Amanda Shapiro: Hi, _Food People,_ it's Amanda Shapiro, your host, and today we're talking about something you might be thinking about this time of year, and that is eating a little bit healthier. So this can be so many different things to so many different people. And if eating quote unquote healthier isn't on your radar right now or not something you want to think about, please stick around because the recipes we're talking about today are comforting, cozy, vegetable forward. They're our definition of healthyish, but they certainly don't have to be yours. This year's annual _Healthyish_ issue has tons of great recipes and amazing contributors, but today we're going to focus on one of the centerpieces of the issue, which is a story from Senior Food Editor, Christina Chaey about how she approaches healthyish eating in the new year. And some of the recipes that express this approach for her. And later on, I'll be chatting with Associate Editor, Ali Francis about what we're seeing on the horizon in the wide world of wellness trends. So stick around for that, but first let's jump into it with Chaey. Hi, Chaey. Christina Chaey: Hi, Amanda. Amanda Shapiro: How are you? Christina Chaey: I'm good. I'm good. Recovering. Amanda Shapiro: I feel like it's especially hard when you work at a food magazine during the holidays. I know everybody has this fatigue of holiday parties and dinners, although maybe not because of the recent surge in New York at least, of the virus, but sometimes it can just feel like 110% of what our lives are like already. Christina Chaey: Yeah. I mean, truth be told for the last two years, it's barely felt like we've worked at a food magazine, you know what I mean? Amanda Shapiro: Very true. Christina Chaey: Just because we haven't been in to work. So in a lot of ways, I feel like it's actually kind of different this holiday season. I'm just looking forward to some calm now. Amanda Shapiro: It's like this, not so dirty secret that like January is actually one of my favorite months because people leave me alone. So what does this year's January, are you even thinking of it like a reset? What is your head space right now when it comes to your wellbeing? Christina Chaey: I don't see this time of year as a quote unquote time to reset or at least not in the way that I think it can imply a particular diet or a particular way of eating. I think that the ways in which reset resonates to me in January is taking a step back. Just being able to relish as you said, some alone time. Often when I am alone, I find myself being a lot more intentional in the kitchen and in terms of choosing what to cook and even how much time I dedicate to it. What I am willing to dedicate time to. Amanda Shapiro: And that's actually what the recipe package is all about that you developed for our February issue. It's a collection of recipes all about how you eat for yourself in the new year. What were you thinking about when you were coming up with the recipes for this package? Christina Chaey: Well, I can go through phases. I have written about this before. I have a tendency to go through phases of extreme indulgence and extreme austerity. And so the pendulum kind of swings back and forth between the two. And while I have a tendency to feel really good in those extreme austerity times, it's not really the picture of how I see year round healthyish eating and what that means to me. Amanda Shapiro: Just to like paint the picture... what do those periods of indulgence look like in a way that has not felt sustainable? Christina Chaey: Oh, I don't know, like triple decker latkes with two inches of roe. You know, everything. Amanda Shapiro: Yeah, so then the austerity measures... when you feel like you have to be like, quote unquote, good. I just feel like this is so relatable for people and I think it's helpful to hear what that has looked like for you. Christina Chaey: Yeah. It's a lot of busting out the steamer basket. A lot of trying to avoid certain kinds of oil heavy cooking techniques. Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. Christina Chaey: It's nothing revolutionary, but I think the place where the austerity angle comes in is, it's not just about adding more vegetables to the plate. For me when I go into those modes, it's also about cutting, right? It's also about cutting out. But the storyline is always the same, which is that it's simply not sustainable. Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. And I think that's so relatable whether or not you actually have your new year's resolution to like eat healthier or stop eating sugar or diet or whatever. It doesn't have to be an explicit goal, but a lot of people, I think have a similar attitude where it's... "Got to clean it up, button it up, get back on track," whatever that means. But if the track is not something that you fully enjoy, it's not the track for you. But this is actually the first time I've seen you really explore this intentionally through recipes, which is why I've loved working on this package with you because I do think all of the recipes in it do a really good job of explaining for themselves what a more realistic path is for you. And I think that provides a lot of inspiration for others. It's like little ways to feel excited about what you're eating. Even if you're eating with health intention in mind. Christina Chaey: You have to feel excited. Number one rule, no matter what it is. Amanda Shapiro: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Where do you want to start? Christina Chaey: I think I'm going to start with the cauliflower, actually. This sticky baked sauced cauliflower. Amanda Shapiro: Oh my God. It's so good. Christina Chaey: So cauliflower is a really good example of something that I think when prepared correctly, I do love certain types of cauliflower, I find more delicious than others. Amanda Shapiro: Can we just take a moment and put cauliflower pizza crusts to rest? Can we just bury them RIP, no more. Christina Chaey: I've never eaten one, dude. Amanda Shapiro: Oh, well, you're better for it. Christina Chaey: I am not a huge fan of most home preps of cauliflower. There's something about roasted cauliflower that I'll eat, but I hate eating it cold. I don't like eating it leftover. It feels very mass chain salad bar vibe to me. Steamed cauliflower is kind of a, no. Amanda Shapiro: Definitely a no. Christina Chaey: And that was something I wanted to figure out. Right? Like how to make a cauliflower that excites me as a main dish. Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. Christina Chaey: So I was really intrigued by the idea of... this must have started in the air fryer community. I'm going to guess, because it seems very air fryer-y. I was... Amanda Shapiro: The air fryer community backslash air fryer on reddit. Christina Chaey: I don't, I mean, you know, that exists and has like 5 million members. Amanda Shapiro: I'm sure. Christina Chaey: So I was very intrigued by the idea of battering the cauliflower in a light coating of something. Baking that until it was dry and hopefully a little crisp, and then tossing all of that in a really flavorful sauce. Amanda Shapiro: You're baking the cauliflower instead of frying and it gets kind of like super crispy in the sauce, right? Christina Chaey: I wouldn't call it crispy, but there is a coating that develops that has this really satisfying... it's a little bit chewy. It has some texture to it. I'm almost going to call it like a slightly soggy sweet potato fry or something. I don't know. That cauliflower inside is tender. And so then while that's baking in the oven, you just whisk together, really simple stove top sauce that has some gochujang, which is the Korean fermented red pepper paste. That's hot and it's sweet, so delicious. And then some maple and soy sauce in water. And then you simmer that in a pan until it is kind of thick and glossy and reduced. You can kind of swipe your finger through it and it'll leave a streak. Amanda Shapiro: Oh my God, this is making me so hungry. Christina Chaey: And then you just toss the call flour in that. And then to me, that's the perfect thing to eat with some rice, you know, and just call it a day. Amanda Shapiro: Let's talk about another recipe. Where do you want to go next? Christina Chaey: So let's go to this spicy and cheesy tomato bean situation with the broccoli rabe. Amanda Shapiro: Okay. I love... first of all, I love a bake. Christina Chaey: I love a situation. Amanda Shapiro: I love a situation where there's a lot of cheese going on on top. Christina Chaey: This one, I was a little bit worried about because as part of the recipe development process is presenting the photos of what recipes will look like to other people, namely to our Editor in Chief. And I was just like, I really don't know if my vision for what healthyish beans look like comes across in this photo, where clearly all you can see is like a mountain of melted cheese. Amanda Shapiro: I know, and I do remember being a bit of a skeptic about this one, but I think this really speaks to the strength of your approach to healthyish eating, similar to the cauliflower. This idea that beans, we love 'em. We know they're good for us. We know we should eat them, but what do we do to make them actually exciting to us? And in this case, the answer is cheese. Christina Chaey: Look, I have no shame in admitting that I don't find canned beans appealing, like at all. Amanda Shapiro: That's fair. Christina Chaey: So I will either just eschew the category of legumes entirely, or I will only make them from dried. The way that I like to make them. Amanda Shapiro: Which is... Christina Chaey: I'll do some onion and garlic and maybe carrot or celery and bay leaves, herbs, drizzle of olive oil. You know, all the good stuff. Amanda Shapiro: Cook for a long time. Christina Chaey: This was not a recipe where I was going to call for cooking beans from dry. Even though if it were up to me, I would do