Ep #128 - Top 2 Strategies For A Winning Plant Based Dinner with Family and Friends

Jarrod: 0:49

I don't know about you, but where I live, the weather is getting cooler and the days are getting shorter. And nothing warms you from the inside like having a nice hot meal with friends and family. So a Anita and I will share two of our favorite ways to rally the troops and to have a fantastic meal together.

Anita: 1:05

Hey there, sunshine. Welcome to the power on plants podcast, where your host, jarred and Anita Roussel 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 everyday 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 to 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 plants is all about. Simple up your chair, grab a matcha latte, and let's get started.

Jarrod: 2:12

Welcome back to another episode of power on plans podcast. Now, hopefully, you have grabbed your matcha latte, and you pulled up your chair, and you have joined us for yet another conversation. Now if you're joining us again, we're so glad to have you back. But if you've never been here, we are all about whole food, plant based living and making it simple, enjoyable. And it's got to be delicious. It's gotta be taste good. Life's too short for nasty tasting food. Plus, if it is nasty, you're not gonna want to do it. You'll do it for a short period of time, maybe you have a certain result that you want to get once you hit it just won't work. You're gonna abandon ship and never come back. And you would blame him who would play?

Anita: 2:57

Well, today we're talking about what can you do when you want somebody to come over for dinner? Or say you're having dinner guest or you're going to go to somebody's house, you've been invited over for dinner, but especially on this one. I mean, you can use these ideas to take to other people's houses. But I think especially it's just really great what we're talking about today for when you want to have people over we get this question so much. What do I do this is real life real life situation. I mean, plant base now are wanting to plant based on some great ideas for eating plant base. But I'm having meat dairy eaters over and I don't know what the like what would be really tasty to serve them when they come over. So we have some ideas for you today, two of our favorite ideas that we want to share with you. And which you want to just jump into, or did you have something you wanted to?

Jarrod: 3:43

Well, no, these are two great ideas. I was thinking right now the weather's starting to get a little cooler outside is hitting that time of year. Oh yeah. And you want those comfort foods too. And I feel like these two ideas really hit that as well. I think they're going to be fun. They're going to be things that people want to participate in, although these are things we eat all year long. So I do eat them all year long. But

Anita: 4:04

you know, if you had us, there could be certain ideas where people hear them they think, yeah, you know, I haven't checked my calendar, but I'm busy that day. Right? These are fun ideas that people are going to love. Alright, so the first one is the pasta bar, pasta bar love pasta bar. And I have done this even taking food to other people's houses because we're going to give you a lot of different options for pasta sauces, things like that. Pick one sauce, one pasta and you can take it like we went recently to a family member's house and I thought I want to take lasagna but I don't want to make a lasagna and people are always wowed if you have a really good plant based lasagna recipe. And basically all that boils down to is a really good sauce. You're gonna layer in your noodles the same way and then you need a really great cheese recipe like how do I get that creamy ricotta cheese, that white cheese in there. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about how to do that today as well. So we did that. I mean, we took the pasta to boil there. So it was family. So we're just going to get a pot put on the water bowl, the pasta they are so we took the pasta and it was whole grain. Now one thing you have to be careful about with pasta is you don't want to just pick up wheat pasta. You know you say this is wheat or even rice pasta, if you're eating gluten free, something like that. Just an example because there are a lot of different gluten free ones. You've got to get the whole grain so if you're buying rice pasta always get brown rice because brown rice is going to have the bran is going to be the whole grain. And then with wheat it needs to say whole wheat, not just wheat pasta, whole wheat pasta,

Jarrod: 5:35

but you also have to look at the label because we actually saw this just a few days ago where it said whole wheat, but it didn't say 100% Whole wheat. That's the front of the box right? It says right and then when you look on the back So what they did is the wheat that was in there was whole wheat. But I think it may have had some like rice or some other flour in there. So 100% is that 100%? Whole wheat? No, the one that I saw it said whole wheat. But when you looked at the label on the back was not 100% Whole wheat. The wheat that was in there was whole, but it had another ingredient with it. So sometimes tricky. Tricky. Like I say, the front of the package is like a billboard, they're advertising what they want you to see. They're not necessarily lying, but they're not necessarily giving you full truth either. It's a little tricky. When you look at the label on the back where the ingredients are, that's where you get the full picture. So just a little something to be aware of.

Anita: 6:25

Absolutely. So you've got your pasta LSA you have somebody coming over, but like when I went to my family member's house, I took the pasta sauce and the cheese. Yes, me loved it. And they, you know, this is the fun part. This is the really fun part because they're not as familiar with eating this way. They eat the way we used to eat, they cook a lot of their meals, homemade. But they eat a lot of meat and dairy and things like that. So they're very interested, even if that's not something that they want to do right now for themselves. They're interested in how do you eat this way? Like, how do you how do you do that?

