Season 1, episode 8: home cooking during a pandemic

Transcript

Conner: (00:12)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast hosted by my mom.

Stephanie: (00:17)
No chicken, no ground beef, no milk, no eggs, no bread, no flour or sugar, no pasta, no dried beans, no rice. The last time I visited my local market, this was the reality. I'd read some accounts and seen a few pictures online, but seeing it in person, well, it was anxiety inducing. It's the result of panic, yes, as well as attempts to eat at home more and venture out less. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we're hearing a lot of public health terms, things like quarantine, social distancing, self isolation and sheltering in place. Depending on where you are in the world, your personal situation is different than mine, and mine will probably change between the time I record this and the time you listen to it. But what I'm reasonably confident of is this, when this episode comes out, a lot of us in the U.S. and other parts of the world will still be practicing social distancing or perhaps be under more drastic restrictions.

Stephanie: (01:22)
We won't yet be eating in restaurants or going to parties. Schools will probably still be closed. There will remain a great deal of uncertainty and fear. But this is a show about cooking with our kids, and if you're like me, you're cooking a lot more, multiple times a day for your whole family, and you're doing it while getting creative with your ingredients and trying to make those ingredients last longer. You're going to the store less so you're relying on fewer fresh ingredients too. So yeah, this pandemic kitchen situation is kind of like a horrible cooking show, frankly.

Stephanie: (01:57)
Oh, and you're doing all this as you work from home and try to provide some academic instruction to your kiddos too. This isn't easy. So I talked to Jenny Tschiesche, a nutritionist in England, about some tips we could use to stay as healthy and safe in our home kitchens during this strangest of times.

Stephanie: (02:21)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast about helping busy adults find the inspiration and information they need to teach the kids in their lives how to cook. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, and today we're going to talk about how we can eat healthy foods and be safe in the kitchen while we're sheltering in place.

Stephanie: (02:45)
My guest today is Jenny Tschiesche. In England she is known as the Lunchbox Doctor. She's the author of Gut Health & Probiotics - The Science Behind the Hype, as well as three recipe books. She is passionate about helping families eat healthy and nutritious meals even in less than ideal circumstances. Her personal introduction to the power of food and nutrition came when she was just 14.

Jenny: (03:09)
When I was 14 years old, I was sent to a field hockey camp, which was for the future England field hockey team, and at that time ... Well, I'm the youngest of seven children, so food was definitely a feature in our lives as a family and everything was cooked from scratch, but it was never something that I had made that kind of connection with productivity, with performance, with outcome. When I went to this particular field hockey camp, I was given a diet sheet, and it really made sense to me that the food that we put into our bodies has an outcome, and if we fuel ourselves correctly, we can perform better, we have more energy, et cetera. So for me, that was the real start of things. That was the seed that was planted.

Stephanie: (03:54)
But it took time before that seed grew into a career. Jenny played national league field hockey until an injury forced her to stop. She had a degree in geography, a diploma in marketing, and had worked in various jobs, but, she says, she wasn't happy.

Jenny: (04:12)
That's when I happened to be standing in a supermarket queue one day and I picked up a book on nutrition, and I decided that that was where I should be focusing my attention. So I did a nutrition degree and whilst I was doing it, I had two babies, two children. They were now 15 and 12 and I graduated in 2009, set up my business and I've been doing this ever since.

Stephanie: (04:30)
We know food is powerful. Jenny herself learned at a young age that food drives health and athletic performance. But I wanted to talk about something more top of mind right now. Can we eat for immunity?

Jenny: (04:43)
The one thing we have that we can do, that we're in control of, is to boost our immune systems in the right way. So the right way, as far as I'm concerned, is just to think about the sorts of foods that we know either stop the replication of viruses, help support the mucosa linings, those are the linings of the nose, of the gastrointestinal tract, to support the gut, because we know that 70% of the immune system is based in the gut. So we've really tried to think about the sorts of foods that give us those nutrients.

