Andrea:
My name is Andrea and I live in Fairfield, Connecticut. I resolve to eat more lobster rolls. I live in Connecticut and never liked them, and after listening to your show, I know why I never liked them: because of the butter. And now I resolve to eat lobster rolls with mayo everywhere I see them.

Bailey:
Hey Dan, this is Bailey LeRoux from Abilene, Texas. And my resolution for 2020 is to eat more homemade baked goods, preferably that I get to make. I've really gotten into cooking this year and I am excited to try my hand at some new things, hopefully including some lamination and some homemade baked bread.

Jennifer:
Hi Dan, this is Jennifer from Lethbridge, Alberta. I resolve to eat more chocolate because, chocolate. I mean, do you really need a reason for that?

Dan:
This is The Sporkful, it's not for foodies, it is for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. You know each week on our show we like to obsess about food in order to learn more about people. And I'm taking my time with the intro today, it's the year-end show, time to kick back, put your feet up, relax a little bit. Yes, we will be off the next two weeks, resuming with our normally scheduled programming the first week of January. But here we are, here we are my friends. We're at the end of another year. At the end of a decade, not only a decade of human existence but also a decade of The Sporkful.

Dan:
That's right. In 2020, we will be celebrating 10 years as a podcast. We've got some surprises, some special stuff in the works for you, for next year, that I'm really excited to share. But what are we doing here today? Well, you just heard some of your new year's food resolutions. You're going to hear some more throughout the show. At the end of the episode, I will report back to you on my new year's food resolution from this past year, which was to drink more tea. I'll let you know how it went and I will unveil my new year's food resolution for 2020. And of course we will also be replaying one of our favorite episodes of the year. But before we get to all that, let's hear a few more of your resolutions.

Jaime:
Hi, this is Jaime from Lake Elmo, Minnesota. In the new year, I resolve to eat more eggs. I have wanted backyard chickens for many years, and this year I became a backyard chicken farmer, after winning my fantasy football league for the first time in 15 years. We took our winnings, put it into the coop, and we've been raising these chicks and the hens for over six months. The new eggs should come any day now and I can't wait.

David:
Hi Dan. This is David from Indianapolis, and in 2020 I resolve to eat more Lao Gan Ma, spicy chili crisp. That stuff is amazing and I want to put it on everything, especially my Saturday morning eggs.

Shannon:
Howdy Dan, this is Shannon from Tomball, Texas. And the food I resolve to eat more in 2020 is grains. I'm very fond of homemade farro salad, during the summer with diced tomatoes, celery, feta, fresh basil, and a homemade vinaigrette. And I'd like to expand that a little bit more. I tried quinoa once, couldn't stand it, so we need to give that a second try. And bulgur and tabbouleh. So to eat more grains in 2020, I may be late to that party, but I'm definitely getting on board.

Dan:
Lots of great resolutions. Thank you. And a big plus one to Dave in Indianapolis because spicy chili crisp is incredible. I keep a jar of it at my desk and a jar of it in my refrigerator at all times, and especially love it on roast broccoli. I love a spicy chili crisp and peanut butter sandwich. Fantastic. And I have heard that it is a thing to put it on vanilla ice cream, although I have not tried it yet.

Dan:
Now moving on, we have a couple of criteria that we use to pick this episode that we feature at the end of the year. First of all, we don't want to pick one from just the last couple of months that you might've just heard, so it's going to be from earlier in the year. And we'd like to pick one that maybe might've been overlooked or misunderstood. And this year that was a pretty easy decision because I want to share with you the episode that we released on April 1, 2019.

Dan:
Yes, this was an April Fools' Day release. many of you thought it was hilarious, some of you thought it was infuriating. And I think that what happened was that a lot of you, even if you realized it was a joke halfway through, you kind of like were still unsure and weren't able to fully appreciate the humor. Janie, my wife, listened to this episode three times and she said that the first one, she wasn't so sure it was a joke. She said the second and third time it got funnier and funnier. She thought it was like the funniest thing we've ever done, once you realized that the entire thing is a giant joke. It is a satire of health and wellness culture and I want you to be able to enjoy it the same way that Janie enjoyed it, knowing from the beginning that the whole thing is a joke.

Dan:
While we're here in your house, Jolenta, can you show me around a little?

Jolenta:
Yes, yes, of course.