Jarrod: 6:59

And it's really any good. I think that's probably one of the questions, I think, but don't actually ask.

Anita: 7:04

Yeah, and you know, sometimes when it's family, and you want to go over and visit and hang out, but you don't want to make it a burden on them. And they know you eat differently and you don't want them have to wonder what in the world can I make what should I cook and make it a burden. So you just want to hang out and have fun. So I just pre cooked everything before I went except the pasta. We threw that in the water when we got there. And then I had pre made the cheese. So that takes all of five minutes. And I'm not kidding you. It's tofu and cashew cream mix together. And those are very simple to make. You throw those together. And then just a few spices like a put a little lemon says to make it tastes good. And you can leave that out. But I did it because I like it. I mean, you can even add Italian seasonings in there, but ricotta doesn't usually have that. So what I did, I like to put garlic, Amman so I just did that tofu cashew cream, some garlic, boom, it's done. And

Jarrod: 7:54

the consistency was said it's really similar to ricotta. But I didn't

Anita: 7:58

want to build a lasagna. I just didn't want to take the time. So we just took the way it's a lasagna in your bowl. So basically layered, they layered the pasta once it was done with the cheese that I had made. And then I made a sauce before I left which you can do any kind I mean, I have a fettuccine alfredo sauce that you can make a white creamy sauce, but we took my bolognese sauce. And it's basically like a meaty sauce, a hearty sauce. So it had a lot of vegetables and walnuts in it for the meat. And it's just such a wonderful recipe. I love that recipe. And it always gets rave reviews, even by meat eaters. It's just It's that good. I mean, there was a lot of what did you put in this now? How did you make it and a lot of second and third bowls that were being dipped? And this is how you do it and show other people how to make this enjoyable and that yeah, I'm not a nasty taste in food. Yeah, this is really good. It's really satisfying. And oh, by the way, I didn't feel bad after I

Jarrod: 8:54

write yes, that that was noticed that afterwards, about 30 minutes, they didn't feel that slump like they need to go take a nap when we

Anita: 9:01

know that's the case that happens when you're eating the standard American diet and you feel exhausted, it just hits you 30 minutes after and it doesn't feel your body the way you need to. We just don't get that anymore. No.

Jarrod: 9:12

And I thought the feeling that way was just normal that you eat and your body just has to almost hibernate for 30 minutes an hour to digest. No, no, ladies, that's not normal. It's just not normal.

Anita: 9:27

No, it's just what how your what your body has to do. It's what happens whenever you're eating the regular foods. You're just exhausted and your body goes into this. I don't know just this process of survival mode. Almost. I mean, that's almost what it's like. You're isolated isolines I was constantly in survival mode

Jarrod: 9:46

for me the word are you talking about after you eat? Yeah, yeah, I would almost say the word that came to mind was a funk. I mean, you've almost got this this well, short hangover. Well, food hangers hangovers the morning after you've eaten a terrible meal. Well, delicious, but terrible for you. And then you you wake up and you really feel that sense of what have I done. But sometimes with these meals for about an hour afterwards, you feel just very sluggish. Yeah. And we don't feel like that. Now taking our story here of going over to family members doing a pasta bar with that at your house at your home. Or if you're going to someone else's house and they say yeah, that sounds like a great idea. I'd like to do that. What you would do is in the case of our situation, we just took the one sauce, but make more than one. Mm hmm. So I said we've got a recipe for Fettuccine Alfredo

Anita: 10:38

Alfredo sauce takes it really takes about five minutes. I mean, you whip it up in your blender, you pour it in a pot and boil it till it gets thick, which takes maybe five minutes I mean by the time It's hot, it's thick. So you imagine, I mean, people talk about this so hard, and it's going to take me so long and you get these thoughts in your mind. But when you have somebody to show you who's been there, and who does it every day, it becomes so easy. I mean, it's a matter of dropping the step into a blender pouring in your pot at bowls at Stan. And I mean, a lot of people cannot tell the difference. I can't tell the difference. And I was a huge cream bass cheesy lover. I mean, that was my world was bond diction. I was the Dairy Queen. I can't help it. I talk about it all the time. But I mean, I still love my cheesy stuff. And this is how you do it. So that so that Alfredo sauce, I know you're laughing.

Jarrod: 11:29

No, I'm just laughing because in my mind, I had the song with Phil Collins, but the words were she's a cheesy lover. She loved her dairy, we'll just leave it at that. So you have the Alfredo, you would have the bolognese, you could have just a plain Marinero. So you have three sauces. Think outside the pasta box, don't just think spaghetti. I mean, there's so many other shapes of pasta, or fun that you could maybe use with a spoon.