that. Amanda Shapiro: Yes. Christina Chaey: So the challenge was how to entice myself into wanting to eat canned beans. Does that make sense? Amanda Shapiro: Totally. And I think you succeeded. Christina Chaey: I had to make this one quite a few times before I got it right. It was in a lot of different iterations. I was trying to make it work as a soup before. But I have to say once I got it to this place where you have beans and some chopped broccoli rabe in this really deeply flavored tomato paste, saucy thing. Once I got it to that place, I had three different rounds of leftovers in my fridge. I eat them all. Amanda Shapiro: That's a winner. That's how, you know. Christina Chaey: Yeah. It was really good. Amanda Shapiro: So just to paint the full picture, we've got garlic, olive oil, anchovies, tomato paste, all kind of sizzled, red pepper flakes... you throw in some broccoli rabe you throw in some whole peeled tomatoes. You get kind of like a really delicious deeply flavored sauce. And then you add the beans. So you're masking the beans with all of this delicious sauce, and then you're topping it with what kind of cheese, mozzarella? Christina Chaey: Some good old, low moisture mozz. Amanda Shapiro: And you cook it. So what's actually the cooking method here? Christina Chaey: Everything happens on the stove top. So the tomato sauce, the broccoli rabe, the beans, and then once the cheese goes on, you just broil it for two minutes or less. Just until the top has, you know, lots of brown spots and is really vigorously bubbling. Amanda Shapiro: This is such a budget friendly recipe too. Beans, one of the cheapest things you can buy. This is basically a pantry meal with broccoli rabe, or honestly, whatever green veggies you have on hand thrown in. How do you serve it? What do you eat it with? Christina Chaey: I would probably want some toast rubbed with garlic, just for eating on the side. For mopping up the sauce. That to me feels pretty perfect. Amanda Shapiro: I think you you can do all kinds of things with it. You could stir noodles into it or rice or any kind of starch or eat it over potatoes. So this is another one where I think we're hitting the strategy note of taking something you know you should eat and just getting yourself excited about it. Christina Chaey: That's this whole story. Amanda Shapiro: We should have called it something like Chaey's guide to eating the food that you don't want to eat, but know you should. Okay. We're going to take a quick break here and when we come back, we will check in with Associate Editor, Ali Francis to talk about some of the trends we see in the wellness world for 2022. And then we'll get back to our conversation with Chaey and talk about a few more recipes. Stick around. So it's that time for us at BA when we are forecasting what food trends are going to carry through to 2022. And there are a lot of food trends generally speaking, but wellness is its own massive niche at this point. So to stay on the healthyish theme, today we're going to talk about a few things we're seeing on the horizon in the world of wellness. And to do that, I'm going to bring in Associate Editor, Ali Francis. Ali, worked with me on _Healthyish_ back in the day and has been doing amazing things since then. I would say she's a pretty expert level brand strategist, and just someone who pays a lot of attention to what's new and what's popping in the wellness space. So Ali, let's talk about some of the things that you're seeing, that I'm seeing, and that we think we're going to see even more of in 2022. Ali Francis: Thanks Amanda. Happy to be here. Amanda Shapiro: Let's dive into like one of the biggest categories in wellness right now, which are mushrooms. And I'm not necessarily talking about the psychedelic kind, but are you noticing the kind of mushroom boom continuing into 2022? Ali Francis: Official: mushrooms are very everywhere. I think in my own kitchen right now, I could count 10 canisters that have mushrooms in them in some way shape or form. And it's funny because I'm somewhat of a mushroom supplement skeptic. I really think the best way to enjoy a mushroom and to reap its benefits is just to cook it and eat it. Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. Ali Francis: But I am still someone here is harboring plenty of mushrooms in my own house. Amanda Shapiro: So what kinds of mushrooms are we seeing in supplement form? I know obviously there's all of the grocery store types of mushrooms, but there's also so-called medicinal mushrooms. Can you talk about those at all? Ali Francis: So I think some of the big players in the medicinal mushroom sphere would be Lion's mane, reishi, cordyceps, sort of mushrooms that honestly have been used for millennia in other cultures, but it just kind of catching on here as playing a sort of wellness role in our diets. My biggest mushroom love at the moment is actually a kind of cacao mix that has mushrooms in them. And that's super delicious in coffee