Speaking of Women's Health
In the Kitchen With Chef Jim: How to Get Started on Eating Healthier
Executive Chef Jim Perko, Sr., CEC, AAC joins guest host Leigh Klekar on the Speaking of Women's Health Podcast to discuss how food is used as medicine. He also shares some of his most popular recipes and the correct way to use a knife in the kitchen.
- Culinary Medicine Toolkit
- In the Kitchen Videos
- Culinary Medicine Website
- Raisin reduction recipe
- Cashew-naise recipe
Please call 440.613.2447 to schedule an appointment with the Culinary Medicine team.
Executive Chef Jim Perko, Sr., CEC, AAC joins guest host Leigh Klekar on the Speaking of Women's Health Podcast to discuss how food is used as medicine. He also shares some of his most popular recipes and the correct way to use a knife in the kitchen.
- Culinary Medicine Toolkit
- In the Kitchen Videos
- Culinary Medicine Website
- Raisin reduction recipe
- Cashew-naise recipe
Please call 440.613.2447 to schedule an appointment with the Culinary Medicine team.
Welcome to the Speaking of Women's Health podcast. I'm your guest host, leigh Klecker, the producer of the podcast, and I'm so happy to be back in the Sunflower House today for a new podcast episode. On this episode I am interviewing Jim Perko. Chef Jim has been with the Cleveland Clinic for 39 years. He has collaborated with physicians to develop the first evidence-based, technique-driven culinary medicine initiatives for the Cleveland Clinic. He has developed culinary curricula for six patient programs and is the creator and provider of the first Cleveland Clinic culinary medicine patient consult to help patients execute prescribed nutritional plans. He provides culinary medicine education for physicians, residents, medical students, nurses, patients, caregivers, community initiatives and has partnered with Dr Michael Rosen, recording over 113 episodes of In the Kitchen with Chef Jim and Dr Mike, and Jim has participated in studies on cooking and nutrition education for the health.
Speaker 1:He's a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, new York, and was one of the four apprentices to the American Culinary Federation, as well as a member of the US Antarctic Expedition, cooking for Scientists in Antarctica. He completed nationally to become a member of the ACF 1992 US Culinary Olympic team, winning five gold medals from the United States, tryouts and competitions in England, ireland and with his teammates he finished third out of 52 teams wow from 30 countries in the 1992 Culinary Olympics in Germany. He is the co-author with Dr Michael Rosen and Michael Croupain in the groundbreaking lifestyle guide what to Eat Win Cookbook, and you can learn firsthand from Chef Perko during a private culinary medicine appointment or shared medical appointment, which we'll dive into in this episode. Welcome, jim. That was a long introduction.
Speaker 2:Thank you, you did great.
Speaker 1:Well, it just shows your vast experience and how you're an expert in the field that you're in. So on this episode, we're going to be talking about the culinary medicine program at the Cleveland Clinic, as well as provide our listeners with some tips and some healthy recipes and to go along with a column you recently wrote for speakingofwomenshealthcom, which included a lot of healthy recipes to boost your immune system. So let's dive right in. Can you tell us a little bit about what the culinary medicine program is at the Cleveland Clinic?
Speaker 2:program is at the Cleveland Clinic Sure, so it's not just one program. Culinary medicine is really many things, and what helped me learn that was the 39 years working with patients in hospitals and seeing all the things that they were prescribed or advised to do by their medical providers, and then all the things we would try to do to help them sustain behavior changes, and over decades of doing that, you know you learn a lot and so I owe a lot to all the patients I served over the years.
