Updates: Cookbook, KetoCon and Book Signing Event: 35

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. I am sharing a few things today, kind of in the way of updates, things that are going on, things that I want to share about that are not related to any guests. So today it'll just be me. I have lots of things going on, which is very crazy, lots of fun things, but the number one thing that I wanted to talk about on this podcast today is my new cookbook that I have had to keep a secret for so long. Uh, but anyway, the title of the cookbook is called The Grain-Free Cookbook for Beginners: Your Essential Guide to a Grain-Free Lifestyle. And I kind of got involved in this because by nature keto is very much a grain-free, anti-inflammatory diet. So a lot of people come to keto and to a grain-free way of life because they have some intolerances or a severe disease. Grain-free is highly related to gluten-free, and really the distinction is if you're gluten-free for health purposes, for celiac or something like that, it means avoiding everything with gluten. But then grain-free is actually a little subset of that where it's even more restrictive. So instead of just avoiding gluten, which would be like wheat, and certainly there's gluten in plenty of products. But in whole foods, grains are divided into two groups. There's grains, which is kind of all the things that we think of whole grain as, so wheat, barley, that sort of thing. And there's this other group of grains called pseudo cereals, and they're kind of sort of grain adjacent. They contain the same chemical in them that is harmful as gluten, and it's in lesser amount though. So some people that have to be gluten-free can actually tolerate pseudo cereals But it depends on the severity of the, you know, disease process that you're working with or whatever. So the distinction of going grain-free is like, how strict do you need to be with it depends on what your goal is. If you have any autoimmune diseases, if you have celiac in particular, you definitely have to be very, very careful with gluten, and some people do better if they go fully grain-free. Um, but just for just general health purposes, it might not be totally necessary to avoid all grains. And so the level that you take this to really just depends on what it is you're trying to accomplish. If you're looking to do it for something like weight loss or to just feel lighter or get rid of that brain fog or wheat belly feeling, then maybe having a little bit of grains on occasion might be okay for you. But if you're really trying to, again, work with celiac or a severe autoimmune disease, you might really do better avoiding all grains all the time. So All that said, you'll actually— if you read the book, obviously you'll learn a lot more about those distinctions and kind of what you should be on the lookout for if you're trying a grain-free diet. Because you know that I am so focused on a sugar-free keto-style diet, of course all of the recipes in the book are also keto-friendly and sugar-free and lots of dairy-free options as well for people who have issues with that. Part of working with the publisher was really around, you know, what, what people are looking for these days and what are the popular search terms. What is it people want to know about going grain-free or gluten-free or keto or any of those things? But it was particularly important because people that get really focused on health tend to look at all these aspects. So if dairy intolerance is a problem, that's going to be part of the plan. And then also some people are still very convinced that being a vegetarian or very, very plant-based is important to them. And so there's a whole chapter in the book that's vegetarian, which was a very interesting thing for me, of course, since I have not done that in a very long time. As you might know if you've been listening to this for a while, I was a vegetarian in the past for 7 years actually, but I haven't been for a very long time. And also, if you've listened to this podcast lately, you know that most recently I'm very focused on getting the proper amount of protein and educating people about that because It's really one of the best ways that you can ensure your health, long-term health and longevity. There is some debate about, is, uh, this idea of getting optimal protein for being really vital and keeping your muscle and all that, is that incompatible possibly with longevity? Because it does activate the mTOR pathway whenever you are eating a lot of protein. It's a building pathway. And then generally for longevity, what we see is a pathway that's more focused on, uh, like autophagy, which you've also heard me talk about before, which is basically your cellular cleanup process in your body. And that is most strongly activated by fasting, not eating anything. And so what the kind of thought leaders and people that talk about this a lot are starting to think is that maybe it's what we really should have been doing all along with our evolution, right? And that's those periods of feasting and fasting so that you're focused on optimal protein at the times that you