Dan:
This is my friend Jolenta Gold. She's a health and wellness blogger. Recently we met up in her townhouse in Manhattan.

Jolenta:
Right here in my kitchen. You'll see my fabulous avocado cupboard.

Dan:
Very nice.

Jolenta:
Just full of avocados for all my various—

Dan:
Oh, wow. And you've got like a little divot, along the shelf is a little row of divots so it all kind of stands up.

Jolenta:
It's like that compartment in your refrigerator that's built for individual eggs. You can take them out of cartons, stick them right in there. That's what this whole cupboard is, just for avocados.

Dan:
Wow and they're all at different levels of ripeness too. That's genius.

Jolenta:
Yeah. As you can see, up at the top we're not quite ripe yet. And then we rotate them down as they become ready to eat.

Dan:
And by "we" you mean...?

Jolenta:
Oh, I mean my staff.

Dan:
Got it. Got it.

Jolenta:
But I supervise it all. I just don't necessarily physically do it.

Dan:
If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know that I've never been Mr. Health and Wellness Guy. That's just not what this show has ever been about. But I've gotta be honest, when I hit 40 I just started not feeling as good. My body didn't bounce back as quickly, my joints were aching, so I decided to start a journey to change the way I eat, really to change my whole lifestyle. I figured it would be an experiment, so I didn't say anything here on the show because I wasn't sure it would stick. But now I'm a few months in and I gotta say, it's going really well. And part of the reason why it's going so well is that I've been inspired by some incredible people, namely the three people I'm going to introduce you to in this week's show. Beginning with Jolenta.

Jolanta:
I had to change my whole relationship to food. It's not my friend, it's not going to hang out with me when I'm lonely, Dan. It is my fuel.

Dan:
As I said, Jolenta is a health and wellness blogger. She's also a public speaker and an influencer. I decided to attend one of her seminars and I just found her enthusiasm to be contagious, so I'm excited to share her passion with you today. But when we spoke recently, I was also excited to hear the story of her journey.

Jolenta:
Growing up I always thought wellness sort of just came naturally to me. I was always on the thinner side, I always played a sport or two in school. I just always had that under control and never really thought about what I was putting into my body.

Dan:
Jolenta grew up on Manhattan's Upper East Side and went to Spence, a private all-girls school there. It's the same school Gwyneth Paltrow went to. When Jolenta got married, her parents bought her the $23 million townhouse next door, which is where we met up to talk.

Jolenta:
After I had my twins, they are going out all day with their two nannies, my husband's at work, and all of a sudden I'm at home with nothing to do. And I just start eating and eating and eating, and as I eat, Dan, I just get more and more depressed. I'm gaining weight. I wasn't even a good mother. The nannies would be like, "The kids are going to the pool," and I'd be like, "I can't go to the pool, I look like garbage, I'm going to sit in the dark with my bread and hate myself."

Dan:
Jolenta says things got worse and worse. She went from eating a whole bag of mini carrots to eating a whole bag of full-size carrots. Finally, she hit rock bottom.

Jolenta:
One night I was craving sugar. I found myself sneaking into one of my twins' backpacks, scrounging for those little natural fruit chews I give them, and I ate the entire pouch of one of my kids' fruit chews. And I was like, "Who am I?"

Dan:
And so when did things start to turn around for you?

Jolenta:
Well, I went to my doctor and she got me hooked up with a wonderful team: a nutritionist, a personal trainer, a life coach. And together we all realized I was putting horrible poison into my body. Turns out I learned my body is a machine, Dan, and I need to put premium, premium gas into that machine.

Dan:
So tell me about some of the different diets you've gone on.

Jolenta:
Well Dan, I'm going to stop you right there because I don't use the word diet. The D word is a dirty word. It's not a diet, Dan, it's a lifestyle. I had to change my whole lifestyle. I did South Beach, I tried the gazpacho cleanse, I even tried this strawberry seed cleanse. And you know that is surprisingly filling, but it is very time consuming to harvest all the actual seeds. My housekeeper was picking seeds out of strawberries for days.

Dan:
I have been experimenting with some cleanses too, but as I told Jolenta, I don't think I could ever totally give up all my favorite foods forever. And that didn't seem to be okay with her.

Jolenta:
You are what you eat. So do you want to be fast, cheap, processed, fake?