Speaker 2:So culinary medicine you know at. Maybe let me go back a little bit In 2018, I was at an NIH-funded National Research of Health funded National Institutes of Health Research Day. I saw 36 different abstracts on culinary medicine 36 different you know opinions of what it is. At Cleveland Clinic, we message culinary medicine to be the evidence-based science. So we try to take the strongest science, the evidence-based science of food, nutrition and medicine, and we combine it with the joy and art of cooking. But to make it in simple terms, culinary medicine takes nutritional science and it makes it taste good. So, no matter what diet any patient is prescribed to follow a cardiac diet, a celiac diet, a Crohn's diet, a FODMAP diet, a diabetic diet, it does not matter. Every patient should enjoy their food. So if we're working with Tossick Cancer Center, there's a cancer patient who's got a head and neck cancer that is prescribed to be on a textured modified diet, minced and chopped or, even more extreme, pureed then that pureed should taste good and that gives that patient quality of life. Right, so in? Yeah, right so in culinary medicine, all the groups you mentioned. We do that messaging from with patients, with physicians, with students, with communities, with corporate right For cancer, for kidney medicine, for any I mean?
Speaker 2:Mean, I'm a chameleon. I can morph myself into any diet, right? You know so when we created the curricula for culinary medicine, we create a technique driven curriculum. What I mean by that is if I could teach you, lee, how to make something moist without adding fat, or how to make something sweet without adding sugar, If you could do that to one thing, you could do it to 10 things. It's a technique. It transcends any diet. It's a technique, right, Right, that's great. A simple way to increase flavor is simply increase surface area. If I got a whole onion in my hand, you're going to have a heck of a time trying to caramelize it. Right, Right, Julianne, under a dice, little pieces, you increase the surface area, increase the area of which you could caramelize the naturally occurring sugars, and it's sweet like a grilled onion.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Works on anything a carrot, a turnip, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. So how, at what point do you get involved? So a patient goes to their physician they are diagnosed with, say, diabetes or celiac disease. At what point does your program and do you and your team get involved then? Or how do you get involved so?
Speaker 2:well, that's a great question. So, first of all, culinary medicine is relatively new, right, I mean, you may be the first words probably started popping up about 2008. We did our first pre culinary medicine program. Dr Roizen started with lifestyle 180 in 2008, but it really hasn't come mainstream now in 2016, 17, 18, and so on. Right Now it's like a buzzword. Everybody wants to do it.
Speaker 2:The key to that is getting the physicians and the medical providers and the doctors to not only recognize it and accept it, to refer. So with that, we created shared medical appointments, right. So for a culinary medicine to be part of a shared medical appointment, you got to have the lead physician do the medical management, and it needs to be a physician that is like-minded and believes in the food is medicine piece as well, right. And so what? Like? We have culinary medicine for chronic disease. Dr Darling's the lead physician in that she's like-minded and so she wants to build into her SMA this component. We've done it in the past for MS what a neurologist. We've done it for breast cancer. We're part of a brain health study, the mind study. We're one of the arms in the study the food piece. So now it's getting more and more and more.
Speaker 2:And here I am on a podcast with you, which that didn't happen a couple of years ago, right, yeah, we're doing pretty soon I'm going to have the city of university Heights firefighters 36 first responder firefighters in this kitchen doing hands-on culinary medicine. Why we want our first responders to be healthy, right, Especially when they got to save people, right. So we're getting there and now the word's getting out and you know, hopefully we'll do more with nursing and so on. That's great. We're part of the curriculum of the medical school. So we actually have culinary medicine finally, not as an elective, but into the curriculum of the Cleveland Clinic Learner College of Medicine for medical students. That's fantastic. We got one coming up next Friday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's awesome, that's great. Up next Friday yeah, it's awesome, that's great. I mean because, as more and more research keeps coming out, there are so many diseases that can be prevented from just a healthy lifestyle, which most includes healthy eating.
Speaker 2:Right. So the science is there. People know a broccoli is better than a Big Mac, but how do you get them to eat the broccoli? How do you get them to know how to make it? You know, if you got broccoli like this here, right, this part's going to cook faster than this part the stock, right. And if you overcook broccoli, it's a cruciferous vegetable, so it doesn't smell, it's not palatable, it smells funky, right. Just think of cabbage on St Patrick's Day. That's overcooked, it's not palatable, anything cruciferous cauliflower, brussels sprouts when you overcook it.
