with guns and things like that. It's you never know what's going to happen. So all of it's scary. Private schools have been attacked too. You know the curriculum obviously is different in private schools.
Speaker 2:Do you think they're behind?
Speaker 1:No, I think private school curriculum is a little bit more forward, because they force the kids to all grow together. And when somebody cannot learn here's the problem with some private schools when kids cannot learn, they kind of just leave them behind.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, where public schools will have systems for them to help them succeed in their own way. So it's I don't know which way is right, which way is wrong. I've tasted both. I loved going to private school for a short amount of time. I love my friends at private school. I love the variety of things that I was exposed to in public school and I do enjoy just having that natural kind of street sense. If you will Not saying you wouldn't get it in private school, I'm just saying like I was able to go right out and understand how the workforce was, how people were, different interactions with people.
Speaker 2:Do you feel like public school is where you kind of decided I'm going to go into cooking? No Culinary school, not at all Not at all.
Speaker 1:So through school I was actually, I wanted to be a professional snowboarder.
Speaker 2:What? And a musician Wow. That's such a different world?
Speaker 1:Yes and no. So I did music for a very long time.
Speaker 2:Music meaning.
Speaker 1:I was a singer pianist a singer yeah, so I was in. I was in a couple bands. We had like cds across the nation. We were signed, all this stuff what was the band called? Uh, the first one was called signal and we did electronic music okay and we did.
Speaker 1:We would play at like all the biggest parties and we were constantly playing shows and we would do like a live set where DJs were spinning their records. We would go with keyboards and do a live set and then it transferred to like rock, electronic music where we're singing. We had a live drummer and guitarist and then we played basically all the clubs in LA.
Speaker 2:And you sang.
Speaker 1:I sang and I did the production with my partner, who's now a big time music producer.
Speaker 2:Did you write songs?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so wrote songs that's beautiful, yeah. And then eventually our drummer moved away, but I couldn't do pro snowboarding because I was always doing music. So I wasn't able to move away to a mountain, which was my dream, and also I kept getting injured snowboarding. So I wasn't able to move away to a mountain, which was my dream, and also I kept getting injured snowboarding.
Speaker 2:So I've had 10 surgeries all from snowboarding Injury, is it?
Speaker 1:that is that risky ACLs, torn ACLs, broken wrist twice, torn shoulder twice.
Speaker 2:Oh, such a risky sport then.
Speaker 1:I was doing big jumps, so I was jumping 65, 70 foot jumps. Every time I would film a video to go like pro. Essentially I'd get injured again and maybe it was a sign I still love snowboarding. It's near and dear to my heart. All my kids have been snowboarding since they were three years old. So we go up to the mountain eight to ten times a year. It's kind of like my sanctuary. It's where I kind of release.
Speaker 2:Where do you go?
Speaker 1:Mammoth, Big Bear. I've been all over. I've been to Canada, I've been pretty much everywhere snowboarding. I love it, but you know, music kind of stopped. We started like a rock band and I was doing that, playing a bunch of bars singing. It was a completely different format and I was working in the family business.
Speaker 1:Your family business, my family business, my grandpa's business, which now my brother runs. It was a pharmaceutical label company and I hated it. It was miserable and all I could think about was this is out of high school. All I could think about was when lunchtime was and when I was getting out and we'd have a show where you know, it would be something about music and working, and it was back and forth. And one day I got sick. The music kind of stopped, bands broke up, we were doing the rock thing, but it was very, a little more small time and I got sick. I got like the flu and I was laying down and I saw a stupid Le Cordon Bleu commercial.
Speaker 1:come on you know, like they play them, you know, midday.
Speaker 2:That's the culinary school, the culinary school yeah, so I saw it.
Speaker 1:I went to work. I said, dede, I'm going to go to culinary school. And he said, over my dead body.
Speaker 2:My God.
Speaker 1:And the reason was we would be, you know, the family business. The reason why I hated it was we'd always go home. They're talking about the business. We'd be at dinner. They'd be talking about the business.
Speaker 2:There's no boundary.
Speaker 1:There's nothing and I would go home and cook and I always loved cooking and I'd cook to decompress and we'd have family dinner and I'd be cooking the family dinners and cooking the family dinners and every Monday the whole family would get together. We were like 15, 20 people there's like cousins and uncles. Every Monday we did it and I'd cook for everybody.
Speaker 2:How old were you when you started cooking?
Speaker 1:I started cooking at around five With mom, my mom so I started cooking and I've said this story a bunch.
Speaker 2:It's basically because I wanted to play with knives. I started cooking, the knife flips, so I wanted to be Peter Pan, and Peter Pan flipped knives.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to flip knives and I went into the kitchen. My mom's like you're not touching a knife unless you're cooking. So I picked up the knife and I started cutting salads and cooking with her and kind of that led me into cooking, but I was always an eater.
Speaker 1:my nickname growing up was col col, which in arabic is eat, eat, so eat eat col means eat in arabic and my as a baby, my grandpa called me col col because, uh, I would just eat everything, uh-huh. So naturally I'd eat and I cooked and this it kind of was of, was a perfect progression for me. And then I went to culinary school a little bit later than everyone else does, like I was in my 20s, 22 I want to say something like that and I loved it. I loved every part of it. It got me in the zone I would come home, practice the things I learned, do more research. It put me in the zone to absorb so much of the cooking world that, like, I thrived in culinary school and it it kind of brought a new light and a new aspect. And I went in thinking I wanted a restaurant and I left thinking there are so many different avenues in the culinary world that I can approach and attack. And I kind of did that against my grandpa's will.
Speaker 1:And he was his big thing, was like you want a family. He goes, cooks, don't make money. That's basically what he said. And I told him like I looked at him and I said, cause my grandma had my support. My mom was like, yeah, let's do it. Um, my brother was. He was a big supporter. He had my brother actually co-signed for me for the school, cause my grandpa wouldn't anyways. Um, he, he. He looked at me and he's like you know, cooks don't make money. And I told him you know, you came to this country when he was in Egypt. He was a doctor. They called him doctor. He owned a pharmacy that he grew up in and became the operator. So they called him doctor, and then he fled to Toronto when Nasser came. So the whole family had to up and leave and I said you went from being doctor to being a janitor in Toronto to help your family.
Speaker 2:How did?
Speaker 1:that sit with his ego and I was terrible, obviously for him.
Speaker 2:But I told him, I said look, you came, and then you moved your family.
Speaker 1:How did that sit with his ego? And I was terrible, obviously for him. But I told him, I said, look, you came and then you moved your family from Toronto to LA with no money, really and nothing. And I said you created something out of nothing. I will prove to you that I will create something out of nothing and within about a year or so, leaving culinary school, I was already making more than I was making at the print shop.
Speaker 1:So I kind of just put myself into the right positions and excelled in everything that I did just because I love it. I love it so much it's fun for me and I was able to, you know, do everything from being on the line to like going and food styling for people. And I was able to work on TV shows. And, uh, I mean, right out of culinary school, I was working for Jamie Oliver, who's, if you don't know, a well-known English chef, and I was an intern for his TV show. And then he, his team, loved me so much I started teaching cooking classes for him on a mobile teaching truck. So I was going around all of LA downtown, a bunch of different places, on this gigantic, conformed big rig that had seven cooking stations in it and I was teaching cooking classes for Jamie Oliver to seven-year-olds all the way to 70-year-olds.
Speaker 2:How was that experience for you?
