Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
I just like listening to this music. This is Russell Broom, by the way. Russ Broom. That's all him. I think I'm the hand claps. Welcome to the Jan Arden Podcast Show Variety Hour. We are running a new program today. Am I allowed to say that, Adam Karsh? Yeah, of course. We are using a relatively new podcast recording platform. It's called Riverside.
And it's similar to Zoom, but one of the major advantages of this program, it's really geared more to what we're doing. So it records all of our audio locally and then uploads it to the cloud. So instead of being recorded online,
like using Zoom over the internet, where you sometimes get little digital dropouts or little warbles. This audio is being recorded locally in all of our places, uploaded to the cloud, and then I download it. So hopefully this show will sound a lot better. Not that the other shows didn't sound good. Or not. Anyway, that was an explanation for all you audio nerds out there. Julie Van Rosendahl joins us today. We haven't talked to you for a couple of weeks. And I guess I should start out right away with
The street potato saga. For those of you who have been following along, Julie and I, about five weeks ago, six weeks ago almost, we went to downtown Calgary, Inglewood, different spots, old concrete planters that sit abandoned all summer long. Julie and I felt needed a few of my PEI potatoes from Rose Cousins. I had seed potatoes left over. We're like, let's plant them.
We did. They grew rapidly. Julie has been watering them and now she'll give you the update. We do have some sad news, ladies and gentlemen. There's a plot twist. So during the, during the heat wave, I was going over with, you know, buckets of water and watering them and, and they're close to my house. So every time I walk down to the river or I, you know, drive to my parents' place or I go past them, I, I wave as I pass, they were just exploding. They love the heat and the rain. So a couple of days ago, uh,
I went by, look over to the first planter that we planted, which was the biggest of the planters. And it was empty. By the dry cleaners. Beside on the corner by the dry cleaners. It was empty. So I pull over.
texted Jan like 27 times oh my god oh my god they're gone and I was mortified why were you mortified no no I was so sad because the pictures like I'm sitting at my kitchen counter and I'm like no and my friend Lisa said what's going on I said our effing potatoes have been absconded oh good I'm glad you were freaking out too because you're like oh no and I'm like
oh my God, are you okay? Are you trapped under a bookcase? Why are you not freaking out like I am? No, I had company here. So I kept picking up my phone and, and then finally they're like, what is happening? And you have to understand Julie that, you know, as much as you and I are enthusiastic, my friends aren't as enthusiastic as me about my potatoes. About gorilla potatoes. I know they're just, you know, they're just potatoes to some people, but
So I ran down the street. I was worried that someone had intentionally done it. You know, I thought, is it because I was posting on Instagram? Did someone come and pull them all up intentionally? Because there was no trace. There was no, you know, debris. So I went down the street. The other ones are fine. One of the boxes had two pulled out, but they were still there. The potatoes are still on them. The potatoes are huge. I couldn't believe. They really are. They're a really good size of potatoes, folks. They almost look like
Baker potato sizes. Oh, and it's been maybe a month since we planted them. So I went and I dug through the soil. The soil is beautiful now. It was like dust. It was like, you know, cigarette butts when we planted them. We just kind of like pulled apart the dead stuff and wedged them in. And now the soil is beautiful. So I went and I pulled out whatever potatoes I could from the initial planter. No one replanted anything. There's three little purpley
flower weeds I don't know in the corner so do you think it's some ding-dongs coming along and yanking them out just because well it's only the one though right and so that first one that we planted it and then the day after I went back or a couple days after and someone had planted other flowers on top of it right so so it might be that same person but then those flowers died and didn't do anything and
I don't know. The other ones are fine. But when you see a plant that size, you know, for those of you who don't do gardens, the potato frond, so the top part of the potato, it's explosive. It really looks like a shrub.
And it has little white flowers that eventually sort of come out. But, you know, it's very exciting for all us potato people to do the new potatoes of early summer. That is a big deal. It was in my family. We'll go out and dig up a couple of hills of potatoes. We'll have new potatoes tonight. And, you know, they were...
Kind of the size of an egg. And that's what we used to have with butter and salt and pepper. And they were delicious. Mom would steam them.
