Saving Dinner with Leanne Ely

Trevor:                    Hi there, I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. On today’s podcast, we cover how to make healthy, home cooked meals, that are less expensive, tastier, and easier, and how to include your entire family in the process. What we cover in this interview is important, whether you’re making meals for yourself, or for your entire family.

My guest is Leanne Ely. Leanne began creating Menu Mailer, on savingdinner.com in 2001, to help families get back to the dinner table. Within just a few years, Reader’s Digest declared a new industry that had been born, the menu planning industry, and Leanne was dubbed the mother of menu planning. Leanne’s goal is to bring families closer together, by enjoying healthy and easy to prepare menus. She creates innovative menu planning products, which include delicious and nutritious recipes, shopping lists, and nutritional information. You may have seen her on QVC, HGTV, ABC, or in Women’s Day, Parents, Redbook, SELF or Shape magazines. Her show, Saving Dinner with the Dinner Diva, airs Wednesday afternoons on Blog Talk Radio, and is one of the top 10 shows on that channel. Today, Leanne share her tips and tricks for delicious, fun, and fabulous healthy eating, for the entire family. So please enjoy this interview.

Leanne, it’s so great to have you on my podcast.

Leanne:                   Oh, Trevor, it’s great to be here.

Trevor:                    Yeah, so, I know that you’ve done a lot of work, trying to help women, especially, get back in the kitchen, making healthy meals, and I think it’s so important that we do that, ’cause so many people now are stopping and getting fast food and trying to find the quick thing that’s not going to be healthy for themselves and for their families. So I think it’s so great, what you’re doing, and so I’m excited to talk about this today, so we can help inspire people to get back in the kitchen, making healthy meals.

Leanne:                   Well, yeah, and it goes beyond just the nutrition. There’s also the psychological component and being connected and a part of a family. There’s huge consequences for ignoring that part of our family life.

Trevor:                    That’s so true. I think we’re, oftentimes people are disconnected. They’ve got fast food. They’re turning on the TV. They’re running around, doing homework, various things, and not spending that time in the kitchen together, or at the dining room table together. And that, I feel like, for my family, for my kids and I, that adds such a valuable time for us to spend together, to find out what’s going on in each other’s lives, to reconnect as a family. And so, I’m so glad that you mentioned that. I think that’s really important to know.

Leanne:                   Yeah, well, the connection thing is … and the other thing is, it’s a training ground. And it also shows your children, which I think is super important, that this is not a one man show. This is not a one woman show, I should say. And a lot of us, as women, we get sucked into this notion we’ve got to plan it, we’ve got to shop for it, we’ve got to cook it, we’ve got to clean it up. And we’ve had a full day too. We’re exhausted. When we get our families involved, and we were fortunate enough to have a spouse who’s amenable, we can get him to do the shopping. We can get the kids in the kitchen chopping, and everybody cleans up together. And then, at that point, then it’s really as a family affair. It’s not a one woman show, and I think a lot of women get overburdened and think I can’t do this, because they think they’ve got to be the pack mule for the whole thing, and it’s not true. We just need to bring the family on board.

Trevor:                    Yeah, that’s a good point. I’m a single mom, and I’ve got three kids, and I don’t have that extra help, so I totally get that it can be overwhelming. So I definitely would love more tips on how to get my kids involved, because they do to a certain extent, but I think I could probably get them involved more. And it’s funny, different ages can participate at different levels, so we’ll definitely touch on that today.

But first, before we go there, let’s talk about some of the benefits of making a home cooked meal. Let’s talk about the nutrition behind that, how it helps us on a nutritional level.

Leanne:                   Well, the basic thing is, when we are cooking, we have a tendency to be a little bit more mindful, as opposed to if we’re picking up the phone and getting takeout or going out to dinner, what have you. We also have the opportunity to up-level every single one of our ingredients. So we know that from the salt to the pepper to the oil to absolutely everything that we’re using, we can have a quality product from A to Z, and that’s really important, when you consider what’s going on in the fast … not even fast food, but good take out food, or good restaurants, all the way from A to Z.

I was in Santa Barbara, in a very nice restaurant, and well … I Yelped it, and it was beautiful, farm to table, et cetera, but it had one of these open concept kind of kitchens, and I looked over, and I saw they had one of those squeeze bottles of what mustard would be and/or ketchup, at a baseball game or something, but it was clear. And it was oil. And I saw them squirting the oil, and I knew what kind of oil that was. That was not quality oil. They weren’t taking care of the smoke point. They weren’t being cautious, so I knew, whatever they were cooking, they were really cooking in trans fat, and this was a five star restaurant, with huge ratings. And the food was delicious, don’t get me wrong, but that ingredient made me go, “Hmm, yep.” So there you have it. So that’s why this is so incredibly important.