Speaker 1:It was awesome. I mean, it was just everything kind of fit into what I wanted to do. I was able to, you know, relay the information that I learned to people and kind of teach people healthy cooking and healthy eating, which is something I do stand by very much.
Speaker 2:And why?
Speaker 1:Because everything you put in your body can affect your body in either a positive way or a negative way.
Speaker 2:So you are. What you eat is factual statement 100%.
Speaker 1:You are what you eat, and I mean there's a lot of bad things that you can put into your body without even knowing. And essentially with all the with the industrial revolution, food changed massively, massively, and we kind of we went away from what is a real ingredient to what is a financially beneficial ingredient. So everything changed. How can we grow things in less time? How can we grow things with less things eating them? How can we capitalize on just even the most simple ingredients?
Speaker 2:Is that happening only in our states?
Speaker 1:So it does happen all over the world, but to less effect. If you go to other countries and you see packaged foods, the amount of chemicals and things they put in it is a little bit more in certain areas. But, with all that being said, they don't eat as much packaged and processed foods as we do.
Speaker 2:As we do, yes.
Speaker 1:So it's not okay, but it's just not as bad.
Speaker 1:We're eating massive amounts of processed foods daily, if not every second of the day. Some people I mean these people that I was teaching on this trucks they didn't come from good neighborhoods and the whole idea was that we teach these kids that, yeah, going to Jack in a Box and getting a burger every single day might seem like it's cheaper, but if you prep just a thought process of like three days, your meals will become a quarter of the price. So we were able to make them sandwiches and burgers and things and break down costs for them saying like, look, I know this burger is a dollar, but after all these ingredients, you can buy these seven burgers and it actually costs you less than that per burger and you're eating real food and it's not difficult to make. You can make it in like five, 10 minutes and we made a bunch of things from like fresh pastas to grilled fish. I mean, it was just a matter of showing people. You got to give people the tools and if they don't have them, they have nothing to work with.
Speaker 2:How did you start being mindful about what you put in your body and the facts about food and ingredients? Is that something that you always thought about?
Speaker 1:No facts about food and ingredients. Is that something that you always thought about? No, so in high school I would say junior high to high school I ate anything I wanted. I mean I would eat everything. I was eating fast food with my friends but we were out skateboarding all the time. It didn't really show. When you're skateboarding for three, four hours a day and you go and you eat you know some fast food, it's not bad. Later I mean it's bad, but different. Later it started kind of showing.
Speaker 1:Later, at high school, senior year, showing, I started gaining weight a little bit and I always said I always said at what point does somebody draw the line? And it was something I always said to my friends and whatever Like at what point does somebody draw the line? And it was something I always said to my friends and whatever Like at what point does a 300-pound person because at some point they weren't, they didn't start 300 pounds At what point does that person say I don't care anymore, I'm just going to do it? And for me that number was 200 pounds.
Speaker 2:I don't care, I'm just going to do it, or like I just give up, I just give up. Yeah, I don't care. I don't care, I don't want to. I don't want to watch.
Speaker 1:It feels good, it's fine, and I'm already 200 pounds. What's 250? What's 250? What's 300? It doesn't matter, and they'll. They'll always be conscious about you know, wanting to lose weight but not take the effort. And for me it was out of high school I was. I said that number was 200 and I was always like 180, 175. I'm a six one, so it's not like crazy, but 200 hit. I remember, stepping on the scale was 201. And I made a bet with my mom's uh, my mom's boyfriend and there was always diet food in the house and I was like this is just like crap, right.
Speaker 2:Diet food like salads and stuff.
Speaker 1:My mom was it's the 90s, right, and it's like. It's like low fat cheeses and low fat this and low fat this and as a kid you're like I don't want this crap and like everyone's on some sort of new fad diet. So I made a bet with him, my mom's boyfriend. I said I bet you I can get to 175 in three weeks. I'll lose 25 pounds.
Speaker 1:In three weeks, In three weeks, and he's like you're on. So at that point I took a deep dive into nutrition and started understanding what I was eating and started understanding how to change it. The first thing I completely cut out was sodas. I stopped drinking soda.
Speaker 2:Do you drink soda now?
Speaker 1:No Good, I don't, and it's. I drink a lot of sparkling water.
Speaker 2:Me too.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I drink a lot of sparkling water. I stopped eating cold cuts and deli meats. I stopped eating mayonnaise.
Speaker 2:Mayonnaise.
Speaker 1:Mayonnaise was a huge one. Mayonnaise was a massive one and that was one thing that I stopped eating. Then I grew a disgust for and then I started hating it and then I started, I kind of grew this allergy almost to mayonnaise. Yeah, it was like a mental allergy, and the reason why, um, is because let's say, you have a sandwich and then you put mayonnaise on it, you're adding about 150 calories, depending on how much you put on. So it bothered me, right. And then I said like let's just cut this out. And I started cutting it half and half with yogurt because I liked it at the time, and then eventually I cut it out and then it started grossing me out and eventually it turned into this thing, like if I ate it I would like toss it.
Speaker 1:Like I had a serious problem with it, but in culinary school I was able to make it and just by doing those simple things at the time, I was able to cut down to 178 pounds in three weeks just being mindful and educated on just being mindful and educated on what we were eating. What?
Speaker 2:we were eating. So yes, please, yeah.
Speaker 1:no, it was that just told me that most people that are trying to eat healthy and do something healthy are essentially not doing it with the right steps. And everyone reverts back. You know what's in your food. It's pretty simple to cut back.
Speaker 2:Just a question. Maybe this is off topic from what you're used to, but do you feel that obesity is related to mental health?
Speaker 1:In a way I'd say yes, and obviously there's specific cases with everybody and I'm not saying that everyone is a whole and people cannot change. Obviously people have health issues. That it makes it more difficult. But I feel like a lot of people make a lot of excuses for this and they'll say, like I have this and this and this and that's why I'm gaining so much weight, my take on it and I could be wrong and I probably get a lot of crap for this. But like, if all people are made the same right and people all have mental health issues and intestinal issues and all this stuff, how come there is, how come are there children, like in African countries, that are starving and they just don't have? They're not obese, they're not gigantic. We're all cut from the same cord, essentially right.
Speaker 1:So, they have mental health issues we do. They have thyroid issues we do they have all these things, but they're not obese.
Speaker 1:They're not obese because there's a lack of food and, at the end of the day, the unfortunate part is it's calories in versus calories out, and it's as basic as that. And what happens with people is they don't realize what they're putting in their body. So it's like I didn't have a meal today, but they went by the fridge six times and they pick something and they're like oh well, that doesn't count, or they don't think about it.
Speaker 2:I also feel like you. You know every time you drive somewhere there's like 15 to 20 different food, like fast food stops yes that just triggers something in your head too yes I mean, like you look at every country and we are. I was the data on this. I read it months ago that we are the fattest country.
Speaker 1:We are.
Speaker 2:It's horrifying, so we don't walk, no the foods we eat.
Speaker 1:It's linked to heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, all of these things Heart attacks left and right, arthritis issues. Everything that we do, everything that we eat and the lack of exercise that we do.
Speaker 2:Lack of exercise?
Speaker 1:yes, the movement is. It's insane. And if you look at the percentage of people now, especially in LA, we drive everywhere. If you go up to like San Francisco or New York, if you, most people don't have cars because everyone just cabs or walks but like you'll be like, hey, let's go two blocks down that way and grab something. We're here at the Target parking lot and the grocery store is across, like right there, like 300 yards, and you'll get in your car, you'll pull out and you'll go to that spot park there Ice cream shop could be in the same shopping center and then you get in your car, drive to the ice cream shop and everybody does this and I mean I fall victim to it too.