And so the ones that you showed us were giant, like really huge potatoes. And I'm telling you folks, the dirt that Julie and I were digging through to try and cram these seed potatoes in, it didn't look like very promising. Cause like Julie said, it was, there was bottle cap cigarette butts, you know, a couple from Tinder that had been there since, you know, three weeks ago, but. Fertilizing the soil. Yes. But it's amazing what,
Like you said, the potatoes did to this soil. It just rejuvenated it. Those roots were working their way in there. And anyway, so for those of you following along, if you're in Calgary and you go to Inglewood and you see potato plants in boxes, that was me and Julie. We're trying to feed the world. One tater tot at a time.
But, you know, when I went back to see what I could recover, I went to the second box that had a couple pulled out. And a woman was walking by with her dog and she said, why are you taking pictures of those weeds? Yeah.
And I said, they're not weeds, they're potatoes. And then it turned out she was quite a gardener and she said, oh, you have some cosmos growing. I had some old flower seeds that I just sort of threw over and they're growing too. So she recognized those, but she didn't recognize the potatoes. So if you don't grow them. Does that not say a little something of how out of touch you are?
Listen, city people, I'm asking you, let's show your kids what an actual top of the carrot looks like, what beet greens look like. Little update.
We are pre-taping this. This podcast will air a couple of days from now. But last night, west of Calgary, the hail was, it's probably one of the top three hailstorms that I've ever witnessed in my life.
Oh no. So the dog and I, I have a five pound little dog. She was so freaked out. I, for about 20 minutes, cause this went on for almost two hours. I took her out to my car and I sat in the car because it's super quiet. Hello, Lexus. Feel free to sponsor us if you want to. But I went out into my little Lexus and in the garage,
And it was super quiet. Like it cut the volume down by half and Middy kind of nodded off. I fell asleep in my slippers in my car. And anyway, I knew that all would be lost. So when I got up this morning, there was still piles of hail on the grass. That was at about six 30. And, um,
kind of assessed the horrificness of what had happened. And that's nature folks. But I also, um, the good part of the story is that my mom has come through. She, uh,
It will inform me all the days of my life, but I could hear her following me as we walked through the yard to look at the destruction. Garden is annihilated. Everything's cut down. The squash plants were doing great. The carrots are cut down. The beets are shredded. The potato plants are like severed off. The rhubarb, I took a knife and I harvested about 30% of what was there because with rhubarb, you only ever take half.
The rhubarb plant really needs half of itself to rejuvenate. So it's like indigenous people have been telling us for thousands of years, just take what you need, take what you need and leave the rest. So anyway, mom was saying, it'll come back. It'll come back. And, but I did, I shed a tear.
But then I had another little lovely thing happened, and that was I had a hummingbird follow me around the yard. And I thought, is that my mom? Like, what is going on here? I had one little deer that was over by, you know, where I put sunflower seeds out for the birds. It was kind of like looking at me going through the yard. But anyway, that's my nature story for this morning. It is sad because...
You know, here we are almost mid-July and it's, I'll let you know, I'm sure everything will come back, but the hummingbird was delightful. The deer was delightful. It's so quiet and still. Everything's had a good soaking. I don't have to worry about going up in flames in my little forest, at least for this week. But yeah, it's, it's, hail is, it is a force to be reckoned with.
It is. And gardens are resilient. Plants are resilient. Last year I had my garden obliterated. Like it was slaw. I know. Two times. But I mean, this is what farmers have to deal with every season, right? Every year, if there's not a drought, there's a hail storm. And so it's, I think it's good if you're a gardener to remember that that's, you know, it's, we're sort of at the mercy of the weather when it comes to things like hail for sure. Well, it's a palpable excitement for sure. Um,
You know, and it's like blades hailing down from the above. The way, you know, I was looking at some of my big sunflower plants and it had like perfect holes drilled through. So I'm thinking, imagine the speed of that hail to just punch a hole. It didn't take the sunflowers are still standing, but they look like Swiss cheese.
