95: Our Insider Secret To Getting A Delicious Plant Based Meal Onto The Table FAST

Anita: 0:58

When you're in this for long term, you've got to build plant based joy. The way you're going to do that is you're going to eat foods that satisfy you. So you don't feel like hurting someone when you're done with your meal. That's just the, that's the truth. That's just how it is. So you go and you fill it up with the veg. But don't forget the things that are gonna stick to your ribs. So say they have a baked potato... INTRO You're listening to the Smarter Healthy Living podcast where we firmly believe that getting healthy should never feel like torture. We're your host, Jarrod and Anita Roussel. We're college sweethearts, and health professionals who help you redefine what getting healthy looks like using a whole food plant based lifestyle. It's time to hear from the experts and learn the best tips and tricks that helped others get beyond the overwhelm, to create a vibrant life they love. If you're sick and tired of being sick, and tired, you're in the right place. So pull up a virtual chair, grab your matcha latte. And let's get started. One of the things that we hear really often from people who have just started living this way, and it makes us so sad, but this is it. This is it. Why does it have to be so hard and honestly, I'm going to tell you the truth, it breaks my heart because I know they just don't have the right system. They just don't know the ways to make it easy. And to make it taste great. So that they want to do it forever. And that's why it seems hard. Once you find your system and you find your groove and you know how to get things in place that save you time, save you money and make you love the way you live. It's just not hard. Today we're sharing one, we make it into a few more. It's hard for me to keep it at one I'm just saying I like to talk and I love to share with y'all. And I love it when you pull up a chair and join me for a conversation so

Jarrod: 2:40

if you're sitting in our living room right now, we'd be doing the exact same thing. You come over for an hour, but you stay three.

Anita: 2:48

It just happens. Because somehow the conversation always comes back to how did you do it? How did you get healthy? How do you live this way? I mean, people somehow just think it's just rabit food. I mean, seriously, jarrod's boss teases him about eating grass. Okay, we're just pulling back the curtain today, and you're just gonna learn the reality. Like, Jared has another job as well as building his business. And he goes into work. And he hears about how he eats grass.

Jarrod: 3:17

I mean, he's good natured about it. I mean, he's he's not being mean or ugly. But it was kind of funny

Anita: 3:26

I know, and people just think, you know, this way of living is just, it's tasteless. It's, I'll be hangry all the time. You got to learn to eat stick to your ribs. We talk about that on this podcast, and inside the membership all the time, it's crucial that you learn how to do that, you know, with the cookbook bundle that's coming out, we've got some extra bonuses that are amazing where we talk about how do you build food formulas. This is key, I have like a 75 minute video training in there that you're going to have the option to purchase. And I priced it superduper low because food formulas are huge. You've got to learn how to build things in a way that don't even require a recipe, you've got to be able to get a meal on the table in a way that doesn't even require a recipe. I love my go to recipes. recipes are super important.

Jarrod: 4:14

That's how your parents used to cook. I never saw either one of them ever use a recipe. I think some of its that they were skilled. And they already kind of knew the recipes in their minds. But they used a lot of those same same methods of just some of this, some of that, like stir it, taste it.

