The US throws away more food than any other country in the world – over 80 billion pounds per year, with each American throwing out an estimated 30% of the food they purchase. This alarming fact is what propelled today’s guest, Carleigh Bodrog, to create her cookbook & community, “Scrappy Cooking,” which shows viewers and readers how to transform commonly wasted foods into delicious recipes.
Sustainability and financial wellness
In discussing the impact of food waste, Carleigh and Tori dive into the deep connection between sustainability and financial wellness. Carleigh shares how mindful consumption practices can benefit both the environment and your wallet. By reducing food waste and adopting sustainable cooking habits, people can stretch their food budgets while minimizing their environmental footprint.
“Reducing food waste isn’t just good for the environment; it’s also a smart way to save money,” emphasizing that wasted groceries equate to wasted money.
Maximizing ingredients and minimizing waste
Carleigh shares practical tips for making the most out of every ingredient, such as repurposing kitchen scraps and using leftovers creatively. She suggests that by adopting sustainable eating habits and minimizing waste, individuals can not only contribute to a healthier planet but also improve their own financial situation.
“By getting creative with what you have, you can minimize waste and stretch your grocery budget further,” she advises, encouraging listeners to embrace resourcefulness in the kitchen.
Budget-friendly cooking strategies
From meal planning to smart shopping techniques, Carleigh discusses strategies for cooking delicious meals on a budget. One of her key suggestions involves repurposing kitchen scraps and leftovers into other meals. For instance, she recommends using coffee grounds to make chocolate granola or as a natural deodorizer, showcasing the versatility of common kitchen items.
Additionally, Carleigh advises creating nutrient-dense broths from vegetable scraps, offering a sustainable alternative to store-bought broths while utilizing food that might otherwise be discarded. “Don’t toss those vegetable scraps or stale bread; turn them into flavorful soups, stocks, or croutons instead,” she advises, showcasing the potential of scrappy cooking to transform humble ingredients into gourmet delights.
“Planning ahead and buying only what you need can help you avoid impulse purchases and reduce food waste,” she suggests, emphasizing the importance of mindful grocery shopping.
Embracing scrappy cooking
Carleigh’s philosophy of “Scrappy Cooking” encourages listeners to embrace experimentation and flexibility in the kitchen. “Scrappy cooking isn’t just about reducing waste; it’s about celebrating the creativity and resourcefulness that come with cooking.” She invites us all to join her in the journey towards more sustainable and budget-friendly eating habits. Check out some of her top tips below:
Carleigh’s tips for reducing food waste & lowering your grocery bill:
- Plan meals and create a shopping list to avoid overbuying
- Use leftover ingredients creatively or freeze for later use
- Store produce properly to prolong freshness and reduce spoilage
- Get savvy with kitchen scraps by incorporating them into homemade broths or sauces
- Opt for seasonal produce and take advantage of sales and discounts
- Experiment with plant-based protein sources like lentils or beans to cut costs
- Try making your own sauces and dressings to save money and reduce packaging waste
- Invest in reusable containers and storage solutions for a more sustainable kitchen setup
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Meet Carleigh
Carleigh Bodrug is the CEO and Founder of PlantYou, a New York Times Bestselling cookbook author and self-taught plant-based chef famous for her simple take on low-waste and vegan recipes. Carleigh has been featured in Good Morning America, the Rachael Ray Show, Martha Stewart Magazine and EatingWell.
Boasting over seven million followers between her social channels, Carleigh has gripped social media with her simple and delicious low-waste recipes that make plants the star of the show.
Her new book, PlantYou Scrappy Cooking: 140+ Plant-Based Zero-Waste Recipes That Are Good For You, Your Wallet and the Planet (4/4/234, Hachette Go), is a follow up to her best-selling debut cookbook, which sold out TWICE.
Transcript:
Carleigh Bodrug:
Anytime I talk about food waste, people make the assumption that it’s the grocery stores and the restaurants that are wasting food. Restaurants typically are very good about food waste because they can’t afford to be wasting food. The largest percentage, I think it’s around 30 to 40%, is in consumer homes. And when you really do think about it, it’s so easy to waste food.
Tori Dunlap:
Hi financial feminist. Welcome back to the show. I’m so excited to see you. If you’re an old anybody goodie, welcome back. If you’re new here, hi, my name is Tori. I fight the patriarchy by making you rich. I teach you how to be better with money while also talking about the ways money affects women differently. I’m a New York Times bestselling author, we have four million social media followers. If you’re not following us on Instagram already, you can go to Instagram and type in Her First 100K and Financial Feminist podcast and follow us there and welcome back.
We took a week off when you hear this, we will be back from our yearly team retreat in Seattle, which I’m manifesting went beautifully and lovely. We are a completely remote team. Also, fun fact, this is not just me. There’s still a shocking amount of people who think that this multi seven figure business with a podcast and a book and products … And blanking on everything else we’re doing. But they think it’s just me. And first of all, flattered, but it is not just me. No, there is a whole team of us. There’s a team of … I think we’re at 15 now. 13. There’s a lot of us. So we’re completely remote and the only time we all get together is literally flying everybody out here to Seattle. So excited for that because I’m coming to you from the past, but as you’re listening to this, it just happened and hopefully it was lovely and great. And hopefully Seattle, we had good fucking weather. This is what happens too, is we fly everybody out here and I want my city to show off and be on its best behavior and it often is not. If you live in Seattle you know … We’re recording this March 21st and the past four or five days have literally been sunny and 68 degrees and it’s been beautiful, but now it’s overcast, so we’re hoping Seattle behaves.
Couple notes before we get started. One of the biggest questions we get asked from our new listeners or people just in general … If you’ve been listening to the show for a while but you feel like you haven’t taken action is like, where do I start? So we have a free money personality quiz. You take it. It’s six questions. It’s not a pass/fail thing. It’s just us getting some information about what to recommend to you. And then we will send you a free personal money plan. You go to herfirst100k.com/quiz. That is herfirst100k.com/quiz. As you’re listening, you can literally type that in right now. Go spend a minute, get your results, and start learning. Again, herfirst100k.com/quiz. We will also post the link down below in the description.
I am so excited for today’s guest. This was an interview I was looking forward to for a really long time. I have followed Carleigh for a long time and she just has really cool, smart shit. Like her recipes are great and way she approaches food is so interesting. And if you’ve been here a while, you know that food is one of my great loves and we just had a great time on this episode. Carleigh Bodrug is the CEO and founder of PlantYou, a New York Times bestselling cookbook author and self-taught plant-based chef famous for her simple take on low-waste and vegan recipes. Carleigh has been featured in Good Morning America, the Rachael Ray Show, Martha Stewart Magazine and Eating Well. Boasting over seven million followers between her social channels, Carleigh has gripped social media with her simple and delicious low-waste recipes that make plants the star of the show. Her new book, PlantYou Scrappy Cooking, or as she would say, scrappy cooking, 140 plus zero-waste recipes that are good for you, your wallet and the planet is a follow-up to her bestselling debut cookbook.
