#152: Cathy Fisher - The Queen of SOS-Free, Plant-Based Cooking
Cathy and Rip after his 2012 visit to True North Health
Feeling stressed in the kitchen? Not sure how to prepare healthy meals while still keeping them delicious and flavor-filled?
Have no fear! This week, we're sending you an SOS-Free lifeline in the form of Cathy Fisher, culinary instructor at True North Health, the McDougall Program, and author of the book and blog, Straight Up Food.
SOS-Free cooking means preparing meals without added salt, oil, or sugar. Of course, that doesn't mean that you're losing out on richness, sweetness, or flavor. It just means you're getting them from whole plant foods and creative spices.
Doug Lisle says, "Cathy's simple but flavorful approach is exquisite," Chef AJ touts, "Cathy's food is among the best that I have ever tasted," and nutritional guru, Jeff Novick says, "I call her work elegant simplicity."
Today, she shares her experience with:
Her personal health journey as a "delicate" and often sick child raised on a farm
How one simple change of eliminating dairy made a world of difference in her health
The Dr. McDougall Program discovery that finally set her on the path to health and vitality
SOS-Free cooking - How she helps her students and clients "keep it simple" through consistency and repetition
Her own favorite meals and rotating breakfast grains
Her response when people say, "Cathy, it's just too hard to make a change!"
How to cook without oil - Yes! It's possible!
How to create more flavor in lieu of added salt
Developing "health courage" in restaurants and around loved ones when you're afraid of being the "oddball."
A deep dive with Rip into Cathy's favorite recipes and salad dressings from her book, Straight Up Food
As Cathy says, no one can determine what you put into your body. If you're ready to explore a refreshing new approach with cooking or if you want to clean up your diet to become even more SOS-free, visit straightupfood.com to learn more and order her book of the same name.
More About Cathy Fisher
Cathy is a culinary instructor at two health centers in Santa Rosa, California: the McDougall Program and TrueNorth Health. She started working at the McDougall Program in 2006 and TrueNorth in 2010 and also gives classes at veg-related conferences and for private groups. She started her blog, Straight Up Food, in 2010 to offer her students more gluten-, salt-, sugar- and oil-free plant-based recipes. It is now read by people from all corners of the globe who are seeking a more healthful way of eating.
Episode Resources
Order the Straight Up Food Book on Amazon or Directly from Cathy’s website
PLANTSTRONG Foods - shop our official unsalted broths and our growing assortment of other delicious products made without oil, added sugar, or excessive sodium. To stock up on the best-tasting, most convenient, 100% PLANTSTRONG foods, check out all of our PLANTSTRONG products
PLANTSTRONG Sedona Retreat - October 10th-15th, 2022 - Dr. Doug Lisle - the esteemed evolutionary psychologist and co-author of The Pleasure Trap - is attending our upcoming Sedona Retreat to give three of his paradigm shifting lectures that help us understand all the forces working against us in our quest to live plantstrong. Once you SEE the system we live in - you can’t UNSEE it. And Dr. Lisle is a master in giving us language and tools to set ourselves on a permanent path to success. And great news! Our Sedona retreat has been approved for 21.5 CME credits for physicians and physician assistants. And 21.5 Nursing Contact Hours for nurses…. And 2.2 CEUs for other healthcare professionals as part of the registration fee for our PLANTSTRONG Retreat.
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Promo Music: Your Love by Atch License: Creative Commons License - Attribution 3.0
Rip Esselstyn:
Hey, gang. I just saw this fun review of our show on Apple Podcast from Trisha Gray. It reads, "I had the pleasure of meeting Rip at a Plant-Strong immersion retreat earlier this year. I love this podcast because it keeps me inspired, and I always learn so much. The enthusiasm Rip brings to plant-based eating is contagious, and he makes veganism cool."
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, thanks, Trisha. That's very, very kind of you. We had a blast during our week in Black Mountain together. If I remember correctly, you even sang a song during the talent show that was an absolute hit. I am super glad that the podcast is keeping you on track.
Rip Esselstyn:
Speaking of our Plant-Strong immersion retreats, our next event is this October in Sedona, Arizona. If any of you have ever wondered what it's like to join one of our retreats, 99% of our attendees agree they are absolutely life-transforming. I would invite you to come learn, laugh, and grow with us this fall as we enjoy bountiful buffets of Plant-Strong foods. We're going to go hiking among the red rocks together. We're going to tell ghost stories by the bonfire, and we're going to get answers to all of your questions from our team of world-class experts. Learn more at plantstrong.com/sedona.
Rip Esselstyn:
So for my audience members that need a little refresher, what SOS-free cooking is? Can you let us know what that means exactly.
Cathy Fisher:
Sure. It just means cooking without added salt, oil or sugar, and that doesn't mean that we're losing out on richness or sweetness or flavor. It just means we're getting them from whole foods.
Cathy Fisher:
What I love about teaching is that I make the food right in front of people, and then they get to taste it in the classes, and then their light bulbs go on, and they're like, "Oh, I didn't know that. Their perceptions start to shift and they say, "My husband would eat that," or "My teenagers would eat that," and they get so excited. So that's why I love my job. I love creating recipes, but I most of all love teaching people, especially in-person when I can see that little moment happen.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn, and welcome to the Plant-Strong Podcast. The mission of Plant-Strong is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes, and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your Plant-Strong journey, and I hope that you enjoy this show.
Rip Esselstyn:
My guest today, Cathy Fisher, may describe herself as delicate, but in my opinion, she is strong, plant-strong. It takes a special kind of strength and determination to transform your lifestyle and adopt a completely SOS-free diet that stands for no added salt, sugar or oil. Not only does Cathy thrive on this way of eating, she also teaches it through her work as a culinary instructor at TrueNorth Health Center. If you remember earlier, we had Dr. Alan Goldhamer on the program. Remember, that's his place.
Rip Esselstyn:
Then also, Cathy also works for the McDougall Program with John McDougall, who we also just had on the program, both in Santa Rosa, California. In addition, Cathy teaches online and has her own book and blog of the same name, straightupfood.com. Her recipes and education give you the health courage to make bold changes because heaven knows she has heard every objection under the sun to adopting a whole food plant-based, SOS-free diet, and that's why she's here to be a resource and a partner, to help get you over the hump and recalibrate your taste buds so that you can actually taste and truly experience the flavors of the delicious and nourishing foods that we're all preparing. Her food is simple and yet decadent. It is straight up food after all. Please welcome Cathy Fisher.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hi, Cathy.
Cathy Fisher:
Hi, Rip. How are you?
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm well. When was the last time that we saw each other?
Cathy Fisher:
2012.
Rip Esselstyn:
2012. I think it was at TrueNorth, right?
Cathy Fisher:
TrueNorth. You just popped in for the day-
Rip Esselstyn:
I did.
Cathy Fisher:
... and was checking the place out. Yeah. I don't know if you'd ever been there before that.
Rip Esselstyn:
No. That was my first time and, unfortunately, my only time, but obviously heard so much about it and wanted to see it with my own eyes.
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
That was fun. Yeah. You know who else has been on the podcast are all your compadres from McDougall and TrueNorth. So I had Alan Goldhamer recently. Just yesterday, I had John McDougall. I've obviously had Doug Lisle, Anthony Lim, so all of your brethren.
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. I've been listening to your past podcast episodes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, okay.
Cathy Fisher:
They're wonderful. Yeah. I just love all those guys. They're so great and so informative.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, and they are, but where the rubber hits the road, that's where you come into play, and you have become a very instrumental and important part of both the McDougall program and TrueNorth, which you've been doing for a long time. I want to talk about that, but first it seems to me, really, you've become the queen of SOS-free cooking. So for my audience members that need a little refresher, what SOS-free cooking is? Can you let us know what that means exactly?
