Speaker 1: 2:10

Hey friend, if you know what it's like to have some crazy busy days, this episode is for you. Today, jared and I are sharing with you what we ate. During our recent move that was whole food, plant-based. Yeah, those were fast-paced days. We cannot wait to share these ideas with you. Here we go.

Speaker 1: 2:32

Hey sister, welcome to the Power on Plants podcast. Are you tired of staring into the fridge wondering what to eat so you can just feel better? Do you want to avoid spending hours in the kitchen making complicated meals in the name of health? Would you love to leave fatigue behind and finally have the energy to do all the things you want to do? Hi, we're Jared and Anita Roussel, christ followers, health care professionals, parents of four and big fans of great tasting food. We, too, tried exercising more, eating natural and clean foods, but we still found ourselves struggling with what we thought were changes that come with age or bad genes, and we weren't finding answers the traditional route. So we dug into the research and created our secret nutritional weapon sustainable plant-based living. The truth is, you can eat more whole plant foods and it's not hard. You just need the way. That's realistic and delicious, so you never feel deprived to enjoy your meals no longer be held back by your health struggles and actively live your life, then you're in the right place. So grab your favorite plant-based cup of happy pop in those earbuds and let's get started. Hey friend, we are so happy to be hanging out with you today. We hope everything is going well for you around here.

Speaker 1: 3:49

It has been a little bit busy. We have been moving. Now we want you to know that we understand what it's like to have busy days. We have four children and in the midst of Jared continuing to work full-time, seeing patients, us continuing to run the business full-time, homeschooling all the children full-time. We had a big move. So we were moving to a different house. We had to get you know what all comes with that. I'm not even I was going to start to explain it, but you know you get it. If you've ever moved before.

Speaker 1: 4:23

It can be a bit crazy, and when you're trying to eat a certain way and you want to stay healthy and you don't want to grab fast food, I think that those are the times when this really puts whole food plant-based to the test and we want you to understand how sustainable it can be. Honestly, this is the easiest way we have ever eaten and Jared, and I see you all struggle just on different forums. We're in and things like that Before we get to work with you and our hearts go out to you because we know that. We know that we know that this way of living should be the simplest way you've ever eaten and you should love it so much that you don't even think about going back to the old things.

Speaker 1: 5:03

Very quickly those things will lose their hold on you as you learn to find your new favorites, and I think a lot of times that's the big issue is you just don't know how. Like it seems foreign to you. But once you do know how and that includes finding your new favorites, finding your new favorite recipes, finding your new favorite meals, learning how to make every meal that was your old favorite into the new version of that meal we call that making recipe upgrades. These are the things I'm going to walk you through in our upcoming course. But, sharon, I want to give you a glimpse today into the reality of how simple this can be for you in a situation like moving.

Speaker 2: 5:43

Well, the challenge with moving is that you're having to pack up everything. Not just that you're packing up the entire contents of your home, but that also includes the kitchen, so that makes it hard to be able to pull from your normal tools and things like that. That is such a great point. I mean home, but that also includes the kitchen, so that makes it hard to be able to pull from your normal tools and things like that.

Speaker 1: 5:56

That is such a great point. I mean, you're looking for a knife and you can't find a knife, or you're looking for this thing or that thing. So that brings up one of the big keys that we want to share today and the fact that if you can do just a little bit of pre prepping now I'm not a big prepper when it comes to food. I know a lot of people like to cook a lot of stuff ahead every week and have all this stuff on hand, and if you can just do a few of those things, it can make your life so much easier. And I can show you like the five to 15 minute things that you can do ahead, so you're not spending your whole Saturday or Sunday.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Who wants to spend their entire day or half of their day off in the kitchen pre-prepping a whole week's worth of meals? To me that's insanity. But if it works for you, stick with it. That's okay. That way of doing things doesn't have to be one way or the other. It's what works for you. But what we see time and again that actually works best is when you can at least pre-prepare just a couple of things that might take you five or ten minutes. So now you've got this sauce that you absolutely love, that you can use on two or three things throughout the week, and now you've got this one base thing that you can pull into a bunch of different dishes, and it's crazy how easy that can make your life.

Speaker 2: 7:08

We've had some sauces double as salad dressings, or maybe a sandwich spread, when we've done sandwiches or just wraps Not always a sandwich with bread, but sometimes we'll do it in wraps or we've done paninis, and you can make that one thing and use it in multiple different ways. Oh my word.

