Ian Theasby and Henry Firth, BOSH!

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Ian Theasby and Henry Firth, BOSH!: Simple Recipes • Amazing Food • All Plants
Ian Theasby and Henry Firth met in school at the age of eleven and live and work together at their BOSH! studio in East London. In June 2016 they posted their first ever recipe online. A year later, and they are the founders of the largest plant-based video channel on Facebook, reaching fifty million people a month. Everything they cook is plant based.
 

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Ian Theasby and Henry Firth, BOSH!

Caryn: Hi everybody, I’m Caryn Hartglass. Thanks for tuning in to It’s All About Food.

 

(Singing) It’s May! It’s May! The lusty month of May! That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray.

Sorry, I can’t help myself. It’s May 1st and it’s May! And I like to sing and it is lusty. We’re going to be talking about a lot of lusty things. I looked up the definition of lusty; lusty means in an archaic form, merry and joyous, but it also means healthy and robust and strong and energetic (like a lusty stew) because it’s all about food and we’re going to be talking about a lot of lusty food today in a moment when I introduce my guests, but I just wanted to say hi because I’ve missed the last two weeks. I’ve missed you and I’ve been away in the jungle of Costa Rica and now I’m back and a lot of wonderful things happened there – I turned 60 and it was just amazing to be there. There’s so much energy in the natural parts of Costa Rica where there are the bees and the bugs and the bats and the monkeys and the pizote and the toucans and all of the wonderful things that you just see hanging around; it’s very inspirational. If you want to know more about what went on during my trip, you can read my daily blog “What Vegans Eat” and I invite you to check out especially my birthday which was Day 1167. There are some fun videos there that you might enjoy.

Okay, now, very very exciting. Not only is it May, the lusty month of May, May 1st, but it is the release date here in the United States of a wonderful, gorgeous, lusty new book called BOSH!: Simple Recipes, Amazing Food, All Plants and guess what? We have the authors of this cookbook and the founders of BOSH.TV right here in the progressive radio network studio coming from East London of all places. Wait till you hear them, they’re adorable: Henry Firth and Ian Theasby. They met in school at the age of 11 and live and work together at their Bosh studio in East London. In June 2016 (that’s less than two years ago), they posted their first ever recipe online a year later and they are the founders of the largest plant-based video channel on Facebook reaching 50 million people a month. Everything they cook is plant-based. Henry and Ian!

Henry: Hey, how you doing?

Ian: Hey

Caryn: Hey, I’m great. I just love being here with you. There’s so much energy in this room.

Henry: I love that, I love that intro. That was so so nice. Thanks for having it.

Ian: That was really really nice. I like the singing as well. I can’t believe it’s May already.

Caryn: I know, it’s May!

Ian: I know, it’s unbelievable.

Henry: The sun is out. Costa Rica must have been fantastic.

Caryn: Yes, I have. I don’t know how to describe it but the first time I was invited to speak in a raw food conference and when the airplane landed, I felt something. And I have a special connection to Costa Rica: I ended up buying 40 acres of jungle property. It doesn’t have anything on it.

Henry: Can we come?

Caryn: Sure. And I’ve camped on it alone. Not in a while, though, and I think about maybe building small but right now I think about it just as like a sanctuary for the bees and the bugs. I’m not doing anything with it. But it’s very remote.

Ian: It sounds idyllic.

Henry: Wow, that’s fantastic. I’d love to be able to say I have. You sound like a Bond villain – James Bond. Like, I have 40 acres of Costa Rican jungle!

Caryn: But I really have a connection and this, okay, we’re on the subject. I used to camp in a certain area on the property and there were these two trees. They call them guava trees in Spanish, but they’re not guava – they’re guaba or the ice cream bean tree. And one of those trees – we had a thing. This tree talked to me! And that tree has since died. I get a little choked up when I talk about this tree because I really felt something. I’m not a tree hugger, okay!

Henry: So, what was the backstory when the tree spoke to you?

Caryn: Well, the most intense time and you’re just asking the right questions and I’m the interviewer here [laughter]. So, I had mentioned I had advanced ovarian cancer back in 2006 and when I came to visit my property after my 15 months of treatment, I’m going to get choked up here, but the tree said “I love you.” I wasn’t expecting anything, I just felt it and heard it. Okay, so Caryn’s wacky.

Henry: That’s so deep. We definitely need to go to Costa Rica and go and stay in the jungle and cook some food.

Ian: Yeah

Caryn: Oh, yeah. Big party.

Henry: Let’s do it.

Caryn: Let’s do it. Okay.

Henry: We’re in.

Caryn: You heard it! Okay, let’s do it. So, so many questions and you were just on the Today Show. I don’t know what they asked you there but let’s just talk about that – what did they ask you on the Today Show?

Henry: Well, they didn’t ask us anything. We had three minutes to cook three recipes with Megyn Kelly. So, it was live studio audience in front of us and behind us, three dishes from the book where we made Make Ahead Sauces because it was Make Ahead Monday, and it was a whirlwind of activity.

Caryn: And they tasted everything and they went “Oh, it’s so good!”?

Ian: Yeah, it was a really odd experience for us both. We sort of got there to the NBC building at the Rockefeller Center and we went in there, got briefed, had a little look at the studio and there’s nobody in there; not a soul to be seen. And then we went to our little dressing room (really really small). Got our makeup down and stuff.

Caryn: And I was going to say, did they do your hair and makeup?

Ian: Yeah. Yeah, they did all that. And then the wardrobe came and she – Henry and I only wear black t-shirts – and the wardrobe lady came and she was like “I think you guys are probably going to be okay” and I’m like “Yeah, this is us”

Henry: This is fine. Yeah, don’t worry about it.

Ian: And then the next time that we walked into that studio, there was just loads and loads of people and food that we had sort of helped prepare behind laid out on a table. It was a really fantastic experience.

Henry: Also, Megyn Kelly gave away a copy of our brand-new cookbook to every single person in the audience and they all cheered! There was like unanimous cheer which was amazing. It is actually – the video of it is online, so you can see it if you go hunting for it.

Caryn: Oh, wow. Okay, I don’t know how many people are familiar with BOSH.TV, but they make lots of wonderful – these overhead videos that take a minute or two. They’re very popular in social media and they’re beautiful.

Ian and Henry: Thank you.

Caryn: So, the speaking thing has been going on a long time. I’m vegan for 30. I can’t believe this is my…

Henry: Yeah, you’re old school.

Caryn: I’m old school. I’ve been vegan for 30 years.

Henry: But that’s good. That’s a cool phrase. Old school is definitely a cool thing to be.

Ian: Yeah, innovator. Trendsetter.