Wow. They just have these perfectly cylindrical holes punched in them. But my pond, I have this little fake pond that I turn on in the spring and it is so full. I'm like, I think I might just take a dip in my little fake pond. It is like it's gone up by, I'm going to say 10 inches. And I have a hot tub on my deck. That's a crappy inflatable hot tub. Thank you, Coleman. Feel free to sponsor us.
And it has a lid on it. And obviously it was, it was like a hot tub living on top of a hot tub.
So I had to take a bucket and get all the water because it had sunk the lid in. Even this inflatable lid, it couldn't hold the water. Wow. I had no idea that it was that bad. You didn't have anything where you are, Julie? Oh, I did, but not like that. And no hail. It looked like hail. I was watching the black clouds sort of swirling together. Hang on to that. Hang on to that thought because we've got to go. We're going to come back. Black clouds. We're picking it up at Black Clouds. You're listening to the Jan Arden Podcast. I'm here with Julie and Adam. We'll be right back.
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A cola or a cream soda, root beer, yes indeedy. And they've got their limited edition summer flavor, which will take you right back to the second grade. You gotta try the ice pop one. Head to janardenpod.com to find out where the closest place to you is where you can go and buy Cove. Go right now. Welcome back, Jan Arden Podcast. We are right in the middle of the word black cloud with Julie Van Rosendahl. So I was looking up at the clouds and
And there were two, there were two that were sort of colliding and starting to swirl into each other. And that's, I think, a sure sign of hail. So I was, I was waiting to see if, you know, you can, you can kind of feel it coming. I have a tarp that I rush out and put over my garden. I put hooks up on the fence to kind of do this makeshift tarp to try and protect the garden this year. And, and it didn't hail, but I had no idea that it, that it had so much outside of the city.
Well, it's amazing. Even my neighbors who are half a mile down the road, they didn't get anything. So within a half a mile, and that's what is kind of astounding to me, is that they're like, we didn't have anything. We heard the thunder. And I'm like, okay. My power went off and on, but I was so grateful that it sort of kept going. I need to get a generator out here. Yeah, you do. The only drawback is...
is I went online as you do and I was like okay they're $18,000 to start what really yeah I'm like well I guess I won't be getting a generator I know people always assume that I'm a millionaire which I'm not but listen folks I'm not Celine Dion for god's sakes I still have a mortgage on my house like I'm paying a mortgage every month so it's funny what people's perceptions are
For instance, if you Google my net worth, it'll tell people that I have a net worth of like $10 million, which makes me laugh so hard.
Uh, considering I, I haven't worked for a year and a half either, but anyhow, I'm only worth like $7 million. Oh, good for you, Julie. Well, you know, the cookbooks, I know that you're worth 9 million just from that last cookbook. Cause I've bought nine of them. That's gotta be 1500 bucks in your pocket right there. Publishing. I tell you, if you write books, you are a kajillionaire.
It's a license to mint money. The publishing industry. That was sarcasm, by the way. I mean, there are a few people who make a lot of money publishing, but for the most part, it's not a huge moneymaker. Hello, Stephen King. Feel free to sponsor us. Anyway, there's so many things that I wanted to talk to you today about. And Julie, whenever we have you on the show, not that we always have to talk about food, but I wanted to get your take on food.
The lie of expired food. And I think we've all gone through this. We're still on task, folks. We've gone from garden to food. We're still on food. We all go in. We look at our bags of salad. We look at our yogurt. We look at milk products. We look at pretty much anything, whether it's boxes of pasta, jars of sauce, cans. There's an expiration date on them. And it's long been talked about.
The lie of those dates and how much food waste there is, if people have a milk and it expires on the 22nd of July and on the 23rd, they look at it and they throw it out and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, but without even tasting it.
without even questioning what that date means, it's dumped down the sink and that's the end of it. And I just wanted to get your take on the billions of pounds of wasted food that could feed a planet. Like it really is an astronomical. Oh, it's huge. And I think a lot of people are aware now that in Canada we throw away or waste food
about 50% of the food that we buy. And some of that is, you know, on the production side of things, distribution, you know, on the farm, but we waste a lot at home. And a lot of that is due to the so-called expiry dates. Now,
Whenever I talk about this, I have to clarify that there are very few foods that actually expire. Usually it's a best before or a use by date. Usually it's best before. So it doesn't mean it's, you know, if it's best before June 30th, it doesn't mean it's
poisonous after, right? But that's it. That's it. They have changed the labeling. So I know that's semantics, but I do like the best before, uh, as opposed to an expiration date, which was very ingrained to us as kids. When we were younger, Julie and Adam, we didn't have best before we had expires. Yeah. Expires on this date. So nowadays, uh,
Nutritional supplements, things like Boost, Baby Formula, they have actual expiry dates because the nutritional profile can be compromised after a certain time. But the use by best before dates are dictated by...