Cathy Fisher:
Sure. It just means cooking without added salt, oil or sugar, and that doesn't mean that we're losing out on richness or sweetness or flavor. It just means we're getting them from whole foods. So instead of the concentrated food products, I think is what Dr. Goldhamer calls them, salt, oil, sugar, we're just getting those things more naturally from whole foods. At TrueNorth, they have a very whole foods emphasis. So as much as possible, eat whole foods with a few refined things like corn tortillas and soy milk and canned beans. We do some of that kind of stuff, too, but the salt, oil, sugar can get really problematic for people.
Cathy Fisher:
What I love about teaching is that I make the food right in front of people, and then they get to taste it in the classes, and then their light bulbs go on, and they're like, "Oh, I didn't know that." Their perceptions start to shift and they say, "My husband would eat that," or "My teenagers would eat that," and they get so excited. So that's why I love my job. I love creating recipes, but I most of all love teaching people, especially in-person when I can see that little moment happen.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So tell me just a little bit about your own personal journey. So if I'm not mistaken in doing my research for today, I see that you, in 1999, you decided that you would learn the language of human nutrition.
Cathy Fisher:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Why is that? Were you having any issues?
Cathy Fisher:
Yes. Isn't that the way it happens? We usually come into this with an issue, many of us. My issue was dairy intolerance, and I had always struggled with it, and it's funny to look back now. You think, "Oh." You could put those two pieces together and figure it out, but back then, nobody, I don't know, and it's so delicious, ice cream and cheese and all of that, and nobody was saying, "Oh, you don't need to eat dairy. You'll be fine without it."
Cathy Fisher:
I remember I was at work one day and a coworker of mine said, "Oh, have you ever heard of Dr. McDougall? He's got all these books out, and he says you don't have to eat dairy," and I'd never heard of him even though I lived a half hour away from him.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Cathy Fisher:
He even had a radio show at that time. I just wasn't in those circles. So I was probably pretty motivated to cure my stomach ache. So I picked up one of his many books. I forget which one it is, maybe The McDougall Plan, and I read it and it just made sense to me. The way he wrote, the way he spoke, I got it, and I could tell he had done his homework and he knew what he was talking about. So I just started implementing things gradually.
Cathy Fisher:
So the first thing I gave up was the dairy foods, and I just felt so good. It's the simplest thing sometimes. From there, it just became a hobby of mine. I really enjoyed it. I started getting more books and watching the videos and going to the local veg events, and I was just totally enthralled with it.
Cathy Fisher:
So in that sense, it wasn't difficult for me because I was very open-minded to it. I was ready to go. So yeah, and my method was to start eliminating the things besides dairy that were easy for me to eliminate, that I didn't really care about, that I would still eat on occasion.
Cathy Fisher:
So I really wasn't a big meat eater, pork chops, chicken steak. So those things I'm like, "All right. Those are on the no more list." Dairy, of course. Oil took a little longer, but Dr. McDougall's no oil, so eventually stopped using that. Going out to eat, sometimes I give myself a little treat, and I think the last thing I gave up was sushi because I love sushi. So now I still go to sushi. I just order differently and it's totally possible.
Cathy Fisher:
So yeah, that was the deal, Dr. McDougall. I'd just been that kid. My dad is the same way. We both have the dairy intolerance, and I just hated it because it had started to affect my social life. I'm like, "Oh, I don't want to go out because I might get a stomach ache, and if I ate just a little bit, I could get away with it, but if I ate too much, it was not good." It started really bothering me. So I was motivated to ... Pain is a good motivator.
Rip Esselstyn:
What was, typically, the culprit? Was it cheese? When you say dairy, are we referring to cheese? Are we referring to sour cream milk? What?
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. We always had ice cream and we always had cheese. I think I would just go crazy. I'm a sweet tooth person. So I'd probably just go crazy on the ice cream and the cheese. I was just a delicate kid, too. Growing up, I was often sick, strep throat, ear aches. I had pneumonia a couple times, and it was just always a problem for me. So I think this open-mindedness toward being healthier was cultivating inside of me for a long time.
Cathy Fisher:
My mom was health-minded but not vegan. We grew up on a little farm and we grow our own vegetables and some of our own animals for food. So she put the oatmeal in the crock pot the night before because she didn't like to get up early so it would just be ready for me and my sister when we got up before school. We just take the oatmeal out, put all the sugar on it and the milk. So we were healthy. I remember we had one cow because a cow can feed a lot of people and-
Rip Esselstyn:
What was the name of the cow?
Cathy Fisher:
Barney.
Rip Esselstyn:
Barney. I love the name Barney.
Cathy Fisher:
I know. I probably named him, and he was black, and black and white, I think. Then we lived on some acres out in the country and we had some pigs and other things, too, chickens. We had everything, and my dad's a farmer by nature. So they put Barney out of his misery one day and that was really hard. I think that was another little seed that stuck in me because I didn't see it, but I heard it.
Cathy Fisher:
Then I remember one night at dinner I asked my mom at the table, we always ate together as a family, and I said, "Is this Barney?" She said, "This is the best meat you're ever going to eat." That was her reply.
Rip Esselstyn:
So was it Barney?
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah, because it was the best meat we were ever going to eat because it was the homegrown meat. I just never forgot that. She wasn't being mean about it or whatever. She just stated it and it just stuck in my head like if I knew how to curse at that age, I probably would've and walked away, but I don't really remember what I did after that, but it definitely stuck with me and I didn't go vegan. I think I was nine or eight or nine or something, but I definitely never forgot that.
Cathy Fisher:
I'd always loved animals, and it just reinforces in me how children love animals, some more than others, and I was that kid. I don't have children. I always knew from a young age I just wanted animals, and that's what I still have. I have three cats, and I've always had animals in my life. So I'm sure in that moment with the Barney thing it's like, "Oh, this isn't right." So yeah. So we were health-minded in a way, but not so much. My mom-
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, no, go ahead, go ahead.
Cathy Fisher:
I was just going to say my mom still is health-minded and she does, her and her husband eat the plant-based now. So I'm glad that she came around. She's been doing it for many years. They go to TrueNorth, they fast. So they're onboard.
Rip Esselstyn:
They've really embraced it. What about your father? Is he still alive?
Cathy Fisher:
He is. He and his wife live in Maine, and they don't eat this way, but they are trying to eat healthier they say because they're getting older, and they seem to be doing okay, but he's very proud and follows me on Facebook and all that stuff and loves what I'm doing. Maybe they're doing some of it and they just don't tell me, I don't know, but whenever I talked to them they said, "We're trying to do better."
Rip Esselstyn:
Nice. So you mentioned that when you were younger you were a delicate girl. Do you still feel like you're delicate or maybe in some ways, but you're also very sturdy?
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. I've always considered myself delicate, especially physically. So that's why eating this way is such a good fit for me because I can feel my best. I mean, nobody likes pain. Nobody likes being not comfortable, but I really don't like it. I will go to great lengths not to feel uncomfortable. I've known my yoga teacher, and Buddhist people, and they're like, "Just sit in the uncomfortableness."
Cathy Fisher:
I'm like, "I haven't gotten there yet." I just will, whatever ... If I need to eat this to feel good, it's not so much about appearance. The appearance in the healthy look comes from striving for the health. So the health was always my goal and it really works, and as long as I exercise, eat well, get my good sleep, all that stuff. I just started buying water instead of using my filter from the sink. I mean, I'm always trying to up it and learn more and I want to feel good.
