Aaron Perry
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Maria Cooper, Executive Chef at the World Famous Highland City Club in Boulder, CO, discusses her fabulous new cookbook and nutrition guide: “Heartful Kitchen.” Infused with sensational international flavors, Maria’s kitchen magic takes much of its culinary inspiration and healing-through-the-love-of-food guidance from her Lebanese grandmother. Chef Cooper opened a restaurant in Spain before moving to Colorado, and delights diners with diverse flavor experiences that are made from wholesome, organic ingredients. Her approach to health and well-being through food and nutrition harmonizes with our cultivation of stewardship and sustainability. With a custom “Healing Tool Bar” this beautiful guide to sumptuous, easy-to-make dishes is an invaluable resource for busy, on-the-go people with various food allergies, health and auto-immune challenges, or simply seeking to enhance health and well-being through the healing power of food! Maria also offers Nourishment Coaching to a limited selection of personal clients – learn more at chefmariacooper.com.
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Hi friends, welcome to today’s episode of the Stewardship and Sustainability Podcast
series brought to you by the YonEarth Сommunity.
My name is Aaron Perry and I’m here today with Chef Maria Cooper, I’m Maria.
And I’m so excited that we get to talk today with you about food, nutrition, different
cultural inspirations and even familial inspirations behind food.
And some of you who may know me know that food is one of my very favorite and dear passions
and I like to say eating is one of my favorite sports.
And some of you may also know Chef Maria Cooper is the executive chef at the Highland City
Club in Boulder, Colorado where we have many meetings, discussions, book club discussions
and a variety of authors and thought leaders, impact entrepreneurs and others from the community
come together and share ideas and time together, often eating Maria’s amazing magical food.
And of course we talk in YonEarth that food is so central to our cultivation of relationships
and to our connection with soil and planet and people all over the world.
And it’s with that in mind, Maria, I’m so grateful we get to have this discussion with you today
and thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you.
And Maria is the author of Heartful Kitchen, a wonderful cookbook that has amazing features
in it, resources for folks that we’ll be talking about and I highly encourage you all to check that out
at chef Maria Cooper.com and so Maria I want to ask obviously I’ve been nourished by your cooking
for many years now here in the community and it’s one of my most favorite treats in part of the week
when I get to eat a meal that you create and give us what’s the background?
What’s the story behind how you’re now nourishing so many people with food?
Well, Aaron, it’s been a pleasure to get to know you and feed you for a while now.
And I do love cooking at the City Club, it’s been a pleasure, I’ve been cooking there for about eight and a half years
and prior to that I did some personal chef work and some catering and I’ve often been drawn to people with special diets
special diet needs gluten-free, dairy-free and those folks who are even needing even more particular care with their food
such as autoimmune protocols diet, fog map, scaps diet, things like that and people come through at City Club sometimes
and have very particular needs with food and so over the years I have been interested in putting together recipes
that are incredibly clean and low in flammatory and all of that and in fact for myself and my own diet I’ve had to do that
and so about it’s been, let’s see, maybe five or six years ago I got sick with I found out that I had a few different autoimmune issues
and I had to get really clean with food, ridiculously clean, like no gluten, no dairy, no grains, no fruits
had an issue with insulin, I couldn’t have any sugar, any kind and at the time I was living a very busy life
teaching dance, my partner has a son so there’s a lot going on
and full-time job and so I was trying to make it work in my own home and I was having to find ways of cooking really simply
but stopping the fridge and thinking in advance and wanting to only cook a few nights a week
and so I created a bit of a system at home and I was inspired to start to write things down
and friends and family for years have been asking me to give them recipes as well
and so it started culminating into this idea of writing a book and this was about five years ago
so anyways that was the start of what is heartful kitchen today but it’s been a five-year project
and a lot of different inspirations that being one the the diet piece of it
another piece you mentioned the the familial piece and so my my grandmother who’s probably my
number one biggest food inspiration she’s a hundred years old now
Lebanese grandmother and when I was growing up I would spend weeks during the summer with her
and we would cook Lebanese food together and so I definitely fell in love with food at a very
young age and and it was just a blast spending time with her and being very slow with food
and getting my hands into lamb and you know flavoring it up with lemon and garlic and parsley