This is an incredibly practical episode that will have you looking at your pantry in a whole new light. And especially for people who are like, inflation is so expensive, the grocery store is a fucking minefield. I can’t leave my house without spending $40. This is going to be a great episode for you. Not only do we get into food waste and how prevalent that is, but we also dive into creative ways to use the ingredients you’d usually throw out to help reduce your carbon footprint, to save money and to make the most out of your groceries. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
But first a word from our sponsors.
I love the mint color on you. It’s fantastic.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Thank you. This is vintage. I’ve been making an effort in the last couple of years to buy entirely vintage when I want to shop because I love to shop. So that’s been my whole thing and I’ve been enjoying it.
Tori Dunlap:
I love it. I have a hard time making vintage fit my body because I’m a curvy girl and so it’s difficult. So I’m good with jackets. Jackets are the fun thing that I can fit into those. And so yeah, I found some really cool pieces recently. Actually, the jean jacket I am photographed in on my book and that I have worn all of the time I found at a flea market in L.A.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Oh, I’m obsessed with that. And you find vintage jackets and I find they’re just so much higher quality often than what is made today, which is the best feeling. Because you’re like, wow, this is 30 years old, but it looks brand new.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally. Well, and then you get to say when you’re on a podcast and somebody goes wear’s your jacket, you get to be like, I’m sorry, you’re never going to be able to find it again.
Carleigh Bodrug:
I love it so much.
Tori Dunlap:
I am thrilled to have you on the show. I was telling you this before, but honestly I’m always excited to have guests on the show, but you in particular, I’m just like, food is such a love for me and a lot of people don’t know that because obviously my platform’s not about it, but I love cooking, I love getting scrappy. I love all of the parts about food that just bring people together and allow us to just have really incredible memories. So I would love to talk to you about how you got started. You started this blog back in 2016, you were vegan. So prior to becoming vegan, you mentioned you didn’t really have a lot of cooking skills. So what was it like to basically deep dive into this very niche cooking process? And was part of your blog, this idea of creating resources that maybe you didn’t have access to?
Carleigh Bodrug:
Exactly. And it’s funny you mentioned your love for food because I’m the exact same way. I’ve always been a huge foodie, just obsessed with food. But my college friends now laugh their heads off because I was the girl that came into our dorm room and stocked a freezer full of tater tots and mini pizzas. I did not know how to cook and I also was not at all concerned about health. And it wasn’t until 2015 the World Health Organization came out with this breaking news that red and processed meat were now classed as group two in group one carcinogens. And my dad actually is a colon cancer survivor. So he had colon cancer when I was growing up when I was 11 years old. Went through chemo, surgery, very traumatic experience. And then nobody mentioned diet at the time, which was so interesting now reflecting back because we just continued eating what I would describe as the standard American diet.
And up until that point, I had never had a fully plant-based meal in my entire life. So that news was like, okay, there might be an association here between diet and specifically colon cancer. And I went to school for journalism, so I’m very much a research type of person. So I started doing a lot of research, watching some documentaries and was like, okay, I’m going to try this plant-based thing. And I was lucky that my parents were also on board at the time. They shifted to a plant predominant diet, I would say with me. Although I was working up in northern Ontario, lived in a 500 square foot apartment by myself, and I was working as a morning radio host. So I was on my own still on the tater tot diet and had to teach myself to cook from scratch.
So what I will say is that the great thing about cooking with plants is that the stakes are very low. You’re not so concerned about your chicken and the salmonella and under cooking. Really, you make a super stew with plants, you add too much salt, you add some broth, you can fix it. So that’s what I learned very quickly is that cooking with plants, the stakes are lower and it can be a lot of fun. And I think just this journalism background that I had, I was really intrigued about the idea of being able to share about my journey and the pitfalls that I was having and the meals that I was cooking. So that’s how PlantYou was all born. I just started sharing on Instagram. I went on goDaddy.com and was like, what words can I make with plant? And PlantYou was available on a domain and Instagram, that’s how that was born.
Tori Dunlap:
Very similar to my story at Her First 100K. It was supposed to be your first 100K and somebody else owned the domain and I didn’t know what I was going to do. And then I had a friend in a bar in New Orleans who was like, have you thought about Her First 100K? And I just hadn’t because I was so laser focused on it has to be this and then bought the domain and it was very similar. It was like, is it available? Great. I’m buying it for 20 bucks in a random bar.
Carleigh Bodrug:
That’s so perfect though. I’m so glad it’s Her First 100K. It’s so much better.
Tori Dunlap:
I think it’s even better than your first 100K, but wasn’t even thinking about it. So your transition from full-time job to PlantYou happened in 2019. We get asked a lot of what does that process look like? I’ve told my own story, we’ve told stories of other entrepreneurs, but it was same thing for me. 2019 was when I decided to take it full time. What was that process like for you? When was the moment where you’re like, okay, it’s time?
Carleigh Bodrug:
So I had now moved back closer to home and I was working in marketing for a hospital foundation. So all the hospitals in Canada have foundations that raise money for hospital equipment. And I was basically telling patient stories, helping to fundraise and really loved the job, had a pension the whole bit, thought I would be there for the rest of my life to be honest. And then PlantYou was slowly gaining steam. I think at the time I had about a hundred thousand followers. I felt very passionate about it and I started thinking a lot about how I could monetize it. And I eventually landed on launching a subscription service. So it was a 7.99 per month subscription service where people would get PDF meal plans that were just meal ideas. I was not saying eat exactly this, they were just some dinner ideas for the week that were plant-based. Launched it. And quite quickly that outpaced what I was making at the hospital, although there was still this huge risk. And my parents were like, don’t do it. Wait until you’re on maternity leave one day and make the jump then. But I felt really inclined and I was very fortunate.
This comes from a huge position of privilege. At the time I was living with my now husband. I think he was my boyfriend or fiance, one of the two at the time, and he was really like, I’ll back you. If things go south, I’ve got you. And then also I just was confident that if I took the jump, I could always find a job. I felt like, okay, I’m working here now, I can probably get a similar job if things don’t go well. So I had saved up a little nest egg. Don’t know how much at the time. And took the jump. And then three months later I got a DM from a literary agent in New York who thank goodness was a trustworthy person because I was very much like somebody’s interested in doing a cookbook with me. I’ll do anything, I’ll take anything. She was amazing. So she helped me craft a proposal and then I signed my first cookbook deal probably six months after I had left my job. That was really the start of when things started taking off. But I don’t know if you’ll remember this Tori, do you remember when Instagram was just photos, not video?
Tori Dunlap:
It’s hard to remember, but yes, I do. Yeah.
