#286: Chef Bailey Ruskus - The Ultimate Guide to Breaking Up With Dairy
Chef Bai shares how to break up with dairy for GOOD!
Are you struggling to break up with dairy? It's the most common thing we hear at PLANTSTRONG. I can live this lifestyle, but I just can't give up cheese and milk!
Well, now you don't have to with this wonderful new book by Chef Bailey Ruskus.
In Breaking Up With Dairy, Chef Bai not only shares her own difficult and eye-opening journey of breaking up with dairy, but she also includes more than 100 unbelievable plant-based dairy recipes for all of your favorites such as milks, coffee creamers, and sauces, to gourmet-quality cheeses, and yep - even milkshakes.
Sometimes the best and most delicious things in life are a big change and a new beginning and unlike most break-ups, this is one where you won’t look back. Forget about the hole in your heart left from dairy, because Bai has the key to your creamy, and cheesy dreams without the stomachache or the cheese coma. This book is proof that breaking up may be hard to do, but it’s so worth it.
From understanding the dairy industry's hold on our eating habits to practical tips for transitioning to a dairy-free lifestyle, this episode is filled with encouragement and actionable advice as you navigate the through the stages of grief and come out the other side with the joy and pleasure of knowing that you can enjoy a healthier, compassionate way of eating the things you enjoy the most.
Let’s stop worshipping at the “church of cheeses” and break up with dairy - for good!
Episode Highlights
Breaking Up with Dairy: A Journey of Personal Liberation for Chef Bai
Understanding Dairy's Deleterious Impact on Health
The Reality of Dairy: Dairy Cows Are Mothers Too
Navigating The Five Stages of Grief: From Anger to Acceptance
Digging into the Recipes for Cheeses, Sauces, Yogurts, Butter, and More!
Creating a Movement for Change
Supporting the Book Release
About the Author
Chef Bai (Bailey Ruskus) is a classically trained chef from Le Cordon Bleu and has been working in professional kitchens and privately for the last 15 years. Her 16 year battle with endometriosis was the catalyst to her deep dive into plant based nutrition and she is now an advocate for women’s health, the environment and animal welfare. She has a community of almost 1 million people on her social media platforms and is the author of the bestselling cookbook: Cook. Heal. Go Vegan! She has been featured on Good Morning America, Veg News, Medium, Brit + Co, Yahoo, Clean Eating Magazine, Parade and more.
Chef Bai is Going on Tour with Williams Sonoma!
Bailey is embarking on a National book tour in partnership with Williams Sonoma for Breaking Up With Dairy and will be in city near you! Click here to meet her on tour.
Episode Resources
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Full Episode Transcription via Transcription Service
I'm Rip Esselstyn and you're listening to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast.
Introduction to Breaking Up With Dairy
[0:04] If I hear one thing more than any other when it comes to taking on a whole food PLANTSTRONG diet, it's that I think I can do this, but I just can't give up my cheese. Well, today, we're going to tell you how you can break up with dairy, and I'm talking about milk, buttercream, and yes, our beloved cheese, our dairy crack, with Chef Bailey Ruskus right after this message from PLANTSTRONG.
[0:44] If you're a regular listener of the PLANTSTRONG podcast, then the name Chef Bailey Ruskus is not new to you. In fact, she's been a guest at two previous Plant-Stocks, and she's been a podcast guest when she released her first book, Cook, Heal, Go Vegan. This classically trained chef is back with a brand new book that hits shelves on February 11th, and it is sure to be a bestseller. Breaking Up With Dairy tackles one of the hardest things for people when it comes to a whole food plant-based diet.
[1:23] How in the world do you get rid of cheese, milk, and butter, you ask? These ingredients are practically ubiquitous. Well, in this book, Chef Bai not only shares her own difficult and eye-opening journey of how she broke up with dairy, but she also includes more than 100 unbelievable plant-based dairy recipes for all of your favorites, such as milks, coffee creamers, and sauces to gourmet quality cheeses and even milkshakes. This book is living proof that breaking up may be hard to do, but it is oh, oh so worth it. And we want to do our best to help Chef Bai hit the New York Times bestseller list, and I would encourage you to pre-order it today.
Chef Bailey Ruskus Returns
[2:18] I'll be sure to have a link on how to do that in today's show notes, but for now, let's get rid of that nasty partner and learn how to break up with dairy.
[2:29] Chef Bai, Bailey Ruskus. It is so great to have you back on the PLANTSTRONG podcast. The last time that you joined me was after your book, Cook, Heal, Go Vegan came out and you were a number for people that are interested. You can go back and listen to that episode. It was such a charming, great conversation that we had. It was episode 135. And then people probably that are part of the PLANTSTRONG family know you because you've been so great at joining us at two of our Plant-Stocks over the last two years. But why I am bringing you back on the podcast is because you have just whipped up a really phenomenal book. I've read it. It's incredible. Here she blows right here breaking up with dairy 100 indulgent plant-based recipes for cheese and butter cream and milk lovers everywhere um and this really is for everyone everywhere, so i can't wait to dive into this this book with you the you've the forward is by none other than Carleigh Bodrug. She did a great job. Congratulations on getting Carleigh to do your forward.
The Toxic Relationship with Dairy
[3:52] But let's just jump right in here.
[3:56] You say that dairy is the toxic, abusive, and narcissistic boyfriend that you can't get away from. So why do you say that? And then how many years did it take you before you were actually able to break up with, that narcissistic boyfriend. I mean, I feel like so many people can relate to that metaphor of dairy being, you know, that thing that you just can't get away from. And honestly, this book was really inspired by some of my toxic relationships with men in the past, because it's rough out there dating sometimes. I'm married now, but yeah, it's rough out there. And honestly, when I was writing the book, one of my good girlfriends was going through a breakup with a very toxic man. And I got a lot of my inspiration from coaching her through this breakup.
[4:50] But yeah, dairy and cheese in general is just so addicting. And it's also in everything. It's in so many processed foods. It's in so many foods and restaurants that it just doesn't need to be in. There's butter on everything, I feel like. And so even when we make the best effort sometimes to get rid of dairy in our diet, it always just finds a way to kind of sneak back into our lives, whether we like it or not. So that's kind of where I got this idea from. And also from my own personal experience where I had such a hard time breaking up with dairy. I had endometriosis, I had tummy problems, I had acne, I had all of these symptoms that are very common when you shouldn't be eating dairy, but you eat too much of it. And I also really love cheese. And so my husband and I, who was my boyfriend at the time, had this running joke where I would still order the cheese boards out and he'd be like, oh, you're going to get the worst stomach ache later. I'm like, it's okay. I'll just deal with that when it comes. So it's really hard to give up. And I'm really, I have a lot of compassion for people who are trying to break up with dairy, but they just can't. And what I noticed from, this whole thing started from a TikTok series.
[6:01] And I got millions of comments from people being like, this is my Roman empire. Why can I not get rid of cheese from my life. I'm so addicted to it. And so that's kind of where this whole inspiration came from, because it's one of those things that we just can't get out of our lives, no matter how badly we want to. And it really is. It's a relationship. A lot of us are in a deep relationship with cheese specifically.