and tasting the raw lamb before we rolled it up into into balls and doing you know everything
we did with it putting it into pastry and putting it into the oven and it was just really
special times so many inspirations she wrote a cookbook and I it’s not published but that is a
that is a goal of mine to to get that to press at some point and the publishing company this is
a self-published book and I have created a publishing company called Mary Rose Press and her name
is Mary and her middle name is Rose so that is after her and so you can obviously publish her book
through that press yeah I hope to do so that is so wonderful I my connection with with food is
very closely tied to my time with my grandmother in the kitchen as well and she was Slovenian
and so we had this incredible connection to old ethnic recipes and traditions and what
what a joy to have that that direct thread and for you to be carrying that forward and sharing
that now with so many people the way that you are and one of the things I’m struck by and you
are of course a bit of a celebrity here in the community with your food so many folks just
absolutely rave about the meals you create and one of the things that strikes me as incredibly
precious in there is that these are delicious flavor bursting experiences that are also so
nutritious and so nourishing for for us and it’s it’s clear when you’re
dishing out for people one by one there’s so much love in what you’re doing and I imagine
that it has something to do with the relationship with your grandmother and where you’re coming from
when you’re preparing food for people yeah and my mom too you know when I am the youngest and
I think busyness was like a thread in my family growing up goes with my grandmother and my mom
but what by the time I was I don’t know exactly I want to say 10 or 11 my my mom
went back to grad school and so she was quite busy but when my my older siblings were
were young she was at home and so I just have memories of her being so full so busy but she would
she would somehow make space to come home and prepare these amazing dinners every night
and my mom is a fantastic cook like the best like when I when I go home every time I go home it’s like
it’s like it’s the best food I’ve ever had you know so you know simple simple things like
she makes fish better than anybody so there’s a recipe in the book called a babe’s baked fish and my
mom’s my mom’s name is Linda but everyone calls her babe in her family and so this dish is
generally made with cod but you can make it with with any any white fish really and it has pistachio and
citrus zest and I make it with ghee because I I think he’s a very tasty healthy fat to cook with
which you can do it with coconut oil or chicken fat or another healthy fat and it’s so easy you
just put everything in a casserole and stick it in the oven and bring it out and base it with the
fat and the lemon juice and so she had this way of creating dishes that were very simple and very
healthy and incredibly delicious so yeah it was my grandmother in the summers or when we would go
see her but throughout life my mom definitely nourished us like through the busyness and and that’s
what I’m trying to do with this book you know is is remind people that you know it’s not so bad to be
busy like we are going to be busy we’re getting busier it seems with our cell phones and our iPads
and everything that we’re multitasking doing but it’s so important to continue to nourish ourselves
and frankly we’re not nourishing ourselves when we go out to eat so often even when we go to
you know the whole paycheck grocery store and choose to have dinner there over and over like
we think we’re nourishing ourselves but when we do it so often it’s um we’re not choosing the
healthiest oils to put into our bodies and to to make choices at home we’re saving time we’re saving
money we can eat organic vegetables at prices that aren’t exordated and um and it’s important
to look at the facts that we are we’re cooking with and so there’s lots of tools in the book
that talk about this not to come from trying to be a perfectionist about food because that’s not
what it’s about it’s about relaxing around food really but having all the information of how can we
eat a nutrient death diet um you know i think a lot of folks are are eating a more of like an empty
calorie diet um and because it’s quick it’s quick to choose um more of a carb rich diet
and it’s fun but um but when we’re choosing foods like um you know hearty vegetables
color rich vegetables and organic proteins um we’re choosing nutrients and the calories that
we’re eating have more vitamins and then almost in them so there was um there’s a a toolbar
at the bottom of each recipe in the book and right now the toolbar relates to uh healing diets
that particular doctors recommend for for patients and some some examples of these diets are
our um fod maps and gaps diet and autoimmune protocol plant paradox um originally when i created
this this healing diet toolbar was going to include vitamins and minerals so let’s say for example
this lemon zested garlicky broccoli yeah i just i just opened to this and it’s a beautiful image
so i i think i’ve probably eaten this before and uh i assure you it’s delicious so yeah i see at the