Carleigh Bodrug:
That was a painful time. And I feel like that shift happened around 2019. And prior to that I had just been posting infographic photos that are like my cookbook. It had ingredients on the top and then the finished dish on the bottom. And I remember vividly when suddenly the Instagram algorithm switched and these photos were not doing well anymore for me. And before that time, people really didn’t know who I was. My platform, people would think I was a man. It was basically faceless. And then I had to switch gears and start making video. But I’m so glad I did because it created such a deeper connection with my audience. But that was all happening around the same time. So I left my job and now I’m like, wait, my current routine of what I do is post one photo a day is now you have to post a video every day. So it was a lot. But if I have any advice for anybody, it would be to make sure you’re making money before you leave. I don’t know if you agree.
Tori Dunlap:
No. I completely agree. I’ve talked a lot on the show about, I think there’s two kinds of entrepreneurs. There’s the leap and the net will appear who actually need that motivation, a little bit of panic to figure their shit out. I am not that person. I need a duck and then another duck and another duck in the row and I need a net and a net and a backup net. So I do think that there is flexibility building something on the side if you do have the ability to do that, because we always like to acknowledge here that side hustle is just a fancy word for second job. A lot of people actually need a second job because they need the money. But for me, and it sounds like that side hustle was something that was a passion, eventually a play for entrepreneurship. It also gives you flexibility to make concrete decisions about your business that might feel risky if you’re dependent on it for income. I think one of the mistakes I see people make is they just ask their business to do too much too early and then you become resentful of the business and it’s just so hard to ask it to pay your rent when it’s not ready to pay your rent. So yeah. I completely agree.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yeah. You want to have that space to be investing in the business. So if you are just using every cent dollar that you’re now making to live, that’s going to be very difficult to scale anything. So if you have the ability to be working at night … Which you made an excellent point that that takes privilege, I think in and of itself. That’s the way I would go about it again. I was still nervous. I remember that day I left my job and I sat in my car and I was like, oh, what did I just do? But it worked out for both of us.
Tori Dunlap:
I had the same experience. Yeah. I’m realizing I love this moment on the podcast where we have guests on who I don’t know a lot about personally. And then it was the same thing for me. My parents were like, don’t quit your job. You need to do everything you can to keep your job. And I’m like, yeah, I’m okay. We’re going to see if this works. One of my favorite things about your platform … And of course we’ll talk about scrappy cooking in a little bit. But your content is like one part, eat more veggies, here’s how we could do that. And one part how to not waste the food that you’ve already bought and the food that’s in your kitchen? Where did your awareness of just how bad food waste is, where did that begin?
Carleigh Bodrug:
It really started from the plant-based angle. So one of my main motivations for staying vegan, for lack of a better term, was that I learned about the environmental implications of animal agriculture. And I think a study was done a few years ago that showed if you as an individual want to reduce your environmental impact, one of the most powerful ways you can do that is by reducing the amount of animal products you eat. So that was really interesting to me and I was like, okay, this really aligns with the world that I want to see. Because in my opinion, when I reflect on the life that I want to lead, it’s really important. And I can imagine that you’re very mission-driven, but it’s really important to me that I live my life for the world that I want to see. So then after I had published my first cookbook and had really encouraged people to eat a lot of plants, I just heard the statistic that stopped me in my tracks. And that was that 30 to 40% of all the food produced in the United States ends up in landfills.
And my immediate thought process here when I heard that was, okay, the food decomposes, it’s fine. But actually what happens is it builds up in landfills and as it decomposes, it emits methane gas and that is very bad for global warming. And additionally, it actually creates more emissions than the airline industry, which is astonishing. Because I feel like in school, if we were ever talking about climate change, it had everything to do with transportation and maybe you’re taking too long of showers. So for us to never be talking about the food on our plate was just really shocking to me. So as a food blogger myself, I still waste food. And back then I was certainly wasting food just because I was recipe testing so much. So I started to take an audit and really practice what I preached in my own home by trying to be really intentional about the ingredients I was buying and reducing food.
And then one day on a whim, I just threw up a orange peel candy recipe. I called it scrappy cooking. Really, again, not much thought was put into this. Put the video up, put my phone down as I do when I post a video because I’m like, oh goodness, what is going to be the reaction to this one? Walked away. Came back an hour later and it had been viewed a million times, had so much engagement. And I was like, wow, people care about this. And that’s what struck in my head, this is something nobody is talking about, needs to be talked about. And not only is it going to help people and the world reduce their food waste, but it will help people save money because when we think about the price of groceries, it is astonishing to me that we throw food out. I know how it happens, but groceries are just so expensive these days.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And not to mention that we live in a society where there are plenty of people going to bed without enough food at night. And there’s food deserts in the United States, not to mention other countries. So yeah. This is clearly a multi … If you peel back the onions, there’s more layers here to this problem. Yeah. It’s a climate change issue. It’s a financial issue, both personal and an economic issue. Yeah. When you hear a stat like that where it’s almost half of the food’s going to waste and the amount of people going to bed hungry, it’s crazy.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yeah. It’s senseless. And what’s really interesting about this? Anytime I talk about food waste, people make the assumption that it’s the grocery stores and the restaurants that are wasting food. Restaurants typically are very good about food waste because they can’t afford to be wasting food. And the largest percentage, I think it’s around 30 to 40% is in consumer homes. And when you really do think about it’s so easy to waste food. I think we’re in such a culture where we’re go, go, go. I find it myself, I barely have time to plan meals for the week. And you head to the grocery store and you have all these good intentions. You’re grabbing food off the shelf, maybe you have a family and you get home and then at the end of the week, the food has gone bad because you maybe got takeout or something happened that week. So it happens a lot easier than we think, and I do not want to blame consumers. Again, I am no perfect person. Even the scrappy person still has food waste. It’s just about if we can do our best, I think we’ll all benefit from it.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And I don’t want to go in the rabbit hole of the classic version of the most climate change is coming from 50 corporations.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yeah. Exactly.
Tori Dunlap:
What can you do as an individual? I am the same way. Obviously I’m budget conscious. I’m your budget girl. I also love food. My partner could come in here right now and tell you how much food ends up getting wasted accidentally just because it gets buried at the back of the fridge. I forget about it. I, to your point, go to the grocery store and I have every intention on cooking in and then I end up … Yeah. Oh, I have a bunch of events that I forgot about where I’m going to get dinner before or after. Yeah. It’s the same thing. So before we talk about specific recipes just in shopping or how you set up your refrigerator, what can we be doing … And I’m really asking what can I be doing? To make sure that I cut down on the food waste and be intentional with what I’m actually purchasing?
Carleigh Bodrug:
So the number one thing that everybody can do that is really simple is avoid the food that is going to be wasted from ever coming into your home so that requires meal planning. And this can be so simple. You do not need a fancy app, you don’t need a cookbook. You really don’t need anything other than a piece of paper and a pen. What I like to do is just write down Monday to Friday, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you’re not a huge planner, you can leave this really loose, but write down maybe three meals that you would probably like to cook in the week. I like to write down, okay, I’m going to make overnight oats, maybe a pasta on Wednesday. I’ll have the leftovers for lunch on Thursday.