Trevor:                    Yeah, and when you select the food yourself, you’re sure that it’s going to be fresh and organic, hopefully, and you’re using the right kinds of oils, like you mentioned, so many of those ingredients, because we know that the nutrition on that is much higher.

So, what are some of the tips that you have for people to save money, while doing this? Because, one of the things I hear a lot, is that if you eat healthy, if you do home cooked, healthy meals, it’s more expensive.

Leanne:                   That is such a myth, and it makes the hair on the back of my neck standup. I’m going to explain a couple of things that you can do. First of all, fresh herbs and spices. You can not beat them. If you go to some place like Whole Foods, that people call “Whole Paycheck”, you can go into the fresh, bulk spices, and pull out exactly what it is that you’re going to need, not just for one meal, but so that you constantly, you’re not sitting there with little cans that expired in 1997, sitting in your spice cabinet. There’s nothing worse than cooking with something that doesn’t taste fresh and wonderful. You want your herbs and spices to be fresh and wonderful. They are super inexpensive. It might say it’s like $15.00 a pound or something, but when’s the last time you ever bought dried thyme, a pound of dried thyme? You’ll never do that. So you buy just that little bit. That’s one way to do it.

The other way is to watch your regular grocery stores. Your regular grocery stores are starting to get with the program. They don’t want to be left behind. They’re constantly having sales. You get their little cards, their grocery shopping cards they have, the frequent, I always call the frequent flyer cards, but you use those, and you’ll find, “Oh, I’m saying 50 cents on this. It’s buy one, get one free on that.” Use your freezer. There’s a great website, and it’s called localharvest.org, O-R-G, and Local Harvest will show you, in your community, within whatever miles you want it to be, what local farmers are growing, from beef, to eggs, to CSA’s, to whatever. So you can support your local community that way. Yeah, it might be a little bit more expensive, but you feel good about spending your dollars that way.

If you get rid of the junk, get rid of the snacks. Snacks are just like … that is a … it’s all packaging, cartoon characters, and crappy food, with healthy claims on the front of them. Not so. You get rid of that stuff, you have room for the other stuff. Things are constantly on sale. Your local farmer’s market, sometimes you’ll walk in there and go, “Geez, that’s expensive.” But then, like for example, in Boulder, we have a wonderful farmer’s market, and everything there is required to be from the community. Well, there’s bruised and blemished produce in a big box, and it’ll say … I’ve got all these heirloom tomatoes that I got for $2.00 a pound, and some of them had a squishy spot, but they’re all organic. They’re beautiful. I made sauce with the squishy ones, and the other ones, I sliced up and ate. It was just fabulous.

There are way to do it. Just watch it. Target is a good place. They’ve got grass, 100% grass fed meat now. You go in the mornings, I find they’ve been marked down. Grab that, throw it in the freezer. So there’s ways around the mountain. Use Costco. Use different places. Everybody’s getting with it. You just need to be price savvy, and you need to shop and figure out where your best bargains are.

Trevor:                    That’s so great, ’cause I get so tired of people saying, “Oh, I just can’t afford to eat healthy. I can’t afford organic.”, so that’s great. So, when we talk about locally grown produce, especially … I’m glad you brought that up, ’cause the nutritional value in that, it’s not just that you’re shopping from … you’re supporting local business, which is great, but also the nutritional content of those freshly picked fruits and vegetables, are going to be so much more nutritional too, right?

Leanne:                   Yes, absolutely. So, what you have to look at is, the thing is, with organic stuff, and especially local organic stuff. First of all, it’s no being shipped, and going across the other side of the country. That’s one thing. And second is that, it’s picked when it’s ripe. There’s a huge difference between ripe produce and produce that’s picked green, and then is ripened up. They’ve shown, study after study has shown, you can look this up, that you are going to get, sometimes triple, 10 times, or at least double the nutrients in organic produce. It’s funny how that works, and none of the garbage, none of the fungicides, or pesticides, or rodentcides. Isn’t that disgusting? All those cides. We won’t want those cides. We just want clean, healthy produce. We don’t want something with 70 toxins on it, right?

Trevor:                    Right, absolutely. Okay, so let’s talk about, so you’ve shopped, and you’ve saved money, and now you’re in your kitchen, what are some of the ways that we can make cooking at home easy, fast, nutritious? Because, we’re busy, and I get that, and people say to me, “Aren’t you ever tempted to just stop and get fast food for your family, so that you can save time and money?” And I’m like, “No, I never, ever go to a fast food restaurant.” I don’t even know the last time … maybe when I was a kid? Maybe we stopped to use the bathroom?