[6:26] A deep abusive relationship, no doubt about it. So what happened on TikTok that you, did you do some posts about cheese being toxic? And then you just got a lot of a lot of attention from it? Yeah. I mean, it was kind of a whirlwind. So when my first book came out, Coke, He'll Go Vegan, I was like, I'm going to get on TikTok and talk about it. And the first recipe that I posted was the mac and cheese recipe from the first cookbook. And so I talked a lot about how breaking up with dairy really helped with bloating and a lot of my hormone issues that I was going through. And it went mega, mega viral. Literally overnight, I woke up the next day. I had never gone mega viral before. And I was overwhelmed with just so many comments, so many messages, so many people relating. And I was like, I'm going to turn this into a series. Well, The series kind of took off and the Dairy Farmers Association of America got hold of the series. And suddenly I was having threats from farmers, from the Dairy Farmers Association. Like it became- Like what do you mean? Like threats like how? You mean on your TikTok thread or in what way? Yeah, on my TikTok thread, they were coming into my email, people threatening me. Like people saying that they're going to come find where I live, that I'm spreading lies, that dairy is like the best thing for people. Well, I was not equipped to deal with that at the time because I think it was a 2021. So I was still just like a baby social media person. You know, like I wasn't ready for that.
[7:53] And so I kind of took the gas off of the Breaking Up with Dairy series for a minute because I was like, I don't want to get sued by the dairy industry or these dairy farmers. Like, this is so crazy.
[8:04] But then I kind of just woke up one day and I was like, you know,
Going Viral on TikTok
[8:07] whatever. I'm not going to let them silence me. And then I just kept it going. And then one day I locked myself in my room and I wrote the book proposal for this thing. And within a month, I had the top publishers in the world bidding on it. And everyone was like, yes. So I'd like to talk about this just for a second, because you and I have both written books before and we've gone through this process.
[8:32] So you locked yourself in a room, you wrote a book proposal. Was it like 25 50 pages did it give kind of a nice outline of what you saw your vision for the book and then how did you how'd you go about soliciting it out to these publishing houses did you have a literary agent that helped you with that yes so uh Carleigh the author of PlantYour and Scrappy Cooking she's one of my good friends and so she kind of like has been a good mentor and also just sounding board for me through just you know all of this stuff and so she actually connected me with her literary agent, which was really amazing of her. And I'm so grateful for her for that.
[9:10] And yeah, I basically just... A book proposal is essentially a book, a business breakdown. How are you going to sell the book? Why is this book necessary? What are the stats and statistics of why people need this book? And when you really go into it, you can really see how...
[9:27] You know, 68% of all people are lactose intolerant. And more than that, chronic illness is such a thing now. It's like everyone you know is dealing with some sort of chronic something, whether it's tummy issues or acne or high blood pressure or endometriosis or period problems. Like everyone's dealing with something. And a lot of that has to do with our food industry. And so when I was writing the book proposal, it was just like an obvious like, yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, all the points of why this book needs to be written. And it was essentially like a business proposal. And so you write the business proposal, you send it to a literary agent, Wendy, my amazing literary agent, she loved it and was like, let's sell this like tomorrow. And so, yeah, we just had all the publishers were like, this book is needed in the field. There hasn't been a book necessarily like this. I think, you know, cookbooks can be serious sometimes. And this book is about a very serious topic, but it's fun and funny and sarcastic. And I really wrote it for the younger generation to really be able to connect
Writing the Book Proposal
[10:28] back to cooking and connect back to really to learn about the dairy industry. Because I don't think a lot of people know about the dairy checkoff program. I don't think a lot of people know about the fact that we actually don't need dairy to survive, where it's this false thing that we've been sold, that we need dairy. We don't. We need dairy when we're infants from our moms and that's it. So, yeah. Um.
[10:55] Well, what's interesting to me is that you landed with the publishing house that I use for every one of my books, which is Grand Central, which is a division of Hachette. And you even work with the same PR person that I did back in the day with my first book. And that's a guy named Matthew Ballast, which is a crazy, crazy, crazy small world. I know. It's so exciting. I love it, though, because I feel like, you know, when you're surrounded by good people.
[11:25] The community just ends up growing with like-minded individuals who want to make things better and change the world. And I think sometimes I feel ridiculous for saying like, I want to change the world. I want to change the food industry. But then I look at people like you and I look at people like Carlrigh and I look at people who are in my circle and I'm like, we are literally changing the food industry and it might be moving slower than we would want. And we might be going up against crazy social media culture, like the carnivore diet and the raw milk trend. But I think at the end of the day, like if all of us can stay true to what we're doing and keep moving that needle and keep stepping forward, I think we will be able to be the change and see the change that we want to see and really be able to connect with people. Because at the end of the day, people are on social media in wellness culture, just wanting to feel better. And I think if we can touch them and show them that you can do this in a way that's good for you, but also good for the planet and the cows and the goats and the sheep, then it's kind of like a win, win, win. Yeah. No, bravo, bravo.
[12:27] And everybody listening knows this, you know this, but I think it bears repeating. And that is that, you know, we are the wealth, one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest country on the planet. We now spend more than any other country on the planet on our per person on healthcare costs per year. And we are also the sickest and the most overweight country. And so much of it is, I would say 90% of it is because what we're putting into our mouths. And one of the big culprits is everything you talk about in your book. It's dairy and whatever form that dairy happens to be in, whether it's milk, whether it's cheese, whether it's yogurt, I want to get into that and your yummy, yummy recipes too. But tell me, you had the endometriosis, you had all kinds of trips to the hospital, you ended up having surgery.
Personal Health Journey
[13:23] Do you feel like a large portion of that was because of your love affair with dairy? Yeah, unfortunately. I mean, yeah, it was. That was like one of the hardest things for me to really face. And I think a lot of people have that same, you know, come to whatever you believe in moment where it's like when you don't feel well, or you have a chronic illness, most of the time in the.
[13:49] They just don't. And so a lot of, you know, being your own health advocate has to do with your own self-discovery and doing research and really being able to look at things from a third point of view and not necessarily looking at specific wellness trends that allow you to still eat what you're eating now, but to really look at the facts of what you're putting in your body, where that's coming from, what the industry is doing, and how that's affecting yourself as a whole. And for me, it was a really hard thing to realize. I mean, not only just because I love cheese, but I'm also a classically French trained chef. My entire career was built on animal products. Like my grandfather was a butcher. He was a chef. I worked in butchery. Like I can't even imagine this part of my life at this point. But I worked in butchery when I was in culinary school.
[14:39] I was like all into cheese making. I traveled the world. I like taught people how to catch fish and like I did had this whole other life. And so when I was really looking at my own chronic illness and I was looking at how much suffering I was going through, I was really appointing that to all the other suffering that's going on within the animal agriculture industry. And that was such a hard pill for me to swallow because it was really opening my eyes and allowing myself to see what was going on and relaying how it was causing my suffering as well. But then there's that second point where it's actually making that change, where it's actually taking that step and making the change, not just being aware, but really being like, how can I make this change for myself? And that is the hardest part because we live in a society that is engorged in cheese and milk.
[15:30] Engorged. What a great word to describe that. And you're right. I mean, let's say that you decide, yeah, okay, I'm going to give up dairy products. It, they're, they're so absolutely ubiquitous in this culture that it's, um.
[15:47] It's a, it's a pretty, this is a little strong, but it's a pretty Herculean task to really give it up. And, and you, in your book, you talk about the five stages of breaking up.
The Five Stages of Breaking Up
[15:58] So I think this is maybe an appropriate time that we can go through these. So what is the first stage? Yeah. So I've got my book right here just in case, you know, and by the way, Rip, you're the first person to ever receive a copy other than me. Yeah. So we're in the VIP club right now.
