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Wes Allison, Stephanie Bogdanich, Molly R. Frisinger, and Jessica Morris live in Tacotopia (Austin, TX). They introduced the Taco Cleanse at the 2013 Vegan Month of Food by eating tacos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 30 days. Veganmofo.com said, “It should come as no surprise that the newsworthy, tortilla-stockpiling Taco Cleanse . . . not only tops my own list of memories, but everyone else’s.”
TRANSCRIPTION:
Caryn Hartglass: I’m going to bring on my next guest because she’s here already. I’m excited about that because I really think this is going to be fun. We’re going to lighten up and talk about my favorite subject (food) in terms of eating it and how delicious it can be.
I’ve got Stephanie Bogdanich—she’ll tell me in a minute how I butchered her name (chuckles)—and she’s one of the four authors of The Taco Cleanse: The Tortilla-Based Diet Proven to Change Your Life with over seventy-five vegan recipes. I just read this book and it’s really a lot of fun. Welcome to It’s All About Food, Stephanie.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Hi, thanks for having me.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, hi! How are you? Did you have your taco today? (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: I did. A taco a day keeps the doctor away, and that’s what we always say.
Caryn Hartglass: Well, I probably need them because I have a fever today.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Oh yeah! Tacos can help with that!
Caryn Hartglass: Tacos can help! So I’ve read. Awesome.
Stephanie Bogdanich: You can sweat it out. (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. Okay, so just give me a little history: how did this Taco Cleanse get started?
Stephanie Bogdanich: Well, all the authors are from Austin. We were sitting around, drinking margaritas and talking. Jessica had said she realized she hadn’t eaten anything but tacos all day.
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: And we were wonder about how long we could go for. She was like, “Oh, we should try to do it for three days.” I was like, “Three days would be easy! Let’s try and do it for a month.” So we decided to eat nothing but tacos for a whole month, and all four of us did. It was really fun and we loved it. We ended up writing recipes and a little bean for all of our friends. It ended up getting turn into a whole book because everybody wants the Taco Cleanse.
Caryn Hartglass: (laughs) But does it really cleanse? That’s the question.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Well, it depends on what your definition of cleanse is. (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: Yes, what is your definition?
Stephanie Bogdanich: We believe, as taco scientists—
Caryn Hartglass: (laughs) Yes, you’re taco scientists. Very good. Does that mean you put TS at the end of your name?
Stephanie Bogdanich: (chuckles) Sometimes.
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: We all have different degrees. I’ve got my doctorate of tacology.
Caryn Hartglass: Oh, right. (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: Molly is a professor of pseudoscience. So we’ve all got different little things. Jessica’s our T.D. registered taco dietitian.
Caryn Hartglass: Excellent. So define what a cleanse means to you.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah. For us, the typical cleanse of having juice—Master Cleanse or something like that—where you starve yourself to fit into a smaller pair of pants is kind of ridiculous. The whole idea of detoxifying your liver—you don’t need to do that; your liver does it fine for you. (chuckles) The whole idea of detoxifying is scientifically unproven; if you want to detoxify because you’ve been poisoned, take you into the hospital. You don’t need to detoxify if you’ve been eating ice cream.
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: So we think the idea of cleanse is that it would be a cleanse of your mind, and to get the over the used relationship with food of being this thing that you have to really be tyrannical about. Instead just enjoying it and plant-based food and having fun with it.
Caryn Hartglass: All right, can you define a taco?
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yes.
Caryn Hartglass: Please do.
Stephanie Bogdanich: A taco, for us, is anything that sits onto an unleavened piece of… grain? Bread? (chuckles) Tortilla or tortilla-like substance. Originally, before we came up with that definition, we had all sorts of things. It got kind of confusing. Like we have a couple of waffle tacos in the book.
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: And decided that we could grandfather those in. But, in the end, we couldn’t go with the pancake in the same way because we had to make the rules somewhere.
