Ep. 286: Chef Bailey Ruskus - The Ultimate Guide to Breaking Up With Dairy

Episode 286 • 30th January 2025 • PLANTSTRONG Podcast • Rip Esselstyn

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:00:00

I'm Rheb Esselstyn and you're listening to the Plan Strong podcast.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:00:05

If I hear one thing more than any other when it comes to taking on a whole food Plan Strong diet, it's that I think I can do this, but I just can't give up my cheese.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:00:24

Well, today we're gonna tell you how you can break up with dairy.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:00:30

And I'm talking about milk, butter, cream and yes, our beloved cheese, our dairy crack with Chef Bailey Ruskus right after this message from Plantstrong.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:02:51

If you're a regular listener of the Plan Strong podcast, then the name Chef Bailey Ruskus is not new to you.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:02:59

In fact, she's been a guest at two previous plant stocks and she's been a podcast guest when she released her first book, Cook, Heal, Go Vegan.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:03:11

This classically trained chef is back with a brand new book that hit shelves on February 11 and it is sure to be a bestseller.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:03:21

Breaking Up With Dairy tackles one of the hardest things for people with it comes to a whole food plant based diet.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:03:30

How in the world do you get rid of cheese, milk and butter, you ask?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:03:36

These ingredients are practically ubiquitous.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:03:39

Well, in this book, Chef BAE not only shares her own difficult and eye opening journey of how she broke up with dairy, but she also includes more than 100 of unbelievable plant based dairy recipes for all of your favorites such as milks, coffee, creamers and sauces to gourmet quality cheeses and even milkshakes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:04:06

This book is living proof that breaking up may be hard to do, but it is oh, oh so worth it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:04:17

And we want to do our best to help Chef BAE hit the New York Times bestseller list.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:04:21

And I would encourage you to pre order it today.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:04:25

I'll be sure to have a link on how to do that in today's show notes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:04:28

But for now, let's get rid of that nasty partner and learn how to break up with dairy.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:04:36

Chef BAE Bailey Ruskus, it is so great to have you back on the Plantstrong podcast.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:04:42

The last time that you joined me was after your book Cook, Heal, Go Vegan came out and you were number.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:04:51

For people that are interested, you can go back and listen to that episode.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:04:55

It was such a charming, great conversation that we had.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:04:59

It was episode 135 and then people probably that are part of the Plantstrong family know you because you've been so great at joining us at two of our plant stocks over the last last two years.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:16

But why I am bringing you back on the podcast is because you have just whipped up a really phenomenal book.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:26

I've read it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:27

It's incredible.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:28

Here she blows right here.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:29

Breaking up with dairy.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:31

100 indulgent plant based recipes for cheese and butter cream and milk lovers everywhere.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:41

Um, and this really is for everyone everywhere.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:47

So I can't wait to dive into this, this book with you.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:50

The you've.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:50

The forward is by none other than Carly Bodrug.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:53

She did a great job.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:55

Congratulations on getting Carly to do your forward.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:05:59

But let's just jump right in here.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:06:03

You say that dairy is the toxic, abusive and narcissistic boyfriend that you can't get away from.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:06:13

Yes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:06:14

Oh, why do you say that?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:06:17

And then how many years did it take you before you were actually able to break up with that narcissistic boyfriend?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:06:25

I mean, I feel like so many people can relate to that metaphor of dairy being, you know, that thing that you just can't get away from.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:06:32

And honestly, this book was really inspired by some of my toxic relationships with men in the past.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:06:38

Because it's rough out there dating sometimes.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:06:41

I'm married now, but yeah, it's rough out there.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:06:44

And honestly, when I was writing the book, one of my good girlfriends was going through a breakup with a very toxic man.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:06:51

And I got a lot of my inspiration from coaching her through this breakup.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:06:56

But yeah, dairy and cheese in general is just so addicting.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:06:59

And it's also in everything.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:01

Like, it's in so many processed foods, it's in so many foods and restaurants that it just doesn't need to be in.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:06

There's but butter on everything, I feel like.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:09

And so even when we make the best effort sometimes to get rid of dairy in our diet, it always just finds a way to kind of like sneak back into our lives whether we like it or not.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:20

So that's kind of where I got this idea from and also from my own personal experience where I had such a hard time breaking up with dairy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:28

You know, I had endometriosis, I had tummy problems, I had acne.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:33

I had all of these symptoms that are very common when you shouldn't be eating dairy, but you eat too much of it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:40

And I also really love cheese.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:41

And so my husband and I, who was my boyfriend at the time, had this running joke where I would still order the cheese boards out.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:48

And he'd be like, oh, you're gonna get the worst stomachache later.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:51

I'm like, it's okay.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:52

Like, I'll just deal with that when it comes.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:54

So, you know, it's really hard to give up.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:07:57

And I'm really, I have a lot of compassion for people who are trying to break up with dairy, but they just can't.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:08:03

And what I noticed from, you know, this whole thing started from a TikTok series.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:08:07

And I got millions of comments from people being like, this is my Roman Empire, like, why can I not get rid of cheese from my life?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:08:16

I'm so addicted to it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:08:18

And so that's kind of where this whole inspiration came from, because it's one of those things that we just can't get out of our lives no matter how badly we want to.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:08:26

And it really is.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:08:27

It's a relationship.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:08:28

A lot of us are in a.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:08:29

Deep relationship with cheese, specifically, a deep, abusive relationship.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:08:34

No doubt about it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:08:36

So what happened on TikTok that you did you do some posts about cheese being toxic and then you just got a lot of.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:08:45

A lot of attention from it?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:08:47

Yeah, I mean, it was kind of a whirlwind.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:08:49

So when my first book came out, Coquille Go Vegan, I was like, I'm gonna get on TikTok and talk about it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:08:54

And the first recipe that I posted was the Mac and cheese recipe from the first cookbook.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:09:00

And so I talked a lot about how breaking up with dairy really helped with bloating and a lot of my hormone issues that I was going through.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:09:06

And it went mega, mega viral, like, literally overnight.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:09:09

I woke up the next day.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:09:10

I had never go megaviral before, and I was overwhelmed with just so many comments, so many messages, so many people relating.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:09:17

And I was like, you know, I'm going to turn this into a series.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:09:19

Well, the series kind of took off and the Dairy Farmers association of America got a hold of the series and suddenly I was having threats from farmers from the Dairy Farmers Association.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:09:32

Like, it became like, what do you mean?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:09:33

Like, threats?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:09:34

Like how you mean on your Tick Tock thread or.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:09:37

Or in what way?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:09:38

Yeah, on my Tick Tock thread, they were coming into my email, people threatening me.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:09:41

Like, people saying that they're find where I live, that I'm spreading lies, that dairy is like the best thing for people.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:09:48

It was.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:09:49

time because I think it was a: 2021

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:09:54

So I was still just like a baby social media person, you know, Like, I wasn't ready for that.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:00

And so I kind of took the gas off of the Breaking up with Dairy series for a minute because I was like, I don't want to get sued by the dairy industry or these dairy farmers.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:09

Like, this is so crazy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:10

So.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:11

But then I kind of just Woke up one day and I was like, you know, whatever.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:13

I'm not going to let them.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:14

Silence.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:15

And then I just kept it going.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:16

And then one day I locked myself in my room and I wrote the book proposal for this thing.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:22

And within a month, I had the top publishers in the world bidding on it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:28

And everyone was like, yes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:10:30

So I'd like to talk about this just for a second, because, you know, you and I have both written books before, and we've gone through this process.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:38

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:10:39

So you lock yourself in a room, you wrote a book proposal.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:10:44

Was it like 25, 50 pages?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:10:47

Did it give kind of a nice outline of what you saw, your vision for the book?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:10:52

And then how did you.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:10:53

How did you go about soliciting it out to these publishing houses?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:10:56

Did you have a literary agent that helped you with that?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:58

Yes.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:10:59

So Carly, the author of Planting and Scrappy Cooking, she's one of my good friends, and so she kind of, like, has been a good mentor and also just sounding board for me through just, you know, all of this stuff.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:11:10

And so she actually connected me with her literary agent, which was really amazing of her, and I'm so grateful for her for that.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:11:17

And, yeah, I basically just, you know, a book proposal is essentially a book, a business breakdown.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:11:24

Like, how are you going to sell the book?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:11:25

Why is this book necessary?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:11:27

What are the stats and statistics of why people need this book?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:11:31

And when you really go into it, you can really see how, you know, 68% of all people are lactose intolerant.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:11:38

And more than that, chronic illness is such a thing now.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:11:42

It's like everyone, you know, is dealing with some sort of chronic something, whether it's tummy issues or acne or high blood pressure or endometriosis or period problems.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:11:51

Like, everyone's dealing with something.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:11:52

And a lot of that has to do with our food industry.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:11:54

And so when I was writing the book proposal, it was just like an obvious, like, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:00

You know, all the points of why this book needs to be written.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:03

And it was essentially like a business proposal.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:06

And so you write the business proposal, you send it to a litter agent.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:09

Wendy, my amazing literary agent, she loved it and was like, let sell this like, tomorrow.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:12:14

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:15

And so, yeah, we just had.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:16