Speaker 1:You're just used to it. But if I was in New York we'll be like oh it's 16 blocks up the road, let's just go, and we'll go to a bodega there and then like, pick up something and come back. And it's kind of crazy, here we're just programmed to get into our car instead of walking places, those little walks. Here's a fun fact walking and running the same distance burns the same amount of calories. So if you run five miles and you walk five miles, you will have burned the exact same amount of calories.
Speaker 2:So then, what is it? Why are we so unmotivated to eat healthy, to be mindful, to exercise? What do you think from your perspective as somebody who's pretty well seasoned in this field?
Speaker 1:I think people, the access to food and what we can have and the need to satisfy ourselves is so strong that people here's the thing One of my buddies a long time ago did the what was the fast called the lemonade diet. It was the master cleanse. He did the master cleanse and that's essentially where you drink lemon water with cayenne and grade B maple syrup and it feeds you. He asked me to do it. I didn't want to do it Supposedly. Supposedly so.
Speaker 2:I didn't do it, and I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't know the how it really works. I do, I read a lot about it and I don't advocate for it. I chose not to do it. But the one thing he did tell me is he had so much more time on his hands when he wasn't thinking about food.
Speaker 2:Snacks.
Speaker 1:Anything. So he wasn't having meals, like he wasn't going to dinner, he wasn't thinking about going to lunch, he wasn't thinking about breakfast, and I think a lot of the times people are eating out of boredom.
Speaker 2:This is true Overeating, out of boredom. We're snacking constantly, like, if you think about this, every time a child says mom, I want a snack, mom, I want a snack. And snack is not carrots with hummus, it's usually chips and candy.
Speaker 1:Exactly, snacks comes in a package that you have to open up, and I think a lot of it is. You're at work, you get bored, you're looking forward to what's at lunch. You come home, you sit down, you don't have much else to do or you're not choosing to do anything. Going to the gym seems like a daunting task, but they say what's the hardest part about going to the gym is actually getting up.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Taking that first actual step. It's not getting there, because once you get there, it's fine. It's actually putting on your gym clothes and walking out the door, and once you do that you're like, hey, I'm already here, I can get it done. It's not. You're never like in a workout, like well, I would rather have a pizza and sit in front of the TV right now.
Speaker 2:I think cooking is the same Cooking is-. It takes a lot of motivation to be To start.
Speaker 1:Yes, I can see how that would be for certain people. I don't have that, no.
Speaker 2:Because it's in your blood, like it's a DNA for you, but for moms, for dads you know, like just coming home from work and thinking about I mean, look Aretha, I think it was Aretha Franklin, they were doing an interview on her a while ago and they're like what is the most hardest task for you? And she just took a pause and she's like, oh, the hardest thing for me in the world is trying to figure out what I'm going to cook.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 2:I could see that so it's hard, Like I could say for myself too. I love to cook and I want to cook healthy meals for my children and my husband, but how do you find the motivation to cook and then clean the dishes afterwards? I think that's where.
Speaker 1:So I do get a lot of help with cleaning for my wife.
Speaker 2:You cook, she cleans.
Speaker 1:Kind of we clean together, I mean we work it together.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful, the teamwork.
Speaker 1:We do teamwork. She cooks as well, but I cook more often than not and it's not like I just dump everything into the sink and just leave. You know we're working at it and is it messy?
Speaker 2:Does it get messy? Because yours is fancy.
Speaker 1:She might think it gets messy. I don't think it gets messy, I do. I am a little bit all over the place and I move quickly because everything for me is a time crunch. So I'm working. I don't work at like grandma's cooking pace, and I think that's a lot of that reason is not a knock on grandma's cooking.
Speaker 1:It's just that grandma's had all this time two, three, four hours of sitting at home to cook and move slowly and make these dishes that we grew up with, and it made us think that these dishes take a lot of time. So for me, one of the big things was when I started cooking Armenian and Middle Eastern food and doing these fun videos. I decided to put this long recipe that I always thought was three, four hours, which one particularly.
Speaker 1:All of them, all of them. Like I would say, the longest recipe that it takes to do is maybe like wrapping dolma or manta, but making stuffed dolma like bell peppers and stuff like that yeah, summer, dolma Summer dolma is fast and easy. A lot of the dishes that we grew up thinking take hours Harissa Harissa is one I did with Araxia on the day of LA, she told me. And she was like I don't understand. This was supposed to cook for like four, five, six hours.
Speaker 2:How did you do it?
Speaker 1:Because it doesn't take that long.
Speaker 2:How long did it take?
Speaker 1:You can do the whole thing in about an hour.
Speaker 2:How I just stand there and stir it.
Speaker 1:So it's Like 45 minutes. There is the cooking procedure, then there's the stirring procedure, but that stirring doesn't necessarily have to happen until the very end, and it's the last couple minutes where you're just whipping it up. So once the grains are cooked, you beat it and it happens. And the whole, my whole process was I know how things work in a kitchen, I know the chefy techniques, I know processes of cooking grains and things like that. So it doesn't make sense for these things to take three, four, five hours.
Speaker 2:But that's why we're not cooking.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. I was able to make these dishes and I do them in 30 seconds because there's edits, but nothing I cook really takes more than an hour tops. So it's these dishes that people were like, and that's like pushing Manta or rolling.
Speaker 1:Dolma like pushing manta or rolling dolma, but other than that, those most dishes you can do quickly and people get scared, they're intimidated. Uh, I try to show people that you can do a lot of simple things very quickly. One pan dishes I made a dish with my uh two girls the other day. One pan chicken and rice and we did it together. Somebody at my gym actually asked she's like I love your stuff, my son loves it, but I would love for you to make something that he can make, so something simple. So I was like this is perfect. I'll go home and make chicken and rice with my daughters and in the video literally I have them rise up from the back of the counter Like it's so easy A kid can do it.
Speaker 1:And we made what looks like a very detailed and intricate dish. It was in one pan. It had the vermicelli in the rice. Uh, we seared off chicken thighs and put it all in the oven and we all ate, and it was. It really didn't take longer. I mean in the oven. The downtime took 25 minutes, but besides that, the whole dish was done in less than an hour. Wow, in one pan with one pan cleanup.
Speaker 2:So that's beautiful. So I wonder, like how can we help the men and women in the community be motivated to do this more often? I mean, you make it look so beautifully easy. I mean I made the garlic sauce that you made, by the way, yeah, the tomb. It was so easy. To be honest, it wasn't hard at all, it's super easy. It's super easy and I was like we're buying this from Zanku Chicken and stuff and we don't even know what they're putting in it.
Speaker 1:Not just.
Speaker 2:Zanku Chicken but all the other I can buy California garlic peel it because it's not….
Speaker 1:You know where it's coming from.
Speaker 2:I know where it's coming from and. I do my research on food.
Speaker 1:I know that.
Speaker 2:California garlic is healthier.
Speaker 1:It's one of the best. It's some of the best.
Speaker 2:So I made it and I was like this is it?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Aura's coming on the show. That's it, I love it. That's it, I mean. A lot of things are like that. It's once you know how to do it and somebody shows you an easy way.
Speaker 2:I feel like… you do a really good job doing that.
