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If you want to get more healthy foods into your life every day, and you just don't know where to start, you've picked the right episode because today we're sharing with you our very favorite foods that we just can't be without. You're listening to the smarter Healthy Living podcast where we firmly believe that getting healthy should never feel like torture.
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We're your host, Jared and Anita Roussel. We're college sweethearts, and health professionals who help you redefine what getting healthy looks like using a whole food plant based lifestyle. It's time to hear from the experts and learn the best tips and tricks that helped others get beyond the overwhelm, to create a vibrant life they love. If you're sick and tired of being sick, and tired, you're in the right place. So pull up a virtual chair, grab your matcha latte, and let's get started.
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Something tells me you're probably a lot like us in the fact that you have things that you've loved to eat every single day, or at least several times a week. Well, I know that you have to have those things in your pantry right or in your refrigerator will chair not have things that we absolutely love that you will constantly find in our pantry and refrigerator. Now we're always looking for new things to try. I always
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like to branch out and adventure a little bit.
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Yeah, we encourage you to do that as well. But for pantry staples, this isn't everything that's always in our pantry. But we just wanted to share with you some of our very favorite things that we keep there most all the time. So I'm going to start with Jared, what's your favorite thing in our paint trait?
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I would say that well, I don't know if that's my absolute favorite, but it's one that I like and it's a staple is oatmeal, dry oatmeal, because I make that every morning.
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And how do you make it What's your favorite way
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I eat it raw, put water on it, put a well first put some dry cow powder, then put water on it, mix it all together. I'll put a little bit of maple syrup to sweeten it. And it gives it that flavor. And then I'll put half a cup cup of frozen blueberries on it. And that that's just my go to I just I love it every morning. Sometimes I'll branch away from it and think I really wish I had my chocolate blueberries. But it's good. It's very healthy for you.
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It's got a lot of phytonutrients in it. So for me, it's just the way I like to start my day and I'll get a big glass of water.
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Is it kind of like chocolate? You said chocolate covered? Chocolate blueberry, chocolate covered fruit and away cherries. Yeah, like frozen cherries.
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It wouldn't have sometimes I will add some raspberries depending on what we have frozen in the freezer. We buy huge bags of the blueberries from Costco. So we always have those available.
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And that is that you do water instead of plant milk. So do you ever stir it vigorously because I know when I make mine I use the back of a spoon and it actually makes oat milk right in your bowl. I'll
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kind of mash it. Okay, not may not make it or mash as long as you do. Because I've noticed in yours when you do it, it does have a little more that milky appearance. I'm not as patient I'm hungry, I want to eat a
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meal is completely easy to do. I love that because you can just make it raw if you're in a hurry running out the door.
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Or even if you're not in a hurry. Sometimes I just choose raw because I like it especially on hotter days outside because the coolness of that instead of having a hot porridge I really like Well,
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what's fantastic are the frozen blueberries because it does cool it down and makes it very refreshing.
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So that's one of our favorites out because you can have it cool, hot and it just tastes good. And you can add all kinds of things to it. And it makes a fantastic breakfast, it's heart healthy, it gets you off to a great start gives you a lot of fiber and just energy
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and it's extremely easy to store because you store it at room temperature. It will last you a long time. What six months because there is some there's some fat found in it naturally.
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It's not a lot but I think if you store it six months, 12 months that the oils that are in it could start to go bad and it might smell a little off but it never stays in our house long enough to go back.
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There are six of us here and we can't keep the oatmeal in the house. Still cat quick cook.
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Well not quick actually still.
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Well, you like the quick kick?
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No, I think for you it's a texture thing. I like the regular but Anita likes the thick cut thick cut out. Yeah,
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I don't recommend the quick cook. It's cut down a lot more and I think just I like chewing it and I think it honestly probably is healthier, because the more you chew things in your mouth, the more digestion starts and then more
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enzymes get mixed in your food
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right and your body has to work a little harder to break it down. So you're gonna it's just better all around nothing.
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So the next thing I had here was that I love dried beans. And we have many many kinds of dried beans. I can't even name them all right now because we eat dried beans wheat beans every day and I cook beans pretty much every day because it is the simplest and easiest thing to cook Particularly if you have an instant pot. And I'll often throw in my next favorite thing on my list, which is brown rice, short grain long grain, it doesn't matter but do opt for brown rice when you're looking at Rice, because that gives you the whole grain. It's gonna break down slower, not shoot your blood pressure up, and it gives you all that really good fiber that feeds your gut bacteria. And you need that that's really great for you.
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But you also get more nutrients and the brand and the germ of the grain so you have more vitamins, more minerals. I love nutrients. So it really is just better for you all around.