Industry, there isn't any protocol. There isn't any standard for all food packaging companies across the country. So a cracker company will come up with their own date to put on the box of crackers. Obviously, a box of crackers has a little bit more leeway than a tub of yogurt.
But even the dairy products, and I feel like the dairy products are among the most tossed, you know, and people do the sniff test. And, you know, they like to err on the side of caution. Obviously, the companies do. But also, they know that people will toss that yogurt and buy another container of yogurt. That's the part of the whole kind of conspiracy that
you know, I want people to be aware of for one thing, yogurt is, it's not a ferment. It's, is it a ferment? No, it's not. It is a ferment. Okay. I was just, I didn't want to walk tread where I don't really know what I'm talking about. So ferments usually are reliant on time and you know, the, what's good about them is that they are fermented. Like people eating yogurt for gut health and things like that. They talk about that. Yeah. I have eaten yogurt for,
I'm going to say a month past that best before, and I have never had a problem. I've even gone so far to take the little mold off. If I pull the lid off and there's a little bit of a green band, I take a spoon. I will flip it off and chuck it in there. I do. Well, Adam, that's me, and that's country living because I watched my mom do it. And she said there's nothing wrong with it.
I do too. And, you know, technically, the softer a food is, the more likely the mold is to travel through it, right? So if you have a really soft cheese versus a hard cheese, you can cut it off versus scooping it off. If it looks like a Muppet, you should probably toss it. But it wasn't Muppety. It was just like a little spot. I know. I do the same thing. I do the same thing. And, you know, you can toss things in the freezer. There's another thing while we're on this subject. We should, you know, it'd be fun, a whole show of food myths.
You can toss almost all of this in the freezer. You know, if you're not going to use it, you don't want to throw it out, but you're not going to eat it immediately. All yogurt, all dairy products can be used in baking. They can all be used interchangeably. Buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, you know, dairy or non-dairy. Throw it in the freezer and you can refreeze things after they've already been frozen.
There you go, people. Adam, you were going to say something. I don't want to cut you off. Sorry. In my house, I'm the expiry date police. Okay. So I'm hyper aware of the food that we have in our fridge and when it's going to expire. And don't get me wrong. I agree with you, what you were saying before. I don't throw out milk if it's fine. I smell it. If it's fine, it's fine. But I've also had milk go sour before.
10 days before the expiry date. That can happen too. So I go by the smell test. But I mean, there are certain things. Yeah, I don't think a box of cereal is going to go rancid a week after it expires. Of course not. I'm not that crazy. Or a bag of chips or something. But there are certain meat and dairy, cheese, whatever, eggs. I get nervous. And obviously like fruit. I mean, you can see it if it's fuzzy.
I toss it. Yeah. Okay. Well, this, this study is a little bit old, 2013, some university to study and the average family in North America. So I'm assuming this is including our American friends between, and this is 2013. So let's add on like 40% in what things are actually worth now between 1300, 1400 and $2,300 per year is thrown out. I believe it. So I'm going to add, I'm going to add,
A thousand bucks to each of those. And I'm going to say that you're chucking out like twenty five hundred and four thousand dollars a year in food that's expired. But it all don't you think it depends how you were raised, you guys like Adam, your kids are going to get that from you.
If it's, you know, if they think, no, my dad always chucked that out. My mom would, honest to God, if something was cooked long enough, it was going to be okay. I don't ever remember having food poisoning from my mom. I don't. I mean, everything went in the crock pot for a day. Right. It'll kill anything. Like you'd look in the crock pot and you'd be like, is that chicken? Is that pork? What is that? My mom would say, I don't know. It was, you know, she'd unwrap that.