are eating to really build and maintain muscle. And then you periods though where you're not stimulating these growth pathways, you're not stimulating mTOR. So that's kind of a little side note. Obviously, um, I do like to mention the fact of getting optimal protein anytime that I can. And one of the ways that you can look at that, if you go to healnourishgrow.com, look for the keto calculator, and there's some options on the calculator. One's a more traditional style of keto, which is going to be a smaller amount of protein which is more about, you know, making sure that you're really in high state of ketosis and there's not having so much protein that it, you know, kicks you out of ketosis. Also, being in ketosis is very muscle protective. So we don't know what the exact, exact right amount of protein is really. What we do know is that the RDA recommendation for protein is a minimum. It is meant to prevent disease. It is not about building muscle. It is not about thriving. It is not about being vital into your older years. And as we get older, your body is less able to take the protein that you are getting, break it down to amino acids, and make it very useful. So as we get older, we actually need even more protein because your body is not as efficient at processing it when you get older. And unfortunately, especially women and especially older ladies, you know, they get very focused obviously on calories and, you know, weight maintenance and that sort of thing, which I'm— there's nothing wrong with that, obviously, but The way that a lot of people approach that is that they actually start cutting protein and cutting things like steaks and red meat instead of cutting the carbs from their diet, which is also very critical as we get older to, uh, you know, we're more likely to be insulin resistant. And when you're insulin resistant, your body does not handle carbs well, and it's going to put about so much insulin, it's going to start making you gain fat. So there's a whole lot of reasons, health reasons, why it's very important to get the right amount of protein. And you'll find if you just focus on prioritizing protein, you will naturally be eating less carbs, less sugar, all of that, because just to maintain your weight, you wouldn't be able to keep all that in. Also, protein is very satiating, so you're not gonna be as hungry. So I do talk about some of this stuff about the protein in the book, um, but my point is it doesn't really matter what diet you follow, what paradigm, what you think is healthy. There's really something in this cookbook for everybody. Now, if you're a vegetarian, there's only one chapter, and that's not going to work so well for you, uh, but. But if you are just kind of still experimenting with kind of eating whatever you want or eating moderately, things in moderation, all of these recipes are just going to be, you know, one meal a week or two, however much you decide to use it, or one meal a day where there's no grain. And so that they're naturally low carb, obviously. And then it also teaches you some substitutions for things that you might typically eat when you're eating a grain-based diet, like breads, pasta, rice, all those sorts of things. You know, you start to use some of these alternatives to that, which could be, you know, cauliflower is a great stand-in for many grains if you're just looking for something that is rice-like or some— to add some bulk to the meal or something to hold sauce. So there's some of those tips in there. In addition, there's a chicken crust pizza, which is pretty awesome. So that gets rid of basically all of the carbs from the recipe, and you get a really nice high-protein meal when you make that dish. So, and of course, desserts. Everybody, especially when they're transitioning Even if you're not a big dessert person, occasionally you might want to have some sweets, and there are so many really great recipes in there for that kind of thing. Some of them are naturally grain-free, like the crème brûlée, and then some have a substitution. So for example, there's a chocolate pie in there that utilizes a crust without grain, and actually one of my Instagram friends, Maya, just made it and she was raving about it and saying how amazing it was, and she actually made a little video about it, so I can't wait to see that. Um, but I tell you, it's a very— it's a crazy thing because, you know, I have my other cookbook, Easy Weeknight Keto. That's a very small book, and it was kind of really for me a proof of concept. Like, I write recipes all the time for the website, obviously, but that is not the same as a cookbook. And I kind of wanted to experiment, and I wanted to see, like, hey, if I set my mind to this, is this something that I can do? Is this something that people are looking for? And then when I ended connecting with the publisher, it turned out that I guess all that stuff really is— people are looking for it and they do want it. And they want things, more education about healthy lifestyle stuff. So this book has— The Grain-Free Cookbook, I believe, has something like 75 recipes. I mean, it's a full cookbook. And of course