All the publishers were like, this book is needed in the field.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:19

There hasn't been a book necessarily like this.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:21

I think, you know, cookbooks can be serious sometimes, and this book is about a very serious topic, but it's fun and funny and sarcastic.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:31

And I really wrote it for the younger generation to really be able to connect back to like, cooking and connect back to, really to learn about the dairy industry.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:39

Because I don't think a lot of people know about, you know, the dairy checkoff program.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:43

I don't think a lot of people know about the fact that we actually don't need dairy to survive.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:47

Or, you know, it's this false, this false thing that we've been sold that we need dairy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:52

You know, we don't.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:52

We need dairy when we're infants from our moms, and that's it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:56

So.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:12:57

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:13:01

Well, what's interesting to me is that you landed with the publishing house that I used to use for every one of my books, which is Grand Central, which is a division of Hachette, and you've even, you even work with the same PR person that I did back in the day with my first book, and that's a guy named Matthew Ballast, which is a crazy, crazy, crazy small world.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:13:24

I know, it's so exciting.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:13:25

I love it though, because I feel like, you know, when you're surrounded by good people, the, the community just ends up growing with like minded individuals who want to make things better and change the world.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:13:37

And I think sometimes I feel ridiculous for saying, like, I want to change the world, I want to change the food industry.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:13:43

But then I look at people like you and I look at people like Carly, and I look at people who are in my circle and I'm like, we are liter changing the food industry and it might be moving slower than we would want and we might be going up against crazy social media culture like the carnivore diet and the raw milk trend.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:13:59

But I think at the end of the day, like, if all of us can stay true to what we're doing and keep moving that needle and keep stepping forward, I think we will be able to be the change and see the change that we want to see and really be able to connect with people.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:14:13

Because at the end of the day, people are on social media, in wellness culture, just wanting to feel better.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:14:19

And I think if we can touch them and show them that you can do this in a way that's good for you, but also good for the planet and the cows and the goats and the sheep, then it's kind of like a win, win, win.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:14:30

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:14:31

No.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:14:31

Bravo, bravo.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:14:34

And everybody listening knows this, you know this, but I think it bears repeating, and that is that, you know, we are the, the wealth, one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest country on the planet.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:14:46

We now spend more than any other country on the planet on our per person on healthcare costs per year.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:14:55

And we are also the sickest and the most overweight country.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:14:58

And so much of it is, I would say 90% of it is because what we're putting into our mouths.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:15:05

Yes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:15:05

And one of the big culprits is everything you talk about in your book.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:15:09

It's, it's, it's dairy.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:15:11

And whatever form that dairy happens to be in, whether it's milk, whether it's cheese, whether it's yogurt, I want to get it, get into that and your, your yummy, yummy recipes too.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:15:22

But tell me, you had the endometriosis, you had all kinds of trips to the hospital, you ended up having surgery.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:15:30

Do you feel like a large portion of that was because of your love affair with dairy?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:15:36

Yeah, unfortunately.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:15:38

I mean, yeah, it was, that was like one of the hardest things for me to really face.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:15:42

And I think a lot of people have that same, you know, come to whatever you believe in moment where it's like when you don't feel well or you have a chronic illness.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:15:52

Most of the time in the doctor's office, no one talks about diet, they just don't.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:15:57

And so a lot of, you know, being your own health advocate has to do with your own self discovery and doing research and really being able to look at things from a third point of view and not, not necessarily looking at specific wellness trends that allow you to still eat what you're eating now, but to really look at the facts of what you're putting in your body, where that's coming from, what the industry is doing and how that's affecting yourself as a whole.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:16:23

And for me, it was a really hard thing to realize.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:16:27

I mean, not only just because I love cheese, but I'm also a classically French trained chef.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:16:32

My entire, my entire career was built on animal products.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:16:35

Like, my grandfather was a butcher.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:16:37

He was a chef.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:16:38

I worked in butchery.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:16:39

Like I can't even imagine this part of my life at this point, but I worked in butchery.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:16:44

When I was in culinary school, I was like all into cheese making.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:16:47

I traveled the world.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:16:48

I like taught people how to catch fish and like I did had this whole other life.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:16:53

And so when I was really looking at my own chronic illness and I was looking at how much suffering I was going through, I was really appointing that to all the other suffering that's going on within the animal agriculture industry.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:17:05

And that was such a hard pill for me to swallow because it was really opening my eyes and allowing myself to see what was going on.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:17:12

And Relaying how it was causing my suffering as well.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:17:16

But then there's that second point where it's actually making that change, where it's actually taking that step and making the change, not just being aware, but really being like, how can I make this change for myself?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:17:29

And that is the hardest part, because we live in a society that is engorged in cheese.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:17:36

Engorged.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:17:37

What a great word to describe that.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:17:39

And you're right.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:17:40

I mean, let's say that you decide, yeah, okay, I'm going to give up dairy products.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:17:46

They're so absolutely ubiquitous in this culture that it's a pretty.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:17:55

This is a little strong, but it's a pretty Herculean task to really give it up.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:18:01

And you, in your book, you talk about the five stages of breaking up.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:18:05

So I think this is maybe an appropriate time that we can go through these.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:18:09

So what is the first stage?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:18:11

Yeah, so I've got my book right here, just in case, you know.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:18:14

And by the way, Rip, you're the first person to ever receive a copy other than me.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:18:19

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:18:19

So we're in the VIP club right now.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:18:21

Good, good.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:18:23

So the first stage is denial.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:18:25

And denial is a phase that is just so comfortable because when we're in denial, we don't have to educate, we don't have to dig deeper, we don't have to get uncomfortable because we're in denial.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:18:38

It's comfortable being in denial.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:18:40

And that's a big place where most people are in when it comes to the awareness of our current state of health and our current state of animal agriculture is denial.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:18:51

So that's stage one.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:18:52

Getting mass denial is stage one.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:18:54

And I think that's the hardest part really, like, is really opening your eyes and seeing everything for what it is.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:19:03

And in for denial.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:19:07

You interviewed Neil Barnard, right.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:19:09

The author?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:19:10

I mean, obviously we know Neil runs PCRM.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:19:13

He also is the author of probably 20 different books.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:19:17

One of them was the Cheese Trap.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:19:19

Yes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:19:19

Right.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:19:20

And so he knows a lot about cheese.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:19:22

He really does.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:19:23

I was.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:19:23

We talked for a couple hours when I interviewed him.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:19:26

And like this, he was just dropping facts and figures for two hours.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:19:30

And I was like, writing as quick as I could.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:19:32

But yeah, I'm.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:19:33

He's a wealth of information.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:19:34

And also he's so passionate about it too, which just kind of, yeah, fueled me up a little bit.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:19:39

But, yeah, he was amazing to interview and he gave me so much inspiration and kind of just, yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:19:44

Permission to almost to write this book because it's, you know, it's kind of scary to go against one of the biggest industries in the entire world.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:19:52

You know, writing a book and talking about, like, going against the norm, going against that industry, going against an industry that is very deep in government corruption as well.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:20:00

So.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:20:01

Yeah, so that's, that's denial.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:20:03

And I had some help with that.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:20:05

Well, this is Bay versus Goliath right here, you know.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:20:11

Well, let me ask you before we go on to the next.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:20:13

To phase, the next stage, I want to.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:20:17

So you talk about some, some things that are entrenched right now in this culture.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:20:23

And, and I didn't.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:20:24

I don't know everything about them, so I'd love for you to maybe riff on some of this stuff.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:20:28

So what's, what is the dairy checkoff program?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:20:30

I don't know what that is.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:20:32

So the dairy checkoff program is essentially a program that allows for government subsidies for the dairy industry.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:20:39

And it's essentially it's.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:20:41

It's exactly what it sound like.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:20:43

Okay, how can we get dairy into as many places as humanly possible to get people as addicted to dairy as humanly possible?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:20:51

So I'm talking schools, retirement communities, low income communities, all the things, food stamps, fast food programs, everything.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:21:01

So that's the dairy checkoff program.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:21:02

A lot of times when you see these advertisements that are like, this is the triple double cheeseburger with, with cheese on the bun and cheese on the lettuce.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:21:11

Like, you see cheese everywhere.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:21:13

That's the dairy checkoff program.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:21:14

Those are people within the government telling these fast food companies that they need to sell more cheese and they don't care how they do it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:21:22

But this is, you know, it's.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:21:23

And then it's all figured out in an advertising meeting.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:21:25

How are we going to get six more slices of cheese on every single burger so that we can get people eating more cheese?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:21:32

And are they, are they, are they getting the cheese for a, like a fraction of the cost?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:21:39

Yes, because of all the subsidies and everything.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:21:41

Exactly.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:21:42

So it's kind of like it makes dairy seem like it's so much cheaper than it actually is, you know, And I feel that same way with meat, too.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:21:51

There's so many meat subsidies as well.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:21:52

Like, if we were to actually see the cost of what it takes to produce beef and dairy, I mean, those two things are the same industry, right?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:22:00

Like a dairy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:22:00

Cows go to get slaughtered to become beef.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:22:03