Caryn Hartglass: Okay. All right. Let’s bring up the pancake for a second. We got the taco police here.
Stephanie Bogdanich: (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles) ‘Cause I was looking at all of your wonderful recipes, starving and going nuts reading them, of course. But there is one dessert taco that looks a lot like a pancake.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm. With the crepes taco?
Caryn Hartglass: The Chocolate Raspberry Dessert Taco looks a lot like a pancake. (laughs)
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, I know. It really does. The most important thing is a burrito isn’t a taco. It’s all about the single fold.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah.
Stephanie Bogdanich: And that’s how you know what you’re really getting. (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: But you can take a large tortilla and fold it in half. Then that qualifies as a taco.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah. Then it’ll be a giant taco.
Caryn Hartglass: A giant taco, which you warn against. (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yes. We like our tacos to be small and delightful so that you can eat many tacos.
Caryn Hartglass: Okay. So I want to talk about my earliest taco memories. It was in the late seventies, I think; I was in high school.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm.
Caryn Hartglass: You probably weren’t even born yet.
Stephanie Bogdanich: (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: And I got tacos from Jack In The Box.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Oh, gross.
Caryn Hartglass: They were gross!
Stephanie Bogdanich: Was it American cheese sliced? (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: Oh my God, it was this grounded up, brown oil plop.
Stephanie Bogdanich: (chuckles) Uck.
Caryn Hartglass: And the taco itself was so oily it was disgusting. Then I moved to California, and things kind of cleaned up from there. I’m originally from New York; I’m in New York now. And I discovered avocados, guacamole, and tacos, and it was a beautiful thing. Then I moved to France in the early nineties, and they didn’t have tacos there. The only thing they had were those hard disgusting ones in the box like El Paso or something.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm. Right, like the kind we had in elementary school.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. We didn’t have them in elementary school. (chuckles) But I did exactly what you recommend in the book. I ended up making my own tortillas.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Nice!
Caryn Hartglass: I had to!
Stephanie Bogdanich: Did you mix the flour one there? I’m sure you couldn’t find masa.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, I made the flour ones. They’re easier too. When you make with wheat flour, it’s a little easier to roll rather than squash.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Well, when you’ve got the presser, it’s super easy to make the corn tortillas. I can make enough for a meal in about five minutes.
Caryn Hartglass: I just actually had another taco memory flash. (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: (chuckles) Oh great.
Caryn Hartglass: I think I was living in California, and I think I bought one at one of these artsy-fartsy kind of home stores a tortilla press.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm.
Caryn Hartglass: And I went looking for masa harina and made it and used the press. That was amazing. That was a long time ago. Yes.
Stephanie Bogdanich: It’s fun stamping them out.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, it’s good to make them. Have you ever heard—
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, there’s a huge difference. You know, originally, before we got masa in this country, I read that tortilla used to come in cans.
Caryn Hartglass: Ew, already made.
Stephanie Bogdanich: How weird is that? Have you ever thought of anything more gross than a canned tortilla? (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: At least it wouldn’t be hard and crunchy, probably.
Stephanie Bogdanich: (chuckles) That’s true.
Caryn Hartglass: Which is pretty gross ‘cause they’re like cardboard.
Stephanie Bogdanich: (chuckles) Yes, they definitely are.
Caryn Hartglass: All right, something we need to talk about in terms of the taco and the tortilla and the quality ingredients, which are really important. I always like to talk about what’s in your blank. Like what’s in your peanut butter, for example. I rage on this. You should only have peanuts in your peanut butter, not hydrogenated oils, sugar, and all kinds of junk. But looking at the back of most of these corn and wheat tortillas in the stores today?
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm.
Caryn Hartglass: The ingredients are scary.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Really? Because I live in Texas so I have access to really good tortillas. And I’m vegan too so I’m always checking recipe titles. I don’t buy tortillas very often, I usually make them or I usually buy (chuckles) already made tacos.
Caryn Hartglass: Mm.
