Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey there, sunshine. Welcome to the Power On Plants podcast. We're your host, jared and Anita Roussell, and we're absolutely head over heels for whole plant foods and helping you navigate this incredible plant based journey. That's because our lives have been completely changed by plant based goodness. We used to struggle every day with excess pounds and low energy, vascular disease, joint pain and lack of sleep, just to name a few, and even though we're medical professionals, we still weren't getting practical answers that actually worked. So we dug into the research, we started living what we learned, and now we both have our lives back, and that's what we want for you, too. The truth is, you can do this, and it's not hard. You just need a way that will bring real and lasting change, and that path. It has to be simple and enjoyable, and it's got to be delicious too. So are you ready to live your life to the fullest? Then you're in the right place, because living without limits that's what Power On Plants is all about. So pull up your chair, grab a matchelite and let's get started. In the amount of time it takes me to drive to the closest store, which is only about five minutes away, and drive back again, I could have so many things prepared, so many meals. I could do five minute sauces. I could have baked potatoes done. I could do those in the microwave. Honestly, with the amount of time it would take me to go to the store to get something and come back because we're factoring in a few minutes to pick something out, put it in my bucket and pay for it, I could totally have multiple meals made Easy, easy. I want you to think about that for a minute. I could make baked potatoes in the instant pot in the amount of time now. Maybe they wouldn't be baked potatoes Really. I mean, I call them baked potatoes. They're light and fluffy and taste like baked potatoes, but they're really quick because they're done in the instant pot. I could make steamed broccoli to go on top of those and a cashew cream sauce. I could put salsa on there, I could put corn and beans on there, I could put some chili spice and I'd still have time to spare. I'm not kidding you, I kid you not. I could dump stuff in an instant pot, have my favorite soup ready to roll and press, start and have it decompress by the time I got home and have the soup going into the bowls, ladling it up. So good thick, creamy and delicious.

Speaker 2: 2:26

Because what you have to factor in is not only is the supermarket the closest one five minutes away, right, what happens if there's traffic? What happens when you factor in the time of getting out of your car, going in, actually going around the store? Grab what you need, get in a lot and maybe it's a busy night.

Speaker 1: 2:45

You're forgetting something else, really important too.

Speaker 2: 2:47

What.

Speaker 1: 2:48

I'm hungry, Okay and I'm shopping hungry, and that is not good. It's not typically advisable.

Speaker 2: 2:55

No, you.

Speaker 1: 2:57

Don't want to shop hungry.

Speaker 2: 2:59

Another tip that's a free tip for you, Okay so you may think it's only gonna take you a couple minutes to go to the store, but it's probably gonna be five minutes. Before you leave the house because you got to grab your stuff, you got to go, you run into traffic. Then there's a line at the store and maybe it's not a long line, but that time adds up and so you think I'll be back in five minutes, and actually it's, maybe it's 45 minutes, mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 3:20

And then, like you said, by the time you're back, you already have a meal made right, I'm not kidding you like I can get tofu in a press, press it out and Probably about two or three minutes, it really doesn't take that long. It doesn't have to sit. I'm gonna take that out, cut it into cubes, whip up at five minutes sauce for that, stir that puppy into the sauce. Boom, it's on my sheet pan with either a piece of parchment or my silicone mats underneath it and the stove was preheating while I did all that. That took max of ten minutes. That's in the oven. Or if I'm gonna be home for a while and I'm doing it for a future meal, it goes into my dehydrator. I don't have to worry about ever cooking or under cooking it. I'm just gonna kind of keep an eye on it every couple hours or so to make sure. Now you can go a little too far in a dehydrator. I mean you can end up with some.

Speaker 2: 4:09

Maybe what you intended. It won't be jerky.

Speaker 1: 4:12

I'm gonna burn it, but you don't want to get too far with that. But is that mind-blowing for you? Like if you're a tofu lover, I just want you to know if you have a dehydrator or you're gonna get one, you're about to love life. You're gonna love it, cuz it comes out just as crispy, just as delicious. But man, this is not a dehydrator episode, but I'm just telling you some of the things you can do. It's amazing. I can take out my spring lettuce mix, I can put a potato on that, some beans, all these different vegetables that I have either Pre-chopped because I bought them pre-chopped, or I'm gonna just chop them right up right then in my food processor because it's so much quicker Done. I mean, it's just so much simpler. So do yourself a favor and start finding those ways you can save time. I need the recipes, I need the food formulas, that things I make, even when I don't have time for a recipe. You've got to know how to throw this thing and that thing out of your fridge and your pantry. Be like Carrie Carrie's learning to shop in her pantry. Okay, she's one of our members. She's like I have got to learn how to shop out of my fridge and pantry. I said this genius, and that's totally what we do.