Speaker 2:So if you take this broccoli and you just put a score into the stock part, like this, right, then that allows this part to cook more evenly with the floret. And then we don't want to shock it in cold water, because when you shock it in cold water, this is like a sponge. So if I put it in a dressing or a dip or whatever, it'll dilute that goodness that we put on it. So instead we blot it dry, we strain it, we blot it dry so it's al dente, crisp, but dry, so it absorbs and not dilutes whatever you're putting on. They're just little things like that that make a difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great and we're going to talk more about those tips here shortly. So I want to go back a little bit about the culinary medicine program. Okay, so we talked about what it can offer patients, how you get involved and then sort of what point. But can the patient then? Now you know, hopefully the listeners will listen to this podcast, they'll go yeah, this is great, this is something I could use in my life or with whatever they have going on in their health needs. So how can someone participate? Do they have to get a doctor's referral? Could they just reach out to you? Do they have to get a doctor's referral? Could they just reach out to you?
Speaker 2:Great question. So to participate in a shared medical appointment, they could just go to clevelandcliniccom forward slash integrative medicine or, even better, we got a phone number is 216-448-4325, option one, and then they could just call and make an appointment. To get into a shared medical appointment, they first have to have a medical visit with the physician that's leading that shared medical appointment, because the physician does the medical management and that's so important because that's how the insurance company will cover it. It's considered a physician visit because everything we do it's not just me, we're. You know the great thing about culinary medicine. Culinary is the food piece, but medicine's the physician piece. And I think it's so wonderful now that at Cleveland Clinic we are under primary care. Isn't that great that wellness and preventive medicine is now part of primary care?
Speaker 1:Right, it is great, yeah, because for a while you were just, it was just wellness you know, and and that was what 10 years before.
Speaker 2:So I do agree.
Speaker 1:It's great that it's now under primary care because it's a primary, you know it should be. You know, first and foremost, taking care of our bodies eating healthy, because what you put in is, you know, how you feel. You know what you eat affects how you feel.
Speaker 2:That's right. You know, anytime you eat, you're either feeding or fighting disease.
Speaker 1:So, during this shared medical appointment, what can a patient expect?
Speaker 2:So during a shared medical appointment. The goals are they're going to learn nutrition right. They're going to learn you know what foods feed disease, what foods fight disease right. They learn that information. But what's so important is how can we get a patient to apply and execute that information so they don't compromise the taste of their meals or their health, because when something's not palatable, or if it's too much work or too laborious or too costly or ingredients aren't accessible or whatever, then they tend not to do it. So to help a patient sustain those behavior changes that are being prescribed, we want to make everything executable, accessible and affordable for that patient and increase their culinary literacies and skills. A huge part is knife skills. So we show them knife skills because no matter what diet you're going to do, you got to hold, know how to hold the knife in your hand and, more importantly, how you hold the food in your other hand so you don't cut your fingers.
Speaker 1:Great, so in, I know, on your website. So I did a little research before this and you discussed a little of this in the column that you wrote for speakingofwomenshealthcom. But you have shared many healthy cooking tips just to help mealtime easier and healthier and to absorb more nutrients, like you showed us with the broccoli. What other top tips, your healthy cooking tips, would you say, that you think people should know most about?
Speaker 2:Well, probably that starts off again. They should know knife skills and learn that, because to get them in the kitchen, we got to make that process less laborious, right. So to have a decent knife, a decent cutting board, we put things wet underneath our cutting board so it don't slide on them, right, it stays stationary. So we teach basic fundamentals about that. We teach food safety, sanitation, we teach about mise en place, so getting all your ingredients together so you could mindfully assemble that recipe right. So there's a number of things, and all of that is covered in the culinary medicine toolkit. We give them all these components. Now, when they're ready to cook, we try to show them the and plus to have the right tool for the right job, right, a big knife for a big job, little knife for a little job, what a good blender or a processor or an implement would be, so they could make this. So it's fun, right, they don't have a bad outcome. And then, when it comes to tips, the biggest ones are what I mentioned earlier. If we could show them techniques on making sweet without.