Jenny: (05:13)
Now the number one that we always talk about when it comes to immunity is zinc. That fantastic micro nutrient that we should all be consuming sufficient amounts of at the moment. That doesn't have to be too difficult. We've been raiding the store cupboard for any nuts and seeds that we have. Just prior to this I've been to Costco, and I bought a huge pack of organic dates, so we've been making these chocolate protein balls. They're just nuts, dates, a little bit of protein powder.

Jenny: (05:41)
In the UK, we're able to get out and do a little bit of exercise at the moment, just one bout a day, but if you're exercising for about an hour, this protein powder is great. But cacao powder or cocoa powder. Obviously cacao is going to be richer in antioxidants and slightly higher in zinc, but cocoa powder, great if you've got it in. A pinch of salt and then if you want to add any extra flavors, we've added some food-grade orange oil into ours, so then we've got chocolate orange protein balls. That's a powerhouse of zinc right there. You could be adding cacao into your smoothie, onto your porridge, to your oatmeal in the morning. These are really simple things that we could be doing to boost the amount of zinc that we're taking on board. Vitamin A's a really important one, and most of us don't tend to get our Vitamin A directly.

Jenny: (06:26)
Because it comes from things like liver and we don't tend to eat that kind of thing anymore, but we can get it from beta-keratin which converts to Vitamin A in the body. Any brightly colored vegetables that we can get. I know some people are struggling with getting maybe butternut squash or sweet potato, but we can buy that frozen in bags or if you’ve previously frozen some, that's great. Carrots, if you can get them. Again, they can be made into stews, they can be made into soups, they can be popped into curries or casseroles. Any of those would be fantastic. And also our brightly colored fruits as well, so things like apricots, peaches, if you can get some of those. So we're going to get beta-keratin which converts to Vitamin A, which again is very much part of the immune system.

Jenny: (07:12)
Beta-glucans, which we get from things like oatmeal, really important as well. My 12-year-old, every single day right now is starting the day with a bowl of porridge. Makes me happy because I know that he's getting what he needs. Beta-glucans are really important. Mushrooms, if we can get them, there's some medicinal value from the polysaccharides in mushrooms. So whilst we might not be able to get the highest-grade mushrooms, you may be able to find dried shiitake or oyster mushrooms. Again, if you rehydrate those they can go into an omelet, so they can go into a risotto or again into anything. If you've got something like miso soup as a base, you could be making sort of a miso mushroom noodle soup. So that would be a really good thing to do.

Jenny: (07:58)
I talked about the gut and gut health. Any probiotic foods or any prebiotic foods would be fantastic right now. Now the sorts of probiotic foods that we may be able to get fairly easily, even simple things like I mentioned. Miso. Soy sauce is actually a probiotic food. Greek yogurt or natural yogurt is a source. If you are able to get something like kefir. We have more here because of proximity to Eastern Europe and Russia, but it is something that we can still buy. It's a fermented food in its own right. But also unpasteurized cheeses. You may be able to get some of those. You may want to think about supplementing probiotic at this stage as well. That's something that I've been advising some of my clients, but prebiotics certainly is something that you could be buying, could be eating fairly easily. Those are the fibers. So really right now we don't want to be wasting anything we have got, but the skin on vegetables is fibrous. We should be eating it, so don't peel your carrots, don't peel your sweet potatoes.

Jenny: (08:58)
My 15-year-old has been having salads this week, but she's been roasting a whole sweet potato and having that within the salad with the skin on and it's really important for prebiotic fiber. What people don't necessarily realize is sort of quirky things that actually count as prebiotic fibers, such as under-ripe bananas, but also cooked and cooled starches. So if you have got pasta or rice or potatoes cooked then cooled and either eaten cold or cooked then cooled and heated back up again. So reheating pasta, rice or potatoes, there you increase the amount of resistance starch, you lower what's called the glycemic index, so the rate at which sugars are released into the body, and you're giving your body some prebiotic fiber, which is really important.

Jenny: (09:43)
Probiotics and prebiotics are really key. Those would be my main areas, and Vitamin D has always got to be mentioned when it comes to the immune system. Most of us need to get that from the sun, and unfortunately if you’re housebound you won't be getting it from the sun. There are some food sources such as egg yolks. Again, liver. Dairy products and oily fish. But if you are not a fan of those or you can't get hold of them, then again, that might be one area that you're looking to supplement.