Stephanie Bogdanich: But in the case of corn tortillas, it’s almost always just corn, water, and salt.
Caryn Hartglass: Right, that’s what it should be. We go to Whole Foods and get the organic ones, which are refrigerated because they don’t last long once they’re made. That’s what you want.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Right.
Caryn Hartglass: But if you look at the popular brands —Mission and some others— the list of ingredients is like lines long. They have preservatives, they have cellulose, they have all kinds of things. It’s like, “What does this doing in my taco?” Mm. It is quite the—
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm. They’re probably just trying to keep it soft.
Caryn Hartglass: Look out for the ingredients in your tortillas, everybody.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, and at least try to make ‘em once. We have quite a few recipes in the Taco Cleanse book, but you can just Google it too. So many people are convinced since writing the Taco Cleanse to try making your own tortillas. It’s surprisingly easy, way easier than making bread, bagels, pizza or any of those things that are leavened with yeast. You just stamp them out, and they take about a minute on each side to cook.
Caryn Hartglass: Yes, they are pretty easy, and I never thought about making plantain tortillas. Those look awesome.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Which ones?
Caryn Hartglass: Plantain.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Oh! Yes! That we put in because we wanted to be able to have every kind of ear to come on a Taco Cleanse. And there are so many people who’re afraid of gluten, soy, corn, or all these things.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah.
Stephanie Bogdanich: So we came up with a recipe made out of just plants, which in this case is plantain and a little bit of starch. It tastes surprisingly more like a tortilla than it does a plantain. It’s not a sweet, yummy plantain like you get at a Cuban place. It definitely tastes more like a regular tortilla.
Caryn Hartglass: Wow, I definitely going to want to try that. I was very excited about plantain tortillas!
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, I love fried plantain tortillas.
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: There’s this recipe plantain style pizza, which I’ve got hooked on in Costa Rica. I love that. Hand pressed is the best.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. I just came back from Costa Rica, and I had fried plantains there. But I never had the plantain tortilla.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, I doubt it’ll stay in Costa Rica. (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: That will come very soon.
Stephanie Bogdanich: We also really love the Dutch Waffle Tacos. The vegan sausage and the syrup: they’re super yummy.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, so the idea is like you have your Ten Commandments; a burrito is not a taco.
Stephanie Bogdanich: (chuckles) Ah!
Caryn Hartglass: But if you fold a tortilla in half, it can be considered a taco, even though it might be a little too big.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yes. Exactly.
Caryn Hartglass: Now, is that because you don’t want to overload it? ‘Cause I bought some—
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yes, exactly. That’s one of the big problems that we veterans have. (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: I’ve bought some mammoth burritos, and you eat one of those: it’s like a bomb has landed in your belly. It’s so huge and so filling.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Totally. Burritos are something I get when I’m starving, I’m going to watch TV, and I don’t want to move or do anything for the rest of the night. So I’ll get a giant burrito and live with that.
Caryn Hartglass: (laughs) I have a question: I’m looking at your great recipes for what you call “supplements.”
Stephanie Bogdanich: That’s right, there’s a whole chapter on supplements. ‘Cause when you get diet books, it’s going to have a chapter on supplements. And in our case—
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles) The supplements are martinis and tequila drinks.
Stephanie Bogdanich: That’s right. There’s a lot of cleansing properties in tequila.
Caryn Hartglass: So I’m looking at this picture of this Everyday Mexican Martini with the martini in it, and it has black salt on the top. What is that?
Stephanie Bogdanich: Well, it’s black salt. It’s made from Hawaiian lava.
Caryn Hartglass: Wow, that’s beautiful.
Stephanie Bogdanich: There’s actually black salt in Indian things, but that’s actually pink. This black salt is made with lava, and I just did it for the picture. You don’t have to use black salt. But it is really nice and minerally.
Caryn Hartglass: Does it taste different?
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, it does!