Dan:
What about Doritos?

Jolenta:
Those are heavily, heavily processed, Dan. I think you are teasing me with that question.

Dan:
No. I mean I know that they're not the healthiest—

Jolenta:
They are fast, they're easy, they're heavily processed. Do you want to be a Dorito?

Dan:
I mean they taste—

Jolenta:
Do you want to be an orange, dusty triangle that sits on a shelf? No. You want to be a life-giving avocado. Just the closer it is to nature, the better. And if there is a carbohydrate in it, get rid of it.

Dan:
So Jolenta, you said earlier that you don't like to use the D word.

Jolenta:
Right.

Dan:
Diet.

Jolenta:
No.

Dan:
Why don't you like that word?

Jolenta:
Well Dan, because there is no right body and I think a diet implies that I'm going to get you to this right shape, and right weight, and I am just all about being healthy.

Dan:
But it kind of seems like when you say healthy you really mean skinny.

Jolenta:
All bodies are beautiful, I accept everyone. I am a fat ally you could say. I just want everyone to also be healthy. I walk down the street, I see people eating sandwiches with large pieces of bread, I see people eating chips on the go and that's where the obesity epidemic comes from.

Dan:
Now, I mean I do want to ask you, you made a couple of references to your staff, the staff in your home, and also the doctors and nutritionists and all this. Let's be honest, not everybody is able to afford this kind of support for their eating.

Jolenta:
Right. Dan, this is something I am very, very passionate about. It is wellness for everyone and there are so many problems we come up against. There's bad diet advice, food deserts, gerrymandering, Me Too, Teapot Dome, Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania, JFK blown away. I mean, what else do I have to say?

Dan:
So before you go, let's bring it back to food. I want to do a lightning round where I say a cleanse, and you tell me what you think about it.

Jolenta:
Great.

Dan:
First up, the master cleanse. That's when you have nothing but water, lemon juice, cayenne, and maple syrup.

Jolenta:
Energizing. It is such an energizing cleanse. You get so many electrolytes, it feels like you're on a runner's high all day long. It's amazing.

Dan:
The goat milk cleanse.

Jolenta:
Well that one really helped with my... situation.

Dan:
I tried one called the green apple, bad apple cleanse. Have you heard about that?

Jolenta:
No.

Dan:
You begin every day with 10 green apples.

Jolenta:
I like it.

Dan:
You pick up the first green apple and you need to stare at it and you think about everything, every toxin inside of you. Not just food-related toxins, but I'm talking about anything that's making you—

Jolenta:
The air around you.

Dan:
Yes.

Jolenta:
This city is so dirty.

Dan:
Yes. Anything that's making you angry or anxious or depressed.

Jolenta:
Oh my gosh. Emotional toxins.

Dan:
Yes.

Jolenta:
So important, Dan.

Dan:
Yes. And so you just stare at that green apple and you need to focus on all that negativity, and then you scream at the apple.

Jolenta:
I love it.

Dan:
You release all that negativity into the apple—

Jolenta:
Yes, get it out.

Dan:
Right. And then you put that apple into the compost bin.

Jolenta:
Interesting, and earth-friendly. I like it.

Dan:
Right. Get rid of it. The second apple you eat.

Jolenta:
Wow.

Dan:
And you go back and forth—

Jolenta:
Sort of the clean slate thing.

Dan:
Right. And then over the course of the day, you start with your 10 apples, you go back and forth. You scream at an apple, you eat an apple, you scream at an apple, you eat an apple. And when you're out of apples, you're done eating for the day.

Jolenta:
That's beautiful. It's so cleansing inside and out, mentally, physically. Oh, you know what cleanse I've been really into, is the shiitake mushroom noodle cleanse. You know those shiitake mushroom noodles you can get?

Dan:
Okay. Yeah.

Jolenta:
They come in like this mushroomy water. You don't eat the noodles, you only drink the water they come in that you're supposed to discard before you cook the noodles. It really kickstarts your metabolism again.

Dan:
Right.

Jolenta:
Yeah.

Dan:
That sounds, that's very similar to the cleanse I'm on right now. The one I'm doing now, it's from the book French Women Don't Get Fat, but like French men are also pretty skinny. So I figured I'd give it a shot. But it begins with, you have to drink nothing but leek water for two days. That's like you boil leeks in water and then just drink the—

Jolenta:
Broth. Like broth.