Brown wax paper in the morning, put it frozen in there, chuck in some carrots, potatoes and onions and voila, that was what we ate four times a week. Yeah. I've always been really conscious of food waste. I will orchestrate a dinner around like a
stump of cilantro that's going wilty in the fridge. But I think partly we buy more than we need. You know, we go to Costco, we buy giant things and then we don't know what to do with them. Hang on to that thought. Costco, we're coming back. We're coming back. Julie Van Rosendal, Adam, me, Jan Arden podcast. We'll be back.
Ketchup loves potatoes.
Welcome back to the Jan Arden podcast. I want to tell everyone what a terrible time I have stopping these conversations because we are on terrestrial radio, which means normal radio. And we are on a podcast platform on all your favorite podcasting platformy streaming sites. These guys just keep talking and Adam and, and Julie are the worst as far as they're the worst and the best when it comes to that, because we have a whole show that we could take in between the shows. So,
So I literally have to say, and then I, and I want to apologize to both of you because sometimes I sound mean and cranky, but it's because I want people to hear what you're talking about. So Julie was just saying she'll plan an entire meal about, you know, using a stump of cilantro that looks like, Ooh, one more day. And we're going to have slimy brown leaves, which nobody wants in a salsa. Mm-hmm.
And then Adam, you were starting to say something about strawberries. So what the hell was that? So I was saying I'm the expiry date police and I'm like hyper aware of dates and mold and things turning colors or looking slimy. So, okay, to be fair, if I open the pint of strawberries and there's one moldy one at the bottom, no, I don't throw out the whole pint of strawberries. I will...
remove the culprit and wash them off. Good, good, good, good. So I'm not that bad, but I'm hyper aware of food safety, sanitary practices. Like I'm hyper aware of that stuff. I'm very clean. I'm very careful with what I serve, how I serve it, how I prepare it. And I just, I'm hyper aware of this stuff. So I get nervous about things that are well past their date. So Julie, my question to you, like, let's say something like a condiment,
He did not say condoms, ladies and gentlemen. He did not say condoms. No, condiments. But they also have an expiry date. They do. It's a little bit longer. You should pay attention to them. So something like a bottle of ketchup or mustard or, again, teriyaki sauce or soy sauce. How past the expiry date is that still good? Five years. Five years. And so, you know, if you are sorting food at the food bank, two years is the rule on
those sort of packaged in a sauce, something like soy sauce. I mean, that kind of lasts forever. I think salt, it's all salt. Yes. Should we, should we discuss whether or not we keep ketchup in the fridge?
Yeah, I keep ketchup in the fridge. And my parents never ever did. So I didn't. But my mustard is in the fridge. My soy sauce is not in the fridge. So fridge temperature, a lot of people put everything in the fridge. People put bread in the fridge. Bread goes stale faster at fridge temperature than desert room temperature. This is why God invented bread boxes. And so I think a lot of people think you just cram everything in the fridge, put your cake in the fridge. Cold cake is tragic.
You should not put cake in the fridge. That's a terrible thing to do to cake. Adam, I'm guessing that you're also the dishwasher police at your house. I am the dishwasher loader, manager, CEO of the dishwasher. I think I do want to marry you, Adam. Anytime. Well, I'll have to discuss it with my wife first. Yeah, I know. I know. I know. It's always the wife.
I think that's great. I mean, I, you know, living alone, I don't have any rules for the dishwasher. But anyway, I'm very surprised at how different everyone is. For instance, talking about what goes in the fridge, my friend Nigel in the UK, you've heard me talk about him for a long time. Their eggs are on the effing counter. Yes. Right. Yes. And the selection of eggs that you can get, you know, you go to the store and you can get duck eggs, you can get quail eggs.
But so I'll tell you why that is. And I have kept eggs on the counter forever.