Then once you make this list, you’re going to create a shopping list based on your meal plan, which I hope took you about 10 minutes. And once you make a shopping list, you’re not heading to the grocery store yet. You’re going to look in your fridge and pantry because so often we’re double buying because again, we’re just speeding around the house like crazy people and then into the grocery stores. So shop your fridge and pantry, see what items you already have on hand or what items are needing to be used up, and then head to the grocery store with your list. Try not to get distracted and buy random things. And when you come back, one really good tip is to do a little bit of meal prep. So if you can prep things. Maybe slice up your bell peppers, create sauces, make the cooking easier for you during the week. And there’s a huge conversation here to be had about food waste and health because I think if we’re going to be intentionally reducing our food waste, I really think that requires meal planning. And if you start meal planning and you start cooking the food that you’re buying, you’re ultimately going to start eating healthier, which is awesome too. It’s like a win, win, win.
Then once you get the food home, a lot of it comes down to food storage. So one big one I see a lot of people waste is their spinach. So they’ll buy a well-intentioned box of spinach. They’re like, I’m going to have spinach smoothies or salads all week. I’ve done it myself and then the spinach slowly is staring at you every day at the back of the fridge. And to keep it longer, I recommend putting a paper towel or clean cloth to absorb some of the moisture and then don’t wash it until you’re actually going to eat it. And then additionally, if you do get to a point where that spinach is wilting, there’s so much you can do with it. So you can put it in freezer bags, you can blend it up with some coconut water and then freeze in ice cubes, so you have spinach bombs to go in your smoothies.
Another big one is herbs. People have a. Real problem with cilantro it seems. So you can store that like a bouquet in your fridge or you can also wrap in a moist paper towel to keep it fresh. Celery and carrots. You can chop and store in water to keep them nice. And you can bring celery and carrots back to life too when they go limp. As long as there’s no signs of spoilage or mold, you can soak them in water. Iceberg lettuce as well. That’s a good trick. Potatoes, you want to keep in a dry cool place like a cellar or a garage. And once you learn how to store food … I have a whole section for this in my book. You can also just Google it. But once you learn how to store food, it can last considerably longer. But when in doubt before you see mold and you think, oh, I’m not going to get to this … Bread is a big one. Bread is the number one waste of food in the world. Freeze it. Your freezer is your best friend. And one thing I want to say about frozen food too is there’s this misconception that when you’re buying frozen that it’s somehow unhealthier than-
Tori Dunlap:
Not as healthy.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yeah. Than fresh. And in reality … Frozen berries is a great example of this. I live in Canada where the food is often … All of our berries are from Mexico. So you think about how many days it took for the berries to get here. And the frozen berries have actually been harvested and then frozen almost immediately. So oftentimes they’ll be more nutrient dense than the fresh. Then if you’re buying frozen berries, you’re taking the guilt away because they’re just as healthy if not more nutrient dense than the fresh. You’re going to have a lot longer life to them, more use for them in your smoothies or whichever else that you’re making. So freezer is your best friend. Food storage, meal planning. That’s like the low hanging fruit, for lack of a better term that is going to get you 90% there to reducing your food waste.
Tori Dunlap:
I love all of those. I was literally writing down the things that I do when I am responsible about it that help. I think one of them is having a well stocked pantry. It’s so helpful when you don’t know what to cook and you’re just like, okay, I need to go out and buy stuff. No, if you have a well stocked pantry, you can make almost anything. The other thing I really try to do is … I am less planning than I probably should be. But I do the like, oh, this is about to go bad, so I’m using it tonight. If I have cauliflower that I know is about to go bad, it’s like, okay, I’m making cauliflower tacos or I’m making cauliflower with some sort of spread, like a harissa hummus situation on the bottom.
Carleigh Bodrug:
That sounds delicious.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you. I’ll make it for you some time. The other thing that I got caught up in … Especially in my early 20s. I’m from Seattle, Costco runs in our blood here in the Pacific Northwest. If Costco called me and they’re like, we need a kidney, I’d be like, which one? I love Costco more than anything. But I was a single woman shopping at Costco and buying things in bulk. And I still do this sometimes. I got an Instacart thing from Costco this weekend and literally I bought a bag of carrots. If you’re watching YouTube that was this big. It was like this long, this big. Massive. So now I’m thinking to myself, how am I going to use all of these things? So I think there are some things if you’re cooking for one or even cooking for two, that Costco is really helpful for like their toilet paper and they’re rotisserie chickens. But I can’t use as many carrots as I’m trying to buy in this period of time.
So yeah. I’m either freezing them, which I love that, or I’m just thinking strategically about when to buy them. And then the other thing I wrote down that I need to be better about, but what I do, speaking of the carrots is cutting things to make them ready to eat. Because something about looking at a whole carrot with all of its hair and the tips, I’m just like, no, I don’t want to eat that. But I’m a little child. I’m a fucking child. If I cut that up and it looks like baby carrots right off the get go, I’m going to eat it. That’s a couple of the things I love to do or that I’ve hacked my way.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yeah. That ties right into this health conversation that we’re talking about too. Is that if you’re going to be intentional about your food waste, you’re going to find you probably are automatically eating healthier if you’re prepping that food. And when I worked a regular nine to five back at the hospital, I was huge into meal prepping. And this isn’t for everyone, but I would really make it. I’m huge into soups and stews. Canadian weather, horrible. So eight months the year it’s soup season, and I would make a huge batch of soup and throw every vegetable known to man in there on a Sunday, and then I would have it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, sometimes even Thursday. So once you actually take the time to prep the ingredients that you buy, they’re just so much more consumable and you’re less likely to fly through the drive through on the way to work when you have something prepped.
Tori Dunlap:
Or reach for … I love chips. I’ll continue to eat chips. But if my carrots are cut, I’m most likely to reach for them. Or if my berries have been washed and opened, I’m more likely to reach to those as a snack rather than my Takis for the seventh time this week. So. Yeah. One of the things I am really excited to talk with you about … And it’s going to take a little bit of a backstory to get into it. But I think that you’ll really appreciate. I was very similar to you. I was the chicken tenders, tater tots … Well, for me it was chicken tenders. That was the version of that’s all I can cook. I just throw them in the oven. And then I made … It was a lot of the people I dated, a lot of the men I dated either had culinary backgrounds or were really good home chefs. My friends were good chefs. And so I started learning a lot and then I watched way too much food network.
So I got to the point where I like to think I’m a pretty fucking good cook. And my partner now was the very much I cook for sustenance. It doesn’t really need to taste good, it just needs to happen. And so over the past two years of us dating, there’s been a really cool version of him where he is learning how to cook. He’s learning all of the things on food network where he is like, oh, I know how to do that, or this is a thing that I know now. The one thing that I feel like it’s the barrier to entry here is he will bring out a cookbook and he’ll look at the recipe and he’ll follow it to an absolute T.