bottom there is this um health food bar right in the guide so what what do these
yeah so so let’s say you follow a fod map’s diet um what is that by the way i’m not
looking familiar yeah so certain certain diets that i have in this book let’s say so so a good friend
of mine um david to sack who works in the building uh that i that i work in the highland building um david
helped me some with this project and um brilliant man brilliant doctor part of he started called
medical and um so david inspired me to create this this medical toolbar and um so fod map’s diet
is a is a diet that he might recommend to a patient who potentially is struggling with a gastrointestinal
issue and to test whose test shows up in a way that says okay this this is indicated that this
person might need to follow this diet and so for the broccoli dish um if you’re following the
fod maps diet cruciferous vegetables are in no okay so this means that we know go yeah yeah so um
but then we have plant paradox yeah and then you can have it if you’re plant paradox i’m not
i’m not going to take the time here to go through all of this but um but if you follow these diets
this book if you follow one of these diets this book will be helpful um in giving you guidance
around each recipe uh huh that’s incredible it’s such a resource yeah it’s a resource in that way
and it could be a resource for um for uh healing healing doctors in that way as well so so i was
saying a moment ago i was uh considering having vitamins and minerals on this as well and as i
started to look through there’s just way too many um like in every recipe there’s there’s so much
and it’s almost just like what’s the point um because every recipe um is very mineral rich
vitamin rich so um yeah it does you it does a good service to to um to look at um
vitamin and mineral rich foods as much as you can nutrient dense foods and a book like this can help
yeah so my my takeaway uh sort of reiterating this for our audience is that we don’t each need to
become the expert that you are and and you with access to other experts like medical doctors we
can get the book and use it as a guide through our own uh healing journeys our own quality of life
improvement journeys whether it’s having an issue with gluten or dairy or other inflammatory
other uh potential conditions this is a resource any number of us can use and and get wonderful
results right and you know you you know that when using these recipes um you are
taxing the body as little as possible there’s no night shades in this book as well um night shades are
for those of you don’t know vegetables that grow at night potatoes um eggplant peppers tomatoes
um so yeah night shade free grains free there’s no fruit in this book except for citrus um so
for those sensitive beings this is a good book for you for those of you who don’t have issues with
any of that um this is also just a highly um flavorful book i talk about um taste sensations there’s
a section on that in this book which which is basically talking about the tongue um so using
taste sensations as a tool and what what you know of that is is all the flavors so bitter salty sweet
sour and then this new flavor they talk about umami right which is like miso or
yes the way karmichan cheese yes yeah right um spicy pungent even um this flavor fatteness
which is which is the way like let’s say we we toss avocado in a dish that’s going to um move
flavor around the tongue so wow so because this book is is limited in things like grains or um
um yeah nothing else is coming to me at the moment but we we add a lot of things like citrus zest
and delicious healthy fats and things that really make flavors pop so if um if you can think of
of friends of yours that eat you know they go out and eat burgers and fries and they’re used to
food like that they’re still gonna enjoy this food because it’s it’s flavor heavy yeah i can
i can attest to that i have had many friends and joy this food as well yeah you mentioned oils
a few times and i’m curious tell us a little more about why certain oils are so good for us and
others maybe are not that good for us it what what’s going on with oils right so um what’s going
on with oils well we’ll need like another hour for that but um so the oils episode yeah the oils
episode um so i can talk about that from my own experience and i i have experimented with
ketogenic diet relatively often so when i’m needing to so ketogenic diet is um is a high fat medium
protein and very low-carb diet and um and it helps if you’re needing to trim up and it helps
if you’re needing to clear brain fog and um it’s it’s pretty magical and it’s difficult
but when i do it i’ll do it for like i don’t know three or four weeks and so i’ve learned a lot
about healthy fats when i when i do that and um what i’ve learned and what i’ve studied about
is that there are certain fats that are that are really good for the body and certain fats that
aren’t and so the types of fats in this book that i’ve suggested cooking with for high for high
temperature are um coconut oil uh ghee which is a refined clarified butter is that yeah
ghee is um butter without the milk solids right yeah and you can buy it yeah you can make it
yeah usually buy it yeah i know more or more folks seem to be using ghee yeah um my some of my