Stephanie: (10:14)
Well, you pointed out, depending on where people are, they may or may not be able to get certain things, but we also are in a position where we are trying to limit the number of times we're going out to the stores, so when we shop, we're trying to shop for a week, two, maybe more at a time and trying to have different things on hand than some of us are used to. What advice do you have for helping us to be healthier at home when we're using a lot of these shelf stable products, cans and bottles and the things that maybe you would normally tell us to stay away from honestly?

Jenny: (10:49)
Yeah, such a good point because normally we might go out and shop several times a week if we're sort of particularly interested in making sure the nutrient value of the food that we buy is high because just picked is just the freshest. If the food has just been picked, that's going to be when the nutrients are at their highest value. So many things are traveled so far in normal everyday life that actually, in some cases, frozen is better. If things have been picked and frozen ... Now I know sometimes vegetables might be dipped in hot water and then dried and then frozen, but they're not losing a huge amount of their nutrients. The one thing we may want to watch out for is a loss of folate. Don't keep them for that long in the freezer before we eat them, but certainly we buy ourselves some time by buying things like frozen dark green vegetables. There's a certain amount of nutrients in those.

Jenny: (11:36)
Even tinned dark green vegetables, so buying tins of spinach and things right now. Easily added to pasta dishes, curries, omelets, et cetera. We're still going to get some nutrients from those. There are some foods that actually are more nutritious when they're in a can, and obviously tomatoes would be one of those. They release much more lycopene. Tinned tomatoes, tinned passata, tomato paste should be ingredients that we should certainly be stocking up our store cupboard with right now, but even other tinned vegetables like sweet corn. Certain studies revealed that sweet corn is more nutritious when it's tinned than any other way, but we can buy frozen sweet corn as well. I think sweet corn travels quite far once it's been picked, so actually the least nutritious way to eat it is picked and then transported across to wherever it’s going to be purchased and then consumed.

Jenny: (12:24)
Better to buy things covered, so if you are buying sweet corn, buy it in its sheath. If you're buying potatoes, buy them covered in mud. They will last much longer that way. In terms of store cupboard ingredients, there are some core things. Now I'm going to try and list the things that I recommend and I'll probably forget some, but tins of vegetables obviously should be there. Even tinned fruit we can be consuming right now. I'd recommended the dehydrated mushrooms, which are great for adding umami, but also those polysaccharides which are part of our immune system. Particularly if we can get the shiitake and the oyster mushrooms. Then if we move in to jars of things like pesto, artichokes, olives, passata again, the sieved tomatoes that we can buy. Again, they can add great flavor to sauces and thickening sauces nicely.

Jenny: (13:11)
Frozen fruits, frozen vegetables, all good. We should be able to get hold of those and stack our freezer with those. Again, good-quality meats can be stretched further. So one of the things that we've taken to do and where we might have a larger portion of beef, for example, we'd get beef half of that and then we would take a tin of pinto beans and make up the rest so that we're still getting a protein-rich fuel, but we're stretching that protein, that meat protein, a little bit further, which actually might be a legacy for our family. That might be something that stays because meat is far more expensive than pinto beans are. We could be combining sources of protein, stretching what good-quality protein we can find, and do you know what? We might even come up with some new recipes as a result.

Stephanie: (13:55)
That is helpful. The thing that's jumped out to me was this idea that tomatoes might actually be healthier from the can.

Jenny: (14:02)
I know.

Stephanie: (14:03)
That's comforting to me.

Jenny: (14:04)
How many of us have those tomatoes just sort of sitting at the bottom of the fridge forever and by the time you eat them they're sort of squashed, a few of the seeds have popped out? Actually those things that were tinned or canned, they were done earlier on in that tomato's life, and because of the heating process they release that lycopene.

Stephanie: (14:22)
One thing that I think is sort of a danger for us right now is excess snacking because it's very easy, and I'm guilty of this. Especially if we have kids, they think they need to snack all the time or we think they need to snack all the time. So we stocked up on crackers and cookies, and those things that can last for a long time. How do we navigate healthy snacks right now? Because the kids are asking and we're so close to our kitchens, where maybe we weren't before.

