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All Things Coconut, Cauliflower, and More


Jonathan Bailor: Hey everyone, Jonathan Bailor and Carrie Brown back with another Living the Smarter Science of Slim podcast. Carrie Brown, how are you?

Carrie Brown: Hello Jonathan, I’m doing very well thank you.

Jonathan Bailor: For this podcast, do you think I should try to speak with a British accent and you should try to speak with an American accent? Can you speak with an American accent?

Carrie Brown: I can’t talk American. I can’t say “water” in American. I can’t say “butter” in American.

Jonathan Bailor: How do you pronounce the thing right above your wrist but below your fingers? It begins with a “p”

Carrie Brown: Palm.

Jonathan Bailor: People from the Midwest say “palm” like a palm tree.

Carrie Brown: We say “pom tree”, so you know.

Jonathan Bailor: What do you call the beverage that comes from cows?

Carrie Brown: “Milk”

Jonathan Bailor: Say it again?

Carrie Brown: “Milk”

Jonathan Bailor: , I mispronounce this word. I say “melk”. Like there’s an “e” in it. I didn’t realize that until ten years ago, but I still say it like that. I don’t know why.

Carrie Brown: So no, I think that’s a very bad idea. I think you should continue to talk in American and I should continue to talk in British.

Jonathan Bailor: I love it. Let’s take the lift and go have some bangas and mash.

Carrie Brown: Don’t get me started.

Jonathan Bailor: She would make a sane version of bangers and mash. Mashed cauliflower. That stuff is the bomb. We’ve been making mashed cauliflower with the Vitamix. All you do is boil cauliflower, put it in the Vitamix, add garlic, onions, however you would make mashed potatoes. It’s good eatin’, Carrie.

Carrie Brown: Good eatin’.

Jonathan Bailor: I like mashed cauliflower. I’m a fan. I digress.

Carrie Brown: Yes. I thought it was me that had the issue with bright shiny object syndrome. Not you.

Jonathan Bailor: I like bright shiny objects. Carrie, fish, you know I love fish.

Carrie Brown: Yes.

Jonathan Bailor: Do you love fish?

Carrie Brown: I do love fish.

Jonathan Bailor: So folks, I just want to make on quick PSA for eating fish. The longer I’m alive, and the longer I’m in the “internet nutrition would”, people talk about meat. Even the food guide pyramid, which of course is the best source of nutritional information around.

Carrie Brown: From the devil.

Jonathan Bailor: I don’t know why it is, but we think protein, we think meat, when we think “I’m not a vegetarian we think that is because “I eat meat”. Carrie, we have to give fish more love. Fish is super healthy, super sane, and folks, if we want our omega-3 fats, fish is the way to go and it’s super super super easy to prepare.

Carrie Brown: It’s probably time I posted my fish pie recipe then.

Jonathan Bailor: Is it a dessert?

Carrie Brown: No.

Jonathan Bailor: Okay thank God. It’s more like a pot pie, not like a pecan pie.

Carrie Brown: Yes, more like a pot pie. To lovely English people, you all know what I mean when I say fish pie. It’s time to post a sane fish pie recipe, clearly.

Jonathan Bailor: What is the other kind of pie? Mince meat pie.

Carrie Brown: Yes, Shepard’s Pie.

Jonathan Bailor: Or like a chicken pot pie, for example. That would be spectacular.

Carrie Brown: I will make you a fish pie.

Jonathan Bailor: What type of fish does it have in it?

Carrie Brown: Whatever. Normally the base is white fish, so cod. A chunky, dense white fish. I often mix it up with haddock, but that’s kind of British, haddock

Jonathan Bailor: Or salmon?

Carrie Brown: Or salmon, you could do too. I’m going to make you fish pie now.