Cathy Fisher:
I had a grandmother who when I was born she, I believe, was already in the wheelchair from arthritis, and she had really bad rheumatoid arthritis. I think that affected me. Maybe we talked about it, but I just got that message from a young age that your health is number one, and if you don't have your health, everything else ... Oh, I just heard the best quote in a video I was watching. What was it? I loved it so much I wrote it down somewhere, but it said, "If you're healthy, you have a million choices. If you're unhealthy ..." No. You know what I'm trying to say.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, yeah. It was in Tony Robbin's book.
Cathy Fisher:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
He started one of the chapters with it, but it was something like, "When you're healthy, you have a million different choices. When you're unhealthy or when you're sick, there's only one thing you want," and that's to be healthy.
Cathy Fisher:
Yes. Exactly. So I've always been a person that wants lots of things. I'm always doing something, learning something, going somewhere, taking a class. I just want to take a bite out of life all the time. I just knew that if I'm unhealthy and I don't feel good, it's just so much harder. It's so much harder. So I enjoy it. It's like a fun game for me to just ... Yeah. I love it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, let's talk about taking a healthy SOS bite out of life so we can attain the elusive health that so many Americans are missing right now. I'd like to start by asking you. So what is your overarching philosophy when it comes to your cooking? Beyond no added salt, no added sugar, no added oils, what's your philosophy when it comes to plant-based, grains, gluten-free, stuff like that?
Cathy Fisher:
Well, let's see. I pretty much eat the way that TrueNorth advocates. So I have followed that philosophy pretty much. I've been working there for 12 years. Before that, I was at McDougall and I still am. They're slightly different. So again, I think because I'm delicate and I just want optimum health, I tend to lean toward TrueNorth a little bit more, which is less processed, closer to nature. So I really do follow that. I do have a couple things in my cookbook that they probably wouldn't serve at TrueNorth because of that old sweet tooth that I had from when I was a kid.
Rip Esselstyn:
You mean like the carrot cake?
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah, carrot cake. I have waffles. I have pancakes. I have oatmeal cookies, stuff like that, and I make my own flour. I just grind up oats because they're gluten free or millet or quinoa, something like that, and I just make my own baked goods, but they're in the once in a while category, special occasion. So that works for me, but otherwise, it's very TrueNorth. When I'm here cooking for myself, it's very simple. It's pretty repetitive. It's funny that I make recipes for a living because I don't really use recipes at home. If I'm going to my mom's and I'm making them dinner, they live about an hour away or we're doing holiday together or something, I'll break out the recipes, but I would say my philosophy for myself and for other people, especially if they're not into digging out the recipes, if they don't like to cook much, it's just to keep it very simple.
Cathy Fisher:
So there's lots of little things like that. I try to get across to people in my classes, it doesn't have to be difficult. If you are the type who loves to go into the kitchen and just hang out and make a recipe and try something new every week, you can do that. If you hate cooking, there's also options for you.
Cathy Fisher:
It's funny. People that come to TrueNorth are often, they've tried everything else and they're there and they're like, "Ah, okay, this is working. I'm fasting. I'm eating the food here. I'm getting better. I'm going to have to go home and I have to cook," and they're just not looking forward to it. So I try to let them know that it doesn't have to be difficult. You can have a meal of a big bowl of soup, a big entree salad. You can make things all at once maybe on Sunday, prepare some things ahead of time. There's so many different ways to fit the home cook that I'm talking to or you could do a combination.
Cathy Fisher:
So my philosophy is keep it easy. I mean, I don't really know too many people in that category who just want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Most people want to get in and get out. My favorite thing is feeling good, and my second favorite thing is eating. So if I want to do both of those things, it's not really spending a lot of time in the kitchen, but I am a creative person. So creating the recipes is fun, but I basically make the same three or four things over and over and over. Every once in a while, I'll get tired of those things and so I'll pull out a recipe. It is fun because I'm on social media and I do videos sometimes where I'm cooking. So I'll have that food around often. Yesterday, I did a class for one of AJ's groups and I made three different salads. So I have three different salads prepared in the fridge, but otherwise, I like it simple.
Rip Esselstyn:
So you said you rotate around three or four different meals pretty consistently. What are those?
Cathy Fisher:
So what I do in the morning, generally, today I just had fruit so far, but often I'll do a different porridge in the morning. So most people or a lot of people do oatmeal, but I like to rotate. I don't like two days of the same breakfast porridge. So I'll do oatmeal, the next day I'll do quinoa, I'll do millet, I'll do buckwheat, I'll do brown rice, something like that with some cut up fruit on it and some cinnamon and some soy milk, maybe.
Rip Esselstyn:
So let me stop you here. So you just named off four or five different grains that you can have for your breakfast. So audience, let me just say that Cathy in 2016 wrote this phenomenal book, Straight Up Food: Healthy Eating That You Can Live With. In here, you have, in the breakfast section, you have a whole section on hot whole grain cereals, which is what you just described there, but the reason I'm bringing this up is I don't do a lot of experimentation with millet, amaranth, quinoa, especially for breakfast. So could you tell me and the listener what's the difference between those grains, millet, amaranth, quinoa, buckwheat? Can you tell me taste and flavor and all that stuff?
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. Each of them is different, different texture, different flavor. I mean, most grains aren't overly flavorful. Something like buckwheat or quinoa will have more flavor. I'm a real texture person, too. So I like to vary it because of that. All those things are gluten-free. So that's why I eat those. I don't have a problem with gluten, but I'm just in the TrueNorth mode because that's what I create my recipes for, and on my website, my book, it's all gluten-free. So I've just gotten into that, but I just like variety.
Cathy Fisher:
It's funny. I just said that I don't like a lot of variety in my meals, but I do like variety in my different grains. I also tend to think it's good to rotate. So even though I'm doing the basic same breakfast every morning, I'm varying the fruits I'm cutting up on it, I'm varying the types of grains. Sometimes I'll vary the non-dairy milks that I'm putting on it. So there is variation within the repetition.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. So within the consistency and the simplicity, there is variation. Dr. Will Bulsiewicz would be very proud of you, and so with your gut microbiome.
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. I watched that podcast video. That was so good. Everyone I watch I'm like, "Oh, it's so good. So much info."
Rip Esselstyn:
I think there's lots of info. Okay. So breakfast, you go with the hot whole grains, one of the ones you mentioned. Do you ever do brown rice? Do you ever like that as a breakfast grain?
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah, and that's the undersung breakfast porridge or grain. It's really good.
Rip Esselstyn:
Interesting. I don't think I've ever had brown rice for breakfast.
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah, It works.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I bet. Okay. So you mentioned the fruit. What are some of the fruits you like to rotate around and are you a fan of frozen fruit, fresh fruit?
Cathy Fisher:
I'll use frozen fruit in a smoothie or something, but generally, I'm buying fresh fruit. I really love going to the farmer's market. So I'll pick up what's in season, and I generally have some apple and banana every morning and then like right now, mango is in season so I might add that or some berries and you could do just one type of fruit if you want, but I like to vary it up. I put a little bit of chopped walnuts on there sometimes. So I love breakfast. It's probably my favorite meal of the day, again, because I'm that sweet tooth. So I just love, and grains are a treat, too. They're like dessert a little bit.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you ever do greens in the morning?