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What's
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your favorite Bane, I have a hard time choosing favorite bean.
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Well, that varies from time to time. And like Anita said, we do have a lot of beans here. And interestingly, that's only just a drop in the bucket.
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Because there's so many different varieties out there. A lot of right now my favorite would be black eyed peas,
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I love them. And we put those the smaller beans like black eye, peas and black beans we put in with our rice and the instant cook Instant Pot instant cooker. That's like a
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pasta pod really is a type of pressure cooker, it's just a simpler form because you can plug it in set the timer and kind of quasi forget about it back
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cook them together, it makes it so much easier. Now you do have to cook your rice a little longer if you haven't pre soaked your beans because beans can take a while to cook. But what I found is with the brown rice and the brand on, it's kind of hard to make it mushy, as long as you don't put too much water in there. And I usually use something like a one to one ratio. So maybe if I do a cup of rice, a cup of beans, I'll do two cups of water. And when I'm done with all that however much I'm putting in there, four cups of rice, four cups of beans, and I'll put eight cups of water.
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And then I usually add one extra cup of water at the end. And that's kind of how I measure my liquid.
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Now how much will that expand and then still a
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lot. So we have a huge instant product. It's hours, eight CT a CT. Yeah, and it's the easiest. I mean, the kids make this you put the rice and the beans in there, press Start and it's done. Now one thing I like to do is bump up the nutritional value in that and we just start big handfuls of greens in it. Or if you haven't a frozen vege if you don't have time to cut it up and you can do things like dice anion and dice bell pepper, put it all in there and cook it together. It's amazing and all kinds of instapot den, but particularly the greens, we're always looking for ways to make greens. That's another thing I've always got to have. We've got to have our greens of some form. I love that and
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generally have kale on hand at all times. Now depending on what's available in our local local supermarket there's green leaf kale, there's red leaf kale. There's now these are all Lisa native but that's called dinosaur dinosaur kale.
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What are your fate? What are your favorites here? We're not talking about everything we have because we constantly have so many things. And so the favorites I would say in produce because that's kind of what we're talking about. Now we made two parties with the greens, I would say I don't have really liked on kale, that's probably one of my favorite leafy greens.
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We eat a lot of different leafy greens and you should to just branch out and get a lot of different varieties but that and then moving from the greens, I just love love red cabbage.
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That's one of my all time favorites and think about and ask yourself when's the last time you've had anything purple, a purple looking food, red cabbage, red onions, grapes, red grapes, things like that. That litter purple potatoes,
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eggplant eggplant, I was thinking that one as well your
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purples but the purple cabbage that's one of my favorite forms of produce. We always have of course potatoes and I mentioned bill pepper and onions. Those are our favorites I think as far as but we branch out we get a lot of different things we bought things that are unique things we haven't tried before. If we see that because we know there are other nutrients in there that aren't in the same proportions as they are in other vegetables. The one
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thing that will affect this too is what's available in our supermarket but we also do try to keep in mind of what's available seasonally.
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Now that leads me to the next thing when those beans and rice come out of the pressure cooker and they have the greens in there then what are we going to do to season that up?
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We do a lot of sauces
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huh sauce hot sauce
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but you make sauces and then we'll do herbs. What's
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your favorite? What's your favorite sauce favorite
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sauce? We have a couple for stuff like the the beans and rice give me white potatoes, the the ranch the kind of the the vegan thing that you make?
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Yeah, that's in the kickback. That's your favorite.
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So it's very versatile.
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It acts kind of like what you might expect a Mayo to add no doesn't taste like a Mayo
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Tyson ranch dressing.
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It does but it helps to give it a little bit of that sauce. I remember growing up when I was younger. I didn't do this in the beginning I saw my parents they would do. Black Eyed Peas and rice and pillowcases. on it. Exit in there, it takes you back home.
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Well, it does. And I remember in the beginning, that's weird. And then after a period of time I tried, I thought, Wow, that's really pretty good. Yeah, so it reminds me a lot of that.
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So I actually do the same thing on my beans, rice, I put a little drizzle of that it's a vegan ranch. And then I'll put, I love the hot sauce. I've got to go with the hot sauce. You know, I am about that now. So there's a jalapeno pepper, jalapeno pepper, pink does just say Pena jalapeno pepper. And it's so good. I mean, it's just delicious. And honestly, I cannot for the life of me remember the brand, we might have to pop that down below because I never bet. It's my absolute all time favorite because it doesn't have any added oil. And it's just mostly just natural ingredients. It's the best one I found. And I like getting organic, because peppers are heavily sprayed. And a lot of times you don't think about that with hot sauces, but try to find an organic one, if at all possible. Yeah, but so sauces and along with sauces, and those are our favorite sauces. Now I have to I need to throw salsa in there. I can't leave. I'm having trouble picking favorites here.