Leanne:                   [inaudible 00:11:33] for me. The only thing useful at McDonald’s, to me, is a cup of coffee, so anyway. Yeah, I don’t ever eat fast food either. My idea of fast food is being able to cook something up fresh and quick. So, one of the things that I do, especially in my single girl days, my big thing would be I’d cook a bunch of protein up, and put it in containers, and put it in the refrigerator, cook up some sweet potatoes. And then I’d have a bunch of greens that were fast, so I could always put something together, had a vat of bone broth in my fridge. So, to me, it was a constant assembly type of a process, because I needed something quick, and I needed to get it done right then and now. So I knew what I liked. I loved chicken that was marinated, and then grilled, so I’d grill a bunch of it. Then I’d turn it into salads, I’d eat it with dinner, and then I’d get sick of that, and I’d go into the next thing.

Now, you don’t have to do it that way. I was just in, this is in the mode of just by myself. At home, when my kids were home and everything, what I would do it, I would always make extra, so I had something for lunch. And I think that’s a huge tip for people, because one of the problems that they have, is that you know, they do okay when it comes to dinner, but they fall apart at lunch. Going out, and there’s a sandwich, there’s the french fries, but there’s somebody say, “Hey, I’m going to go out.”, or, “Hey, we’ll bring you pizza for the office.”, and everything falls apart. If you bring your own thing to your office, that’s when you can really up the nutrition.

And one of my other favorite tips, is making sure that I have something green and leafy every single meal. I know, that sounds bizarre, but in your smoothie, a handful of spinach, and a little bit of avocado, and some berries, nobody’s going to know that the spinach was in there. And you can do a big, green, leafy salad, with your leftover protein, from your dinner before, and then at dinner time, if you just kind of keep in mind the colors of what you should be eating, so you want to get some beta carotene in. Let’s get some butternut squash there, or some sweet potatoes. Make sure there’s more green, leafy stuff, and have another salad. Maybe have some broccoli, and there’s your protein. And it’s amazing what happens, and you know this. You are The Skin Dr., what happens to your skin when you’re eating all these nutrients all the time. Your skin changes and it starts to become more glowing and beautiful, and it’s just the simple act of deliberately putting those vegetables in every meal.

Trevor:                    Yeah, absolutely. And certainly, we’re doing all this, for a lot of different reasons, for our health, and even for our beauty, and aging, and all of that. Certainly, it’s when we nourish our bodies, and it’s the daily choices that we make, with what we eat, and the sooner you start these with your kids, the earlier you start this, the easier it is. So, I have people all the time say, “How do I get my kids to eat healthy?” And so let’s talk a little bit about that, because I think one of the things is that, we gotta model. We gotta set a good example for them. If we’re eating junk, they’re going to eat it too.

Leanne:                   Of course. Yeah, you can’t say eat some berries, and be sitting on the couch eating a pint of Haagen Dazs. That’s not gonna compute at all. But I think, too, the other thing that we make a mistake as parents, we’re almost of afraid of our children. Seriously. And we start with this notion that we have to feed them a kid’s meal. The minute we default to, what I call, dumbed down food, chicken nuggets in the shape of a dinosaur, ketchup with everything to dip it in, and giving them corn dogs and things, because this is a kid’s meal, and not introducing them to regular food, big mistake. What happens then, is you’ve trained their pallet to eat garbage. You have to train their pallet to eat good food, and it’s not just a one shot deal. You might get lucky and have a kid like that, but it’s not a one shot deal.

I remember, when I was at a Mommy and Me class. Now, my son is 25, so keep this in mind. I was at a Mommy and Me class, and my son was eating this lentil stew that I made, and it had sweet potatoes in it, all kinds of vegetables. It was just like this big thing, and the moms all stopped and watched him just sit down and just suck that down. And then he had an apple, that was cut up, with some almond butter. I think somebody said, “How do you get him to eat like that?” And I said, “That’s what we eat at home.” I didn’t give him a choice, and I think that’s the other problem we have, is that we give our children choices. They decide … they put their foot down and say no, I’m not going to eat that, and so we’re scampering to the kitchen, like a short order cook, and saying, “Oh, here’s your peanut butter sandwich, because I don’t want you to starve.”

Well, you know what? Guess what? They’re not going to starve. I promise you. This is not Afghanistan, and there’s no first aid truck threatening to leave with their food aboard. We have a whole different paradigm here of good food available all the time, just need to train their pallets. We can do this being kind, being gentle, and just showing this is how we eat as a family. It’s really easy, and we don’t need to throw guilt down. We don’t need to be a shrew. And we don’t need to feel guilty even if we haven’t done this. We just need to shift the thinking, and I think it’s really important too, that we let our people know where we are, and what we’re trying to do. We let our spouse know, and we don’t just pop it on them.