Anita: 4:34

There, there are things that they had learned over time. The truth is, the systems don't take long to learn. You've just got to have somebody to show you how to do it. And one thing we're going to share with you today, honestly, when I learned this, it blew my mind, you've got to just start thinking how do I do this? Because a lot of people say oh, it's just so time intensive. I mean, I'm chopping vegetables all the time. Seriously, there are about a bazillion ways that you can cut down on the time it takes you to chop and food prep. You see these people on YouTube or on in their blogs and they're spending all this time days, days meal prep days chopping their veg to prepare for the week. And I'm thinking, Okay, what how are you living your life? Like I've got a bunch of stuff on my plate. I don't have time for all that. And my guess is that you don't either. Okay, so here's the thing. You've got to have ways to do this that are quick. And now we're gonna share one with you right now. Now, say you've got to chop some veggies. You need some vegetables for the week, but you've had a crazy busy day. you're heading home you have no clue what's for dinner, which honestly, there are systems you can put in place where you have that planned out for you. It's really easy. It's not a worry. But let's just say it's an off day something weird happened. You got to get something on the table. Okay. There are tons of places that have salad bars around you. There are Sushi bars, there are Asian restaurants, okay, all you have to do is pop into a Whole Foods somewhere that has a little bar, where they have salad stuff, they've got raw veggies already chopped up for you fresh, go in, get up one of their to-go boxes almost said like a plate, you're not going to take a plane, you know, just to go container and start filling that puppy up, put in whatever looks good to you, whatever you think you're going to eat and think about putting it with a grain or something that's going to stick to your ribs, okay? Even if you're making a salad, you want to build into that salad things that are gonna make you full that are gonna make you happy, not hangry, we don't want to be hangry we want to be happy people, because that's the way you're gonna keep doing this. For long term, you've got to build plant based joy, the way you're going to do that is you're going to eat foods that satisfy you. So you don't feel like hurting someone when you're done with your meal. That's just the truth. That's just how it is. So you go and you fill it up with the veg. But don't forget the things that are gonna stick to your ribs. So say they have a cook baked potato, well you can pile those veggies on top of your baked potato with some salsa and yum, Dinner is served. How hard is that they have cooked whole grain brown rice. Choose brown over white, it's gonna stick to your ribs, it's going to feed your gut bacteria the fiber they need, then you're going to pile the veggies in, and you're going to put them over the rice, or the barley or the quinoa. And then you've got to get those flavor formulas on there. So if you want it to be Mexican, maybe I'd choose some corn and some black beans because the beans, potatoes, things like that, make it stick to your ribs, pile that thing up with the stuff that's going to mix well get those seasonings on there. If you have some seasonings or spices at home things that you like to start looking at those ingredients, you got to learn how to read the ingredients label. But once you're set up, it's just easy. I mean, it can be as simple as squeezing some lime on it, get that flavor in there. Because if you just eat it plain, you're gonna go, I want my steak back. I want my creamy sauces back, you know, you've got to have this,

Jarrod: 8:04

You want to fall back into the things that you're used to

Anita: 8:06

right. And when you first start eating, the truth is later on down the road, eating things more plain with less of the seasonings and stuff, you won't mind it so much. But honestly the seasonings are also really great for you. If you have just regular herbs and spices. I mean they just bump up the flavour. Sometimes a thousandfold. But also the nutritional value like Jarrod same health benefits,

Jarrod: 8:26

anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antibacterial,

Anita: 8:30

lowering your blood pressure, cinnamon, different things like that lowering your blood pressure. I mean, so many great things you can do fresh herbs, dried herbs. I mean, we've already given way more than one thing, what I want you to focus on is thinking about how you can get things easy on the table fast. I mean, think about meals, you can dump in a bowl or put on a plate and just kind of dump together and it's done. It really is that easy. Kids love opening up bags of things. I mean, while you're there, if they don't have corn on the corn on the table, say you're at a grocery store that has a salad bar, right, you just go get some frozen and dump it out. You can heat it or you can eat it cold.

Jarrod: 9:08

Oh yeah, a lot of times we don't thaw it, we just dump it onto whatever the dish is and if it's a hot dish, it warms it. And it's just tastes like fresh, sweet corn. So there are many things that you can do that with that you don't have to feel like needs to be cooked.

Anita: 9:24

I mean, you can build something like a Mexican potato, you buy a baked potato, you dump on black beans, some corn, and then you can get whatever other veggies you want on there and put some salsa on it or Pico

Jarrod: 9:37

or a little avocado, we've done that before.

Anita: 9:39

One of my favorites and that again, makes it stick to your ribs. And it's just delicious. It gives you that creaminess like sour cream would on a potato. All right.

Jarrod: 9:47

Now with this too, I think what makes the old way easy is because that's what you've been doing that's been your groove the whole time. And you already have those systems in place. So when you transfer over to this, find systems like this, that make it easier. And once you do it once or twice, then it's just habit and you're not having to relearn all kinds of things. Now, it sounds like what you're saying is that when you go to the store that you can buy all of your food just done there and that's your meal. One of the other things that may blow your mind is that maybe maybe you already have some cut lettuce or you have a head of lettuce that you could cut easily. And you just think I don't really have a lot of stuff to put on. I don't want to cut a bunch of tomatoes. I don't want to do this that or the other. Well then you could go to the store and just buy whatever you want to add on to that