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, tastes minerally.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Lots of salts are kind of fun to experiment with, and it’s definitely stronger too. I really like smoked salt too, if you ever get your hands on that. It can add a lot of a pot of beans; just add in a teaspoon of smoked salt and you get that nice smokiness that you don’t get in the plant-based diet as much.
Caryn Hartglass: I am. I also love the beergarita where you actually add the—
Stephanie Bogdanich: You know, the beergarita is often fixed. I don’t know if I’ve seen that anywhere else. But they sure are fun.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, this is original. You’ve actually got a bottle of beer poured upside-down into a margarita cup.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, you kind of have to plunge your beer into the margarita. It’s great on a super hot day.
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles) So it slowly empties out as the liquid in the cup goes away, I guess.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Exactly.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. Beautiful. (chuckles) That’s funny. Okay, I love that you’ve got the holidays covered.
Stephanie Bogdanich: (chuckles) Yeah, you know! Because in any diet, that’s going to be a struggle. But not with the Taco Cleanse! There’s a taco for all occasions, as it were.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. Okay, my all-time favorite is the one for Passover. I come from a Jewish background—I’m not religious at all—but I’m into food for all holidays.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm.
Caryn Hartglass: And you have the collard tortilla, which a tortilla made from a collard green.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm. (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: And you add these typical foods for Passover: roasted horseradish sauce and toasted matzo kernels.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, you got to have that little bit of crunch with the matzo.
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles) That’s terrific. What else here… I like your Halloween taco costumes.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah. At one of our book signings, we had my dog in a taco costume. We were like, “Feed the Taco Dog.” People were very excited for that. Then at the end of the night, my boyfriend was putting him in the car and taking the costume off. Then someone yelled from across the parking lot, “That’s not a taco dog! That’s just a dog in a taco costume!”
Caryn Hartglass: (laughs) Okay, so you’ve got a very good and comprehensive book.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Oh yeah.
Caryn Hartglass: And you cover taco yoga positions. Beautiful.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah. One of our friends who has been teaching Iyengar style yoga for almost twenty years, and she did the taco yoga sections for us. Her blog is called Vegan Eats & Treats, and she just made a video of taco yoga too.
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: So if any listeners want to check it out, it’s really funny and she’s giving away copies of books too.
Caryn Hartglass: I actually look forward to doing the crossword at the end of the book. I haven’t done that yet.
Stephanie Bogdanich: You have the crossword all worked out.
Caryn Hartglass: I have to say I found the guacamole pie in the taco pretty quickly. That maze wasn’t too challenging.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, that’s more of a beginner game. (chuckles) That’s wonderful.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. (chuckles) And it’s lovely. You have a lovely certificate of completion at the end of the book, which will make any participant in the Taco Cleanse feel very, very proud.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah. We’ve been watching fill them out and put them on the refrigerator on Instagram. That’s been really fun.
Caryn Hartglass: You know, I was just talking to the founder of FoodBytes!—not sure if you’re familiar with it—but they’re a bank that invests in agricultural businesses, and they had an event in Brooklyn last week. There was this one company—I didn’t see them there although they emailed me and said that they would be there—called flatev (f-l-a-t-e-v.com).
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm.
Caryn Hartglass: They make an appliance that kind of looks like a toaster.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm.
Caryn Hartglass: But the opening is on the bottom, and they sell these little pods of tortilla dough; kind of like a Kauri.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm.
Caryn Hartglass: You put the pod in the machine and the tortilla comes out of the bottom.
Stephanie Bogdanich: (chuckles) That’s like something that you would see in SkyMall.
Caryn Hartglass: They have a cute little commercial that makes it like it’s not that easy to make your own tortillas, like you were saying, ‘cause they’re so time consuming.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Oh yeah. I can imagine the, “Oh no! Dough all over the flour!” (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. It’s an interesting unit. I don’t know where it’s going to go. You know it’s out there. (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: flatev.com. Anybody want to check it out. Then the other thing is the ingredients when I was at this event last week, there was a company called Masienda and they’re promoting heirloom varieties of corn from Mexico.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Oh yeah.
