Episode 219: Longevity-Focused Cooking w/ Chef Jeremy Rock Smith

In this appetizing episode of the Aging Well Podcast, Chef Jeremy Rock Smith shares his expertise on longevity-focused cooking. With a rich background from Kripalu Yoga Center and Miraval Resort, Chef Jeremy discusses how integrating Blue Zone and Ayurvedic principles can transform your culinary approach. Learn about his journey from traditional kitchens to a focus on health through nutrition, techniques for organizing your kitchen, and the importance of a food philosophy. Discover practical tips, seasonal recipes, and the vital connection between food, wellness, and community. Tune in for an inspiring conversation on how to reignite your love for cooking and age well through delicious, healthy meals.

Learn more about Chef Jeremy Rock Smith: https://www.jeremyrocksmith.com/

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Transcript

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In this appetizing episode of the Aging World Podcast, we welcome Chef Jeremy Rocksmith, a culinary expert with a passion for longevity focused cooking. With years of experience as the former executive chef at Kapaloo Yoga Center and now leading the culinary scene at Miraval Resort, Chef Jeremy blends traditional expertise with innovative approaches rooted in Blue Zone and Ayurvedic principles. Discover how to transform your pantry. Reignite your culinary creativity and embrace the joy of healthy seasonal plant based meals. Tune in for practical tips, delicious insights, and a fresh perspective on how food can fuel aging well.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 0:43

Jeremy, welcome to the Aging Well podcast. Can you share your journey into the culinary world and how you became so passionate about longevity focused cooking?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 0:53

Uh, culinary world, it's interesting. I always say that, how do you become a chef? Usually someone calls out and you get promoted. But I, uh, I started, I started working in restaurants when I was 14. out of high school, thought I wanted to be an attorney. Something happened and I ended up deciding I don't want to go to college. So I ended up back in a restaurant was working for this guy. I was working in the dining room and I thought I wanted to own a restaurant. So I went into, uh, cooking for one year was the, was the goal just to learn, learn it, to manage it and stuff like that. And, uh, I ended up staying with it for about 12 years, 13 years in traditional. I ended up going to the culinary Institute and then I just did the traditional trajectory. I had a Japanese sous chef who told me, said, work for a year at a place and move on and don't take a management role for 10 years. And that's what I did. And, uh, I let me, took me all over the world. It was in London, Chicago, South America, New York, all over. And then in my early thirties, I had a midlife crisis. Cooking crisis, as I like to call it. I was right around when Kitchen Confidential came out. And, uh, when I first saw that book, I was like, I started reading it. I'm like, why is he telling everybody this? And my second thought was I can relate to this. And, uh, so I actually jumped out of the restaurant industry. For about three years, I was living in the Berkshires, came from a long generation generations of carpenters from Long Island, and my, uh, dad moved back to the area and was like, I want to learn how to build a house. So took the time off, figured I had food down, I'd get shelter, I'd be set, and that's when I started looking at food through the lens of health, through nutrition. In culinary school, we didn't really, at CIA, we didn't really look at it that way. It was very much a lab coat person talking to us about nutrition for seven days, and uh, yeah. And then we make this food that was basically tasteless, but supposedly great for you. And so I had no interest in it. And it's the first time in my life I really started cooking at home. And so I started getting into, exercise, weightlifting. I had a friend that was a semi pro boxer trainer, and he's what are your goals? And I'm like, Get buff, obviously. And, uh, so for three years, I did that. And at the end of the house, I was like, what am I going to do next? And in the Berkshires, I haven't done healthy food. It was the one thing I hadn't done. I'd be catering all this different stuff. And where I live in the Berkshires, I'm lucky to have Canyon Ranch and Kripalu Yoga Center, which are two of like premier yoga and health centers in the world. And so I went to both and I wanted to be entry level and I went to Canyon Ranch. Started out entry level, got back on that line within the first day. I'm like, my god, this is repetitive and Someone asked me to teach and so what I was doing there was really just taking advantage of every program They encouraged employees to take part in everything. So I was working out, going to nutrition lectures. And eventually I ended up teaching, going in, working with nutritionists and I'd cook alongside them. So I started really getting into nutrition in a different way. Got introduced to Ayurveda, was there four and a half years. And then I went to Kripalu Yoga Center, was there 12 years, basically went as their executive chef, wrote the Kripalu Kitchen Cookbook in 2019, got on CHOPs, did all this kind of crazy stuff. And that's where I became this middle person between, Nutritional Psychiatrists, Nutritionist Dietitians, and realizing that there's a lot of great information out there, but it's overwhelming, and so people really, cooking is where the practice becomes real. And, so nutritionists could give all this information, but like, how does that translate into the kitchen? So I played this medium, middle role of getting people into their kitchens, making it accessible, and uh, stuff like that. So yeah, that's how I got into it, it was purely personal and purely wanting to save myself really from the industry. But in that process, I was able to teach at the same, it's the same time and spread what I was learning to others.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 4:25

And how did this time shape your kind of approach to food and wellness?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 4:30

For

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 4:31

you learned very little about cooking well, I guess, in culinary school.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 4:36

Yeah. Cause food was really, I always love the act of eating food. Like I love, I realized later on that, like I've realized now that really food is just my way of connecting with people. That's all it is. Like I'm a foodie. I like food, but I'm not that kind of foodie. I'm like some hipster in Brooklyn that needs fine dining. I just, I like food like real soul food that's connecting people. And what I realized is that. I grew up in a traditional, I was born in the 70s, 71. I read something recently in the 1970s when the American food started going south, basically. And I'm like, I can attest to that. It's convenience foods. And we really growing up, didn't have a story with food. Didn't learn from my grandmother, didn't have that connection. And whereas these other cultures do. And so to me, I started really looking at like people's relationships with food. One and like how we're programmed to not be in a kitchen, but yet everyone's attracted to food. Everyone likes it. And then just the idea of Now, when I went into candy ranch, it was very Western based nutrition. It was very calories, fat fiber, and which I think is important to know, but it was this whole idea of everyone eats the same thing. Therefore we're all good. And when I went to Kripalu, we introduced Ayurveda, which is a sister science of yoga nutritional science over 5, 000 years old. And it really comes down to the individual. And it's not only about what you eat, it's how you eat. Keeping things light at the table, things, I mean, I read in a nutshell is eat local, eat seasonal, eat things that encompass the six tastes, sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent, which we could talk about and eat things grown with care. And what was the final thing was eat things, eat things that are cooked with love. And I remember at the time I was like, can I just say intention? Cause I wasn't there yet. But over time it started to make sense. And as I was helping people try and that we're facing weather. because of their health or family health, they had to make these changes. The hardest part was getting them back into the kitchen because our relationships are so off with the kitchens and a lot of stuff we carry for stories from when we're kids, and so yeah, I did that for 12 years. And when I jumped off of Rapallo in 2022 and The reason why I went into longevity is that I watched, I was watching my father retire, my mother and her husband retire. A lot of my students were in that age group. Obviously I hit 50 in that point. So I started looking at it and yeah, I realized it's a different game at that point where people are heading into retirement. You have certain people that like have been cooking for families all of their lives after people come to the classes and cooking classes are the only classes that people will come undo because they hate cooking. No one goes to a yoga class because they hate yoga. because hey, I need to do this, but I need to re relationship with it. So I realized it's, I would always teach the cooking, which is cool, but it's getting people's relationship changed sometimes with food and cooking that really can change things for them.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 7:09