Speaker 1:I work at it. I work at simplifying things so that everyone can do it and you know there are a lot of recipes that I learn from people and a lot of you know, armenian moms and things like that will tell me a lot of different detailed parts of recipes and I try to figure out a way to simplify it to where maybe this detail didn't matter that much and maybe there's a different technique we can do and maybe half the people aren't going to know if it's missing or not and I might get. I get in trouble sometimes. I get a lot of moms and things like that. Trouble. Trouble is in, like in the comment section. People are like that's not how you do it.
Speaker 2:That's not this. Oh, the farines. Exactly as we call them the Karens.
Speaker 1:A lot of people. I mean, I did a ponchik the video and I made a custard and in the custard I didn't put egg. And the reason why I didn't put egg in the custard is because most people are going to break it.
Speaker 2:And so I did it a version where it was just… what do you mean by most?
Speaker 1:people are going to break it. So if you…. The real way to make a custard is you slow cook. You cook, you heat up milk or cream and then you take like a room temperature egg and you whisk it enough with some sugar and then you temper the cream into the egg. So the milk or the cream cannot be too hot. Then you got to slowly add it into the egg while you're whisking it, okay, and then you put it all back in the pot and then you bring it back up to temperature.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay Now in that process.
Speaker 1:If you do any of it wrong, the eggs will cook and you'll have scrambled eggs inside of your custard. So instead of that whole headache and process and yes, a custard with eggs is way better, I get it but instead of doing that, I just put cream and sugar with a little bit of vanilla and cornstarch and brought it up to temperature. And if you make it boil or you do whatever, it's going to be fine. And it thickened up into a custard and stuffed it into an easy ponchik. And guess what? If I did it with egg, most people would be scared to do it. And I did it this way.
Speaker 2:Most people are going to try it. Wow, I understand why Because it's simple you try to make it simple for people not to discourage them.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I don't want to discourage me and I know we're talking about health food and I'm talking about a ponchik, but the idea is Don't I'm hungry for a ponchik. A ponchik is an Armenian donut. For those who don't know, yeah, it is, it is.
Speaker 1:The point is, I do things to simplify them, to get people into the kitchen, and I try to make it so it's not scary. And I do easy ways and hacks and things that you can essentially shorten your bandwidth so that we don't lose our customary traditions and our heritage recipes and the recipes that are. Maybe it's not our heritage, but it's recipes our grandparents made for us, that they adopted from other places. So that we don't lose these things and they're just gone with the wayside, why not do a version of it, an adaptation of it, so that you can still enjoy it? You can still enjoy grandma's cooking without being scared to get in the kitchen.
Speaker 2:Or too overwhelmed, too overwhelmed.
Speaker 1:Yes, it should be easy. Cooking should be fun. Cooking should be easy. It comes off in the food, it's delicious and you can sit. There's nothing like sitting around a table with your family eating food that you prepared.
Speaker 2:Do your. When your kids come home from school, do they go? Oh, this smells so good. Dad, mom, what did you pick? They definitely do that. How does that feel? You know, it's always a good sign.
Speaker 1:I know what my kids like to eat and I know what they're going to say Are they picky eaters? They are selective eaters and I don't want to say picky, because my kids eat sushi. Everything from sushi, they eat. I mean they've eaten foie gras, they've eaten. They eat like A5 Wagyu.
Speaker 2:From you preparing.
Speaker 1:Yes, they eat. One of my daughters loves caviar and loves the salmon caviar. I mean, they eat things that 90% of kids won't eat but then they'll pick a random thing that they just don't want to eat, like bell pepper, dolma, because they can't eat cooked bell pepper for some reason, which makes absolutely no sense.
Speaker 1:But they can have caviar, but yeah, they can eat caviar, but bell pepper doma is like off the table, so like they'll. That's why I say they're selective eaters. We're working at getting them to. Just, I've always said you can try anything. If you don't like it, you don't have to eat it, but you have to taste it. And it takes somebody 10 times of tasting something before they actually know they like it.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:Your taste buds constantly evolve, but also-.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting-.
Speaker 1:Here's a fun one Eggplant. A lot of people don't like it. I love it.
Speaker 2:Me too.
Speaker 1:Love eggplant. So delicious A lot of people hate it. So if I had an eggplant recipe and you had an eggplant recipe and five other people in this room, we all gave them the same eggplant recipe. Do you think each one would taste the same?
Speaker 2:Absolutely not. It would absolutely not Taste buds are different for everyone, right.
Speaker 1:Your seasoning your thing, even though the recipe's identical, how you cook it, how long you cook it, did you overcook it? Did you season it at the right time? All of these things are variables. Now, tasting eggplant for the first time, saying I hate eggplant now forever. How can you say that when you had eggplant from one person that cooked it From one crop of eggplants, by the way? Now, if you taste it 10 different times from 10 different people and 10 different recipes, you can now make a pretty good judgment on like, hey, I probably don't like eggplant, but I've had a lot of people that said hard, no, I do not like this.
Speaker 2:And then I make it for them and they're like well, I do not like it unless you make it for me Wow, and I think this is why most pediatricians tell parents that don't give up If your child doesn't like avocados or bananas. You need to keep trying and trying until they get used to it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I like that. Do you think that clean eating is important? I mean, there's this thing right now of organic and non-organic.
Speaker 1:So I think if you can eat organic, you should. I know that it's more expensive and I don't tell everybody to force them into it. Look, if you can't eat organic produce and vegetables, don't say I'm going to get Cheetos. Like, eat the non-organic ones, right, it's okay. It's better to have a non-organic something than to not eat it at all.
Speaker 2:Why do you think organic is important?
Speaker 1:I think it's important because the rest of the world is cooking and making things organically. It's been organic for a long time. The problem is that we've got away from it. It's like saying, hey, now we're all gonna eat real meat again.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. Most fast food places right now are producing I don't know what it is. It's not even now.
Speaker 1:Now with 100 beef was a big slogan we heard a couple years ago what was it before? I know what it was. I I don't like to tell people what it was, but can you please tell us? So there was a thing called pink slime. That, um, pink slime, yeah pink slime was it's mortifying. Actually, it's what they used to fluff ground beef.
Speaker 1:I've seen that the way they did it was they would take the carcass of the beef and they'd spin it and whatever kind of like whipped off of it onto the walls of the meat processing plant they'd scrape off. Now they had to kind of cure that or make it edible because it was tainted. So what they do is they would add ammonia to it. And the way they found out how much ammonia to add was they just tested it on people. Tested it on people, yeah. So they would give somebody this meat and they go oh, did you get sick? No, they didn't get sick. Okay, it's good. Did you get sick? No, you didn't get sick. Oh, you got sick. Okay, we'll tone it down a little bit. Can you taste it? Okay, we'll tone it down a little bit. And then they figured out what this perfect ratio of pink slime was.
Speaker 2:And then they would take that pink slime and they would put it into the ground beef it for an eighth of the price.
Speaker 1:More recently they've stopped with the pink slime. A lot of places, wow. But I am. I can say I'm never speechless.
Speaker 2:It's, it's, it's pretty gnarly, um, and people actually put these in their bodies. I mean, I'm sure things like this cause cancer and all kinds of diseases.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. We don't know what half the stuff is that we're eating and what's crazy is like the FDA and things like that have regulations on stuff.
Speaker 2:But how truthful is the FDA? A lot of it changes.
Speaker 1:So it's ever-growing. Science is ever-growing. So let's say we can't use this chemical because it's going to cause cancer and it's bad. But guess what, there's this other chemical that we can put in, and we can put it and it'll be fine. But we don't have enough research and detail on that other chemical until 10 years down the line when they're like, hey, maybe this one's bad too. So it just keeps happening. So when I say eating organic is better, it's food and it's natural source, even the soils that we buy have things in them. Yes, miracle-gro and all this stuff. It's fine, it's the better alternative.