Caryn: But I’ve seen the progression of videos on YouTube and other places and I’ve actually been surprised because some people have gained some notoriety as vegan chefs/vegan cooks with some pretty crappy videos. And I go and look at them from time to time and I’m like, “What is it?” But you, I mean, it’s a whole other story. This is one gorgeous class act. Everything is just beautiful.

Ian and Henry: Thank you.

Caryn: Beautiful. You really put the quality into your videos what you’re doing.

Henry: Well, you know what, that’s so nice to hear. We do put a lot of time and effort into making it look as beautiful as we can because most importantly, we’re representing vegan food/plant-based food – just plants to the world – and it needs to look better. And the other thing is, we’re competing with things like cheese; like melty cheese pools. Or for someone who likes meat, a juicy steak being ripped open. And we’ve got plants, so we’ve got plants so we’ve got to be a bit more creative. And that’s why we put so much time and effort in.

Ian: Yeah. And social media is a funny place as well because you only have like a really small amount of time to get people’s attention, so if we want to grab their attention, the opening few seconds are really really key, so we always put like the best bit of the video right at the beginning. So, yeah, we do spend an awful lot of time really making the videos as good as we humanly possible.

Caryn: These short videos… You know, I’m old school okay, so I like watching how things are made and taking my time whatever, but I realized that in today’s world, everything is the soundbite and people are just scrolling. Like you said, you want to grab their attention but things need to be quick. And I’m thinking that maybe it’s an illusion too because I want to help people get back in the kitchen and cook, but most people complain it takes too long and they want things to be quick. And these short videos kind of make it look like it’s quick… [Whispers] But it’s not really.

Henry: That’s so true because, actually, the 60-second video will actually take you 20 minutes to cook. I think the really great way of describing it is, imagine that somebody has got… They’re looking at it with one eye. They’re looking at their phone with one eye and one thumb while their attention is on something else. And that’s what we’re competing with. Whether it’s kids on the bus or someone doing the shopping and looking at a video while paying the guy behind the till. You have to imagine you’re competing with all of that stuff, so it’s really important to make something engaging that catches their eye in 5 seconds and just looks high color, high gloss, high sex. And yeah, then they get into the kitchen and it’s going to take them 20 minutes but then they love it and they cook something fantastic and it’s plant-based.

Caryn: Well, you know what, I think it’s going to take a lot of them more than 20 minutes and I’ll tell you why.

Henry: Some of them maybe. Yeah, it depends which one.

Caryn: It depends on how skilled you are because I can do something in 20 minutes and I have some friends that when we cook together and I watch them painfully slowly chopping and I’m “Okay, how much… I can do that in two seconds!” Some people are slow.

Ian: Yeah, that’s true. Basic home economic skills seem to be lacking in today’s world which is a real shame. I think it’s a problem that stems from education system. I think there’s a lot of… There’s not enough emphasis on the importance of good quality home cooking and something as simple as just being able to use a knife and use it proficiently is overlooked as a skill from nowadays.

Caryn: Did you take home ec in school?

Ian: I did.

Henry: I don’t think I did. I think I might have messed around doing bread and butter pudding.

Caryn: What did you do in home ec?

Ian: Well, I’ll be honest with you, I did home economics all the way up until GCSE which in the UK you finished at 15 years old, so that was like 18 years. And if my home economics teacher could see me now like being a professional online chef, she would be like “This is, wow, I can’t believe it.” Yeah, they just wouldn’t believe it at all.

Henry: Yeah, they wouldn’t believe it.

Caryn: Well, I took home ec a long time ago and we learned how to make pound cake. It’s the stupidest thing.

Ian: What’s a pound cake?

Caryn: What is a pound cake?

Ian: Yeah, we don’t have.

Caryn: It’s like a pound of flour, pound of butter, pound of sugar. Something like that. You mix it up and it makes a cake. I don’t know if it’s a pound of sugar, but it’s like a pound, a pound, a pound.

Henry: Yeah, it’s a nice little ratio.

Caryn: And it’s a buttery yellow cake.

Ian: Nice.

Henry: Well, for us, we would definitely – we’ve been home taught. My mum taught me how to cook. Ian’s mum taught him how to cook and we’ve just always had a passion for food and creativity and also media. And I think where we are is a very exciting intersection of those three things. The fact that we’re not professionally trained, that we’re not like that kind of badass chef that spent ten years in incredibly grueling kitchen jobs, I think is actually quite helpful for our audience because it makes us think about the common person and simple food and what they actually want to cook. It’s not that fancy, we don’t use fancy ingredients, it’s just supposed to be easy.

Caryn: It is. I’ve been doing it for so long that it’s easy for me and when people say it’s hard, it’s always hard for me to understand what’s so hard about it. It’s easy. Yeah, okay. You met at eleven?

Ian: Yeah

Henry: We did

Caryn: And then, what’s the story about the vegan thing?

Ian: So, yeah. Henry and I met when we were 11 years old at our high school. We’re on the first day and both of us kind of grew like built a friendship together throughout the course of our schooling years. And when the schooling years came to an end but neither of us went to university or college and we kind of went our separate ways and we were trod both very different paths that when it comes to career. I kind of did fashion where I was doing first retail and then worked into buying and that was… It was fun but it kind of doesn’t have the soul. I was always craving something more. And then Henry will tell you, he went into the digital world.

Henry: Yeah, I was making websites for people. So, for me it was always about the internet/technology. I remember like Faceparty and then Google and then Myspace and then Facebook. And I was working; building websites all through that. Self-taught. But always a passionate cook and always very creative. I love music as well and I think we came together in a job about six years ago. So, we were friends and flat mates and we started working together on this startup, but again, as Ian said before, there was something lacking from that job as well. It was something we believed in but it wasn’t doing good in the world and at some point, about three years ago, there was just the realization in my brain of stuff’s broken in the world, specifically climate change is broken, and surely, we as a human race is better than this. Surely, we as a human race can fix things. We’re not that stupid and why isn’t more being done to reduce climate change.

Ian: Yeah and I suppose at that point there wasn’t any sort of direct thing to go and pursue, was there?

Henry: No, there was a break. A natural breakpoint after that business because it was in the process of being sold.

Ian: Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, Henry, like he said, had a desire to sort of use his career to improve where we are environmentally. But there wasn’t like an obvious sort of path to walk down and then that’s when vegan came into both of our lives. I kind of fell upon it. I was in the middle of a New Year’s resolution to give up alcohol for the first three months of 2015 and one month into that abstinence from alcohol, I found it really easy and decided that I’d up the ante and give up meat and found it quite difficult.

Caryn: Now, why would you do that?