[16:16] So the first stage is denial. And denial is a phase that is just so comfortable. Because when we're in denial, we don't have to educate. We don't have to dig deeper. We don't have to get uncomfortable because we're in denial. It's comfortable being in denial. And that's a big place where most people are in when it comes to the awareness of our current state of health and our current state of animal agriculture is denial. So that's stage one. Getting past denial is stage one. And I think that's the hardest part.
[16:51] Really, like is really opening your eyes and seeing everything for what it is. And for denial, you interviewed Neil Barnard, right? The author, I mean, obviously we know Neil runs PCRM. He also is the author of probably 20 different books. One of them was The Cheese Trap. Yes. Right. And so he knows a lot about cheese. He really does. We talked for a couple of hours when I interviewed him and like this, he was just dropping facts and figures for two hours. And I was like writing as quick as I could, but yeah, he's a wealth of information. And also, he's so passionate about it, too, which just kind of fueled me up a little bit. But yeah, he was amazing to interview. And he gave me so much inspiration and kind of just permission to almost to write this book. Because it's kind of scary to go against one of the biggest industries in the entire world, writing a book and talking about going against the norm, going against that industry, going against an industry that is very deep in government corruption as well. So, yeah, so that's denial. and I had some help with that. Well, this is Bay versus Goliath right here, you know?
[18:03] Well, let me ask you, before we go on to the next stage, I want to, so you talk about some, some things that are entrenched right now in this culture. And, and I didn't, I don't know everything about them. So I'd love for you to maybe riff on some of this stuff. So what's, what is the dairy checkoff program? I don't know what that is. So the dairy checkoff program is essentially a program that allows for government subsidies for the dairy industry. And essentially it's, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's like, okay, how can we get dairy into as many places as humanly possible to get people as addicted to dairy as humanly possible? So I'm talking schools, retirement communities, low-income communities.
[18:50] All the things, food stamps, fast food programs, everything. So that's the Dairy Checkoff program. A lot of times when you see these advertisements that are like, this is the triple double cheese burger with cheese on the bun and cheese on the lettuce, like you see cheese everywhere. That's the dairy checkoff program. Those are people within the government telling these fast food companies that they need to sell more cheese and they don't care how they do it, but this is, you know, it's, and then it's all figured out in an advertising meeting. How are we going to get six more slices of cheese on every single burger so that we can get people eating more cheese? And, and are they, are they, are they getting the cheese for a, like a fraction of the cost yes because of all the subsidies and everything exactly so it's kind of like um it makes dairy seem like it's so much cheaper than it actually is you know and i feel that same way with meat too there's so many meat subsidies as well like if we were to actually see the cost of what it takes to produce beef and dairy i mean those two things are the same industry right like a dairy cows go to get slaughter to become beef so if we actually saw the real cost of that, how much water it took, how much grain it took, like paying the agriculture workers. Beef and dairy would be so much more expensive and people would be eating so much less of it if it weren't for these subsidies.
[20:12] Yeah. And the reason why we have all these subsidies is because of the huge lobbying forces that are behind them as well and the misinformation that they yield. Yes. There are literal people's entire jobs that are lobbyers. And they also, their entire jobs are thinking about how they can get people more hooked on dairy. So think of the tobacco lobby where they're trying to figure out how they can get, as anyone and everyone smoking cigarettes, it's kind of the same thing, but just with dairy. And it doesn't feel as dirty or as bad as the tobacco lobby, but it literally is. They're thinking, if you think about it, dairy is the only Advertisement that is allowed In public schools Why is that Hmm, So you want to get these kids hooked on dairy. And not only that, you've seen autoimmune diseases, asthma, endometriosis, all skyrocket in young kids because of dairy periods. Girls are getting their periods at like nine years old now. Like, why is that happening? Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes, exactly. Actually, I'm sorry, type 2 diabetes. But in children, in type 1 diabetes, it's the milk that actually is a contributor to that.
[21:32] What about, you talk about late stage capitalism.
[21:39] What do you mean by that exactly? Well, I mean, if you think about it, we're just consumers.
[21:46] That's all we are to the government. We're just consumers. So we are in late-stage capitalism right now where, I mean, everyone's just trying to make money off of us. Corporations rule the world. Corporations rule the government. And one of the biggest, baddest corporations is the dairy industry, big dairy. And late-stage capitalism is essentially, we feel like we have no control, right? We feel like these corporations are winning. They're taking everything from us, which in a way they are, but in a way we're also paying them. We're funding this. So as much as it feels like we're out of control of this, there is so much power in numbers. And if we stop spending our money on these things, if we stop spending our money on things like milk and cheese and whatever, and letting these silly food trends take over, we stop spending our money on this, then we'll actually see a dent in the dairy industry. And maybe these corporations will change what they're doing because at the end of the day, all they want to do is make money. They don't really care how they do it. Yeah. Yeah. Before we move on to stage two, which is bargaining, I got one more point that you address that I want to talk about. And that is that, and I just want to drive this home to people because it's so obvious, but yet we somehow, we forget it. And that is milk is for babies.
[23:09] Period. Period. Period. Exactly. Yeah. So when we're babies, you know, a couple of things happen. We have an enzyme that allows us to digest milk. But also, you know, it's part of our makeup to when we get that milk, when we latch onto our moms, we're safe. We're like, okay, we're safe. We're comfortable. We're getting happy hormones. Everything's going to be cool. As a baby, you have no control over anything. Like you, you eat and you sleep and that's pretty much all you do. And so when you get that milk, it's like the most comforting, beautiful thing ever. So what the dairy industry has done is they have learned how to capitalize on that vulnerable, comfortable feeling that we all had when we were young. And they want us to be addicted to that feeling until we literally die, which is just crazy. You know, if you think about it, we are the only animal that drinks breast milk from another animal past infancy. It's weird.
[24:14] It sure is weird. It's just weird if you think about it. And we don't think about it like that often, but like, I don't know. It's weird. Why would, yeah. Yeah, very much so. I mean, if you're really after a high-protein mammalian milk secretion, then you want to have rat's milk, which is 51% protein. Really? Yeah. There you go. Delicious.
[24:41] Put that on my cereal. It's also the idea, too. It's such a good point because it's also the idea, too, that we've been marketed that the only milk that's normal to drink for humans is cows, goats, and sheep. But why is that? It's just like some weird cultural habituation. That's what it is. It's just like we've been marketed and like cows are just this thing that they're only meant for our, our use and abuse. Right. You don't think about, but dogs, dogs are just supposed to be loved, but not the cows. You know, it's kind of weird how we have this cultural specifics. specifics. Well, you know what's even wild is that in the UK, they tried actually selling, mother's breast milk to consumers because if we're going to be drinking any kind of milk, why not drink breast milk, human breast milk? And people were so grossed out by it that it didn't move at all, but it's, you know, it's like, again, we're so habituated into thinking that cow's milk, goat milk. Yeah. And I think like to another point, milk is for babies. You know, the dedication of my book is to the mama cows.
[25:56] And I think we forget that mother cows make cows make milk because they're moms, not because they're dairy cows. So the whole system is just so horrible in the sense of like, we're using and abusing these moms. We're forcibly impregnating them. We are milking them while they're pregnant. They have their baby. We take their baby from them and then we hook them up to machines and take their milk for us and for ourselves instead. That entire cycle goes on and on and on and on for these cows. So a lot of these cows can have like 10 to 15 babies in their lifetime. They're pregnant for nine months, just like us. And those babies are taken from them every single time. And if it's a boy, either that baby gets shipped to become livestock or it gets slaughtered reveal. And if it's a girl, then it goes through the same fate, becoming a dairy cow. And the most horrible part about all of this is at the end of it, when these dairy cows are so exhausted from this cycle of abuse, they collapse and then they too are shipped off for slaughter. And the entire thing is just so disrespectful to the animals themselves. And we forget, we forget that these are literal mothers that we're taking advantage of and we're taking their babies from them so that we can drink their milk instead. And that, when I learned about that, I was like, okay, I don't need cheese anymore. I'm done.