Anita: 11:58

Fork, Brian, if you have several people coming over and it's a bigger party. I mean, you don't have to do everything on your end, maybe they bring some of the

Jarrod: 12:06

other point that we wanted to make with this is that he can have other people bring some of the stuff so that you don't have all the burden of meal prep.

Anita: 12:14

And just take a quick minute to think about their food preferences. And you can even ask them if they have any preferences because some people like maybe they can't eat gluten, or their children can eat gluten. And so you want to have a gluten free option. So think beyond the shapes as well. But as much as you can look for even in the gluten free that whole grain like whole brown rice, things like that. The brown rice doesn't really have to say whole brown rice, though. It's just brown rice, pasta, it's fun. But

Jarrod: 12:43

you're minerals and vitamins in that brand that you're removing when you take the brand away, right. And

Anita: 12:49

I even have a recipe in the cookbook of Parmesan cheese. So you could serve that as well. And that again, it's another recipe to make, you throw just a few ingredients in a fade process or in a blender, you boop, and it's done. And that's under five minute recipe. I mean, I'm all about this, it's got to be it's got to work with our time, or it won't work at all. So that's that's one of those things that it's just got to happen. It's got to be quick, it's got to be easy. It's got to get on the table fast. And

Jarrod: 13:18

I'm just I'm kind of envisioning a dinner party with the pastas and the sauces. And it's just extremely easy because you have the different stations and you may have a some type of warming pot, you could use a crock pot, or you could have a pot on the stove on low heat. And just keep things warm and everybody just goes and serves themselves. And if you have the parmesan, you could sprinkle that on there if you want to do ricotta, so that you have kind of a lasagna bowl. So it's spaghetti, that's lasagna. I mean, there's just a lot of stuff. And then if you have different herbs or seasonings. Another favorite of ours with spaghetti that we've done in the past is actually taking a marinara sauce, and then adding vegetables in it, just loading it with castables It could be green beans, peas, you could take diced carrots,

Anita: 14:04

right. Somebody might like that or if you don't want to do that and you want to keep it simpler, just steam some broccoli, so people can throw broccoli on you can throw that on the white sauce, the broccoli with the alfredo sauce well, great would

Jarrod: 14:16

even be good because the flavor is not as strong so if you wanted a milder flavor, I'm still getting the benefits of that cruciferous vegetable we love some cruciferous,

Anita: 14:24

I'm just thinking about getting the color in there making the plate pretty so you've got the broccoli on there with the white sauce would be

Jarrod: 14:31

she's a food artist. It's got to appeal to all the senses got a taste and smell it also has to look appealing to

Anita: 14:37

it does it's got to be pretty and then there's also some little little tiny tomatoes that they could put on top even raw so the tomatoes and broccoli with that white sauce would be really nice or yeah, these are the kinds of things that you want to be able to put together but none of that stuff takes a long time and I will also say to you and we'll talk more as we go and we talked about this inside the membership to getting your children involved. Because children can cut up tomatoes they can cut up a lot of these things even young children because their knife set you can get that were made for young children that won't harm their hands. You know so these are things that you can do also to speed up the process.

Jarrod: 15:15

Many hands make for light work yeah. Plus when they're invested in the meal they're much more likely to try it and not be resistant to it and say yeah, this is gross. And also

Anita: 15:25

with the bars kids love it because they can come in either your your children or other children they can come in and they can pick what they want to go into their bowl so they can make their own thing they have more choices. They have more control over it and they just like that better. It goes over a lot better with them just

Jarrod: 15:41

fun.

Anita: 15:41

It is fun, fun. The bars are a lot of fun. I'm trying to think Do we leave anything out herbs and spices have them sitting out Italian seasonings. Thank you About your flavor profiles here. So you This is oregano, you can have fresh, you can even have fresh herbs out in different bowls if you wanted to get fancy so you can have basil oregano would be great time, it's delicious and red pepper flakes. That would be good at people like spicy things, and some people do. So that can be a perfect, absolutely. So these are some of the simple things that you can do on a pasta bar. And you can make a lasagna you could take all these ingredients we talked about today, layer them up and serve a delicious and beautiful Asana. If I was doing that, I would get even more greens in there by baking in. And I even do this in my pasta sauce as well. You put in greens, cut it really small. And when you're cooking your pasta sauce, the red sauces it gets so just cooked down and soft. And it's delicious. You can feel it, fill it with kale or spinach. And so

Jarrod: 16:37

you really don't know what's there. I mean, you can kind of see it. But as far as flavor wise, you don't really notice that it's there. Right gives it that nutritional kick.