favorite fats to cook with are grass-fed beef tallow and um which has really good omega
yeah chicken fat duck fat for Thanksgiving we roasted a duck and made duck soup and then we had
all of this duck fat and we’re still cooking with it and it’s incredible wow yeah and everything
just seems to um work better in the body and so when i say i’m speaking for my experience
what’s my experience is when i’m eating fats like this it’s um it’s more harmonious
well i know you as a friend of many years and i know that you’re very connected to body that you’re
very body centered in what you do and you’re a dancer you you teach dance and i’m wondering if
you can share with us a bit about that that body connection as a dancer and how that kind of
relates over to your work as a chef in your work with food yeah that’s a big question
is that that’s another episode yeah um well i think in general like it’s in everything that i do
in my in my outer world it’s and in my inner world it’s important for me to stay connected to my
body and and i don’t always i mean i can find myself really in my head at times i think at the club
at city club um i manage quite a bit and um yeah you have a lot of responsibility and i love it
you know yeah and i really enjoy it but um but if i don’t go out and take that 20 minute walk
like the days that i don’t do it i notice it yeah and so the balance of um of life is is so important
and um and and it’s important to notice like when when things are off and notice when
when i got to go out and take that walk or notice when i haven’t um stop to eat lunch
yeah um when i’ve had too much caffeine and stay in tune with with all of that because it’s it’s
it’s certainly not about getting things perfect because every day i don’t get things perfect
yeah with regards to self care and and just noticing like what’s off how can i get back
um there’s a hang of time yeah what do i need now and what’s next and what do i need later at the end
of the day does it need to be a down night do i have it in me to be social um especially with this book
you know it’s been um it’s been a journey especially the last six months putting this book together
and um and if i didn’t i think i may have told you this the other day but if i didn’t push
the way that i did it wouldn’t have happened yeah it would have taken another year which
I’m sure you can relate to well the funny thing about books that i’ve noticed is they don’t
write themselves no it takes an incredible amount of of sustained uh energy willfulness discipline
uh to put something like this together and uh i i’m so grateful that that you’ve done it because i
know knowing you and eating your food is often as i do i know this is going to be just an amazing
resource for so many folks folks all over the place folks who you’ll you’ll probably never meet in
person and uh i’m just grateful that you’ve done the work and taken the the time to make this happen
while you’re also an executive chef at a very busy dining facility and doing all kinds of other
things in your life as well so uh yeah it’s funny you know it’s not it’s not really for me
like this this book like on a couple different levels so you know when you start writing and you have
a folder in your computer and it’s like why don’t we know what this book’s going to be called yet
so why do i call it so when i first started it five years ago it was just called an offering
that was the name of the folder yeah and um because that’s what it was because it was like okay i’m
giving this is like a giving giving and um and that’s what this that’s what this is uh i have
i have this coaching business that i’m that i’ve started and i’m working with clients and i’m
teaching them how to cook and they’re most generally people who don’t know much about food
generally people who are suffering in some way because they’re nutrient starving you know
they’re they’re not eating nutrient rich diets they’re eating um empty diets and so but they’re
really they’re really wanting to create change or else they wouldn’t be asking for help so um
and up until now i haven’t had this available so i’ve just been giving them the book
you know just been like passing them the book which has been so nice and it’s been uh it’s been
such a gift to see these recipes helping people and changing their lives and customizing them
to fit people’s needs yeah because everybody’s different and some people have really special
food needs it’s such an interesting uh observation that you’re making that is a truism i think for
our culture at this point our society that so many of us are going through day-to-day life
with incredible caloric intake right we have a very calorie rich
diet generally speaking but it’s often way too often nutrient bereft nutrient
devoid and we spoke about this a fair bit in in YonEarth and i think it’s one of the
greatest opportunities that we have to improve our own health and well-being our own quality of life
for ourselves the people around us our families and so on and it is also a beautiful way to be
in deeper stewardship of places farms soil people growing food cultivating food those two
really go hand in hand and uh one of the things that strikes me Maria and uh you your
chefery if that’s a word exemplifies this when we’re talking about increasing health and well-being