Speaker 2: 5:17

I was actually just thinking about Carrie for something else the tomato soup.

Speaker 1: 5:22

Oh, I love the tomato soup.

Speaker 2: 5:23

This was one of Anita's favorites growing up and she has she has spot-on Recreated it, but in a plant-based way that loves her back.

Speaker 1: 5:31

We're having Carrie on the podcast. It's what? Yeah, five minutes, five minutes. It's amazing, it's delicious.

Speaker 2: 5:36

You gotta hear her talk about it.

Speaker 1: 5:38

It's so fun because she doesn't like to eat the same meal over and over again. I won't spoil everything, but it's so fun.

Speaker 2: 5:43

So you got to hear about her in the tomato soup if you want to just add a little extra treat every now and then, you could get the Little star, like pastas, mm-hmm. Or maybe if you have kids, you could get alphabet pasta. Yeah throw it in there. Well, you boil it first, but that won't take long you start that boiling while you're making the soup, or it should be done in a Few minutes.

Speaker 1: 6:01

Throw that in there and it makes it 15 minutes for everything I'm talking, even if you added a little pasta.

Speaker 2: 6:07

Yeah, yeah, I'm cleaning up for this. By the time you would just be getting back from the store.

Speaker 1: 6:13

Absolutely. And if I'm not hungry and I'm going out to eat and I'm waiting at a restaurant, then I got an order and then I got to wait for him to prep it. Oh my goodness, I'm not even gonna go into what else I'd be thinking of there, but just think this doesn't mean you can't go out. I mean, we have a full-blown series on dining out, this two-part series we just did for you. Don't miss it. If you're thinking I'm saying you can't dine out, you're totally wrong, because we dine out, we love it, but we have skill and you have skill too. You know why? Cuz you've got access to us and you're an insider and we're gonna tell you how to do it. Okay, go back and listen to episodes. I want you to write this down right now. Episodes 222 and 223 eight steps for dining out on a plant-based vegan diet and Enjoying it. Please tell me what the most important part of that title is. Enjoying it, yeah, plant-based is super important. If you want to get healthy, that's also the most important part. But enjoying it. If you don't enjoy it, you're never going to do it. And why would you? Why would anybody expect you to? That's not realistic. Okay, so that is not what we want for you, that's not what you want for yourself. We can make this quick. Quick is a big key to enjoying it right. If it's not fast, you're not going to enjoy it because you're going to be worried about all the other things you could be doing, all the other experiences you could be having in life during that two to three hour kitchen nightmare you just experienced by pulling up a vegan recipe that you thought you'd try to make and buying all the complicated ingredients and coming home and putting them all together. If you even got to that and they didn't go back in your fridge because you dreaded making it because it looks so difficult and intimidating. I know how it is, because that's that was my life before I got in the kitchen and learned the simple way to do this. And that is what is so important. We have people say to us that we just meet and start talking about what we do. Oh, I tried vegan, I tried plant based. That was so hard. Why was it hard for you? Because it took hours in the kitchen. Listen, it shouldn't take hours. You're not going to do that. You're not going to do that to yourself, because our recipes are quick and simple. We teach food formulas that are very quick and simple. We give you keys to make it quick and simple and delicious all throughout this podcast. Put them into practice. Think about what are the five minute sauces I could put together and keep in my fridge this week, and if you don't want to make it ahead, you don't got to make it ahead. We'll talk about that too.

Speaker 2: 8:40

Make it fresh. But when prep is simple, cleanup is usually simple too, because if you use one or two utensils, the cleanup is so much faster than if you dirty up five pots and 100 spoons, and you've fried stuff which we don't do anymore. So now we don't have to clean up grease in our kitchen. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 8:59

How much time that has saved us. I'm so glad you brought that up. I mean, not only is it a much more pleasant environment because I'm not running my fingers over stuff and finding greasy film Now, we weren't nasty, I cleaned all the time but it's just the reality of cooking meat and using oil to fry things. I mean, I remember, oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:21