Caryn Hartglass: Because unfortunately a lot of our corn is getting contaminated ‘cause we grow so much genetically modified corn today.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, since corn air pollinates, you can’t really isolate it. There are some beautiful kinds of corn in Mexico that make such colorful tortillas. It’s like every color of the rainbow.
Caryn Hartglass: Okay, now tell me: have you had some celebrities take up the Taco Cleanse? I think you did; I know I read about them.
Stephanie Bogdanich: In a January interview, Jennifer Aniston said that she was buying the book. When that happened we got an explosion of people saying, “Oh my God! Jennifer Aniston loves the Taco Cleanse!” That was a lot of fun because—
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. Did that help sales?
Stephanie Bogdanich: It just went everywhere. We were on E! True Hollywood Story or E! Entertainment.
Caryn Hartglass: Did you ever talk to Jennifer?
Stephanie Bogdanich: No, but we sent her a signed copy.
Caryn Hartglass: Oh good. ‘Cause I thought she wasn’t a very vegan friendly person.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yes. I don’t think that she even knew it was vegan. I think that she just saw Taco Cleanse and was all, “Oh, that sounds nice.”
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: Then next thing you know, on E! Entertainment News there’s “The Taco Cleanse: How Jennifer Aniston Got Her Red Carpet Body.” We’re like, “No.”
Caryn Hartglass: No. (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: That’s totally not how she got her red carpet body. That’s a combination of genetics and probably a lot of personal trainers. (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: Okay now. A lot of your recipes recommend that you can sometimes use premade ingredients.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yes. We want Taco Cleansing to be really easy. You can go the homemade route, but we want it to be approachable to people who are trying vegan foods too. So we always recommend the best vegan products out there.
For example, we have Infinite Fish Taco, which involves breading your own tofu which takes three different bowls, tastes really good, and is a lovely recipe. But if you don’t want to do all that and mess up your kitchen, you can buy the Gardein Fish Fillets, which are really delicious. You pop them in the oven and they’re done.
Caryn Hartglass: Right. So the Taco Cleanse book is out. What are your plans after this?
Stephanie Bogdanich: Well, we’re talking about making all gluten book next.
Caryn Hartglass: All gluten?
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yes. (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: Aw. (chuckles) So that’s like a lot of seitan?
Stephanie Bogdanich: And pasta, cupcakes, and all the foods that—
Caryn Hartglass: And for those of those who can’t eat gluten, they know to stay away from it and not even open it. (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: Exactly. Don’t even look at the book. (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. Aw, that’s sad. I don’t have a gluten intolerance, although I think wheat sometimes gives me a headache. That doesn’t keep me from eating it; I just don’t eat as much as I used to. But wheat has certainly gotten a bad rap, and people need to know that if you don’t have celiac disease, you don’t have intolerance. As long as you’re eating whole minimally processed forms of wheat, you should be fine.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah. It’s definitely a big, popular diet here at the vegan restaurants. People order the seitan on their gluten-free bread. And the seitan is a form of gluten.
Caryn Hartglass: Oh, that’s funny.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah.
Caryn Hartglass: Do they even know what they’re doing? That’s funny. (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: That’s the question. (laughs)
Caryn Hartglass: Okay, let’s talk about that for a minute. I don’t want to judge here, but I’m just maybe judging. I’m observing!
Stephanie Bogdanich: (laughs)
Caryn Hartglass: There are people out there who like to give themselves labels.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm.
Caryn Hartglass: They like to call themselves vegan, they like to call themselves vegetarian, or they say that they eat gluten-free. Then they see something they like which isn’t vegan and they say they’re vegan. Then they’re like, “Okay, I’m not, I’m not!” Or somebody orders, like you said, the seitan on the gluten-free bread. I mean, what’s that about?