Jonathan Bailor: The tip I want to give our listeners: I’ve been on the lookout for how we can get wild caught fish affordable. It’s not super affordable. Keep in mind that one of the reasons you want to eat fish is that it’s an amazing source of super healthy fats. If you’re not eating fatty fish, in some ways, it kind of defeats the purpose of eating fish in the first place. It’s still super sane and filling, but it’s not an awesome source of the most biologically available omega-3 awesome anti-inflammatory fat burning fat.

Carrie Brown: So you get protein, but not all of the other things you could get on top.

Jonathan Bailor: Exactly. Salmon is just a great example. It’s delicious and super easy to make. It’s like chicken, you can put it in almost anything. Salmon is the new chicken in my opinion, but if you want wild caught salmon it could be extremely expensive. But I was asking around when I went to Costco-folks know I’m a fan of Costco. None of their fresh salmon is wild caught. It’s all farmed, which isn’t a deal breaker, but I wanted to see if I could get some wild caught salmon affordable. The good news is that in the frozen section-which means it’s not limited to the Pacific Northwest or Costco shoppers-they have these salmon patties, and they’re wild caught. When you actually look at the price per pound, it’s less than five dollars per pound.

Carrie Brown: Their salmon burgers are the bomb.

Jonathan Bailor: They’re delicious, and they’re less than five dollars per pound for wild caught salmon.

Carrie Brown: From frozen they take like four minutes to cook.

Jonathan Bailor: You can season them, you can put all natural marinara sauce on top of them, you can do all kinds of stuff.

Carrie Brown: They are literally salmon and seasoning. That’s it. They’re fantastic.

Jonathan Bailor: For folks that are trying to do wild caught fatty fish that is insanely healthy for you and delicious, I have yet to find a more affordable option than those frozen salmon burgers.

Carrie Brown: Yes, I love them.

Jonathan Bailor: Love it. Love it, love it, love it.

Carrie Brown: Also, while you’re there, because these are also fabulous, are the (Kirko) brand Costco turkey burgers, while are essentially white meat turkey and seasoning. They are fantastic. Get a bag of those while you’re there.

Jonathan Bailor: Yes, and super easy to make. In fact, I used to do the salmon burgers on a Cuisinart Griddler-it’s like a George Foreman grill-but now I just put them all on a baking sheet and cook all twelve of them at once.

Carrie Brown: Of course you do, Jonathan.

Jonathan Bailor: I have my lunch for the week. It’s glorious. You know I love cooking in bulk.

Is there anything you don’t do in bulk? No, don’t answer that question. What’s the next question, Jonathan?

Jonathan Bailor: The next question that came up in our lovely Smarter Science of Slim support group, which if you haven’t checked out, please do. Smarterscienceofslim.com/community. We’ve got Dr. Cathy, who you’ve heard on this podcast, who’s awesome.

Carrie Brown: We love Dr. Cathy.

Jonathan Bailor: Dr. Cathy has been a doctor for longer than I have been alive.

Carrie Brown: I’m saying nothing.

Jonathan Bailor: So Dr. Cathy, wonderful lady, she’s our Smarter Science of Slim Support Group moderator, arbiter, facilitator person. Anyway, a question that came up in the free Smarter Science support group had to do with wheat grass.

Carrie Brown: My cats love eating wheat grass.

Jonathan Bailor: Really? They’re probably the only living things that do. Wheat grass is not a very tasty substance.

Carrie Brown: They love it, in the winter when there’s no grass outside I buy them a thing of wheat grass every week and they mob me when I bring it in.

Jonathan Bailor: You buy it fresh?

Carrie Brown: Yea, the little pallet things of wheat grass. They mob me and they mow it in about three days.