And they're fine in Canada. But the reason, sorry, the reason why is in Canada, they're washed. And so that, you know, compromises the shell supposedly. And so that's why they suggest that you refrigerate. And in the UK, they still have poo on them, correct? And I love an egg with lots of poo on it. You know, it's a sign of a good egg. No, I'm just being honest. It comes out and so they're not washed. So they feel like,
barrier, which kind of sounds insane that the poo barrier... Yeah. Poo is useful. It protects... It is useful. I mean, if it wasn't for poo, nothing would grow. Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. If poo would like to sponsor us... Oh, my God. Where's that laugh track, Adam? Where's the laugh track? Oh, God. Hang on. I got it right here. Oh, my God.
Thank you. Thank you very much. You know, but anyway, poo is useful. Every fool knows that. Who doesn't want to...
Walk out under their porch with a burning bag of poo for a practical joke every now and again. Haha, my friends, they lit a bag of poo again on the... Anyway, getting back to some statistics, this is what great podcasts are all about. I know there's people in their car right now, right people in cars? You don't even want to go into your office right now because you want to hear what the hell we're going to talk about.
So it is very sad about wasted food, getting back to that little moment, because 25% of food is thrown out, 25%. That's 25% of the fresh water that goes towards producing that food and that goes uneaten. And then there's 21% in landfills that it's...
People have to understand it's such a far reaching problem. I know that there's some people that are really trying to utilize expired food, especially when it comes to produce.
And there's a lot of companies. There was a company not so long ago that was doing these juices made from expired fruits and vegetables. Not expired, but best before. Yeah. It was a company. I wish I could remember it. Well, and partly, you know, partly it's that we have these convenience foods too now, right? Like the shredded cheese is going to go bad faster because there's more surface area. The pre-prepped...
greens, the tubs of greens. And then you have the plastic, the plastic weight from the, from the packages. Yeah. The pre-washed greens are going to go far faster than a head of lettuce. You know, we used to just buy a head of lettuce and that lasts a lot longer. And there have been organizations that, I mean, there are a lot of food rescue organizations. There are some that, that rescue food that's, that's too ugly, you know, for the grocery store shelves. And,
and do things with it, which is great. Sometimes there has been concern that that's taking away from, you know, hunger relief agencies that would typically get those, that produce to pass out. But sometimes
Yeah, you know, I think knowing what to do, I think it all comes down to cooking skills. Knowing what to do with what you have in your fridge. We're so used to saying, oh, I saw this on Pinterest. I'm going to get the ingredients and make it versus going to the fridge and saying, okay, I've got half a head of cauliflower. I've got some, you know, squishy. That's how I cook. So how do I cook too? What do I have?
a meal. It's like, it's like black box cooking. It should be a big thing. But, um, but knowing what to do with wilting greens, with, with dairy products that are about to go south. I would think soups. I would think soups or sauces. I mean, there is nothing you cannot throw on a spaghetti noodle. Nothing. Totally. Soup, sauces, cooking it down. Like as much as my garden was annihilated today, when the sun is up a little bit, I'm going to go out and
pretty much take all the kale that I have and I'm going to take the greens. I've got some Swiss chard that's kind of annihilated, but I am going to put it into a bag, a plastic bag, Ziploc, and I'm going to freeze it. And what I'm going to do today is I'm going to keep squashing it down as it freezes. And pretty soon I will literally have
probably five pounds of all these greens in a bag and I will use them for, they will last me six months. And I sprinkle them in smoothies. I sprinkle them in soups, sauces. You know, I'll even sometimes just put them on top of having a baked potato. I'll grab a handful and chuck it on top of a baked potato. So,
Anyway, it is really hard to stomach of what's happening and how far reaching you taking a banana, a tomato, and, oh, I can't eat this anymore, and chucking it into your garbage. At the very least, folks, think about composting. If you have a little backyard and you don't like the idea of putting stuff into a bag, you can literally take your greens, find a little corner of your yard, and chuck them in the dirt in the corner of your yard. It's going to break down. Mm-hmm.
I have a composting bin that I've had for years that works so great. Throw it out into the, throw it around your plants. I know it's, and bury them a little bit. Like you don't have to just leave your half,
Into the freezer. Into the freezer and then into soup. Anything can be cooked down into soup, right? Compost soup. This is, I hope this has been factual. Compost soup is something that Julie's going to have in her next cookbook is compost soup. You're listening to the Jen Arby podcast. We're going to be right back. I'd like to be.