That’s another thing that we do, is when we just pop it on them, everybody’s going, “What happened?” Suddenly, my pizza’s gone. Nobody’s told me anything. But if you start to say, “Gosh, yeah, that’s what I need to do.”, bring your people on board. Explain what’s going on. Ask them for input. “What do you like that I make, that’s really good, and that’s healthy?” Talk about growing foods. Talk about things in a positive way, not like you’ve gotta eat your broccoli. We used to say, when my kids were growing up, you need to eat your growing food first. This is what’s going to grow, and with boys, my son, what I got him with, was this is what makes muscles. And you just kind of talk about food in really, really positive ways, and you cook it deliciously, and get them involved as well.

Short story for you, when my son was seven years old, my kids were great eaters, because they didn’t have a choice. This is what I did all the way through. But he wouldn’t eat a salad, and it drove me nuts, because we had salad, pretty much, every night. So one day, I said to him, Peter, you are going to make the salad. And he went, “Me?”, ’cause he knew that I knew he hated salads. And I said, “Yeah, you. Just whatever you want to make.” So he made up the salad, destroyed my kitchen. There’s junk everywhere and whatever. But that night, he had three helpings of salad at the dinner table, and was asking all of us, “What do you think of my salad? Mom, what do you think of my salad? Hey, Caroline … “, talking to his sister. “Good salad, huh?” And of course, we all lavished him with praise. But at that point, I went ding ding ding, this is the secret to getting to kids. Have them do it, they take on their own nutritional responsibility, and bingo, you’ve got kids that not only are healthy, and know how to pick good food, but they know how to prepare it by themselves too, because that’s important.

Trevor:                    I love that. That’s such a great story, and I definitely see that over and over again with my kids too, where it’s a big thing that we do, is I get them involved in cooking. And also, if there’s any way to garden, like if you can grow any vegetables or herbs or anything, kids love that, because then they want to taste it. They want to eat it. They’re like, “Oh, it’s a tomato, and I watched it get ripe.” And, “Oh, my gosh. Look how delicious it is, mommy. Have you tried it? Look, we’ve got more.” And even if you don’t have an outdoor space to have a garden, you can have a little pot by your window, right? Do you recommend people do that too?

Leanne:                   Yeah, absolutely. I used to make lettuce bowls, big lettuce, and I had, I put it right there, and you’d be able to snip off little pieces of lettuce. And I got to the point where the kids were allowed to snip it off, but we had to, before they butchered the whole thing, I had to show them how to do it. But, there’s so many things you can do, and I think growing your own food is probably one of the best things you can do. We used to have a huge garden. I home schooled my kids. They had a pretty amazing childhood when they were younger, and so we used to grow things, and we’d have so much excess, that I told them they pick it, there was a gourmet restaurant down the street that would buy it, and I’d let them keep the money. But they had to do the gardening. They had to do the gardening, they picked the berries, they got the zucchini, they got the okra, they got the tomatoes, and they’d go in, and they’d negotiate with the chef. It was awesome.

So, yeah, that kind of stuff, the more that they could take responsibility, understand where their food came from, and appreciate it, the more they’re going to eat it. We had two cows, well they were calves, or they were steers, I should say. You know why. And one was named Meatball, the other was named Meatloaf. And I told the kids, the reason they’re called that, is because we don’t eat George or Sam, but Meatball and Meatloaf we eat, and you need to understand, as much as these might seem like pets, they’re not pets. So we all cried when they left. Me, both kids, we cried, and then when they came back in packages, and went into the deep freeze, my son, at dinner one night, I remember he was eating, and I saw tears rolling down his cheeks. And I said, “What’s up? Are you okay?” And he goes, “Yeah, I feel really bad for Meatball, but he sure does taste good.”

So, understanding where your food comes from is also part of this whole equation. How do we get our children eating healthy? Understand where their food came from.

Trevor:                    Uh-huh, that’s such a good point. Okay, so, now, I have to admit. Sometimes when I’m busy, and I don’t have a lot of time to cook dinner, and I get … I just think to myself, I’m not going to get my kids involved, ’cause it’ll just make more mess. It’s going to take longer. It’s going to be harder. But at the same time, I think that I could probably use some tips on still getting them involved, in a way that helps me, rather than making more work. So do you have any tips on that?