Ian: Well, because I was just…

Henry: It was a challenge, right?

Ian: Yeah, a challenge needs to be exactly that. A challenge. And if I’m finding something really easy, it doesn’t feel like a challenge.

Caryn: But did you think that meat maybe wasn’t the best thing to eat or what?

Ian: Well, I looked at my diet at the time and I was like, okay, I could give up chocolate because that’s the sort of thing that people would give up or… But I don’t really eat that much chocolate.

Henry: It was kind of like lent, right? You were in a lent vibe?

Ian: Yeah, that kind of mentality where I thought, it’s easier to give something rather than to start something. So, rather than say “Oh, I’m going to jog like 10 miles a day,” I was like, “I’ll give up something that’s quite prevalent in my diet.” And I took a step back and looked at my diet and meat were just there. It was there for three meals a day more or less, so I decided that I’d give up meat and found it really difficult. Started doing reading about vegetarianism and the good things about it and the good things about the environment and the stuff that comes with it and, yeah, by the end of the month of February of 2015, I decided that I’m just going to try this vegan thing and give it a whirl.

Henry: By the way, we were living together at this point as well and I think we were living with my ex-girlfriend at the time?

Ian: Yeah.

Henry: And Ian was on a… Like he was cooking these curries and I remember looking at them and just being like “No, mate.” I was a full meat-eater, right. I loved meat, I had a personal trainer who had me on meat at the time. And I remember mocking Ian and thinking how ridiculous it was that he’d got taken his health kick to vegetarian and then vegan and just being like “Dude, what are you on about? This looks so much tastier, what I’m eating, than what you’re eating over there.” And I asked him questions like “Where do you get your protein from?” or “It’s not going to save the world.”

Caryn: You’re programmed to ask those questions.

Henry: Yeah, it is weird, isn’t it? And then, at one point about six weeks in, I was thinking about this climate change stuff and thinking about “What can I do in climate change? How can I help that thing?” And we put on Cowspiracy on the big screen and that was for me, the turning point. And overnight, after watching that, I just knew I had to go vegan. And before long after that, it became apparent that this was obviously the place to apply our skills to help the world do what we’d just done, whether they did it completely or whether they did it a bit, and just help them across that like journey that we’d gone through.

Caryn: Don’t forget how you felt before… Don’t forget.

Henry: Yes, exactly. You’re so right. Well, we kind of think about it all the time, don’t we?

Ian: Yeah. What the?

Henry: Just the feeling of eating meat and how we felt about eating meat. I think one of the things that’s really helped us with this book and with our channel and with our approach is the fact that we are quite targeted towards meat-eaters. And there’s a lot of people that say that, but I think we really really are to our core to the point that we don’t talk about the vegan word on the front cover of the book even. Of course it’s vegan. We’re not ashamed to be vegan but we also are much more about showing delicious food rather than delicious vegan food.

Caryn: Now, when you were looking at his curry and thinking that your meat looked better, do you remember what it was that looked better to you?

Henry: Yes. I mean, his curry was fantastic. Like, he’s a great chef, so the curry would have been great. Now, I would be absolutely delighted to eat that curry, but I remember the… There’s just it’s that thing when you say to a proper hardcore meat-eater, “Oh, we’re going to a vegan restaurant” and they’re like “Ugh” and they turn their nose up and they’re like “Why would I eat vegan food? I’m not vegan” without thinking that a significant amount of the food you eat is vegan. So, I think it was just more the word “vegan” rather than anything else.

Caryn: It’s just fascinating what we learn about ourselves and how we just assume things without thinking.

Ian: And I suppose it’s also like what we’re not taught. That’s the wrong word, but like what we’re exposed to.

Caryn: We’re programmed.

Henry: What we’re used to, yeah.

Ian: Yeah, I mean, think about how many times you walk down the street and you’ll see an advert for a burger or some ribs or some chicken and you’ve seen that ever since you can recognize what things are on a screen or on a billboard and you see it like literally hundreds of thousands of times and it just imbeds into your mind that this is what you’re supposed to be tasting. And so, to break away from that, it’s quite difficult.

Henry: And you’re looking for it to round off a meal. So, I would have been looking at his curry, I’m just getting into the mindset of me three years ago now, I would have been looking at his curry and the sauce would have been delicious. The ingredients would have been the same bar one. So, there would have been onion, there would have been garlic, there would have probably been coconut milk and spices. And it’s just that extra tiny bit of flesh that I was looking for to make it a proper meal. And then in going vegan, you have that realization that you don’t need that.

Ian: Yeah. And actually, any foodie worth a salt should really relish the opportunity to adopt a vegan diet because what you’re doing is you’re taking away that sort of mainstay of a plate and you have to focus on the accompanying things that you would usually sort of accompany the meat. So you have to focus your effort on the things you wouldn’t usually focus your effort on, which for me I just see it as like a challenge, and you get the real feeling of reward when you cook something up and it’s like super super tasty.

Henry: This might sound like a little bit out there as a comparison, but if you think about the design of a garden in the United Kingdom or America versus the design of a garden in Japan, okay. So, in the United Kingdom or America, your garden would be focused around one thing. So, you’re going to have like a water feature in the middle or maybe a big circle and around it you’ll have things going on. Whereas in Japan, they have this – they have no center in their gardens. So, in fact, you’re supposed to get a different viewpoint wherever you walk around the garden. It’s more immersive and it’s more about the experience of you in relation to that garden.

Ian: The feeling.

Henry: And I think we look for… Traditionally we look for meat or fish to be the centerpiece of our meal and once you drop that and it’s more about plant-based food and you’re eating vegan food, you have to just be a little bit more like floating around the Japanese garden and play with flavors and play with ingredients because there may not be a center.

Caryn: Okay. What does BOSH mean? What does BOSH mean?

Henry: Good question! [laughs]

Ian: It is a good question. So, our philosophy is…

Caryn: And it is BOSH! (exclamation point).

Henry: Absolutely!

Ian: Bish Bash Bosh. It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s get it down now, it’s no messing around. It’s just, yeah, really good food. Bish Bash Bosh!

Caryn: So, it’s the end of Bish Bash Bosh. Is that a British thing? Bish Bash Bosh!

Henry: I mean, it probably is more of a British thing, yeah. It’s an exclamation that was made popular by some chefs. Jamie OIiver used to say it. Joe Wicks used to say it, he’s a sports guy and a chef, cook I’d say probably. But also, it’s just become synonymous with done, easy, in a pan, simple, BOSH!

Caryn: Was it obvious that that’s was what you wanted it to be? Or were you sitting around like “What are we going to call ourselves?”