Speaker 1: 7:25

I mean, he just hit the nail on the head right there. Think about that for a moment. Not only could you use it on a salad or a sandwich, you could take that same sauce. And what if you could use that same sauce on a baked potato, or on a pasta dish, or on a rice bowl, or on your tofu as a marinade? Listen, your mind is going to explode with the possibilities of whole food, plant-based, when you can see this walked out before your eyes. I'm all about this. I want you to see and understand what the possibilities are, because you think you're going to be limited and it's laughable. It truly is laughable. Not the fact that we're laughing at anybody, because we're not. I don't think it's funny that any of us were ever stuck in the situation that we didn't know how to do this, but it really is so funny that we are convinced that this is difficult when it is the most easy way to eat on the planet.

Speaker 2: 8:17

Now this may be showing my age, but the way we do it is kind of like the geranimals of food, of plant-based, because you can mix and match all these different sauces or different ingredients to create a brand new dish, just like geranimals where you had the shirt and the pants and the shorts as long as you had the right color tag. Then it was a matching set. I love that's what like 50 years ago? At least tag us if you know what I'm talking about with geranimals.

Speaker 1: 8:51

Yeah, send us an email and let us know. Or if you know what I'm talking about with geranimals yeah, send us an email and let us know. Or if you're inside Pyre Free Group, make a comment about that if you remember geranimals. That is so funny, I totally forgot about them.

Speaker 2: 9:03

That was mid-70s. I believe I was in the 70s, whenever geranimals were a thing. I may have had one or two, but I did not have a closet full of geranimal clothing.

Speaker 1: 9:15

That's such a good example, though it's mix and match. I mean, you've got it right and so you learn how to get these right flavors and these right things into your food and how to use this sauce with that thing and that sauce with this thing, and before long, your mind is exploding with all the possibilities of ways that you can eat food and you're wondering how before you used to stand and stare into the pantry wondering what in the world you were going to eat. And I think that's where a lot of people get frustrated and you feel like I keep falling off the wagon. This is ridiculous. I know it's healthy for me, I want to eat this way, but there's a couple of different reasons why that might be happening. We're not going to go into depth here, but I think that's one of the key reasons that and the fact that you don't learn how to make it quick and easy for you to do and it had to be quick and easy during this move. There was no other way that was going to work for us. So what did we do specifically during this move that set us up for success? There are a bazillion different ways this could have been done that could have worked within the power on plants method. However, the thing that worked for us this time was our kids saying hey, why don't we make a little bit of tofu ahead of time in our favorite power on plant sauces? So they love the Asian peanut sauce and we have a tofu nugget sauce as well. That's so good. It's a recipe inside our cookbook. All these things I'm going to be sharing with you today are things we make on a regular basis and they're the things we put into our cookbook bundles. So if you're thinking and hear us say something, you think honey, that recipe, I don't know how to make that. It's all in our cookbook bundles at poweronplantscom forward slash cookbook. You can find both bundles there. But listen, this is the key Getting these few things made ahead of time, made it to where we didn't have to think oh, I'm desperate and I'm hungry, and there's the fast food restaurant I'm going to pull in and I'm going to excuse it because I'm moving.

Speaker 1: 11:14

This was just so simple to do ahead of time. So what we did is pre-prepped a few things that we knew we could use in various ways throughout the week, things like the tofu that we just talked about and our Velnita cheese I'm talking when you make this recipe. It's high speed blender. Throw in a few ingredients, turn it up to high, let it blend till smooth, pour it in a pot and let it bubble for maybe five minutes till it's very thick and bubbly. You pour it over into a little Pyrex dish and let it cool out on the counter till it starts to firm up and then you can just pop it in your fridge. It's done. The whole thing probably takes 15 minutes max, max. It may not even take that long.

Speaker 1: 11:55

You can use this Vellnita cheese before it hardens as a soft cheese like a cheese sauce. It's amazing. That's different from our nacho cheese sauce recipe. Now this is totally different. Both amazing, completely different flavor. This one firms up and it's a soft, grateable cheese like Velveeta cheese would be. And so my daughter said why don't we call it Velnita? It's hilarious. Like if we ever took it to market we couldn't call it that, but it's so hilarious I had to use it when I put the recipe out because she's young and she came up with that name and it was just so clever.

Speaker 1: 12:29

Yeah, so clever. So they made the Vellnita cheese, they made a batch of that, they made the tofu with our yummy sauces on it, and then we had some whole grain bread that we had picked up from the store. I didn't even make the bread this time, it was just some whole grain bread that we really liked that has no oil added. So here we are, we're in the middle of the move. We had left out a couple of things that we knew we would need, like our instant pot and like our panini maker.