Welcome back to the Jan Arden Podcast. Believe it or not, today I was going to talk about high school.
And we are going to get to it, but we're not going to do it this week because that is absolutely an entire show of how we make our way through high school, how we feel about the friends that we still have, how we wonder about. I mean, I think half of Facebook is just wanting to search for people we went to high school with. Anyway, I digress. Food security in our country has been brought to the forefront because of COVID. It really, really shone a light on that.
a lot of people hungry. And Julie was a person in particular that I really relied on during the pandemic. I mean, she brought to the forefront, the whole problem with children's lunches and that kids were eating two meals a day at school. And now with schools being closed, I didn't even realize how far reaching that was that these are two meals that are now off the table for thousands, tens of thousands of kids.
So with people throwing out food and with food banks being a little reticent to take a head of lettuce that doesn't look perfect, there's a whole movement around.
across the planet. And I've seen it in Europe. I've seen it here. I've seen it in the States where it's called dumpster diving. But there's a group of people that are intelligent. They are university professors. They're teachers. They're dentists. They go and they take food out of dumpsters that are like zucchinis, tomatoes, jars of pickles, canned goods. And that's what they live on. They are making a concerted effort to go into these
dumpsters and taking food out and using it. And it is all, they have clubs, they have clubs all over the world. That's amazing. Cause grocery stores waste a lot of food and a lot of it goes to pig feed. A lot of it is perfectly usable by humans, but yeah. And all grocery store chains sort of deal with it differently. And it, but it's, there's a lot of food that does not need to be wasted. And yeah,
And just knowing what to do with it, I feel like we can all, you know, a lot of these big world problems are really solved best at home by each of us doing what we can in our communities to sort of address those bigger problems.
those bigger issues. Yeah. I mean, getting back to what you talked about, the importance of learning how to cook and having some skills. There's an author, her name is Tamar Adler. Oh, yes. And her book, An Everlasting Meal, Cooking with Economy and Grace. And it's, it's,
And she says in the absence of culinary information, people assume that any information they've been given must be the most important information. Do you have her book? I don't. I don't have it in front of me. No, but but it's that whole thing about, oh, it's expired, so it must be bad. So it depends on on how you're taking in your information, whereas hopefully this show will help people to reconsider that.
Today, at least, when they're looking in their fridge, whether it's a jar of pickles or a box of Cheerios or whatever it is, you guys can...
use it long past what they're telling you. And it is about using common sense. And if you're not sure, you can go online because there's lots of information too that will say, sorry, you can eat Cheerios for 40 years. They're okay. It will be fine. Well, that is one of my favorite books, An Everlasting Meal, Tamara Adler. I love it. She also talks about leftovers. So, and I think this is a huge thing. We need to rebrand leftovers as homemade convenience food.
If you want to roast a huge sheet pan of vegetables and you live alone, you don't need to just cook what you're going to eat that night. Having pre-cooked veggies, pre-cooked all kinds of things...
are better after some time in the fridge, like stews and soups and curries, like they are better after some time in the fridge. And, uh, and so, you know, cooking ahead and, and using those scraps, using the cooking liquid from your, you know, cooking your vegetables or whatever, just getting into the habit of using all those bits. I was, I'm going to totally named up right now. I was, uh, I was talking to Ina Garten earlier this pandemic. I know, right?
know. And she is, you talk to her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. And after our phone call, she's like, call me anytime. So I call her every day now. Uh, and just to see, no, but she's, you know, she was saying we got on the topic of leftovers and she was like, you know, my, my store, the barefoot Contessa, uh,
Like we, that was our business was leftovers. It's only leftover if you've already eaten it. But if you go to her store and there's so many, you know, prepared food stores across Canada right now, you go and you buy some roasted chicken and some salad and some potatoes or whatever. You're not thinking of it as leftovers because you're buying it from somewhere else. Someone else has cooked them. You haven't already eaten them. But she's right. Like it's all pre-cooked refrigerated food.
Food. Leftovers. It's all leftovers. Glorified leftovers. Yeah. So you're getting your tub of tabbouleh. You're getting some, you know, croutons that you could make with stale bread in a second. And it is about just trying things in the kitchen. And one thing that, another good thing that's come out of COVID, cooking, baking, people making bread for the first time. And I know we've talked ad nauseum about baking on the show this last year and a half.