to the point where I don't even really care if the mushrooms are doing anything. Amanda Shapiro: What's the brand? Ali Francis: It's Golde. So that's Trinity Musan-Woffett's brand, yeah. Amanda Shapiro: I have friends who use rasa, which is a mushroom infused coffee alternative, and some of them are caffeinated and some are non-caffeinated and you can use them to kind of ease yourself off your like caffeine addiction if you want, or to just kind of moderate it a bit. Ali Francis: I went straight from like three coffees by 11:00 AM to the one that is non-caffeinated at all from rasa. And I immediately put that aside and then reordered the one that was half caffeinated. Amanda Shapiro: Yes. Yes. Ali Francis: I was like let's be realistic with this journey. Amanda Shapiro: Yes. It's a helpful journey for a lot of us. So mushrooms continuing to boom into 2022. Another thing that I think we're going to see more of are these updated nostalgic comfort food brands. I know you wrote about Snow Days, is that right? And Gigantic, yeah. So talk to me about some of these and kind of describe what this nostalgic comfort food updated trend is. Ali Francis: Yeah. So some of the ones that I'm really excited about, like you said, Snow Days, which I've written about. They're designed to be a kind of pizza roll that probably plenty of us grew up housing, without so much of the processed ingredients. So you'll actually look at their ingredient lists and it's just carrots and peppers and cassava. And you're not seeing any of those weird red dye 40 or strange kind of indiscernible ingredients. They're not trying to be like vegan or gluten free necessarily. They're just trying to use the whole ingredient in a sort of more natural way. Amanda Shapiro: That's interesting because we've certainly seen a rise in plant-based quote, unquote, vegan, everything, but I think the kinds of nostalgic comfort foods we're seeing now kind of coming back aren't necessarily so prescriptive or like, yeah, there's still some cheese in there or there's still some gluten, but it's just fewer ingredients and just kind of stripped down. Like one of the ones I think we both tried recently is Goodles. I actually had these last night for dinner because I knew we were recording this podcast. And Goodles is a new box macaroni and cheese brand, which I think is a category we're just going to see even more new entries into because it was just so dominated by like Annie's and Kraft for literally my entire life and probably yours. It's just pasta and cheese powder and you make it in the exact same way and I dunno, it was really good. Ali Francis: I thought it was really good too. I also think it's funny, Goodles does one kind of cool thing where they basically use vegetable fiber, so I presume some kind of ground up vegetable and it's actually in the flour mix that makes the pasta. I was like, "Is this the same as eating broccoli, probably not." But like, do I feel a bit better that there is broccoli in the actual noodle that I'm eating for lunch today? Like yes. And I also think they were just delicious, like everything still has to be delicious in this category. But if you can have delicious, easy to make, and there's some good food in there, I think that's a win-win. Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. I mean, it's obviously great for kids, and I think Gigantic is another one you've written about. That's a really fun, kind of, not so bad for you chocolate bar. What's up with that? Ali Francis: Yeah. I'm actually fairly obsessed with Gigantic. Nutritionally, they're like an energy bar or a nut bar than they are a chocolate, but it truly just tastes like a Snickers. I think what they focused in on is definitely whole ingredients, but frankly chocolate is a category where there's plenty of whole ingredient brands. So what they've really done is just reduce the amount of sugar in the bar. I'm pretty sure it's still whole sugar, or cane sugar or something like that. But there's just so much less of it that what you're tasting is sweet and chocolatey and yummy, but it's nutritionally more like something you would take hiking. And they make this like caramel in Gigantic that is truly magic. I don't know what they're doing, but it's kind of chewy like that, but without a bucket of sugar, I don't know. But I'm into it. Amanda Shapiro: Okay, let's talk really quickly about one more kind of adjacent wellness space. I am seeing so many new apps and companies dedicated to women's health. And obviously women's health is not a trend, but it is I think a long ignored and misunderstood space. So I'm seeing companies crop up for different phases and life stages of women's health, and menstrual support is a big one. But I think where this overlaps with food is especially in sort of these recommendations around how to eat, to feel better either when you're on your period about to get your period or going through menopause. What have you seen in this space? Ali Francis: So there