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Caryn Hartglass: Hello, everybody I’m Caryn Hartglass and it’s time for “It’s All About Food.” How are you today? I am happy, happy, happy. You know sometimes when you have pain and then the pain goes away and you feel good? Sometimes you don’t even realize how good you feel or why you feel good, it’s just something has gone away that shouldn’t have been there. Well, it’s not like I really had pain, but I want to tell you what I’m happy about. My computer was crashing and I fixed it today, and I can’t help but see the analogy and I’m going to tell you what I am talking about right now. So, my computer’s maybe four years old, I use it day and night, I’m on it all the time, maybe it’s not the best thing, but I work for my non-profit, Responsible Eating and Living, building websites, recipes, I’m writing book, there’s everything is on my computer, it’s really, really important and I’m sure it is for a lot of you, these tools that we use. Well, I didn’t really realize it, but it was getting hot, it was getting noisy. And finally it just crashed and this morning, I did a little research whatever, I took the thing apart of course, the warranty went up last year, so it’s not under any warranty, and I took it apart and looking inside it’s filled with dust everywhere, so I put the pressurized air on it and then I had to do a little surgery too, pulling out these clunks of dust that got around the fan and whatever, and I made it really as clean as I could and I turned it on and it was spectacular because of what didn’t happen. And I didn’t even realize that my computer was making so much noise. But I noticed how quiet it was, and I am sure it is going to be fine now, and I am really excited about it, but it made me think about what we do to our bodies, and how the things we put in our bodies can really make a difference, positive or negative, and thinking about the foods that we eat that cause a lot of plaque along our arteries and then cause chronic disease. And then I was performing surgery, pulling out all this heavy condensed dust in the nooks and crannies of my computer, surgeons pull out all kinds of plaque and fat that are around our heart and our arteries, just to extend life and make us feel better, and then we can do with food too, food and fiber can clean our insides. We can do it with fasting, too, where fasting can help at a very accelerated rate, clean all the junk that we’ve collected inside. And just like I see with my computer after I cleaned it out, I performed surgery, put it all back together. It’s running, it’s quiet, and when we take care of ourselves and we eat high fiber food that keeps our insides scrubbed, we feel good. And we don’t have pain, and we’re not creaking and noisy like my computer was. You see what I am getting at? Anyway, number one, I would recommend cleaning your computer from time to time, and also taking care of yourself with healthy, nutritious food that don’t clutter up everything that’s inside of us. That makes sense, right? I hope so.
Okay, so I am very excited about my guest today and I am going to bring her on a little early today in another few minutes. But, before I do that, I just wanted to talk about some of the really cool recipes that we’ve been making this week because they’ve just been so delicious and so simple and I want to share them with you, and maybe you’ll visit responsibleeatingandliving.com and go to the recipe blog and you can see all the latest new recipes. But breakfast, is a really important meal, and especially on the weekends when you have a little more time, there are things you can do that are easy and phenomenally healthy. So we had this easy, Spinach Frittata. It looks like eggs, but it’s not eggs. It’s so much easier than eggs. It uses garbanzo bean flour and this recipe has some simple ingredients. It looks good and it just tastes good and it’s really satisfying, so you can go a long time during the day after you’ve had this lovely, lovely brunch. And it’s great if you want to serve it to guests because it’s pretty impressive. So, I really recommend this easy, Spinach Frittata. The other thing about it is… You know, I remember back decades, decades, decades ago, when I did eat milk, and eggs, and you’d have to go out and get fresh milk and fresh eggs. Sometimes the extra convenience of having something like garbanzo bean flour (which I like to keep stored cool in the cupboard until I open the package and then I keep it in the refrigerator), you can have it on hand for whenever you’re ready. You don’t have to run out to the store and get fresh, tortured animals products for your breakfast. So that’s easy Spinach Frittata. Please check it out and let me know what you think.