You know, because we were really following along with what Canadian families were doing at home with their kids and they were making stuff. You know, I had a friend said, I don't think I've made brownies in 25 years. I just always bought them the one bite brownies out of that brown bag. Yep. So that has come out of it. And I know people won't go back.
There's so much satisfaction in lifting that lid off your grandmother crusade pot and seeing a crusty loaf of bread that has two little slices in it where the top has opened up like a beautiful flower. And you tap on that crust. And there's that hollow-y sound where the air and the yeast has done their magic. And then you slather on your bread.
butter or your margarine or your cream cheese or whatever. And you have some satisfaction. A, you didn't spend a lot of money doing it and you know where it came from and it ain't going to expire because that sucker is going to be gone in a day. You're going to be like, Hey, who took the knob? I was saving that for my whatever. Yeah. We've learned a lot. We've, we've come a long way. We really have. And you know, there's so much comfort in even the smell of food cooking and
When my son Willem is at school, I often will time baking something so that when he walks in the door, there's the smell. You know, it's just it seems like a little thing, but it's a big thing. And having that smell of baking, having that. And I think that's been a big thing through the pandemic is the sense of nostalgia. People are baking things that their their parents and their families used to make.
Realtors cook. Realtors make cookies, Julie. Oh, I know. I know. If they're selling a house, they will even go buy themselves some ready-made dough, slice it up, and they will have cookies freaking baking in the oven when their walkthroughs come to look at the house. And some people use cinnamon, and they put cinnamon on a baking sheet, put it on parchment, and put it in the oven. And so this is advice, right? I put cinnamon on my breasts. That's what I use.
In dating, I just... A bit of vanilla. Oh my God. Vanilla behind each ear. But some people say though, but I have to strongly disagree with the cinnamon, this practice of putting cinnamon in the oven and you walk in and it smells like something's baking. No, it's just dry cinnamon on a baking sheet. Like that's just pure disappointment right there, right? It smells delicious. What's baking? Oh, cinnamon. There's no cookies. Psych. No cookies. Yeah.
But it would work if you're selling a house. Yes, you're right. So, but we, we're, we are reminded of how important those smells are and how comforting it is. And, and,
And there's just a lot of changes we can do. And it does start at home. People are always like, what can we do to change the world? Climate change. Obviously, landfills are a problem. There's a lot more people than there were when they started labeling and putting those expiry dates on was after the war. So in 1946, 1947, people started getting ready-made things in shops. Farmers were all fighting. Like a whole shift in our civilization happened. Mm-hmm.
because of the way we were getting our food, you know, and the ready made never went back, you know, the family farm never really recovered. No. And it started being taken over by companies that were feeding everyone that wasn't at war. And so anyway, that's where it all started changing and labeling started after the war. Before then, it didn't exist. Yeah.
So we just eat differently. We have one minute left. I'm going to give that to you, Julie, just to kind of take us home with, how do you think people can- No pressure. No, no, but how do you think people can get out of that way of thinking by just chucking shit out? Knowing what you have, right? Knowing what you have. I mean, we have these massive fridges, these massive pantries, you know, knowing what you have and knowing what to do with it, have it be a challenge. So, you know, I have a 15 year old
not only do I get them to help me make dinner, I get them to help me think about what's for dinner. Like come down and let's look in the fridge and figure out what to do with it. Just because those are skills that are, that are learned. They're not necessarily taught in school. And, and we can teach each other. We can teach our neighbors, you know, our friends, we can get together and cook. Don't just have people over for dinner and,
have them over and cook, have them sit at the kitchen counter while you're cooking. I love that. And maybe it's, Hey, I've got, I bought too many tomatoes. Yeah. Dorothy, do you want a couple? Anyway, that's our show for today. Julie van Rosendahl, as always such a pleasure, Adam. Thank you. Our Riverside, we're going to have laugh tracks through every hilarious thing we've said today. Thanks for listening to the show. As always, we appreciate it so much. We'll see you next time. Okay.
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