Jonathan Bailor: I’ve actually never tried fresh wheat grass. I’m sure if you blend it in a smoothie you can’t even taste it, but the most common way people eat wheat grass is the kind you’ll find in the sane store, which is just powdered, dehydrated wheat grass. It’s wonderful when you’re traveling or you don’t have access to non-starchy vegetables. It is never a substitute for actual non-starchy vegetables ever ever ever ever. Nothing that is not a whole food is a substitute for whole foods. But if you’re on a plane from Seattle to Manhattan and you can’t bring non-starchy vegetables on the plane but you can bring wheat grass-not that I’ve ever experienced this personally, wink wink-with wheat grass there are some tips to make it palatable. If you just try to eat wheat grass it is a bit like trying to eat sand. It is not going to go well. If you choose to eat wheat grass, which I would only recommend if you don’t have access to non-starchy vegetables, one: it is very important to get the finest ground wheat grass you can possibly get. If you are the lucky owner of a Vitamix or a Blendtech or another high end blender, you can solve this problem by not just mixing it with a spoon and water, but by throwing it in the Vitamix and letting it do it’s thing. If there’s any way to add it to something else, that makes life so much easier. If you just try to eat wheat grass with a spoon and water-you might be able to do it, but-

Carrie Brown: It’s not the funnest thing you’re going to do this year.

Jonathan Bailor: If you eat low fructose fruits, throw a peeled orange in the Vitamix with a couple tablespoons of wheatgrass, blend it up for two minutes, throw some ice in there so that it’s not warm. Drinking warm orange juice is not the best. So two tips: mix it with something else and make sure to eat it as finely ground as possible. The brand that I use when I travel is in the sane store. It is quite finely ground and is quite delicious when combined appropriately with other stuff. When I say “delicious” I mean you can’t taste it. If you could taste it, it would not be delicious.

Carrie Brown: Yes, you’re definition of delicious and mine are just worlds apart, and that’s okay. We need to celebrate our differences, which are many.

Jonathan Bailor: Carrie, a wise woman once told me that it’s all about your goals.

Carrie Brown: That exactly true. Thank heavens I do not have the same goals as you. I think that woman was me, Mr. Bailor.

Jonathan Bailor: I think it was too, Carrie. That is the irony.

Carrie Brown: I’m going to throw something at you in a minute Jonathan.

Jonathan Bailor: Next, Carrie, the importance of vegetables before noon. Sounds like the name of a book.

Carrie Brown: Or something.

Jonathan Bailor: So why are we talking about the importance of vegetables before noon?

Carrie Brown: Pick me! Pick me!

Jonathan Bailor: Carrie, what is the primary requirement before you could call yourself sane?

Carrie Brown: Non-starchy vegetables. Ten servings a day.

Jonathan Bailor: Yes! At least! Correct.

Carrie Brown: Could I answer the question? The before noon piece?

Jonathan Bailor: Sure, go ahead.

Carrie Brown: It’s because if you don’t get them in before noon, you’ll never get them in the rest of the day.

Jonathan Bailor: Ding ding ding! Bonus point, you got two for two, Carrie, congratulations.

Carrie Brown: We don’t even plan this stuff.

Jonathan Bailor: We don’t. You’ve been listening.

Carrie Brown: I’ve been paying attention.

Jonathan Bailor: Carrie is exactly right. You have to spread these out across the day, so if you’re not already at about three servings-which seems like a lot, but people don’t think about how small a serving of vegetable is. One carrot is a serving of vegetables. If you cook spinach, you naturally will eat three servings. Just eat it as a part of breakfast. Make a frittata, make some of Carrie’s wonderful stuff. If you can’t, make a green smoothie. By your second meal of the day, you should probably be right around five servings of vegetables. If you are, you’ll feel great and start to look even better. Also, hitting double digits will really be a non issue. You won’t even think about it and you’ll hit it.

Carrie Brown: You can seriously get half of your veggies in a smoothie.

Jonathan Bailor: Oh absolutely.

Carrie Brown: And not taste veggie at all. None of the smoothie recipes on my blog have less than five servings of veggies in them.

