Veet Karen The Vegan Cooking and Nutrition Podcast
Offering practical cooking and nutrition tips to add more plant based food into your diet
Veet Karen The Vegan Cooking and Nutrition Podcast
Interview with Pandora from Pandora's Plate
Today I'm interviewing the wonderful Pandora College. Pandora graduated from the vegan chef training in 2015. Before she came to the chef training, she was already a nutritionist and she has done so many different things since graduating, including working at her gym as a nutrition and cooking adviser.
In this interview we talk about some tips and tricks on how to add more plants into your diet and also what to do after you've trained at the gym.
https://www.veets.com.au/vegan-foundation-cooking-course for the vegan foundation course Pandora mentions – this happens most months.
https://www.veets.com.au/vegan-chef-training for the vegan chef training which is what Pandora attended to get her business created in the plant based world.
for more information on protein
https://www.veets.com.au/blog/mexican-scramble-tofu for Mexican scrambled tofu
https://www.pandorasplate.com.au/shop/p/spring-blade-e2krs Nourished by Nature Pandora’s wonderful cookbook (note it is predominantly plant based – Pandora does mention dairy from time to time)
https://www.rufflefarm.com.au Pandora’s daughter and partner’s mushroom business in Newtown
https://www.veets.com.au/blog/v-chicken-sandwich for the mushroom nugget recipe
For full show notes go to www.veets.com.au/28
Hope you enjoy this episode
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Follow Veet on https://www.facebook.com/VeetKarenVegancookingandnutrition/
Hope you have a very delicious week
With gratitude Veet
https://www.veets.com.au/vegan-chef-training
Ad for sensational eBook
Veet: Welcome Pandora, so wonderful to have you here today on the podcast.
Pandora: Thank you Veet, I'm very very happy to be here with you.
Veet: Pandora's coming from the lovely Coffs Harbour region and I have some questions. I'm sure we're just going to chat away anyway because that's what we love to do. The first question is. What made you jump in and do the vegan chef training way back in 2015?
Pandora: Well, there's a little bit of a journey, but the thing that really drove me was, I wanted to write a cookbook. That was a bit of a dream of mine in my early 20s and I sort of started to piece together a bit of a journey of what I needed to do to sort of get some credibility to do that. So I did my advanced diploma of nutrition, put that all together and I thought I actually need to really arm myself with some credibility as a chef.
I started to look for some healthy chef courses and Veet's cooking school came up. I was very intrigued and it was ticking all the boxes plus more. I managed to, that day, sign up for the foundation course and little did I know, that was actually the life-changing moment for me, that took my journey not only towards bigger and greater things but just changed the whole way I thought. I began arming myself with some great chef skills, making some fabulous friends and clearly we're still very good friends, but yeah, it was probably a life-changing moment that gave me so much more than what I'd actually thought I signed up for.
Veet: I remember you came along in April and did the foundation course and then you soon signed up for the whole vegan chef training. I'd completely forgotten that your goal, your original goal, was the cookbook. You have made a cookbook I have to tell you listener. Pandora has sold so many of her cookbooks. Would you like to talk about your cookbook?
Pandora: Absolutely. So my cookbook really also didn't have a theme, which when I came down to start making my cookbook, after doing the vegan chef course, it all just came together. I knew that I wanted to make a plant-based cookbook. I wanted to because we'd learned how to cater for people with dietary requirements, which was also something I hadn't thought about, my book came together as a plant-based cookbook that was also catering for dietary requirements. It all sort of came together like that and then I self-published. I had a friend of mine who helped me self-publish my cookbook and then I went on to sell all of my cookbooks on my own.
But Veet bought my first copy, before it ever even went to print, so I made sure I honoured that promise and sent her the first cookbook. But also, it was great because Veet endorsed my cookbook too, which was very important to me. Veet as my master mentor and the person who I didn't even realise at the time, was such a big inspiration to putting that together. I cannot thank you enough.
Veet: You are so welcome Pandora, and it's such a beautiful book. I will put the link in the show notes for people who are interested. And one thing that I learned from you Pandora, was how to sell. Pandora sold all her cookbooks herself and she sold 3,000 in two years. That is incredible.