Speaker 2:Ara. When I heard how garlic was actually produced that word mortified I jumped immediately to California garlic. I'm like I'm never buying regular garlic, ever in my lifetime again.
Speaker 1:You know it's….
Speaker 2:It's disgusting.
Speaker 1:Finding the food processes of things. If you dive deeply enough into anything, you're going to find some pretty horrible truths.
Speaker 2:Yes, and there's a documentary on that on Netflix.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think it was… Not banned, I think it was.
Speaker 1:Banned. I haven't seen that one Years ago.
Speaker 2:it was this man and he was on a hunt to find, you know, like, how corrupt our food is, and he just talked about it. He had a documentary, but it's just nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1:So I mean, it's honestly a lot of food, food processes can be very difficult to kind of like pinpoint and I mean there was, there are some pretty crazy stuff. When I was working with Jamie Oliver, they were they. I was exposed to the fact that they used to put like beaver tail inside cookie dough ice cream Because apparently beaver tail kind of tastes like vanilla or cookie dough, so they used to use that instead of actually putting the real stuff in it. Yeah, it's beaver tail.
Speaker 2:How did you I mean, what's the craziest thing that you were exposed to that changed your eating habits?
Speaker 1:You're like your eating habits. You're like um so a lot of dairy processes kind of scared me for a long time um, I don't drink a lot of milk, uh at all uh, we don't either I. I have a whole thing with milk what is it tell us? Educate us so milk itself, and I get a lot of gripe for this from like Middle Easterns and Armenians and Russians.
Speaker 2:But milk is not the same as it is in the Middle East, so it's not the same. No, exactly. Let's just put that out there first.
Speaker 1:That's the point. That's the difference. So a lot of like just milk and I eat cheese. I love cheese. Okay, I love my karoon cheese. I'm a Karun ambassador, so Karun's cheese is awesome Just saying that they make their cheese differently.
Speaker 2:Karun, yes, oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:So Karun cheese, the string cheese, Armenian string cheese, oh my God.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right, with a cow on the label.
Speaker 1:Yes, I love my Karun cheese. A lot of the milk and dairy companies out there. When they're making milk, there's the pasteurization process, how, when they're making milk, there's the pasteurization process, how they basically nuke it and then they separate the milk and they reconstitute it and all of these different heavy processes. Like the dairy cows that come out are like they're pumping like 20 gallons of milk where a regular dairy cow should be pumping around seven gallons of milk a day. There's like a bunch of different hormones and things like that. So there's bad milk out there and those those milks are not necessarily good for you.
Speaker 1:And I tell people like, if you're drinking a jug of milk, um, drink it because you like it, don't drink it because you think you're doing your body good yes, well, that's the information that was put out there for a long time, it's all it's the same.
Speaker 1:it happened with eggs for years. For years they were like eggs, eggs are bad, eggs are bad. And then they were like oh, eggs are good, Eggs are good. And there's all these different, like industrial farmers and things like that, that put money into stuff like this and they essentially, you know, dictate what the population is going to eat.
Speaker 2:All right. What? What brands of like milk and eggs do you suggest people to purchase? I mean, you're in this, you're well seasoned, I can tell like what's good. Like, especially for moms that are making foods at home instead of buying baby food.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean eggs. I love. There's a called Good Eggs and I'm not sponsored by them. Good Eggs, they actually do make good eggs.
Speaker 2:Good Eggs, yeah. Where do they sell these?
Speaker 1:They sell them at most.
Speaker 2:Like Whole Foods and things like that. I believe they have them.
Speaker 1:I have my own chickens.
Speaker 2:You have chickens, I do have chickens. They have eggs, of course they like eggs.
Speaker 1:You have chickens. I do have chickens. They have eggs. Of course they like eggs, yes.
Speaker 2:I haven't bought eggs in around a year and a half since I got them, and I'm sure you feed them all.
Speaker 1:I feed them everything that we eat. So they eat organic matter, the things that we eat. I don't eat all organic. I try to.
Speaker 2:What don't you eat? That's not organic.
Speaker 1:A lot of the fruits, so when I go buy fruits and vegetables, if I do find organic ones, I will eat them. Um, if there are, there's something that I have to get in a pinch, it's, it's, it's okay.
Speaker 2:I try to shop at like decent grocery stores as well it gets so expensive, all right it does, and I think that's the daunting task.
Speaker 1:Yes, like some. I mean I've seen broccoli that's more expensive than meat. You you know what I mean. And it's unfortunate because we're paying a higher price to do something that should be more simple. In the old country people ate fruits and vegetables because meat was expensive. Yes, and now meat is less expensive than fruits and vegetables. It's crazy and it's all just how things work. It's pretty insane to me. I mean milk-wise. I know my kids drink any of the organic milks are good. I like milks that have cream on the top. So there's a Strauss brand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the red one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it comes in a glass jar. That's the one I buy for the kids.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's really, my husband loves that.
Speaker 1:The little cream on the top. He puts it on bread. Yeah, it's like echte kind of.
Speaker 2:That's really good. And then there's this other brand I keep forgetting it's got like, it's like a green. There's the butter. They make butter too.
Speaker 1:Oh, like the Irish butter, the ones that they make. I think I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:It's like a cow, Obviously it's a milk carton, but then they make the sour cream of that. That's a really clean brand too. I forget the name. I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:But honestly, if you look at the label, look at like if it says organic, if you look for something that looks like it's good for you, and then read the labels, the labels.
Speaker 2:Ingredients right, they matter.
Speaker 1:Ingredients, the labels. They're key. It really is. It's wild how much stuff is in our food and when you eat something that's like packed with sugar to like mask certain things. It's wild yes people will be like oh, this is fat free, but the fat free one has more sugar in it than the full fat one you know what's daunting to me that they put uh, I think it's called carrageenan yeah, is that what yeah?
Speaker 2:they put carrageenan in simetan yeah, and armenian markets sell it and I'm like this is horrifying and we well, not me, but people actually buy that and give it to their children for breakfast it's, it's number one cancer causing ingredients. I mean, how do you it's, it's pretty wild.
Speaker 1:I mean, a lot of stuff gets approved because they say it's good for you, or in small doses it is, and it really depends. Now, eating something that's bad for you isn't the end of the world, but eating it daily is the bad thing. I mean, you're allowed to venture out. You're allowed to have things that are bad for you. If 80% of the food you put in your body is good and 20% is bad, that's a really good ratio. Food you put in your body is good and 20% is bad, that's a really good ratio.
Speaker 1:And living in LA, living in the States, it's pretty tough to eat 80% good or basic. You can be 100% and that's wonderful. But most people giving them that 100%, what they do is they're 100% for a while and then, as soon as they don't feel like it, they dump off and they're 0%. Is there 100% for a while and then, as soon as they don't feel like it, they dump off and there's 0% Now and it just doesn't work. You need to be able to sustain something. Fad diets don't work because you do a fad diet and you're like I'm dieting, I'm dieting, I'm dieting, and then, oh, I broke my diet today. I had like chili cheese fries. Oh, I'm gonna pick got to start on Monday. Monday is like the day everybody starts their diet.
Speaker 2:It's always like that.