Cathy Fisher:
I don't. I know AJ loves her greens in the morning and vegetables, but I don't. I load up on the greens and the veggies at lunch. So for lunch and dinner, I will do some combo of these two meals. So I'll do potatoes with veggies, either raw and/or cooked, steamed, boiled, whatever, and then for the other meal, I'll do a tostada and a corn tortilla with beans and rice and lettuce and salsa and avocado. Sometimes I won't do the tostada. I'll just make a taco salad out of it and I'll make corn chip in the air fryers, make some little corn chips from the tortillas, but I do do that a lot and sometimes I'm like, "Okay. Remember what you do for a living. You got to change it up here."
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes, have a branch out.
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. What about dinner?
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. So I'll either do the potato and veggies for lunch and then I'll do the bean rice veggies for dinner, and then the next day I might swap it, something like that, but when the weather's cooler, I'll definitely cook more soups. I love soups because they're all in one pot and they're super easy. You can't really screw them up too bad if you're new at cooking, unless you put in too many spices or something, but I always tell people start small and they can work up. You can always add, you can't take away, but soups, and if I had a family or something, maybe I would be doing more recipes, but there's so many things.
Cathy Fisher:
I have a to-do list a mile long like probably most people that work for themselves, and I just want to get to it. Yesterday, I was making those three salads for that online class and it was so fun. So I got to remember. Sometimes I'm standing in the kitchen and I'm like, "This is boring. I'm tired of eating this," and then I remember, "You have this book that you spent a long time," thank you, "creating recipes for, and this isn't just some cookbook. This is the cookbook that has your favorite dishes in it, the way exactly you like. Don't forget that."
Cathy Fisher:
It's funny. I have to remind myself sometime, "Oh, yeah. I have a cookbook." Sometimes I don't even make my own recipes the same. I'll vary it. I like to let people know you can vary it because sometimes you don't have something on-hand or you're trying to avoid something, you become sensitive to something or whatever. Make it your own. Within the plant-based options, make it your own. I don't like hot and spicy food too much. I definitely don't do jalapenos. So I always make a point to tell the hot and spicy lovers, "Go ahead. Make it hot and spicy in any way you like, red pepper flakes, cayenne, some sauce, whatever it is. Go for it."
Rip Esselstyn:
So I want to talk about some of the recipes in your book, but before we do, you've been teaching classes now at TrueNorth, you said, since 2012.
Cathy Fisher:
2010, so 12 years. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
2010, okay. So for the listener that is out there and they just mentally feel stuck, and I'm going to throw a couple objections at you, and I want you to tell me what you would say. So the first is, "Cathy, it's just too hard to make this change. I don't think I can do it."What would you say to me?
Cathy Fisher:
I would say that it's definitely possible and a good way to think of it is learning a new language. So when you learn a new language, you don't expect to be fluent in a day or week or month. It's going to take time. I mean, assuming the person is committed, they really want to do this small bites, small steps. Often people will come in this new and they think, "Oh, I need all these recipes." You don't really need all these recipes. Pick five, pick three, and write them down if that's helpful to you.
Cathy Fisher:
Planning, oh, my gosh, planning is the key to everything, especially. I mean, once you're rolling, you don't have to plan everything. I don't really plan anymore, but when you're starting, just get out a piece of paper and write down, "Okay. If I've looked at Cathy's book, these are the options she's putting out there for breakfast. This sounds good. I'm going to write that down. This sounds good." So writing it down really helps. We always think we're going to remember things. We're not. Write it down and make your slots for each day of the week, and you can repeat.
Cathy Fisher:
So if you make a big thing, a soup, you could have that for many meals, especially when you're getting going. You're not trying the cornucopia of all plant-based recipes. You're trying to readjust your palette. You want to give it a couple weeks, a month, and if it takes repeating simple foods, then you do that because the more you stay on without veering up, your taste buds are going to recalibrate and talk to your brain, and they're going to start saying, "Oh, this food is great," and you're going to start craving that food, that new food that you're eating. It's not really new food, new preparations, and your brain is going to start getting used to not having whatever that you've cut out, the meat, the dairy, whatever. So it's going to start getting used to that.
Cathy Fisher:
So I don't want people to get so overwhelmed with the details. When I create my recipes, and maybe this is helpful to make this point that I have a beef stew recipe without beef. Okay. So let's keep all the things in that we know are health-promoting, that we already have around the house, potatoes, carrots, celery, and let's take out the things that aren't so health-promoting, the meat, the oil, loads of salt, and then maybe we'll just leave some things out, maybe we'll substitute with something else. So in the beefless stew, I take the beef out. I substitute with chunky Portobello mushrooms. It works like a charm.
Cathy Fisher:
What else? So I don't add oil. You don't need oil. I never met anyone who says, "Gosh, I really miss that oil." Nobody says it. Don't worry about it. Replacing oil in a soup like that or a stew, it's just using water, using some vegetable broth. It's not hard at all.
Cathy Fisher:
So you keep all these things that make beef stew look the way it does and taste the way it does for the most part. You might substitute with some of these other things, and then it looks like what people are used to eating, and does it taste exactly? Does it have that meat taste? No, but it tastes close enough so people enjoy it. If they really want salt, add salt to yours. If you're having company and you don't want to impose your no salt food on them, put salt shaker on the table, they can add it if they really want to, but I always tell people if ... Sometimes in my classes they'll say, "Oh, it needs salt," and I'll know that they're saying that because they are used to eating salt at every meal that they eat probably, maybe not breakfast, but some people use salt at breakfast.
Cathy Fisher:
So it doesn't need salt. You're just used to using a lot of salt. So in lieu of salt, I'm always working to give more flavor. If you're just eating one of my dishes and your standard American diet using all the salt, of course, you're going to say it needs salt because that's what you're you're used to, but if you give it time, you'll be like, "Wow, this is great, and all these flavors." Like I said, you could always add more flavors if you want.
Rip Esselstyn:
So what I'm hearing is if you have this attitude, it's too hard to change. Dive in. Give it a couple weeks for your taste buds to recalibrate, and before you know it, you're going to be craving the good stuff and you're not going to miss what you thought were your favorite foods that you couldn't live without.
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah, and you won't lose affinity for those other things, but keep your house clean. Don't keep anything that you're trying to avoid in your house if all possible because you will be tempted. Yeah. It's an amazing thing. I wake up every day and at every meal I'm so excited to eat and I know you know what I'm talking about. It's like I get to eat again, and I've been plant-based for 23 years. It never gets old. I never like, "Oh, I got to eat fruit again. I got to eat oatmeal again. I get these stink of potatoes again." It's never like that.
Cathy Fisher:
So people, another little tip I tell them, you got to have faith just for a little while because there's this bridge and you're going to be, "Mm-mm," you're going to want to turn around and go back the other way you came. Keep going over that bridge. It's going to be hard, but once you're on the other side, it'll be so much easier. Maybe it's like with many things in life. You just got to get over that hard initial part.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, as you say in your book, you got to bluff your health courage.
Cathy Fisher:
Yes. I wrote that in the part about eating out. So I have lots of articles in the back about how to eat out, and that's really scary for a lot of people who are new to eating this way. I say if you're branded at eating this way, don't eat it out for a month, which throws people out. They're like, "A month?" but eating out is a danger zone. Until you have that courage and you know how to order and if you get to that restaurant and you're starving, you're not going to want to ask the waiter for a big potato with some salsa and broccoli, but you will get to that point where you will be doing it at home, you will feel so good about what you're doing, you'll see the changes in your body, how it's working, how it's looking. Your taste buds will be recalibrating and you will love it so much that when you go out, you'll have your little boundary, "I'm not going to do that."