Dan:
Right, and like so far so good. But actually hang on, I realize I haven't had lunch yet. Hang on one sec. [SLUUUUURP]

Jolenta:
Bon appetit.

Dan:
This is not enough food for me. That's Jolenta Gold. Her health and wellness blog, which focuses on the ketogenic lifestyle, is called Ke-Told You So. Coming up, our journey continues. I'll talk with an ultra-marathoner who's going to totally revolutionize the way we all think about smoothies. And we'll meet a yoga instructor in LA who's doing incredible things with turmeric. Then later I reveal my New Year's food resolution for 2020. Stick around.

Dan:
Welcome back to The Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman. In last week's show, I visit a very special restaurant where all the chefs are grandmas. The owner, Jody Scaravella, he opened this place after his grandmother, mother, and sister, all passed away within a few years of each other. Jody told me about auditioning potential chefs.

Jody:
Well, I put an ad in the Italian newspaper, in America Oggi and it said, "[ITALIAN]," which basically means we're looking for housewives to cook these regional dishes. So I invited all of these women to my home and they came with their husbands, and they came with their kids, and they came with their grandkids, and they came with the neighbors. And I had a house full of people with plates of food. It was like a Fellini movie. And that's how it was born.

Dan:
But after a few years, Jody made a big change in how he does things so that now his restaurant is even more unlike any you've ever heard of. Check out that episode to find out what that change was, and to hear me navigate the restaurant's holiday party, where 20 grandmas were all competing to feed me. That one's up now. Check it out. Okay, back to our very special, very ridiculous and satirical April Fools' episode.

Dan:
When I set out to change the way I eat, I knew that if I was really going to start to feel the difference, to feel better, I'd also have to exercise more. One day I was scrolling through Instagram and I came across a guy named Ian Bryan. Ian's an angel investor and ultra-marathoner. He's also into Tough Mudders. Those are like part run, part obstacle course. Ian posts these viral Instagram stories where he gives investment tips while crawling through mud and under barbed wire. So I started following him, and his videos always get me so pumped up, I knew I had to include him in this episode. When we spoke recently, the first thing I wanted to know is what's Ian training for? Right now?

Ian:
I have a 18-miler coming up. I'm doing that, actually it's the first part of a 30-miler. I have kind of a little finish line at 18 miles. And then do the remaining 12 miles.

Dan:
But so isn't that just a 30-miler then?

Ian:
Yeah, but wherever you put the finish line, that's an accomplishment and that's something for you to remember.

Dan:
Right.

Ian:
So what kind of runs are you— how long are you running?

Dan:
More like one or two... minutes.

Ian:
Okay. And how far does that get you?

Dan:
I mean, there's like a stop sign down at the end of my street.

Ian:
You as a runner, you don't need to pay attention to that sign. Even though it says stop, you can keep going.

Dan:
Right. Right. But usually by the time I get to that sign, I'm tired.

Ian:
Right. Right. Well, it's a process. Yes, I run 10 to 15 to 20 miles a day, but five miles a day is fine. I run five miles a day, several times a day.

Dan:
I mean look, hey, I love that you are so passionate about it. It's just, I'm just being honest, for me when I hear that it just sort of makes me feel like a running failure.

Ian:
When I first started I couldn't run five miles. I had to run six because five wasn't enough.

Dan:
Let's talk about food because this is a food podcast. What do you eat when you're going on one of these big runs? How do you manage your caloric intake? Because you must burn a lot of calories on one of these things.

Ian:
So I have a number of goos that you can get them in any flavor.

Dan:
These are like tubes of goo?

Ian:
It's repackaged cake frosting that somewhere on the packaging says the word "sport."

Dan:
Okay.

Ian:
So you can bring five or six of those depending on, you want to take one every four miles, maybe every five miles. In your case, maybe just sort of a constant feed into you.

Dan:
Okay. Got it. Maybe like I could get one of those helmets that they make with the two beer can holders and the straws that come down?

Ian:
It's an excellent idea. I mean, so they have vests and belts to which you can attach nutrition but then there is a lot of the body that hasn't been exploited yet.

Dan:
You mean like for carrying snacks?

Ian:
Think about... take a fruit leather, make it a bracelet.

Dan:
Right.