[27:23] Yeah. No, it, it, it, it's horrific. I want to read your dedication because I think it's beautiful. This book is for the voiceless for the mamas and their babies, because it's important to remember that cows don't make milk because they're cows. They make milk because they're mothers it's really good um so so stage two is bargaining yeah that's what we all do with everything it's the pros and cons list you know and i was really honest with the pro and con list like we all like dairy because it's delicious you know it's creamy it's cashew pepe it's your favorite cupcake and your all these things that we love so much. And so bargaining is really being like, but I like it, but how bad could it be if I like it so much and it brings me so much joy. And so in this page is really a full breakdown of the pros and cons list and what the pros are of eating dairy, which is like, it's delicious. It's easily accessible. Thanks to the dairy checkoff program. It's affordable. Thanks to the dairy checkoff program. It's part of our cultural food.
[28:31] All those things are very valid. All of those things are very valid things that consumers deal with every single day. And I wanted to put that in there because I'm definitely not discounting everyone's personal experience. I think that's so important. But then we have our cons list, which is way bigger than the pros. And I think that alone is something to look at. But just looking at how the dairy industry pollutes a lot of our clean water sources, how we take a lot of the grain that's grown to feed this livestock that is also monocropped and sprayed with so much glyphosate. There's so many things that can put you at a higher risk for breast cancer, prostate cancer, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, painful periods. There's so many cons. I could literally go on and on and on, but that would make this podcast three hours long.
Understanding Dairy's Place in Our Lives
[29:19] Yeah. I think what's also important, and you say how one of the cons is, and I say this all the time, the number one source of saturated fat in the American diet is cheese. Exactly. And I don't think most people realize that. People are eating a pound of cheese a week on average. Right. So like 52 pounds a year. Yeah. And you know, about 50 years ago, we were eating five pounds of cheese per person per year. Yeah. And we can thank the dairy checkoff program for that. Yeah. Yeah. Checkoff. All right. Let's move on. So stage three is... Anger. We're so angry. And I mean, honestly, the anger is... How do I move through anger? I think moving through anger is just letting yourself feel it. Let yourself be really upset. I think there's this thing that people think about vegans and they think, oh, just the angry vegans. And I think a lot of new vegans are angry because they're finally just allowing themselves to see what's really going on in the animal agriculture industry. It makes you angry.
[30:24] It It makes you angry at the system. It makes you angry at our government. It makes you angry at everybody. And you just have nowhere to put that anger. You have nowhere to kind of, suddenly you find yourself online, like commenting back to people. And I feel like that's in general, that's not what we should be doing to feel our anger. But I understand where people are coming from when they are angry, when they find out about what's going on. But I think, you know, feel your angry, feel your anger, punch a pillow, do what you gotta do, talk to people about it, find someone that's angry too. So you can have someone to bounce off with, but then fuel that anger into action, right? Pick something that feels accessible to you, whether it's just changing your own life, changing your own diet or volunteering or reading or learning or having conversations, listening to podcasts, whatever you're going to do, find your community and put that anger into actionable steps. So for me, this is my action. This cookbook is how I'm feeling my anger. Okay, good. Good. Well, you've done a great job fueling that action. What about how do we move through stage four, which is depression? Yeah, I mean, I think...
[31:38] It's all time, you know, and being consistent with yourself. So the problem with the five stages of grief, the five stages of breaking up is if you don't allow yourself to really move through every single step, you're going to feel like a pinball going back and forth. So if you find out all these things you go through, you know, you're not in denial anymore. You really understand what's going on, but you're not like giving yourself actionable steps to actually follow through with. If you're not being accountable to yourself and actually doing the thing, actually breaking up with dairy, actually doing these commitments that you've had for yourself, you're going to bounce back and forth from anger and depression forever because you're never going to actually move through it onto the next step,
Embracing Anger and Action
[32:20] which is actually feeling better, figuring out life after dairy. You know, it's like with any breakup. If you keep going back to that guy, you know, you're going to keep breaking up. He's going to keep treating you the same way, You know, when people show you who they are, believe them. So it's like, if you keep denying yourself that freedom away from that relationship, you're going to stay depressed, you're going to stay angry, and you're going to bounce back and forth. So I think in order to get out of that, you got to commit to yourself and just go for it. Hmm.
[32:52] Well, let me ask you this. So you talk about going back and forth like a pinball. Yeah. Did you say that happened to you? Like, did you a number of times tell yourself, okay, I'm done with dairy because I don't want another trip to the hospital. I don't like the acne. I don't like these harsh periods. And were you able to make the connection with dairy, but just not have the...
[33:16] Not have the fortitude or whatever you want to call it to move through the five stages and stop the pinball process. Yeah. It took me about a year back and forth for, yeah, it took me a long time. And then I had a really bad surgery. And after that, I was like, okay, I'm over it. And they're like, nothing can literally nothing can convince me of anything other than just eating plants and being as clean as I can and moving my body and just trying to move forward the best possible way I know how. Because at the end of the day, a lot of times we know what we're doing wrong, or we know what we're doing that's hurting ourselves. And sometimes we just have to have, most of the time, I've worked with thousands of people helping them change their food or helping them learn how to cook or whatever. And a lot of times people only change when their back is against the wall, unfortunately. And for me, my back was against the wall and I had to make a change. And so that's really what it did for me. And it kind of made me realize that I wish I had done it sooner because maybe I wouldn't have gone through so much medical trauma. I wouldn't have, you know, which I still am dealing with, you know, PTSD from having medical trauma, having endometriosis. And I think,
Moving Through Depression
[34:29] you know, we don't have to go that far. We don't have to go that deep. We can change before, you know, things get really hard.
[34:39] Yeah. Well, I think that everything you've described here is. It's also applicable to, to, to big meat, right? Oh, totally. Yeah. What a great blueprint. So stage five is acceptance. Yeah. Right. Hallelujah. Relief. Yeah. Relief. And now what is it time for now? Is it time to reset? Yeah. Find community reset. Acceptance is just, it's more of that like soft feminine energy of just like, okay, hey, this is where we are and let's keep moving forward.
[35:17] It's hard to accept when you really learn about stuff that's happening in the world. I mean, in general, we're living in a really crazy time to be alive right now. Everything just feels really crazy. Every day I'll open my phone with one eye like, what happened today? And I think if we can just have acceptance for the things that we can control and have acceptance for what's going on and trying to move forward in a way that, it could be, you know, surrounding yourself with people who think like you or surrounding yourself with people who make you feel seen and heard and who allow you to make the changes that you want to make. Or, you know, it could be having a new morning routine or things like that. Like taking those little steps because once you're in acceptance.
Acceptance and Community
[35:59] Then you can move forward. That's why I put this before all the recipes, because I think it's really important to go through a lot of these things before you dive in and like change all your pantry items and buy a new Vitamix and do all the things. Cause sometimes you have to feel all your feelings before you can take those actionable steps. Sometimes people do it all at once, but I do think it's important to go through this and then you're like, okay, I've got fuel, I've got energy, I have motivation. And that's when you kind of start cooking. That's when you can get into it. That's when you can change how you drink your coffee in the morning. That's when you call restaurants ahead of time to see if they've got options for you. You know, that's when you become the person who books all the reservations for your friend group. So that's kind of what acceptance is all about. Yeah. And you have all these, these fun photos, like there you are. This is with the right across from acceptance, but where did you get this outfit? Oh my God.