And I used to do this early in my days too. And I would get mad at people in my life who didn’t follow the recipe because I’m like, no, the recipe says this, we need to use this. But what often happens is any recipe book I won’t have that certain ingredient. And rather than feeling like, oh, I need to go out and buy this thing that I’m maybe only going to use once or that just an extra trip to the grocery store, I end up subbing it for something else, or I don’t measure my spices exactly because I know what things should taste like. So I really wanted your perspective as someone who is a cookbook writer but also committed to scrappy cooking, how can people think about recipes in a more flexible way, understanding that you can make something without a hundred percent following the recipe, especially considering that vegetable substitution is actually really easy with a lot of things.
Carleigh Bodrug:
I love this question because it really speaks to my mission, which is to really empower people to learn to cook and then have the flexibility to use up the food they have in their fridge. And it’s actually how I designed my new cookbook is I have probably about 25 recipes that are earmarked as kitchen raid recipes, and they are identical to what you’re talking about where you can flex in whatever vegetables you have in your fridge. So as opposed to calling for one bell pepper, it will say one cup of chopped vegetables. I use x, Y, and Z. You could use blah, blah, blah or whatever you have on hand. And so if somebody’s listening and they’re new to cooking, I know from being a recipe creator that I get questions … Probably so many messages every day asking if they can make substitutions in recipes. And oftentimes they’ll be like, can I sub sweet potato for butternut squash? And I’m like, 100%.
So I will say in my career, 99% of the people that ask this question, the answer is yes when it’s a substitution for a vegetable. And you want to look at vegetables that are similar. So a butternut squash and a sweet potato and a yellow potato, they all have a similar texture. They’re going to go great in whatever you’re making. And it goes back to what I talked about earlier. I think plant-based cooking is a really great way to enter into this realm of learning how to become an intuitive cook because the stakes are so low. Really, you’re dealing with plants, you’re not going to probably overcook them to the point where you won’t be able to consume it. You’re probably not going to under cook it to the point where you can’t consume it. It’s really easy to play around and get fun. And I think that so much of it comes from just like you said, your partner. It’s like we take it too seriously and we’re looking at it so literally, but we need to have fun with it. It’s supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to be enjoyable. And I really find often cooking once you get in the flow of it … And you might relate to this. Can be therapeutic. When you’re in a real flow with it and you’re tasting things. Taste along the way.
Tori Dunlap:
I cook things just when I need a break. I need the meditation of cooking. I will do this often is I will break my work because I’m just like, I’m so stressed and I will go cook something.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Exactly.
Tori Dunlap:
A hundred percent.
Carleigh Bodrug:
It’s almost a mindfulness activity where you’re like, okay, I am chopping some vegetables. I’m not thinking about X, Y, and Z at what’s going on at work. And I encourage people to taste their food along the way, find out what they like. Add a little more salt, add a little more chili powder, whatever you’re making, and it’ll be okay. You can always fix it when you’re cooking plant-based. It’s supposed to be fun. Take the rigidness out of it is really what you need to start by doing.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Let’s talk about seasoning for a second. Because this is the number one thing that I think I see and the number one thing I had to learn is how to properly season my food. I think the average listener of this show is obviously progressive. They probably know the vegetables are good. We don’t need to convince them that plant-based diet is a good thing. But I do think there is this misconception that again, is rapidly changing, but that vegetables don’t taste good. And I’m like, no, you’re just not seasoning them properly or not cooking them properly. I love my mom. I grew up in a steamed cauliflower household or steams-
Carleigh Bodrug:
So did I.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And I never ate a vegetable growing up. And I look back and I think definitely it was partially because I was a picky eater, but partially … I remember the first time I tasted charred Brussels sprouts for the first time and I’m like, these are fucking incredible. Where have these been all my life? So let’s talk maybe about seasoning, but also the heat of the importance of char or cooking something in a certain way.
Carleigh Bodrug:
It really comes down to those components of salt, fat, acid, heat. And I am a huge seasoner. Even when I’m writing my cookbook recipes, I’m like, oh my goodness, I’m adding four tablespoons of nutritional yeast to these Brussels sprouts. And I’m like, people are going to think this is nuts. But it just adds so much flavor and deliciousness and also health benefits when you’re really seasoning your food. So there’s elements here. You talk about char. If you cook something like potatoes, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and you really roast them and add some oil and char them, the flavor almost caramelizes, comes out and it makes them 10 times more delicious. Almost as delicious as like a potato chip when you have a Brussels sprout that is really, really crisp. And then I love to add acid in terms of I’ll often coat some vegetables in a little bit of apple cider vinegar. I love a balsamic glaze, so that’s a really great way to enhance flavor of your vegetables. I have a great recipe where you roast a cabbage steak and then you finish it off with balsamic glaze. Just delicious.
And then we’ll talk about fat. So oils, a peanut butter, almond butter tahini. Making dressings with fatty ingredients is really going to add a nice balance when you have something that is very … Kale is a great example. Everybody tells me they hate kale, but I love kale. And the truth is it really comes down to that acid and fat. You want to add a little lemon juice and massage it in, and then either a fatty dressing … Not a fatty dressing, but like a tahini dressing, which has some fat content or avocado to balance out that crispness.
And then finally we talk about salt, seasonings. So I find a lot of people under-salt their food, but this is highly personal. There’s a lot of people in the whole food plant-based community who are SOS free. So this is salt oil and something else. But when you don’t eat salt, your palate is going to be very specific. If you try something salty, it’s going to seem like so salty. So I do find that people are so specific about their salt. I’ll get comments from my first book that some recipes are too salty and then another person will say, not enough salt. So I think it’s a very personal thing, and this goes back to really being customizable with your recipes. Trying the food and salting and seasoning to your liking is a huge thing. And in stocking your seasoning cupboard I think is a great way to start.
Tori Dunlap:
We did a previous episode on the show and it’s called How to Be a Better Cook, and I talk about what I’ve learned and I literally am just yelling at people. I’m like, salt your goddamn food. I don’t know how you feel in Canada, but in the US it’s like salt is a bad thing. And I’m like, no, again, you watch any cooking show and they take … First of all, you have a salt well, which is another tip I have, which is like, don’t keep your salt in a shaker. Actually basically touch your salt, you know how much there is, and then you just watch them just … It’s so much salt and it makes it taste better-
Carleigh Bodrug:
Even dessert.
Tori Dunlap:
And I feel like you’re going to have a better time.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Even you’ll find chocolate desserts, you’ll find it tastes a little flat, you add a little bit of salt and suddenly that sweetness.