Anita: 16:45

Absolutely. So that's the pasta bar. I mean, we could go on and on. I've got other ideas. But time is limited time is important. So we're going to move on for you guys. The next one I want you to think about is a sushi bowl, sushi bowl bar. And

Jarrod: 17:01

we said yes, we did say sushi bowl. Now sushi bar would be fun, I think and you and you can do and we do that with our own children. But if you're thinking gathering with other people, especially if people aren't familiar with wrapping, rolling it, people could make a mess, they could get kind of frustrated. And I believe that you can have the same enjoyment and experience in a bowl and it's just a lot easier to scoop them together you put what you want. Exactly. And

Anita: 17:28

and the thing is, is maybe your friends love sushi, they wrapped it before at home, they're interested in trying it do a sushi bar, then it's the same ingredients we're about to talk about. So you think about that. I like the brown rice, the short grain brown rice, now the white rice is going to be more more gluten so it's going to be traditional, aka more traditional, you can do that. But if you're trying to eat more whole plant foods, one thing you can do as do the short grain brown rice and it works quite nicely, especially for a bowl and if you're wrapping it again, it's not quite as sticky, you can do it but we usually tend to wrap that inside our nori sheet. So put the nor sheet on the outside when we do that outside and it didn't work. And it didn't hold quite as well. Yeah, so I think with the sushi bowl though, it's really great to use the short grain brown rice, I like that a lot so you can put it into your bowl first. Now you can push it up down flat into your bowl and make it kind of the shape of the bowl. I mean, you can get fancy as you want. You can do this however you want to but you can do that or you can just plop the rice down in there just let everybody make it like they want but the thing is deconstruct a vegan sushi or a veggie sushi meal what would be good in there and we're going to give you some ideas of the things that we absolutely love in our sushi that would be amazing toppings on the sushi bowl. What's your favorite?

Jarrod: 18:52

I know that I love hard to pick a favorite. Well, it's hard because I like several toppings together because of the flavors that come together. But I'd say my very favorite is the tofu that you make with the sauce on that

Anita: 19:05

guy but we just recently made another tasty with a different sauce. I think that would be awesome.

Jarrod: 19:10

That was really good. Again

Anita: 19:11

what I did with the new sauce I'll tell you guys because it's not hard at all and you don't need specific amounts. So what you're going to do is you take a little bowl, you take some fresh ginger and if you do not have a microplane grater get yourself one they're super cheap. Look it up get a stainless steel one on Amazon microplane grater get your fresh ginger root, okay, anybody in the produce section can tell you what it is and where to find it. It's not hard and most every

Jarrod: 19:37

places like we have Publix where we live most of them haven't. That may not always be organic, but most of them do have the ginger if

Anita: 19:46

you don't even have to peel it. Just grate it on the microplane grater, probably about a half teaspoon to a teaspoon depending on how much sauce you're making. Sometimes I even do more depending on how spicy I want it because it is spicy. It has it can it can have quite a kick, right and you're going to be eating it raw very good for you. So it keeps the kick but it has really really great nutrients like Jared said it fights inflammation, it bites cancer, it's wonderful for infection. So anytime you can get that fresh raw ginger, get it Okay, so you're going to write that into a bowl, you're going to take a garlic press or finally mints with a knife, some fresh garlic. So take it out of the skin. Men set up yourself. Don't buy the little jars of pre mints. Yes, you can do that. If you're in a hurry. And sometimes if I'm in a hurry, I'll use garlic powder. But I'm telling you there's something about the fresh garlic again, it's got a little bit of the paint a little bit of a bite. So don't go overboard. Maybe start with one club. We're used to it so I'll do multiple globes and ours. And actually, we are going to kick it so it will take some of the spice of the Garlic out because we're going to bake this tofu. Okay, so this is your typhi sauce. So you've got the ginger mint graded. You've got the garlic pressed or minced in the bowl. Now you're going to take some Tomari now Tomari is like soy sauce, but it's gluten free. Okay,

Jarrod: 21:07

it has no wheat is just soybean rice, soy bean, or I'm sorry, I'm sorry, soy sauce is soybean and wheat. Right? I didn't know that in the beginning. It It wasn't until we got tomorrow and I was looking at what's the difference?