Ian:
Take two more fruit leathers, anklets. Wrap a wrap, a tortilla around your neck.

Dan:
I love tortillas. How do I know— like let's say I worked my way up to like a lot of miles running, how do I know if I have enough food with me?

Ian:
Well you want to eat before you're hungry and drink before you're thirsty.

Dan:
So you're saying like eat preemptively.

Ian:
Eat preemptively. Yes.

Dan:
That's actually great for me because that is something I already do.

Ian:
You've been doing it your whole life.

Dan:
That's right. I've been training, it turns out I guess, to be a runner, but I've been training by doing the eating part of being a runner, instead of the running part of being a runner.

Ian:
Yeah.

Dan:
So one of the things I'm so excited to talk with you about Ian is that you've taken all your experience running and doing all kinds of extreme exercise, and your experience with food and eating while running, and you've come up with something.

Ian:
Yes. SMUn.

Dan:
What? What?

Ian:
That's a smoothie brand, it's called SMUn.

Dan:
Smoo?

Ian:
SMUn. It's S-M-U-n, but the N is tiny.

Dan:
How do you say it?

Ian:
SMUn.

Dan:
SMUn.

Ian:
SMUn. So it's just spelled S-M-U with a tiny N.

Dan:
And so because it's smaller, you also say it smaller?

Ian:
Yeah. Yeah. You kind of pull back the throttle when you get to that part of the word.

Dan:
Got it. And so what is SMUn?

Ian:
SMUn.

Dan:
Right. Okay, so what is it?

Ian:
Well, I can't talk about everything, there's some non-disclosures. But we brought in a team from NASA, from other space agencies, using technology that could very well have been used to solve any number of the world's problems. Those kinds of minds pointing at this blender. They're using AI, they're using machine learning, they're using TI, A learning, jumbotrons. This blender is the Tinder of Uber.

Dan:
So I mean, Ian, I know some of it is proprietary, but you've got to tell me a little bit more about this product.

Ian:
Here's where we're coming from. When I'm out on an ultra-marathon or you're on your way to the stop sign, you need fuel, right? I am getting as much fuel into my body as I can, but my body has to do a lot of work digesting that and I want all of my body's effort to be going to my legs. So pre-digested food, what's the most pre-digested food? The smoothest food?

Dan:
Smoothies?

Ian:
Smoothies. Every smoothie you've ever had, what's wrong with it?

Dan:
It doesn't-

Ian:
It's not smooth enough. Could we make a smoothie smoother? We can make a smoothie smoother. SMUn.

Dan:
How did you get this business off the ground?

Ian:
Well first was the idea, and once I had the idea I opened up Microsoft Excel, made a spreadsheet, took that spreadsheet to Silicon Valley.

Dan:
And you've raised a lot of money on this thing now?

Ian:
So much.

Dan:
One of the things that I also love about your work, Ian, is that you're giving back, is obviously so important to you. You built like a charitable component into SMUn.

Ian:
So what we say is everybody deserves a smoothie, whether you want a smoothie or not. So when you buy a SMUn smoothie, we will give you another one that you can give to someone, whether or not they want it.

Dan:
So, when I buy, if I just want one smoothie and I don't want the extra charity smoothie that I would give to someone else, how much is that one smoothie?

Ian:
$12, standard price for our small.

Dan:
And then if I want to be able to give one to charity, how much does that cost?

Ian:
$24.

Dan:
Got it.

Ian:
But that $24 is only going to the first smoothie, the second smoothie is free.

Dan:
Wow. So Ian, where are you hoping to take SMUn?

Ian:
Well, I look around at the ultra-marathons I'm at, and even when I'm just walking down the street, and I see people eating and drinking all sorts of healthy foods, and I think, "Why are they not drinking the SMUn right now?" So it's a dream, but it's my dream, that within five years everything— every human being is eating is a SMUn smoothie.

Dan:
Like all caloric intake?

Ian:
All caloric intake.

Dan:
On the whole planet?

Ian:
Yes.

Dan:
Then you'll be able to determine who lives and dies?

Ian:
I mean that's I think the real value proposition. There's not a lot of companies out there on the market that can control the future of all life on earth. So I would love to see SMUn be acquired. I don't need it to be trillions of dollars, I just need it to be way, way more than it's worth. Like I said, it's a dream but it's my dream.