Henry: We had that moment, yeah. There was… We had what we call a “name storm” when we’re sat down just throwing names on the whiteboard and there were some terrible names that came out, but BOSH! It just… When it came out, it just made sense.

Ian: Yeah, it was jumping off the board. There were other things like VTASTY TV…

Henry: That was terrible.

Ian: And I think we’ve probably got that somewhere. Like a picture of it.

Henry: Yeah, I have the domain name.

Ian: Yeah, we should probably dig that out. But yeah. The word BOSH, I mean, it definitely jumped off the page because, well, it’s the word BOSH.

Henry: It just made sense.

Ian: Yeah.

Caryn: 50 million viewers about every month?

Henry: Yep.

Caryn: That’s amazing.

Henry: I know, it’s fantastic.

Caryn: And I don’t… I mean, how many vegans are there in the world? I don’t think we’re all watching your channel.

Henry: No, loads of them are not vegan.

Caryn: Which is wonderful!

Henry: We have a massive percentage of our viewers and now the readers of our book are not vegan. So, they’ll be flexitarian or they just like food. Some people will follow our channel and still not even know that it’s vegan because it’s not something that we talk about a lot.

Caryn: Right.

Henry: But it’s great that we’re having that impact and the most beautiful thing is when people send you pictures and we get a lot of pictures where people have cooked our food. They tag us in it and it means they’re sharing delicious veggies with the world.

Caryn: I’m just curious, how much do you film to make a two minute video?

Ian: Well, I suppose it depends on the recipe but for a good example, recently, we released a dish called Indian Style Pasta, which is something that we do quite regularly where you take two cuisines or two world cuisines and you kind of blend them together to see what you’ve got, and we took Indian style curry and we took, obviously, Italian pasta and we blended the two together and the dish was very very tasty. It was like super tasty but that dish I remember specifically how long it took because we had a train to catch and we were like on a really tight schedule. We were like, can we get this video completely done before we get on this train? And we started cooking at half past nine and we finished cooking at half past eleven and made our train for quarter past twelve. So yeah, that was like a two hour one; however, some of them take significantly longer than that.

Henry: And I think…

Caryn: Two hours is not a lot.

Ian: No, it’s not a lot.

Henry: But bear in mind, that is a fast one. We’ve shot videos that have taken five hours before just to shoot and then you have the edit, you’ve got the edit time, you’ve got the planning. So, I think on average it’s about 8 to 10 hours for a video.

Ian: Yeah and that’s like from inception to total completion.

Henry: Yeah, but it can go up, and we’re starting to change our videos as well so they’ve got more of me and Ian in them as well. So, they’re going to take even longer as well.

Caryn: Yes, I’ve tried to make some of those overhead videos and we don’t have all the right equipment, so that that’s really important.

Henry: Well, if you want any tips, let us know. We’ll happily help out. We can give you a little equipment list.

Caryn: Okay, good. Yeah, one thing I got was the vertical arm so that I can hang my camera down.

Ian: Yes, very very important.

Henry: I think the nice thing about having that vertical overhead view is it just removes everything else. It removes distractions and it makes the person feel like they’re cooking the food. You also kind of make sure the perspective is right so the hands look like your own hands. A bit like a first person computer game. That kind of thing.

Caryn: Very good. Okay, so were you surprised when you started getting millions of viewers? Was this the plan in the business plan?

Henry: It was the plan. Yeah. We… it’s been a. On the one hand, you could say it’s been an overnight success, but I don’t think many overnight successes happened overnight, and we spent both, Ian and I, spent over a year working on separate ideas about how we could build something vegan before we came together to make BOSH! and even we were working on BOSH! for a solid good six months before we would have put the first video anywhere. And not only that, but we brought our ten years of experience in different fields into that six months, so I think there was a lot of effort into making it an overnight success.

Ian: Yeah.

Caryn: I’m a singer and I’m waiting to become an overnight success.

Henry: Well, your singing was beautiful.

Caryn: And speaking of singing, just because this is my show and it’s all about me and it’s all about food, but it’s all about me, I just sang this weekend in a concert for the Leonard Bernstein centennial. So, he was born a hundred years ago and there’s like 2500 concerts going on to celebrate his music.

Ian: 2500? That’s a lot of concerts!

Henry: Yeah, wow.

Caryn: Yeah, this was like a library concert. We’re doing some more in different libraries but there were a lot of people that came and it was wonderful. And I sang this song from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide called “Glitter and Be Gay.” It’s a coloratura song and I performed it when I was younger and I sang it and I just want to say that not everybody who’s 60 can sing this song and there were a few people in the audience that said “Not many people will do that” and I attribute it to my food.

Henry: Good for you.

Caryn: It’s kept my vocal chords kind of clean.

Henry: Well, you look fantastic. There is absolutely no way you would say that you were 60 years old.

Caryn: No, but the point is, this is what 60 looks like. Everybody else, I don’t know, they look like they’re not healthy.

Henry: You look great so well done! This is – we need to go like 30 more years and hopefully we can look like shining pillars of health.

Ian: Exactly, fingers crossed. In fact, before going vegan, I had absolutely no preconceptions of the physical benefits that the vegan diet may bring. Like you start eating a whole plant-based diet and then all of a sudden you notice, “Oh, my hair’s a bit thicker. Oh, my skin’s a bit clearer. Oh, I’m sleeping sounder at night. Oh, I’m going to bed easier and waking up fresher and like all the weight’s dropped off me.” I had like no idea that anything like that was going to happen so it’s, yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Henry: So, how was it for you? Was it about animals or health or the environment?

Caryn: I was 15 years old and a guy in school said he was vegetarian and then all of a sudden, I just like was one of those <ding!>.

Henry: So, you didn’t know that was a thing before?

Caryn: It was, well nobody was talking about it back in, well, a long time ago. And then I realized I don’t want to kill animals. It just was obvious. Isn’t it obvious everybody? It was obvious and

so I started on my path to be vegetarian. I wasn’t vegetarian right away. I had a lot of fights with my mom and then I was vegetarian. I was still eating fish and it took a while to get rid of the fish, the scaly vegetable. And chicken’s the feathered vegetable. And then by the time I was 30, I had started reading things. There were actually… This was 1988 and there was the Vegetarian Resource Journal was out and Vegetarian Times magazine existed here in the United States. And there was a Vegan Society in Great Britain.

Henry: Which is still going. Still going strong.

Caryn: Around for a long time actually; way before me. And then I realized I had to give up butter and cheese and I love to cook and I love making New York style cheesecake and all that, so I couldn’t imagine doing it. And I actually had a business trip to Israel – I worked as an engineer and I was going to spend three months there and I decided I’m going to go vegan in Israel. And what’s interesting now in Israel is like a major vegan scene.