Anita: 21:20

Oh, that's what it is. Right. That's what you said back then. Yeah, so Tomari look for low sodium because I'm telling you it is super salty. Even the low salt sodium is very salty, and you don't want to use a ton of it. But in this, it just packs that great punch of flavor that you need on that tofu. And tofu is great because it soaks up flavor and it tastes amazing. If you've had it and you thought you didn't like it. Try the sauce. Just try it. So you're gonna you're Ivan's going to be preheating at 350. You've got a baking pan, a baking sheet like a cookie sheet, I use a rectangular cookie sheet. And then I have a silicone baking mat. I love the thing. If you do not have one, get yourself one if you can, because you're not going to have to back parchment paper anymore. You're not going to have to stand and spend five to 10 minutes each time of your life scrubbing that pan down after you've made baked potatoes or this Thai food dish or your vegetables in the oven because nothing sticks to this thing it washes up in a matter of seconds and I use it for everything we bake cookies on it, we use it for tofu, we use it for baked potatoes, the I don't put anything nothing or make hits a cookie sheet directly anymore. Because that silpat mat that silicone mat is called a silicone baking mat. That's what you want to look at. Okay, so now we've got our our pan ready. It's lined with our silicone baking mat that took all of a few seconds we've got our oven on. We've mixed the ginger the garlic. Now we put a little Tomari in there, you might want to start with a half cup to a cup depending on how much tofu you're making. Maybe start with half a cup. And then just put in maybe a tablespoon of maple syrup. Whisk it all together and taste it if you wanted a little sweeter, add another tablespoon of maple syrup. Okay, then what you're going to do is you're going to take your Thai food, look up online how to press typhi because the more liquid you can get out of that tofu, the more flavor you're going to get into it because it becomes like this beautiful sponge that's going to soak up all this amazing flavor. Okay, so get it pressed out. I have a tofu press I bought one. It's not an expensive one. It's plastic, it's green and white. You can look at tofu press on Amazon doesn't take very long, the name of that one. But it's super easy to use. And it

Jarrod: 23:36

starts at while you you make the sauce and that way it gets a lot out while you're doing it. So you're doing two things at the same time you're maximizing your time,

Anita: 23:45

there are some that are messy that you have to crank down. This one has two little rubber bands on the side, it does all the work for you. And I'm all about that. So that's the one I have. And it's not really expensive, like some of the other gadgets $13,

Jarrod: 23:57

maybe 20. But I use it all the time. It's wonderful. And we're still on the original one and we've had it for a few years now. So those are investment. Yeah.

Anita: 24:06

And so you go ahead and once that tofu is drained out and pressed out, you're going to take it and it's a block and you're just going to cut it into little squares this that whatever size you would normally want maybe like it was

Jarrod: 24:19

maybe one centimeter,

Anita: 24:22

maybe a half inch yeah cubes like that. I'm just think about think of it like a baked chicken that you've cut up into little squares that you want to be in that bowl in that grain bowl that sushi balls, so little pieces of chicken that would be in your sushi. Alright, so you're gonna cut that up into squares or cubes, gently toss it because it will break up if you start stirring it like crazy. You don't want to vigorous no say you cover it just kind of holding Yeah, kind of fold the sauce in and then your tofu is covered and you could even let it sit for a minute or two. Honestly, if you want to do this overnight, you don't have to but if you've got time and you want to do it the night before it's one thing you don't have to do that day. Okay, so you fold it in, light it across your sheet pan by now I probably put five minutes time may be 10. If I'm really going slow into this dish, you pour it out on the pan, you're gonna bake it and it does not take long at all on about 350 and my convection oven is what I bake it on in it. Once it starts drying up, you check it because it'll stay kind of soft, but once it starts getting a little bit harder and a little bit lightly browned, you don't want to burn it, keep an eye on it. Then you'll take it out if you cook it too long it gets kind of gets pretty dry and it loses some of its labor, but you want it to start firming up. Now you can also cook this today before put it in the refrigerator it gets even more firm like a chicken consistency as well, after it's been written For dried it said this is something that's perfectly fine to cook the day before company comes over it actually sometimes it tastes better, I think. And then you could just take it out and preheat it very quickly. I mean, it wouldn't take about a couple of minutes.

Jarrod: 26:01

I know for a lot of us we love a lot of things cold. Oh, yeah, we'll take that tight. Either way.

Anita: 26:06

We'll take the tofu leftover. We'll be going in there looking for where is it? Oh, eight at this morning. It I mean, the kids will just take it out and just ate ate it. It's just so good, Cole. That's wonderful. But anyway, so the early

Jarrod: 26:19

bird gets the tofu

Anita: 26:21

in this house, that's the trade. You want to get this tasty tofu done. And in the sushi bowls, it doesn't have to be fresh, but you can make it right away. When you're, you know, right then when you're preparing your dish and serving it, or you can put it in the fridge and it works great. So that is how you make some tasty delicious Thai food unique and add some nut butter in there. If you want to start getting fancy and get that flavor that's a little bit different of a sauce. It works very well to it clings to it, it makes a nice flavor. But if you're trying to cut down calories, or you don't want to, for some reason over eat on nuts, because you you eat a lot of nut butter or whatever

Jarrod: 26:56

you don't have to don't want that flavor for that particular meal. Exactly. It's great without it and make it however you want. It's great with it too. It's

Anita: 27:04

just different. It's totally a different sauce. So try both ways. See what you like better and sometimes us or one sometimes serve the other just

Jarrod: 27:11

depends. If you have people coming over make both and let them decide.