through our food and beverage choices this is far from an austerity program in my experience
the food you create is so abundant with flavor is bursting with incredible delightful
indulgence really in in the miraculous abundance of this this planet and my hope is that
folks will check this out and and experience this for themselves of course if you’re visiting
Denver or Boulder and can come up to the highland city club come for lunch um but you know
short of that this this is such a tremendous resource around that enjoyment of life that i
believe so many of us have in our cultural paratages back generations we have all around the
world rich traditions around food that are helpful and really enjoyable and i know in addition to
your Lebanese background with your grandmother you you also have had a restaurant in Spain
and many of your dishes have just an incredible Spanish zest and penache to them so i’m curious
tell us a little about the time in spain and what were you doing that yeah yeah from love with
saffron so there are it’s funny it’s not a dancer is he yeah let’s not go there
so it’s funny i was making the index and um i realized like how much saffron is in this book plus
the tremendous amount um so i yeah i think it was gosh nine years ago or eight years ago i was
looking on Craigslist or looking on yeah looking on Craigslist for a job and i saw that someone was
looking for a chef for Madrid for a place in Madrid and so i thought yeah i’ll look into that
and so long story short i got hired to open up um help open up a restaurant um in downtown Madrid
and it was called hardest and um they wanted a chef who had been involved with organic food and
they wanted a boulder chef that you know like big salads because they don’t do that in Spain um so
i and i i helped them i helped create the menu i had like some of my dishes and then helped
them with with their dishes and um yeah it just helped it was hired to help get it started
so i went over there for a year and um it was a wild experience i didn’t know any Spanish
really and i went there and i had a team of about five or six people in the kitchen none of them
spoke english i just had my my Spanish book learned on the job and uh yeah it was a trip amazing
i had my grandmother’s hummus recipe on the menu and they still do it there to my knowledge
i think yeah pretty sure they’re still open but it’s it’s been a number of years that’s wonderful
yeah is there a certain dish that you make regularly now that somehow reminds you of your
timing Madrid well we do pay a relatively regularly um and it’s more like techniques
you know like different broths that i learned how to do there i worked with a couple chefs there um
that taught me a lot so i had the opportunity to to work with some great chefs in that kitchen
it was it was lovely it was quite an experience it’s really grateful
it’s so beautiful yeah and it just it tells us a little more about the taste sensations i want to
come back to that because i have one yeah one of the things that strikes me i was thinking about
this the other day watching a movie with a lot of our technology of course we’re recording this
we have audio we have visual yeah what we don’t have is a roma and flavor right and to be able to
attempt to communicate just how amazing this yeah through audio visuals is a bit of a challenge
with sure we have words so we can attempt it right so there’s this one dish in the book um it’s
called sensational fish uh with spaghetti squash anchovies and cavers so um and this dish the
point of this dish is to highlight all the taste sensations so basically you have your your tongue
and to make a dish taste really powerful if that’s what you’re going for is to hit your whole tongue
and just pop it out right so that’s what this that’s what this does so you have the sour the sweet the
fatty the pungent the umami so for example um i used spaghetti squash at decent amount in this book
because it’s comforting right spaghetti squashes is um it’s comforting but it’s very low
carb it’s very low sugar so spaghetti squash will give you the sweet and that’s the bed of this dish
you have the umami from the fish because macro you choose between macro or cod in this dish
which is a very umami on the umami scale it’s a high it’s high in the umami the fatteness comes
from the cooking oil which is your choice of coconut oil or ghee or chicken fat or talo
another sweet is the caramelized onion you get the pungent flavor from the garlic
more umami from the anchovy you get the sour from the white wine
um you get more fatty from the avocado and then um and then you get the broth that’s underneath it
so something about this book is um the mineral rich bone broth which is um it’s very central to
to this this book many of the recipes have bone broth as uh as an ingredient so um that’s all
I’ll say about that for now but um yeah that’s a little more but yeah it’s kind of a fun recipe
to try it actually uh if you if you aren’t quite ready to buy the book you could go on uh
shethmariecooper.com and this recipe is on the website on the on the blog so share that one
yeah yeah you could grab that one on the website and if if folks are interested in your um
consulting and coaching service can they find information about that at the web as well?