Cathy Fisher:
There's lots of tips for eating out and I put those in the book, but yeah, there's so many ways. Also I say, if you do veer, you go out, you veer, don't beat yourself up. Each meal is a new opportunity to just get right back going in the right direction. So we're not aiming for perfection in the beginning, but you want to go in that direction. You don't want to turn around and go the other way.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So you build up that health courage, and at the same time, also, you're not as concerned about being an oddball because a lot of people, they don't want to stick out like a sore thumb. They don't want to cause problem. They don't want to be the oddball, vegan, plant-based person.
Cathy Fisher:
Right. Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
So what do you think of that?
Cathy Fisher:
Let me think about that. Yeah. Been there, done that. I think having that time behind you where you've already been doing it so you feel stronger, that's going to help, but I don't know. You just got to give it time because then after you're doing it a while, your people are going to know what you do, "Oh, that's Cathy. She eats this way," and they're not going to bat an eye for the people that you. They might, but who cares? You'll get to that point where you're like, "Okay. Whatever."
Cathy Fisher:
No one else, I mean, letting other people dictate what goes in to your mouth, in to your body, and results in your health makes no sense. You're the one who has to live in your body every day. You have to wake up feeling icky or feeling good, and it can only be determined by you. No one else is putting that fork up to your mouth. I know it's hard. People put pressure on you, especially if we have our spouse and they don't want to eat the same way we do, and there's tactics for that as well, but you got to be courageous.
Cathy Fisher:
When you go out to eat or you go to someone's house, you want to be kind. You always want to be kind when you're talking to the waiter and whatever, but ask for what you want. Especially nowadays, 2022, everybody's asking for everything. People are not oddballs the way they used to be. Even the no oil, they might go, "No oil?" and you go, "Yeah," and they'll say, "I'll check with the kitchen," and they'll go back and they'll check and they'll come out and tell you.
Cathy Fisher:
Sometimes I have ordered things with no oil like home fries. They usually drench them in oil, and I'll say, "Home fries dry," which means no oil, but sometimes they've been pre-prepared with a little bit of oil and they bring it out and they have a little bit of oil on it. So then at that point you can decide to not eat it or to eat it, and sometimes I have eaten it because I'm starving and maybe part of me is like, "Oh, I don't want to inconvenience them." It depends with the situation, but I'm not trying to be so perfect either that I'm driving myself nuts.
Cathy Fisher:
So don't drive yourself nuts. Get back on at the next meal. The more time you have behind you of doing this, the easier it will get. You will know which restaurants or your go-to restaurants. You'll know what to order when you go there. If you don't know, if you're going somewhere and you've never been there, you can look online. Everybody has their menus online.
Cathy Fisher:
Lastly, you can always ask for what you want. They might say no, but often they say, "Oh, yeah. We have baked potatoes or rice laying around in the back." Steamed veggies is becoming a more common request. So yeah, you might not be eating the big meals that everyone else is around, but when you get to this point, I don't care, and it's also a point of education for other people should they ask. I'm not sitting around preaching to everybody like, "Oh, you should be like me," but often they will ask like, "Oh, why are you eating that?" or "What are you eating?" and then I can talk to them about it. So I like that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So let's talk about some of your cooking techniques and some recipes in particular that are in Straight Up Food. I do want to say that I have some quotes here from some people like Doug Lisle that says, "Cathy's simple but flavorful approach is exquisite." You have chef AJ, right? "Cathy's food is among the best that I have ever tasted." Then our nutritional guru, Jeff Novick, "I call her work elegant simplicity," right?
Rip Esselstyn:
So I mean, a lot of good shoutouts for your work, your cooking style. So let me start by just saying ... So you cook without oil. For people that are like, "Oh, my God, how do you cook without oil?" what do you tell people?
Cathy Fisher:
I tell them it's all possible. I haven't used oil in forever. Oil is very high in fat, though. It's the most calorie dense food there is. So you may notice, "Oh, I'm missing that fat and that richness," but if you're committed to getting it out of your cooking, just know there's ways to cook without it. So it depends if you're stir frying, if you're baking, if you're using it in a salad dressing. So there's different techniques for what you're doing, but the thing with oil is I would say that for most of us, not you, but most people, they grew up using oil in their house. Their parents used oil and we learn how to cook often from our parents. So it's just a habit that maybe we've never really thought about. Everybody uses oil in the restaurants. It's just everywhere like salt. So we've never really given a second thought.
Cathy Fisher:
So just know that we can get used to not having it, and there's other ways to prepare. So when I'm preparing just stir frying some veggies in the nonstick pan, I like a nonstick pan if I'm not using oil, I'll just put water in there or some vegetable broth, and that works just fine. If I'm roasting something in the oven, it doesn't need anything on it. Just put the bell pepper in there, put the garlic in there, the zucchini in there and-
Rip Esselstyn:
What's your best friend when you're roasting? Is it parchment paper?
Cathy Fisher:
Oh, I have both. I use parchment paper and then I have a silicone mat. I use both. I like the parchment paper a little easier. I find, especially when I'm baking things like cookies or what else am I doing? Fries or something like that, it gets things a little crispier than the silicone mat, but I have both. I mean, so parchment paper is you throw it away after use it. I don't really love that about it. Sometimes I use it and it's still pretty clean after I use it and then I can reuse it.
Cathy Fisher:
So one of my side things is garbage. I really try to be more aware of not creating so much waste, which when you eat whole foods, it helps with that. It's really nice. So yeah, you can still roast without the oil and, yeah, you're not going to have all that fat cooked into it and around it and on it, but it's still going to be delicious because when you roast, it's a dry heat, it's taking out all the water, so you're getting a more intense flavor. So it's still going to taste great.
Cathy Fisher:
A lot of salad dressings have oil in them. So all my salad dressings, of course, do not, and I have different tricks for that. I usually just leave it out and put something else in like lemon juice or apple cider vinegar or I'll blend up a tomato or a cucumber or something to give the wetness to the dressing, and it's delicious. If you want to richer dressing because you're giving up that oil, I have recipes. I have a ranch dressing.
Rip Esselstyn:
Talk to me about that. I actually have that written down. I want to know. Yeah.
Cathy Fisher:
It's so good. So I use nuts and seeds as the base when I'm replacing oil, and most often I'll use cashews because they're white, they're a soft nut, they blend easily, and you can make them look like ... What am I saying? A dressing. A ranch dressing is white and creamy. So when I blend up the cashews, they get white and creamy and they don't have a lot of flavor on their own so they can take other flavors nicely. So you can always do a nut-based dressing. If you're trying to lose weight or watch your calories or something, you might not want to do a lot of nut-based dressings, but another trick of mine is to use white beans. They're white. They blend up well, they'll give you that creamy look. It won't be like the bright white of the nuts and the seeds, but it will still allow you to have a dressing that's creamy that doesn't have big added fat to it.
Cathy Fisher:
Then that's also a spectrum. So you don't have to just use all the white beans or all nuts. You could use mostly white beans and two cashews if you just want a little bit of richness. So there's room for everybody, depending on what your health goals are.
Rip Esselstyn:
Cathy, what about in desserts? If you're not doing oil in desserts, what do you use instead?
Cathy Fisher:
Well, oil gives richness. It also helps hold things together. So what do I use? I don't really have a direct oil replacement, but if I want something to be rich or have some fat in it like my oatmeal raisin cookies, I think I put in a quarter cup of almond butter. So when you open the almond butter or the peanut butter, something like that, there's that oil on the top, but that isn't refined oil. That's just the natural separation of the oil from the nuts. You can pour that off. Some people still stir it in, but I put a little almond butter in the cookies.