Jenny: (14:52)
Absolutely. It's quite an interesting time, isn't it, to reflect on our own behaviors and perhaps those of our children, when it comes to snacking. We don't necessarily get to see what they do at school, but I've learned something about certainly one of mine and his snacking habits during this period. But I think the important thing to note is that this is actually quite a stressful period for most of us, and one thing that we must be aware of is that when we undergo stress, the amount of sugar glucose in our blood rises pretty quickly. What we know is that when the level of sugar in our blood rises, the body doesn't like to be at extremes so it tries to counterbalance that. In our case, it will generally produce insulin to try and bring your blood sugar down. Your blood sugar is spiked as a result of snacking incorrectly, eating the wrong kinds of foods. Those are the foods that are low in fiber, low in protein, low in good-quality fats.

Jenny: (15:40)
But also with the addition of this stress on top, your blood sugar levels can spike and then fall. When that happens you get to a point where you're at a ... I can't even call it hunger, but it's more like this need for something to give you another boost. So it may not be that you actually feel hungry, but your proximity to snacks, you can see them, they're there and you're low in blood sugar so you just grab. You grab whatever there is. So the way that I try and help people understand the best way to sort of navigate that is to really think about a couple of things. Really think about the first meal of the day. That first minute of the day ideally will contain fiber and protein.

Jenny: (16:17)
So again, if you're a breakfast person, and not everybody is a breakfast person, but if you're a breakfast person then ... or even if you're a brunch person, whatever that meal is, make sure it's got fiber and protein in it. That is absolutely key. If you do nothing else, I would do that one thing because it sets the tone and it sets you up and it doesn't cause those fluctuations in blood sugar that, say, a bowl of cornflakes or rice pops or sugar-coated cereal certainly would. So really focus on fiber and protein at breakfast time and then try and keep going through to lunchtime without snacking.

Jenny: (16:53)
There's a question we need to ask ourselves and certainly ask our children is whether we are truly hungry. Is it sort of mouth hunger or stomach hunger? And really the way to identify that is, could you eat a steak and vegetables? Could you eat a salmon salad? Could you eat a bowl of dahl right now? If you could, you probably are genuinely hungry. If it's cookies or ice cream or chocolate or candy, that's probably not real hunger. That's about wanting to boost your mood. It's about eating through stress and it's about boosting sugar levels, so there are two different types of hunger that we need to be aware of.

Stephanie: (17:30)
Yeah, absolutely. One other thing I want to ask you about is just some food safety basics. I think there are a lot of people who are cooking more than they normally do. What are some of the key things that we need to do just to keep our kitchens safe and healthy?

Jenny: (17:47)
One of the things you might want to think in terms of safety is if there are any food allergies in the kitchen, which I know from personal experience, if one person tends to do the cooking more, but now you're at home, you're sharing that job. Then certain rules need to be discussed and you need to agree on those from a safety perspective. Having different kinds of chopping boards for different uses is really important. So color coding, and I think that's really important if you've got children in the house, because this is an opportunity not only to teach them some cooking skills, but some safe-cooking skills, and having different color- coded chopping boards is a really important thing as far as I'm concerned. Making sure your knives are very sharp, which might sound counterintuitive, but more accidents happen in kitchens because knives are blunt and people slip than because they are sharp, so really make sure that knives are particularly sharp.

Jenny: (18:41)
As far as safety is concerned in terms of eating food, it's a difficult one because I know we find ourselves during this period making some decisions around whether we should be using food not based totally on the date that it says on the packaging, but maybe based on sight and smell. Whilst I encourage that because I don't want people to be throwing away food unnecessarily, we don't want to be wasting produce, I do think you need to be careful if you're not a seasoned cook, because you may not know the difference between what is and what isn't still safe to eat, so just a word of caution as far as that is concerned. Be careful when it comes to washing things like poultry. You don't need to. In fact, you shouldn't, because you could be spreading bacteria around the inside of your sink. Do give vegetables are really good rinse. It's a really important thing, and I would say as much as you can, if you can get organic vegetables and, like I say, do eat the skins because we need to get the fiber in as well.