Anita: 27:15

Yeah, which one do you like better. I've been trying out both that's kind of fun. So now we've got the rice. Now we've got the trophy. And some of my other favorites. I love just sticking baby potatoes, like sweet potatoes are my silpat mat. You can do purples, you can do oranges, you can do any style. You can even do the white ones. And get those in the oven. How hard is a potato to cook think about how hard all these things are to cook. The rice is going to cook in my instant pot. Put it in there, put in the water start done. Okay, now we've got the tofu, quick sauce mixed fold in put it on the sheet done cleanups quick because we've got our silpat mat in both cases, sweet potato, you know how you cook those in the glue gets all over the sugar cooks out the gate, but it's the sugar, right? it bakes onto your pan before they get done. And when you take it out, you got this burnt mess, you got to clean up. Not so with a silicone baking mat, that's all not at all. So then you freed up your time. I mean, think about every time I cook a sweet potato, I'm saving myself at least five minutes of my life that I'm not going to have to stand over that sink do in these crazy rituals that we get into because we think we've got to cook this way. And we just don't, there's so many extra steps that we don't have to take. So you've got your quick Instant Pot Rice, you've got your tofu baked off, you got your potatoes baked off, which honestly you can cook those at the same time. I mean, you can pop them in them at the same time and sweet

Jarrod: 28:38

potatoes just makes a great addition. I don't know that we eat tofu, I'm sorry, eat sushi or sushi bowls. Now without sweet potato I love it gives it a sweetness and it gives it a lot of that stick to your ribs type of consistency. It's

Anita: 28:51

one of my favorite things. And then think fresh mango if they're in season or frozen ones that you can sit out thought and then cut up. That's a great topping. We'd love mango with the sweet potato on our sushi balls. And with the tofu. Yeah, that's a good combo. And other things we eat cucumber, raw cucumber,

Jarrod: 29:10

slice them up on that. Bell pepper, I believe we've done right long slices, avocado, that's another one of my favorite. I love having that in 11 flavors mixing with the sweet potato and the tofu.

Anita: 29:22

I'll tell you something else that sauce I gave you for the tofu, mix some extra of that up and let people drizzle a little bit over their sushi bowl. Not a lot tell them it's salty. But if you just drizzle a little bit over your bowl, it is amazing. And then that better sauce where you add the net better, it's a little thicker, it's really a great option for adding afterwards,

Jarrod: 29:40

it would be like having a small bowl where you could just dip the sushi if you made regular traditional sushi. Instead of dipping your sushi in it, you're actually just putting the sauce on the bowl itself.

Anita: 29:51

And then the other thing I'll say is if you want to avoid sugar, or you're not eating a lot of added sugars, even when maple syrup being pure maple syrup, leave it out. You don't have doesn't have to be a sweet dish, it can be a savory dish. And with the little amount I've put in it, it's not really sweet, sweet, but it gives it that under sweetness. But you don't have to do that. I've made it many times without any maple syrup at all. And it's still good. So it just depends on what you want. This is where you learn how to tell what flavor do I want and you can think about all these different things that are make it really easy, but it makes it makes it the most enjoyable for you because you get those flavors in there that you love. And that's what we're all about.

Jarrod: 30:31

The beauty is that your guests if they want to bring a certain ingredient absolutely love certain flavors that you don't they can make it however they want and everybody's happy. It works. When you get together for a meal.

Anita: 30:43

Yeah, and then I think about flavors like you can leave out some cilantro fresh cilantro I mean some people really like it it's either a love or hate relationship.

Jarrod: 30:53

Well basil might be good we mentioned that for the the basil possible. Yeah, definitely because I know that you use that in what in Vietnamese cooking

Anita: 31:02

I don't pet either one of those and

Jarrod: 31:04

I'm not sure that I wouldn't want it. But you can you could if you want to. Now we forgot a very important ingredient.

Anita: 31:12

Let me think let me think what do we forget

Jarrod: 31:14

sushi? Oh, the nori nori sheets. Yes. So you got to have the nori in there to if you want sushi. So let's say good. What do you do? Well you buy nori flakes, they actually make this the same as what they that was what you have in the nori sheets and what is nori it's a type of

Anita: 31:35

some people might not know it's a sea vegetable, right? So it gives it that fishy flavor that Sushi has and so you do want to put that and we usually put that down close to the rice, so be the rice the nori sheets, then all your veggie toppings, your Thai fav sauce. Now I guess you could do that if