Speaker 1:Why not just do it anytime? And if you mess up, that's fine too. It's truly fine. I designed a diet back in the day.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:I did. My friends and I designed a diet and I had given it to a ton of people and a bunch of people lost weight doing it. What?
Speaker 2:diet was it.
Speaker 1:So it's called. We called it the boom diet and the reason why we called it is when we made something that was boom, we would go boom and it was just like and the whole premise I have a whole sheet that's written up on it and the whole premise of the diet was shop on the outsides of the grocery store. If it and the whole premise of the diet was shop on the outsides of the grocery store.
Speaker 1:If you don't recognize the name in the ingredients, list you cannot eat it and it has a eat all the time, few and far between and never section. And within that section it pretty much covers and it's a one-page thing, it covers almost all foods. And the reason why we did the diet and it was based off of paleo so we call it maybe paleo-esque because there are built-in cheats and the idea behind the diet was that, since there are built-in cheats, if you follow the cheats and you're in the few and far between guideline, you don't have to say, oh you know, I messed up my diet, we'll start again Monday. So it had built-in sections and there was some parts that were you cannot eat and you shouldn't eat. But within those frames there's so much you can eat and there was no limitation, so you can eat as much as you want of it.
Speaker 1:And everybody that did it within the first three, four days and everybody that did it within the first three, four days, the first three days were always hard, but after that they started sleeping better, they started going to the bathroom better, they started shedding pounds. I gave it to my buddy that was part of this gym and he gave it to four of his friends and they wanted to personally message me. They sent me. This is before social media was crazy. They sent me a text like you have no idea, I've lost 60 pounds because of this.
Speaker 1:I mean it just. Essentially. All I did was show people stop buying from the center of the grocery store. Buy from the borders of the grocery store.
Speaker 2:Which are the Fresh fruits, fresh meats, veggies.
Speaker 1:Your dairy is all on the outside. If you want to eat dairy, you want to eat. All of the stuff that you should probably be eating is on the outside and all the stuff you probably shouldn't be eating is inside, because the stuff that's inside doesn't need to be refrigerated. Be aware of any sort of dairy looking product that has a three year shelf stable.
Speaker 2:Like those milks they have on the inside insane.
Speaker 1:It's insane. I mean cheeses, velveta cheese. Yes, it'll survive a apocalypse. Is that really cheese? It's not, it's. It's actually petroleum, it's actually gasoline it's.
Speaker 2:This is a short you, just you just wow, I got goosebumps it's but there's people who love it. You know what look?
Speaker 1:they love it look my kid, my, my wife grew up on the velveta mac and cheese and my she's, my kids have had it. They love it. I have had it too. I'm not gonna say have had it too. I'm not going to say I haven't.
Speaker 2:We all have, everyone has. But that's probably before you knew.
Speaker 1:But it's knowing. Part of it is knowing and knowing something and doing it, we're all going to mess up when we're given that the carrot is dangling in front of us and people are going to mess up. You can't expect to be surrounded by all of this stuff and not maybe try it or taste it or see right, you can choose not to have it anymore, but you try it and knowledge, knowing it, is half the battle.
Speaker 2:How can we motivate as people who are knowledgeable? Okay, what is our responsibility? To spread our knowledge exactly how can we help people who are buying all these processed food and they're not aware? Like I know a lot of moms they buy those gerber foods yeah, and it's tough.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of stuff in them. Excuse me, there is a lot of stuff in them. Um, you just gasped for an hour there is scary, that's so scary. It's so easy to make your own baby food.
Speaker 2:It's so easy I mean, I make my baby food.
Speaker 1:It takes like 10 minutes it literally is putting some vegetables into a pot and mashing it up, put a little bit of butter salt turmeric. It's so easy. I mean, there is really isn't. And you know what? It's an eighth of the price you can buy a bag of carrots and blend them up in a pot with some water and you will have so many jars of baby carrot food. It's crazy.
Speaker 2:You know what's funny? I, you know, we have a poodle and he was having some stomach issues and the doctor is you know, we took him to the doctor. The doctor is like, oh you know, just don't give him dog food anymore, give him Gerber.
Speaker 1:Gerber oh perfect, that's wonderful, that's wonderful.
Speaker 2:Baby food to a dog.
Speaker 1:Even people. Now they're feeding their, they're realizing that dog food isn't good for their dogs anymore. That's right, and there's like healthy dog food you can buy. Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2:Gerber's, the healthier version, apparently. I don't know. I don't know how I can ever look at that food the same way, ever again. But you know, again, it's about knowledge, people or Earth's best. I mean it's the same thing, you guys.
Speaker 1:You know what it is is. The hard truth is that people don't want to know. That's the hard truth.
Speaker 2:Yes, I've had that People don't want to know.
Speaker 1:I mean I tell people all the time and they'll go. Just don't tell me, I just don't want to know, that's where I get the same thing.
Speaker 2:They'll say literally, they'll say the words You're too organic, you're the organic tree, get away, I just don't want to know Like you're bothering me and it's like I don't want to change.
Speaker 1:I'm not trying to force anybody to change anything. I'm trying to give you the tools. You do what you want with the. It's my job to raise my kids and I give my kids a vast wealth of knowledge, and even they don't listen. I mean, they're kids. Look, at the end of the day, you can tell your kid whatever they want and then, if you hold them back here's the thing that I know let's say, you hold your kid back from everything. The second you give them a little inch, or they turn 13, 14, 15, and you let them out into the real world. What's the first thing that they're going to go after? Hot Cheetos, all the stuff that they can't eat Hot Cheetos.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and it's, it's. It sucks, and I don't. My kids, you know they don't have hot Cheetos every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course, but they do sometimes, mine too, and you have to.
Speaker 1:You have to learn to give and take with it and and it's, it's, it's your you'll. You'll have like a caged animal at that point and at some point you're not going to be standing by your kid. When they're 25 and their whole entire life, their mom was like you cannot eat this. And guess what? It's right in front of them. They're like I wonder what this was. Oh, this is magical. I need this in my life.
Speaker 2:Did you read about that child a few weeks ago? He was hospitalized pretty healthy eating family but the mom's like, okay, you can have a cheat day, and she allowed him to eat. What is that? Chips that all the kids love talky talkies yeah yeah, the purple bag is that what it's called? Yeah, it burned his. I think he burned a hole in his intestines oh, just like he got an ulcer. Yeah, he get like a, he ate like a whole bag and he just couldn't stop vomiting and it was so heartbreaking to see that.
Speaker 1:So here's the thing, and then the reason why I said like 80-20,. If I eat right now a thing of Velveeta, it's going to go right through me because my body is like I don't know what this is.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to use it. Yeah, it's going to reject it.
Speaker 1:It gets out of there. Now, if you keep feeding your body Velveeta or some other crap, whatever your body is going to go, hey, I need to figure out what to do with this, because this is the only thing that I'm getting. Your body is smart and it tries to utilize what it can eat healthy food, natural foods, real foods daily. I mean meat, vegetables. You know, if you want to eat grains, grains, if you eat natural foods daily, the second you put something bad inside of you. Your body goes abort mission and it happens quick. Thank God for that though it's, your body will learn it.
Speaker 1:But if you eat bad foods, all the time your body is like now I need to figure out what to do with these bad foods so that I can survive and live, and let's store it. And it says, let's store it. Your body just starts storing everything I'm going to figure out what to do with this later and it just stores it in places.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. All right, what advice do you give for parents who genuinely want to cook dinner for their families, but they don't find the time and the motivation to do anything?
Speaker 1:So helpful.