That's fascinating. Already, I think I've learned so much about just a different approach to food and how that affects our, goals of aging well. So for those who are unfamiliar with the blue zones and how their diet, how did their diets contribute to longevity?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 7:28

Well, I think the things that the blue zones all have in common I mean, the predominantly plant based, but which is, which we know, it's about balance and stuff like that, but the things that they all have in common plant based movement, and purpose is, is one of three of the biggest things out of it for me that most of us lack in our culture at this point, and as we move into retirement and as we age, it's like, where's our purpose in life? I mean, I just came off of running a kitchen for 12 years and it's almost like having a relationship where like you're floating out in the world, and you're like, well, what's my value? What was them? What was me? And I was watching my mother and her husband, they actually sold their practice rather quickly. And my mom at one point said, she was, I think I'm grieving. And she goes, because I, I don't know what, what I'm doing anymore, and everything or her work was really based upon serving others. And she hadn't really planned for like, how do I do this outside of here? And so food to me in a way, like a lot of times food, we think of it just eating the meal, but food in a way is like the act of cooking is purpose cooking for oneself and for others is really an act of purpose at a certain point as well. It's an act of service. I don't know who said it was the cooking is the ultimate purpose. Form of love. To show love to someone else. And a lot of times you always hear, when mothers are cooking for their children, there's purpose in that. That's why mothers foods always taste the best. Because there's love going into it. At a certain point. And so, I think that's the piece where, Blue Zones come in. Last year I took a group we did a sailing culinary trip down in Greece with a friend of mine, a yoga friend, and we were going island to island, and that was the one thing that I quickly noticed was that it's not, in Ayurveda they talk about this too, it's not just what you eat, it's how you eat, and I think that's really important. One of the things they say in Ayurveda is like, keeping your conversations light at the table. Often times we vent at the table, we talk about the tweets we saw last night, and uh, and the next thing you know you're taking that shared experience in a life that's always going so fast and it's you're wasting, cause it's a physiological reaction that you're getting by connecting with someone, or even yourself, and so, I think that's the biggest thing I've noticed, like in Greek cuisine, the biggest thing across the board is, it's sharing. The first course of all of their meals are a bunch of little tapas plates where everyone's Sharing that meal with each other. And it's the idea of you're always, you're not taking more than you can get. You're always looking to make sure everyone else is being served. And so if you look at Sardinia, they're, they're, they're making, the older, the people that are living in their hundreds, their nineties, are still getting together every week together and making pasta. And it, and it goes across cultures. I, I was teaching an overnight kids culinary camp, and these two kids, they were twins, they came back from India. And they said, Oh, we were making Indian food. Obviously I've been at Kripalu for years and they were like, that's not how my grandmother makes naan. And I'm like, I'm sure it isn't man. And, and he's yeah, he goes every Thursday, her and all her friends would get together and make bread. And the little girl goes, this boy and girl twins, she goes, honestly, she goes, I don't think they were making bread half the time. Cause they were just talking. And I was like, that's actually the point of it. It's this way of, while you're making something, you're, you're sharing in this experience and it's a way to slow down in a lot of ways.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 10:30

Oh, that's fascinating. Cause you're, you're making connections in things that we talk about here on the podcast. Like some general themes. We have our six pillars, which are exercise, physical activity, eat a healthy diet, maintain a healthy body composition have good sleep hygiene, don't smoke and have purposeful social connections. And the other thing that we talk about are what my friend Jay labels as spies, which is my well centered fitness, which is spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional, and social, and how all that connects together. And I've never thought of putting purposeful in front of diet, because we talk about eat a healthy diet. Well, people are like, well, what's that mean? But probably one of the bigger and better steps that we can take is be purposeful first with what we eat. Because we talk about, oh, take your time eating. We rush to eat food in the, in the United States. We eat food that sometimes we're just eating it and it's like if, I can't eat doughnuts anymore. Even and I live in, near Portland where voodoo doughnuts are supposed to be so great. And every time I've gone there, it's this is crap. I mean,

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 11:41

yeah.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 11:42

just because you put Captain Crunch on a doughnut doesn't make it any better. And every bite, I'm like, why am I doing this? And so I like that idea of being purposeful with our diet and our nutrition, not necessarily just from the macro goal or the caloric goal, but from the social and the psychological purpose.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 12:04

Well, to me, once you infuse it with that, it's something that's more sustainable. I went through a period when I first got into nutrition where I was very Western based, where I was just like, calorie, fat, fiber, counting all those metrics, and I was in this process of kind of like, my body is my temple, and and I realized I started eating, like I said, when I was back in culinary school, we would make this food that was supposed Hit all the marks, but nutritionally, like taste wise, it was soulless, and it was boring, and, and that was one of the things that got me really, when I went into health, you see a lot of these places, Kripalu, and even Canyon Ranch, having worked at both, in their evolution of what wellness is, in the beginning, it was all about, don't do this, don't do this, no sugar, no this, which is, yeah, but then you start realizing there was a level of well wait, sugars, you look at grease, what are they that's an un processed sugar that adds sweetness. How are they using it? Well, they are using it in moderation with other things. And so, it became kinda this well wait, there is this moderation piece where, This idea of eating healthy and feeling, there's this whole idea of it used to be, if you're going to eat healthy, you should feel like you're giving up something, you should, you should, every time you eat, you should activate the gag reflex because you're not going to enjoy it, right, and therefore it's going to be the sustainable way to live because you're going to feel better, but eating, taste, all that stuff comes together. You know what I mean? And so I find that the moderation, you look at the, again, looking at the blue zones, they do use certain things. There are treats, we're right now online. We're doing this series of Ikeria. We're doing a cooking series. And so we're taking all the top recipes from there and that's what we find. They make honey cookies, but it's honey. And there's always a little bit of savory in there, which is why it ties into Ayurveda, because Ayurveda talks about the six tastes. The sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent. Well, they have sweet, but every time there's sweet, there's astringent. A little bit of astringent, because when sweet hits the front of your tongue, it tells your brain more. And when astringent hits the back, it tells the brain that's enough. And if you look at our American foods, it's sweet sour salty, sweet sour salty, sweet sour salty, so we're just stuck in this loop. So they have these spaces for it, but it's either small portions or it's there, and it's just very well balanced and intentional. More than anything else so you don't feel like you're you're giving up in that way and I think more so is you know when people move into at any age Especially when you're getting older especially when when you especially if you've raised kids and even cooking for other people most of your life Right you'd feel like I've had many people come to me like dude. I feel like a short order cook You know I've got one kid that eats it, so I'm not cooking for myself. It's reestablishing. What works for you You know and willing to go with it seasonally I noticed for myself over the years eating mindfully being aware of how Foods were affecting me that I realized that like I didn't crave a lot of fruits You know I used to always when I was in my 20s and I was like I'm gonna get healthy I'd pile on a bunch of fruits In the morning and I'd have bloating and all this stuff and one day it was in 2018 I was doing a lot of like kind of introspective eating and I found that I wasn't craving fruits And I, but what really got to me was where did that story come from in my head that that was the way for me to eat, so to me, I was talking to a couple lately, they're going into retirement. They did. They just retired together. And I'm like, dude, now's the time to explore what works for you and view your body as a lab almost, you know what I mean? And take things in and take things out and make notes of what it is and, and find what's good for you. And, she said they had seven kids and she goes, I always cooked all the meals for them. And she goes, I really hate cooking at this point. And I was like, well now it's time to bring it back for you, and find that moderate, that moderation in it. And cooking is a practice in a lot of ways, food and cooking, like diet is something it's a practice, but cooking more so because it's like the gym. it's, you've got to set, there's really no end game on it. There's no end. It's just something that you're building into your day to day. However works for you. You know what I mean? And there's some days where it's going to be like, man, I'm so into this. The other days you can be like, this sucks, but once you start doing it, you feel good. And there's ways to invigorate yourself. Like for me, when I went to Greece, I was just in Greece for a month. I've read it, led a group down there for a week. I stayed on the farm for three weeks and I was in an olive orchard. working with these Greek chefs. And it was like, not really, they weren't even trained chefs, but the inspiration that I got from them, I was able to come back and be like, all right, now I'm reinvigorated to cook again, and I think that's the piece of it as well. And community, doing it by yourself all the time can be a drag, that's the big