Jonathan Bailor: What I’ve started doing recently is I have this little concoction that I make. Totally assembly, not chef, but I like it. We often use rice or pasta just as a base or as fillers. You put fish on it, you put chicken on it. I use either kale or spinach. I prefer kale. I take a bunch of kale, red onions, and garlic, and I just it in a pot with a bunch of water and I boil it until it’s boiled down, and use that as a base. If I’m going to have salmon, I just put it on top of that or just use it as a side dish. When I just scoop it on my plate and I have my nutrient dense protein and my side of amazing kale, garlic, onion blend usually with marinara sauce on top, without even trying I’m going to eat four to five servings of non-starchy vegetables. Granted, I’m a larger person so I eat a lot, but truly folks, you need to eat until you’re satisfied, and if you eat nutrient dense protein and whole food fats and filling the rest up with non-starchy vegetables, you can’t help but go double digit. Just make sure you do that, because it’s really easy to get focused on anything else besides non-starchy vegetables because they’re kind of the least sexy food group. Most people don’t get excited about them, but one you start living the sane lifestyle and seeing what they do from a health perspective you’ll be quite excited about them.

Carrie Brown: I’m actually in the middle of writing a post that might be out before this podcast airs. It is kind of along the line of: I know I have been focused on making sane cookies and muffins and pancakes, and that’s all goodness, but let’s not forget that the focus is the ten servings of non-starchy veggies and all of the other cool stuff that I’ve made you is great, but that shouldn’t be the core basis of your diet. That should be the treat to make you feel normal. We must not lose sight of the veggies being where it’s at and all the cool stuff like having pancakes for breakfast, that’s all a bonus. You have to build your day around the veggies.

Jonathan Bailor: I’m so happy. I think Carrie just hit the nail on the head. I’m going to do one plug for green smoothies, because I know when folks are just getting started with sanity this seems a little weird, but folks who are sane veterans-I’ve yet to have any person not have this experience. Here’s phase one: green smoothies? That sounds ridiculous. I’m not going to do that. Phase two: You know, cooking all of these vegetables is pretty time consuming. Maybe I’ll try these smoothies. Phase Three: These smoothies make my life so much simpler. Here’s the glorious thing; what Carrie just said is spot on. When you’ve got your green smoothies and you want to have sane pancakes for breakfast, have your sane pancakes and enjoy them; because you know what? You’ve got your green smoothie. Yo don’t need to be like “oh, I was going to have sane pancakes, but I don’t know how I’m going to get my vegetables in”. Nope. Taken care of. If for dinner you just want to have a big thing of sane fish and you don’t want to do a bunch of vegetable cooking, you know what? Smoothie. Taken care of. I love it. Carrie, well stated madam.

Carrie Brown: Plus, if you haven’t joined the smoothie train, and Jonathan knows that I was a bit slow in getting on the smoothie train, I think there’s about six green smoothie recipes up on my website now, which is Carriebrown.com. None of them taste anything like a vegetable. They do look like a vegetable, but they don’t taste like them. There’s one that tastes like a strawberry milkshake. It genuinely tastes like a strawberry milkshake. There’s also an orange creamsicle and a mint chocolate one. In a blind taste test, you would never know there was five servings of spinach or kale in that sucker. Go try smoothies if you haven’t!

Jonathan Bailor: Absolutely. Carrie has a knack. She’s almost like a magician for hiding non-starchy vegetables in recipes. You would never think to find them.

Carrie Brown: Exactly.