Jarrod: 31:51

you are tempted to just layer the nori sheet in the bowl, you could but I think it would be very difficult to cut because it's I mean, when we make sushi, we have to have a very sharp knife to cut through it. So I would recommend doing the nori flakes in place of it. Now I do want to give a little kind of caution here. Yes, is that another thing that is available are kelp flakes, you want to avoid those, not that kelps bad for you, but it's extremely high in iodine. A lot of people are low on it, lot of people are low. So that's a great way it's a good way to get it done. If

Anita: 32:25

you only very little at a time you don't want to ever die so I'm

Jarrod: 32:28

talking a little sprinkles maybe once or twice a week. I've heard that I think it was a 10 ounce package of kelp would give you enough iodine to last you for years. I mean you've taken just little bits over that course of time. So again if you're doing kill caution, little caution there Yeah, so stick with the nori plus I think it's going to give more that traditional sushi flavor anyway right.

Anita: 32:51

So the net better recipe that I talked about today if you think and I'm gonna go through this together I want specific ingredients that is inside the cookbook. We also what else do we mention the alfredo sauce, the

Jarrod: 33:02

greater the Bolognese sauce and a sausage

Anita: 33:05

favorites that's in the cookbook. The cookbook is available at power plants.com forward slash cookbook but it's also available the members only exclusive addition that I'm adding new recipes to on a regular basis now that is inside the membership so you can get that inside the membership. I've been working on a biscuit recipe that is well you tell them what oh, it's amazing. They hated having to taste test all these biscuits.

Jarrod: 33:30

Lately torture, we had to go through several rounds where she was and I say our recipes are tested and perfected. And I mean that that it goes through quality control and we have to taste test and we always hate

Anita: 33:43

and then there's the whole I think I might have liked the last batch better. Can we try that one? Again,

Jarrod: 33:49

we need to test these again, just to be sure. But this reminds me of the biscuits that used to make right after we got married Southern Living Southern Living biscuits. Yeah, I mean, it's very, very close to that, right? There's

Anita: 34:02

just so good. They're light and fluffy even though we make them with a whole grain flour. And then

Jarrod: 34:07

that's really the only difference is it has just a little more of that whole grayness than it would be just a refined white white flour, but it's it's like it's amazing like we put honey on it we put some

Anita: 34:22

jam like yeah, just spread Chia jam are offered spread. Be careful with your jams and jellies always look at the ingredients. They shouldn't have any sugar none at all. At all. So sweet. Oh yeah. Look at the crofters is it called simply create I forget what it is called the

Jarrod: 34:39

rafters. It's, I think it's an all fruit. It's not a spread.

Anita: 34:42

It's not called all freight. It's I think it's called simply freight. But I can't remember for sure. But crofters also has one that they put a lot of sugar in and they call it a freight spread. So you need to read your ingredients label every single time we sound like a broken record, but you've got sometimes you have to hear these things more than once. And I want you to understand sometimes we have to be reminded, yeah, that's true, too.

Jarrod: 35:03

Bad, loving voice reminding you look at the ingredients.

Anita: 35:08

Ingredients. I don't care what it says on the front of the package, turned it over. But right now the membership is closed more than it's open, because we want to work with our members on the inside. But right now it just happens to be open. It's only open though through Sunday the 21st at midnight. So do not wait if you know you want in because it's not going to be open again till next year and people contacting us when is it open? When's it going to be open? It's open now. So while you're thinking about it with all the Thanksgiving prep going on, join now because we're going to work with you on how to get through the holidays and what do I do when I'm having people over and what do I take to someone's house and All those different things were

Jarrod: 35:50

given all the resources that we have in the membership. Yeah, and that's the other

Anita: 35:54

thing, what we gave you two of our favorite things today that you can do when you have people over. But

Jarrod: 35:59

we, we have a resource there 12 fun and delicious plant based food bar ideas, yeah, that we share two of them from that 12. Right. So

Anita: 36:07

you can go inside right now and grab the other, how many, two of the 12 or 12. So go in and right now get 10. More, I mean, you can do that right there available right when you join the membership. But that's not all that we're doing. We've done some crazy stuff this time, because we're celebrating our 50th birthday. So we have opened up a ton of extras for the membership. And you can find all about that by going to power on plants.com Ford slash membership. And we're also doing a crazy Black Friday special right now, because that's coming up as well. And it's early bird deal. And so what you can do if you sign up now to get inside the membership, you can get our hour and a half long course, where I'm going to walk you through one of the best ways to get started with healthy plant based. And that's with our 10 simple recipes that you can make with four ingredients or less, and I have a resource guide. But in this video, I'm going to take you deeper dive into those 10 Different quick and easy meals that you can make some of the ingredients that I would use and how you put those together and how you make it quick and easy to work with your busy schedule. And that's all inside the membership just waiting for you. As soon as you sign up. It's our