Cathy Fisher:
What else do I do? I'm thinking. Another good example, oh, desserts, yeah, nuts and seeds, those can be really easy to overdo on. So that's also in the special occasion category or just a little bit. I know people who go crazy having nuts in their house, they have a really hard time. So you may not even want to have nuts in your house for a while if you're going to eat nuts and seeds at all. What else do I have that's a dessert?
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, for example, I wrote down a couple that really jumped out to me. One was your sweet potato pecan pie.
Cathy Fisher:
Oh, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Obviously, that doesn't need oil, right? I mean, the pecans just are so rich and-
Cathy Fisher:
Yes, and I don't think I add any fat to the filling. I think the crust has some nuts and dates in it. It's made of nuts and dates, but the filling does not have any fat. I'm real conscious of if I do need to add fat to something, I'll try to do the least amount. So it works. For example, I have a waffle recipe. Most of the time, oil-free waffles just don't have the oil in the batter but they still tell you to put the oil on the griddle or the irons, but if you put a little bit of fat in the batter, you don't have to put any on the irons if you have a non-stick waffle iron.
Cathy Fisher:
So I just put two tablespoons of cashews or almond butter or something in the batter, and that way it allows it not to stick to the irons. Another good one, which isn't a dessert, but it's hashbrowns. A lot of people get in this way of eating and they're like, "Oh, I'm going to have to give up X, Y, and Z." So it's exciting for me to give people recipes that will surprise them like hashbrowns because that typically is made on a griddle with oil. Otherwise, those potatoes are going to stick to your pan. So I have one non-stick frying pan it's called Ozeri, O-Z-E-R-I. It's my current favorite and it's pretty inexpensive.
Rip Esselstyn:
Where'd you get it, online or-
Cathy Fisher:
I ordered it online because Chef Ramses at TrueNorth, he uses Ozeris to make his crepes, I mean, crepes. Those are super thin and they work well on the Ozeri. It's like a ceramic-coated coating. So that's a good one. I think they're only $40 or something. So I have that for things like veggie burgers, hashbrowns, pancakes, which I make occasionally. You need no oil in the pancake batter or on the pan. It works great.
Cathy Fisher:
The thing with nonstick pans, by the way, is you just don't want to overheat them to preserve them for longer and also not to get anything weird coming off the coating, although nowadays nonstick pans are made much better than they used to be. So if you're worried about nonstick pans, just don't overheat them. I never turn my nonstick pans over medium because if you compromise that coat of the nonstick pan, then that's when things start to stick and then you got to throw it away. So they're just a little more delicate. Even if you treat nonstick pans well, they still have a shelf life. I think it's five years or something.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's some really good advice. I know we have a green pan and I do all of our pancakes in it. We have gas and it goes from basically zero to high, like one to 10, and I always set it at 3.5, and I don't go over that. Then when I really want to stir fry onions and put it on high or something like that, then I do the cast iron. Do you have a cast iron or do you not use cast iron?
Cathy Fisher:
I've never used a cast iron. All my cookware besides my nonstick frying pan is just stainless steel. So I mean, yeah, but I do say to people, "If you want to do things like the hashbrowns and the pancakes and the veggie burgers, you need ..." I mean, you can bake all those things, too, if you're really, "I don't want to do non-stick pans." You can bake them. They won't turn out quite like the browning the same way, but they still will work.
Rip Esselstyn:
You mentioned your waffle recipe. I was looking at that because I love making waffles for the family on Sunday. You take oats, you throw them into your Vitamix blender. So you then to make oat flour, and then you put in ... What I love is you said here, let me find my notes here. Oh, yeah. You put in corn flour.
Cathy Fisher:
Oh, corn meal probably. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, corn meal, and does that give it a little bit more of a hardiness? I saw that and I was like, "Oh, I really want to try that."
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah, it does, and it gives texture. We're eating for flavor, but we're also eating for texture, and oats on their own, they're okay, but I always love mixing oats with something else. It just makes it more interesting. Then I always grind my own because it tastes better. It just tastes better. I've bought store-bought flour and made things just to try it because people ask me, "Oh, will this work with store-bought flour?" So I'll try it out and it works, not exactly in the same way, but it doesn't taste as good.
Cathy Fisher:
So I tell people and they're like, "Oh, grind your own flour? That's a drag." Well, then you only grind as much as you need. You don't have the big bags sitting around. By the way, if you do have bags of flour sitting around, don't keep them in your fridge. The moisture from the fridge will compromise that and it just won't taste good. Just keep it in your cupboard.
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. I just grind mine as I go. I've learned about both the pancake and the waffle recipes. It's funny. The cookbook's been out so long now. I learned things. I'm like, "Oh, I could have done that." Now I realize, "I could just put all those ingredients into the blender. I don't have to get a mixing bowl and do it a separate, grind the oats and then put it in the bowl," but yeah. So try those waffles and also try the pancakes because they're oatmeal lemon pancakes, and they have a little bit of lemon zest in them, and it just makes your whole kitchen smell amazing.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yummy. So can you make millet flour or amaranth flour or any of that stuff like you can ... I mean, can you just throw it into the blender and blend it up? Yes?
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. If you have a high speed blender, especially like a Vitamix, it's really easy to make your own flour. The only flour that's hard to make is rice flour because rice is so hard. You can do a cream of wheat texture where it's like coarse sand, and maybe if you kept blending it would turn into flour. So I don't do rice flour very often. Plus, grinding rice flour is very loud. It's obnoxious. So if I do need a rice flour, which isn't that often, I think that's one I'll just get in the bulk bin. I think I learned from Mary McDougall long ago rice flour makes a really good thickener for gravies because it doesn't clump, brown rice flour, but yeah. Grinding your own flour is great. Millet is another one that's hard, not as hard as rice, but you can grind millet in your blender, and it works great.
Rip Esselstyn:
I like it. You don't technically have a chef background. This is all self-learned, right?
Cathy Fisher:
Yes. Yes. I mean, when I was a teenager, I loved baking, again, the sweet tooth. So I'd make cakes and cookies and stuff at home, but I never endeavored to be a chef, no, but I had already been eating plant-based for a while before I got the job, offered the job at TrueNorth, and I'd already been an elementary school teacher as well. So I thought, "Okay. Well, I cook for myself plant-based at home and I have taught before, so maybe I could put these two things together and be a good teacher," but I am quite the different teacher now than I was at the beginning.
Cathy Fisher:
It's funny because at TrueNorth, people come back all the time. They've been coming for 30 years. Sometimes they'll say, "Wow! You're such a different teacher than you used to be," and it's just because I've done it so much, but yeah, in the beginning, I didn't know what I was doing. I would just make recipes out of Dr. Goldhamer's health-promoting cookbook, and there was six or eight people in the class, and it was just really fun.
Cathy Fisher:
I think that's when you came by. I was just starting. I started there in 2010, and then the next year, in an effort to be a better teacher, I joined Toastmasters. So I was a Toastmaster for nine years. I think that helped me because I'm an introvert and I'm a little more wallflower. So teaching and doing the Toastmasters brought me out, and just over time made me really comfortable talking in front of people. Now, if I talk in front of hundreds of people, I just love it. I just love it. I'll still be a little nervous, but I love it, but doing the cooking demo is so fun because you're feeding people and everybody loves to eat.
Rip Esselstyn:
Nice. Well, and things at TrueNorth are hustling and bustling these days, right? So you're probably not delivering your classes to six or eight people probably.
Cathy Fisher:
No.
Rip Esselstyn:
So how many people on average?