Henry: Is it like 9% or something like that? A large portion of people yeah.

Caryn: It was easy because there’s always hummus.

Henry: And falafel. I mean, those guys know how to make a falafel right?

Caryn: So, yeah.

Henry: Fantastic. And then so, how did you deal with the cheese and the butter?

Caryn: Do you like the way he’s like turning this around and asking me the questions? Haha.

Henry: It’s research!

Caryn: Yeah. Well for me now, I told you before I had advanced ovarian cancer, so when I eliminated dairy at 30, a lot of my menstrual symptoms went away. So, dairy. And I ate a lot of dairy till I was 30 and I still think that that was a whole part of my health issues. But dairy is terrible. It’s a hormone soup and it totally messes up your your balance and they do autopsies on people that die at certain ages and they find that most women have breast cancer and most men have prostate cancer and this is all hormone connected.

Henry: Wow. So, even if they don’t know they have it, it’s there.

Caryn: No, they have it there.

Henry: Yeah yeah. Wow, I did not know that.

Ian: I didn’t know that either.

Caryn: Well, I’ll tell you where I heard that. So, this is the week of the 7th annual Food Revolution Summit: foodrevolutionsummit.org. And if you haven’t been there, visit my website responsibleeatingandliving.com. There’s a link – you can go there and register. It’s halfway through. You can still get a lot of great information and I heard that today actually. I heard a number of things I’m going to tell you about.

Henry: Okay.

Caryn: I learned from Dr. William Lee today. Today was the anti-cancer show, so they had three speakers talking about foods that fight cancer and he said – do you know what stem cells are?

Henry: Yes, of course.

Caryn: So, stem cells are like these magical little beginning cells that life comes from.

Henry: That’s all we are at the beginning.

Caryn: Yes, stem cells. And they use stem cells whenever they can to do some major healing, but, and it’s in research right now, we don’t even know the power of stem cells, but cancer, when we treat cancer we kill whatever cancer we can but it’s really hard to get the stem cells.

Henry: Right. Okay.

Caryn: And so, time can pass and you think you’re healed and all a sudden the cancer comes back because of the stem cells are still there. Well, I learned purple potatoes kill stem cells!

Henry: Bad stem cells or all stem cells?

Caryn: The cancer stem cells.

Henry: Wow. Okay.

Caryn: Purple potatoes. Have you had purple potatoes?

Henry: We have. Yep, we have. In fact, my girlfriend’s parents, they like to grow exotic vegetables and they gave us purple potatoes.

Ian: Yeah. Super tasty.

Caryn: The first time I had them, they tasted like donuts. They don’t always taste like donuts but this time they tasted like donuts.

Henry: They must have been good ones.

Caryn: Okay, so, we’ve babbled enough. Now let’s talk, not enough, but let’s talk about the book. It’s absolutely stunning. The photos are stunning, the food is stunning, and that’s important. In my vegan activism, I like to say that if we want to promote this thing, that as individuals, we need to look the best that we possibly can. It’s not about being pretty or handsome. It’s about looking fit and healthy. And the food’s got to look good.

Ian: Absolutely.

Caryn: And those two things together, people are going to be like “I want that and I want to look like you.” Okay, so I noted a few recipes that I wanted to talk about. The first one is Mushroom and Guinness Pie.

Henry: Oh, yeah. That’s fantastic that one. Shall I do this one? Do you know what? That is one of my favorite recipes.

Caryn: I love drinking Guinness.

Henry: Exactly.

Ian: Yeah, I like Guinness.

Caryn: And Guinness wasn’t always vegan or at least not in the United States.

Henry: I celebrated when it went vegan about a year ago and we had to get it in there. It’s such an amazing pie that one. It’s just, it’s easy to make because pretty much, you just got to get the mushroom, you get the Guinness, you cook them down a little bit, and then you put a pie crust on top. But it’s so warming. It’s perfect for when you have cold weather. Maybe not today, but it’s just such a British pub classic. Love that recipe.

Ian: Perfect with some potatoes.

Henry: Perfect with potatoes or chips or even minted mushy peas or minted peas.

Caryn: Minted mushy peas [laughs].

Henry: It’s so British. It’s proper British that.

Caryn: Cooking with beer, any kind of beer, is really fantastic.

Henry: Yep.

Caryn: Okay, the next one you know is a super popular item. They call it Guacaroni. Guacaroni’s really neat.

Henry: This is one of Ian’s genius creations. I have to give Ian all of the credit for this!

Ian: Guacaroni. Yeah, that was a crazy one. We basically, as I said before about the Indian style pasta, we have a penchant for blending world cuisines and, obviously, who doesn’t like guacamole? And who doesn’t like pasta?

Henry: Or macaroni, specifically?

Ian: Yes, macaroni, specifically. But yeah, initially we were thinking, maybe you could make like a thin guacamole and turn it into basically like an avocado sauce for spaghetti, but that didn’t seem inventive enough, so we kind of thought which pastas it would go with and we looked at macaroni. I thought, oh macaroni is good in macaroni and cheese, so surely this is the perfect shaped pasta to go with a creamy guacamole. And then we were like, well what would you call such a thing? And then you start thinking – it’s like well, it’s got to be Guacaroni.

Henry: There’s only one answer. I can’t believe someone else didn’t invent it first.

Ian: It was a light bulb moment. It was like, Guacaroni! Why isn’t that not a thing?

Henry: That was a moment of genius. Now it is a thing.

Ian: And you know what, since we’ve, as Henry has said earlier on, since we get photographs all the time – we get loads and loads of photographs – but since we’ve released that book in the UK, one of the photographs that we keep getting it again and again and again is Guacaroni. Because you’re going to get cold. You can make it the night before, pop it in lunchbox, and have it the next day for your lunch.

Henry: It’s easy. It’s creamy. Also, it’s beautiful in terms of color. It’s green. You can put cherry tomatoes in there and it goes red. It’s wonderful.

Caryn: Yeah, it can be good cold but I really love cooking with avocado when it’s warm. It’s a whole different flavor and nobody’s doing it.

Henry: Yeah, maybe we should try more warm avocado dishes?

Ian: I agree, yeah.

Caryn: We’ve made like a fettuccine with avocado and walnuts sauce. It’s very rich. It’s really really amazing.

Ian: That does sound amazing. We got a quick tip for the old avocados. We were lucky enough to spend a bit of time with the CEO of the World Avocado Association about three months ago.

Henry: He was an interesting character.

Ian: Yeah.

Henry: Avocados are his fruit.

Caryn: WAO, the World Avocado Association.