[36:57] I, so I had this idea. So that was my idea for the cover initially is I wanted to be in like a milkman outfit. I don't know. I found the bow tie and the hat online and then I found the white jumpsuit and I was like, I just want to be like the new age milk woman. like we're doing dairy-free milk only. So that was kind of my inspo. It didn't quite make the cover, but I think it's perfect for the beginning chapters.
[37:21] I do too. And let me tell you, the photography in this book is absolutely so brilliant. Did you hire a photographer to do all this? So it was just me and Steve, my husband. Yeah. So when we got the book deal, we were living in a super tiny two-bedroom beach apartment we live in san diego we're like two blocks from the beach i miss our old neighborhood so much but i was like steve we got to build out a photography studio we can't have this huge book deal and like hire someone to do our own photography that's not going to happen and steve and i have no formal training in photography so everything has just been like youtube videos and like we're just trying to figure it out as we go, and so yeah we moved into this house um, in La Jolla. And we have a whole, we have a three bedroom house. One of the rooms is literally all of our photography equipment. And yeah, it's been really fun just figuring it out. We got a bunch of our backgrounds and stuff from this company in Denmark. Like I sort of scoured the internet to get everything that we needed for this book. So yeah, we've invested pretty much everything into this, this book. And I really wanted to do the photography because photography a lot of times
Behind the Scenes of the Cookbook
[38:29] is, you know, your soul and your personality and like your point of view. And I think that that's so important in a book like this so that everyone could really see our point of view and really feel our energy throughout the book. Yeah.
[38:43] Well, what I want to do now is I want to walk through some of the recipes because the recipe section is phenomenal. I think you've got seven different sections, if I'm not mistaken.
[38:54] So I've chosen a couple of recipes from each section, just so everybody can get a little bit of a feel. And the first one is almond milk. No, you call it no strain almond milk. I want to know what is the trick? How can you do no strain almond milk and not have any kind of pulp and weird stuff? Yeah. So that was a big goal of mine. You know, I read every dairy-free cookbook there was looking for what I just, I was like looking kind of for holes and seeing the industry, you know, when you're, when you write a book proposal, like I said, it's like a business proposal. So you kind of look for holes in the industry. And what I noticed is like most nut milks require a nut milk straining bag. And I loathe the nut milk straining bag. Like I never want to get in my rings and like, I just, I don't want to do it. And I know most people don't either. So I wanted to create a no strain almond milk, which is really hard to find. And the key is you have to get slivered blanched almonds and they blend up just like cashews. Yeah. Incredible. Incredible. And before I go on with some more recipes, I want people to know that you have a little section, a little box in the book where you say out with the old, and it includes whole and nonfat milk, milk, fat, milk powder, whey, casein, colostrum. What is colostrum? It sounds really awful.
[40:23] Is the worst trend in wellness history i swear it is the um it is the liquid that comes out right before the breast milk does that's supposed to go to the baby and it it has it's like packed with all sorts of things that can boost your immune system and you know antioxidants and all these things that are for the baby but instead these companies are taking it and they're dehydrating it and they're turning it into a powdered supplement. Okay. Okay. So colostrum, then we got condensed milk. We have cream. We have ghee, yogurt, cheese, and butter. And so you basically, in the recipe section, you have substitutes for almost every one of these. Yeah. Right? Literally. We have like a no-way protein powder, so you can make your own protein powder at home. No way. No way.
[41:12] Yeah. And that's, I mean, I love a protein powder. I'm especially like I have gone through phases where I don't touch protein powder, where, you know, it just everyone kind of goes through their own phases. And I think, you know, one of the biggest problems with people who have a lot of protein powder is whey protein. And I remember I used to have the worst stomach problems. I was like one of those girls with tummy problems. And it's because I was drinking whey protein. And it's just so bad for your gut lining. It can cause like so many gastrointestinal issues. And so, you know, I don't want to discount people who need that like quick source of protein, that quick source of nourishment that, you know, moms or people on the go or whatever. So I really wanted to make sure that there was a protein powder option available that was still really creamy and delicious and kind of gave all the things that we're looking for. Well, speaking of creamy and delicious and mouthfeel. So here you have a whole milk, the equivalent of a whole milk right there. Can everybody see it? Yeah, there you go.
[42:10] And what do you use? What nut or seed do you use to get that mouthfeel? So you can use a couple of different ones in this. And in the beginning of the book, I talk about different replacements. So if you have cashews, there's a replacement for that. Or if you're allergic to cashews, there's a replacement for that.
[42:27] If you're allergic to almonds, I talk about all the replacements because I really want this book to be allergy friendly with the idea that dairy is the number one allergy in the world, but I'm not discounting the fact that people have other food allergies. So I wanted to make sure. But we use cashews in that and it's all about ratio. It's all about how long you blend it for, but it is the perfect whole milk substitute. It's perfect to the drop of water. It is like perfect. And you also, in a lot of your milks, you have, and I love it, you have some dates in there as well to give it a little bit of sweetness. And thickness. So a lot of times in plant-based milks, this is also an issue, you know, which you have your own line of plant-based milks, you understand this. But a big issue in the plant-based milk world is gums and emulsifiers and preservatives and oil. And the reason why a lot of that is there is for thickness it's for the fact that it won't separate you know while it's sitting on the shelf it's for you know product life all that kind of stuff so the date is really a great option to have that thickness and it also kind of helps emulsify the milk so that you get that nice thick consistency without having to use a gum or a filler or an oil, How many times did you have to shoot this shot to get it? Literally once. Seriously? Yeah. Yeah, we had our camera on shutter speed. We got this super fun light.
[43:53] And I don't have it that much. My wrists are kind of trashed from chefing for so long. So I was like, Steve, this is all you. You're going to pop this open. And we did it the first time. I'm really impressed with Steve, actually. So you have a pistachio milk. And you say that this works like a charm as a latte. Oh my gosh. So good. It's so pistachios are so fatty and creamy and so flavorful. So it's really good in a matcha latte. And it's also really good just for like a regular pistachio latte too. And it's like slightly sweet, sweetened so that you can have it in a latte, but any of the book, any of the milks, you can always make them unsweetened too, because you're making it yourself. That's the benefit. You've got, you've got, you know, a lazy girl's barista soy milk. You've got all things hiracha but this one yeah this one i'm like wow you got a black sesame seed milk look at that right there it is yes yeah that recipe is one of my favorites because it's so umami like and there's so much protein in it because sesame seeds are actually packed with protein um but i love that one so there's actually a ramen recipe later on in the book and we use that black sesame seed milk in the ramen. And it is like a flavor explosion you can't quite comprehend.
[45:16] All right. I'm moving on from the milk section and you've got so many incredible ones there. And let's talk about...
[45:25] This one, I believe this section is called, let me get it. The one you can't live without. It's your ode to cheese. Yes. And the first one is on page 87 and it's the family size cheddar block. Yes. And what attracted me to this was you've got, if I'm not mistaken, what's the first ingredient? It's like yellow potatoes.