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 16:23

Yeah, we talk a lot about the Mediterranean diet being the healthiest diet and the Nordic diet starting to get a lot more press, but I think from listening to you here in just these few short minutes, I'm starting to hear more. It's not about the what we're eating, but more the why we're eating and that that plays a huge role.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 16:43

Yeah. Big

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 16:44

so, when you talk about retirees becoming stuck in their routine when it comes to cooking, how do you go about getting them to rediscover that joy of cooking or the joy of being in the kitchen?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 16:57

It's funny. I, for a long time prior to the pandemic, I was always teaching on site cooking these weekend retreats or week long retreats. And they'd be intensive, and then one of the things, one of the good things that came out of the pandemic that I would never have tried was cooking online. And so when I started cooking online, it was cruel because I, I got more people in that didn't have access or people that were nervous about cooking to come in more importantly, also, and I could see in other people's kitchens. And it hit me at one point that, I had been doing it the wrong way the whole time. Like I was putting the cart before the horse because what I was doing a lot of times, my, my students would be like, my kitchen's too small. My kitchen's this, or this is that I was looking at my one friend's kitchen. I was like, turn your camera around and let me see. And I was like, well, where, where are your spices? And they're like over here. And I'm like, move this over here. And I was like, why is this over here? And I started, and then I started looking at my kitchen and going, well, why do you have this here? And I realized that, Every successful, first of all, every kitchen I've worked in kitchens, the, the, the business plan for most restaurants is make the dining room as big as possible and cram that kitchen into a tiny space because that's how you make your money. So I've been in kitchens, cranking out 300 meals with two guys, in a closet, so I'm like, wait, it's, why do those kitchens work? Because they were organized. It was a space that was created and I realized that I was when I was running Kripalu at its peak, we were doing like 400, 000 meals a year. There was someone rotating our refrigerator and I realized all of these things that were not even taught. We have refrigerators. We don't know how long produce lasts, where to put it, how long is it here. And so I went backwards. I'm like, if you're going to build a sustainable cooking practice, the kitchen has to be set up for it. Because if it's not, you will never, you can make a really nutritious recipe that's tasty. But if it takes you eight hours and it takes every dish in your house to do it because, and then the cleanup is five hours, you're not going to do it. So that's when I backed it up and started being going into like, all right, let's talk about our spice cabinets. Let's get these organized. And, and even then it wasn't about What I was putting in, it was like creating this idea of creating your food philosophy. What's your food philosophy? Every great kitchen, especially the last, the health ones, Capallo and Canyon Ranch, both had food philosophies. And everyone can have their own food philosophy. It could be I want to be predominantly plant based, Mediterranean diet, or, some people want to do carnivore, that's fine. Whatever your food philosophy is, it's going to set up what your kitchen is, what you're going to bring into it. And oftentimes what we do is we want to start something new, we bring stuff in. But what we're doing is we're piling on what's already in there. And so we haven't gotten, we haven't purged yet. And it's that whole like clutter thing. And so my first thing is purge, I tell people start purging the space because you need to renew it in a lot of ways. And so I'm like, pick a cabinet, go through your equipment. Everybody's got that ice cream maker, like pierogi maker that they bought in the 70s that's been sitting in the back. Like my mom had a quesadilla. I think she still has a quesadilla maker. I'm like, I don't know if you need a quesadilla maker. It's two tortillas, but like all that stuff, you should probably hear this and be like, Oh, he's doing it again. But all those little things using? Honey. Honey is like one of their superfoods. that you don't need, I find that I get clutter in my house or the spice cabinet. That's a great one. Everyone has their spice cabinet. That's, I don't care what diet you're doing, that's where all the flavor comes from. How many people are digging through that? You're going by the spice that you bought 20 years ago on vacation and swore to God you would use, but you don't want to throw out. My thing is, you've got to purge first and then set, alright, here's my intention, this is my food philosophy. It's a Mediterranean diet, then I need legumes in here, I need rice. And once you do that and you create this new space, There's a level of, you get the oxytocin rush from the organization, but then you can start managing it a lot better. Managing your fridge, things like that. And then, then the cooking starts. And then from there, it's not just about learning recipes. One of the things that I pride myself on and what I quickly learned is, a lot of chefs will teach you the recipes, Oh here, just do this, do this, but they're not teaching you the technique behind those recipes. And it's really, there's to me there's five or six techniques that once you nail, they carry over to every recipe you're ever going to do. And then it becomes fun, because once you have those techniques, then you're just exploring. You're trying new foods, you're trying new spins, you're trying new tastes. And then to me it grows from there. Like you're trying them out with the people around you. You're trying them with friends and things like that. So that's to me, that's where I look at it. You gotta start, you can't just start cooking. And that's what everybody wants to do. You've gotta kinda start from the beginning, work your way up, and then go from there.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 21:51

I'm chuckling to myself because I'm seeing how different my wife and I are both in the kitchen. She's very organized with everything else in life in terms of spreadsheets and stuff, but her Approach to cooking is just total chaos to me. And my refrigerator when I was single was always pretty empty because I would use things. And it, there were times I remember one time I had a jar of spaghetti sauce, some spaghetti and a can of salmon. And I threw all that together and made a dish. And my wife's very much recipe oriented. You gotta follow recipes. And, we get so much stuff in the refrigerator because things get pushed to the back. And I'm always like, no, no, it's first in, first out. That's

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 22:32

FIFO! Exactly!