Tori Dunlap:
Flaky salt.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yeah. Suddenly the sweetness is dancing. So salt is a huge one. And I would say even if you break out a cookbook and you try a recipe and you get it on the table and you’re like, eh, add a little bit of salt. It might be the game changer that you’re looking for.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. To your point about acid, the little squeeze of lemon juice too. Speaking to my partner, I don’t mean to roast him, pun intended, this badly episode. He’s a great cook. He’s getting better. But he made a cabbage soup a month ago and he’s like, yeah, it had a bunch of good stuff in it, but there’s just something missing. And I was like, bring it to me. And I basically doctored it and I tasted it and I was like, oh, this needs acid. And I just put red wine vinegar in it. I’m trying to remember. I think I added garlic powder and that’s all I added, and it immediately tasted better. So I think it is, to your point, tasting your food, and it is those four components. I’ve preached it before. And she actually follows me. She just started following us a couple of weeks ago. So mean over at Salt Fat Acid Heat and I had a melt down because I love her.
But yeah, it’s the four elements. If something’s missing, figure out, is it not salted enough? Have I not charred it with the heat? Yeah. Do I need more acid? Do I need some fat? Yeah. You’re exactly right. Let’s go back to, you were mentioning a lot of the things that we love to cook and that are really healthy for us are also the most expensive. The groceries that are the most expensive are fruits and vegetables and fresh things. So yes, I think we can get them frozen. I think that’s a great way to cut down on the cost. I guess we live in a society where the cheap things are not the most healthy things. So can we talk maybe more about that barrier that a lot of people have to healthy food just because they can’t afford it?
Carleigh Bodrug:
It’s really tough. I am not going to sit here and say that eating a whole food plant-based diet is going to be cheap. I don’t think heading to the grocery store and eating healthy period … I’ve heard from friends that meat and dairy are just astronomical themselves. I do think that stripping things down to really basic things can be helpful. So I’m talking about canned beans. Going around the vegetable section in your grocery store and seeing what’s in season and what is on sale. And building meal components from that can be a really effective way of building healthy meals that are calorically dense. Rice, pasta, grains, bread. Then zipping through your vegetable aisles and seeing what you can combine. I think one thing that I really encourage people to do in their households … And it ties into being building more affordable meals, but we have in this household what I like to call staple meals.
So every single week I make probably some sort of curry and I make some sort of pasta sauce and I make some sort of soup. And they’ll contain different things every week, but they’re in my repertoire where I’m cycling through them as a base recipe. So a great example would be I’m obsessed with red curry, so I’ll always be making red curry with coconut milk, a little bit of ginger, whichever else. So if you have these meals that you love in your household, I think stocking your pantry with those base items and then just cycling the vegetables or the protein that’s on sale. If you are a meat eater, it’s great to look at what proteins on sale that week. And cycling them into these base meals and knowing you already have the foundations maybe at home from buying something in bulk can be a good way to save money. But there’s no way around this conversation without acknowledging that it’s not clear cut and it’s not easy in terms of solving food insecurity. I to your point earlier, like an onion, because oftentimes the issue is that people live in food deserts and literally just don’t even have access to fresh food or the education to know how to cook it.
Tori Dunlap:
When we talk about food deserts, our research, it’s 34 million households in the US are food insecure.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Astonishing.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. It’s just crazy. Is there help or hope for people who want this access to whole foods but are often forced by necessity to eat more processed? You were talking about this. Is there certain processed foods that are less bad? You already touched on this. But thinking about like, okay, I can’t eat a hundred percent whole food diet. Are there ways that we can combine fresh ingredients with slightly less worse things, if that makes sense?
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yeah. I love to call this up leveling food. So a great example would be if you’re someone who likes Kraft dinner and a box of Kraft dinner might be affordable or Alpha-getti, adding frozen peas, which are an excellent source of protein, fiber, nutrients, and they’re typically really affordable in comparison to other vegetables. Adding a whole thing of frozen peas. You could add some tofu. Tofu is typically a pretty affordable protein. And right now you’ve up leveled what would typically be considered a low nutrient dense meal and made it nutrient dense. So that could be also applied to you get the cheapest pasta you can get from the grocery store, dry pasta and canned sauce, and again, up leveling it with whatever vegetables you can add to it. What I love to do sometimes is add a bunch of vegetables to a food processor. This is another hack for reducing waste, but carrots, bell peppers, onion, garlic, whatever you have. Even frozen vegetables and making it into a veggie ground, sauteing that with a little oil in your pan, and then adding just a jarred pasta sauce and putting it over noodles can be a great way. So thinking about how you can not take away these processed foods that can be staples in people’s diets who can’t necessarily afford, but add where you can affordable plant-based or whole food substitutes.
The other side of this conversation is there is a stigma that eating vegan is expensive. I am not surprised. When you head into Erewhon and they’ve got a Hailey Bieber smoothie for $18. It’s insane. But in some ways, a whole food plant-based diet can be more affordable than eating some processed food. So a great example is I see so many people who go vegan and then they’re just buying one-to-one replacement. So they’re going in and they used to eat beef, so they’re now buying Beyond Meat or Impossible meat for $10 for one small package. Or they’re buying vegan chicken fingers, which are extremely expensive for the amount of food that you’re getting. So I would encourage people from both a health perspective and a financial perspective to really lean into whole foods if they’re available and accessible to you. So rather than buying ground beef, buy lentils. Can buy a huge thing of lentils for a couple of dollars. Soak your lentils and add that to your pasta sauce as opposed to an Impossible meat. And you’re going to benefit from a health perspective there too. So if we strip it down to whole foods, it can be somewhat affordable. And I say that knowing that that comes from a place of privilege as well.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. One of the things I did … Not necessarily because I was trying to be more vegan, but because I was trying to be healthier and also I didn’t know how to cook, was I would take a frozen pizza and then just chop up a bunch of spinach and then top it.
Carleigh Bodrug:
I love that.
Tori Dunlap:
That was my easy hack. I wanted pizza, I wanted it to be slightly healthier, so I took my fresh spinach and I just threw it on there. And I’ll still do that sometimes. I actually do that a lot. I’ll take my Trader Joe’s chicken tikka masala and then throw in some sort of leafy green on top to make it healthier. Yeah.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
You mentioned the privilege of being vegan. You had an episode on your podcast where you talked about white veganism. Can you share a little bit about that topic? And yeah. Let’s talk about that privilege of being vegan.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yes. So when you hear the term vegan, what comes to mind? And it’s probably a white woman in California. And I am not helping my own case here as I talk on this podcast.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s Gwyneth Paltrow.
Carleigh Bodrug:
I am Canadian, but I am a white vegan woman. And that’s been the representation. When we think about veganism, it’s this Gwyneth Paltrow fad, super healthy hippie diet. When in reality, a lot of the origins of people who have eaten vegan for centuries come rich in culture. So Indian culture, African American. There are so many vegan recipes and staple ingredients in these people’s diets that are vegan. So I think it’s difficult because the problem is then people who are growing up and they are say, African-American, don’t see the representation of themselves in someone that is vegan. So they’re perhaps less likely to go that way, which is unfortunate because it can be such a healthful nutrient dense and in some cases more affordable diet.