So if we actually saw the real cost of that, how much water it took, how much grain it took, like paying the agriculture workers, beef and dairy would be so much more expensive and people would be eating so much Less of it if it weren't for these subsidies.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:22:18

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:22:19

And the reason why we have all these subsidies is because of the huge lying forces that are behind them as well.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:22:27

And the misinformation.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:22:28

That's real.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:22:29

Yes.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:22:29

There are literal people's entire jobs that are lobbyers, and they also, their entire jobs are thinking about how they can get people more hooked on dairy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:22:38

So think of the tobacco lobby, where they're trying to figure out how they can get, you know, as anyone and everyone smoking cigarettes.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:22:46

It's kind of the same thing, but just with dairy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:22:48

And it doesn't feel as dirty or as bad as the tobacco lobby, but it literally is.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:22:55

They're thinking, if you think about it, dairy is the only advertisement that is allowed in public schools.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:23:03

Why is that?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:23:05

So you want to get these kids hooked on dairy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:23:08

And not only that, you've seen autoimmune diseases, asthma, endometriosis, all skyrocket in young kids because of dairy periods.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:23:16

Girls are getting their periods at like nine years old now.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:23:20

Like, why is that happening, you know?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:23:22

Type 2 diabetes.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:23:24

Type 2 diabetes.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:23:25

Exactly.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:23:26

Or actually, actually, I'm sorry, type 2 diabetes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:23:28

But in, in children in type 1 diabetes, it's the milk that actually is a contributor to that.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:23:39

What about you?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:23:42

Talk about late stage capitalism.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:23:45

What do you mean by that exactly?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:23:48

Well, I mean, if you think about it, we're just consumers.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:23:52

That's all we are to the government.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:23:54

You know, we're just consumers.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:23:55

So we are in late stage capitalism right now, where, I mean, everything, everyone's just trying to make money off of us.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:01

Corporations rule the world, corporations rule the government.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:04

And one of the biggest, baddest corporations is the dairy industry.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:07

Big dairy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:09

And you know, late stage capitalism is essentially, we feel like we have no control.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:14

Right.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:14

We feel like these corporations are winning.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:17

They're taking everything from us, which in a way they are.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:20

But in a way, we're also paying them.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:22

You know, we're funding this.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:25

So as much as it feels like we're out of control of this, there is so much power in numbers.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:31

And if we stop spending our money on these things, if we stop spending our money on things like milk and cheese and whatever and letting these silly food trends take over, we stop spending our money on this, then we'll actually see a dent in the dairy industry.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:47

And maybe these corporations will change what they're doing, because at the end of the day, all they want to do is make money.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:24:51

They don't really care how they do it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:24:53

Yeah, yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:24:54

Before we move on to stage Two, which is bargaining.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:24:57

I got one.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:24:58

One more point that you address.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:25:01

That.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:25:01

That I want to talk about, and that is that.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:25:04

And I just want to drive this home to people because it's so obvious, but yet we somehow.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:25:10

Yeah, we forget it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:25:12

And that is.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:25:12

Milk is for babies, period.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:25:18

Period.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:25:19

Exactly.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:25:20

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:25:21

So when we're babies, you know, a couple things happen.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:25:24

We have an enzyme that allows us to digest milk, but also, you know, it's.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:25:32

It's part of our makeup to.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:25:34

When we get that milk, when we latch onto our moms, we're safe.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:25:37

We're like, okay, we're safe, we're comfortable, we're getting happy hormones.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:25:41

Everything's going to be cool.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:25:42

As a baby, you have no control over anything.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:25:44

Like you.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:25:46

You eat and you sleep, and that's pretty much all you do.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:25:49

And so when you get that milk, it's like the most comforting, beautiful thing ever.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:25:55

So what the dairy industry has done is they have learned how to capitalize on that vulnerable, comfortable feeling that we all had when we were young.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:04

And they want us to be addicted to that feeling until we literally die, which is just crazy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:10

You know, if you think about it, we are the.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:12

The only animal that drinks breast milk from another animal past infancy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:19

It's weird.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:26:21

It sure is weird.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:23

It's just weird if you think about it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:25

And we don't think about it like that often, but like, I don't know, it's weird.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:29

Why would.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:26:30

Yeah, yeah, very much so.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:26:33

I mean, if you're really after a high protein mammalian milk secretion, then you want to have rat's milk, which is 51 protein.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:43

Really?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:26:44

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:26:44

There you go.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:45

Delicious.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:26:48

Put that on my cereal.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:49

It's also the idea, too.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:51

It's such a good point.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:52

Because it's also the idea too, that, like, we've been marketed that the only milk that's normal to drink for humans is cows, goats and sheep.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:26:58

Yeah, but why is that?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:27:00

It's just like some weird cultural habituation.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:04

That's what it is.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:27:05

It is.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:27:06

Like we've been marketed and like, cows are just this thing that they're only meant for our.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:27:11

Our use and abuse.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:27:12

Right.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:27:13

We don't think about.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:27:14

But dogs, dogs are just supposed to be loved, but not the cows.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:27:17

You know, it's kind of weird how we have this.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:20

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:27:20

Cultural specifics, you know.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:22

Well, you know what?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:24

Well, you know what's even wild is that in the UK they, they tried actually selling mother's breast milk.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:34

Right.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:35

To consumers.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:36

Because, you know, if we're going to be Drinking any kind of milk.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:39

Why not drink breast milk?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:40

Right?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:41

Yeah, human breast milk.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:42

And people were so grossed out by it that it didn't move at all.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:27:47

But it's, you know, it's like, again, we're so habituated into thinking that cow's milk, Goat milk.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:27:53

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:27:55

And I think, like, to another point, milk is for babies.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:27:58

You know, the dedication of my book is to the mama cows.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:02

And I think we forget that mother cows make.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:08

Cows make milk because they're moms, not because they're dairy cows.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:13

So the whole system is just so horrible in the sense of, like, we're using and abusing these moms.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:20

We're forcibly impregnating them.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:22

We are milking them while they're pregnant.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:25

They have their baby.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:26

We take their baby from them, and then we hook them up to machines and take their milk for us, for ourselves instead.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:32

That entire cycle goes on and on and on and on for these cows.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:37

So a lot of these cows can have, like, 10 to 15 babies in their lifetime.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:43

They're pregnant for nine months, just like us.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:45

And those babies are taken from them every single time.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:48

And if it's a boy, either that baby gets shipped to become livestock or it gets slaughtered for veal.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:54

And if it's a girl, then it goes through the same fate, becoming a dairy cow.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:28:59

And the most horrible part about all of this is at the end of it, when these dairy cows are so exhausted from this cycle of abuse, they collapse, and then they, too, are shipped off for slaughter.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:29:09

And the entire thing is just so disrespectful to the animals themselves.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:29:13

And we forget.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:29:15

We forget that these are literal mothers that we're taking advantage of and we're taking their babies from them so that we can drink their milk instead.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:29:23

And that when I learned about that, I was like, okay, I don't need cheese anymore.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:29:28

I'm done.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:29:29

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:29:30

No, it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:29:31

It's horrific.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:29:33

I want to read your dedication because I think it's beautiful.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:29:36

This book is for the voiceless, for the mamas and their babies, because it's important to remember that cows don't make milk because they're cows.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:29:45

They make milk because they're mothers.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:29:48

That's really good.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:29:52

So stage two is bargaining.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:29:54

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:29:56

That's what we all do with everything.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:29:58

It's the pros and cons list.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:00

And I was really honest with the pro and con list.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:03

We all like dairy because it's delicious.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:05

It's creamy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:06

It's cachio e pepe.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:08

It's your favorite cupcake.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:09

And all these things that we love so much.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:12

And so bargaining is really being like, but I like it, you know, But.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:16

But.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:16

But how bad could it be if I like it so much and it brings me so much joy?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:20

And so in this page is really a full breakdown of the pros and cons list and what the pros are of eating dairy, which is like, you know, it's delicious.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:30

It's easily accessible thanks to the dairy checkoff program.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:33

It's affordable thanks to the dairy checkoff program.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:35

It's part of our cultural food.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:38

All those things are very valid.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:39

All of those things are very valid things that consumers deal with every single day.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:43

And I wanted to put that in there because I'm definitely not discounting everyone.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:47

Personal experience, I think that's so important.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:50

But then we have our cons list, which is way bigger than the pros, and I think that alone is something to look at.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:30:56

But, you know, just looking at how the dairy industry pollutes a lot of our clean water sources, how, you know, we take a lot of the grain that's grown to, like, feed this livestock that is also monocropped and sprayed with so much glyphosate.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:31:09

You know, there's so many things can put you at a higher risk for breast cancer, prostate cancer, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, like, painful periods.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:31:18

There's so, so many cons.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:31:20

I could literally go on and on and on, but that would make this podcast, like, three hours long.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:25

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:26

I think what's also important, and, you know, you.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:29

You say how one of the cons is.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:30

And I say this all the time.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:32

The number one source of saturated fat in the American diet is cheese.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:31:36

Exactly.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:36

And I don't think.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:37

I don't think most people realize that.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:31:40

People are eating a pound of cheese a week on average.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:43

Right.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:44

So, like, 52 pounds a year.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:31:46