Speaker 2:I'm going to demonstrate two recipes for you today that are going to do that, because at the end of this podcast, if there's anything I would love anybody that watches this to take home is I'm going to show them how to make a raisin reduction so they can make something sweet without adding sugar, because raisins got protein, they got fiber, right. They also have something called allulose that can help block it's naturally occurring in a raisin to help block sugars from being absorbed into our blood. You could freeze it for up to three months. I'll get more on that when I demo it and then I want to show them how to make a cashew nays. So instead of having mayonnaise, which which has egg yolks, which has lecithin and choline, in the presence of a saturated fat that could contribute to TMAO or trimethylene and oxide. And that's what's great when people watch our videos, I do it, dr Roizen, because Dr Roizen will explain the science, so they understand it, and then we demonstrate a recipe that goes along with his science.
Speaker 2:So if he's talking about why you want to moderate your consumption of an egg yolk, we show him how to make something without the egg yolk, right. And we do that on 113 episodes for all kinds of different things. So the biggest tips are making moist without fat, sweet without sugar, savory without sodium. Someone on a hypertension diet can't have no more than 1500 milligrams of sodium in a day. How can we make their food taste good without adding salt? Right? How to make dressings with no oil, no sugar, no sodium and so on, and and still tastes great. And we do that and it's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. I mean, I'm already learning a few things here. We've only been doing the podcast for a short time, but who knew about putting the wet paper towel under the cutting board? I mean, that's a great tip right there. So why don't we, if you're ready, um, go into the knife skill um demo, because I'll tell you what. No one's really ever showed me that. And I've got three kids and I'm cooking for them all the time, using knives every day, and I'm probably using it wrong.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, first of all, we got something wet, because if you don't have something wet, see what happens it slides on you, right? So that's why we want to take something wet, put it down, and that keeps our cutting board from sliding like so. Now, the main knife that we use in the kitchen with our patients and anybody, is an eight inch chef's knife, meaning it's eight inches from the heel to the toe. Okay, now, this particular knife has a half bolster, meaning it's thick up here, but then it tapers down to the same thickness as it does to the blade. All right, so a full bolster, this thick part, would be all the way down to the end. And then, when you're doing this a lot, you'll get a divot in here and it's hard to sharpen. You got to put it on a grinding wheel and grind it where this one. It doesn't happen like that, right? Actually, I'm gonna see. Hey, gabby, can you bring me my other knife please? Actually, I'm going to see. Hey, gabby, can you bring me my other knife please? And so I'll show you what a full bolster looks like. But that way you could sharpen it from heel to toe.
Speaker 2:Now what we ask people is we never ask people to hold a knife like this. Thank you so much, everybody. This is Gabby, our sous chef, right here. Okay, and we do everything together here. Thank you, gabby, our sous chef, right here. Okay, and we do everything together here. Thank you, gabby. So this is. Thank you, gabby. This is a full bolster right here. See how it's thick.
Speaker 2:And this was my issue knife in 1977 at the Colony Institute, and I still got it. But the reason they did it back then was you would break chicken bones. It acted like a cleaver. Nobody does that anymore. Everything's fabricated. And you'd have to grind that down on a wheel this one you don't. You could just put this on a steel or a stone and it sharpens evenly. So instead of holding a knife like this three fingers on the handle, three fingers on the handle, three fingers on the handle, thumb and index on the blade it's like choking up on a baseball bat gives you more dexterity and control.
Speaker 2:The harder part, how you hold the food in your other hand. So you want to indent your fingernail under your first knuckle. So if you hold food, okay, I'm going to come back around, all right. So if you hold food, okay, I'm going to come back around, all right. So if you hold food Like this, that's how you cut your fingers. So I got a piece of celery here. If I'm on my knuckle on the other part, I'll tell everybody.
Speaker 2:A lot of people that come in our kitchen they always cut with the tip of their knife. If you just take your knife, put the tip, press like this, all these muscles are tense and tight. If I did that all day long it'd drive me crazy. Instead, if you cut with the back part of the knife, you got good body posture mechanics right back part of the knife you cut like this, all that tension's gone. So on my knuckle back. Part of the knife you cut like this, all that tension's gone. So on my knuckle back. Part of the knife I cut on the downswing and that's how we and you'll never cut your fingers.