Ian: Yeah, we did it. So, we cooked up – we were invited to make the dessert out of the three-course meal. Two of the chefs were invited to do the other two courses and we decided to make an avocado brownie which was really really good but the tip in about the avocado brownie; the tips is about good guacamole and I asked this guy, I said “So, what tips would you give to make fantastic guacamole” and he said yellow tomatoes. Use yellow tomatoes because they’re sweeter and they have like a slightly softer flesh and it just works perfectly with the fleshy avocados to make a fantastic guac, so that’s a tip from the CEO of the World Avocado Association.

Caryn: And I bet it helps the color too.

Ian: Exactly.

Henry: He didn’t like it when a red tomato was popping out of the… ruining the beautiful green of “his fruits.”

Ian: He honestly was dressed in a crisp white suit. He had perfectly prune skin and he was like a Bond villain.

Henry: He was like something out of the movies. I mean everything in New York feels to us like we’re in the movies, but this guy was honestly like something out of the movies.

Ian: Top lovely guy though.

Caryn: Okay, next recipe is the Irresistible Risotto.

Henry: Ah. So, yes. That’s delicious.

Ian: It is super delicious.

Caryn: So, what boggles my mind is going out into the world and you eat in a restaurant and you may even give them notice and they’ll tell you they can make a risotto, for example. Now, I know risotto. You have to cook it a long time whatever. But how hard is it to make a vegan risotto? It’s not hard.

Henry: Not at all.

Ian: No.

Caryn: And yet, I’ve had so many crappy ones. We went to this fine Italian restaurant and they were like frozen vegetables mixed with rice. It wasn’t risotto, but anyway, you have a lovely irresistible risotto.

Ian: It is pretty irresistible that one.

Caryn: And it’s great – it’s got a lot of green in it.

Ian: Oh, so much green, yeah. That’s one thing – my parents they were like, we would go to restaurants as kids and I would be like “I might try the risotto” and they were like “Oh, don’t have the risotto. It’s really boring. It’s just like a savory rice pudding.” And I was like…

Caryn: That sounds good! A savory rice pudding.

Ian: Yeah, like a savory rice pudding. And I think a lot of people don’t really put much emphasis on what else complements the rice of the risotto, so we went to town with that and got so many veggies in that. Super healthy for you.

Henry: And also, we are big on greens, so we should talk about nutrition like that at some point, but for us, getting as much green into our diet is a priority every single day. So, we’ll often wake up in the morning and it sounds really obvious and most of your listeners probably do this anyway, but we’ll start every day with a green smoothie filled with kale, spinach or chard or whatever we can to make sure we’re getting everything we need in our body. And that spring green risotto is a great way to pack yourself full of things like magnesium and iron and just enjoy comforting food but also get some health in there.

Ian: Yeah and it’s good cold that.

Caryn: The risotto?

Ian: Yeah, you can make a huge batch of it for dinner and then have it for lunch the next day as well.

Henry: Also, it looks beautiful.

Ian: Yeah.

Caryn: Let’s see here.

Henry: It’s a beautiful looking thing.

Caryn: Page 60. Okay. Oh, here it is. I’m going to put it up here: look everybody, how beautiful that is.

Henry: Look at that.

Caryn: I want to lick the page. Okay, now most of the time, I’m the kind of person that likes to eat one thing at a time. And I like to really enjoy and concentrate on the flavor of one thing before moving on to the next, which is really frustrating for like my mom or someone who’s prepared a dish and they say “What do you think of them? I haven’t tried it yet. I’m not there yet.” But then sometimes, some things look really good together and the Mezze Cake is one of those.

Henry: There’s a funny story behind this one actually. You even said that some recipes take us 5 hours to shoot.

Caryn: Yeah.

Henry: That one is. That’s probably the single longest shoots we ever did for one recipe. I think the inspiration for that dish came from – it actually came from a guy we know called Jamie and he challenged us to make a lasagna that involved falafel. So, we were kind of thinking, how could we get those Middle Eastern flavors into something that was all packed together and it was fairly early on in the journey. It was probably the 30th or 40th recipe that we ever shot and the inspiration was very simple: layered veggies, a bit of rice, and let’s put falafel – a layer of falafel over the top. We’re going to bake that down and of course it’s filled with delicious flavors like hummus.

Caryn: Hummus makes a great frosting.

Henry: Yeah. Like, tapenade is in there. You’ve also got sun-dried tomatoes. It’s a fantastic dish. It takes a long time to create, but then you get this beautiful concoction and the most important thing is every single bite of every slice of this cake tastes like all of the amazing flavors of a Middle Eastern restaurant in every bite.

Caryn: I’m thinking of, I don’t know what made me think of this, but Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where the little girl is chewing the gum and she’s going…

Ian: Veruca Salt.

Caryn: Right. And you’re thinking about all of the flavors she’s getting out of the gum. Okay, never mind.

Henry: That’s so exactly what it is.

Ian: Cakes should be a celebration. I suppose that’s like a celebration of vegetables because you can dress it however. Look at how beautiful that is on the top, right? You can go to town with the decoration.

Caryn: Have you ever put candles in one?

Ian: No.

Henry: Maybe we should!

Ian: Yeah, we should definitely do that!

Henry: A birthday Mezze cake.

Ian: A hundred percent.

Caryn: Absolutely, why not?

Henry: And by the way, that recipe has had about at least 5 to 6 million views online.

Caryn: Oh my goodness!

Henry: It’s one of our biggest food videos ever.

Caryn: Okay, the one that I want to try just because it looks like really fun to make is the Spiral Tart.

Henry: Isn’t that beautiful?

Caryn: Yes, now that probably requires a lot of Zen.

Ian: It requires a really sharp mandolin.

Caryn: Yes.

Henry: We had a bit of a tease was there. We had a little bit of a tiff while we were shooting this video, do you remember?

Ian: Yeah, I do, yeah.

Henry: I had to go for a walk – Ian was the one creating it and it took so long and it was so difficult and at that point we were still learning our craft, so sometimes tensions got high and I just went for a little walk and left him crafting this masterpiece.

Ian: Yeah, the video, it took a long time to shoot, but this is absolutely a labor of love. Like if you’ve got a spare half an hour to sort of mandolin all the vegetables and to sort of build it out into this beautiful sort of swirly spirally tart, it’s absolutely completely worth it. And you can go, you can introduce some really nice flavors into the bottom as well because you like line your pie dish with your pastry and then you, I think on this recipe we put tomatoes also on the bottom.

Henry: Yes, we have tomato on the bottom with a tiny hint of chili.

Ian: That’s it but you could quite easily do something else like what a…

Henry: Pesto would work great.