Jonathan Bailor: I love it. Carrie, I wanted to talk about coconuts. It seems to be coconut and (keenwa) seem to be the two new sexy foods. We all know (keenwa) is insane. We’ve covered that in previous podcasts. The food coconut is amazing. Coconut goodness. If you need to use an oil, coconut oil is a good oil. I just want to warn our listeners of something. This is a perfect example of why we have to be cautious when we go into the supermarket and when corporations get their hands on food. You’ll notice there’s actually not a lot of fanfare about buying coconuts. There’s a lot of fanfare about buying processed derivatives of coconuts. Coconut oil, this is a fact, is a processed derivative of coconuts. Coconut sugar is insane, and is also a processed derivative of coconuts. Coconut water is a derivative of the whole coconut. Coconut milk is a derivative of the whole coconut. Not to say that all of these things should be avoided-coconut sugar should be. It’s a perfect example of we’ve got this whole food that’s beautiful and it’s full of wonderful gut flora healing fiber and metabolism boosting medium chain triglycerides and it’s incredibly satisfying, and it’s inefficient when compared to other fats. When big food get’s their hands on it it turns into processed stuff. If you ask the average person on the street about coconuts they’ll say “yea, coconut oil”. The first thing that comes into their mind is coconut oil. To be clear, coconut oil is not bad, but by definition, coconut oil is not as sane as whole coconuts. The take away message here, folks, is if at all possible, coconuts are wonderful for you and I would urge you to try to find ways to incorporate shredded, completely unprocessed ,whole coconut meat into your recipes. Wonderfully healthy. If you like coconuts, I would urge you to focus on as close to the whole coconut as possible, and not the marketing hype around processed, packaged derivatives of coconut. Carrie, what do you think?

Carrie Brown: I think it’s really ironic that for most of my life there were three things in the world that I wouldn’t eat. Melon, spinach, and coconut. Now, for the last year, I eat more spinach and coconut that anything else I eat. Those are the two things that I ingest more of than anything. I just think there’s a moral and a lesson in there somewhere. I’m not quite sure what it is, but I just think that’s really bizarre. The focus of my life is the two things I didn’t eat for thirty years.

Jonathan Bailor: You should probably put water on that list because you drank squash or whatever that was. Not you drink water. You’re drinking water right now, I’m so proud of you.

Carrie Brown: Only when I’m around you. It’s all a front.

Jonathan Bailor: It’s funny that you should mention spinach, melon, and coconut, because for those of our sane listeners who eat fruits, I actually think a melon, coconut, spinach smoothie might actually be kind of tasty.

Carrie Brown: I may now eat more spinach and coconut than any other food stuff, but I will never eat melon. Ever.

Jonathan Bailor: It’s not a food which I would say yo should go out of your way to eat, so that’s totally fine. That is a unique trifecta.

Carrie Brown: Don’t you think that’s weird?

Jonathan Bailor: It is weird.

Carrie Brown: Every time I think of you I think of coconut, because when you look at my recipes, you always say “can you replace it with coconut?” “can you replace it with coconut?” “could you use coconut instead?” I’m like “AHHHHHHH”.

Jonathan Bailor: Well that’s because, folks, coconut is one of those foods which are go out of your way to eat these good. They more analogous to medicine than they are to food. They’re literally therapeutic. When we talk about therapeutic sources of fats, coconut, cocoa, avocado, chia, flax, fatty fish, those are the things we need to be going out of our way to eat. Remember that cocoa was on that list. We sent our last big round of edits for the new book “The Calorie Myth” over to Harper-Collins last week or two weeks ago.

Carrie Brown: It’s a blur.

Jonathan Bailor: Many things are happening at the same time. I hadn’t seen Carrie’s recipes that are in the book-she’s got between 30 and 40 in there-and I was looking through some of the sane desserts and I was just like “dude, these are some good recipes”. Props to Carrie. I called her and it was late at night and I was super tired. I was like “Carrie, I had to call you because between coconut, cocoa, all this good stuff, turning it into sane recipes, there’s no reason not go sane. It makes you feel good, it makes you look good, and it is damn tasty”.

Carrie Brown: Yes, damn tasty. And you know I made you orange coconut cupcakes and I bet you never made them.

Jonathan Bailor: No, I have never followed a recipe in my entire life.

Carrie Brown: I made those for you, Bailor. You have to make them as well. Good Lord.

Jonathan Bailor: Well folks, I hope you enjoyed Carrie and I’s ramblings this week.

Carrie Brown: The ridiculousness that is Bailor and Brown.

Jonathan Bailor: We always love chatting. We always love sharing sanity with you. We hope you’ll stuck with us and join us next week as we eat more, exercise less, but do it smarter. Talk to you soon.

– What to love about coconuts
– What to avoid about coconut-products
– What to love about cauliflower