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:47

And, you know, about 50 years ago, we were eating five pounds of cheese per person per year.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:31:53

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:31:53

And we can thank the dairy checkoff program for that.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:56

Yeah, yeah, check off.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:58

All right, let's move on.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:31:59

So stage three is anger.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:03

We're so angry.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:06

And I mean, honestly, the anger is Move through.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:32:09

How do I move through anger?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:10

I think moving through anger is just letting yourself feel it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:13

It, like, let yourself be really upset.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:15

I think, you know, there's this.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:16

This thing that, you know, people think about vegans, and they think, oh, just the angry vegans.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:21

And I think a lot of new vegans are angry because they're finally just allowing themselves to see what's really going on in the animal agriculture industry.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:29

It Makes you angry, it makes you angry at yourself, it makes you angry at the system, it makes you angry at our government.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:34

It makes you angry at everybody.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:36

And you just have nowhere to put that anger.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:38

You have nowhere to kind of of some.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:39

Suddenly you find yourself online, like, commenting back to people, and I feel like that's.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:44

In general, that's not what we should be doing to fuel our anger.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:47

But I understand where people are coming from when they are angry, when they find out about what's going on.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:51

But I think, you know, feel your angry, Feel your anger.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:55

Punch a pillow, do what you got to do.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:58

Talk to people about it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:32:59

Find someone that's angry, too, so you can have someone to bounce off with.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:33:03

But then fuel that anger into action.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:33:06

Right?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:33:07

Pick something that feels accessible to you, whether it's just changing your own life, changing your own diet, or volunteering or reading or learning or having conversations, listening to podcasts, whatever you're going to do, find your community and put that anger into actionable steps.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:33:22

So for me, this is my action, this cookbook.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:33:27

Now I'm fueling my anger.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:33:29

Okay, good.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:33:30

Well, you've done a great job fueling that action.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:33:36

What about how do we move through stage four, which is depression?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:33:41

Yeah, I mean, I think it's all time, you know, and being consistent with yourself.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:33:48

So the problem with the five stages of grief, the five stages of breaking up, is if you don't allow yourself to really move through every single step, you're going to feel like a pinball going back and forth.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:33:59

So if you find out all these things you go through, you know, you're not in denial anymore.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:34:04

You really understand what's going on, but you're not, like, giving yourself actionable steps to actually follow through with.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:34:11

If you're not being accountable to yourself and actually doing the thing, actually breaking up with dairy, actually doing these commitments that you've had for yourself, you're going to bounce back and forth from anger and depression forever because you're never going to actually move through it onto the next step, which is actually feeling better, figuring out life after dairy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:34:30

You know, it's like with any brain breakup, if you keep going back to that guy, you know, you're gonna keep breaking up, he's gonna keep treating you the same way, you know, and people show you who they are, believe them.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:34:42

So it's like if you keep denying yourself that freedom away from that relationship, you're gonna stay depressed, you're gonna stay angry, and you're gonna bounce back and forth.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:34:51

So I think in order to get out of that.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:34:53

You got to commit to yourself and just go for it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:34:58

Well, let me ask you this.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:34:59

So you talk about going, you know, back and forth like a pinball.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:35:03

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:35:04

Did you say that happened to you?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:35:05

Like, did you a number of times tell yourself, okay, I'm done with dairy, because I don't want.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:35:11

I don't want another trip to the hospital.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:35:13

I don't like this.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:35:14

The acne.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:35:14

I don't like these harsh periods.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:35:17

And were you able to make the connection with dairy, but just not have the.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:35:23

Not have the fortitude or whatever you want to call it to move through the five stages and stop the pinball process?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:35:31

Yeah, it took me about a year back and forth for.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:35:35

Yeah, it took me a long time.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:35:37

And then I had a really bad surgery, and after that, I was like, okay, I'm over it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:35:41

And they're like, nothing can.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:35:43

Literally nothing can convince me of anything other than just eating plants and being as clean as I can and moving my body and just trying to move forward the best possible way I know how.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:35:53

Because at the end of the day, a lot of times, we know what.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:35:56

We know what we're doing wrong or we know what we're doing that's hurting ourselves.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:01

And sometimes we just have to have.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:04

Most of the time, you know, I've worked with thousands of people, helping them change their food or helping them learn how to cook or whatever.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:10

And a lot of times, people only change when their back is against the wall, unfortunately.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:14

And for me, my back was against.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:15

Against the wall, and I was.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:16

I had to make a change.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:17

And so that's really what it did for me.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:20

And it kind of made me realize that I wish I had done it sooner, because maybe I wouldn't have gone through so much medical trauma.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:27

I wouldn't have, you know, which I still am dealing with, you know, PTSD from having medical trauma, having endometriosis.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:35

And I think, you know, we don't have to go that far.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:38

We don't have to go that deep.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:40

We can change before, you know, things get really hard.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:36:45

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:36:46

Well, I think that everything you've described here, it's also applicable to.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:36:52

To.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:36:53

To Big Meat.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:36:54

Right?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:36:54

Totally.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:36:56

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:36:57

What a great blueprint.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:36:59

So stage five is acceptance.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:37:01

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:37:02

Right.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:37:03

Hallelujah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:37:04

Relief.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:37:06

Yeah, relief.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:37:08

And now, what is it time for now?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:37:10

Is it time to reset?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:37:11

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:37:12

Find community.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:37:13

Reset.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:37:14

Acceptance is just.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:37:15

It's more of that, like, soft, feminine energy of just like, okay, like, this is where we are, and let's keep moving forward, you know, like, it's Hard to accept when you really learn about stuff that's happening in the world.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:37:28

I mean, in general, we're living in a really crazy time to be alive right now.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:37:31

Like, everything just feels really crazy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:37:33

Every day I'll open my phone with one eye, like, what happened today?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:37:36

You know, And I think if we can just have acceptance for the things that we can control and have acceptance for, you know, what's going on and trying to move forward in a way that it could be, you know, surrounding yourself with people who think like you or surrounding yourself with people who make you feel seen and heard and who allow you to make the changes that you want to make.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:37:58

Or, you know, could be having a new morning routine or things like that, like taking those little steps.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:04

Because once you're in acceptance, then you can move forward.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:07

That's why I put this before all the recipes because I think it's really important to go through a lot of these things before you dive in and change all your pantry items and buy a new Vitamix and do all the things.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:16

Because sometimes you have to feel all your feelings before you can take those actionable steps.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:22

Sometimes people do it all at once.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:23

But I do think it's important to go through this.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:26

And then you're like, okay, I've got fuel, I've got energy, I have motivation.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:31

And that's when you kind of start cooking.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:33

That's when you can get into it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:34

That's when you can change how you drink your coffee in the morning.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:38

That's when you call restaurants ahead of time to see if they've got options for you.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:42

That's when you become the person who books all the reservations for your friend group.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:46

So that's kind of what acceptance is all about.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:38:49

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:38:50

And you have all these fun photos, like, there you are.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:38:54

This is with the right across from acceptance.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:38:57

But where did you get this outfit?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:38:59

Oh, my God.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:03

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:04

So I had this idea.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:05

So that was my idea for the COVID initially is I wanted to be in like a milkman outfit.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:09

I don't know.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:09

I found the bow tie and the hat online and then I found the white jumpsuit.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:14

And I was like, I just want to be like the new age milk woman.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:17

Like, we're doing dairy free milk only.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:39:20

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:20

So that was kind of my.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:22

My inspo.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:23

It didn't quite make the COVID but I think.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:24

Think it's perfect for the beginning chapters.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:39:28

I do too.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:39:28

The f.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:39:29

And let me tell you, the.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:39:31

The photography in this book is absolutely so brilliant.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:39:36

Did you hire a photographer to do.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:38

All this so it was just me and Steve, my husband.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:42

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:43

So we.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:44

So when we got the book deal, we were living in a super tiny two bedroom beach apartment.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:49

We live in San Diego.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:50

We were like two blocks from the beach.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:51

I miss our old neighborhood so much.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:53

But I was like, Steve, we got to build out a photography studio.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:39:56

We can't have this huge book deal and like hire someone to do our own photography.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:40:00

That's not going to happen.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:40:01

And Steve and I have no formal training in photography.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:40:03

So everything has just been like YouTube videos and like we're just trying to figure it out as we go.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:40:07

And so yeah, we moved into this house in La Jolla and we have a whole, we have a three bedroom house.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:40:14

One of the rooms is literally all of our photography equipment.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:40:18

And yeah, it's been really fun just figuring it out.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:40:20

We got a bunch of our background and stuff from this company in Denmark.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:40:24

Like, I sort of scoured the Internet to get everything that we needed for this book.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:40:28

So yeah, we've invested pretty much everything into this, this book.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:40:32

And I really wanted to do the photography because photography a lot of times is, you know, your soul and your personality and like your point of view.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:40:40

And I think that that's so important in a book like this so that everyone could really see our point of view and really feel our energy throughout.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:40:47

Throughout the book.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:40:48

Yeah, yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:40:49

Well, what I want to do now is I want to walk through some of the recipes because the rest, the recipe section is phenomenal.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:40:56

I think you've got seven different sections if I'm not mistaken.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:41:00