Cathy Fisher:
Maybe 15 or 20 in the class physically. We do have space space limitations there. So we do the classes in the dining room and it's not that big, but now at TrueNorth, they have the camera in the dining room. So all the lectures, myself included, it's streamed into people's rooms if they want to watch from their room. I believe it's through something called Roku, which I'm not really familiar with, but it's archived. So if you have the Roku at your house when you go home, I think you can access those past lectures, I think.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's pretty trick.
Cathy Fisher:
I know. It's pretty neat. So I'll teach a class and then someone will come down who was watching in the room and they'll get the sample. So it's really nice. I particularly like the small groups because you can talk to people and answer their questions and they get to taste the food afterwards. So it's really fun. So many people are encouraged. After going to an in-person cooking class, they're like, "Okay. I can do that. That looks easy," or "That tasted great," or both.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I want to talk about three recipes right now. So Chef AJ said, "Oh, my gosh." There's three recipes that everybody needs to try of yours. The first was the Tu-no salad, Tu-no salad. What can you tell me about that? It probably tastes like a tuna salad, but there's no tuna.
Cathy Fisher:
Right. Actually, when I named it Tu-no, I researched it first, and I found out that was a brand name of something at some point, but they had gone out of business or something. So I thought, "Oh, I'll be clever and come up with this name." Now in the world of SEO, search engine optimization, it's not the best name. So when people reprint that recipe and they want to put it on their site, which I'm fine with, they want to rename it, and I've learned through that that you got to name things what people are searching for.
Cathy Fisher:
Anyway, I called it Tu-no because there's no tuna in it, and instead of the tuna, I use garbanzo beans, which is really common. Most vegan plant-based chefs will have a Tu-no recipe and usually use garbanzo beans. Some people use almonds, but most of the time it's garbanzo beans because when you smash them, it looks like canned tuna, and it even smells like tuna. It's very unusual.
Cathy Fisher:
So in my classes, I'll smash the garbanzo beans in the food processor or with the bottom of a cup or something, and then I'll walk around and show it to everybody. It's just one of those moments where they're like, "Oh, yeah, that smells like tuna." If you want to add more seafood flavor to it, you just add some kelp granules, which you get in the spice aisle or the Asian cooking aisle.
Cathy Fisher:
So that's the hard part about that. It's not hard. That's the substitution for the tuna, and then I keep in the things like the celery, the green onion. I put some fresh basil in mine and then I make that dressing out of the cashews and I make a mayonnaise out of that that has mustard and lemon juice and garlic and stuff in it. So I think people love that one. That and the beefless stew and the carrot cake are probably my three most popular recipes.
Rip Esselstyn:
There's another one. There's another one that I'm going to call you out on here. So tell me this. With that Tu-no salad, how do you recommend people have it? You like it on a piece of open face sandwich like bread or on a bed of leafy greens?
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. So the interesting thing about TrueNorth is they don't do any bread there. So I teach people, but if you do do bread, yeah, you could make a sandwich out of it, but in the TrueNorth vein, we say you can eat it on its own, you can eat it on a spinach salad or a green salad. You can spoon it into romaine lettuce leaves and make some little boats out of it. You can put it into a steamed corn tortilla and put a couple tomatoes or avocado on top and just eat it like a taco. So there's lots of options.
Cathy Fisher:
Sometimes I will lightly steam a large collard green leaf. I can't eat them raw. If you can eat them raw, go ahead. They're easier to roll if they're just steamed for 30 seconds or less, and then you pat them with a paper towel and then you just roll some Tu-no salad in there like a sushi roll, and then you cut it in half. So if you're doing a little party or something and you want to have a cute little appetizer, that is a great one.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, and that collard green leaf, when you steam it for, like you said, 30 seconds or so, it just becomes this vibrant, beautiful green.
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. It's great. When you do that, cut off the big stem, but leave the middle stem because you're going for a big, complete circle. You don't want to break that. So there's lots of different ways to eat the Tu-no salad.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So the other recipe besides the carrot cake and besides the no beef stew is the creamy coleslaw.
Cathy Fisher:
Oh, yeah. That's always a hit.
Rip Esselstyn:
So what do you do to make that creamy? Is it white beans or is it cashews with some stuff?
Cathy Fisher:
You could do the white bean trick with it, but I usually do the cashews because we're emulating a mayonnaise-based dressing that's usually on coleslaw. I love options. So I'm trying to make it as close to traditional as possible in taste as well, but I always give people the option. You can use the white beans if you want, but yeah, that's a great recipe, and it's got the cabbage and the carrots, but also has some raisins and some apples in it. Is there anything else? Probably some onions, too, and then yeah, that same cashew based dressing. It's got a little mustard, little garlic. I use that in many different places. I tell people if you can't eat cashews or nuts but you can eat seeds, find the nut or seed that works for you or do the white bean trick.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So a dish that I love but I have a hard time getting right, and I actually had it in my first book, The Engine 2 Diet, but it's not to the level that I want it to be, and that's a mushroom risotto. You have a mushroom risotto in your book.
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah, and nobody ever talks about that recipe. It's so funny. I love it. They don't make it that much because it takes time to make risotto. You got to stir and stir.
Rip Esselstyn:
Let's talk about it. I'd love to talk about it for a sec.
Cathy Fisher:
Okay. Yay. Yeah. The mushroom risotto, that's the only recipe that I do typically use white rice with. I usually use brown rice, some kind of brown rice, but it's called Arborio white rice, and it's this type of rice that the more you stir it in the liquid and the heat, it becomes more starchy. I think so long ago when I made that recipe, I was looking for shortcuts like, "How can we get around all this stirring time?" I don't really think I found one. I think with that kind of rice you just still have to stir it quite a bit, but the thing with risottos is they're always loaded up with cheese, and probably salt and oil.
Cathy Fisher:
So I wondered if it would still work without the cheese and it totally works. It totally works. You still have the rice and the deliciousness and the mushrooms and the texture. I put a little balsamic vinegar in there to give it a little mm-mm. So yeah, try it. Try it at your house and see if you like it. Maybe get one of your kids on to stir so you don't have to stir.
Rip Esselstyn:
I will, I will. What kind of mushrooms do you like to use for that risotto? Is that a white button mushroom? Is it shiitake?
Cathy Fisher:
I forget.
Rip Esselstyn:
Portobello?
Cathy Fisher:
I'd have to look at the recipe, but since it's a mushroom-featured recipe, I'm betting I used a combination of mushrooms. So probably some shiitake and some cremini, but mushrooms are very interchangeable. I did just discover a new mushroom in a new recipe that's on my blog. It's not in the book. It's called crab cakes, and in place of crab, I use lion's mane mushroom, which I'd never heard of, and I usually don't like to take people down the path of looking for weird ingredients, but that one was just so interesting to me, and I've done so many recipes.
Cathy Fisher:
At this point I'm like, "Okay. What haven't I done? What can I get creative with?" The lion's mane mushroom is sold at Whole Foods. It's really not that weird. You could find it there, and it peels, it peels. It looks like a little broccoli and you can peel it. It's white and it looks just like crab meat when you peel it. So it's amazing. I love mushrooms. I did this informal survey on my Facebook page last year like, "What's your most disliked food?" and I got hundreds and hundreds of replies. Can you guess what the most disliked food is?
Rip Esselstyn:
Either mushrooms or eggplant.
Cathy Fisher:
Oh, well, mushrooms was number two. So I'm aware of that now and I'm creating recipes to try to always give the mushroom haters an option, but I love mushrooms. They're so good, but the number one disliked food was cilantro.
Rip Esselstyn:
Ah.
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
I always hear that 50% of the population has this gene and it makes cilantro for them taste like soap. So maybe that's what's going on there.