Dan:
That's Ian Bryan. He's the founder, CEO, and chief smoothie disruption officer of SMUn. So Ian is using the latest technology to create an all-new kind of food. What about the ingredients and traditions that people have been relying on for centuries? For that we turn to Jenny Miller. She's a yoga teacher and certified master herbalist in LA. You've heard of echinacea? Ginseng? Gingko biloba? No one was using any of those before Jenny discovered them. We'll get to how she and I met, but when I talked with her recently, the first thing I wanted to know was what herb is going to be the next hot new 1,000-year old trend.

Jenny:
There is an amazing Indian ginseng called ashwagandha. Have you heard of it, Dan?

Dan:
I mean, I've heard people talking about it, but I have no idea what it is.

Jenny:
I mean, it's basically like a knobby root. To be honest, it's really what cured my restless legs. I mean, I just could never Netflix and chill, I was always Netflixing and twitching.

Dan:
And so you're referring to ashwagandha as Indian ginseng?

Jenny:
Yeah, I kind of call it like Korean garlic.

Dan:
Oh, I thought that was Cambodian ginger.

Jenny:
No, it's Korean garlic.

Dan:
Jenny says ashwagandha is about to be everywhere. She's going to make sure of it.

Jenny:
You know, I don't even like the word influencer with a capital I, but I do know that when I post an Instagram story, things fly off the shelves. I really see that as my role, really amplifying and supporting ancient traditions that people have forgotten, but really have been the foundation to the health and wellness of Okinawan villagers who live to be 100.

Dan:
So I had never done yoga in my life and I was in LA a few weeks ago and, I'm trying to get healthier. I figured I would give it a shot and I walked into your yoga studio.

Jenny:
Yes, I loved it.

Dan:
Does that happen often to you? People just like walk into your studio?

Jenny:
Yeah, I think sometimes when you know you need some healing, people get called to my studio, it's very inviting.

Dan:
Right. That—

Jenny:
So I'm glad you liked it.

Dan:
Yeah, that's certainly how I felt. And so I didn't realize that I was walking into the advanced sweatshop yoga, what do you call that yoga?

Jenny:
Yeah, definitely. It's the advanced sweatshop yoga. What we do is we actually go a little higher than your regular hot yoga because I mean, let's just be honest, there is so much negativity in the world and so I decided we just want to take it to the next level. And so yeah, it's pretty hot in there.

Dan:
And so let's back up here a little bit, Jenny. Because I want people to hear your origin story. Okay?

Jenny:
Yes.

Dan:
I know you're not originally from LA. How did you come to be who you are today?

Jenny:
Oh my goodness. I love talking about my origin story. Well, I grew up in a little town outside of Indianapolis called Muncie. Shout out to Muncie.

Dan:
As a kid, Jenny had a bunch of health problems.

Jenny:
Migraine headaches.

Dan:
Social distortion.

Jenny:
Rosacea.

Dan:
Anthrax.

Jenny:
Irritable bowel.

Dan:
And mega-death, which, despite its name, turns out to be less serious than actual death. Jenny's parents took her to all different doctors who put her on all kinds of diets and medications. Nothing worked. Then Jenny had an epiphany that would change her life forever. She was in college at a keg party.

Jenny:
I know it's going to sound silly, but I was like smoking a blunt and it slipped out of my hand and it totally, I actually fell and I hit my head on the corner of a keg, and I totally got knocked out. I had this vision of myself floating in space above the Great Wall of China, Angkor Wat, a Shinto temple. I just thought to myself, "Oh my God, we're not even of our bodies, what is our body, our body anyway?"

Dan:
When Jenny came to, she was a yoga teacher. She got on the next plane to Los Angeles, which is where she discovered a dish called khichuri.

Jenny:
Khichuri is amazing. It is literally the thing that changed my life.

Dan:
It's like lentils and rice? It's a South Asian dish?

Jenny:
Yes, from the Indian subcontinent. And I mean, I even used to sneeze when I would get out into the sun. You know about this, right? Like how some people sneeze when they're in the sun?

Dan:
Yeah. My wife has that. Yeah.

Jenny:
Oh my God. Yeah. Who knew that khichuri with so much turmeric would work?

Dan:
So khichuri is lentils and rice and turmeric. Can we please just take a minute and talk about turmeric?