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And this isn't good. We're given too many things that we like, but it's so hard once you start eating whole food plant base, you find a ton of favorites that you like, and it's just hard to choose one I'm having trouble with this app isn't
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very good problem to have.
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It is. And then I'm back with the sauces and the flavorings, right? herbs and spices. Yes. So what's your favorite herb or spice that we put on things? I have two things written down under herbs and spices, which may be what most people are thinking, you know, the spice style, I'm thinking probably
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will probably the one that I use the most would be fresh ground black pepper.
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Okay, you do use that a lot. I think that probably is one of your favorites. She liked the spice of that tea.
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I love smelling it when we first get it like when it comes in and open the bag. It has such a fragrant woody smell to
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peppercorns.
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It's not like it's not like going through the lumberyard at your local home improvement store. Not that kind of woody smell. But it has pepper will pepper but it almost has kind of a pine undertone to it. And it's just so good.
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But really, I mean, did you smell that growing up? A lot of times we just bought the bond. And so
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yes, when you buy the pre ground, what happens is the aromatics the volatile chemicals in and that sounds kind of dangerous, but it's just the they're just molecules within it that that they go to gas. And then when you eat it, because our sense of taste is not just our tongue. It's also our sense of smell, right? So as you're eating these foods, the smells go up the back of the nose, and that contributes to your quote unquote, taste. So if you can get fresh ground black pepper, corn oil, fresh peppercorns and grind them freshly on your food.
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It's such a huge difference.
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It's amazing. And
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I hate describe it. Now you just have to experience and when you do, you'll think Wow, this is amazing.
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Yeah, it's amazing when you can get that smell and that taste in there. And we'll just link below to our favorite pepper grinder for you because it's we found several different cons that we've tried. And really this is the easiest one it's a ratchet kind and crank
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the handle back and forth and few cranks and you've got all the pepper on they're super
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easy to fill to all I get so we'll link that below. And then our next favorite thing that we can't do without would be Huh, what do you think? I was thinking about just I don't know where this would fall but could cow powder you mentioned putting it in your oatmeal and that's one thing I like to have because I like my good drinks. I've got to have something really tasty to drink and I love making what would you call it my chocolate drink that I just call it the chocolate drink. I mean, you can put a little nut butter in it but I've gotten to where I'm using less nuts these days. So I'll put chia seed or flax seed in it and place of nuts and it makes this creamy chocolate.
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It's like if you were to drink really a thin or milkshake or chocolate pudding that's really thin. It tastes to me like melted ice cream. I just absolutely love it.
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Yeah, that's a good analogy
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that how dates and then the chia seed or flax seed and maybe a little pinch of salt and some water and then add ice to cool it down in it.
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I think we just refer to it as the chocolate drink the chocolate drink Yeah, sometimes we may use a an organic decaffeinated coffee that I'll brew like if I have some leftover Anita can make a kind of our version of a frappuccino with
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cat is amazing. It's filled with antioxidants. It's just super healthy great for you and we will do an episode about cow at some point. We don't want to go
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give too much away right now. I had a look I was going there. We'll save that for another episode. We
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don't want to battle coming up really soon, we'll do that soon. And then that just I think about cooking all my soups and stews, I've got to have a can or I don't even buy cans of this actually about tetra packs of diced tomato. We love diced tomato and our soups and stews.
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that's mostly what I use it in.
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Occasionally I'll open it up and maybe use a little bit in a tofu scramble, or maybe a wrapper or something. But usually it's just soups and stews. And we make a lot of those in the incident, a lot of things. So I like the diced tomatoes have to have those. And we
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go for organic too. Now one thing I have noticed is that there are a lot of tomatoes that get grown in Italy. And my understanding is over in Europe that they don't utilize a lot of the chemicals and things that they don't pesticides,
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and right
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they don't spray a ton of stuff on it like we do here, a lot of those things are outlawed over there. So if you were to find something from somewhere like Italy, even if it's not organic, it very well may be better than they
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might be a better option.
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But we do find organic and we bought tetra pack and we really liked those the tetra packs are the rectangular boxes. So when I'm buying something acidic, I prefer to not buy it in metal. I just don't like it. Sometimes it gives it a metallic flavor to me and I'm thinking okay, it's metal getting in my food from the can. So we usually just buy the tetra packs, which are the little containers or
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they're like little cartons. Mm hmm.