Now the other thing I wanted to mention is, it’s hot here in New York, it’s summertime now for those of you down under and other places where it’s winter this may not sound as much fun to you. But I’m going to take a sip of my green juice just a moment please. That’s good. I had been going kind of nutty on making these frozen desserts. Now I have to admit for a very long time, I did not have high-powered blender. I lived with joy for a long time with a regular, plain, old, low-power blender and I’ve made wonderful things and if that’s all you’ve got, that’s great, it’s great to have a blender. But now I have a Vitamix, and I’ve been using it quite a bit to make these frozen desserts. These non-dairy ice cream things and they’re so easy to do. If you don’t have a high-powered blender you can always make a version of these that I am going to talk about and make like a thick shake. But you can really make these wonderful sweet treats. And for people that have sweet cravings, and I know many people that do, these are so satisfying and good for you. I think last week I talked about the strawberry ice dream that I made that was just frozen strawberries, cashews, and a little non-dairy milk. I did the same thing with blueberries this week, blueberries, with tiny little bit of cashews and then non-dairy milk. Blended it up in this high-powered blender to create this wonderful treat. But my very favorite, and this one I’m really so excited about in fact, I want it now and I can’t have it right now. I thought about it a few days before I made it. And I was thinking bout the orange creamsicle. Do you remember? And not everyone remembers this because you may not have had a Good Humor truck come into your neighborhood. But, we used to get these Good Humor pops, which were like vanilla ice cream, surrounded by orange sorbet or an orange sherbet something. This orange vanilla combination – well what if I froze oranges and make one of these treats. And that’s exactly what we did. Gary peeled a couple of oranges and sectioned them for me and froze them. I didn’t even know he had done this because I had just said I really wanted to do this with oranges but I am going to need to freeze them in advance and he went ahead and did that. When I was really wanting to make the recipe the oranges were already frozen and I just blended them with a little bit of cashews, non-dairy milk, a little vanilla and oh my goodness this is better than anything and there it is. A lovely, satisfying cool summer treat. And I like I said if you don’t have high power blender you can add a little more non-dairy milk make a wonderful shake it just as delicious and satisfying.
And then the last, there are a couple more, I just I love eating food, and it’s just a fun treat. I mean, for example, today we were getting our delivery from Go Organic NYC and as I mentioned before I like to finish up all my produce for the week before I get new produce, that’s just the game I play I don’t want to waste any of it and I had a little bit of cabbage left over and I’m reading “The Raw Food Nutrition Handbook” which we’re going to be talking about in a moment with Karin Dina and I was thinking I have this cabbage left over in the refrigerator that has to be finished before the next delivery comes and I’m reading this wonderful book, and then I thought here’s what I am going to make for breakfast. And I shredded some cabbage that the remaining cabbage, I shredded an apple, and some raw carrots and made this beautiful, colorful, little salad. I sprinkled some vinegar on it and a little bit of sesame seed, and wonderful great breakfast. I’m really excited about cabbage these days because it lasts, it doesn’t wilt like some of the other greens and you can make just so many things with it, raw or blended or cooked or steamed, in soups, it’s a great food.
Here’s another recipe, this was just beautifully sweet in taste, but also sweet in action, so one day this week we finished dinner and yeah, we wanted to have a little desert, and Gary surprised me, he made this raw nectarine tart again, the simplest of things, he blends it together, almonds and medjool dates and really like nothing, a half of cup of almonds, and like two or three dates and you can put them in a food processor and blend them up together and that’s your crust, you press that into your little tart pan and then he sliced one nectarine into thin little slices, fan them out, made this beautiful little pie, it was a raw pie, very satisfying, delicious treat, so easy. You need just a few tools and some imagination and you’ve got the healthiest, wonderful foods that are fun, beautiful and delicious. Yeah, how about it?
I wanted to mention, I’m not sure how many people are familiar with the company Hampton Creek, hamptoncreek.com, they used to go by the name of Beyond Eggs, but I think they are moving toward just calling themselves, Hampton Creek. Not sure what the marketing plot is behind all of that. But they are at hamptoncreek.com but they’ve got a number of products that are out to replace the animal egg, so they’re working on making industrial products mayonnaise, cookie dough, things like that and ultimately want to get into the fast food business where companies that make food and use eggs somewhere along the way, will be able to use this plant-based egg. That hamptoncreek.com is using instead of the animal egg, and get the same quality product or better and it’ll be cheaper, it’s a genius concept and I’m not saying these foods are healthy. But in order to get away from the hurt and cruelty to animals this is a great thing. And I just wanted to bring to your attention, if you’ve haven’t read them, they’ve been doing these open letters in the New York Times to food leaders, CEOs. There’s one to the CEO’s mom, and the most recent one is to President Obama. And there’s a lot—they’re really great in terms of concisely putting together what’s wrong with our food system, so if you have a chance spin over there and read some of these letters, I just really, really enjoy them…
Transcribed by Alexis Ellis, 1/6/2017