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 22:34

know? And so it's interesting that, that There's that need to have a food philosophy and then, and follow that. We often, when we talk about, oh, okay, it's diet time, I gotta lose weight. So I gotta change everything that I'm doing. I'm just gonna throw out all the junk in there, that I have. First of all, you shouldn't have that junk in the refrigerator or the pantry in the first place. But we shouldn't have to change what we're doing. We don't have to change the philosophy. We just have to change the level of consumption a little bit.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 23:02

It's true, and that's the other thing I think that's important is that, I've seen leading and watching people come through transformative workshops, you've watched people leave just on fire, ready, and food, yoga, whatever the workshop that would be when I was at the center and stuff, and you'd see a lot of people not be successful because everybody tries to do the 180. Everybody tries to do this huge change when it's really start with one thing. I was working with a friend of mine, Michael Mortelli, and he, he does like outdoor leadership stuff. And his thing is bringing back people back to nature, which to me is in a lot of ways, it's the same thing with food. It's you're just trying to remind people of like, where we come from, because that's ultimately on a side note to me, connection to nature. If you look in the blue zones, that's another big piece. There's very much a connection to nature and food is a great way to do that. Because even if you're in an urban environment, yeah. You can pick up a piece of dirty kale from a farmer's market and you're connecting back to nature in a lot of those ways, more than anything. But I think, in the long haul, it's like when people do that big change at once, they always fall short. So my thing is what he said to me once was we were in a class and it was like, A true practice is something that you know, you do without self judgment because we do a lot of critiquing of ourselves, when we're doing things that you set, you set a goal that's obtainable. And I always tell people in cooking, it could be like wherever you are, everyone in the room is at a different place. I commit to steaming rice once a week. Cool. And you worked there. And so that's what I did when I first started cooking, man. I wanted to be up here and I was 19 and every time I do this, I just fail. And it wasn't until years later when I got into the yoga and I really got into meditation that I realized in meditation I did the same thing. I was like, all right, if I'm going to be a meditator, I need to be on that hip mountain in a cave in a loincloth for five days straight alone. And then later on, I was like, how about just a mindful minute? Start there. And that's when I realized like any sort of practice, whatever it is, cooking, running, exercising, you don't meet the practice. The practice meets you. And if you meet, if the practice comes to meet you, that's when the subtle changes start to happen because then you can commit to something. You're not necessarily attached to it and it's, it's a slow build. And again, that's what they're saying in exercise in general. A lot of these blue zones, they're not out doing was it CrossFit by any means, it's just. consistent movement daily, whether it be walking up a hill committing, I have a big hill outside. My neighbors call it the hill of death. Every time they're walking by, they're like, ha, that's my hill. When I get up in the morning, I walk up that hill. It's a great way to start my day. It's a pause. If I'm working from home, I'm in between projects. They always say there's that 15 minutes. You need to get your brain to transition into another thing. I go outside and I walk the hill. And so all day long, I mean, I don't track it, but But over time, I'm moving, and I don't even puff on that hill anymore. It's just there. I walk backwards up it and hang out, but it's a practice that's just built in now. So I think same thing with cooking. Don't go big, start something, start, clean it out first, bring some one dish at a time, and slowly grow from there.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 26:04

Yeah, I think one of the challenges in the U. S. is we have moved away from seasonal food and seasonal ingredients. So can you share a simple technique or recipe that encourages creativity with some of that seasonal ingredients that we find?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 26:21

Well, I think for seasonality, like right now, one of the things we talk about Ayurveda really speaks to that, and I think giving you an idea of a recipe, but more so, what I believe in it, wherever you live, there's a season, and talking about that connection to Earth is every season, basically, the Earth is giving you what you need in that moment. Okay. So right now we're in winter here. I'm in the dead of winter up here. It's cold. It's freezing. There's nothing growing. And so a lot of times people would think, it's this is when the grains were harvested. This is when the hard root vegetables are out. There is a little bit of dairy, things like that. What does all that do? It puts insulation on, right? By spring, everything I'd love. I always joke that my friend, we're talking about, he's intermittent fasting was a thing. It's 100 years ago because everybody was doing it in March, basically, up here. Because the stores would run out, nothing's growing, and there's old recipes for stolen soup. I think that's where that came from. It's just to make you feel like you're eating. But ramps dandelion greens, all these things are in the Allium family. What do they help you do? Detox. They help you strip from that winter sludge, basically. The summer, all our vegetables are cooling. Right? It's to keep you cool in the summer, and then by fall you're doing late summer harvest. Things become, it's cold mornings warm afternoons, so things become a little starchier, a little sweeter. And you should be eating more warmer foods, because your body can't really process. So, that's what I started trying to do, was tune in to seasonality. And my thing is I started doing a thing where I'd have a strawberry in June, in the warm, from an orchard. And the taste of it and then, like right around now, everybody goes to that token holiday party where there's that token fruit platter that's been shipped from wherever. And again, depending on where I live in the Northeast, there's always that pile of strawberries. You eat that strawberry there, it's not enjoyable. Not at all. And it's probably going to cause more distress in your system than anything else because it shouldn't be what you're eating. So to me, if you embrace the seasons, one, You can have recipes that you're coming back to. So for me right now, it's always squash. We're in squash season right now. And one of the ones that I did in my cookbook was I would take old school, like really heavy recipes and turn them into new. So I do a butternut squash. You can do a pasta with it, or you can even do a an enoki with it, but like a, a pumpkin sage, uh, sauce basically with a little bit of garlic, sage, things like that. Really rich done in a rice pasta or even over rice. And it's very simple. I have a green soup that we switch out. You can switch out the green seasonally and cook them and stuff like that. So I was actually just upstairs this morning looking at a big pile of apples because that's really the fruit that's still going up here. And a baked apple. I do baked apples with walnuts. So it's just basically taking walnuts, toasting them and then cooking them in a little ghee or coconut oil with cinnamon, all spice, all those warming spices, and then I'll take apples, cut them in half, score out the core, pack them in and bake them at 350 for 20 minutes and so they're still a little soft, they're soft but a little, there's still some punch to them, they're not totally mush, and then that's your morning breakfast sort of thing, so.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 29:19

I should have scheduled this uh, this interview a little bit later in my day because I haven't eaten yet and you're getting me hungry.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 29:28