So I've six.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:41:02

So I've chosen a couple recipes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:41:05

Let's do it from each section just so everybody can get a little bit of a feel.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:41:09

And the first one is almond milk.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:41:12

No, you call it no strain almond milk.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:41:15

Yes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:41:15

I want to know what is the trick?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:41:18

How can you do no strain almond milk and not have any kind of pulp and weird stuff?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:41:26

Yeah, so that was a big goal of mine.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:41:27

You know, I read every dairy free cookbook there was looking for what I just, I was like looking kind of for holes and seeing the industry.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:41:35

You know, when you're, when you write a book proposal, like I said, it's like a business proposal.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:41:39

So you kind of look for holes in the industry.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:41:40

And what I notice is like most nut milks require a nut milk straining bag and I loathe the nut milk straining bag.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:41:48

Like I never want to.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:41:49

It gets in my rings and like I just, I don't want to do it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:41:52

And I know most people don't either.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:41:54

So I wanted to create a no strain almond milk, which is really hard to find.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:41:58

And the key is you have to get slivered, blanched almonds and they blend up just like cashews.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:42:03

Incredible.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:42:04

Incredible.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:42:04

Easy, breezy.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:42:05

And before I go on with some more recipes, I want people to know that you have a little section, a little box in the book, book where you say out with the old.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:42:15

And it includes whole and non fat milk.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:42:21

Milk, fat milk powder, whey, casein, colostrum.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:42:26

What is colostrum?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:42:27

That sounds really awful.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:42:29

Is the worst trend in wellness history.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:42:31

I swear.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:42:32

It is the.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:42:34

It is the liquid that comes out right before the breast milk does that's supposed to go to the baby.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:42:39

And it's like packed with all sorts of things that can boost your immune system and, you know, antioxidants and all these things that are for the baby.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:42:48

But instead these companies are taking it and they're dehydrating it and they're turning it into a powdered supplement.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:42:55

Okay.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:42:56

Okay.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:42:57

So colostrum, then we got condensed milk, we have cream, we have ghee, yogurt, cheese, and butter.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:43:03

And so you basically, in your, in the recipe section, you have substitutes for almost every one of these.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:10

Yeah, right.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:10

Literally, we have like a no way protein powder.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:13

So you can make your own protein powder at home.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:43:15

No way.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:17

No way.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:18

Yeah, and that's.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:19

I mean, I love a protein powder.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:21

I'm especially like, I have gone through phases where I don't touch protein powder, where, you know, it's just everyone kind of goes through their own phases.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:29

And I think, you know, one of the biggest problems with people who have a lot of protein powder is whey protein.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:34

And I remember I used to have the worst stomach problems.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:38

I was like one of those girls with tummy problems.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:40

And it's because I was drinking whey protein.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:42

And it's just so bad for your gut lining.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:44

It can cause, like so many gastrointestinal issues.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:47

And so, you know, I don't want to discount people who need that, like, quick source of protein, that quick source of nourishment that, you know, moms or people on the go or whatever.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:43:56

So I really wanted to make sure that there was a protein powder option available that was still really creamy and delicious and kind of gave all the things that we're looking for.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:44:05

Well, speaking of creamy and delicious and mouthfeel.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:44:08

So here you have a whole milk, the equivalent of a whole milk right there.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:44:13

Can everybody see it?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:44:14

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:44:15

There you go.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:44:16

And what do you use?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:44:19

What Nut or seed do you use to get that mouthfeel?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:44:24

So you can use a couple different ones.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:44:26

In this and in the beginning of the book, I talk about different replacements.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:44:29

So if you have cashews, there's a replacement for that.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:44:31

Or if you're allergic to cashews, there's a replacement for that.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:44:33

That if you're allergic to almonds.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:44:35

I talk about all the replacements because I really want this book to be allergy friendly with the idea that, you know, dairy is the number one allergy in the world.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:44:43

But I'm not discounting the fact that people have other food allergies.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:44:47

So I wanted to make sure.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:44:48

So.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:44:48

But we use cashews in that and it's all about ratio, it's all about how long you blend it for.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:44:53

But it is the perfect whole milk substitute.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:44:56

Like, it's perfect to the, to the drop of water.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:45:02

It is like perfect because.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:45:03

And you also, in a lot of your milks you have, and I love it, you have some dates in there as well to give it a little bit of sweetness and thickness.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:45:12

So a lot of times in plant based milks, this is also an issue, you know, which you, you have your own line of plant based milk, so you understand this.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:45:20

But a big issue in the plant based milk world is gums and emulsifiers and preservatives and oil.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:45:25

And, and the reason why a lot of that is there is for thickness.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:45:28

It's for the fact that it won't separate, you know, while it's sitting on the shelf.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:45:32

It's for, you know, product life, all that kind of stuff.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:45:35

So the date is really a great option to have that thickness.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:45:40

And it also kind of helps emulsify the milk so that you get that nice thick consistency without having to use a gum or a filler or an oil.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:45:48

How many times did you have to shoot this shot to get.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:45:52

Literally once.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:45:53

Seriously?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:45:54

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:45:55

We had our camera on shutter speed, we got this super fun light and I, I don't have it that much.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:02

My wrists are kind of trash from chefing for so long.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:04

So I was like, Steve, this is all you.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:06

Like you're gonna pop this open.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:08

And we did it the first time.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:09

I'm really impressed with Steve, actually.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:46:11

So you have a pistachio milk and you say that this works like a charm as a latte.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:17

Oh my gosh.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:18

So good.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:19

It's so.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:20

Pistachios are so fatty and creamy and so flavorful.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:23

So it's really good in a matcha latte.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:26

And it's also really Good.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:27

Just for like a regular pistachio latte too.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:29

And it's like slightly sweet sweetened so that you can have it in a latte.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:34

But any of the book, any of the milks, you can always make them unsweetened too, because you're making it yourself.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:46:40

That's the benefit you've got.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:46:42

You've got, you know, a lazy girl's barista, soy milk.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:46:46

You've got all things, Horace, but this one.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:46:51

Yeah, this one, I'm like, wow, you got a black sesame seed milk.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:46:58

Look at that.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:46:59

Right there it is.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:47:01

Yes.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:47:02

Yeah, that recipe is one of my favorites because it's so umami, like, and there's so much protein in it because sesame seeds are actually packed with protein.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:47:10

But I love that one.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:47:11

So there's actually a ramen recipe later on in the book and we use that black sesame seed milk in the ramen and it is like a flavor explosion you can't quite comprehend.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:47:23

All right, I'm moving on from the milk section.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:47:26

And you've got so many incredible ones there.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:47:29

And let's talk about this one.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:47:32

I believe this section is called, let me get it, the one you can't live without.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:47:38

It's your ode to cheese.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:47:40

Yes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:47:41

And the first one is on page 87, and it's the family size cheddar block.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:47:49

Yes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:47:50

And what attracted me to this was you've got, if I'm not mistaken, what's the first ingredient?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:47:57

It's like yellow potatoes.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:47:59

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:00

So we wanted to make all the cheeses basically made from vegetables and some nuts.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:06

Some of the cheeses do have refined coconut oil in them just a bit.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:09

Just because you're not going to get a melt if you don't add any oil.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:13

You know, we.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:14

So here's the thing about that recipe.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:16

That recipe was tested almost 40 times because we were like, okay, we tried to do it completely oil free a bunch of times.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:23

We tried to do it, you know, with.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:26

It was like.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:27

We almost gave up.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:28

We were like, okay, we just can't figure this out.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:29

We can't do this, this cheddar recipe, there's no way.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:32

And then, I don't know, one day it just clicked.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:35

It just happened.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:36

And we were like, oh, this is.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:37

This is perfect.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:38

Because, you know, a lot of vegan cheddar tastes too much like nutritional yeast or it tastes too much like starch or it tastes too much like oil.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:47

And we didn't want any of that.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:48

We wanted it to be really, you know, I really wanted these cheeses to be like the real thing, I wanted you to really get that cheddar.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:55

Cheddar vibe from it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:48:56

And if you are oil free, there are tons of cheese recipes that don't have oil in them.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:49:02

But I like to think of the cheddar recipe as like a.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:49:05

A bridge.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:49:06

You know, it's like a bridge cheese recipe.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:49:08

It still melts, it still slices, it still shreds.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:49:12

It takes me back to like fourth grade.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:49:15

I would come home and I had for a snack, I'd have cheddar cheese on top of a Ritz cracker.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:49:21

Yes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:49:22

Oh, man.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:49:24

Yeah, I haven't though, but.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:49:28

So you've got all kinds of cheeses.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:49:30

You've got a creamy gorgonzola.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:49:32

You've got a cheese log that's made from macadamia nuts.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:49:35

I'm going to jump right now because I've got a bunch of sections that I want to kind of give samples of.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:49:40

This is the feta cheese.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:49:42

And I think a lot of people love feta.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:49:44

So what did you use to create your feta?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:49:47

So the feta is made from tofu, actually.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:49:51

And I wanted it to be like a high protein feta cheese that could kind of use as a snack.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:49:56

But it's not like the traditional tofu feta where you just slice it up and then you season it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:50:01