it has the whole introduction in the beginning that gives you the education about why you might want to eat less grain. And it also has some other resources throughout the book about, you know, various things like weight loss or the keto calculator I mentioned, different resources for products that support a grain-free lifestyle. So I think it's a great resource, and even if you don't need all that other stuff, it's got great recipes. And I test everything, and I make my husband eat all the things and tell me the truth about whether that, you know, if he thinks they work or if it could use tweaks. I also had a couple of friends during the process test some recipes for me, serve it to their families. So I really think that it's a high, you know, high-quality cookbook. I think that you'll enjoy it no matter how you eat. So check that out. It's on Amazon. If you just type in Grain-Free Cheryl McColgan or Grain-Free Cookbook for Beginners and scroll down a bit, you'll find it. Um, one of the nice things, it doesn't actually fully release until I believe the date is July 19th, which is a Tuesday, 18th or 19th. So whichever one's a Tuesday. Um, and before it releases, one of the things that you can do on Amazon is you can preorder and it's nice because it signals to the publisher that there's interest, number one. So it's It definitely helps bring it up in the rankings, things like that. So if you go there, search Buy It On Pre-Order. One of the nice things with Amazon, when you pre-order, it has like a lifetime price guarantee. So if at any time in the future the book price reduces, goes on a big sale or something, they actually rebate you that money, which I think is pretty cool. And it helps support, you know, if you're already listening to this podcast, if you like my work, you like my content, then it's just a good way to support the book without feeling like, uh, you're gonna, you know, it's gonna be on sale later, nobody wants it anymore, and you will have spent your $10 or $15 or whatever it is, and now it's only $3. Hopefully that will not happen, but you never know. I mean, books have cycles, right? And so typically a book like this might be even more popular at the beginning of the year when everybody's focused on resolutions and changing their diet. But like I said, it doesn't matter how you eat, I think you're gonna like the recipes. And so if you are called to support the book or buy the book, I'd really appreciate it. And of course, if you don't, that's fine too. Some of the recipes will be being released on my website as part of the sort of campaign or the marketing portion of it. Before, they've had me, you know, release a few of the recipes that are in the book. One of them is already up there. The first one I put up is the keto lasagna I'm calling it keto lasagna because it is keto. It is keto-friendly is what I'm calling on the website, but it's just a zucchini lasagna. So again, we're talking about using substitutions for things that are typically full of grain. In this recipe for lasagna, the substitute is going to be zucchini noodles. So they're actually flat pieces of zucchini that you cut, or I really recommend that you use a mandolin. And I have my favorite mandolin linked in my, um, in my store. It's very inexpensive. I want to say it was maybe $25, maybe even $20. And once you have one, you'll find lots of uses to it. The only thing I will say is you do need to be careful because they are very, very sharp, and plenty of people get hurt using mandolins. But if you use it properly and always use a protective shield, and you can even wear like a protective like metal glove when you use it, um, just for extra protection. But they're, they're extremely useful if used properly. So you can get some nice thin cuts on different things. It also has options for shredding vegetables or doing more like noodle style that kind of stuff. So it's a really versatile kitchen tool that I like, and I'll be sure to link that in the show notes. But you can always just go to my Amazon shop page and find anything that I talk about there. Uh, other news, so in relation to the book, if you happen to be near me in the Cincinnati area, so we're actually doing a book event, a book signing at my favorite local bookstore that I'm going to for years, Joseph Beth. And that is 7 PM on that Tuesday. Well, like I said, it's either the 18th or 19th. I should have looked up the date before we got on here, but So if you happen to be in town and in the area, I would love to see you. I don't— I need to practice writing because my handwriting is atrocious. I don't know if I can do anything about that before the event, but it'll still be a good time even if you can't read what the heck I write to you. So my other little bits of news. So this Friday, so the day I'm recording this is actually just the day before release, which I never do. I usually have a backlog of episodes, but I really wanted to just talk about this and share about this a little bit. Before the date, so I decided I'd squeeze this episode in between my other scheduled episodes. And so I'm going to KetoCon for the first time where I'm