[45:53] Yeah. So we wanted to make all the cheeses basically made from vegetables and some nuts. Some of the cheeses do have refined coconut oil on them just a bit, just because you're not going to get a melt if you don't add any oil. You know, we, so here's the thing about that recipe. That recipe was tested almost 40 times because we were like, okay, we tried to do a completely oil free a bunch of times. We tried to do it, you know, with it. It was like, we almost gave up. We were like, okay, we just can't figure this out. we can't do this cheddar recipe. There's no way. And then I don't know, one day it just clicked. It just happened. And we were like, oh, this is perfect. Because a lot of vegan cheddar tastes too much like nutritional yeast or it tastes too much like starch or it tastes too much like oil. And we didn't want any of that. We wanted it to be really, I really wanted these cheeses to be like the real thing. I wanted you to really get that cheddar vibe from it. And if you are oil-free. There are tons of cheese recipes that don't have oil in them. But I like to think of the cheddar recipe as like a bridge. It's like a bridge cheese recipe. It still melts. It still slices. It still shreds. It takes me back to like fourth grade. I would come home and for a snack, I'd have cheddar cheese on top of a Ritz cracker. Yes. Oh, man.
Exploring Dairy-Free Cheeses
[47:20] But so you've got all kinds of cheeses you've got a creamy gorgonzola you've got a cheese log that's made from macadamia nuts i'm going to jump right now because i've got a bunch of sections that i want to kind of give samples of this is the feta cheese and i think a lot of people love feta so what did you use to create your feta so the feta is made from tofu actually and i wanted it to be like a high protein feta cheese that could kind of use as a snack, but it's not like the traditional tofu feta where you just slice it up and then you season it. This one is actually like you blend tofu in the blender with a bunch of ingredients and then you set it that way. And then you slice it. And this one's really good too, because you can toss it in seasonings and stuff after it's set. So it's, and you can crumble it and do all those things as well. All right. Well, you got really cheesy.
[48:16] Next section, get sauced. Sauces are so important. The first thing that you have.
[48:24] Is so many people that I know are looking for a good yogurt.
Crafting Dairy-Free Sauces
[48:27] And your first recipe here is you call it almost instant mango Greek yogurt. So how do I create my own yogurt at home that doesn't have all of the oil and all of the sugar? Yeah. So making your own yogurt at home can be really challenging. And I had a classic coconut fermentation yogurt in my first cookbook. And what I found is people had a lot of hard times like making that work. And it's because when you're fermenting things on your countertop, it's all about the temperature and how clean your glass is that you're fermenting it in. And, you know, how cold the coconut was or, you know, like there's so many or what kind of probiotic strains you're using. There's so many different variables. And so when I was making this book, I was like, I don't want to have people have to think about these variables. I want people to know that the recipe is going to work, whether they live in the tropics or whether they live in the Rocky Mountains. You know, like I think that's something that I've noticed in the dairy free world or even in general, when you're making your own cheese or your own yogurt or your fermentation in general, it's all very dependent on where you live. And so this yogurt, there's no fermentation required. It's technically not even like if we're being super technical, not quite a yogurt because it's not fully fermented. However.
[49:50] We do use probiotic powder in there. So you're still getting that like probiotic goodness, but it's super easy to make. Anyone can make it. And we use frozen fruit to kind of emulsify it to thicken
The Comfort of Dairy-Free Desserts
[50:04] the yogurt. So it really feels like a Greek yogurt. And you get that high protein breakfast without having to worry about... You know, fermenting things. Yeah.
[50:16] You have a spreadable butter and the first two ingredients are cauliflower and chopped carrots. I mean, come on. Is that really, is it really good? It's so good. So, so when you're thinking about butter, you know, you're thinking about margarine specifically, it's all oil. And so we wanted to make one that was all vegetables. And at first the recipe was turning out so weird. Steve was like, this is not going to work. What are you thinking? I just kept being like, trust the process. We're going to totally figure this out. And we finally did. And yeah, there's a couple of different ways to make it depending on how the consistency you want your margarine or your spreadable butter to be, but it's really, really good. And yeah, it's made from vegetables, which is so fun. Wow.
[51:02] And just so the audience knows, and you said this, but some of your recipes do have either extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil in them. Yes, a couple of them. Yeah. But we, you know, on the bottom of each recipe, there's an allergy ledger. So there's nut-free optionals, oil-free, nut-free, soy-free, gluten-free, grain-free. And again, I really wanted to have everyone feel seen when it comes to their preferences, their food allergies, or their chronic illnesses or things that they're dealing with. And I know that, you know, oil is not for everybody. I know that a lot of people can't eat nuts. I know that a lot of people are gluten free. So that was something I really wanted to highlight. And I really wanted to make a very solid effort to make as many recipes oil free as humanly possible. You know, there's certain things, like I said, the cheese or the butter stick, like if you want it to melt, it kind of has to have a little bit of oil in there, or it's, you know, not going to be the real thing when it comes to like that melty, but then there's going to be another separate option for you. So there's, like I said, there's something for everyone. Yeah. And this is, this is going to be the last get sauce recipe I'm going to share with, with everybody. And that is one of my favorite comfort foods in the Hawaii world is macaroni and cheese, mac and cabbage. And so you have this baked truffle Mac here, here she blows right here, but that's not the photo that, that caught me. It was this one.
[52:31] Oh my gosh. That is so gorgeous. You know that photo i actually scrapped and then at the very last second i threw it back in and it's one of my favorites now too that it's printed oh it's so nice it's so good i made it i actually cooked um a farm sanctuary dinner for 70 people for thanksgiving uh a couple weeks ago and we made that recipe and everyone was freaking out over it what what makes the truffle, Well, we use truffle. Okay. So it's, it's.
[53:06] Okay, then. Yeah. So where do you, where do you get truffle? So you can get truffle oil like anywhere. You just want to make sure that the truffle oil that you get is ethical.
[53:18] But yeah, you can find truffle oil so many different places. I, so I live in San Diego. We have little Italy here in San Diego and I have some friends who own Italian restaurants. So they, they definitely hook it up for me when it comes to truffle, but yeah, you can find it. Or if you don't want to like use truffle oil, the mac and cheese recipe alone is essentially like a white cheddar style mac. So you don't have to do the truffle oil either. Okay. Good to know. All right. Well, I'm moving on now to main meals. You had so many of them. It was so hard. I just wanted to pick two of them. So this one, I've never, this is so creative and I'm going to show the photo and then I'm and I'll say what it, or you can say what it is. What is this a photo of what main meal? It's lasagna soup. Lasagna soup.
[54:06] I cannot wait to try that. So good. You like make this, the broth by roasting everything and then you blend it and then you add it to the broth, which is so cool. How in the world did you think of a lasagna soup? I mean, it's a pretty typical dish actually. And I wanted to do a lasagna, but I was feeling a little lazy that day so i was like you know let's make a lasagna soup and it's actually really good well you say it's love in a bowl it is it's a comfort you know i think a lot of times with dairy people just want comfort they want to feel those feelings you know and i think sometimes we don't need the dairy we just need to a little push in the right direction one of my favorite.
[54:50] One of my favorite foods on the planet is indian food and when i saw this i was like okay after the lasagna soup i want to make this this is a paneer masala and obviously you've got rice you've got tofu and you've got this this sauce oh and the paneer cheese so that is the last cheese in the cheese chapter and that cheese if i believe is actually oil free yeah well and so is the mozzarella okay wait can we just go back to the cheese chapter really quick because we have this one recipe where you can make a mozzarella block mozzarella balls and burrata cheese it's completely oil-free you can switch it depending on your allergies and it's truly mind-blowing like it will change everything you think about cheese so as a cordon bleu trained chef yeah what challenging was this cookbook for you it was the hardest thing i've ever done, Truly. Truly. I can't wait for my next cookbook because it'll be so much easier to write.