Our house smell totally different the oily old smell.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Absolutely. It didn't matter how many times we opened up the windows, how much kitchen product we use no, it didn't. And we moved in. I remember several houses that we moved into where the people before us lived and they ate more oils and meats and things like that. And you just underneath the microwave, like that film, if you're still cooking meat and cooking that you just check out the underside of that and think I would not have this happening if I started playing bass. It makes cleanup so much easier. It's unbelievable. This way of life is so freeing. And today we're talking well, we're mostly talking about time, but Jared brought up a great point there with the cleanliness of it. It's just so much easier in so many ways. I mean I can just name thing after thing about how it's so much easier. But time, okay. There are many, many ways I can teach you, and Jared can teach you about saving time in the kitchen. But your one takeaway today is I can learn very simple ways to make five minute sauces. I can learn some simple recipes that I just dump things into the Instant Pot and press start. I can learn things to throw together that don't even require a recipe for when I don't have time for a recipe.

Speaker 2: 10:37

And I just had that thought of nowhere in there were you mentioning measuring.

Speaker 1: 10:42

No.

Speaker 2: 10:42

You're saying dumping in the Instant Pot throwing in a bowl. Exactly. You weren't mentioning quarter teaspoon of this and a half cup of that.

Speaker 1: 10:49

You don't have to do that. I mean yes, which means less clean up.

Speaker 2: 10:52

You don't have to clean up the measuring spoons. You don't have to clean up the little Pyrex measures.

Speaker 1: 10:56

Right. So there's so many ways you can learn to do it. It doesn't even require a recipe. If you think you know what, anita, I'm just getting started and you cook all free and you cook plant based and I know that you like good food and so I just want that base recipe. I want to know how to get those things in there, because I'm just getting started and later on I'll learn the formulas. Then, great, get the cookbook. You can get it at PowerOnPlantscom. The cookbook is filled with a lot of time saving recipes. All of them are time saving recipes. The only one I can think of that maybe isn't is lasagna. It's not going to be any more time intensive than traditional lasagna. Lasagna is just one of those things that takes a little more time because they're steps. You've got the ricotta cheese, you've got the noodles, you've got the sauce. You know it's got these different steps that you put together, but when you do it's so worth it. But for a regular basis, for making our regular day-to-day meals, we've got to have those things that we know how to whip up in a flash that we don't have to worry about getting in the car, driving to the store, getting what we need there, driving back home, or I've got to stop on the way home. You're going to learn how to stock your pantry in the way that you always have what you need on hand, those go-to favorite products, the things you use time and time again. You're just going to have them available because you know I need this, this and this. I need these three, four ingredients to throw together my signature sauce, my favorite sauce or this other favorite sauce or that other, so you'll have about five or more favorite sauces that are new to you that you can put on potatoes or rice bowls or into your salads, which are going to be now sticking to your ribs, because you've listened to our episodes on building a stick to your rib salad, so now it's not. I'm starving when I eat a salad and then I'm exhausted because it took me so much time to put it all together. You're going to learn the power on plant's way to pull your meals together that you're not stressed out. Get your kids in the kitchen to help out, because that's going to save you tons of time as well. You're going to have your go-to favorite meals that you can look at and you know that you can get those on the table within 15 to 20 minutes. Easy 30 minutes tops. You're going to use the appliances that are going to make things so much faster and easier for you. You're going to use all the simple strategies that we show you how to get back your time, the time that you've been feeling like you're losing in the kitchen. There's no reason for you to feel that way. So today, make this one mindset shift. It does not have to take me a lot of time. It is not hard and it isn't a long drawn out process. Don't make it that for yourself. You know, sometimes we have the tendency to try to make things complicated. I don't know like maybe it's a badge of honor, we feel like. But you know you reach a point in your maturity and I think you're probably there too, sister, where you feel like you know I paid my dues in the kitchen. I am good to go to press start on the InstaPie. I'm good to go to know what to throw in my blender to make this meal, how to get a five minute sauce going on this meal to make it taste amazing. How to go and shop from my pantry and fridge. I totally we've got to have Carrie on to share with you guys about that. It's so awesome and you're just gonna love her. So these are your takeaways, but the biggie is it doesn't take you a lot of time. It's not time consuming. The truth is, you're gonna free up your time and have so much more time to spend doing the things you love, because you're literally fueling your body well, but also getting yourself out of the kitchen onto the things that you love doing the most. And when you find your new favorite plant-based meal that takes you under 20 minutes, I want you to send me an email at Anita at PowerOnPlantscom and tell me what did you do in the time that freed up for you that you couldn't have done before? I cannot wait to hear all about it, and we'll see you next time on Power. On Plants MUSIC.