Stephanie: (19:39)
Those are exactly the things I was thinking in my head too. What is maybe your favorite thing that you've made at home during this time?

Jenny: (19:50)
I was playing a game called freezer lottery. You know, you're not quite sure what's in there. I happened to pick out some frozen butternut squash and so I roasted that off, and then I have some gram flour, so some chickpea flour, and I had a tin of chickpeas that I used just a small amount of, and I had some falafel spice, which I've been able to get from one of our local ethnic stores. So I basically made some butternut squash falafel from those ingredients with a bit of salt, just mixed it all together in a food processor, rolled it into balls and then rolled in a little bit of hot olive oil and popped into the oven to roast until they were lovely and crispy on the outside, but nice and soft and fluffy on the inside. They were absolutely amazing with just some salad I'd been able to get. So that's one of my favorite ad hoc, let's see what we've got in the freezer, let's see what we can do with that recipe so far.

Stephanie: (20:45)
You can find Jenny at lunchboxdoctor.com and follow her on Instagram and Facebook @lunchboxdoctor. I'll also link to her site and share a video of those zinc protein balls on kiddosinthekitchen.com. Now, I want to share one last thing Jenny said because it was a truly beautiful reminder of the opportunity we have now to spend more time in the kitchen with our kiddos.

Jenny: (21:08)
I think this is a really strange time, but I also think it's a very opportunistic time from the perspective that we've got our children at home. They can see us cooking, they can be part of that process and, in fact, we're probably more created now than ever. There is plenty of opportunity to positively influence children. I'm not saying drag your children into the kitchen and make them cook with you, but I know from being one of such a large family, I'd say six out of the seven of us are foodies, and I don't think there's any coincidence because Mum cooked from scratch.

Jenny: (21:54)
We were drawn to the kitchen because that's where Mum was, and if you wanted her attention, that's where you had to go. It's a place where we will have happy memories. It's where we can speak with our mum, and certainly the same thing happens in our house even in normal times. It's where my children's friends congregate when they just come to the house. But now is a really good time for them to spend some time with you, whether they want to get involved, if they do fantastic, but they could just be watching, and you know how much they're learning? Loads just by being around you whilst you chop that onion or whilst you make the base of a soup or whilst you bake those oats slices, flapjacks, cookies, whatever. They are learning so much just by being at home with you, so let's use this as an opportunity.

Stephanie: (22:50)
Let's use this as an opportunity. What a beautifully positive message. At this moment, we're all doing our best. We're teaching more and cooking more and worrying more. We're balancing a lot of chores and a lot of thoughts in an uncertain time. We're trying to stay strong. We're trying to stay healthy. We're trying to be positive when we can. Speaking of positivity, I've noticed an interesting silver lining at home. My son has become more open to trying foods. He's discovered he quite likes tomato slices with basil and balsamic vinegar and that cucumbers are indeed not vile and that halibut is delicious.

Stephanie: (23:38)
We're sitting at the table as a family twice a day instead of once, and we're less rushed when we do. We're extending grace to the chef, that's me, because I'm doing my best with the ingredients I can find and the time I have. So here's my monthly kitchen challenge for you. Just keep doing your best. Breathe. Wash your hands a lot. Stay home. Snuggle your kiddos. Eat as healthfully as you can. Connect with others over the phone. Offer grace to those around you. These are uncertain times, I know, but I'm hopeful we can emerge from this pandemic whole and healthy. Thanks for listening and stay safe.

Stephanie: (24:35)
Thanks for joining me for Kiddos in the Kitchen. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, with a reminder from my son.

Conner: (24:42)
If you like my mom's podcast as much as I do, you can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stephanie: (25:02)
That's right, Conner. You can also view the show notes, subscribe to our newsletter, and check out all of our other content at kiddosinthekitchen.com, where kiddos cook on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and I'll be back next month with another fresh episode. Until then, I encourage you to get your kiddos in the kitchen.