[55:54] Now that you've done this. Yeah, it's so hard. It's so hard to rewrite. Beacon cheese is already very much a thing. I'm not inventing anything. But I'm really trying to rewrite the way that we're doing it in a sense of I want it to be accessible for people. Because at the end of the day, you don't go to the grocery store and make your own cheese. You know, you're, you're, we're used to going and just buying cheese and then it's done. So I really wanted it to be accessible and again, not have a lot of fermentation and, you know, have steps that the regular person could do. And I think that was just, it was hard. Like I said, some of the cheese recipes took 40 tries to get the right thing. Cause I just wanted it to be just right.
[56:34] When did you first have the, when did you lock yourself in the room and do that proposal? Like was that in 2022 23 when was that 2022 it was uh october 2022 the book was sold by november contract was signed in december it was quick that's crazy and then so so and then how how long did you spend on the book like the recipes and the photos and all that so the entire year of 2023 we were so busy locked in our house writing this book because i mean we also run our own business, me and my husband. So we have our business. We are still private chef. We still do pop-up dinners. We do content online. Our audience exploded in 2023 too. So that was a lot to deal with. And that's when I let go of the podcast because I was like, I just can't juggle all this. This is too much. And so it took an entire year of us working every single day. All of our friends were like, you guys are insane. You guys are working every day. And it really was seven days a week, we invested all of our own money into it. We were just like, we want to change how we look at the food industry, how we look at cheese, how we look at all this stuff. And we, we have this incredible opportunity and let's just go for it. And I mean, we had to move. So that takes a lot of work. Like there was just so much that happened, but yeah, it was all of 2023.
[57:54] Um, and yeah, I ended up, yeah. You guys just put it all on the line. I love it. I love I put everything on the table for it. I actually got injured from writing the cookbook. I dislocated my collarbone from my sternum from working too much. And my doctor put me on like a strict no cook for two months. After I submitted my manuscript. Oh my goodness gracious. Injury on the job. Literally. Okay. So life of the party section, you've got these sweet pepper poppers that I want one now. What can you tell me about these pepper poppers? Well, you know, I love the concept of a jalapeno pepper popper or what are they originally called? God, my brain. I don't know. I just want to say pepper popper 10 times.
[58:54] But yeah, I love the concept of a jalapeno popper. That's what they're called, jalapeno poppers. But I just, I get heartburn when I eat too many spicy things. So I wanted to do, you know, and that's a very classic dairy recipe is to have a jalapeno popper. So I wanted to do something that was a little less spicy. You can always use jalapenos if you love spicy. But this was with the small sweet peppers and I wanted to make sure they were gluten-free and they had just like a, you know, and I think that one is food allergy friendly too. I think we use sunflower seeds in that one. So that literally everyone can eat that recipe, you know, for these party recipes, I wanted to do it. So it was really crowd-friendly so that your grandpa, your breastfeeding friend, like everyone can enjoy no matter what food allergies they have or what they're going through?
[59:41] So this one, I just felt like just by looking at the photo and so many of your photos, I can actually, my mouth starts to water and I can actually taste what it, what I think it tastes like, but just to give people an example, like, look at this, look at these lobster rolls. That's exactly where I just was. Really? That's yeah. There you go. And look at that. And what are you using there? Jackfruit? I'm like, what are we using now? we're using king oyster mushrooms and hearts of palm. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So that one's really fun because, you know, we think butter, we think lobster roll. And I was like, I just want to make this more San Diego inspired. So one of our crema, so in the sauce recipes, we have a recipe called crema four ways. So you can make a base, whether it's soy based or nut based, depending on your food allergy, and then you can make different flavors from it. So we have a lemon poppy seed crema. And then we have what we are calling a Bay's special sauce crema, which is essentially like chorizo flavor inside of a crema, which is so delicious. And so we decided to make this more of like a San Diego Mexican kind of inspired lobster roll that has the Bay's special sauce on there. And the use of the King Oyster mushrooms plus the hearts of palm is like the perfect lobster replacement. It's one of the best recipes in the book. Honestly, I love it.
[1:01:06] Did you, so you said you moved to a new location, a new house. Yeah. When you're making all these recipes, you're testing them. You said you did that one recipe. I mean, it was the cheddar cheese 40 times before you got it right. Yeah. Are you sharing it with neighbors or what are you doing? So the food doesn't just kind of go in the trash. Yeah. So we, when we moved, we accidentally moved into a retirement community and we had no idea. And so all of our neighbors at the time were like 80 plus kids. 80 was the youngest. And so I was just like going around to all my elderly neighbors and giving them like cakes and sandwiches and cheese. And they had no idea it was vegan. They were like, oh my God, this is amazing. Thank you. So we were kind of feeding the neighborhood for a while. And then we would invite friends over, you know, and we would do big, big shoots when the recipes were finalized. But actually this lobster roll was a one and done kind of thing. We like made it the first time and I was like, that's it. This is perfect. So you have a hundred recipes. How many recipes did you have that just kind of hit the cutting room floor? Didn't make it into the book?
[1:02:21] You know, not a lot because I snuck a lot of recipes in. So it says a hundred recipes, but a lot of recipes have recipes within the recipe. If that makes sense. Yeah. It's not like the crema four ways. We also, so if, so we did a presale incentive too. So we had like five coffee creamers that didn't make it in there. So I ended up doing a little coffee creamer ebook. So when you purchase the cookbook on presale, you can get that as well. And I'll probably extend that for the first week of the book launch as well. But yeah, not a lot. You know, I wanted this book. I mean, it's 320 pages. So I wanted this book to be as packed as humanly possible and to have every single option in there. Yeah. So the last section, of course, is the dessert section. Right the sweetest thing i i actually love this this this photo of you you look so relaxed like i know i'm like who is she i know i'm like wow it's uh is that who i think it is.
[1:03:21] You know this whole book is inspired kind of by a rom-com you know so all the titles and stuff so yeah uh so this one of course, whipped cream, right? Look at that on top of that strawberry, but you call this. Yeah. So how do you make a whipped cream that's dairy free? So the traditional way is to use coconut fat. So you use really cold coconut fat, but I know a lot of people don't want to have the saturated fat that comes with coconut fat. So I ended up doing dairy, a whipped cream two ways. And the other way is using really, really cold silken tofu.
Creative Classics in Dairy-Free Cooking
[1:03:59] So cold meaning what like you have it in the back of the fridge for a day or two you want it like cold got it not frozen but just icy colds that's a really big key with making dairy-free whipped cream is to make sure the temperature is right and if you're having a hard time with the temperature a trick you can do is if you have a kitchenaid mixer you can actually put your bowl in the fridge or the freezer too so this again these are pretty indulgent but i just want to show the photo this is a granola cookie dough milkshake look at look look at that, such a gorgeous photo this is this is food porn right here this is what we're really it really is like definition food porn for sure yeah that recipe is great because that also has that cookie dough in there um and the cookie dough is a high protein cookie dough too so you can just eat the cookie dough if you want and then i just had to show this because it it looks so like five star 10 star restaurant this is a black sesame blackberry flan yes had to have a flan you know look at that.