Speaker 2:Follow my page no that is, that's a given. I hope you guys are.
Speaker 1:The, the wealth of information that we have nowadays, um, it's, it's limitless. So if you go and you're like I have 15 minutes to make a meal, I don't want to do anything. Literally google 20 minute meal for my family, you'll find 5 000 recipes. It takes one second to make a little effort, a little gesture, be like, oh, I don't want to do it, I need something for 20 minutes. Well, you can actually find whole books written on 15-minute meals, 15-minute healthy meals. I try to do things on my page that are a little more simple and quick and easy and fast and, yeah, on my it's so helpful, I think, the video aspect and seeing it, even though I do do it quickly and I have a lot of edits yeah, but it makes you calmer.
Speaker 2:You're like oh, he made this garlic sauce in like three minutes, and then I write in the caption.
Speaker 1:I write the recipe and I write what you need to do and I kind of show that like you can follow this along and then you can also see the video. And the video happens quick. But if you just read the text, you can see the steps, you can see the outcome and it's honestly, there really isn't anything that should take you that long. Now, if you're in the kitchen for two and a half, three hours and you're making chicken and rice, it's not the recipe, that's the problem.
Speaker 2:It's it's your effort it's the cleaning up the cleaning.
Speaker 1:The cleaning up part look.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be honest with you. Lots of moms and dads dread that.
Speaker 1:The cleanup aspect can get a little daunting Now, doing things where you kind of clean as you go or kind of limit the catastrophe that's made cook, chop up your things next to a trash bin or put a bowl. What I do is I put a bowl on the counter and I put everything into that bowl. You limit the amount of walking back and forth the pots and pans. Really, when you're making a meal it's one or two pots.
Speaker 2:Or maybe you can model that. I think that I mean you. Obviously it's the. The cooking is phenomenal and it makes it simple, but maybe like modeling that, like look, this is how I do it. This is to kind of minimize cause. It's anxiety provoking. I feel like cooking is an anxiety provoking activity for lots of parents now and they need that guidance, like it doesn't have to be scary. You guys, we all want to cook healthy meals but of course but who's going to clean up after we're all exhausted?
Speaker 1:Of course, I promise you, that's to me that's like a big issue. I think when I explain like cooking to a lot of people and how to cut things up and chop things up and things like that, they get excited.
Speaker 2:I think maybe what you said to your point is modeling how I move in the kitchen might help Exactly to your point is modeling how I move in the kitchen might help Exactly To lessen the anxiety, to minimize I can cut this here.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's simple things that I still get blown away, Like putting a towel under your cutting board doesn't make it slide is so logical to me, but when I tell people that they're like wow.
Speaker 2:Wait does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, see a lot of people like, let's say, you take your cutting board, you put it on the counter Most people have, you know, granite counters, whatever and like you put it down, it starts sliding and now your knife is sliding and everything. If you take a paper towel, you put it under the cutting board. It no longer moves. Now you have a stable ground, which every little trick, a trash can in front of you, a little trash bin in front of you, every little thing when you're moving those tricks that we need.
Speaker 1:It helps, it does maybe I'll do a video on it I'll do a video.
Speaker 2:I think that's really, that's really uh special and it's helpful. Like, oh, like he cuts the fruits here. Oh, this is where he puts all you know the peeling and yeah because what do we do when we peel on the counter?
Speaker 1:on the counter or in the trash. Can you're standing in all my culinary school? Peeling in the trash cans like the biggest, no-no no, no planet, because what happens is somebody drops the carrot or whatever in there and they're going, I'll just wash it, it's okay no but for real I think those, those tricks would really, really motivate, because I always think I'm what can we do to motivate people?
Speaker 2:I mean, there's such a lack of motivation with people. I mean, you see it, everyone's sad, everyone has anxiety, everyone's struggling with something. So these little things I always try to kind of create and help people with, and it'll be very meaningful, I think, for people to see that I think so.
Speaker 1:I think it'll be fun to do something like that, and I love tricks and tips, I love telling people, explaining those little things, and I think a lot of the times I need to hammer them down, because a lot of times I don't even realize that I'm doing them and I think that might be the only you know, putting it up like five, ten of them together so people will will know, but it's the kitchen's not a scary place guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of people feel that it's so sad that you know it's easy to grab in and out, you know what it is and it's.
Speaker 1:the unfortunate part is our parents didn't necessarily invite us into the kitchen.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Our parents told us to stay away.
Speaker 2:Our parents- it was, it was a little bit too much.
Speaker 1:It was too much effort to just we were going to be a little bit more messy, we were going to be a little bit more. It's dangerous or whatever.
Speaker 2:Dangerous yes.
Speaker 1:My kids have. I've never put guards on the gas for my kids. I've never had drawer locks for my kids. I gave my kids a knife at a very young age and showed them this is how we cut. This thing is fire, Don't burn yourself.
Speaker 1:And then when we cook, you know, I invite them into the kitchen and I give them tasks. A year ago it was about a year ago, maybe two years ago it was right after COVID-ish. It's been two years. It's been four years since COVID, but two years ago or so, we watched Home Alone with the kids and we were like my wife and I had an idea. We were like you know, what would these kids do if we were gone? So they came, they go, what's for dinner? We go, whatever, you're making us. They were super excited. So they're like okay, we're making dinner, I go, yeah. So we sat down, I opened up a bottle of wine. We sat on the other side. We have like this kind of peninsula bar area and I sat on the other side. The kitchen's on the other side. It's the view that everybody sees, right.
Speaker 2:Oh yes.
Speaker 1:So where everybody sees from is where my guests usually sit. It's like a little kind of bar top and we sat there with our glass of wine and I said the kitchen is free reign for you. The proteins are there. You guys make whatever you want. And they were like okay, tell us what to do and I go. We're not saying one word. And the four of them assembled a lot of things and they had. I mean, there was a ribeye that they had access to. They had Ora King salmon, which was like the Wagyu of salmon. They had the access to all of this stuff and what we found out is some of it were not chefy practices, some of it was very funny, but they were able to put together a full meal for us.
Speaker 2:That's survival.
Speaker 1:Yeah, from scratch, essentially. Now there were some funny things. My kid was cooking a steak in a pan. My son walked over and he put the salmon in the same pan. So steak and salmon cooking in the same pan. My youngest daughter at the time was about four and she was like I'm going to make pasta. So she took pasta, she put it into a strainer. She's like I have to wet the pasta and I was like what? So she walked over to the sink and she turned on the pasta because in her mind, pasta needs to be wet, oh my goodness. So she wet the pasta and while she's doing that, my other son walks over with his salmon hands and he washes his salmon hands over the pasta. There were things happening that weren't necessarily we had a strawberry and arugula salad.
Speaker 1:Things were happening that were a little bit strange. They made rice with no timing, no measurements, no nothing. And I was like this. I said at the end of the day you guys are going to eat all of this with us. We sat down. We actually ate a good meal.
Speaker 1:And what I learned by your children, and what I learned was that you know everything that we've taught them and some of it we did not teach them. They've been absorbing, they've been watching. We've never kicked them out of the kitchen. We're not like, hey, go in there and do something else while I make dinner and I'll call you when it's done. It's like look, I know sometimes you can get busy, but we call them all the time come hang out with us. Hey, this is pretty much our only time we're also busy. This is our time. Come hang out, just sit and hang out with us and watch. And they've absorbed enough to where now they ask for that every day.