So yeah, so that see that's the other thing like you said if you look at Again, Ayurveda and the Blue Zones cross over a lot because they're so One of the things about those Blue Zones is that they were isolated, okay? You look at Ikeria, there was no major port. So things weren't getting moved in there, so the people that were living there were relying more on the um, on the the land. And therefore there was that connection to it, and when you have a connection to your land, what inherently comes from it? Pride. More than anything else. And that's what I was found. Even though we weren't in Icaria in Greece, we're on Poros Island on this farm, the pride of the food is just amazing because there's such a connection to the earth. I was there for the olive harvest and every day this olive press rolls up at three o'clock. And so I was with this group, it was Dutch people, all these people coming in and they had, they picked all the olives. I didn't do all that. They did a lot of work to that one. And, uh, we roll it down there and they fire up this press. And they have a tare scale and you'll see like tractors pulling up. Just people, locals harvesting olives off their lawn, off their property and bringing it up. And there was this one couple, I was new to it, I thought they worked there. And we're watching the green come out, this extra, this is super food man. It's just coming out and I'm like, you only see that color, I didn't know this. For the first 14 days and then it goes away and it's just so vibrant green and the guy starts getting excited and I don't speak Greek and he's just talking to me in Greek and he doesn't care. A lot of people thought I was Greek so it was hilarious and I'm like, all right, I'm going to go with it. And he starts writing it down and he was writing about how many kilos he had and how many liters. And I think he had yielded like 45 liters off of this property, which is huge. And he, the excitement in his eyes and I realized, I Like I thought he worked at the dude was from somewhere else. Like it was his, it was his own olives, so that, that was like, wow. And so, and it was funny, there was I was going down like the woman I'm working with, her husband's Dutch and he's explaining to me one day on a zoom meeting and I'm watching him. I'm like, he's been doing this for 30 something years and I see his eyes just light up and in my back of my mind, I'm like, wow, this guy's Dutch. And he's been doing this every year and he gets excited and I don't know where he's Wow, I'm sorry I get so excited. I just, it's but it's and again, there's that seasonality. Here you are producing it every year and it differs every year, which is cool. Sometimes it's a little more spicy or sometimes it's not, and I think that, that's the piece for me is, is, is, uh, Yeah, that prides gardens, people have little gardens, in their homes and stuff. I, a lot of people went to cooking in the pandemic. I had lumber delivered and I put some beds in at my house, I was like, I'm already cooking. I'll go to gardening. And so I still grow little things and just like the pride of that, the getting out and moving, going out and plucking it. It's, it's a form of meditation. I think to me, that's the other piece of cooking is cooking in a lot of ways can be a meditation. I do a lot of, I sit every morning. as part of my practice. But even in cooking, I was running Kripalu Center. We were doing. 2019 at the peak, we went through over 14, 000 gallons of kale in one year. I mean, we were going through tons of food and there was a veggie prep manager at one point that I would always see him cutting onions. And I'm like, man, I said, you can have someone else do that. And he said this to me, he goes, you know how much I process when I'm cutting onions, man, it's therapeutic for me. And I tell people, it's you get sometimes when I'm anxious in the morning, I just start cooking because my hands get moving and it just gets me out of my head at that point. And I think that's where if you start looking at it again, that's countering all the brainwashing that we've been told that cooking's a chore Cooking, it's more important things than cooking because there really isn't Completely

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 32:56

just spinning with so many different ideas of how this is all applying to really aging well but the health span of the American people in general globally. I mean you think of obesity, I mean I think probably a huge part of our obesity crisis is our disconnection from food. We just, we eat food because, there's chemicals in it that give us some kind of, endorphin rush or something like that. And that's our attraction to food rather than the joy, the connection we get from growing it, producing it,

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 33:30

Mm hmm

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 33:30

harvesting it and, making our own dishes. And I think that's an important piece that we need to recognize a little bit more. Oh,

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 33:41

when I was down there the first year, I was on the hijra. I got passed up a hill and later on the woman, she was 90 and she was cranking up this hill. Everybody would come down from the to town to get their food in the afternoon at the siesta should buy stuff. And she was cranking up this hill. And so this year when I went back, I brought my group there to watch. And you'd see people of all different ages with canes or whatever. I'm exploring the hills and this one guy, I kept seeing him. Every time he'd be up a little bit higher, he'd take a little rest, he'd wave to me, and keep moving, and it was just a slow sort of pace, but that's the other piece, is how a lot of the Blue Zones view movement is very different than we view movement. I've realized that we have this kind of subconscious thing that as we get older, we should be slow, that you just slow down. that you stop moving less. And I just, I don't agree with that. You look at these places and it's very counter to that. And even across Europe, I was, we went on this hike up Methena volcano and my nine year old was there and she's, she's, she's up front. And then there was a group I realized, and I was being, I don't know, through my American eyes, I realized that a lot of these people in my mind, Once we got to this trail, I was like, this isn't just a hike. This is hairy. We're in this volcanic rock, and it was an age group that, 70s, that I wouldn't expect to be hiking there. And at one point, one of them, my friend Katerina, she's looking down at me. She's are you all right? And I'm like, please. I'm like, don't question my physical prowess. I'm fine. I'm trying to take pictures, but I was keeping up with them. And I realized that that's something in my mind that it's been programmed in. Even though I don't live that way, I still view it that way in a sense. That you don't move as much, and you don't move here and there. I'm watching people cruising by on scooters, and like driving little motorbikes, and I'm like, just a different way of viewing it. And sadly enough, I was hanging out with all these Dutch guys and they were like, you guys don't move. And I'm like, I know, I'm like, stop shaming me at a certain point, but it was interesting. These guys are always on bikes and they're always moving as part of their culture. They just need to learn to share their food more. The Dutch guys are still like us where they're like, this is my plate, sort of thing. But.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 35:42

Lived and worked in Holland, Michigan for a while and heard so many stories about the Dutch bringing their Tupperware to parties and taking food home with them.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 35:52

Exactly. Well, it's funny, it's funny. One of the guys, it was three different people. It was an Irish guy that said it to me because his wife was Dutch. And they were just talking about the different cultures and how we eat. And they were talking about turning the tea with the biscuits. How if you're in, in, in the Dutch, we'll basically take the tin of biscuits out, hand them, pass them around and give everyone one biscuit. And he goes, and then the biscuit tin is gone, and you're like, where are the biscuits? And he goes, whereas the Germans will just lay them all out. And it's just this different way of eating. Yeah, but, what was it, Katerina said she was talking about, eating with her husband's family for the first time. And someone knocked on the door, and it reminded me of that comedian lately who talks about Sebastian Monaco or whatever. He talks about, A knock on the door in the 70s versus now, and how back then everyone would run to the door, Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? And you'd invite them in and you'd offer them the Entenmann's coffee cake, and would you like some Sanka or something like that? And he goes, now somebody knocks on the door and you're like, Shh! Did you call them? Who is it? And everybody, everyone's on a different level. Whereas, it's funny, in Greece we would do these big, Part, we do the cooking thing at night, and we make enough food. And then slowly, after working with my person there, every day, all of a sudden they'd just be inviting people all day long. And 15 people. The next thing there'd be 35 people there. And that's the way they view eating. It's always just, there's more than welcome. That's one of the things they said in Longevity and Icaria, is they asked this one guy, Is it the food? Is it the movement? And he goes, No. He goes, What we do traditionally is we'll set a table, and we always set an extra seat. That's it. And that's for the person or friend who hasn't, that we don't know who's coming, basically. And that's how they view eating, in a lot of ways, so. And then the opposite was this. My wife always clears her plate. She's good. She grew up with seven, five family. Big family, so she makes sure she eats everything, they see it differently if you, if you've cleared the plate, they get worried that you didn't have enough They're like, are you okay? And I'm like, we're fine. We thought we were being complimentary, they're like, all right, I'll leave a little bit and then eat it right when you take it. Something like that,