[1:05:10] It's about the classics but like being creative with the classics and realizing that you can like have fun with it too you know yeah and then i just got a show this is an almond french silk pie i look at this and and this is i could just eat the whole thing i know i could and literally and then i would go to bed oh but maybe not because it's all healthy ingredients, then maybe not like oh my gosh um so you said that now that you've written this cookbook, everything else will be a little easier so i i mean i hate to even ask you this question but have you started think putting thought into what your next book will be yeah i really gonna be yeah oh my god my husband thinks i'm insane so i mean how it sounds like steve has been so incredibly supportive throughout this whole process and it sounds like he's actually been, a major part of it um yeah has it has it has it brought you closer together.
[1:06:19] Totally. I mean, it's so funny because Steve and I started as co-workers. So when I first moved to San Diego, I was working at a bar just until my business got off the ground and we bartended together. And so that's how we met. And so we've kind of are used to working in the fire together. When you bartend, it's kind of a hectic, stressful situation. You're kind of in the weeds together. And so when he first started working with me in 2020, it was hard to kind of navigate and figure out how, because it was my business and it's weird being your husband's boss in a way, you know, like that's kind of something weird to navigate, but now we're full partners and, you know, he does a lot of our blog and our photography and all that stuff. And he's just someone that just is down for all my ideas. I'll wake up one day and I'll just be like, you know what, let's do this. And he's like, all right, show me the way. Let's go. So I think everyone needs someone like that in their lives to just fully believe in them. And I wouldn't have been able to build the audience and the platform and everything that we have now without having Steve in my life because he's really been someone that's supported me and helped me through all those hard times having endometriosis and just dealing with life in general, pandemic, all that stuff. So it's been nice to have him by my side because I just truly can't imagine doing any of this if he wasn't here. Yeah.
[1:07:41] Um, what can we do? Like everybody that's listening to this right now, what can we do to help make sure that breaking up with dairy becomes a New York times bestseller? Oh, I would imagine that's one of your goals with this book. And so, and so like, can we pre-order what's the best time for us to order the book? What can we do to help out? Thank you so much for asking that question. That is a big goal of mine. So, I mean, the best thing to do is to order the book from either Barnes & Noble, Target, your local bookstore, you know, trying to diversify where we get book orders from and also supporting those smaller bookstores is really, really important for them and also for things like the New York Times list. And also pre-ordering is really important. If you do pre-order, you can go to breakingupwithdairy.com and submit your receipt from anywhere you pre-ordered from. And there's a ton of goodies in there. There's like a guide to meal prep. There's all these pre-order bonus goodies. There's like so many, I think there's six eBooks or something like that. I just wanted to make it really juicy and hold you over until the book comes out for sure. And there's that coffee creamer ebook in there as well.
[1:08:54] And other than that, if you're listening to this or watching this, the books come out, it's the week of pub, just order it the week of pub, buy one for your friends. And yeah, we really do like authors really do need so much rallying of the community to kind of get to those bestsellers lists. Because if we were able to get Breaking Up with Dairy on the New York Times bestsellers list, that is definitely saying something, Right. That's saying that the culture is changing. We're ready for something new. And, you know, it could make a really big impact and how we're all looking at food and the food industry and what we're all expecting from, you know, big corporations and how we're going to move the needle forward. Mm-hmm. You bring such a wonderful perspective, a very necessary voice into the movement. And as you say in the opening of this, I want to get it right. So let me just let me access my notes here, if I can find them. But you say something like, this isn't just a fad. This isn't just a, you know, this is a full-fledged movement that is underfoot right now. And we've got to do our best to...
[1:10:21] Move past just everything that's wrong with dairy, the egregious nature of the abusive relationship that we subject these cows and these calves and everything to, the planet, the deforestation. So thank you so much for bringing this to life, bringing this into the universe.
[1:10:46] And um thank you for thank you for being here with me you know we can all make change i for so long i thought what am i gonna do like how could i make a change and then at some point you just have to get out of your own way and decide that like i am big enough to do things i'm big enough to make change in my community my voice can be loud enough my voice deserves to be heard i can take up space you know i think a lot of times we're we're taught that we shouldn't be taking up space. And we can take up space. And it is going to take a collective of us to really make change and to do things.
The Movement for Change
[1:11:19] But I have faith that things are changing right now for better or for worse. Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better. And yeah, I'm here right along with you. I was so inspired by you. Your TED Talk so many years ago before I was even vegan inspired me to kind of be more allowed to change my whole business to becoming vegan. And look what that's done. And so now here I am. And hopefully whoever is listening can be inspired to know it's not too late to change. It's not too late to, to go against the norm. And if you don't feel supported, like DM me or Rip and we'll support you, you know, like...
[1:11:56] So what is your handle on TikTok, Instagram, if people want to follow you? Yeah, so it's Chef Bae, B-A-I, and we're also on YouTube. And we also now have a sub stack, which I am so excited about. We've heard the community feedback on advertisements on recipe blogs. And so we decided to completely drop the ads. And we have a completely ad-free recipe blog with so many recipes on sub stack. And we release a new recipe every single week on there. So that's exciting. Help me out. Help an older guy out here. What exactly is Substack? So it's essentially like, I mean, I just figured it out myself, honestly. What's TikTok?
[1:12:39] What's Substack? Substack is essentially like an online forum. So it initially started for people who have newsletters or journalists or people who want to write more long form content. But I started seeing a trend of recipe bloggers going over to Substack to have a very low monthly kind of paywall. So for us, it's $8 a month and you get access to everything. Our challenges, our favorite episodes of our podcast that we used to have, it's all on there as well as all of our recipes ad-free. Because I think people are sick of ads. And the other thing with advertisements on my blog is I couldn't control exactly what ads were going on the blog. So a couple of times I saw advertisements for the dairy industry on my own blog and I was like, I cannot do this anymore. And it's expensive to run a blog and to test all these recipes and all that stuff. So a sub stack is a very simple way to support the creators that you love, no matter what type of creators that they are. And in return, you get amazing content that's advertisement free and that you can really kind of control what you see and win.
[1:13:46] Well, Bailey Ruskus, I am so proud of you for diving in headfirst and just tackling this incredible project. And it is such a winner. So everybody breaking up with dairy chef Bailey Ruskus.
How to Support the Book Release
[1:14:08] What an absolute gem, just like you are. And thanks for coming back on the PLANTSTRONG podcast on the way out can you give me a virtual PLANTSTRONG fist bump to breaking up with dairy oh yeah let's do it let's make a movement millions of people let's go i'm ready let's go.
[1:14:29] To pre-order Breaking Up With Dairy, just go to breakingupwithdairy.com and you can get $175 worth of free content. I'll link up exactly how to do that in today's show notes. Keep in mind that Chef Bailey Ruskus will be visiting Austin February 23rd. She'll be doing an event at Williams-Sonoma in the early afternoon. And then, fingers crossed, if we can make it happen, We'll be doing a PLANTSTRONG Potluck at the world headquarters here in Austin the evening of the 23rd. If we can't make that work, we'll do the 24th. So just keep an ear to the ground by following us on @GoPLANTSTRONG on Instagram and my personal Instagram account, Rip Esselstyn. And we'll be sure to keep you up to date on those exact dates and times for that Chef Bailey PLANTSTRONG Potluck. And stay tuned because in February our podcast episodes are all going to be focusing on the wonderful beautiful heart as we celebrate National Heart Month with guest appearances by some of your favorite heart doctors. Thanks as always for listening and remember to always always keep it PLANTSTRONG.
[1:15:49] The Plant Strong podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Lori Kortowich, and Amy Mackey. If you like what you hear, do us a favor and share the show with your friends and loved ones. You can always leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And while you're there, make sure to hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode. As always, This and every episode is dedicated to my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. And Anne Cryle Esselstyn. Thanks so much for listening.