Speaker 2:I think that what you just said is that let me just go back. Inviting your children to the kitchen is important.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, but this is key to healthy eating.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And that's what I translated that into. That's why I took a pause. I'm like, wow, this is actually incredibly powerful that you're guiding children to these ingredients.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Because you cannot have an 11-year-old, 10-year-old sit down and say well, this is a carcinogen. This is blah blah blah, You'll lose interest.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:But the way you do it is so playful, like, come on, let's all cook together. And that's what really interests children to healthy eating versus. I was never. I don't know what the kitchen's about. Let's grab Carl's Jr.
Speaker 1:Let's grab.
Speaker 2:In-N-Out and that is probably the most meaningful statement All of those foods.
Speaker 1:if they go and they eat fast food, it's all going to be good to them and giving them the opportunity to be in the kitchen, most kids will taste what they make. And if a kid is picky, have him make the food, because when they make it they, oh, I'm gonna try it. And then, if not, you always tell them. I always say you know, you can't feed somebody something without tasting it yourself, because they'll think it's poison you're trying to kill them.
Speaker 2:That's true, that's true. You know. I was reading uh research a while ago and it was talking about obesity and healthy eating and a doctor who was conducting the research had written you know, you cannot put a stop to those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'll tell you why. And I got further in reading the research and it talked about. If we want to fight obesity and disease and all kinds of like health issues, consuming food, we need to teach children from a young age, because it's those little girls, it's those little boys who grow up to be parents and they teach their children to eat. So I think when you say inviting children to the kitchen, it's a bigger statement, it's so important.
Speaker 1:It's so important for our kids to cook. It's so important for our kids to know what it's like to be in the kitchen. It's important for our kids to know what real food is.
Speaker 2:The texture of food, the taste of food, absolutely when.
Speaker 1:I worked with Jamie Oliver. I ran into children that thought their eggs came from the grocery store and didn't know that it came from chickens.
Speaker 2:Oh man.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean and these types of things.
Speaker 2:How to boil an egg. There's kids that don't even understand.
Speaker 1:I eat. That's so sad, so I try to get as much natural foods into us. I'm an avid bow hunter. I don't know if I told you that.
Speaker 2:A bow hunter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm an avid bow hunter.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I told you that. A bow hunter, yeah, so I'm an archer. You're a jack of all trades. What the heck is this Snowboarding? Bow hunter, chef musician, yeah, there's a lot of things, wow.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of things. So my biggest thing is I'm not a trophy hunter. And every time you tell somebody you're a hunter, everyone's like oh, you don't kill giraffes, do you? No, I don't, but if I did, I'd eat it.
Speaker 2:Is that the first comment they say Always, always, people are always like that. Well, my first comment wow, he's jack of all trades, definitely.
Speaker 1:I bow hunt.
Speaker 2:I'm a huge.
Speaker 1:I love the aspect of being out there in the wild and seeing what these animals are eating and being able to harvest an animal, bringing it home and I do everything the butchering the fabrication. I do it all a to z and I call it I. It's from field to plate, or I say field to toilet where did you learn to do that, though that's.
Speaker 2:That's a different technique, though.
Speaker 1:So I just started researching it. I became an archer kind of, when I started cooking. Wow, 22, 23, something like that, I don't know. But I fell in love. I picked up a bow for the first time and I said this is magical, is it. And I need this in my life. I shot a bow for the very first time. What?
Speaker 2:was the first animal you took down, the first one was a wild boar. Oh, my god, how did that feel?
Speaker 1:it was. It was awesome it was, it was very cool. Um here's the thing I love animals and I love.
Speaker 2:I know we're gonna get all those dearly murderers yeah and it's.
Speaker 1:It's not that I'm not. Look, we eat. If you tell me you're against hunters and I don't love animals because I'm hunting, then you should be the person that never goes to the store and buys meat. And if you are a complete vegan and you hate hunters, and you hate animals.
Speaker 2:Vegans they eat avocados.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's not get into where that comes from and how it impacts the universe.
Speaker 1:There is so much about eating protein that your body kind of needs.
Speaker 2:Yes, it does.
Speaker 1:And me going out and harvesting these proteins, knowing what these animals have eaten. The animal lived a good life and I took that life to feed my family.
Speaker 1:Yes, way better than going to to feed my family yes, Way better than going to the store and buying something that's packaged and cooking that and yeah, that a lot of people. That's your only choice. But I've worked hard at being able to do this and I get it from the field, I bring it to my plate and now I'm eating wild, free range organic, I'm feeding my children what I have put a lot of work into and I also pair that meat with what those animals are eating. So if I go and hunt deer and the deer is eating sage, I cook the meat with sage and it's next level, chefing.
Speaker 2:Next level. Oh, you're such an interesting human being. I can sit down and talk to you for like five hours. You're so intellectual, though Like you.
Speaker 1:I'm sure. Thank you I mean you read.
Speaker 2:You probably read and do research.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of research. Not probably you do that you have all this wealth of knowledge. There's a lot of research that's always being done. It's like a deep dive into everything.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's always being done. It's like a deep dive into everything. Well, I think that your dada?
Speaker 1:is that what you call them?
Speaker 2:No, deep dive, no, no, no, your grandpa.
Speaker 1:Oh, dede, dede, Dede.
Speaker 2:He should be so proud Is he alive?
Speaker 1:He is not my nene and Dede long past and they were my everything and I've always looked up to them and I still, to this day, try to live up to their expectations.
Speaker 2:Well, I think you're doing a phenomenal job.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm sure your family's like super proud and your kids are like this is you know? Yeah, you are giving them the life.
Speaker 1:My kids don't know any difference, so they think everything is normal and it's it's pretty funny. They're just, they're like yeah, that's my dad, he's doing's doing stuff again. Yeah, that's my dad.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's dad with the deer. Yeah, yeah, it's totally normal, dad, did you?
Speaker 1:kill anything today. Oh, that's fine. Oh, cool like. Oh, look here's this yeah, we go out. Now I get photos taken of me and they're like dad, do you know that person? I go, no, they're taking a picture like oh okay, cool, nobody took pictures of you today.
Speaker 2:How is that for you? Tell me? How are you accepting that? I love it. Yeah, I love it. I love it. You seem like the type like you mentioned it's, it's fun.
Speaker 1:I've always wanted to be kind of in the limelight of things and, um, when these things started happening, I was very excited about it. I never turn anybody away, I'm never.
Speaker 1:I'm always just I love it and I think it's so fun and I think it's so cool. When people see me on the street and they're like hey, they'll be like oh guy, can I take a picture? I go absolutely. Some people are always oh, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm like no, if you see me on the street, come say hi, I will give you a hug and we can take a picture and hang out and it'll be fine.
Speaker 2:That is the most nicest thing you know. You see, this is interesting because men are different in this area than women. Women tend to be a little bit more scared. Like oh you know, but men are so much more welcoming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've seen that I could see. I mean, if you're like a woman in the limelight, it's a little bit like intimidating.
Speaker 2:When, like six guys rush, you like let's take a picture. You're like, oh, chill out, my wife follows, yeah, my wife loves you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's telling me to change and I don't like that and I'm like I'm sorry, honestly it's it's funny, but it's fun. It's fun, I enjoy it. I love it. I live it up well, all right.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for joining me thank you for having me it was such an amazing conversation. I mean mean, I called you. I'm like what are we going to talk about? And you're like uh, yes. I can go on and on and on and on about everything and anything. Now I know what you're saying. All day I would love to have you on again, let's do it.
Speaker 1:So thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you for having me. ©. Bf-watch TV 2021.