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And then what else we don't buy plant melons because we make those are completely simple. Go back and see the plant milk episode if you haven't seen that
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episode five
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and pick up your free plant milk recipe that's attached to that as well. And there what else I mentioned did I talk about under herbs and spices. Talk about ginger and garlic
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because not because we got on to the black pepper.
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No my favorite but we never heard mine though. Ginger root, fresh ginger rate and a microplane grater we can also link that below. Absolutely amazing flavors to your stir fries and to your sauces for your tofu and I'm trying to think what I'll use ginger I throw ginger root fresh, I don't even peel it, you throw it into your smoothies and shakes. We just use them It gives
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it a great flavor. It also will give it a little bit of I say heat but it's not the same as like a hot pepper is not one of those where your mouth feels like it's on fire.
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Although I guess if you use enough of it, it would but you use enough to where it just like it gives a little warmth to your mouth.
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It's really healthy as the main thing it is just filled with well filled with flavor like Jared said but just an incredible immune booster and it also is an inflammation Potter so if your daily and pain in your joints are hurting and you're exhausted, Ginger is one of the best things actually I used to drink ginger shots on a regular basis. It was just juiced ginger and lemon and tumeric. And that's just really incredible for you know, that'll
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wake you up and
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yeah, you'll want to energy bass, forget the energy drinks. That is the way to go.
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Alright, I have a question for you. All right, what is your favorite sweetener?
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That's so easy,
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you know, metal on us a little bit of a softball, but
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Medjool dates, I absolutely cannot get enough of those things when I want something sweet. Now, when I say I can't get enough of those things, I don't mean I eat a ton of them at one time because they are super sweet. So I'll just I don't even eat them. I just use them to sweeten things.
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Yes, we mainly use it as a sweetener, like in the drinks that Anita had mentioned earlier
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chocolate drink. This actually leads into another my last favorite thing which is matcha tea, or any kind of tea for that matter. But matcha tea, you're getting the ground at tea Li and she make matcha latte with my date
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with your dates, yes,
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which is why I was mentioning that. So you put that it's kind of like the other thing that I talked about my drink, it's just instead of the cow powder, you use the matcha powder. So it's matcha powder, it's a few Medjool dates, make sure to take the pits out you don't want to leave those in.
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That makes them
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say that because we have done that once or twice. Yeah,
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it's no fun was that no, you don't want that. And then just either a little a few nuts just to make a nut milk right there in your drink. That's how easy it is you
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don't have to have to make it separately beforehand.
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You just make it all together at the same time. Just throw everything together. And
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these are the things we're passionate about teaching people how to do because these are the things that save you time and make your food taste great. And you don't have to go to the store and buy it or keeping that milk in your refrigerator all the time. So if I don't want to use nuts and I'm trying to go lighter on the on the eating nuts and what I do is I actually will use chia seed or flaxseed because I try to get that daily and you should as well because you're going to get your omegas that way if you're not going to take fish oil you're getting several tablespoons of those daily are gonna be great for you to get your omega although
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blending them though, especially with flax seed is good because of the whole around it. If you were to eat a seed hole, it's probably Not going to digest, but if you can get it in the blender, like with the drink, you're going to absorb the nutrients from that better.
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Yeah, and we have a little like a coffee grinder that we used to grind.
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A little old pedal coffee grinders.
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And so that works really, really great. And I think that wraps it up. You want to kind of you think we can go over those again one more time. Do you remember what we talked about?
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Well, no.
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He talked about its oats. And then rice, like long or short green bean and then but brown rice beans we talked about so he never
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mentioned our favorites.
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Yeah, my favorites honestly are chickpeas and Pintos.
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Those are my you're not mentioned that. I will vouch for her. Yes, she does. A lot of
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beans if you haven't tried them, get them blend up your garbanzos make some homemade hummus. It's wonderful, simple, delicious. And then so we have the beans and rice. Then in that we're gonna put our greens we're gonna have herbs and spices definitely. And some hot sauce. Gotta have it maybe some salsa. How about produce.
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We mentioned the greens then we said bell pepper, onions, garlic, garlic. I
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use tomatoes in the tetrapack
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potatoes of all kinds sweet regular, doesn't matter what kind eat it. There are no white growers. And then diced tomatoes, GM flax seeds. Love those cow.
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And then Macia dates, the Medjool dates, I think that's it. You got them on the spices, we talked about the black pepper, and then the sauces,
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any kind of tumeric You did it. So those are our absolute favorite pantry items.
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Now it's time for you to go and discover your own. There are a myriad of incredible choices for you out there just waiting to be discovered to help you feel your best fill you with energy so that the possibilities blow wide open and you can go out and do all the things that you were created to do. Don't forget before you go just to like and subscribe. We'd love to hear from you leave a review, and we'll see you next time on smarter healthy living.