speaking. I'm actually doing a cooking demo, so I'm going to do some recipes from the book. And I have my partners— I actually am just posting a review for this new air fryer that I've been using for a little while. I've had several of them over the years. This latest one is definitely my favorite, and I think that's probably what happens, right? Like, products— once they— once the air fryer craze caught on, like a lot of more people started making them. People started finding that they are very useful. And then so I think manufacturers over time have started, you know, adding new features that really make them much more useful. And it makes it an appliance in your kitchen where you don't feel like you're just, you know, doing it for one thing. Like air frying, people typically think of that as like, oh, I'm going to put my chicken wings in there, or I'm going to put some, um, you know, some kind of— or if you have kids, or if you're not keto or whatever, you could put potatoes in there and make french fries out of them. You can make them very crispy without a lot of oil. So that appeals to a lot of people, and that was kind of their original premise. Well, now you can use them for a lot of different things. So this oven that I have now that I've been loving, it has a proof function, which is really cool. So if you make any kind of yeast breads, you can put it in the air fryer to proof. And if you haven't— if you're not a bad— I saw— I used to make bread, like real bread, back in the day, probably 25 years ago. I was kind of obsessed with it. And if you're not familiar with proofing, it's when you put the yeast into your flour, it needs to take some time to digest the sugar. As it does that, it starts to rise, and so that initial rise is called the proof. And it's very useful to have it in a very specific temperature kind of space and in a space that does not get drafts. Typically, some ovens, full-on ovens, have this feature as well, but it's a very low temperature, so not every oven will do it. Generally, it's around 100 degrees, and you put your bowl in there with your yeast and your, your dough, and you let it proof, and it helps just keep it more consistent. It helps it rise further and longer and all that kind of good stuff. So it's got the proof function, which is cool, and then it's also got a grill function, which is pretty amazing because it's got like a special grate that goes in there. You cook a legitimate steak on, you can get the nice grill marks like just like you would outside. And I've tried it and it's like, it doesn't— of course it's not going to have charcoal flavor or anything like that, but it works really well. It cooks a lot faster. You can still use it for my favorite method. You know my favorite method is reverse sear because I love keeping a nice stock of meat in my house. So generally it's frozen, and reverse sear, what it's best for is meats that are frozen or very thick cuts of steak. And all it is I've actually been meaning to write an article about this for such a long time, but it's such a simple process that I don't really need a whole article about it. I'll just tell you right now. So you just put your meat in the frozen— like I said, frozen or whatever. It can be unfrozen, room temperature, anything like that. Okay, so you put it in there at 225 in your regular convection oven or standard oven. You want to have like a little rack where you can elevate it from a cooking sheet. So a cooking sheet, not a— or baking sheet, right? Not a cookie sheet, because it's not only for cookies, but but you put a rack on top of that so that the air can circulate around the steak. So this is why the air fryer is actually really good for this because the air can fully circulate in an air fryer and that's actually what it's designed to do. But so you elevate the steak a bit off your baking sheet and put it in there, 225°F. Of course, you know, my other thing that I love that I always talk about in my recipes are my temperature probes because I cannot cook meat properly without a temperature probe. I'm not one— now if you watch this on video, you'll see this old school way you poke certain parts of your hand to know whether something's like well done, medium rare, kind of the give in the meat. I can't trust that. I'm not good. I'm like, I don't know if it feels like the pad of my hand or not. So I always just use my temperature probe. It's got a thing that sits outside the oven, then it's got a long cord, and you put the temperature probe in the meat. The part that has the temperature on it sits outside of the oven. There's all kinds. The most recent version I've gotten is really cool because it connects to my phone, uh, via Wi-Fi, I believe. So it doesn't have the restriction on the Bluetooth distance. And then it rings when it gets to the certain temperature. And I use this for smoking meat all the time too, because, you know, you're trying to get your smoker to a certain temperature, but then you also need to keep an eye on the meat temperature. So it actually can put 4 probes in this one single box, which is really cool. Um, but anyway, I use this in the