Anita: 10:34

Your favorite veg if you want cut up bell pepper and onions and all those things. There are other ways you can get them already cut up or you can cut them up quicker at your house and standing with a knife. I mean, there's just a bazillion ways to save time. This is one way we're giving you utilize your local food bars. All right, just make sure they're not pouring a lot of oil on this stuff. It's just raw food. Get the food, get it into a box, pour it onto something at home, you can even bake a potato at home if they don't have a baked potato bar and you can't buy your baked potato there. It doesn't take long to throw a potato in the oven. You don't need to wrap it in foil, you do not need to put a drop of oil on it. Please don't oil has 120 calories per tablespoon, empty ish, mostly empty calories, that's just going to fill you up, put on pounds make you not feel good. Why would you do that to yourself and you're not going to miss it. You're not going to miss the oil. Our potatoes get so crunchy just in the oven. If we want them to

Jarrod: 11:32

We'll have a little bit of a crisp so, we break them open, we eat the inside. And then you have the skin which a lot of times I'll go like Anita makes this great cashew-based sauce that's a replacement for using butter or cream or anything like that. So I'll mash that into potato eat it. Then the skins a lot of times are dry now because I've eaten everything from the inside. So I'll go and pour a little more of the sauce, a little grind of salt, maybe a little hot sauce. And then eat him that way. Almost even pick him up and like eat, like twice baked potato skin.

Anita: 12:06

Exactly, or you would a french fry. I mean, honestly, you just put a little ketchup

Jarrod: 12:10

We've done like before, ketchup with a little hot sauce.

Anita: 12:14

Y'all eat cold potatoes and dip them in ketchup. I mean, seriously eating this way is not hard. It's just not hard. But you get in your mind that this is hard. And there are ways around it. Do you need chopped vegetables? Yes. Are there other ways to do it besides standing there and chopping for hours and hours and hours each day? Absolutely. And that's what we love teaching. But I want to go back to Jarrod Sharing about the cashew cream sauce that we use. I teach how to do that. But there's other ways. Some people say well, I can't eat nuts, or I don't want to eat so many nuts because I tend to overeat on those many other ways to make cream based sauces, sour creams, Alfredo sauces, for pastas, things like that, without using nuts. So don't be afraid of eating this way. Because you think every cream sauce is going to have nuts in it. There's, again, there are tons of different ways to do this. And we love sharing those, that is our passion. That's what we love, we love it and get paid to that's another really big passion of ours. You won't hang around long without learning that we are really passionate about getting great food on your plate fast. And that's our thing. We've got to have ways to enjoy it. We want that for you. Take this one way, find a way to get your veggies chopped quicker and into your mouth easier that you're going to love. And you're going to start thriving on this way of life.

Jarrod: 13:35

One other the thing that you shared with me that was kind of a mind blower was that if you want a grain bowl and you have everything, but you don't have the rice, or you don't have the time to cook it. And it's not hard, but it will take some time. 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and you just don't have it. You could go by an Asian store, Asian restaurant and buy premade rice.

Anita: 13:57

They have brown rice there. They make it all the time. It's good. It blew my mind.

Jarrod: 14:03

That's so simple. That's so easy.

Anita: 14:04

And you think oh I just don't even have to I don't even feel like dumping it now. Truth be told there are ways you can make it that it's just as quick and easy as going there. But say you're on your way home

Jarrod: 14:16

You're on your way home and you don't have the rice but you think in your mind I've got all the other fixings and sure would love a good grain bowl, but I don't have the rice. Boom!

Anita: 14:25

Or what if you have the rice but you just don't want to wash the pot after you make it. I mean that's reality too I mean, this is real life, sister. Listen, you can do this, and you can love it. You've just got to learn the simple secrets, the systems, the way to make this work for you, that you're going to love and you're going to feel great. You're going to thrive in life. You have a lot of things you need to do places you need to go people you need to see things you need to accomplish in your life. You were put here for a reason you have an incredible purpose, and we want to see that purpose become a reality for you. If you've learned a lot from this episode, we would invite you to take just one quick second and leave a review down below so that other people can find this podcast and learn what you've learned today and help them get started on their journey to health too. And until next time, have a great week, and we can't wait to hang out with you on the next episode.