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 37:49

Yeah, I grew up with a grandmother. I'd take a couple bites and say, what do you need?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 37:52

Right, right.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 37:53

a full plate. Let me eat.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 37:56

Exactly. No, that's great.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 37:59

So what are some of the biggest misconceptions about healthy longevity focused cooking?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 38:06

That is difficult. That it takes a lot to know. Like I said, we've been exploring the series online. We're going to every blue zone. We're going to Ikeria. January 7th, we go to Sardinia, Okinawa, and then finally, we'll go to Costa Rica and then Loma Linda. And what I found with every one of these recipes is I'm researching them and finding different versions of them. They're simple. They're all simple. And some of them, my little culinary brain can't get over like the longevity stew for my carrier. I mean, it's literally like five ingredients, you learn things how to prepare, but I'm in my mind as I'm making it with the class cause I'm going to taste it and I'm like, this is not, this is not going to do it, and then all of a sudden I add that cup of dill to it and all of a sudden I'm like, Oh my God, this is amazing. And my mind is always, I'm like, this is going to need lemon. I know it needs something and I get there and it doesn't. And that's, what's funny is everyone in the group is having that feedback that, yeah, we look at this, we don't think, and then it gets there. And I think that's the, that's what I love the most about it. Because again, these people living remotely, simple ways, so they're not applying these complex things, and so to me, there's food. You look at two ways, there's food. You can be viewed as utility where it's purely just fuel. And then there's food as fancy cooking foams and things like that. And that's a totally different game. When I, when I started to learn this, I used to talk about this in Canyon Ranch was there's two types of cooking I came to learn. There's, cause everyone would ask me, you must cook these really fancy meals at home every night. And I'm like 25 ingredients. I'm like, dude, I have just as much time as you. And chances are after I've been cooking all day, I don't really want to go home and cook. I said, but there's cooking to entertain and there's cooking to sustain. I'm like, okay. And they're two different things. And if you look at a lot of the blue zones, they're cooking to sustain. Yes, there's some complex things and ritual things that they do, but most of it is cooking to sustain. It's done in very simple ways. These kitchens aren't kitchens with a million gadgets in them. There's a soup pot, there's a saute pan, and it's a little bit of a time honored technique that gets passed down from generation to generation. That's really where the magic happens. So I think that's the biggest thing for me is it's simplistically brilliant in a lot of ways. Yeah, it's not over the top and it's, it's approachable, and you can, and you can, you can uplevel it. You can play with it. Like I'm refusing to do that right now. I'm like, we're just going to keep it as it is. But I look back and I'm like, well, I could do this to it. I could add a little of this to it, which you can. That's always tell people make a recipe the first time the way you want that way it is. And then after that you make it your own. I call it the remixing. It's like the besides, my typical hollow cookbook during the pandemic had just come out and at home I started just playing and I'm like, dude, I could release a whole other cookbook called the besides basically of that cookbook because you could take every recipe and kind of change it over, to a certain point. So, and that's the other thing, the hard to find ingredients, they're not hard to find ingredients. Most of that stuff is there, it's all herbs. It's simple spices. You don't need a huge pantry to support it,

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 40:53

yeah, I'm not a recipe person. Uh, I think it was about a week or so ago, my wife texted me this message, she was working late and so she said, this is what I want for dinner, she sends me this recipe and it's basically an article that she got online. And I'm searching through this thing. This person talking about how much they love buying chicken. And it's this whole article, but there's no recipe. And I was like, where are the, where's the, where's the ingredients? And I said, okay, there's a picture here. And it was basically, just chicken. What are the, the grape tomatoes. And I think there were some black beans in it. And those are, okay, those are the three primary ingredients I see in there. I'm good to go. That's all I need to know. Throw those in, throw some spices in, and it came out great.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 41:35

And that's, it's it. It's funny, that's what I always tell people. It's sweating, sautéing, blooming your spices, and simmering. You know those three steps? You can, you can freestyle all day long. And that's the idea with a lot of my cooking classes. It's I'm going to teach you these steps, but here I'm going to show you a variation on it in the process, and this is where you can incorporate different aspects to it, and that's the thing is you can actually take a lot of recipes if you have dietary goals, you can infuse your own dietary goals into them. When I was running a few years ago, we ran an online soup series and we were, it was fun. I was like, it's, we'll do it once a week. We ended up doing it for 21 weeks. We just couldn't stop. And so every week it was like, what soup, I started taking like. Everybody tell me what soup and we pick the favorite and we went all over the world. And what we quickly realized is I started quizzing them. I can give them a recipe with 25 ingredients and they can break it down into three steps basically because most soups and stews only takes three steps to make no matter what culture you're cooking in, at a certain point. So for me at that point I was like, ah, I've succeeded. Once they had that, a lot of them started freestyling on their own. At a certain point. Then I couldn't give them the recipes too soon because then they'd start trying to cook them before the class. And I was like, and I had a few recipes go south and I'd be like, well, what happened? Tell me what happened. I'm like, well, you did this and you did this. And we could have fixed that. And I think that's the one thing we, I like about the class is I always get five or six people that cook along with me and they're awesome no matter what. And they're always like, you're too fast. And I go really slow. But it's great because some of them will cut, they'll run into the problems that others, others will. And so I'll pause in that moment, turn the camera and be like, all right, let me see. All right, do this, this, and this. And then at the end, we know at the end of it's going to be thumbs up and thumbs down. We never get thumbs down. Everybody pretty, pretty much succeeds on it. And then the others walk away going sweet. Now I've learned from their mistakes. Now I'm ready to do it. Now I feel confident doing it, which is good.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 43:20

I feel like stews shouldn't even have a recipe. I mean, by principle, they're just, what do I have in the,

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 43:26

no.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 43:26

the household to just throw into this pot and eat.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 43:30