Leanne:                   Well, at the beginning, it is more work. I’m not going to lie. It’s more work, and it’s a little bit aggravating. But, when my daughter was 12 years old, I remember saying to her, “You know what, Caroline, I am super busy.” Garlic on chicken’s like a perirenal favorite at our house. And I said, “You know, why don’t you make it? You know how to do it. You’ve made it a million times with me.” So, at 12 years old, she made dinner for us. She made mashed potatoes with way too much salt, and she made broccoli, and she made the chicken. She knew exactly how to make it. But it was a really good experience.

And sometimes you just have to kind of let go of this I don’t want the mess, I don’t have the time. We do have the time, because it pays off later in spades, in spades. My daughter, freshman year in college, made for her dorm floor, she made Thanksgiving dinner, at 18 years old, because she was by my side making it for years. So, we get to do that. Motherhood is the only job that I know, when you’ve done a good job, you’ve worked yourself out of a job, and you’re on the sidelines. You’re not doing it anymore.

So, this is a training ground, and I think cooking has to be looked at as the same time of hygiene and health matter as flossing your teeth. This is how we take of ourselves. We take of ourselves by learning how to cook. And it’s not brain surgery. It’s not difficult. There’s a few special things that you have to do, as far as cooking and learn. YouTube is amazing. You learn how to chop an onion there. They’ve got all these chefs showing you how to do things. I’ve done my own cooking camp and things, at Saving Dinner, but the point is, is that if we lose sight of this old fashioned skill, which has a very new application for keeping us in wellness, and actually optimizing our health, then we lose sight of what’s important. So, the excuse of I don’t have time, and I can’t, but I don’t know how, and all this other stuff, that can be changed so quickly. That can be fixed.

Trevor:                    Yeah, and I think that maybe on some nights, we’re in a hurry, maybe it’s not appropriate, but certainly [crosstalk 00:25:12]

Leanne:                   Of course, not every night.

Trevor:                    Yeah, incorporating them as much as we can. And then, let’s talk about age appropriateness. My kids are a little bit older than some people watching, listening, might have younger kids, and their level of involvement is different. And it sounds like you started your kids really early. I bet it probably surprises people, to hear a 12 year old making a whole meal, but it depends on how early you start them. But what do you kind of expect at different ages?

Leanne:                   Well, nowadays, you can buy safe knives. You can buy knives that will chop an onion, but they won’t chop a finger. So you can buy these kiddie sized things, so what I did, back when my kids were growing up, they didn’t have all of this, but I found little pumpkin carving knives, and I bought a bunch of them when they were on sale, after Thanksgiving. So, those were those kids’ knives. So they would cut carrots, they’d cut celery, I would have them chopping things. I would have them actually doing things. They were five, six, seven years old. When they were about nine or 10, I started teaching them how to use a real French knife, how to hold it, how to put their little hand like a claw, so they would never chop off a finger. So it was always like this.

All the safety tips I taught, I taught a bunch of kids how to do this. I had come cooking classes that I did around the country for Macy’s, but the thing is, kids, we don’t give them enough credit. We assume that we give them dumbed down food. We assume they don’t know how to do anything. They don’t, because they haven’t been trained. We get to do that. But if we bring them into the kitchen, and we constantly have, I call it a tribal mentality, of we are doing dinner. And yeah, I appreciate that you have a lot of homework. I’ll help you with that later. But right now, I need some lettuce washed. A five year old can wash lettuce and use the salad spinner. A three year old can start putting, a two and a half year old can start putting un-sharp … they can put spoons and what have you into the dishwasher. Two year olds can help clear the table. I would suggest not having them take dishes from the table, but picking up the napkins, taking up the place mats and things like that. But everybody should have something to do.

I think there’s a bigger psychological implication to this too. We, as families, studies have shown in Casa, which is a think tank in Columbia, did a huge study on the family meal. And what they showed was, that kids felt more connected when they sat in their same place every night for dinner, they felt like they were a part of. When they were part of the family meal, preparing it, even grocery shopping. I used to teach my kids, really little, go find me some broccoli, and tell me why that’s the broccoli that you chose, because you don’t want brown spots, and I’d show them the ends of the stems. I’d show them how to smell asparagus. All of this stuff, how to pick things. So from stem to stern, even planning food, sit down with your kids, and say, “Okay, what did we like? What healthy foods do we like? What growing foods and muscle making foods do we want to have this week?”, things like that. All of that kind of is critically important, connects us, not just with nutrition, but psychologically it feeds their souls, as well as their tummies.

Trevor:                    Yeah, I love that. So my kids went to Montessori for pre school, and I remember how much the Montessori program, that they would get the kids involved in kitchen activities, and have little kitchens setup in the pre school. And the kids loved that, boys and girls. They loved that activity center, and I think that we forget that this is creativity for them. This is a way of them expressing themselves, and so it’s a great way, even when they’re really little, to set up a little table for them, where they can have little pitchers of water. Like, you know, the little apple slicer things, you just press it down, spiralizers, or depending upon their age, those are all great things for kids to get involved with.