Speaker 1: 12:56

We thought we don't eat panini sandwiches a lot, but that would be such a great warm meal that we could have and it would be so delicious and on the go Just a great thing to grab. Now, this was a local move. We couldn't have done this if we were moving across country. But there are different ways that you could do it. You could go ahead and pre-prep your sandwiches and have them there ready to go and, yeah, you can take that baggie with a sandwich in it like a little silicone baggie and put it up in your windshield when you're driving on a warm, sunny day and that sandwich will be warm.

Speaker 1: 13:22

Be careful, don't leave it too long. You don't want to get sick if bacteria grow or something like that. But when you know you're going to be ready to eat it within an hour or so, you can set that out and it's a yummy way to heat a sandwich on the go, isn't that crazy? There's so many little tips like this that you need to know changing. But this was a local move and so at the first house, what we're able to do is have those things set out. Now maybe you're not moving, but these are things that you can use on your busy days, you don't have to be moving to use these things. That's why we want you to know look, I'm having a busy week. I've got a lot going on at school, my kids have all these meetings and things I have to go to, we have doctor's appointments. Whatever it is that you have coming up.

Speaker 2: 14:02

Maybe you're going on a trip. I mean, that's kind of like a little mini move where you're getting all your clothes and things into luggage and if you have children, you have to get different various items together, packed in the car. It's still going to cause a little bit of a disruption of your normal routine. So, having these strategies in place, where you know, hey, we're going on vacation, we're leaving in about four or five days, let's pre-prep some things, so that way, on that day before, and we're in that last little minute hustle of getting stuff together and packing the car, you still have food. You're not wondering oh no, what did we do with it? Well, in our case, we pack our pots and different tools. Where's the ladle or where's the high-speed blender? You already have all that stuff planned out.

Speaker 1: 14:42

Absolutely, and it does not take long to plan. This is not sitting down for hours trying to come up with some massive plan. That's just absolutely perfect. Think about what would work for you and what's so simple and getting ideas like this. Write down the ideas that you get now so that when you have those days you're not wondering what should I do?

Speaker 2: 15:03

So we and look, you're going to think, I will remember this. I will never forget Write it down.

Speaker 2: 15:09

Write it down, because when you're in the middle of it and you think, oh, my goodness, it was such a great idea we have this happen from time to time, like we'll have podcast ideas and then it's so good, we just think we don't need to write it down. But we have started a habit of texting it to each other. We can be out at the beach sitting there and think, oh, I have an idea for this. Other one says, oh, that's brilliant, I love that idea. Okay, I'm going to text it to you right now. So don't forget write it down now, because your mind's going to be elsewhere. You're going to be thinking about going on the trip or the move or whatever the busyness is, and you're just not going to remember what that meal idea was it's real life.

Speaker 1: 15:49

This is what happens and so this is the first meal a whole grain bread with no oil or added sugar, layered with yummy tofu that's been pre-marinated and either baked or dehydrated, you can do it either way. It's absolutely delicious. So now you've got that flavor in there from the tofu and you're going to add in there a quick and easy sauce and then get the Valnita cheese in there to get all melty and delicious. And I love a fresh slice of tomato because we're in summer right now and that was just so good having that fresh slice of tomato on there. But honestly, I'll eat tomato at any time of the year, but there's something special about them in the summer.

Speaker 2: 16:29

And we love the Valnita cheese too, because it does soften and melt really nicely.

Speaker 1: 16:34

It is so delicious in these sandwiches I mean just so simple. It's like a two to three ingredient sandwich. Sometimes they wouldn't even put a sauce, they just do the tofu and the vanilla cheese and the bread, and that was it, and it was so delicious. Well then you're probably thinking, oh, that's not healthy. You didn't get any greens, you didn't get any colorful veggies. Well, that leads me to number two green smoothies. Now, before you flip the podcast episode off, I want you to think about this, because this is one of the easiest ways for you to pack in leafy greens on the go, get a recipe that you love or learn the formula for making them. It's not hard, just pack them down. Jared says punch them down, punch it down.