Pandora: Yes.
Veet: I just loved when you told me that you went into shops and said “I think your shop needs my cookbook” and they bought it. For anyone who's wanting to sell anything, I just love that.
Pandora: Well, and I think it's a bit like a muscle, the more you practice it and exercise it, the bigger it gets. But I mean, look, the first couple of times was a little bit nerve-wracking, but I got used to it in the end and it was welcomed with such open arms that it was actually a joy to start going around doing that. So yeah, it was really good.
Veet: Fabulous, and going back to the course, what was the biggest takeaway for you from doing the vegan chef training?
Pandora: Look Veet, it was such a big life-changing moment anyway. Just even from that foundation course moment, my immersion in the vegan world, which was something that I didn't truly understand. So from a nutritionist point of view, it also sort of cemented itself for me as well because, you know, being vegan brings together so many different aspects. People have an ethos, there's the humanity towards animals, there's the nutrition side, there's the sustainability side. I think just the whole course all together bringing together different cultures, the beauty of vegan food, its nourishment, all the different ways that you can bring it together.
There's not just one thing, it was a whole immersion of collective things. Just the humanity to animals, how it is sustainable, but also my biggest sort of come in, was from the nutrition point of view as well and it all just made so much sense. So it comes together and you just cannot love it enough. I mean, I share so many recipes that I don't even tell people that it's vegan and they sit there, they love it, they enjoy it and they're so surprised when I tell them it's completely vegan. So I kind of really love that aspect. I think that's what I've really brought away is, it's so easy to make vegan food and make it delicious and healthy for you, without people even understanding what they're eating.
Veet: That's brilliant. Yeah, and we know that you've made your cookbook but you've done a whole other range of things, including now, you're working in the gym which I just love. So would you like to talk about some of the things that you've done?
Pandora: Well, I think probably what catapulted me after doing the course was definitely, I was so inspired to do workshops for a start. So I started to really jump into doing workshops from home with small groups of people. You know, I didn't want to do exactly what you did, I wanted to reinvent my own wheels so I started to do workshops. Mind you, I also did what I call my internship with you for many years and and worked with you at the cooking school, which I completely loved.
So I was doing that, I was doing my own workshops from home and also it actually shaped how I did my private consults too, because I began to get and attract a lot more people that were vegan. I'd have parents with kids that were vegan, that didn't understand what vegan was and how to be a healthy vegan. You know, they thought, some of these kids were thinking, well healthy vegan is, you know, highly processed vegan food.
Veet: Yes, children do tell their parents that they want to be vegan and I just love that the parents came to you for support.
Pandora: Even at the gym, I've got one of the parents that comes up and gives me a hug after class, because both his daughters come to my classes and he said “I just love the fact that you're such a great inspiration for my girls”, and he's actually a school teacher, so that kind of really makes me really happy.
And then of course I did my cookbook, I've just done a national webinar on perimenopause and menopause. So I work also now at the gym because I'm also a personal trainer, which means that I can really bring both together and I'm always talking to people about bringing more plant-based food into their life and how to make it healthier, especially those women going through perimenopause and menopause. But you know, I like to open it out to everybody, so there's always something there for everyone. I guess my biggest message is, from all of that too, that Eat Lancet report in 2019, just bringing 50 percent more plants to your plate is sustainable for our health and also the planet so people need to, I want to help people make that shift, even if it's a small step one at a time.
Veet: So fantastic, the Lancet report is very easily available if you go on PubMed. So if anyone's never read that it is there. It's what a lot of people are using now to ensure that people are getting more plants on their plate.
Pandora: Yes.
Veet: I'm digressing from the questions but you know, I know a lot of listeners are going to the gym and protein is a big thing and I have spoken about protein in so episodes. Two, three, and four of the podcast are on protein. But do you have any tips for people who are going to the gym and are adopting a more plant-based diet? What they can do? Like what they should be doing after doing a gym routine or...?
Pandora: Oh yeah, absolutely. So we know that protein is important for all of us. It doesn't matter what age we are, doesn't matter what sex we are, because our ageing process starts from a very young age anyway. But protein is important.