Jarrod: 37:20

food formula. Secret video. Yeah, so normally we sell that separately. But if you join now we'll throw that in there the

Anita: 37:27

whole course the hour and a half course. Absolutely. And then it's broken up into different areas. So you can like you can watch it and then it'll tell you what area in the video that the next part starts as well. Yeah,

Jarrod: 37:39

so you can it's also searchable. Our my word platform is searchable. So if you want to look for tofu, you search, you put that in that search term, and it will bring you up to the exact place. And that video where the word tofu is used, we

Anita: 37:51

had so much fun, we have just revamped everything to make it special. Because we've just started opening up the membership to for a regular opening. You know, we did a founding member launch where you had several ladies join us and it was so much fun to see the results that they got. But this is the first actual opening that we've had of it. Since we've just redone so many things. We've gotten them there. And we chose this platform and set it up in a way, like Jared said is searchable for you. So you can go and type. Any word we've ever said like if you're looking for lunch ideas, you can type in lunch, enter, and it will pull up every video. And not just the title of the video or the topic anytime inside any video we've ever mentioned the word lunch, but it doesn't just pull the video up, it pulls you up to that exact spot in the video. So when you hit play, it'll start playing right there where we are talking about lunch. So it makes it so easy.

Jarrod: 38:45

Well in the search bar is on the main screen, the home screen of the platform so that it's easy to find. And it will search through all the videos. So you don't have to be in a certain section to look through certain videos. If you just think oh my goodness, I remember they talked about papaya somewhere. But Lord help me I don't remember where on the main screen, going to search bar papaya boom, I searches through all of them and brings it right up makes it super fast.

Anita: 39:11

I'm really excited about the community that we have set up. Now because it's a different platform than Facebook, we set up a private community so it's less distracting. But you have an app and it can it can push notify you every time we post something. So what happens on Facebook, when you're in a group is nine times out of 10 You're not going to get notified or see that you even have a post within the group. And it's something that you've paid for or invested in or you just really want to be there and you're missing all the material that's inside you don't even like when did they have that meeting? When did they have that q&a? I didn't even know they were doing alive. I didn't even know this was happening. It's very frustrating. It is frustrating when you're trying to learn and so we set up the community to be absolutely a beautiful space where you can direct message each other but you can also post just like on Facebook and share and receive ideas. Were absolutely so excited to be proud of it. Yeah, a lot of work whatever it is and we're we're thrilled to have this and we know the results we know the results that people are getting from it as well and we cannot wait to meet you on the inside. But if you think I want to know what all those extras are, what are all the bonuses and we have a six bonuses on the inside that we included plus the Black Friday deal that I just told you about. You will not find the Black Friday deal listed on the enrollment page. It's something that we just told you about here and we made it as a special announcement but you will be getting that when you sign up. And if you want explanation about the other six of bonuses that are included or what else in the membership, like what happens once I get there. That's all on the membership signup page there registration page. So if you go to power on plants.com forward slash membership right now, you can read all about it, everything that's included, we even have frequently asked questions on there. So you can get a lot of your questions answered. And if there are any questions you have about it that we didn't answer there, all you need to do is shoot us a quick email at well, when you want them I would say do it support at power on points.com support at power plants.com And we'll get right back with you. We have loved hanging out with you again today. As always, if you're new, come back again, we have over 125 podcasts episodes that are jam packed with actionable actionable advice. This is important to us, you know, you need those little things that you can take right now and start doing and if you listen to anything, this is also new and it's freaking me out. Okay. All you need to do is pick one little thing, sister just one takeaway of something you want to try. If you don't have a microplane grater, get one and start grating ginger into some of your Asian dishes or foods or you could even make ginger tea we love ginger tea ginger same time inflammatory is going to help your pain go away. I had frozen shoulder when we first started eating this way you know those joint pains and eggs that you just think are due to age they can start finishing when you start eating this way it's very typical for that to happen so start trying some ginger tea on a regular basis so go to we actually have a free resource for you with our ginger tea recipe. You can grab that power plants.com forward slash ginger tea

Jarrod: 42:21

correct just straight ginger cheat tea no dashes or underscores or anything your tea we will I will link that down in the description for you as well.

Anita: 42:28

Well especially with when are being here and it's getting colder. That's right thing

Jarrod: 42:33

I was thinking too because it is known to help open the airways and helped with cough if you got a little viral something going on. It is actually a fantastic remedy.

Anita: 42:43

Well Ginger helps to fight bacteria and viruses as well. So it's a great thing to have. Alright, do not forget to go and check out the membership registration page. It closes November 21 On Sunday, you do not want to miss this. It's going to be an exciting exciting time together. We cannot wait to get to meet you on the inside. We've loved hanging out with you today again, and we will see you next time on power on plants.