That's what we would laugh whenever we did a super stew, we'd get to the end and they'd see my face. They're like, let us guess, you're going to add something else. And I'm like, you can make them so nutrient dense so quickly. I'm like, here's some kale. I'd always be throwing in some green at the end. I'm like, you get them in there. I said, now it's even more, it's a full meal at this point, and that's one of the things, with, with, We talk about that, like soups and stews are great, especially this time of year. I always tell people to make a double batch of everything you're making. It takes just as much effort. Often times those things things cook better in larger quantities anyway. And then you take out what you want to eat. And then even if you're, two of you, you freeze it in little two cup containers, you pull it out, and you do this once a week, you start building up kind of an arsenal of backup food. And I always say there's a fine line between what A soup and a sauce. You do a black, pureed black bean soup, you just reduce it down, you've got some straight up veggies, some leftover protein, there's a bowl that's just come together really quickly for you, so it's using a lot of the, I take a lot of the commercial, it's funny, when I took the time off from cooking 20 something years ago, It was the first time I cooked at home. Like you in my twenties, I, it was like my fridge was pretty empty. Most of the time back then it was like beer and takeout, I was not cooking. And so I started applying all the things I learned in commercial kitchens to my home kitchen. And it's funny, I used to look at that as like a gap in my resume, but I realized that's ended up being what I still teach to people today is all those little tricks that can be applied at home. I see a lot of great chefs that can't cook at home sustainably because they're so used to having everything, you know what I mean? It's like you're used to big kitchens and moving and cooking at home does, it takes a different angle that you have to take on it. The critics at home can be way worse than, than in a restaurant,

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 45:06

it's true. So how can someone that has limited time or resources incorporate some of these principles into their daily meals?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 45:14

I would say, for me, it's, it's pick, start with where you're at. If you haven't cooked a lot, pick a, pick a simple soup, pick something easy and slowly incorporate a recipe a week into your life. My thing, breakfast to me, I don't teach a lot of breakfast because to me, breakfast is something that, if you've got a consistent meal you eat, whether it be, your toast or your yogurt and your fruit, That's where you get consistency in your life. And let's say it's your dinner that you want to shoot for making start there, and basically I would say, start with a one pot meal, do it on a weekend. Look at it as a way of, carve out the time, carve out a few hours. Don't start, if you're still working, if you're in retirement, go for it. Start with where you want to start, come up with a simple meal plan, but maybe start one meal, get that down at another meal. Things like that kind of slowly add to it. Don't try and change everything at once. And I think that's the simple thing, the simple way to go. And then resources, talk to others, cook with others, come to my cooking classes, things like that. I think you get inspired by others. One of the things, I talk about in, in, in my classes is that restaurants, we don't plan day by day. We have menu rotations that we put in, that we change. And so there's a lot, getting to know what you can do ahead of time. I think that's the bigger piece, is learning how to prep and prepping ahead. And also how to handle. Leftovers, things like that. Because a lot of times we don't know how to handle getting things cold and they go south really quickly. When we don't handle them well. So, yeah, I would say start where you're at, pick a skill that you want to learn. I would say the soup, I think spices and incorporating the soup is the way to go. One pot meals are where you start. And then from there you start growing, and then start building out your menus. But, really, beginning at all. What's your food philosophy? Where do you want to go? And I think that's the bigger piece. Is it going to be Mediterranean? If you start just pulling recipes and jumping all over, you don't really have a focus. The food philosophy is always something you're going back to. And incorporating into that food philosophy, especially if you're just starting out, I would say, chick, go for recipes that are, six ingredients or less. Things like that. Put an earmark on it. Be like, I don't want to go crazy. Six ingredients or less. Again, a lot of those blue zones. I had a friend that went into cooking Italian and he went to Italy for four weeks and I was like, wait, we have only done French food. I was like, why are you going into Italian? He goes, I don't know. I got a feeling. He came back. I'm like, well, what is it? Sicilian, Tuscany. And he looks at me and he goes, six ingredients or less. He goes, I found that the best foods, the best meals were that they were simple because the ingredients were good. It was good quality. He goes, plus it was easy to prepare. Plus I don't have to manage a huge inventory. And I was like, it was really a brilliant business plan in the long run so they can easily be applied at home.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 47:54

Yeah. So do you have advice for families looking to bring older generations into the kitchen for sharing cooking experiences?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 48:05

I would say, I think that's where it comes in is, is everybody has their job. Everybody has their like, and it's even people that have children. So again, I think we gotta go both ways, older and younger at the same time. And everybody has the things that they enjoy. You know what I mean? And so look, if one dude is I just washing the dishes, let them do the dishes. That's a good job to me. It's meditative. It's part of the process. My thing is everybody's got skin in the game basically. You know what I mean? So that everyone's taking part. That's what cooking should be. It should be a communal experience. I'll do one year when I wasn't working and we had Thanksgiving off when it was during the pandemic. That's what we did. My one daughter is making mashed potatoes. The little one was picking the herbs. My son, you know what I mean? Everyone was taking my son was taking part in it, cutting stuff. And so everyone takes a part in it. And I think that's the piece that, you're making a meal, but at the same time, You're creating community and creating family ties and you're creating tradition, I think, more than anything else. And I think that's one of the things that we sometimes lack is that way of cooking together and finding a tradition in it.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 49:12

So it sounds like cooking and eating is really a big spiritual component of our lives,

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 49:18

It is. It is. It's a huge piece. It's a huge piece that's been neglected. I find, I mean, commercially, I neglect it often. But I think if you can dial it back and slow down, it's really a good excuse to slow down. So I always say, sometimes I tell people, I teach over at Miraval Resort and we do a bone broth class and I tell them, I said, it's a way of bending time. I said, everything is so fast paced. I said, you can get out of your head, especially, sometimes family members, when we get together. It's hard to be together. You're talking and your aunts, things come up, but when you're all collectively doing something together and hands are busy, it keeps conversation light, it keeps things at a level and things like that where you're not getting into that. So I feel it's a nice way for people to come together at a certain point and have a little competition. Maybe, I don't know.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 50:06

I think we can get back to a lot of those traditions. I mean, I'm just Through this conversation, I'm just reflecting back to growing up and my mom in the kitchen and, I didn't cook a lot with her, but I feel like I probably did and just that involvement because I learned to cook through my mom and through my, my grandmother and all that. So what inspired you to write the Kripalu Kitchen and what can the readers expect from it?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 50:33

Uh, the Chronicles of Cookbook is cool because it's, when I was doing, writing the book with David Joaquin, one of the things he said, he's co written a bunch of books, he goes, Your book's a one stop shop. And one of the things, because we were doing buffet, we had so many dietary things coming through. And so those recipes can be, are basically, can fit, they're mostly gluten free, mostly dairy free. Excuse me, gluten free vegan. That was my thing with all the sauces, but they cross between, because a gluten free vegan sauce can go on meat. And so, they're very They hit everyone at one shot. They're a one stop shop. So if you have multiple diets within a household, two different preferences, the recipes are all easily adaptable. And the stuff again, I purposely did it so it wasn't far weird ingredients or anything like that. It's stuff that you could obtain. And then it incorporates a lot of Ayurveda. There's a real good intro to Ayurveda within it as well. And it's globally inspired whole foods cuisine. So it hits everywhere, which is pretty fun. It's pretty fun.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 51:31