Yeah, well that's right, so you know just recently, I was talking on the webinar, just saying, from the age of 30, and this is for men and women, that our muscle starts to decrease by about three to eight percent per decade. So coinciding with that, what we need to do is, make sure that we are exercising our muscles and feeding our muscles and of course, you know, protein is very important, so the two actually go together. So we need both of those to age healthily, you know, as I said, it doesn't matter whether we're female, male, young, old. It doesn't really matter who we are, but protein is very important. After we do a workout, within that next hour, it is very important to just regenerate help for the recovery of our muscles.
Plant-based protein is available in so many forms and I find at the gym, people ask me always about supplements etc. as well, and I will say, well look, food first but if you need to have supplements, go, there's plenty of beautiful protein supplements out there, like hemp protein, there's pea proteins etc. I always say, if you're going to have them, then add them to a smoothie that's also got some really nice plant-based milks, your fruit, dates, some nuts, some seeds etc. But just make sure, even post-exercise, if you don't want to have a smoothie, make sure you have some protein in the way of nuts and seeds. You can get it from your quinoa, don't forget quinoa, hemp seeds, soy products are actually a whole protein.
Veet: Sorry, sorry I interrupted you, I often have tofu on toast after I've done my exercise.
Pandora: Your scrambled tofu changed my world. That is just like, what even is that? If you have not had the scrambled tofu, you have not lived. That is the best thing I've ever had and it's just so addictive.
Veet: Yeah, I teach in the vegan foundation, there is the Mexican scrambled tofu on my website, which I'll put the link in as well.
Well, I want to talk more about food, but just before we move on to that, do you have any advice for anyone wanting to do the vegan chef training?
Pandora: Oh, I can tell you that it is the best thing I ever did, just from every level. As I said, I went in thinking, I need to get some chef skills to make a cookbook, but there was so much more that I got from it. But even if you are not vegan, or you want to know a bit more about being vegan, it is just such a great learning platform. You meet like-minded people. So many cultural dishes that you learn and you learn also about the culture and why people eat certain foods. We learned about dietary requirements, you learn about starting your own business etc. It just opened a whole new world up. So I think when you start it, be prepared to be open to absolutely anything that may come your way. There's so many ideas that come from it and, as I said, just even the mix of people that bring so much variety to the table of the cooking school. I cannot recommend it highly enough, I'm the biggest fan.
Veet: I think everyone who's done it are fans, it's so great and I'm a fan of you all because you've just gone on and done such incredible things. So let's talk about what sort of vegan food do you like cooking and eating? What's the favourite vegan food that you like cooking and eating?
Pandora: I don't know. Look I've got three of them but two that really like, but just because my daughter, Montana, was staying with me the last week, I have to say cauliflower and eggplant. Montana said to me "why are you not over cauliflower yet" and I just can't get over it. Cauliflower is just one of those beautiful brassica vegetables that is such a blank canvas as well, so it is tasty but you can add so many different flavours to it and do so many different things with it. It can be a rice, I actually sort of put it in the food processor and add it to my tabbouleh. I can coat it in, like, lots of smoky paprika and cumin and bake it in the oven and sort of turn it into Mexican tacos. You can just bake it, I make a beautiful salad where I just roast my cauliflower and throw it on a bed of rocket with some pomegranate and some chopped up hazelnuts and I know I'm just getting hungry at the thought of it. So there's nothing I can't do with cauliflower, just give me a big cauliflower and I will just salivate over it and then just come up with something delicious. But you know not only that, look, I'm also, I think as a nutritionist I look at the beautiful nutrition that comes with cauliflower. I mean they're anti-carcinogenic, they've got that beautiful sulfurophane that comes with it but they're just full of vitamins and minerals.
Veet: Oh yeah, and I know you love cooking mushrooms because your daughter has a mushroom farm doesn't she?
Pandora: Yes, she does, at Ruffle Farm in Newtown in Sydney.