So what is the solution to this? I think it’s just amplifying voices in the plant-based and vegan space who are of different colors. I try to do this on my platform myself. Try to call in people and making sure that they get the platforms to have the representation. And then from a media perspective, it’s commercials with vegan products, having different representation in them can start tackle this issue and unravel it.
There’s so many wonderful creators online that do this, but talk about the origins of their food from when they’re making vegan meals from different cultures. I think it’s just so wonderful. And I think part of this is the beauty of social media now is that really anybody can cook online and become a creator and showcase their recipes and recipes that have been passed down through culture. And it’s a wonderful thing to see because I think that it does hopefully start to even out that representation as time goes on.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I love that. And you’re exactly right. Think about Indian dishes. A huge chunk of that is either vegetarian or vegan, and that’s a staple of Indian cooking. Yeah. You’re so right. I want to talk to you about … You mentioned this before, but the creation of a cookbook. I’ve written a book, I won’t shut up about it. But there’s so much difference between … Well, first of all, a novel and nonfiction, that’s a whole other thing. But I’m thinking about a cookbook where it’s like, okay, you got to do photo shoots, you got to test recipes, but also you have to think about not only what the recipe looks like and what’s in the ingredients, but how you present it in terms of education. And shameless plug for your book, I got a copy yesterday. It’s truly so beautiful and shows you every single ingredient, and then to your point, shows you substitutions. You can tell that you definitely thought about not just how do we make something that tastes good, but how do I actually teach somebody how to do this? So I would just love to hear your perspective of what goes into actually writing a cookbook.
Carleigh Bodrug:
So much work, as you know yourself. Books are just mammoth, mammoth amount of work. I wrote my first one. I remember I had signed the deal and the next day I went out and bought a camera. I had been shooting everything on my iPhone up until that point. And really, my first one was a crash course in writing cookbooks, because I wrote the whole thing, shot the whole thing by myself, and it was brutal. I think it took me about a year.
Tori Dunlap:
I want to pause you there for a second. Most people hire food stylists.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
If you write a cookbook, most people don’t style the food themselves. It sounds like you did it yourself, which is even more work.
Carleigh Bodrug:
I did. I didn’t have the money at the time. I did not have the money at the time to hire out, and I was like, I can do this. It’s like that thing, how hard can it be? Boys do it. I did it and it was just a mammoth amount of work. So really my first cookbook, I thought a lot about what is the cookbook that I needed when I first went plant-based? And really I had to sacrifice this idea of it being this really beautiful image stylized cookbook, because I wanted these infographics, which I’ve carried through both of my books where I have the ingredients on the top and then the finished dish on the bottom. And if anybody is watching on YouTube, I’m going to show what by that because I feel like it doesn’t necessarily make sense.
There is my book. And later on I had published it. And it was so interesting because I kept getting messages from people who were neurodivergent as well as parents with kids who absolutely love the book, and then also just general public. But later on, I was diagnosed with ADHD and I was like, this makes so much sense because for some reason my brain computes this format of my cookbook in just a much simpler way to cook. And so many people have said that to me. So I carried it forward to my second one, but it is a lot of work. And I took all of the images for my first book of the individual ingredients as well. Nightmare.
My second, fast-forward, I was able to build a team around me, amazing photographer. What a godsend that was to have somebody taking the photos and be able to spend more time actually recipe testing. My sister actually left her job and assisted me. I hired her full time to work on the book. So I had help this time, which was wonderful, but it was still a ton of work, man. It’s usually a two-year process. So you usually write for around nine months and then two to three rounds of edits, all of the photos, the lifestyle shoots, and then as you know yourself because I know you did so much work to promote your book, the promotion is half the battle because then you’re going on podcasts, you’re hiring PR, you are trying to get on TV and all of that jazz, and then it never ends because you still want the book to be a success after that first week. Everybody write a book.
Tori Dunlap:
You got it.
Carleigh Bodrug:
It’s so much fun.
Tori Dunlap:
No. I literally tell people all the time … People ask me all the time, should I write a book? And I’m like, honestly, no. No. You’ve got to really want it. You got to really want it bad. Yeah. So this is our nice way of saying … And we’ll give her a plug at the end. Buy her book goddammit. It’s great.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Oh, thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
I would love to do a little bit of a rapid fire with you and give you a ingredient that is scrappy or something leftover and tell me what I should make with it. So coffee grounds.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Coffee grounds. I love to add a few tablespoons of spent coffee grounds. So after you’ve made your coffee to make a chocolate granola. So you just add oats, cocoa powder, a little bit of tahini and some of those coffee grounds, mix it up, roast it in the oven, and it makes the most delicious like mocha flavored granola. Another thing you can do with coffee grounds, pop them in your fridge in a bowl and they’ll actually be a natural deodorizer because they suck up things. You know how people put baking soda in their bowl. And then number-
Tori Dunlap:
I’ve got baking soda.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yeah. Exactly. And then number three is you can use it as a plant fertilizer. But I am not a green thumb. I’ve been told it works amazing for some plants and not so good for others, so please do a little Google search before you start putting it in your plants and then DMing me and saying it killed my lily. I’m not sure.
Tori Dunlap:
You managed to bring up my two favorite things in this world, which is cooking and plants in the same conversation. As someone who does keep plants alive pretty well yeah, you’re exactly right. Sometimes it works great, sometimes it does not work. Oh, and I should have said this before, almost every idea you’re going to give me … I may have doctored this game a little bit. Is all recipes that are in your cookbook. So vegetable scraps like the insides of peppers or cauliflower, like the leftover leaves of cauliflower. What do I do with veggie scraps?
Carleigh Bodrug:
So biggest cooking tip … This is great if you’re wanting to reduce waste. And I actually learned this from watching Rachel Ray’s 30-minute Meals. I always, when I’m cooking, have a bowl next to me where I’m collecting my food scraps. And then what I do with them is put them in a freezer bag, collect them over time. Once that’s full, you’re going to transfer to a big pot, add a bunch of water. I like to add turmeric and black pepper. Extra health benefits and a nice little yellow color. And you’re going to make your own nutrient dense scrappy broth, which I like to call a vegan bone broth because it really is so nutrient dense from those skins of onions and cauliflower leaves and all that good stuff.
Tori Dunlap:
I do the same thing. We had our camera switched. This is what happens. My good camera decides eventually it’s just tired and it stops working. No. I do the same thing. I keep a freezer bag in my freezer and then just when I’m chopping vegetables, that’s where the scraps go. The other thing, if you are not vegan that I like to do … And this is a little crazy. But if I am at a restaurant where I am either ordering like mussels or I am ordering a steak and it comes with the bone, I will take the bone to go and I will put it in a to-go container, and that goes in my broth.