It.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:50:01

This one is actually like you blend tofu in the blender with a bunch of ingredients and then you set it that way and then you slice it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:50:09

And this one's really good too, because you can toss it in seasonings and stuff after it's set.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:50:14

So it's.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:50:15

You can crumble it and do all those things as well.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:50:18

All right, well, you got really cheesy.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:50:23

Next section, get sauced.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:50:25

Sauces are so important.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:50:28

The first thing that you have is so many people that I know are looking for a good yogurt.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:50:34

And your first recipe here is, you call it almost instant Mango Greek yogurt.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:50:40

So how do I create my own yogurt at home that doesn't have all of the oil and all of the.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:50:47

All the sugar?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:50:49

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:50:49

So, you know, making your own yogurt at home can be really challenging.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:50:54

And I had like a classic coconut, like fermentation yogurt in my first cookbook.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:51:00

And what I found is people had a lot of hard times like making that work.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:51:06

And it's because when you're fermenting things on your countertop, it's all about the temperature and how clean your glass is that you're fermenting it in.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:51:15

And you know how cold the coconut was, or, you know, like, there's so many or what kind of probiotic strains you're using.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:51:21

There's so many different variables.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:51:24

And so when I was making this book, I was like, I don't want to have people have to think about these variables.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:51:29

I want people to know that the recipe is going to work whether they live in the tropics or whether they live in the Rocky Mountains.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:51:34

You know, like, I think that's something that I've noticed in the dairy free world or even in general, when you're making your own cheese or your own yogurt or your fermentation in general, it's all very dependent on where you live.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:51:45

And so this yogurt, there's no fermentation required.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:51:48

It's technically not even, like, if we're being super technical, not quite a yogurt because it's not fully fermented.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:51:56

However, we do use probiotic powder in there, so you're still getting that, like probiotic goodness.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:03

But it's super easy to make.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:04

Anyone can make it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:05

And we use frozen fruit to kind of emulsify it to thicken the yogurt.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:11

So it really feels like a Greek yogurt.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:14

And you get that high protein breakfast without having to worry about, you know, fermenting things.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:52:22

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:52:23

You have a spreadable butter, and the first two ingredients are cauliflower and chopped carrots.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:52:29

I mean, come on, is that really, Is it really good?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:34

It's so good.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:35

So.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:35

So when you're thinking about butter, you know, you're thinking about margarine specifically, it's all oil.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:40

And so we wanted to make one that was all vegetables.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:43

And at first, the recipe was turning out so weird.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:46

Steve was like, like, this is not gonna work.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:48

What are you thinking?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:50

I just kept being like, trust the process.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:52

We're gonna totally figure this out.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:54

And we finally did.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:52:55

And yeah, there's a couple different ways to make it, depending on how the consistency you want your margarine or your spreadable butter to be.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:53:02

But it's really, really good.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:53:04

And yeah, it's made from vegetables, which is so fun.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:53:08

Wow.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:53:09

And just so the audience knows, and you said this, but some of your recipes do have either extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil in them.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:53:20

Yes, a couple of them.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:53:21

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:53:21

But we, you know, on the bottom of each recipe there's an allergy ledger.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:53:25

So there's nut free optionals, oil free, nut free, soy free, gluten free, grain free.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:53:31

And again, I really wanted to have everyone feel seen when it comes to Their preferences, their food allergies or their chronic illnesses or things that they're dealing with.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:53:42

And I know that, you know, oil is not for everybody.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:53:45

I know that a lot of people can't eat nuts.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:53:47

I know that a lot of people are gluten free.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:53:49

So that was something I really wanted to highlight, and I really wanted to make a very solid effort to make as many recipes oil free as humanly possible.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:53:59

You know, there's certain things, like I said, the cheese or the butter stick, like if you want it to melt, it kind of has to have a little bit of oil in there.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:54:06

Or, or it's not going to be the real thing when it comes to that melty.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:54:11

But then there's going to be another separate option for you.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:54:13

So there's, like I said, there's something for everyone.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:54:16

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:54:16

And this is going to be the last get sauce recipe I'm going to share with everybody.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:54:22

And that is one of my favorite comfort foods in the Hawaii world is macaroni and cheese, Mac and cash.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:54:28

And so you have this baked truffle Mac.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:54:31

Yes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:54:31

Here she blows right here.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:54:34

But that's not the photo that, that, that caught me.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:54:36

It was this one.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:54:38

Oh.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:54:39

Oh, my gosh.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:54:40

That is so gorgeous.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:54:42

You know, that photo I actually scrapped, and then at the very last second, I threw it back in.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:54:47

And it's one of my favorites now, too, that it's printed.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:54:49

Oh, it's so nice.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:54:51

It's so good.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:54:52

I made it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:54:52

I actually cooked a farm sanctuary dinner for 70 people for Thanksgiving a couple weeks ago, and we made that recipe and everyone was freaking out over it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:55:03

What, what makes the truffle?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:55:06

Well, we use truffle.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:55:08

Okay, so it's, it's okay then.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:55:13

There you go.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:55:16

So where do you, where do you get truffle?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:55:19

So you can get truffle oil like, anywhere.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:55:21

You just want to make sure that the truffle oil that you get is ethical.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:55:24

But yeah, you can find truffle oil so many different places.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:55:27

I, I, so I live in San Diego.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:55:29

We have Little Italy here in San Diego, and I have some friends who own Italian restaurants, so they, they definitely hook it up for me when it comes to truffle.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:55:38

But yeah, you can find it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:55:39

Or if you don't want to, like, use truffle oil.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:55:41

The Mac and cheese recipe alone is essentially like a white cheddar style Mac, so you don't have to do the truffle oil either.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:55:47

Okay, good to know.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:55:49

All right, well, I'm moving on now to main meals.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:55:52

You had so many of them.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:55:53

It was so hard.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:55:54

I just wanted to pick two of them.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:55:55

Okay, so this one I've never.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:55:59

This is so creative.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:56:01

And I'm going to show the photo and then I'm going to say what it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:56:04

Or you can say what it is.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:56:05

What is this a photo of?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:56:07

What main meal?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:56:08

It's lasagna soup.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:56:10

Lasagna soup.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:56:13

I cannot wait to try that.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:56:15

So good.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:56:16

You, like, make this, the broth by roasting everything and then you blend it and then you add it to the broth, which is so cool.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:56:23

How in the world did you think of a lasagna soup?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:56:26

I mean, it's a pretty typical dish, actually.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:56:29

And I wanted to do a lasagna, but I was feeling a little lazy that day.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:56:33

So I was like, you know what, let's make a lasagna soup.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:56:36

And it's actually really good.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:56:38

Well, you say it's loving a bowl.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:56:41

It's not comfort.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:56:42

You know, I think a lot of times with dairy, people just want comfort.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:56:45

They want to feel those feelings, you know, And I think sometimes we don't need the dairy, we just need.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:56:50

Need to a little push in the right direction.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:56:52

One of my favorite, one of my favorite foods on the planet is Indian food.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:56:59

And when I saw this, I was like, okay, after the lasagna soup, I want to make this.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:57:03

This is a paneer masala.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:57:06

And obviously you've got rice, you've got tofu, and you've got this, this sauce.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:12

And the paneer cheese.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:14

So that is the last cheese in the cheese chapter.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:16

And that cheese, if I believe is actually oil oil free as well, and so is the mozzarella.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:23

Okay, wait, can we just go back to the cheese chapter really quick?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:25

Because we have this one recipe where you can make a mozzarella block, mozzarella balls and burrata cheese.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:32

It's completely oil free.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:34

You can switch it depending on your allergies.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:36

And it's truly mind blowing.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:38

Like, it will change everything you think about cheese.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:57:40

So as a cordon Bleu trained chef.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:44

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:57:45

Challenging was this cookbook for you.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:49

It was the hardest thing I've ever done.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:52

Truly.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:53

Truly.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:54

It was.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:57:54

You know, I, I can't wait for my next cookbook because it'll be so much easier to write now that you've done this.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:02

Yeah, it's so hard.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:03

It's so hard to like rewrite.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:05

You know, vegan cheese is already very much a thing.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:07

I'm not inventing anything, but, you know, I'm really trying to rewrite the way that we're doing it in a sense of.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:13

I want it to be accessible for people because at the end of the day, like, you don't go to the grocery store and make your own cheese.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:19

You know, we're used to going and just buying cheese and then it's done.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:23

So I really wanted it to be accessible and again, not have a lot of fermentation and, you know, have steps that the regular person could do.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:31

And I think that was just.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:32

It was hard.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:32

Like I said, some of the cheese recipes took 40 tries to get the right thing, because I just wanted to be just right.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:58:41

When did you first have the.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:58:43

When did you lock yourself in the room and do that proposal?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:58:47

Like, was that in: 2022

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:58:48

23.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:58:49

When was that?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:50

2022?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:51

It was October: 2022

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:53

The book was sold by November.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:55

Contract was signed in December.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:58:56

It was.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:58:57

That's crazy.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:58:59

And then, so, so.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:59:00

And then how.

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:59:02

How long did you spend on the book?