Ian: Pesto would work perfectly with this. And then, yeah, we do carrots and zucchini and eggplant, but again, you could probably be experimental with the things that you use. But yes, a super super nice dish.

Henry: And it just looks so beautiful as well.

Caryn: So, had you made it before you filmed it?

Henry: Oh, no.

Ian: Yeah, that one we just thought, “Right. This is how you do it. Let’s ghost town film it from the oft.

Henry: We in at the beginning for about the first, I’d say six months, we tended to shoot and test at the same time. And if they didn’t work, we would re-shoot. But we’ve got to the point now where we’ll test every single recipe that we put online as a video we’ll get tested at least twice. And that book we’ve tested every recipe in there five six seven times. It also, like they were very big differences in terms of recipe books and the kind of quality that you get. So, if you go for the big chefs, they’ll have tested a lot of times to make sure it’s perfect. But often, smaller chefs or smaller blogs might not have the time or the budget to do that. And one thing that’s really worth saying about this book is it’s been through big chef level testing. So, every recipe in there is bulletproof.

Caryn: Okay, I want to show another just stunning photo. This is the Bosh Wellington.

Henry: Oh yes.

Caryn: And you’ve got the roasted vegetables and some greens there. I don’t know what the greens are.

Ian: We’re from a small smallish city in England called Sheffield and Sheffield is in the county of Yorkshire and in Yorkshire, roast dinners are a big deal, so we absolutely needed to put a banging roast dinner in this book.

Henry: This is the kind of thing that you would eat for Thanksgiving or Christmas. If you didn’t want to eat bird or something then, which we don’t, then this is perfect. And it’s so delicious that any meat eaters at the table will definitely definitely be taking your food.

Caryn: It’s stunning but I want to talk too about the roasted vegetables and potatoes because we make them a lot and they’re like the simplest thing to do and then you’ve got them all in your Dutch oven or whatever you put them in. And then you bring it out and they’re all caramelized and just fantastic.

Ian: Nice and crispy.

Caryn: And so comforting and satisfying. It’s… I love. And people people don’t talk enough about roast vegetables in my opinion.

Henry: What’s your favorite roast vegetable?

Caryn: Well, so I like, I like a bunch of things. Like the onion when it’s roasted; gets all caramelized.

Ian: Good point.

Caryn: And potatoes and sweet potatoes. I’m not big on parsnips.

Henry: Oh, I do love a good parsnip.

Caryn: I like it mixed in things, but not alone. It’s just me. What am I missing here?

Henry: Garlic.

Caryn: Oh, garlic.

Henry: Just when you get a little piece of garlic that’s been roasting away for like 45 minutes. It’s incredible.

Caryn: That’s like the bonus. And it gets all gooey.

Henry: So, the bonus you can just suck it all out. It’s fantastic. The browner the better.

Caryn: Okay, we love food! So, we’re talking the hour away about food. So, you have a select selection of hummus. There should always be hummus. Hummus is hummus. Many different flavored hummuses’ because they’re easy to make and they’re delicious and everyone loves them. And then you’ve got some vegetable maki and I want to say that maki is not an easy thing to photograph and this picture looks kind of nice.

Henry: Oh, thank you. Yes, that is beautiful, isn’t it?

Caryn: Yes.

Ian: Yes, that’s a good one.

Caryn: So, while we’re here and I’m looking at the maki, what I want to ask you is: you’re here in New York City, have you been here before?

Ian: Yeah, we were here in October, weren’t we?

Henry: We were, yeah.

Caryn: Where have you been eating and where do you plan on eating?

Henry: The funny story…

Caryn: Have you been to Beyond Sushi down the street?

Henry: We have. That was the last time we came here we went to Beyond Sushi. Oh my goodness, they are genius.

Ian: He’s not a chef that guy, he’s an artist.

Henry: Yes.

Ian: Like straight up, like that food just looks unbelievable. You just look at it – I don’t want to eat that. I want to put it on my mantlepiece at home.

Caryn: Right, with the beautiful colors on top of each piece.

Henry: We actually shot a video while we were there so a little bit of a food review, which is going to be coming soon on BOSH!

Caryn: Coming soon!

Henry: So, we have done Beyond Sushi, but this trip has been focused on burgers, so we’re actually doing a video about burgers where we wanted to sample all of New York’s finest vegan burgers.

Caryn: Are you going to Flying Marty’s Vegan Burger?

Henry: Should we?

Caryn: Yeah.

Henry: Maybe that’s straight after this then.

Ian: Where is that?

Caryn: I think he’s down in the 20s, but he was a pilot. Retired. Vegan. And he’s – it’s just a little place, but Flying Marty’s Vegan Burger. I think he uses a Beyond Burger now.

Henry: Okay.

Ian: Oh, cool. That’s cool. Well, just this morning, before we came to see you guys, we nipped into a little diner in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg, called Champs. Have you heard of that?

Henry: Of course you have. You must know it, of course.

Caryn: Yep.

Ian: Oh my god, their food. First and foremost, the three ladies that we were chatting to are all legends. We loved them. We had such a great conversation. They’re so well aligned with so many of our values; but the food that they made today was nothing short of astonishing.

Henry: World class.

Ian: Yeah, it was. It was just world class.

Henry: We’ve also sampled the Superiority Burger, which we heard was the finest burger in America and then…

Caryn: What did you think?

Henry: We thought it was amazing. I like what they’ve done with pure plants – is very very impressive. But before that, we went to sample the other end of the spectrum, which was White Castle and their new Impossible Slider because we wanted to see how what White Castle did with that. That was interesting.

Ian: Yeah, that was. Another shout-out to the Superiority Burger. That little – the way that they operate is so exciting. To sort of stand there at the counter and watch all the chef’s just in broad daylight. Just operating so swiftly.

Caryn: It is a tiny tiny hole in the wall.

Henry: It’s so New York, isn’t it? Tiny space but very cool and very high-quality product.

Ian: Exactly.

Caryn: Have you been to Blossom?

Ian and Henry: No.

Caryn: My partner Gary, he loves the Blossom Burger.

Henry: Okay.

Ian: Again, is that in Manhattan or?

Caryn: Yes. So, there are – they have a bunch of restaurants. The one we go to is up by on Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side.

Ian: What time are we leaving today?

Henry: After Blossom, obviously!

Caryn: And then PS Kitchen, they have a Beyond Burger.

Henry: Oh yes.

Ian: Big shout-out to those guys.

Caryn: And they make it pretty greasy [laughs].

Henry: We love those. That place is fantastic.

Ian: The food was great but the ethos of that place is fantastic as well. If I remember correctly, they employ people who were down on the luck before.