actually um currently i’m doing free discovery sessions for the coaching so um yeah you can
just schedule a 20 minutes free session with me through the website wonderful yeah wonderful
and maybe i’ll take this opportunity to remind our audience that this is the YonEarth Communities
stewardship and sustainability podcast series and today we’re speaking with shethmariecooper
you can get information about her amazing cookbook a heart full kitchen at shethmariecooper.com
you can get information about her uh coaching and consulting services there as well and if any of
you would like to check out any of the YonEarth uh media resources audio books ebooks you can
go to yonearth.org it’s letter y on earth.org and use the code maria cooper to get a discount on
those uh as a way to celebrate our discussion today and uh all this talk of food maria is making me
a little hungry are you hungry of what should we try something i see there’s something amazing sitting
here and i probably cannot resist it any longer okay all right what do we got so this is a recipe
from the book um we have i will let you hold it and maybe i’ll pull the recipe as if we can talk
about it so these are truffles so i do have some desserts in this book and um these are decadent
power truffles wow and they have no sugar in them they have um i actually did that there’s this
website you can go on and do the whole nutritional breakdown of them so they have i think like
one carb in there or something so can i have one yeah you can have one okay i’m going for this kind
which one is this they’re the same they just they just have different um topping so this is
pistachio dusted and this is um oh my goodness oh my goodness so you can make these with carrot powder
or cocoa powder and the way they’re made is with um coconut milk that’s been reduced a whole lot
so it’s like really really thick and then you stir in um and you kind of nut butter or seed
butter that you like and there’s a lot of spices there’s fresh ginger there’s a lot going on
they’re a little cardamom i’m getting there’s um so there’s ginger there’s lemon zest there’s
orange zest there’s um there’s so there’s sweetened with stevia but if you can’t do stevia you can do
any kind of sweetener that works for you i like liquid stevia because it doesn’t have
it doesn’t affect your blood sugar anyway in any way and it’s um it’s not bitter like powdered
stevia and there’s not that much in in the recipe these are amazing good there’s vanilla
yeah and you can coat them in whatever you like so and i like to keep them in the freezer
and it’s nice my my partner’s son he likes um sweets and so he eats these and it doesn’t have
any effect on his you know on his wildness he just eats them and they actually study them out
because they have the uh the protein in them from the nuts wow so uh is amazing i’m so glad you like
them and when they when they’re dusted in cocoa they’re really just like eating chocolate
you know it’s just like eating a chocolate treat but way more nutritious yeah they’re
different breakfast too there’s um a couple more truffle recipes in the book and there’s also a
um a avocado mousse recipe which is a really a really nice dessert it’s creamy and it’s made with
uh with cashews wow Maria that’s amazing i might have to put it in order in for some more
you can have the rest by ten thank you so much yeah you got it so i want to make sure that we’ve
covered everything we wanted to discuss today before wrapping up i know we’ve got a few minutes
remaining with our episode is there anything on your end that you want to make sure we mention or
hit on um i think we i think we did it yeah i feel like things are pretty covered
nice i’d like to hear about your food my food yeah i’d like to hear about how you’re doing with uh
with with your cooking and is there anything you want to talk about with your cooking oh my gosh
well i love eating i love cooking i’m a total amateur and i love hanging out with experts like you
and um one of the kind of grab and go things i enjoy uh throwing in my bag in the morning is just
a big hearty salad and that way i know i’m getting my leafy greens my chlorophyll my various
colors i’ve been really into cucumbers lately for some reason i don’t know exactly why and uh
it’s soup and stew season so yeah making things like chili blanco is uh one of my favorites
was turkey it’s time of year it could be or with chicken or yeah um other you know other
approaches that i usually make it with pizole in there and quite a lot of cumin it’s very like
cumin intense yeah and uh cumin forward cumin forward yeah um and it’s just it’s so comforting heartwarming
and satisfying what kind of chicken do you get do you get like chicken thighs or do you put a
whole chicken or yeah generally enjoy uh baking a number of chicken thighs that i’ve seasoned
okay beforehand and i usually do that with skin off and i’m kind of uh one of those weirdos who
really enjoys baked chicken skin for some reason and i love it i love it yeah so i’ll often have
that as a treat while i’m preparing the soup and in tearing the the meat up my hand to put into the
the soup um i think i do a mere plot a little bit at the beginning sometimes but not every time