Speaker 1: 17:18

Punch it and so you put them in and just pack them down, and on top you put some of the fruits you like so that it's not completely bitter or sharp. With the greens, so you might put some bananas, or load it up with berries and flax and omelet powder. Get that omelet powder in there. All these things, all this goodness that is going to keep your energy up while you're loading and unloading. All those boxes are running to and from your appointments. Green smoothies are the way to go. Now, the third thing that we did is we hooked up an instant pot with dried beans. Now, if you haven't heard it after this episode, you need to go back and listen to episode 305 to learn even more about the amazing benefits of cooking dried beans. But I'm going to let you know today. One of the best benefits of eating dried beans is that you can make them in larger batches and enjoy them in so many ways throughout the week. Think about how Jared just shared all the different ways that you could use a sauce. He was talking about mixing it up granimal style. Right, you can do the same things with tofu. You can do the same things with beans. So now your mind should be exploding right now at just the thought of even if it's not exploding with the specific ideas, it should be just in awe of all the different ways that you could use just a simple ingredient like beans. So we saved out our instant pot, we loaded in the beans and some liquid like some water, and we had saved out some of our favorite seasonings and spices. So we would eat beans by the bowl full. And then, to move on to the next thing, they whipped up a batch of hummus. So with some of the garbanzo beans we had made, they whipped up hummus. You could do the same thing with any beans make a bean dip and we would get that onto some tortillas that we bought, corn tortillas that had nothing but. And you have those and you can put those in the microwave or oven very quickly while you're doing stuff and in a matter of minutes they're crunchy. Or you can just heat them till they're soft but a little warm. That might take five seconds, 10 seconds. You slap the beans on there, chop up whatever you want. You could load it up with some pre-washed greens, you could put some chopped tomato, you could just put salsa. If you don't have time to chop veggies because you're too busy. You've got your salsa on there, your beans on there, a yummy sauce. You could use the valnita cheese again. I mean, we've got what? Three pre-prepped ingredients and we've got multiple, multiple meals. We don't even have time to share everything. We use this for throughout the week.

Speaker 1: 20:03

I'm just hitting the highlights here, but it was amazing how we could take just a couple of ingredients and make all these different meals that were just no-brainers and would take us five, ten minutes to stop, throw them together and be able to eat something that not only filled our bellies but brought a smile to our face, felt enjoyable, and that we didn't have a crash and burn afterwards when we needed the energy to do the move. We still felt amazing. It tasted great. This is why we love Whole Food, plant-based Living, the Power on Plants way, because this is the sustainable way you do it. This is how you stop falling off the wagon. You have those foods that absolutely taste amazing to you, that you look forward to. You learn all the possibilities and different ways you can mix things up and eat them and make it work for you. You learn the ways to save time and not make it take all day long and feel like you're spending two, three hours in the kitchen every time you want to eat something. That's not even practical for me on a normal day, much less during a move or during a busy season of my life. What if you've just had a baby, or you've got four young kids that you're homeschooling, or you're running your own business and you want to grow it to the next level? You do not have time to spend all those hours in the kitchen. I totally get it. This is why these key things are so important for us and this is why it's our heart to teach you how to make whole food, plant-based living sustainable.

Speaker 1: 21:31

So we took the hummus, we made some tacos, we made some quesadillas. We ate bowls full of beans, and then we did very simple salads. You could take those same beans. You could take the cheese, you could take the tofu. You could take a ton. Of course, we loaded it down with all kinds of greens that we like. They were all pre-washed. We bought pre-washed broccoli, pre-washed this, pre-chopped that, and you just throw it into a bowl. It's that simple. And now you've already got your sauce because you made that beforehand with the tofu and the cheese. Boom Salad right there, done Five minutes and we're all smiling and it's delicious and we have all our favorite ingredients and they're all pre-chopped and pre-washed by the store. The store didn't really do it, but y'all know what I mean. They did this and it's done like it's finished. We don't have to think about it and we can just eat it, enjoy it and move on with our day. Did we feel like we were missing out on anything?

Speaker 1: 22:24

no, no we never once thought I just wish I could go and stop over there and get me a burger. I just wish I could go have this or that. No, we felt amazing. We had tons of time and this can be your story too. And when it's your story, you won't find yourself struggling to stay on track. You won't feel like healthy, plant-based eating is hard or sustainable. You won't feel like you're missing out on anything or be jealous when somebody next to you is eating a steak. I'm just telling you this is the reality of what happens when you know how to live whole food, plant-based the power on plants way. We are so excited for you to try some of these ideas in your own life. Take just one, just one thing that you learned today and put it into practice, and then let us know inside our free group at poweronplantscom forward slash P-I-E that's poweronplantscom forward slash pie which one you liked best. We can't wait to hear how you love these time-saving tips, sunshine, and here's to living our best years yet. Thank you.