Now, if someone hasn’t really been following this, and they’re at a point, maybe their kids are … it doesn’t even really matter that much, but maybe their age is … they’re not toddlers anymore. They’re not little, teeny kids anymore, and they haven’t had very healthy practices at home, and they want to make a change. You said don’t make the change really rapidly. Don’t just yank everything away from your family and make a huge change all of a sudden. So, instead of that, what do you recommend for those baby steps? How do you get started to make that shift?

Leanne:                   Well, one of the things I think is really important, if that you sort of lay down the … First of all, have a family meeting. It depends on how old everybody is. It depends on if you have a partner or not, but if you have a partner, first thing is get your partner involved. And say, “Look, here’s the thing. Here’s what I’ve been thinking about. Here’s where I think we’re falling short as a family. These are some things that I want to do. Do I have your support? Are you with me? Can we do this together?” And I think, that kind of a thing, instead of saying, “We’re doing this and we’re doing that.” And, “Get rid of the french fries. Don’t call for pizza anymore.” That’s just going to tick everybody off. Instead, we can bring them alongside, by explaining, “Gosh, this is what I’ve been thinking. How do you feel about this? Can we get on board? Can we do this as a team?” Then you present to your children, and then your spouse, or your partner, will come alongside, and say, “Yeah, this what we’re going to do.”

And then you just start thinking about every aspect, and every single aspect. Can we have a little herb garden here? Can I take one kid a week shopping with me, and explain how to pick produce? One thing that I did is, I went to Wal-Mart, I bought little aprons for kids. I put their names on them. They’d put some hand prints on them. They had their little stools. And I would say, Tuesday and Thursday would be my daughter, and Monday and Wednesday would be my son’s time in the kitchen, and each kid had their own turn in the kitchen with me. And it was a one on one time, and we’d go through whatever it was we were eating. I’d teach them a skill, or I’d show them how to do it. I’d say no. I’d crack them as we went, and did that.

So, those are some different ways that you can start getting the children involved. Make them feel a part of it, and I think the little apron and the stools were really like a big deal for my kids. As soon as I’d say, “Okay, Caroline, it’s your turn.” She’d go running into the kitchen. She’d grab her little apron and put it on, grab her stool, so she could get up to the island to do her thing. And it’s those things that we do. When we let them know, and we do, we let them know, you’re important. You’re a part of this. This is what we do as a family.

I used to tell my children, they’d ask, “Why are we doing this? Why are we eating this?” And I’d say, “Because it’s excellent, and we are the excellent Ely’s. We eat like this. We prepare our food together. We do this.” Age appropriateness, of course, all the way, but always emphasizing something super positive, that’s never punishment, it’s always a privilege.

Trevor:                    Yeah, that’s beautiful. So, with all that, that you’re investing in early on, it does show up later. You talked a little bit about this. Your kids are older now. One of my kids is 18, and I heard him say, the other day, he had a friend over who’s 20, and his friend was like, “Let’s go out. Let’s go out and get something to eat.” And my son said, “Yeah, but if we make something here, it’s going to be healthier. No matter where we go out to eat, it’s not going to be as healthy as what we make here.” And he’s 18, and he’s telling his friend that. And I was like, “Aww.”

Leanne:                   Yeah, of course. Like they say, the birds come back to roost. It’s true. And I’ve witnessed that all along too. My kids grew up like this, but later on, we have a little time of rebellion, where my children would say, “There’s nothing to eat around her, mom. All we have is ingredients.”, which I used to laugh, because there was nothing that they could just go to the pantry, pop open a bag or whatever, and eat. You had to actually put some effort to it. And, for a while there, they didn’t want to have anything to do with it. My daughter, once they went into school, after home schooling, she started trading her lunches. I had homemade yogurt. I had all this other … she’d trade her lunches for the junk.

Later on, when it was … I think it was even last year, for my birthday, she wrote me this … it was on my Facebook. She wrote this thing about me. “I’m so grateful that you never let us have those horrible Lunchables.”, ’cause they used to beg me for them in the store. You know those little Oscar Meyer things? And she said, “I learned how to eat well, because of this.”, and it was a big thing for her. Because she had so many friends that, all through the years, struggled with getting to the place of healthy, because one you know, and you haven’t been trained to do it, there’s a learning curve.