and there’s usually a fair bit of garlic in there too um so it’s fun it’s easy and if we make a big
pot of it uh as you were speaking to earlier there are often you know eight ten twelve meals in there
that can be ready to roll throughout the week throughout busy days um so that’s a lot of fun
yeah yeah yeah i think um soups and stews right now are are amazing and freezing them and
you know the one one thing about these uh recipes in this book is most of them are better than
the next day yeah or the day after that and so um and a lot of them are great in the freezer
and so you know taking the time to make your own um your own chicken broth your own
bone broth is it makes such a difference and it’s so it’s so nourishing
is it a is it a fairly complicated process you know i’m wondering if folks might be a bit
intimidated because it sounds like it could be intimidating no no i mean generally there’s a
couple different ways you can do it so the way that we do it often is is we like to we like to buy
rotisserie chickens from home foods the organic ones yeah because they’re pretty affordable
mm-hmm i think right now they’re like nine ninety nine right so we’ll buy two and we’ll take the
um we’ll take the meat off yeah and we’ll make a big chicken salad for the week would not
to get the fridge and then we have two heart kisses we’ll throw them in a big pot with water
and you put a little bit apple cider vinegar yeah i’ve heard that because that helped my mom
that hurts take the goodness out of the bones you let sit for an hour turn it on and cook it for
six hours wow so you let it simmer you let it sit with no heat no heat for an hour then you put
it on heat that’s it yeah i mean at the last hour of cooking you can toss in some uh onions and
celery carrots if you want but i don’t usually i’ve even heard folks will use their onion
peels and their carrot onions at that stage a way to use some of those things that would
other good wise go to college yeah you can and while you’re cooking through the week if you end up
having those a nice thing to do is throw those in a bag in the freezer and then when you’re ready
to make socks you got it ready you got it ready to go that’s such a great idea yeah and um but you
know having broth um even without the veggies is fine i guess it still makes delicious soup because
usually when you make soup you’re cooking veggies you’re chopping up veggies subtaining them
and then throwing the broth in so you’re going to have the flavor of that veggies those veggies
anyways yeah yeah um but it really helps us through these cold months to be
eating soup or even like drinking that broth regularly i have a recipe it’s more like a tip i think
in the book but to to be drinking broth as a meal or in between meals it’s called warm liquid
gold i saw that but you um you heat up the broth and then you you stir in some some fat of your
choice chicken fat or um coconut oil or olive oil or something put a little bit of sea salt
you could put cinnamon or something and just drink it and it’s nourishing and it coats your belly
and it prepares you for what’s next you know i think it’s a nice thing to do it reminds me of a
remedy that a dear friend in fact an old love of mine taught me which is to use chicken broth when
we’re getting sick and adding in cayenne and i think some black pepper yeah maybe some turmeric
and a little bit of lemon juice and just drinking that and it’s it helps and so another great reason
to keep some of this broth on hand right if we start to feel that tickle in the throat or we’re
starting to feel worn down it’s another excellent potential remedy we can go to yeah and uh
you’re you’re you’re what is it liquid gold what is it warm liquid gold warm liquid gold yeah i mean
this woman that i’m i’m working with currently i work with her on the phone coaching she lives
back east and she works in jails every day and um she gets up really early and goes to jails and
works in jails every day and she drinks her broth before she goes to work every day and it’s like
saving her you know she that’s how she talks about it um and i think part of all of these practices
whether it’s making broth or drinking broth or slowing down to cook a meal um it’s self-care
and um you may ask yourself like are you doing enough of that for yourself maybe you are
i mean i’m not sometimes um sometimes i am but when i do that it’s in the act of doing it
that actually makes me feel more vital it gives me strength and makes me feel like
more fit you know i’m giving myself that message that i’m i’m worth this self nourishment yeah
it’s so powerful yeah and it takes remembering and it takes doing and practicing it just like
anything else yeah i love that yeah i love that yeah well Maria thank you so much for joining us
and it has been such a pleasure to have our discussion today with chef Maria Cooper please
audience go check out chef Maria Cooper.com you’ll see her amazing book her amazing resource her
amazing cookbook and guidebook heartful kitchen there and you can also connect with Maria there
for her coaching and consulting services and uh Maria had spent such a pleasure thanks so much
for joining us thank you
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