Jenny:
I literally have an altar for turmeric in my house. It is in the northeastern corner of my house; the feng shui is perfect. And this altar literally has piles of different types of food- and pharmaceutical-grade turmeric. It's how I make sure I stay focused and grounded about what really matters, and turmeric really drives my life.

Dan:
And I mean khichuri is like the hot dish in the wellness world right now, Jenny, and you discovered it.

Jenny:
Dan, I'm not really into the sort of competitive titles around being first or number one, but I did discover it first about five years ago.

Dan:
That experience discovering khichuri, that's what led you to open your yoga studio?

Jenny:
It is. I actually specialize in a form of yoga that I developed. It's both the extreme sweatshop yoga that you experienced, combined with khichuri. So what you basically do is while we go through our flow, we actually rotate each person in the group through a hot soaking tub of my special khichuri.

Dan:
And then at the end of a session who eats the khichuri?

Jenny:
Oh, we all take a taste of it.

Dan:
Oh, okay. So your studio has the sweatshop yoga, you're doing khichuri yoga, and now I understand you've also added baby yoga?

Jenny:
Yes. I mean you've seen the baby yoga and I think it's lovely for mothers and fathers to bond with their baby. But at my studio we actually do an intermediate level of baby yoga. Prior to starting your baby yoga session, we have all the babies swaddled in a injera-based wrap that Wakandan villagers have been using for centuries. It's really beautiful. It's soft and pillowy and you can eat it.

Dan:
Jenny, I gotta say, it seems like you're just sort of glomming onto a bunch of other cultures. Can you tell me a little more about how you've researched all this?

Jenny:
Oh gosh. I actually did tour a lot in Asia. I spent about two weeks in Tokyo, and on my way to Chiang Mai in Thailand, I did have a layover in Shanghai, which was lovely. It was the best 12 hours of my life. And I also then made it down to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is a tiny island just south of India and it really was beautiful: beaches and drinks and massages, a lot of massage therapy, I received a lot of massage therapy there. And I like to interact with the locals, especially when they're serving me my food.

Dan:
I mean, clearly traveling places to experience other cultures is better than not doing that, but is sitting on a beach in a resort really the best way to experience those cultures?

Jenny:
You know, we live in a really tough world nowadays and everyone is stressed out, everyone is depressed. I barely can check into the news without wanting to just fall apart. And so why can't we find a little liberation through eating a beautiful mix of quinoa and lentil with turmeric? Why can't we use that as our portal into wellness? When you go to a different ethnic hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Los Angeles, the dirtier the better. It gives you more of that authentic taste. Sometimes I even actually take my food and rub it on the floor just to make sure that I'm getting all of the microbes, because that's the closest thing that I can get to transporting myself to India or Vietnam. You want all of the microbes, and if you have those microbes in your neighborhood, why not eat all of it?

Dan:
That's Jenny Miller of Khichuri Yoga in Los Angeles. So I guess my journey continues and the thing I'm learning is that—

Jenny:
Everyone please plant your feet lightly on the floor. Take a deep breath in. Stop, now the rest. Dan, The Sporkful, I wish you peace and silence in your mind, body and bowel.

Dan:
We done?

Dan:
What a journey, what a destination. I feel so much better. Okay. Before we get to my new year's food resolution for 2020 let's hear a few more of yours.

Eric:
In 2020 I'm eating a hell of a lot more chickpeas.

Gretchen:
Hi Dan. This is Gretchen from Maui, Hawaii. My New Year's food resolution is to cook with fire as often as possible. We have a wood-fired oven out in the yard. I want to run it at least once a week. There's hardwood from our pasture. It can do so much more than pizza. I want to roast pork shoulder, bake a turkey, cook breadfruit, and try my hand at brisket. It's going to be a great year.

Hannah:
Hi Dan and The Sporkful. My name's Hannah, and in 2020 I resolve to eat more pretzels. I live in Chicago right now. I'm about to move to Philadelphia and there's lots of pretzels in Philadelphia. And a lot of people make fun of me for eating pretzels because they say that they're boring but I love them. So in 2020 I'm going to eat more pretzels.