are a few things I'm seeing in this space that I think are designed to be alternatives to the medical establishment. So looking for natural remedies and herbal supplements and things outside of just having to go on the pill or in the very most extreme cases of women's health issues, having a hysterectomy at a young age. So I think this is all really exciting to me as someone with endometriosis. It's particularly a topic I'm tuned in on, and so I'm seeing things like Flow, which is a vitamin supplement. It's full of different herbs and sort of adaptogens and things that are designed to ease pms and ease your period and make the actual week you're on your period more bearable. And they're also very easy to incorporate because they are delicious. I definitely felt a difference. It could be psychosomatic, but if it is, I'm very cool with that too. And so I think the other thing I'm seeing in the space is seed-cycling, which we've talked a little bit about before, Amanda. And... Amanda Shapiro: This is so fascinating to me by the way. Ali Francis: It's so fascinating. And the idea is that, correct me if I'm wrong, but you eat a different kind of seed blend at different phase of your menstrual cycle. And there's something in that blend that is designed to give your body what it's deficient in during that phase. Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. I found this one so dubious, my first heard about it because I'm like, "Literally seeds? I'm going to eat different seeds?" it seemed like witchcraft, but your levels go up and down according to your cycle, which is one thing that makes people who have periods different from people who don't, is that this cycle, you end up actually having less of certain vitamins and minerals at certain times of the month. And so certain seeds happens to be really high in exactly those vitamins and minerals. And so cycling which seeds you're kind of adding to your diet, and we're just talking about like a couple tablespoons in like a smoothie or whatever each day... Ali Francis: Yeah. Amanda Shapiro: Could actually really help to balance that out and get rid of some of those swings in both mood, mindset, energy, et cetera, that a lot of us feel throughout the month. Ali Francis: For sure. And I think I was sort of similar to you where I was like, "This subscription just sends me different bags of seeds? I don't understand." And I think part of that is because we've been so conditioned now to be really far removed from the plant source. Like even thinking back to mushrooms, they're pouted or in a cacao mix or in a capsule and so far removed from mushroom, that I actually came around to seed cycling because I was like, "Wow, I can see what it is that's going into my body. I can see that this is a food." And I think that's something that's really obscured when foods are in supplement form. It's like, how pertinent is this? Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. And you can certainly do your own research and just go to your local bulk bin and buy those seeds. But a brand like Phasey, which will send you these kinds of subscription based little seed packets, is also just doing great education around the subject. Whether or not you want to buy the product or take the mushrooms or whatever they're educating people about the potential benefits of these ingredients. We're going to wrap up here. Ali, thank you so much for talking about wellness trends of 2022. Ali Francis: Thank you so much for having me, Amanda. Amanda Shapiro: All right. We are back with Christina Chaey and let's get another recipe along with a strategy. Let's say we want to eat meat, but not have it be, you know, the center piece of the meal. What do you recommend? Christina Chaey: So let's talk about chicken soup. This is a chicken soup that you make from scratch in the sense that you're making your own broth. And then you have it with rice noodles and a spoonful of scallion crisp, which if Andy Baraghani could hear me right now, I'm sure he'd be really pleased that his disciple is carrying on his good work. Amanda Shapiro: He would love this. Let's talk about some of the elements of this soup first. And when you say making your own broth, this sounds very intimidating, but it's actually not. You're actually making the broth while you make the soup, if that makes sense. You're just also making broth because you're cooking your raw chicken in water, AKA you're poaching it. Christina Chaey: Right. Amanda Shapiro: So talk a little bit more about poaching chicken because I feel like this sounds intimidating. It sounds maybe not so delicious. What's up with this method. Christina Chaey: I think poaching chicken is probably the single most underrated chicken cooking method. We just don't do it enough. And it is just transcendent when it is done correctly. There is nothing more delicious to me than poached chicken breasts. Amanda Shapiro: How do I do it correctly? Christina Chaey: Well, I'll say two things. One is