Speaker 2:See, you're just cutting just like so and you get nice slices right. So if you want to make, you know, a dice, first you got to make a strip, but see how I'm always on my knuckles and then a large dice is a large slice and then a large strip and a small would be a, you know, medium, medium and small, small. Then if you want to make a dice. If you're always on your knuckle, you can't cut yourself, but if you, and then it's safe. That's why I don't have to look. No, because it's like you know playing music by ear, right, you know. So then you get all these nice dices, okay. So that's the main thing now. When people got a melon at home and they go to peel it, instead of throwing the peels away, practice your knife skills on slicing and dicing and strips, because once you master this, they'll serve you the rest of your life and I'm sure it probably makes preparing at the.
Speaker 1:You know, if you're doing a lot of preparing and cutting, it makes it go quicker, because I feel like sometimes when I'm doing a lot of cutting vegetables, I'm it's, it could be a half hour. I mean, it's taking me a long time and then I'm already over.
Speaker 2:You know cooking at that point they're now doing cooking camps for kids. They've been doing it a long time, um, you know. And actually another thing I did, it's kind of pre-culinary medicine. I started a program called food is knowledge. Age appropriate for pre-k and k. For a five-year-old that goes in schools and the only way to get that in schools was integrates food nutrition with academics. Food is math, measuring, counting, weighing, timing, buying, selling. But that could be a whole other podcast and conversation, but the point being is, if you cook with kids, they start to learn this.
Speaker 2:So they can learn good habits, safe habits, and you can get them tuned in early so when they go to college maybe they might want to make something for themselves. And when you cook a meal, lee, when you cook a meal anybody you're not just feeding your belly, you get functional exercise. You're going to the store, you're shopping, you're buying. Then you got to put the stuff away. If you got a garden, oh my god, I do yoga when I pull weeds in my garden because I'm kneeling here and I'm stretching the pool that way. Right, you get the mindfulness. You're outside, all that forest bathing they talk about, right, yeah, yeah, there's so many components Hospitality, sharing and caring, a meal with someone you love. You break bread together.
Speaker 2:A lot of physicians will talk about aromatherapy Essential oils in the kitchen, ginger, cinnamon, garlic. Aromatherapy essential oils in the kitchen ginger, cinnamon, garlic. You get so many aromas which, if you're with a child, creates food memories formed in childhood and carried for life. You got them, I got them. Everybody has some of our parents and grandparents growing up. I got four grandsons. You know what?
Speaker 2:they're going to remember about Papa His kitchen smells like garlic, right? Yeah, so, yeah. So that's the knife skill part, yep.
Speaker 1:Well, that's really, really helpful. I mean and, like you said, you made so many good points too of starting young, because then they can make their own food. They know how to do it properly, they know how to do it, so it's easy. It's not going to, you know, it's not going to take them hours. You know they can put together something healthy in a half hour.
Speaker 2:Plus, you'll learn a lot. So, even though you know there may be older, we're starting with that five-year-old. When you go, food is math. You got to measure, so all the ingredients that go in. But then what is the yield going to be? What is the final outcome? You might have a half a cup of spinach and a half a cup of kale, and a pear and a banana and an orange, but after all that stuff is pureed, what's going to be the final yield? So they learn that piece of it. What's the portion size? How many portions will it make? Now, what are the nutrients that you get out of all that? What is the cost out of that? How do you store it? Food safety, sanitation, how do you keep this safe? There's so many lessons you could learn, and when you cook together like that, oh my God, the conversations you could have. It's endless.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, especially. I mean mean, I've got two teenage boys, um, and you know they're like, oh, how long do I put this in for, or how much you know making a smoothie. I'm like and I'm thinking in my head, how do you not know? You just throw a bunch of stuff in and you know, figure it out. But they, you know, they want to know, which I guess is a good thing. You know, should they put a half cup of the orange juice? Or how much yogurt? Right?