Carleigh Bodrug:
You’re real scrappy.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s really scrappy.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Look at you.
Tori Dunlap:
I like to eat good food and it’s a good restaurant, they’ve been cooking that thing forever with a bunch of seasoning and it’s add to a broth. So yeah, I’ve done that a couple of times where I’m like, hi, actually, can I get it into go box? And then I just take all the muscle shells or I take the clam shells. If my meat comes on a bone, a lamb chop I will take the leftover parts of that and I will put it in the broth.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Genius. That’s amazing.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s maybe too obsessive, but that’s what it’s okay. Carrot tops. I have some carrot tops literally in my fridge. What should we do with those?
Carleigh Bodrug:
Carrot tops. I love to make a carrot top chimichurri. So this is just blending with some balsamic vinegar and some spices, and you can use it to season for tacos. You can also take carrot tops and make a pesto. So I have something called a scrappy pesto in my book. So you add any greens and you add them with cashews, nutritional yeast and blend them up with some garlic. So good. Such a good sauce.
Tori Dunlap:
Yep. Was planning on pesto, so I love that. Lemon peels.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Oh, so good. Lemon peels have a million uses, but this is actually my favorite recipe in my new book, lemon peel pesto. So I like to take a potato peeler to avoid some of the pith. But you can peel your lemon peels and then again blend them with cashews, garlic, nutritional yeast to make this beautiful luscious … Almost like a vegan Alfredo sauce. If you’re someone who loves citrus, this is very lemony. And then add it with your favorite pasta or even use it as a dip. Citrus peels are also great, whether you’re using lemons, limes, orange peels, you can candy them and they’ll become almost like gummy worms. And it’s okay when you’re candying them if they do have a bit of that pith. So you can use the whole peel because it’s like a sweet bitter deliciousness that happens and yeah, it’s really good.
Tori Dunlap:
This is not directly cooking, so you might not know anything about this, so tell me if you don’t. But I’ve heard that you can use them to clean things. I don’t know how this works.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay.
Carleigh Bodrug:
I do this. So you add your lemon peels and your squeezed lemons to a container, a spray bottle, and then you add vinegar and you let them soak. And then after a couple of days you just drain the lemons and you can clean your surfaces with that. But you have to be careful. I believe it might be quartz where it can wear down the surface. So again, Google’s your best friend. But it makes an excellent … And has such a nice scent to it for cleaning and great way to repurpose your lemon scraps.
Tori Dunlap:
And that’s one of the only things I actually won’t compost either, and I’ll purposely put them in the garbage disposal so that the garbage disposal doesn’t get stinky.
Carleigh Bodrug:
They smell so good.
Tori Dunlap:
Exactly. Exactly. One of my favorites … I think I learned this from you. A jar of barely they Dijon mustard or peanut butter.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yes. I love bottom of the jar recipes, I like to call them. So Dijon mustard. Once I get to the bottom of the jar, I like to add vinegar, olive oil, salt, black pepper, and shake it up. Lemon juice too. To make a beautiful luscious like mustard dressing. Peanut butter, similar idea. This is one of my most viral videos, which it’s so funny and I’m sure you’ve experienced this. You put something up and you almost didn’t post it like this is lame. But I made a peanut sauce out of an almost empty peanut jar. So just you have your almost empty jar, you add some soy sauce, hoisin sauce, a little bit of rice vinegar, give it a really good shake, and now you have a delicious peanut sauce that you’ve added new life to that jar that would’ve otherwise been thrown out.
Tori Dunlap:
And you’ve got the mechanism to make it right there too. Because to your point, you just put the lid on it, you shake it. Yeah. And it always drives me crazy. I can never get … I know there’s more in there, but I can never get it with my knife to actually use it for its intended purpose. Okay. I saved the best for last. Slightly stale bread. Talk to me
Carleigh Bodrug:
Slightly stale bread. So again, bread, the number one most wasted food, which is so shocking because how much do all of us love bread? But the problem is, I think we buy it from a bakery and then it goes hard really quickly. So what you want to do with stale bread is I have an amazing vegan French toast casserole. You just break up that hard bread, put it into a casserole dish, make a beautiful custard out of vegan yogurt, plant-based milk, and pour it over top and then pop it in the oven and that bread will suck up the moisture, become absolutely luscious and delicious, almost like French toast. When in doubt breadcrumbs or croutons. You can bake your bread into croutons for your salad or you can blend them up with some spices to make some delicious breadcrumbs, which you can use for a million different things.
Tori Dunlap:
Put it on the top of soup. Yeah. I just did this for the first time last month. I do bag salads. I’m a bag salad girly. I love them. They’re convenient, they’re great. And I made my own croutons as opposed to using theirs. It was night and day. It was like, yeah, olive oil, salt pep, bunch of garlic powder in the air fryer. It was one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. I was just like, great, why am I not doing this the entire time?
Carleigh Bodrug:
Sounds amazing.
Tori Dunlap:
I am just blown away by you. I love having this conversation. I love your work so much. You have a new book called Scrappy Cooking. Tell us more about it.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yeah. So Scrappy Cooking has over 150 delicious whole food plant-based zero waste recipes, just like what we talked about today. Lots of kitchen raid recipes where you can interchange the ingredients and it is out everywhere books are sold. Thank you so much for having me on. This was a blast and your admiration of my content is like, I feel that way 10 times about you. I just think the work you’re doing is so powerful and so important. So thank you, thank you, thank you,
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you. Yeah. Please follow her on Instagram too and TikTok, if you haven’t already. I’ve learned a lot from you and it’s just so excited to continue reading your book and going to make a recipe this week. So thanks for being here.
Carleigh Bodrug:
Yah. Thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you so much to Carleigh for joining us for this episode. You can get both of her cookbooks wherever you buy books, including Plant You Scrappy Cooking, which is her brand new cookbook that literally comes out today. So if you want to support her, want to support small bookstores, we’ll link it down below. Bookshop is a great place to go to get that because you support the local bookstore and you support Carleigh who’s a woman author. So we’re just really excited for that cookbook to come out. I have a copy of it. It’s great, and I say this in the episode, but it’s so helpful in terms of actually visualizing recipes, especially if you’re not someone who knows a lot about cooking.
Thank you for being here as always financial feminist. We appreciate it. You can like, subscribe. You can send this episode to a friend that you think would love it, and you can leave us a five-star review if you really enjoy the show. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being Financial feminist, and we’ll see you back here soon. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, Associate Producer, Tamisha Grant, researched by Ariel Johnson, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and operations by Karina Patel, Amanda Leffew, Elizabeth McCumber, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Taylor Cho, Kailyn Sprinkle, Sasha Bonar, Claire Kurronen, Daryl Ann Ingman and Jenell Riesner. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolf, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K team and community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First 100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over one million women negotiate salary, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of almost 250,000 on Instagram and more than 1.6 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