Stephanie Bogdanich: I don’t know. (chuckles) We have a part in the book called “Is the Taco Cleanse right for you?” One of the questions is: do you experience recurring feelings of hunger on a daily basis? Everyone’s favorite one is: do you enjoy attention from peers based on dietary restrictions?
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles) Ah, yes. That’s definitely a trend.
Stephanie Bogdanich: It’s definitely a trend ‘cause I don’t know what’s that about. For us, one of the reasons we got so into the idea of the Taco Cleanse is that we were just so tired of the nutrition people taking over vegan food.
Because for us, we’re not in it because we want to lose weight or anything like that. We’re in it because we love animals and we love the world, and we don’t want to see anymore environmental destruction for meat and cows. Chopping down trees in the amazon so that cows can graze is not what we’re at. That’s where we stand.
A lot of times people think we’re vegan just because we want to have dietary restrictions for fun. So I think a lot of it comes from that.
Caryn Hartglass: I’m really glad you brought that up. That’s a really important point for us not to forget. Those of us who are vegan why we’re vegan. For me, it always about animals, and the health and the environment were just amazing bonuses.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yes, bonuses.
Caryn Hartglass: Amazing bonuses.
Stephanie Bogdanich: And I think that the health brings a lot of people to veganism, which is great because it is a very healthy way to live. But I think at the forefront it’s about cruelty to animals. That’s why we avoid all the animal products in our clothes, our makeup, and everything else.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, but it makes it a little harder—getting back to what we were just talking about labels—when people say that they are something that they aren’t. It makes it harder for those of us that are.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah. Isn’t that the truth? I don’t know how many times that I ordered something—
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah! Because people think, “Oh! It just has a little in it,” you know.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Uh-huh. (chuckles) “You can eat around that, right?”
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles) Yeah, so please: if you’re not pregnant, don’t say you’re pregnant. If you’re not vegan, don’t say you’re vegan. Say you eat a plant-based diet and occasionally maybe something else.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah! People love saying that they’re vegan when they’re not. I don’t get it because being vegan, people give me a lot of shit. So I wonder why. (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: Yes. Exactly. Why do you want to have that shit?
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah! Exactly. (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, you have to believe in something very strong. Again, I’m bringing up the guy I was just talking to. I don’t like to have sensational kinds of programs and argue with people.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm.
Caryn Hartglass: That’s not who I am. But I made it clear that their company, which supports “sustainable businesses”, some of them really aren’t sustainable.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Mm.
Caryn Hartglass: But they see them as sustainable, and I think they see them as profit centers. Sustainable fish, sustainable palm oil, sustainable beef: they’re oxymorons.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah. I don’t know how you can have sustainable beef and oil with this many people eating beef.
Caryn Hartglass: Exactly, just do the math. You can’t do it. There’s not enough landmass, period.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, exactly.
Caryn Hartglass: Yes, okay. And he actually said this—my guest, Manuel Gonzalez—that these plant-based alternatives, these plant-based businesses at some point should take over. I hope to see that sooner than later.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, I see that as the future too. Like you were talking about Jack in the Box: people are so attached to their meat and they’re like, “Oh, I can’t go vegan ‘cause I love meat,” or whatever. And I’m like, “But you’ll eat at Jack in the Box!”
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: Is that really so good? Would you know any difference if you were eating meat or if you were some soy crumble in your nasty Jack in the Box tortilla? You don’t. No way! (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: Exactly. You don’t know what that stuff is at the bottom of your oily tortilla; you just don’t know. But you mentioned soy products—
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah, wouldn’t you rather have it made out of soy rather than outta some weird animal parts?
Caryn Hartglass: Absolutely. Can you talk about Soy Curls? You mentioned them a few times in the book.
Stephanie Bogdanich: About who?
Caryn Hartglass: Soy Curls.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Oh, Soy Curls! Sure. They’re absolutely a minimally processed food. They’re just straight up soybeans that are soaked, blended, dehydrated, and then stripped. They’re made by Seventh Day Adventists who are often vegetarian and I think they’re from Oregon.