Speaker 2:let me give you a smoothie story, okay food is knowledge.
Speaker 2:Here's this a true story. We did food is knowledge. We did it with Cleveland schools, right, and the two schools that we pilot. We did a green smoothie, right when you go into the school. I gave them my recipe. I go there. They had 300 already made and pre-poured by the time I got there. I taste everything. I go to taste it. It was god-awful. My recipe was god-awful. I go, let me see what you did.
Speaker 2:Here's what they did wrong because they had to make a lot. Right, they bought the kale in big bags and it was wet, right. Same thing with the spinach, right. Because they bought institutional bags and they were probably older and they were all wet. You know it happens when greens get wet, they get real funky.
Speaker 2:The bananas weren't ripe, the pears weren't ripe and they didn't peel the pith off the orange, and I don't want to add sugar to this. Now, if you just have the pith off the orange and I don't want to add sugar to this now, if you just have the pith on a citrus, it's real, real bitter. You got to peel that because I want the smoothie to be sweet, so I made them. Dump all those because a kid you only get one shot with a kid. If this kid makes a frown and don't like it, that kid looking at him ain't even gonna try it right? Yeah, that's right. So made them throw it all away. We went to the store, bought new stuff and then we did it right and it was great. Oh, there's a saying in the culinary world good in will help you get good out. So if you buy stuff, you handle it with integrity and properly. You get a great outcome yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1:I mean and I actually didn't really know that your greens shouldn't be wet I mean because I'll buy it frozen sometimes because of work and all this going on, and it's just not the same. And then I'll buy it already packaged, you know, at the store because it's so convenient. I'm like, oh, that's sweet, it tastes so good. How come mine can't taste like that?
Speaker 2:So there's actually there's science on, like carrots, you know, sometimes people buy carrots already cut up those little ones in bags and everything they're already degraded the nutrients that are, you know, soluble to heat. Light and air, right, already degrades nutrients. So when I buy carrots, if I get the green tops on and they're fresh, at least I'm a little bit fresher, right. And then you know, anybody that's able to have a garden, it's a great thing to do. But the more you could do your when you make your own, when you cook, you pick the food, you decide the source, where it came from, right, you control that and you control how it's made and prepared. When you buy something somebody else did, you lost all that control Right.
Speaker 2:And once you make something that's like, wow, this is really good. When kids get used to doing that, they're not going to want all this stuff because you created a benchmark for what good is and it's hard to go back right, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1:Uh, do you want to go and show everybody the raisin reduction um?
Speaker 2:absolutely Okay. So we just took raisins, we put them in a pot. You take it's real simple, equal parts A cup of raisins, cup of water. We put it in a pot, right, and then this one here is already rehydrated. I'm going to show you the water that we got from it.
Speaker 2:Okay, the liquid which is now a raisin broth. Okay, and I'm not going to do this whole thing because it'll be loud in the interest of time, but this is the broth. I'm going to see if I can get a spoon and bring it up so everybody could see. So those raisins were already cooked. This is what the broth looked like, okay, so we reduced, reduced down. If you took a cup of raisins and a cup of water, or two cups of raisins and two cups of water, you reduce it down. That one was a double batch, okay, and that's what it looks like. Now you got this raisin broth, right, all right, okay. So now we put that in, like so. And this is a high-speed blender, but you know it helps to have the right tool for the right job, but you could do it in any blender, ramp it up, and I got this tamper to go down, so I put it on. I go slow, like so right, and I just keep going and that's all I do. So I would let this go about another minute and then when I'm done, this is what I would get, and we make this ahead of. This will freeze for up to three months easy, and that's what it looks like.