Dan:
Thank you so much to everyone who sent in resolutions and to you, Hannah, don't ever let anyone tell you that it's weird to love pretzels. I assume you're talking about sort of soft-baked pretzels because you're talking about the sort of Pennsylvania Dutch and German traditions, and those are all great. Maybe there's not a huge variation in flavors, but there's a lot of variation in textures because you get the ones with like a big, doughy knot in the center. Then you've get some that are more long and skinny, so they're a little bit crustier. A lot of different ratios of surface area to volume in different pretzels. So it's really a wonderful world to explore and I wish you the best exploring it, Hannah.

Dan:
All right, so here we are, my friends. Before I get to reveal my resolution for the new year, let me report back to you. Last year I resolved to drink more tea. I said I wanted to cut back on coffee and caffeine. As we've learned on the show in the past, moderate caffeine consumption can make you feel good, but excessive caffeine consumption can result in irritability and anxiety, and I didn't need any more of those. So I said I'm going to cut back on coffee and caffeine, not eliminate, just cut back. And I am here to tell you that I did not do very well. In fact on my resolution to drink more tea, I'm giving myself a C+, lowest grade I think I've ever given myself on one of these resolutions. I started off well but I just need that good hard hit of caffeine that only strong coffee can provide. I think I'm a coffee guy at my core. And so tea remains something I enjoyed from time to time, but I really kind of failed or at least C-plused on last year's resolution.

Dan:
Onto this year. I was thinking of resolving to eat more fish because I live on Long Island, which is an actual island, and I have access to a lot of amazing fresh fish and I feel like I don't eat enough of it. But that felt a little bit like a generic resolution. I want to do better for you. This past summer it was tomato season, all the fresh tomatoes, had bunch of tomatoes in the house. I was preparing for a barbecue. I said, "What am I doing with all these tomatoes? I'm going to make a salad. Panzanella."

Dan:
It's a bread salad and that's with like croutons or stale bread and usually tomatoes, and then there's oil and vinegar and you can kind of throw whatever other vegetables you want in there, there's a million ways to do it. But I Googled and I found an Ina Garten recipe for panzanella. I decided to follow that recipe. In that recipe was something I had never had in panzanella before: capers. And the capers totally made this panzanella. They took the bread salad to a whole other level and it got me really excited about capers.

Dan:
I would eat things in restaurant that have capers, but I had never bought capers myself. I had never cooked with capers in my life before making this bread salad. And their acidity and the sharpness, kind of like the way they do a lot of what an olive does or what citrus does, but in a smaller way, that kind of spreads itself a little bit more discreetly throughout a dish. I just got very excited about. So I went out and I bought a bunch of capers, I bought like three or four different jars: different sizes and different types, to try them out. And now they've been sitting in my pantry. I have not done anything with capers in my house since that panzanella. Then my parents went to Sicily for this big vacation and my mom brought me back capers from Sicily. So now I've got an amazing array of capers in my house and I don't know what to do with them. So you can see where this is going. It is time for my New Year's food resolution. Drumroll please.

Dan:
In 2020, I resolve to eat more capers. What are capers? Well, according to Bon Appetit, capers are actually little flower buds, they're flowers. They come from a plant called the finder's rose, or the capers bush for the less creative. Capers are very bitter when eaten right off the bush so many, many generations ago, some genius decided to pickle them. And so that salty brine and some time mellows out the bitterness, and the brine essentially turns capers into little flavor bombs, "concentrated doses of salt and acid that can take ho-hum dishes to new heights." Here's the thing: I got all these capers, but outside of this panzanella and obviously, yes, fish I understand, like lemon, butter, capers on fish, that's a classic. But beyond that, what else can I do with all these capers? This is where you come in. I want you to post your favorite dish that involves capers, post it on social media, tag me, tell me: what should I do with all these capers?

Dan:
Well, there you have it, another year in the books. I want to thank you all so much for listening to this show and for engaging with our show, and for responding when you felt inspired to respond, and we'll talk to you again in January. In the meantime, subscribe to the podcast, connect on social media, do all the things. The things! So thank you and happy new year.

Dan:
This show is produced by me along with senior producer...

Emma:
Emma Morgenstern.

Dan:
And associate producer...

Ngofeen:
Ngofeen Mputubwele.

Dan:
Our editor is...

Tracey:
Tracey Samuelson.

Dan:
The show is mixed by...

Jared:
Jared O'Connell.

Dan:
Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Daisy Rosario. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

The Fryes:
And we're the Fryes from Abilene, Kansas. Reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.