You can’t find them everywhere because they’re a pretty small company, but they’re totally worth ordering a box. One of our co-authors has a vegan store called Rabbit Food Grocery, and you can get them there. But they are just the most delightful vegan ingredients because they’re super high in protein, they have this wonderful texture, they’re really easy to make; you just soak them. I usually soak them in vegetable broth and then fry them in a pan with whatever ingredients.
You’ve got plenty of recipes in the book that use Soy Curls. You can use seitan instead, but Soy Curls are so easy and we all really like them. They’re super popular amongst vegans these days.
Caryn Hartglass: I’m glad you brought them up because I haven’t had them in ages, and I’ve just kind of forgot about them. Now I have to look for them again, Soy Curls.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yes. I wonder if you can find them up there. I know that there’s that vegan store.
Caryn Hartglass: Oh, I’m sure. Now, before we go, I just wanted to mention I appreciate you adding at the end of your book some resources. You mentioned Vegan Tacos: Authentic and Inspired Recipes for Mexico’s Favorite Street Food by Jason Wyrick. I spoke to Jason when his book came out, and I just want to say that book is very different from your book. They’re both wonderful.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yes, very different. But I love his book too, yeah. It’s great.
Caryn Hartglass: He’s an amazing chef. He really knows what he’s talking about.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Really authentic recipes.
Caryn Hartglass: Yes, he goes into great detail and I just went crazy over that cookbook because it was just amazing.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yeah. We love that one and Viva Vegan! by Terry Hope Romero too.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, she lives here in my neighborhood in Queens. (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: She’s very good. Yeah, she gets to hang out with him in the book too. But Viva Vegan! is my favorite one.
Caryn Hartglass: Which is?
Stephanie Bogdanich: Viva Vegan!
Caryn Hartglass: Oh yeah, there’s a lot of recipes.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Sure is a Latin cookbook. Yeah.
Caryn Hartglass: A lot of them. Well, Stephanie, this has really been delightful. Now I got to figure out how to get a taco really and get over with my fever.
Stephanie Bogdanich: I know. That’s the problem. Several people have written and they’re like, “I’m having trouble getting off the Taco Cleanse.” And I’m like, “Yeah.”
Caryn Hartglass: (chuckles)
Stephanie Bogdanich: It kind of becomes a way of life. That’s why I could never leave Austin ‘cause how could I not have breakfast tacos every day? I mean, what do other people eat?
Caryn Hartglass: It’s not dangerous. You could stay on a Taco Cleanse for life, can’t you?
Stephanie Bogdanich: Yes, definitely. Hopefully. (chuckles)
Caryn Hartglass: Well there, that’s wonderful. (laughs) Thank you, Stephanie.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Thanks so much for having me, and have a wonderful day.
Caryn Hartglass: Okay, you too. Be well.
Stephanie Bogdanich: Bye-bye.
Caryn Hartglass: Whew, okay, we have a minute left or so. That was totally fun, wasn’t it? Taco Cleanse. It’s just a really fun book; it’s fun to read. Probably would make a great gift because it’s very fun, and the recipes are really, really good. I really like it. Can I say really, really, really, really enough?
Meanwhile, back to Responsible Eating and Living, where I live. I hope you’ve been checking out our most recent recipes. My daily blog is now on day… day 390? 391, for goodness sake’s. The thing about prepared food: sometimes they really come in handy. Right now, we have this addiction for Sky Valley Organics Sriracha Sauce, which yesterday we put on some tofu and green beans. Gave it a real authentic Thai flavor. Sometimes that’s all you need: a great prepared sauce that has quality ingredients. So check that out if you like hot and spicy!
All right, thank you for joining me on It’s All About Food. I’m going to go and have some tea and take care of myself. And you should have a delicious week.
Transcribed by HT, 8/19/2016