Speaker 2:Now you use it for savory. You could use it for baking, but this way, instead of adding white sugar, brown sugar, honey, agave, whatever you're getting protein fiber. You're getting allulose right. Antioxidants that's in the raisin. You could also do it with prunes, right. People do it with dates and so many things. We did the raisin reduction because they're affordable, most people have them, are familiar with them and plus, they do have the allulose. Now here's I'll go. You want me to go into the cashew nays now and do that one?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just had a question just for my selfish reasons when I bake in the future. So if I'm making a recipe you know I make a zucchini bread recipe. It's my grandma's, kids love it and that's a good way to get the green vegetables in there Would I substitute my, because it's about two and a half cups of white sugar this recipe called for, I know right, so it's like I know when I just took away all that wonderful green vegetables, like by putting all that sugar in, could would I use two and a half cups of the raisin reduction?
Speaker 2:I probably would start with half. Okay, because, first of all, the raisin is already cooked down, you know. So, if you had two and a half cups of whole raisins by the time you cook it and puree it, it's not two and a half cups anymore, right? That goes back to the yield. Yeah, so you know exactly. You know, depending how many loaves or how much you're going to make, you know, start with less, because you're going to get a flavor that'll come off the raisin, right. You're also going to get moisture that's going to come off that raisin, right. You're adding moisture to it, which if, if you control it, it's a good thing because that could add moisture without adding oil or fat. Exactly, exactly, right. And so, the more that you know, you get into doing these things, depending on what your recipes are, the next time you go, I think I need a little bit more and I think I need a little less, and you write those notes down. Then, after a while, boom, you're gonna nail it. You want me going to?
Speaker 1:cashew nays. Yeah, so this is going to be a way to add flavor, but reduce your sodium intake. Correct with the cashew nays um, well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But More importantly, if you have mayonnaise again, you get the yolk, you got added oil, you got added sugars right, and then you get the lecithin and the choline and all those things that are going on in there and I got to get. These are the wrong gloves. I got to get bigger gloves. I'll be right back. Yep always having the right tools like you said, having everything you're getting. Yeah to get bigger gloves.
Speaker 1:I'll be right back. Okay, always having the right tools, like you said, having everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, those were. Those were Gabby's gloves. That's why I had a hard time. Now I got mine. Okay, we're good, all right.
Speaker 2:So now, if you have mayonnaise, you got the egg yolk, you got the oil and the added sugar. So some people then, instead of having that, they might get vegenase. But when you look at the nutritional label and everybody should read the ingredients and the nutritional analysis main ingredient is oil, okay, and it's 80 calories a tablespoon, because it's mostly oil. Okay, and actually one of the problems with Vegenaise, it's so good you could eat it with a spoon, you know. So you're eating a lot of. It's pretty good, but it's a lot of oil, right? Yeah, and you know what's the three addictives in food Sugar, sodium and fat, right? You like ice cream? Yes, that is the trifecta. It has all three. That's why it's so easy to eat. So that's why we want to help people, to show them how they could enjoy food while reducing the amount of added sugar, sodium and fat, because those are the three main addictives in food.
Speaker 2:Okay, so now we're going to go back around here, all right? Okay, so now we got our processor, our blender, rather Okay. Okay, so we got cashews. If you get them soaked overnight. A cup of cashews soaked overnight, right. Then we got our garlic, garlic, fresh garlic, okay. We got dry mustard, a little bit of cayenne and we got salt. We got a little bit of raisin reduction here that I'm going to put in. So you saw the raisins, okay, so that's going to go in our raisin reduction. Then we got some water, plain water, okay, and you have all these recipes that we gave you.
Speaker 1:Yes, we'll put the link to all the recipes in the show notes for all of our listeners out there distilled vinegar, apple, apple cider vinegar, and then we got lemon juice.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that's all that goes in there. Right now, another one fell down. I'm gonna use this one. Oh, it's just fine. Okay, so now we're gonna do the same thing. We're gonna put this on, see it? That's why I love it could start at a slow speed. I'm going to ramp it up.