So we got to make that the healthy diet. The Kripalu diet, instead of Mediterranean, Nordic, and people fighting about what's, which region has the healthiest diet. And I, and I think it is really just those basic principles that you've been talking

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 51:47

It is.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 51:47

are what are for longevity.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 51:49

It is. They're all healthy. They're, you can take from all of them in a lot of ways. It's the same, I joke when we were, when I was exploring food there, culture to culture, we all just have the same versions of different things. It's the same version, just differently presented. You've got dosas in India, which are crepes. You've got crepes in Paris, you know what I mean? It's ravioli pierogi. It's all, if you look at it, it can all be intertwined. My grandmother

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 52:17

had a good pierogi in so long.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 52:19

Polish, so I remember the kielbasa and all that stuff. My daughter likes them too, and it's just funny because I realize she skis. Like my grandmother started skiing when she was like 55. She was rolling. She'd take us roller skating, lived in 90 something. Really healthy woman. I realize now, like she had the longevity down. But she was funny. But she had a little, thing in her kitchen where if you had an ailment you'd spin it and it would tell you what herb you needed to take with it but she was also really into colonics and let me tell you you did not get sick at my grandmother's she's i know what would cure that no we're good grandma but hey she lived long you

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 52:55

Oh, yeah.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 52:56

that's great

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 52:58

Yeah. Sometimes we think that longevity is a genetic thing and it's a lot of it is really more of a lifestyle.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 53:04

it is lifestyle yeah she stayed active she would take us roller skating they what she i realized now that she was a pretty strong strong woman and she's just very vibrant, did her thing and her, my, her, my great grandmother was a nanny Paki. She was, she was another one, 99 years old, she was a spitfire though. The we used to joke that, you'd hear the truck drivers like, man, you've got a, you've got a mouth like nanny Paki. Cause she, she was, she would swear and the whole thing, but she spoke her mind, never edited herself. That's why I always like when you, when they always talk to someone that's hit like 105, 110, what's the secret. And it's always so funny. Cause they're always like, Oatmeal or whiskey? I don't know what it's good, but I was a woman recently. She was like, no relationships. And I'm like, I think it's whatever you find for yourself that works. As long as something that keeps you invigorated and happy, I think that's important.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 53:53

So besides eating well, what are you doing personally to age? Well,

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 53:58

Me, I'm big. I'm a fitness person. I exercise a lot, a lot of meditation, things like that. To me, the trips that I take down to Greece are something that I look at as something that I can do a long time But it's also being part of a community I brought 20 people down for a week and kind of introduced them to this whole lifestyle and they've all stayed connected since then So to me, I've been in the restaurant world. My life has been built around Food and work for a lot of my life So I'm really focusing on trying to build community for myself around being with people So, you know to me work You know, in Buddhism, they say work, you should have a right living. So to me, when I teach at Nerville, that's created, I'm constantly engaging with people. I'm on my feet. I'm talking about food. I'm being part of it. So that's, that's what helps me. I think it's going to keep me alive basically because if I, as long as I'm, uh, functioning with people and being in community, I'm a happy person. The eating I got down, exercise, I definitely have made part of my thing, but I think for me, it's working on, I'm having the purpose because they're with that comes purpose. And this was many people as I can help move into that. I create a greater network that I'm part of and it feels good.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 55:06

yeah, I write purpose with a capital P because I think it needs to be emphasized a lot more that the things we do need to be purposeful

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 55:13

Yeah,

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 55:14

and not just oh, I did that on purpose.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 55:17

right.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 55:17

What's that mean?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 55:18

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 55:21

So if our listeners want to explore a bit more about this way of cooking, in addition to buying the book, what is one small step they can take today?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 55:30

Go to my website, Jeremy rocksmith. com and I'm doing a class. I'm doing classes on Sardinia. I've got a library of different classes and also resources to help you reset your kitchen and stuff like that. And I think that's the thing. My big step today is think about what your food philosophy is, where you want to go with it, and then pick a cabinet and start really taking your kitchen back and making it your own. It's something, one of the things I do at a weekend program is I tell people, if you had a sign above your kitchen stove, what would it say right now? And sometimes I get, Battlefield, help wanted, I guess someone said, and then at the end of the weekend I said, what do you want that sign to be? And I have one over my kitchen and it says apothecary. And so that's what I want my kitchen to be, a place of healing. So set an intention, create a food philosophy, and go from there.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 56:15

It says, see my wife has a sign in the kitchen. It's I forget what all it says, but it's say thank you, say please, and it's, it's all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And I'm changing my spelling of gratitude too. I put two T's in gratitude, where it's, an attitude of gratitude.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 56:30

You have to have that every day. Yeah.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 56:33

I think if I was going to have my sign in my kitchen, it would be one that we have in the entryway. I see it as I come down the stairs from the upstairs, but it's a quote from Matty Stepanek, who was, uh, he was like 12, 14 when he ultimately passed, but he had written I think, five or six different books of poetry. He had muscular dystrophy, but it's remember to play after every storm.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 56:54

That's a good one.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 56:56

So just, having some kind of philosophy, I think bringing that spiritualness back into the kitchen I think is important, that social piece. So you've mentioned your website, is there anywhere else that people can learn a little bit more about your work? Do you have social media? And also, where is the book available?

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 57:14

Yeah. Book available through my website. You can grab my book. It's also available on Amazon. I'm on Instagram at Jeremy Rocksmith. I'm on Facebook at Chef Jeremy Rocksmith as well. And that's where I'm at, man.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 57:27

All right. Well, I'm sure everybody's going to want to find you. I'm going to, look up some of your website. I want to get some recipes and, and all those things. But I've really, really enjoyed this conversation. I, I thought we'd just be talking about the, the what's of food, but I appreciate that this conversation has been much more about the why's of food. And, it is really just tied into everything that we talk about here on the podcast about aging well and longevity and health span and all those things. And I hope, everybody will listen to this. Hopefully not only listen, but share it, subscribe and do all those types of things, but definitely look you up. I am going to buy my wife your book for Christmas. Hopefully she doesn't learn of that too soon. But I'm really actually myself looking forward to, to reading it. And so just, I thank you for your time today. This has just been

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 58:19

you. Yeah. Great. Keep up the good work.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 58:22

we'll have to have you back on again, cause I think we could dive deeper into some of these topics.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 58:26

for sure. For sure.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 58:27

forward to having you on later in the season or next season or somewhere in there. So.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 58:32

Excellent.

jeff_1_12-09-2024_053754: 58:33

Well, we're going to end here on that and just, keep doing what you're doing, teaching people what you're teaching, and keep aging well.

squadcaster-1fhc_1_12-09-2024_083314: 58:40

Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.

58:43

Thank you for listening. I hope you benefited from today's podcast and until next time, keep aging well.