Trevor:                    And there’s some people that say that if you deprive, “deprive”, I’m putting that in quotation marks, because somebody can’t see me, that’s listening, your child of junk food, they’re just going to rebel and they’re going to eat more of it. Or you’re going to set them up for an eating disorder, or issues with food. How do you feel about that? ‘Cause I’ve definitely heard that from people, other parents, like, “You know, this is just going to backfire on you.”

Leanne:                   Yeah, believe me, I’ve heard that one too. And, as a matter of fact, I was speaking at this large mother’s group, and I got … when the Q and A came along, this woman just me have it, and told me I’m setting everybody up for eating disorders. I think we run into these fear packs, with being overly permissive, and then being overly strict on the other side. There is a middle ground. I swear there is a middle ground. And what we need to do, is if we keep everything on an even keel, with the way we present to our children, that’s the biggest thing, because as a mom, I understand completely. I had two children in less than two years, and I was stretched beyond capacity. Why, why, why? Constant questioning, constant whining, constant, constant, constant. And you’re constantly correcting and training and hoping that we’re going to do a little better next time.

But, the thing is, we can’t bow to foolishness, like bad choices and all of that. When we understand the consequences of giving them inferior building blocks, in which to create this adult house that they live in. We always have to keep coming back to that. We just had … there was a devastating earthquake in Mexico, and I’m going to tell you right now. There was a lot of seismically unrelenting problems with those buildings there. That’s why they came down, but if you build it with, in mind, there could be this coming up, then you’re going to build with better building materials and better methods, to keep that building up. We can’t hand our children crappy building materials. We need to remember too, childhood is the very foundation in which their health is built. This is important, and this is a responsibility to a parent, that’s crazy.

So, that’s how we do it, and we don’t cow tie to that. Instead, we just shift. We just make the [gentle shift 00:37:36][inaudible 00:37:35]. You can have that, but first you need to be eating this. And the other thing is, make a rule. Is this the stuff you’re going to keep in your house? But your kid goes to a birthday party, let them have it. Have the Cheetos. Eat the cake. Come home and feel crappy. My eight year old said to me, “I feel awful.” And I said, “Look what you ate at the birthday party.” And that, not that you’re going to be bringing something else for them to eat at the birthday party, unless they have some kind of anaphylactic allergy, let them have it. Let them do whatever. But at home, 95% of the time, keep it good stuff.

Trevor:                    Right, and I think a lot of it, too, I think that’s all great. I think a lot of it, too, and you’re talking about this is our attitude about it, and staying positive, and not focusing on the negative, like this food is really bad, or judging, being judgy about people who eat this way, or the restaurants, or anything. But more of this food is going to nourish you and make you stronger.

Leanne:                   Exactly. Food can be so polarizing. It’s like politics and religion. We don’t need to do that. We don’t need to be those people.

Trevor:                    Right. So, Leanne, you work a lot with adults too, and helping them stay … It’s not just about the families, and not just about kids, but individuals, and helping them eat healthier, and helping them, not only eat healthier, but enjoying the foods, making them in a way that tastes good, like Paleo, or these keto diets, or various diets that come up. You figured out ways to help people follow those diets, but in a way they can actually enjoy the foods, right?

Leanne:                   Absolutely.

Trevor:                    So, tell us about some of the tips that you do to help make these things taste better, that a lot of times people are like, “I just don’t know if I can eat this, because of the way it tastes. It’s not the food that I normally eat.”

Leanne:                   Well, first of all, you need to understand, I’m a foodie. I used to have my own catering company. I was a private chef. I’ve done all kinds of things. I get it. I had chefs that I sat elbow to elbow with them, and drilled them, and asked them, “How do you make this? How do you make this?”, and so I learned how to make traditional French cuisine. What I didn’t like was, well back in those days, we’re going oh, all that fat, all that cream, and all that, but for me, dairy is hugely inflammatory. I have a tendency to get rosacea, so I have to stay away from that. I look at how do I make an anti-inflammatory meal. What is inflammatory for me, might not be inflammatory for you, and finding our own nutritional guru within, knowing what works for you and what doesn’t, that’s the ticket.

So, taking that in mind, and being a foodie, how do we do this, so that we’re getting in those greens, we’re getting in the sulfur vegetables, we’re getting in all those colors, and we’re eating quality protein. How do we do that? Well, it’s all about the flavor. It’s all about marinating. It’s about herbs. It’s about using garlic and onions. It’s about GI. It’s not being afraid of fat. It’s allowing the fat in, the good fat in, and allowing delicious things to happen.