Speaker 1:And so for those listening out there, right now we've got Chef Jim, who's blending his cashewnaise recipe, and it's a way, just to you know, add some instead of using mayonnaise. This is his recipe. He's created with cashews. That's a lot healthier.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I would normally let this go maybe another minute or so, but I want to show you real fast. I got one done here and then I'm going to show this. Okay, so here we go Now. This needs about another minute, but look, see, right there Now it's a little grainy because it needs another minute, but this one is some I had already done. It takes on the consistency of cream cheese, so you could turn this into a tartar sauce. I could turn it into salad dressings. This is absolutely delicious and this is the part I want to show you. You know, one of the things for breakfast in the book I did with Dr Roizen. My wife and I make this all every week, all the time 100% whole grain pumpkin rye bread and we put the cashew nays on it. And this is delicious Whole grain pumpkin rye bread with cashew nays. You're making me hungry.
Speaker 1:Breakfast. Yeah, and, as I mentioned, we'll have those recipes in the show notes and we'll also put them up on our speakingofwomenshealthcom the website. That way, everyone out there can, you know, start making this and you know, substituting some of that, like mayonnaise and for this, and adding it to, like you mentioned, your pumpkin rye bread, turn into tartar sauce.
Speaker 2:So oh, yeah, it's so easy. I mean, if you made a fish sandwich, you got a tartar sauce on there but you could use it, just like you would use cream cheese as well. It's outstanding. Remember, we tell people don't think about what you can't have, shouldn't have, or advise not to have. Instead, think about all, about what you can't have, shouldn't have or advise not to have. Instead, think about all the things you can have right right and this is.
Speaker 1:You know, I live life in moderation. However, you know, sometimes you just have a craving and this is a great way to substitute those bad foods oh yeah, just like we make a vegan milkshake.
Speaker 2:You know, instead of having ice cream, you know you can take a frozen banana. It's like ice cream. You can put it through a Yonanis machine. It's like soft serve ice cream. You could cut it in a little coin, you know. When it's ripe, peel it and then cut it in, you know a little, you know disc, skewer it, freeze it and then, after it freezes, take it out and dip it in 70% cocoa, dark bittersweet chocolate. Now it's like a Klondike bar, and then you could sprinkle toasted walnuts or pecans on that before the chocolate sets up. And now it's like a Captain Crunch type bar. Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Think of all the things you can do. It's fun.
Speaker 1:Absolutely no-transcript. Before we wrap up, is there any last final words or tips that you want to share with our listeners?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I guess the biggest ones. I go back to think about all the things you can have, that you're advised to have, and not what you can't. If you're being told to moderate your consumption of red meat, thinking about it will just drive you nuts, right. So if I go back to the celiac patient, they can't have gluten, so they can't think about it. Instead they want to think about all the grains that are gluten-free and what they can make from that. So whatever you're being prescribed to do, that's your go-to world, what you could do. And then the other part would be you can't love what you don't know. So how does that celiac patient know they're not going to like mill it if they never had it or tried it, right you know. So give things a try and have fun. Practice your noise skills.
Speaker 1:That's right, I will. I will tonight. Well, thank you so much, jim, for joining us on the Speaking of Women's Health podcast.
Speaker 2:It's been great. You know I forgot to mention I do individual culinary medicine consults where I'm the medical provider. Now, I think I might be the first chef to ever do this, because chefs don't chart in a patient's medical records in Epic. And this does that. Right, but it is out of pocket. So the shared medical appointments are covered by most insurance companies. Right, Because it's a physician visit. Culinary medicine consult our government doesn't recognize it, so it's out of pocket. But there I work with the medical provider or PCP, I look at it whatever diagnosis, what the prescribed dietary advisements are, and then I could work how to make it and taste good. Then they could come in this kitchen. We have a lot of this stuff ready and then we just go at it and cook, so when they go home. Okay, I think I could do this and that's a culinary medicine consult.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, great, and they would just call the same number.
Speaker 2:Same number.
Speaker 1:Okay, was just going to ask Perfect, and we'll put that number as well in the show notes for everybody. Well, thank you. We're going to wrap up this episode and I want to thank our listeners for tuning in to another episode of the Speaking of Women's Health podcast. Gabby want to say goodbye and Gabby works with Chef Jim yeah, one of his chefs in the kitchen. Thanks so much, gabby. We appreciate everything and for helping us with the episode, and we'll have to definitely have you both back.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
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