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. I think that's definitely what's going on because you either love it or you hate it, and that was just so fun. People love piping them out.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So you mentioned broccoli just a second ago. One of the things to me that is so important when it comes to, especially SOS-free cooking, are the sauces that you're making to put on top of the food. You have a whole section on sauces and dips and dressings. Specifically, I'm just going to call out one, you have a broccoli garlic sauce.
Cathy Fisher:
Oh, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
I saw that, I was like, "I never would've thought of using broccoli and potatoes and garlic and whizzing it up and creating a sauce from those three ingredients."
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. That's another one of those recipes of mine that I never hear back from anybody about. So I don't know if people just aren't making it because it sounds weird. Anything that you can blend can be a salad dressing, carrots don't blend well so you wouldn't want to use that, and it could be a sauce. A trick I like to do and I know they do it a lot in the raw food world too is you make your salad, you make your stew, and I do this in the beefless stew, you just take two cups of that or in the case of the dressing, a portion of the salad, put it in the blender, and then you use that as the dressing or you use that to thicken the stew or you use that as a sauce.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's a good tip.
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. So you can totally blend, and blending cooked potatoes is a great trick for a sauce, especially if you don't want to use cashews or high fat something or other. A potato in any form, except raw maybe, is delicious.
Rip Esselstyn:
So you put that potato in there. If I didn't want to put broccoli in there, what would make for a good sauce with that potato?
Cathy Fisher:
Yeah. You know what a lot of people do is they make a no cheese sauce using the cooked potatoes and cooked carrots because the carrots give it the color, and then they add dried onion and garlic, and sometimes I'll add nutritional yeast because that'll give it the cheesy taste.
Rip Esselstyn:
Are you a fan of nutritional yeast or not?
Cathy Fisher:
Eh. I used it more in the beginning when I was transitioning because it tastes like cheese, but they don't use it at TrueNorth, so I just have gotten out of the habit of using it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you use avocados at TrueNorth?
Cathy Fisher:
Sparingly. Every once in a while, they'll have an avocado in a dressing or something, but never just a container of chopped avocado because it would because chaos because the food they serve at TrueNorth is very simple. A lot of people are coming off water fasting for many weeks, and some people aren't fasting, but they keep the food. They're very simple. They have a salad bar that's always open with maybe three dressings at the end, and then on the other side they have the hot bar, and during mealtimes, they'll have a grain, they'll have some greens, and then they'll have something like a lentil loaf or a stew or something, and then they always have a soup, too, but they keep it really simple. They don't even do raw onions and garlic on the salad bar because people are trying to heal their guts so they keep it very basic.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, so if I'm looking for a go-to salad dressing because we love salads and you have a great section on salads in your book, but give me a really quick tasty go-to salad dressing.
Cathy Fisher:
Okay. Well, tasty is subjective, but I'll say this. I've been doing this a long time. This is just weird me. I don't ever make salad dressings at home. I shouldn't say this because I'm a salad dressing recipe teacher.
Rip Esselstyn:
No. Yeah. We can edit this out. Go ahead.
Cathy Fisher:
I'm trying to get the point across that you don't have to make a salad dressing if you don't want to. You can keep it very simple. You could do grapefruit juice, lime juice, lemon juice. You can do a next level up, which is just something I do often is I will squirt a little mustard and a little apple cider vinegar or another flavor of balsamic vinegar and just stir it right in there. So I didn't really have to make a dressing. I just put those two things together and I happen to love vinegar and mustard so it works.
Cathy Fisher:
If I have something in my salad that ... I just did this the other day. I was chopping up some tomatoes and some cucumber for my salad and I thought, "Oh, I'll put those in my little blender jar," because I have a little blender as well as my Vitamix. So I put some tomatoes in there, some cucumber, a little vinegar, a clove of garlic, maybe some mustard, and I just made it on the fly.
Cathy Fisher:
So if you're new to this, maybe that's not as comfortable for you, but after you make a few of my dressings, you will get so comfortable you'll just do it. You won't need to look at a recipe. You'll feel really comfortable, but yeah, and I have a whole salad dressing roadmap in there, too, because it depends on what you like. I like things on the overly flavored side. So I've had to work to make sure my recipes are giving enough flavor to people. So I like a basic dressing myself, but if you want to richer dressing, like if I'm going to an event and I want to bring a dressing, I'll bring the ranch dressing or another.
Cathy Fisher:
I have a really good recipe. Try this one at your house because it's my favorite of my recipes or in my top five, one that you didn't mention yet that's in the book and it's the curried sweet potato salad, and there's a big picture of it. So look that one up, but it's got this dressing that's got the cashew base and it's made with some orange juice and a little bit of garlic and some curry and you blend it all up and then you put it on the cooked sweet potatoes. I use the Hannah yams, the white sweet potatoes, and then there's some green onion in there. There's spinach in there. It's so good. So you can also take any of those dressing recipes from those prepared salads and just use them as a standalone dressing as well.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. There it is right there.
Cathy Fisher:
Oh, yeah, yeah. It's so good. Then I put sliced almonds on the top of mine, and that's optional if you don't want to do the nuts, but it's such a beautiful presented salad, too. So when I'm asked to go to a little dinner party or potluck back in the old days, I haven't been back to a potluck in so long, but that would be one of the things that I would take because it's eye catching. We eat with our eyes, too. Don't forget. So it got to appeal to our eyes and our taste buds as well.
Rip Esselstyn:
So I know we've been posting it, but where can people find out more information about you and your blog and your recipes and your great work?
Cathy Fisher:
So my blog is straightupfood.com. You can go there, and all the recipes are free, and I haven't added any advertising to my site yet, which is really weird. I've contemplated it. So it's really easy to follow site. It's got great searching. If you only have zucchini in your house, you can search zucchini and find all the recipes that have zucchini. So that's my blog.
Cathy Fisher:
Then social media wise, I'm still most often on Facebook. So you can find me at Straight Up Food on my Facebook page, and following me there is fun if you're on Facebook because I post what I made for lunch or dinner. So you can see the recipes, but also what I'm just making day-to-day. Also, sometimes when I'm at TrueNorth and I've done a class, I'll have someone take a picture of what I've made and I'll post that, and it's fun. Then I also have a YouTube channel that really got going during COVID because I wasn't teaching in-person, I was teaching from my kitchen. So there's probably 50 videos up there.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, this has been a fun chat. A lot of great valuable information that you have accrued since you decided to dive into this lifestyle back in 1999, and all your work at TrueNorth and John McDougall and the McDougall program, all the people that you've helped, Cathy, you must feel really, really great about the career path you've chosen and all the people you're helping with your SOS-free plant-strong cooking.
Cathy Fisher:
I do. I get so much love at TrueNorth. It's amazing. So they just wash it over me and I take it. So I do, I love to know that I'm helping so many people and that I get to see a lot of those people in-person. It's just the best. It's the best. So thank you, Rip, so much for talking to me today. This was so fun.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, it was. Thank you. Again, everybody, Straight Up Food. Great name, great name.
Cathy Fisher:
Thank you.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. Bye, Cathy. I hope to see you again soon.
Cathy Fisher:
Okay. Bye.
Rip Esselstyn:
As Cathy says, no one can determine what you put into your body. If you're ready to explore a refreshing new approach with cooking or if you want to clean up your diet to become even more SOS-free, visit straightupfood.com to learn more and order her book of the same name. Thanks so much for listening, and as always, keep it plant-strong.
Rip Esselstyn:
The Plant-Strong podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous true seekers who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth, most notably my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