that for me, I think this recipe, I wanted to build around poached chicken breasts, because when I think about December and the holidays, for me, it happens to coincide with the most meat eating that I do out of the entire year. And usually like what kind of meat is that? It's roasts, it's maybe prime rib, maybe it's a ham. That is kind of hard on my tummy to be honest. And so in a lot of ways, I feel like a soup like this I find really almost medicinal in terms of the food that I want to eat after party season is over, you know. You certainly can make a fine tasting broth from poaching chicken in water alone, and seasoning it with salt. You totally could. However, this version gets some help in the form of some scallions, crushed garlic, and fried ginger. Which is actually a technique that I learned from Jessie YuChen, who uses this technique a lot in their soup making. You essentially just do not peel, but instead thickly slice pieces of ginger, and then you fry them in some oil in the pot for like five minutes. Enough time that they get really nice and brown on both sides. Amanda Shapiro: In a separate pot, then you're... Christina Chaey: No, no, no in your soup pot. Amanda Shapiro: In your soup pot, before you make the soup. Christina Chaey: Right. Amanda Shapiro: Got it. Christina Chaey: That's the base of everything. And the amount of flavor that the fried ginger adds is just so surprising and incredible to me. You're adding aromatics, like whole scallions and some smashed garlic, and then you're adding your water and your chicken and some salt. And so all of that, it is absolutely astounding to me, how much flavor you can coax out of a single chicken breast. Amanda Shapiro: And you're getting skin on, bone in and the skin is going to have a lot of flavor in it too. So that's why you don't, ultimately you take the skin off and discard it, right? But you're using the skin to flavor the broth while the chicken cooks. Christina Chaey: Correct, correct. Amanda Shapiro: And then talk about this scallion crisp that you put on top. Christina Chaey: The scallion crisp is like your favorite condiment that you spoon all over everything. Like you could make a piece of cardboard exciting if you spooned chili crisp over it, right. So this was sort of a play on how much, so many of us are obsessed with chili crisp. You take some thinly sliced scallions, and thinly sliced garlic and you put that in a small pot with a good amount of neutral oil, like vegetable or grape seed. And then you bring all of that up from cold, which is just the term that we use for when you don't heat your oil first before adding something to the pot. So you bringing everything up from cold because you want the scallions and the garlic to very gradually gently fry in the oil as it heats up. The moisture gets driven out of both. They start to turn golden brown and as the moisture leaves them, they start to crisp and get super aromatic. And then you pour that over some grated ginger and the green parts of the scallions over those two fresh, really vibrant flavors. So you get the umami and savoriness from the crisp scallion and garlic, but you also get that sort of fresh note from the ginger and the fresh scallion. And then you mix that all up and you season that with some soy sauce and just spoon it right on. Amanda Shapiro: It doesn't even need to be said, but you kind of should make this oil anytime for anything that you're eating, including cardboard. But I hope that you're not eating cardboard. Christina Chaey: Yeah. And you know, it's just one of those things that will definitely keep for a couple of weeks. Amanda Shapiro: I mean, the strategy with this soup to me is really like, we all know chicken breast is a good lean protein, but how can we actually eat it in a way that doesn't seem like we're eating chicken breast, you know? And I feel like this is a perennial problem we have at BA. It's like the people want the chicken breast recipe. How do we give them the chicken breast recipe? Christina Chaey: So much of the time I think people try to make chicken breast into something it doesn't want to be. Amanda Shapiro: Right. Christina Chaey: And that's where you run into problems. But you know, for me, something about the clean flavor of chicken breast versus other parts of the chicken, there is no better part of the chicken to eat poached. Amanda Shapiro: So I feel like we'd be remiss to not talk about drinking. It's a bit of a fraught subject, obviously. If you choose not to drink ever at any time, like that is a totally great decision to make. If you choose to drink also a great decision, but I do feel like January is a time when you also feel like maybe you went a little bit overboard the last couple of months. We're trying to figure out how to kind of get that reset. And not everybody wants to do completely dry January. I've gone both ways. Where do you fall on that spectrum? Christina Chaey: Yeah, I definitely am not interested in doing that personally. Amanda Shapiro: She's like hard pass. Christina Chaey: It's just because I think in general, I've reached a point where I just don't think that restriction of any kind leads to anything good for me, personally. Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. Christina Chaey: The body does a good job at pointing you toward what it wants. That's sort of how I operate. And so after a month of a lot of drinking, I'm naturally going to not want to drink as much. But you know, it's like, I still want a little something. And so that was kind of the thinking behind what kind of drink recipe would make sense for a story like this? What is the drink that I would want to drink when I want just a little something? Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. And it's called the Adonis Spritz. First of all, where does the name come from, and second of all, what is in it? Christina Chaey: The Adonis is a very old, I want to say it was like maybe prohibition era cocktail of sherry and sweet vermouth. It's very delicious. Alex Beggs introduced me to it, obviously. But you know, it's like as far as cocktails go, technically that's an all spirits cocktail. That's like a little bit much for me I feel on a, an average week night. So this is kind of my take on just pouring some water into it. Cause that's really all it is. It's a little bit of fino sherry, which is a pretty dry sherry and some sweet vermouth, which is super botanical and sweet obviously. And then like a splash of club soda. And a twist of orange. Amanda Shapiro: It sounds so refreshing, honestly. Christina Chaey: Yeah. I mean, I think that's the point, right? It's like water plus. Amanda Shapiro: It's like a slightly spikes LaCroix. I think you could mix this up in a lot of ways with either swapping out your citrus or playing around with your different types of vermouths if you're one of those vermouth people. Christina Chaey: Or sherry, really, you know. I think of it as like a pre-dinner drink. You just happen to not be drinking at dinner. Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. That's not like a giant glass of wine. Not that there's anything wrong with a giant glass of wine. Christina Chaey: Also at this point I have no wine in the house. It's all gone. Amanda Shapiro: All gone. Nor do I really want to be buying more wine at this point. Christina Chaey: It sounds like you got a lot of Adonis spritzes in your future. Amanda Shapiro: So, I think that every recipe we've talked about completely fulfills what you were saying, Chaey, about dishes that aren't indulgent nor austere, but kind of sit somewhere in the middle and help you feel excited about eating vegetable forward, health forward food. Christina Chaey: I think my hope is that these are recipes that feel, um, I hope they don't feel healthy, I guess. Which sounds counterintuitive, but what I mean by that is that I think we're reaching a really good positive moment in just the greater discourse around things like this. Where I think we can kind of start to be like, what does that even mean? Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. Christina Chaey: And for me, this is the food that I cook that makes me feel the way I want to feel, you know? Make it an everyday thing. Amanda Shapiro: It's an everyday thing or come back to it whenever you want. It doesn't have to be January. You could feel like you want to eat more healthyish or vegetable forward anytime of year and come back to these recipes or just make them part of your rotation. I certainly know that I already plan to with a lot of these. And it's always just great Chaey to get a slice of your brain. Whether it's in a newsletter or in a recipe package like this or on the podcast. So thank you so much for sharing with us. Christina Chaey: Well, I can't wait to exchange notes and see what you think. Amanda Shapiro: Yeah, it's great to have you. Thank you to our guests today Christina Chaey and Ali Francis for helping us usher in this new year of eating. Make sure to check out Chaey's recipes in the February issue and online and we'll link to them in the show notes. Give our guests a follow on Instagram. Christina Chaey is @seechaey and Ali Francis is @alifrancis.me. Thanks for listening. If you love the show, be sure to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It helps keep us _Food People_ employed. And you can follow _Bon Appétit_ on Instagram @bonappétitmag and on Twitter @bonappétit._ Food People_ is produced by _Bon Appétit_ in partnership with Pod People. Vishnu Vallabhaneni is our senior producer, Ginny Bloom is our showrunner, Madison Lusby is our senior production manager, and Morgane Fouse and Jessica Jones are our associate producers. Nico Avalle assisted with research and this episode was engineered by Trae Budde. The music is by DJ Nu-Mark. June Kim and I provide editorial direction for the series. Special thanks to Matt Sav, Aimee Machado and Nico Steele. I'm your host, Amanda Shapiro. See you next week.