I was just saying to Veet, they made the Good Weekend magazine with exotic mushrooms, so they grow enoki, chestnut, lion's mane which I didn't really know about until I came to the cooking school and you introduced me to lion's mane and we baked it in the pan and we pressed it down and it had the texture of like a soft juicy, I don't want to say chicken because it's got its own flavour and texture but that was, I mean, oh my gosh, a bit like the cauliflower experience for me where it can just lend itself to absolutely anything. You can turn it into lion's mane nuggets which are just delicious.
Veet: Yes, and that recipe is inspired by you and that is actually on my website for the nuggets. And I have 50 grams of lion's mane every day because it's so incredibly good for brain health, so you know, I don't want to get Alzheimer's, so that's why I'm having my 50 grams of lion's mane every day and I don't have it in the supplement form, because supplement form is dehydrated lion's mane, so why not have it in the fresh form?
Pandora: Absolutely, absolutely and it's such a beautiful looking mushroom. When I go and grab some, because unfortunately my daughter lives in Sydney so I have to buy it from my local markets up here, but it's almost too nice to put it in its brown paper bag. I feel like I need to walk around the market just showing it off.
Veet: I think that’s hilarious.
You taught me because I used to put it in a pan and then put something heavy on top and squashed it down, or I would just fry it in a piece. But you taught me to strip it up into small strips and it makes so much volume when you do that. You buy what looks like a small head of lion's mane and it probably costs you $15 but then when you strip it, it just seems to make three times the volume and it's fabulous, so thanks for that tip.
Pandora: Pleasure.
Veet: What else can we talk about food? oh yeah, do you have any advice for people wanting to add more plant-based food into their diet?
Pandora: Just add it, I always say, and I think the most important thing is, a lot of the big nutritionists out there say we should be eating at least 30 different fruits and vegetables per week. Now for me, I can eat that in one meal, one of my salads would just have all of that. But I think, if we concentrate on that, because bringing more plant-based foods into your diet is really really essential for our gut health and people forget about that and you know I'm a big, I'm very passionate about gut health and prebiotic fibre, which comes in all our plant-based foods. Prebiotic fibre is what feeds our already existing microbiome, or our bacteria in our gut, so I think, if you think about it like that, our gut bacteria is also, 80 percent of our immune system sits in the gut, but our gut health is also responsible for our bone health, our weight, our mental health and so many other different things. It brings fibre, which is really good for our digestive system, which is also then really good for our long-term health. As we age, we're getting towards that sort of higher risk for cardiovascular disease, cancers etc. So I think the more plants we add into our diet, the more fibre that we add, the better that we feed our gut bacteria, I think the healthier we're going to age. But also, it just gives us really good vital energy. I don't know about you, but I always feel pretty vital when I eat my plants and fruits and vegetables.
Veet: Yes, I always am astounded when people say they eat and then they feel tired, because as soon as I eat I'm like one of those energiser bunnies.
We are both ,I know, we're both advocates for not restricting but adding more and so, when I first heard 30 plants I'm like, ah, I just thought it was vegetables and fruit, but it's also the grains and the legumes and the nuts and the seeds, they're all plants, so it's very easy to have, you know, 30 different plants in your diet for sure. But certainly, I think for some people, though it's a great way for them to look at it, if they don't do that, because I know there's lots of people that don't have that variety.
Pandora: They said to me "oh my gosh, I found it really hard to put 30 different plants and vegetables together" but they said, "now that's locked into my brain, I'm really trying to do that", so I think that that's a, you know, it's really important to see if you can get that variety, 30 different, you know, fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds etc. during the week.
Veet: Oh yay. And just one last question before we go on to your recipe, which I'm so excited about. What do you think is the future of vegan food?
Pandora: Wow, the future of vegan food. I think, even like, it's been 10 years since I basically did the course with you and I think that the whole vegan food industry has exploded. Let's face it, restaurants now, fast food restaurants, the supermarket, the fast food chains, but you know the processed foods, but everyone is getting on to that sort of vegan food, it's important, but I really do believe that there's so much more research out there. They say 10 percent of Australians identify either as vegetarian or vegan, whereas 10 years ago it was 1.5 percent, so you can see the shift, but I also see in our generation, or my daughter's generation, the big shift because it's sort of, I think, the stigma of the hippie days has sort of transferred itself into also the sustainability, also the nutrition side. The ethos of looking after our animals, but that whole shift is now becoming very apparent, so the vegan industry, I think, is exploding and the next 10 we'll see even more of a shift.