People have this notion, that eating healthy is expensive. Wrong. We’ve already dispelled that. But also, it’s boring, and it doesn’t taste good, and it’s blah, and it’s this and it’s that. It’s not. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s different. It’s fresh. It’s wonderful. It’s in season. It’s personally selected. You go to the farmer’s market and you … I had no idea what I was going to buy at the farmer’s market. I was going to buy what looked great, what was the freshest, what smelled wonderful, what I knew I could do something with, and that needs to be kind of our quest, that we want the best possible things, and we want to bring in the flavor. And just a few things, like using fresh herbs, not being afraid of garlic, and stuff, and don’t be afraid of the salt and pepper. Use quality salt, pink Himalayan salt. Use fresh, ground pepper. Don’t buy the stuff in the can. That has an ability to just up-level your cooking like nobody’s business.

So, the things that we’ve been told aren’t necessarily true. Don’t look for fat substitutes. It’s crazy. That ups the carbs, which ups the inflammation factor. It’s all about real, healthy food, and just making sure that the flavor’s there.

Trevor:                    Oh, I love that. I’m really enjoying so much more of getting more herbs and spices. I know when I was growing up, my parents always did a lot of that, a lot of home cooked meals. I grew up on a farm, and they always had the herbs and spices, especially fresh herbs. And I kind of got away from that for a while, and when I was working on my book, I kept thinking, “There’s something missing in this.” And so I talked to a chef friend of mine, and he was like, “Fresh herbs. You’re missing all the fresh herbs, and that’s going to add more nutritional content.” And I thought, “I can’t believe I didn’t think about that.” So then I just started playing with them more, and ever since I was working on those recipes, I’ve been incorporating a lot more of those, and it’s amazing the flavor that you can get, not to mention the antioxidants, and even just the oils that are in some of these herbs, and all the great benefits.

So, I’m glad you mentioned that. So tell me about the Hot Melt.

Leanne:                   Okay, I can tell you’ve been peeking around on my website. Yeah, we have the Hot Melt. So, you know that the keto diet’s just kind of taking off and going crazy, and what happens, the way we develop products at all, at Saving Dinner, is we get a number of customer service requests saying, “Hey, how about this? What do you think of that?” And then I start looking into it. I do my research, and then ta-da, this is what we have. So, this summer, we introduced the Hot Melt diet, and it’s the keto diet, but done in a way that doesn’t make you, one, crazy, so that you’re like peeing on sticks and doing blood tests, and counting this, and counting that. The principles are the same. When you go into ketosis or not, who cares, you still have to hold the line and do this. And it’s great for brain function. It’s great for hormonal function as well, having all that fat, and the benefit, especially for people who have more than 30 pounds to lose, is they just melt. That fat just comes off, and we’ve seen amazing results.

So, what we did, is we did the Hot Melt diet, and we had two weeks in there, of Hot Melt recipes, and how to do a keto, or Hot Melt shake, and we had everything that we did. And what I had them do, because four weeks is pretty much what you want to do, so that you can properly get into ketosis. For some people it’s less. For some people it’s more. So when we did this, and again, the biggest thing with the keto diets that I’ve seen, that drives me nuts, is they’re loaded with cheese, and it’s inflammatory, so you’re kind of shooting yourself in the head.

So, I cleaned it up, and did a lot more vegetables and really cleaned it up and made it really healthy, lots of avocado, lots of GI, things like that, and delicious, delicious recipes. They went crazy. And so, we had week one, and then week two, and then you go back to week one, and then do week two. Well then people were saying, I want more. Give me another two weeks. So, we just introduced another two weeks, and we call it “Volume Two: The Hot Melt Diet”, and it’s kinda taken off. People like, this. They want to know this.

And so, it’s sort of Paleo, with a keto emphasis. It’s less keto, less Paleo. It’s just kind of my own amalgamation.

Trevor:                    I love it. Okay, great. So we’ll include the link. You’re going to give me the link, so we’ll include that on my website, below your podcast interview, so people can go check that out and learn more about it.

Well, Leanne, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and talking. It’s such an important topic to talk about getting our families back together, getting back in the kitchen, so I appreciate all your information.

Leanne:                   Oh, thank you so much. It was great talking with you, Trevor.

Trevor:                    I hope you enjoyed this interview today, with Leanne. To learn more about Leanne, and her program that she’s got going on, just go to thespadr.com. Go to the podcast page with her interview, and you’ll find all her information and links there.

And while you’re there, I invite you to join The Spa Dr. community, so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows. You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

And if you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend that you get your customized skin report. Just go to theskinquiz.com. It’s free, and takes just a few moments to answer some questions, and you’ll get your own skin evaluation report, some great tips and information on how to address the root causes behind skin issues, and what your skin might be telling you about your overall health. So I hope you’ll check it out, theskinquiz.com, and I also invite you to join me on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and join the conversation.

I’ll see you next time on The Spa Doctor podcast.