Henry: It’s ex-convicts. So, they employ ex-convicts and all of the profits go towards helping ex-convicts get rehabilitated into society and she’s fantastic.

Ian: And like the food that we had on the last trip in October, that was some of the best food that we had. It was really really good. Fair play to those guys. Love that kind of…

Henry: We also shot a video there, didn’t we?

Ian: Yeah, we did.

Caryn: Have you been to any of the Candles?

Henry: No.

Caryn: Oh my goodness! Now, okay, whether you have a burger or not, you have to go to one of them.

Henry: Okay. Deal.

Caryn: I mean, you just have to.

Ian: It sounds like we’re going to have to come back!

Caryn: They’ve won the most awards. They’ve been doing it since the early 90s, I think, and the owner. It’s – there’s Candle Cafe which is the first one. Which is on – it’s in-between 74th and 75th on Third Avenue. Then there’s Candle 79; it’s more upscale. It’s on 79th and Lexington on the East Side. Both on the East Side. Then on the West Side by 89th and 90th Street on Broadway is Candle West and you must go there.

Henry: We absolutely will. It sounds like we should take notes of the next places to go.

Caryn: Well, you have to. I mean that is, you can’t not go there, and that’s the best.

Ian: It’s such a shame that we’re going back tonight.

Henry: I know.

Caryn: Oh no! You’re leaving tonight? And then I would say, you should come over and eat over at our house because we make amazing food.

Henry: We’ll do that on the next trip. Hopefully that will be really soon.

Ian: Fingers crossed.

Caryn: But I just want to say that the owners of the Candles, Joy Pearson and Bart Potenza, are beautiful beautiful people. I think Bart just turned 80.

Henry: Wow.

Caryn: They’re just energetic, lovely. I can’t say enough wonderful things about them and you feel all that in the restaurant.

Ian: Yeah, we’ll have to go.

Caryn: But you feel that in a lot of vegan restaurants – the love.

Henry: So, a question for you that’s relevant then to the burgers is: what’s your perfect American burger?

Caryn: Yeah, that’s a good question. So, my partner Gary, he’s more the burger boy than I am. The guy thing (the burgers). But so, and because I’ve been a vegan for so long, I’m not looking for something that tastes like chopped meat or flesh. And we’ve actually created a burger that I really like which is made with – it’s a combination of grains. It’s got red rice, black rice, millet, and a turanicum (which is also called Kamut) and then a bunch of flavors. And I find it has a really nice texture and holds up really nicely. And then, to me, a burger is all about the bun and the shmears and the goo and everything that goes with it. So, you have a nice chipotle mayo or something that you can make or buy and the tomato and the lettuce and the good bun.

Henry: With just a kick of spice in there.

Caryn: Yeah, that’s what makes it.

Ian: Yeah, definitely. The guys from Champs were saying the same things, weren’t they?

Henry: That’s so true, yes, it was McKenna.

Ian: Yeah, good chef.

Henry: That’s exactly what she would put on hers. Was chipotle mayo. There you go – you and McKenna are like kindred spirits.

Caryn: Whoever that is.

Henry: She is the head chef at Champs. So, there you go. You’re with good, yeah.

Caryn: Oh, okay, hi! We’re together on that.

Henry: You are.

Caryn: Alright, well, we just have like 2-3 minutes left.

Henry: Wow, time has flown really quickly!

Caryn: Time flies. I want to ask some silly questions!

Henry: Go for it!

Caryn: I’ve got four minutes. Okay, a couple things I noticed in your book when you talk about the appliances and tools and things you need. You didn’t mention that people need a rice cooker and you talked about how to make rice and then can… I don’t understand what the big thing is about making rice and you talked about how easy it is. I mean, it really is easy, right. What is it?

Henry: So, my dad gave me a recipe when I was really young. It’s one of the finest recipes he’s given me, I think, apart from the paella, which is also in our book. It’s very simply, you get the water up to the boil, you put in a two to one ratio of water to rice, you have the water boiling, you pour it in, put the lid on the top, and then turn it down as low as it can go, and you give it 12 minutes then you turn it off, leave it to sit for a bit. Now some people go 10 minutes rather than 12 minutes, but that just works every single time. But I think if you didn’t be lucky to have my father to give you that equation then it is, I guess, easy to burn it if you have too much water. But yeah, we don’t really use rice cookers.

Ian: No. No, we don’t.

Caryn: No, no. Anyway, I just, I was like yeah, no rice cooker.

Henry: So, if you’re listening and you don’t know how to cook rice, that works perfectly and don’t worry about it.

Caryn: The other thing you don’t have is an instant pot.

Ian: What’s an instant pot?

Henry: Is that like a crock pot? So, it’s a really slow cooker? Is it like a slow cooker?

Caryn: I’m not into pressure cooking. It’s a pressure cooker and I mean, a lot of people swear by them and the instant pot is from Canada and it’s quite the trending rage.

Henry: Okay.

Caryn: Especially for people who don’t like to take too long cooking things because things are quick. But I love to cook and I’ve never really felt a need for it and maybe one day when I discover it, it’ll be great, but I don’t know.

Henry: No, we’re with you on that; I don’t think we need it. And also, I guess that might be great for making a big batch of stock or for making an amazing casserole, but for us, we want to make it easy for everyone and most people don’t have stuff like that in their kitchen.

Caryn: Exactly.

Ian: Exactly. Just as long as you’ve got a knife, a chopping board, and a pan, you’re basically away.

Henry: Yeah. You’d be surprised sometimes at how little the average person would have in their kitchen.

Ian: Yeah, that’s true.

Henry: Even a food processor is something a lot of people don’t own.

Ian: Yeah.

Caryn: Wow. Well, I’ve had fun.

Henry: Yes.

Ian: So have we. Thank you for having us.

Henry: I’m hungry now!

Caryn: I know, I’m so hungry and we’re probably going to go to Beyond Sushi now. Ian Theasby and Henry Firth, thank you so much for coming in.

Henry: Thank you so much for having us.

Caryn: I’m so excited looking at you and having you on this show.

Henry: It’s been a pleasure.

Caryn: Yes and best of luck to you. So, the book is released today in the United States: BOSH! Bish bash bosh!

Ian: That’s the one!

Caryn: And go to BOSH.TV. There’s just so much fun at that website. Alright, so I guess I’m going to wrap it up here. I’m Caryn Hartglass, you’ve been listening to It’s All About Food. Visit my website responsibleeatingandliving.com and don’t forget to check out the Food Revolution Summit because it goes into Sunday and there’s just so much going on there. Okay everybody, have a delicious week! Bye!

Transcribed by Carol Mock

 

 

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