Rheb Esselstyn: 00:59:03

Like, the recipes and the photos and all that?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:06

So the entire year of: 2023

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:13

Because, I mean, we also run our own business, me and my husband.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:16

So, you know, we have our business.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:18

We are still private chef.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:19

We still do pop up dinners, we do content online.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:23

now, our audience exploded in: 2023

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:26

So that was kind of like a lot to deal with.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:28

And that's when I let go of the podcast because I was like, I just can't juggle all this.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:32

This is too much.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:32

And so it took an entire year of us working every single day.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:37

You know, all of our friends were like, you guys are insane.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:40

You guys are working every day.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:41

And it really was a week.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:42

We invested all of our own money into it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:44

We were just like, we want to change how we look at the food industry, how we look at cheese, how we look at all this stuff, and we.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:50

We have this incredible opportunity and let's just go for it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:54

And I mean, we had to move, so that takes a lot of work.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:56

Like, there was just so much that happened.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 00:59:58

But, yeah, it was all of: 2023

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:00:02

And, yeah, I ended up, yeah, you.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:00:05

Guys just put it all, all on the line.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:00:07

I love, love it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:00:08

I love it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:00:09

Everything on the table for it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:00:10

I actually got injured from writing the cookbook.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:00:13

I dislocated my collarbone from my sternum from working too much.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:00:18

And my doctor put me on like, a strict no cook for two months after I submitted my manuscript.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:00:24

Oh, my goodness gracious.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:00:26

Injury on the job, literally.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:00:30

Okay, so life of the party section, you've got these sweet pepper poppers that I want one now.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:00:42

So what can you tell me about these pepper poppers?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:00:45

Well, you know, I love the concept of a jalapeno pepper popper, or what are they originally called?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:00:53

God, my brain.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:00:56

I don't know.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:00:57

I just want to say pepper popper 10 times.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:01:01

But yeah, I love the concept of a jalapeno popper.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:01:03

That's what they're called, jalapeno poppers.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:01:05

Um, but I just, I get heartburn when I eat too many spicy things.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:01:09

So I wanted to do, you know, and that's a very classic dairy recipe, is to have a jalapeno popper.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:01:15

So I wanted to do something that was a little less spicy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:01:17

You can always use jalapenos if you love spicy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:01:19

But this was with the small sweet peppers, and I wanted to make sure they were gluten free and they had just like a.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:01:25

You know, and I think that one is food allergy friendly too.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:01:27

I think we use sunflower seeds in that one so that literally everyone can eat that recipe.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:01:32

You know, for these party recipes, I wanted to do it so it was really crowd friendly so that your grandpa, your breastfeeding friend, like everyone can enjoy no matter what food allergies they have or what they're going through.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:01:47

So this one, I just felt like just by looking at the photo and so many of your photos, I can actually.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:01:54

My mouth starts to water and I can actually taste what it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:01:58

What I think it tastes like.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:02:00

But just to give people an example, like, look at this.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:02:03

Look at these lobster rolls.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:02:05

That's exactly where I just was.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:02:07

Really?

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:02:08

That's.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:02:08

Yeah, there you go.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:02:10

And look at that.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:02:11

And what are you using there?

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:02:13

Jackfruit?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:02:14

I'm like, what are we using?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:02:16

No, we're using king oyster mushroom, oyster mushrooms and hearts of palm.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:02:20

Oh, my gosh.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:02:22

Yeah, so that one's really fun because, you know, we think butter, we think lobster roll.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:02:26

And I was like, I just want to make this more San Diego inspired.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:02:29

So one of our crema.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:02:30

So in the sauce recipes, we have a recipe called crema four ways.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:02:34

So that you can make a base, whether it's soy based or nut based, depending on your food allergy.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:02:40

And then you can make different flavors from it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:02:42

So we have a lemon poppy seed crema.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:02:44

And then we have what we are calling a base special sauce crema, which is essentially like chorizo flavor inside of a crema, which is so delicious.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:02:55

And so we decided to make this more of like a San Diego Mexican kind of Inspired lobster roll that has the base special sauce on there.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:03

And the use of the king oyster mushrooms plus the hearts of palm is like the perfect lobster replacement.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:09

It's one of the best recipes in the book.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:10

Honestly, I love it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:03:13

Did you.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:03:14

So you said you moved to a new location, a new house?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:19

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:03:19

When you're making all these recipes, you're testing them.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:03:23

You said you did that one recipe.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:03:25

I mean, it was the cheddar cheese 40 times times before you got it right.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:28

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:03:28

Are you sharing it with neighbors or what are you doing?

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:03:31

So the food doesn't just kind of go in the trash?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:33

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:33

So we, when we moved, we accidentally moved into a retirement community and we.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:39

Yeah, we had no idea.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:41

And so all of our neighbors at the time were like 80 plus.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:45

Like 80 was the youngest.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:47

And so I was just like going around to all my elderly neighbors and giving them like cakes and sandwiches and cheese.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:54

And they had no idea it was vegan.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:56

They were like, oh my God, this is amazing.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:58

Thank you.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:03:58

So we were kind of feeding the neighborhood for a while and then we would invite friends over, you know, and we would do big, big shoots when the recipes were finalized.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:08

But actually this lobster roll was a one and done kind of thing.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:12

We like made it the first time and I was like, that's it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:14

This is perfect.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:04:15

So you have a hundred recipes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:04:19

How many recipes did you have that just kind of hit the, the cutting room floor?

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:04:25

Didn't make it into the book?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:28

You know, not a lot because I snuck a lot of recipes in.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:30

So it says 100 recipes, but a lot of recipes have recipes within the recipe, if that makes sense.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:04:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:37

We've got like the crema four ways.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:39

We also.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:40

So if.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:41

So we did a pre sale incentive too.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:43

So we had like five coffee creamers that didn't make it in there.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:47

So I ended up doing a little coffee creamer ebook.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:50

So when you purchase the, the cookbook on pre sale, you can get that as well.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:54

And I'll probably extend that for the first week of, of the book launch as well.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:04:59

But yeah, not a lot.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:05:00

You know, I wanted this book.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:05:01

I mean, it's 320 pages.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:05:03

So I wanted this book to be as packed as humanly possible and to have every single option in there.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:09

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:09

So the last section, of course, is the dessert section.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:13

The sweetest thing.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:16

I actually love this, this, this photo of you.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:19

You look so relaxed.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:20

Like.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:05:21

I know.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:05:21

I'm like, who is she?

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:22

I know.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:23

I'm like, wow, that's.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:25

Is that who I think it Is.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:05:27

You know, this whole book is inspired kind of by a rom com, you know, so all the titles and stuff.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:05:32

So.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:33

Yeah, so this one, of course, whipped cream.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:38

Right.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:39

Look at that on top of that, strawberry.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:42

But you call this.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:43

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:05:44

So how do you make a whipped cream that's dairy free?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:05:48

So the traditional way is to use coconut fat.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:05:50

So you use really cold coconut fat.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:05:52

But I know a lot of people don't want to have the saturated fat that comes with coconut fat.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:05:56

So I ended up doing dairy a whipped cream two ways.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:05:59

And the other way is using really, really cold silken tofu.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:06:05

So cold meaning what?

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:06:07

Like you have it in the back.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:06:09

Of the fridge for a day or two too.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:06:11

You want it like cold.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:06:12

Got it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:06:13

Not frozen, but just icy colds.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:06:15

That's a really big key with making dairy free whipped cream is to make sure the temperature is right.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:06:19

And if you're having a hard time with the temperature, a trick you can do is if you have a KitchenAid mixer, you can actually put your bowl in the fridge or the freezer too.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:06:28

So this, again, these are pretty indulgent.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:06:31

But I just want to show the photo.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:06:33

This is a granola cookie dough milkshake cake.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:06:36

Look at, look, look at that.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:06:40

Such a gorgeous photo.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:06:42

This is, this is food porn right here.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:06:44

This is what we're really.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:06:45

It really is like definition food porn for sure.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:06:48

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:06:48

That recipe is great because that also has that cookie dough in there.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:06:51

And the cookie dough is a high protein cookie dough too.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:06:53

So you can just eat the cookie dough if you want.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:06:55

And then I just had to show this because it, it looks so like five star, ten star restaurant.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:03

This is a black sesame BlackBerry flan.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:07:08

Yes.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:07:09

Had to have a flan.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:07:10

You know, look at that.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:07:18

Classics.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:07:18

But like being creative with the classics and realizing that you can like have fun with it too, you know?