We're making mushrooms which are becoming a lot more prominent on our food pyramids, seaweeds, etc. so I'm excited.
Veet: Me too. A friend, just yesterday, sent me a reel on, they're making making cheese from melon seeds. Wow, you know, and that's just one of the things, like the video had so many other things in it. We already know the pepita pumpkin seeds are a complete protein, well actually, all pumpkin seeds are also a complete protein, but they always used to get thrown away in my house, so there's so many exciting possibilities.
Pandora: Oh look, there is, and I do really feel it because I'm very in touch with, obviously, both my girls and their generation and their friends and they are just definitely the new generation U, that will really bring, you know, the whole sort of vegan, plant-based movement into that sustainability to animals you know, like humanity to health and everything. I think your knowledge is obviously powerful and I think that that's where it's also going to be driven from.
Veet: Can we go on to your recipe share?
Pandora: Sure. Well, I know I also had a a little cooking tip, you know what, I had a cooking tip that was going to lead into my recipe share, but then I thought that I might as well just change it up. One thing I actually learned when I was working with you at the cooking school, and it was at Coorabel Hall. There was a couple that we were making a salad, and we were doing pumpkin and cutting it up for a pumpkin salad, and I was there sort of helping them, and they just cut the pumpkin up seeds and all, they sliced it up and they baked it on a tray. I said, oh you're going to take the seeds out and they said no, that's the best part. They baked the pumpkin for the pumpkin salad and the seeds came out all crunchy and delicious and they formed part of that salad and to this day I always do that.
People say to me, when they eat that salad, they go, oh my gosh, what are those crunchy things? And I go, that's the pumpkin seeds that I cooked with the pumpkin, so I completely forgot that pumpkin seeds are full of zinc, as we know, which is really good for you. It tasted delicious, really good for you and just pimped up that salad. There's a little cooking tip.
My recipe for you guys. I think I should stick with the mushroom theme and I do this all the the time when I go and take a nibbly platter, or people come over for dinner and I really want to impress them with mushrooms is, I get either a big Portobello mushroom cup, which is the large ones, or some nice little ones. By the way, hot tip, little button mushrooms cup side up in the sunshine, five of them, 15 minutes will give you your daily dose of vitamin D.
I get my cashew cheese and I stuff it in the mushroom and I bake it in the oven. The smaller ones probably take about 15 minutes, but the larger ones will take about 25 minutes. I bake it in the oven and pull them out and that cashew cheese has gone all crispy,, and the mushroom is cooked underneat and it is absolutely delicious. And of course the cashew brings your protein, your healthy fats, and my cashew cheese has got garlic and lemon and dill and chives. Nutritional yeast of course.
I'll make a veggie stack and put the big mushroom, the stuffed mushroom on there, or I'll take my little stuffed mushrooms to a dinner party and people go, oh my god, what is in there? And I tell them its my cashew cheese, and they go, what is that? That is delicious. So it's my secret weapon.
Veet: I love that it's your secret weapon. I love that idea on a nibbly platter, now that would be yummy.
Pandora: Well it serves its purpose for both, so you can either have it as a main meal or you can have it as a nibbly platter.
Veet: Yeah fabulous. Oh well, that's the end of the interview, thank you so much Pandora. We actually are sitting here at, I don't know what it is. We started at six o'clock, because we meet on a Monday morning to do co-working together online, so I think that it's time to go and have a cup of tea, but thank you so much Pandora for this wonderful interview and sharing all your tips and tricks.
Pandora: My pleasure, and you know what, you changed my life Veet.
Veet: I'm so glad to hear you say that and I've learned so much from you too, so thank you Pandora. Have a wonderful day
Veet: Wow. That was a great chat. I hope you're inspired by plenty of the things that Pandora talked about, and if you are interested in doing the vegan chef training, or even just talking about it, or doing part of it, or finding out what it's about, please do contact me. All the information on how to contact me is in the show notes.
Have a sensational day and I hope you eat lots of yummy yummy yummy food. Bye.
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