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:24

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:24

And then I just gotta show this is an almond French silk pie.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:27

I look at this and.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:29

And this is.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:30

I could just eat the whole thing.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:32

I know I could.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:32

Good.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:33

And literally.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:35

Literally.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:35

And then I would go to bed.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:07:38

Oh, but maybe not, because it's all healthy ingredients.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:43

Then maybe not, but.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:45

Oh, my gosh.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:47

So you said that now that you've written this cookbook, everything else will be a little easier.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:55

So I.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:55

I mean, I hate to even ask you this question, but have you started.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:07:59

Started think.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:08:00

Putting thought into what your next book will be?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:03

Yeah, I already, yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:06

Oh, my God, my husband thinks I'm insane.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:08:10

So, I mean, how.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:08:12

It sounds like Steve has been so incredibly supportive throughout this Whole process.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:08:17

And he sounds like he's actually been a major part of it.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:08:23

Has it brought you closer together?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:25

Totally.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:26

I mean, it's so funny because Steve and I started as co workers, so when I first moved to San Diego, I was working at a bar just until my business got off the ground, and we bartended together.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:36

And so that's how we met.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:37

And so we've kind of are used to working in the fire together.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:40

You know, when you.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:41

When you bartend, you're.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:42

It's kind of a hectic, stressful situation.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:45

You're kind of in the weeds together.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:47

st started working with me in: 2020

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:53

And it's weird being your husband's boss in a way, you know, like, that's kind of something weird to navigate.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:58

But now we're full partners.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:08:59

And, you know, he does a lot of our.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:09:02

Our blog and our photography and all that stuff.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:09:05

And he's just someone that just is down for all my ideas.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:09:08

I'll wake up one day and I'll just be like, you know what?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:09:10

Let's do this.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:09:11

And he's like, all right, show me the way.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:09:13

Let's go.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:09:14

You know, So I think everyone needs someone like that in their lives to just fully believe in them.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:09:19

And, you know, I wouldn't have been able to build the audience and the platform and everything that we have without having Steve in my life, because he's really been someone that's supported me and helped me through, you know, all those hard times, having endometriosis and just, you know, dealing with life in general, you know, pandemic, all that stuff.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:09:38

So it's been nice to have him by my side because I just truly can't imagine doing any of this if he wasn't here.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:09:48

What can we do?

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:09:50

Like everybody that's listening to this right now, what can we do to help make sure that Breaking Up With Dairy becomes a New York Times bestseller?

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:10:01

Oh, I would imagine that's one of your goals with this book.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:10:07

And so.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:10:07

And so, like, can we pre order?

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:10:10

What's the best time for us to order the book?

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:10:12

What can we do to help out?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:14

Thank you so much for asking that question.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:15

That is a big goal of mine.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:17

So, I mean, the best thing to do is to order the book from.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:20

From either Barnes and Noble, Target, your local bookstore.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:23

You know, trying to diversify where we get book orders from, and also supporting those smaller bookstores is really, really important for them.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:30

And also for things like the New York Times list.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:33

And also pre ordering is really important.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:35

If you do pre order, you can go to breakingupadairy.com and submit your receipt from anywhere you pre ordered from.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:42

And there's a ton of goodies in there.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:45

There's like a guide to meal prep.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:47

There's all these pre order bonus goodies.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:49

There's like, like so many.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:50

I think there's six ebooks or something like that.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:52

I just wanted to make it really juicy and hold you over until the book comes out for sure.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:10:57

And there is that coffee creamer ebook in there as well.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:11:00

And other than that, if you're listening to this or watching this, you know, the books come out.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:11:05

It's the week of pub.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:11:06

Just order it the week of pub.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:11:07

Buy one for your friends.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:11:09

And yeah, we really do, like, authors really do need so much rallying of the community to kind of get to those bestsellers lists.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:11:16

Because, you know, if we were able to get Breaking up with Dairy on the New York Times bestsellers list, that is definitely saying something, right?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:11:24

That's saying that the culture is changing, we're ready for something new and you know, it could make a really big impact and how we're all looking at food and the food industry and what we're all expecting from, you know, big corporations and how we're going to move the needle forward.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:11:42

You know, you, you bring such a, a wonderful perspective, a very necessary voice into the movement.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:11:55

And as you say in the opening of this, I want to get it right.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:12:02

So let me just, let me access my, okay, my notes here if I can find them.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:12:09

But you, you, you say something like, this isn't just a fad, this isn't just a, you know, this is a full fledged movement that is underfoot right now.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:12:23

And we've got to do our best to move past just everything that's wrong with dairy.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:12:31

The egregious, you know, nature of the abusive relationship that we subject these, these cows and these calves and everything to the planet, the deforestation.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:12:43

So, yeah, thank you so much for bringing this like, to life, bringing this into the universe and thank you for.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:12:55

Thank you for being here with me.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:12:56

You know, we can all make change.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:12:57

I, for so long I thought, what am I gonna do?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:00

Like, how could I make a change?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:01

And then at some point you just have to get out of your own way and decide that like, I am, am big enough to do things, I'm big enough to make change in my community.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:09

My voice can be loud enough.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:10

My voice deserves to be Heard I can take up space.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:14

You know, I think a lot of times we're, we're taught that we shouldn't be taking up space and we can take up space and it is going to take a collective of us to really make change and to do things.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:25

But I have faith that like things are changing right now for better or for worse.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:29

Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:32

And yeah, I'm just, I'm here right along with you.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:35

I was, you know, so inspired by you, you, your TED Talk so many years ago, before I was even vegan, inspired me to kind of be more allowed to change my whole business to becoming vegan.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:46

And you know, look what that's done.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:47

And so now here I am.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:49

And hopefully whoever is listening can be inspired to know it's not too late to change.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:53

It's not too late to, to go against the norm.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:13:56

And if you don't feel supported, like DM them me or Rip and we'll support you, you know, like, so where, where.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:14:04

What is your handle on TikTok Instagram if people want to follow you?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:14:08

Yeah, so it's Chef Bae Bai and we're also on YouTube and we also now have a sub stack which I am so excited about.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:14:16

We've heard the community feedback on advertisements on recipe blogs and so we decided to completely drop the ads.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:14:24

And we have a completely ad free recipe blog with so many recipes on Substack and we release a new recipe every single week on there.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:14:32

So that's exciting.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:14:33

Help me out.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:14:34

Help.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:14:34

Help an older, an older guy out here.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:14:37

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:14:38

What exactly is Substack?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:14:40

So it's essentially like it's.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:14:41

I mean, I just figured it out myself, honestly.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:14:45

What's up?

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:14:46

Stuff.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:14:46

Yeah.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:14:46

Substack is essentially like an online forum.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:14:49

So it initially started for people who have newsletters or journalists or people who want to write more long form content.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:14:56

But I started seeing a trend of recipe bloggers going over to Substack to have a very low monthly kind of paywall.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:15:04

So for us, it's $8 a month and you get access to everything.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:15:08

Our challenges, our favorite episodes of our podcast that we used to have, it's all on there as well as all of our recipes ad free.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:15:16

Because I think, you know, people are sick of ad free ads.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:15:18

And the other thing with advertisements on my blog is I couldn't control exactly what ads were going on the blog.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:15:24

So a couple of times I saw advertisements for the dairy industry on my own blog and I was like, I cannot do this anymore.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:15:31

And you know, it's expensive to run a blog and to test all these recipes and all that stuff.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:15:35

So a substack is a very simple way to support the creators that you love, no matter what type of creators that they are.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:15:42

And in return, you get amazing content that's advertisement free and that you can really kind of control what you see and what one.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:15:50

Yeah.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:15:50

Well, Bailey Ruskus, I, I am, I am so proud of you for diving in head first and just tackling this incredible project.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:16:07

And it is such a winner.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:16:09

So everybody, Breaking up with Dairy.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:16:12

Chef Bailey Ruskus, what an absolute gem.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:16:16

Just like you are.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:16:18

And thanks for coming back on the Plantstrong podcast.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:16:21

On the way out, can you give me a virtual plan strong fist bump to Breaking up with dairy?

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:16:27

Oh, yeah, let's do it.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:16:29

Let's make a movement.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:16:31

Millions of people.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:16:31

Let's go.

Chef Bailey Ruskus: 01:16:32

I'm ready.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:16:33

Let's go to pre order Breaking up with Dairy.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:16:38

Just go to breaking up upwooddairy.com and you can get $175 worth of free content.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:16:45

I'll link up exactly how to do that in today's show notes.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:16:50

Keep in mind that Chef Bailey Ruskus will be visiting Austin February 23rd.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:16:56

She'll be doing an event at Williams Sonoma in the early afternoon.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:17:01

And then, fingers crossed, if we can make it happen, we'll be doing a Plan Strong potluck at the world headquarters here in Austin the evening of the 23rd.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:17:12

If we can't make that work, we'll do the 24th.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:17:15

So just keep an ear to the ground by following us on GoPlanStrong, on Instagram, and my personal Instagram account, RIP Esselstyn.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:17:24

And we'll be sure to keep you up to date on those exact dates and times for that Chef Bailey Plan Potluck.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:17:34

And stay tuned because in February, our podcast episodes are all going to be focusing on the wonderful, beautiful heart as we celebrate National Heart Month with guest appearances by some of your favorite heart doctors.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:17:49

Thanks as always for listening and remember to always, always keep it plant strong.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:17:56

The Plan Strong.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:17:56

Our strong podcast team includes Kerry Barrett, Lori Kordowich, and Amy Mackey.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:18:03

If you like what you hear, do us a favor and share the show with your friends and loved ones.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:18:08

You can always leave a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:18:14

And while you're there, make sure to hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:18:20

As always, this is and every episode is dedicated to my parents, Dr.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:18:26

Caldwell B.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:18:26

Esselstyn Jr.

Rheb Esselstyn: 01:18:28

And Ann Kreu Esselstyn, thanks so much for listening.

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