kitchen too. I use it daily, and I have an instant read thermometer as well. So if I'm doing something that's like a little bit quicker cooking, like a fish or a chicken or something, and I just want to make sure that I don't, um, go too far and overcook it sometimes, or like fish, fish putting the probe in the fish is not always that easy because it's thinner. So I do like to have the instant read one as well. Um, but you put it in the oven and when your meat gets to within 15 degrees, 20 to 15 to 20 degrees of your preferred doneness. So for example, if you like medium rare, I think off the top of my head, I think medium rare is 130. Don't quote me on that. But so that means you around 110, you would take the meat out of the oven and then you sear it. So this is why it's called reverse sear because a lot of, um, places or steakhouses or things, they'll always just cook the meat all the way on the grill, right? But if you do it this way, it cooks the meat slowly up to 110. So what you avoid with that process, instead of doing it on the grill real hot and quick, you know how it's when— especially if you're a medium-rare kind of person, this might not matter as much as if you eat medium or well-done meat, but the center, the very center of steaks are generally like still really cold when you get to the the proper searing on the outside. It'll still say the temperature is whatever that's supposed to be on the inside, but somehow it still tastes more cold. I don't know why. I have no good explanation for this other than just saying, you know, that's my experience. Maybe not— you'll have to write me and tell me if you experience this too. But when you do it reverse sear, the whole piece of meat is very evenly cooked to 110. It's almost like a sous vide in a way, if you're familiar with that. And so when the meat is all evenly cooked, then you just take it off and sear the outside. It's just, I don't know, it's the best. And also for frozen meat, it's the best because it defrosts it along the way, keeps it at a temperature that's going to keep out any pathogens or anything, uh, you know, instead of doing other methods of defrosting like putting it in water or leaving it on the counter. So I really like it, especially for frozen, or if it's really thick. You got a really thick steak and you put it on a grill, it's more likely to get burnt like to a crisp on the outside before it ever is close to the temp on the inside that it should be. So anyway, that was a very long explanation to say they cooked the meat, the meat, to within 15 to 20 degrees at 225 in the oven and then take it out and sear it the rest of the way. So that's very simple. That's all reverse sear is. So, and actually in the book, I think one of the steak recipes in there, I think I give a brief description. So what I just said there in about 6 or 7 minutes is about maybe 3 sentences in the book, but it's, it's everything you need to know to do it. Um, so anyway, back to KetoCon, doing a few recipes from the book. I have this awesome air fryer from Caloric. I'm gonna put the link in the show notes for that as well. And, um, yeah, so it'll just be meeting some people that I've known online for a really long time, meeting them in person, which is great. There's gonna be some wonderful education. Like I said, I'm doing the cooking demo, um, and And I think there will be just, I don't know, every opportunity to just have a lot of fun. My sister's meeting me down there. If you happen to hear this and can find a really cheap flight to Austin, I think they still have a couple of tickets left. And I actually have a discount code. It's HEALNOURISHGROSS. If you could put that in at checkout and you can get to Austin by Friday, I would love to see you. Any other news? Oh yes. This is just a personal piece of news. I don't really have to share this, but since since this is a shorter podcast anyway, I'll just go ahead and share it. Our house is under contract, and so we will be moving here shortly, and I'm hoping to not let that impact the podcast releasing on every Wednesday too much. Like always, I have a backlog of interviews. I try to at least have a month or two out so that I'm never stuck in that place where it's time for the podcast to come out and I— a guest reschedules or something like that. So I don't think it will affect the podcast, but we'll see. It will also be interesting to see where we are next because we at the current time do not have a new house or anything like that. We do have a plan at the moment. I don't know if I'm ready to like necessarily share that yet because hey, what if the house sale falls through or something? I don't know. But it does entail a little adventure that I could take you on with me as well. I might even add a little I don't know how to think about this. I might have to add a smaller mini episode each week to kind of give the update. But one thought that we had is to just VRBO in a few different places around the country for a little while, and in the hopes that the housing market will settle down a little bit in the meantime, and then we can revisit this in the spring. Because where we are in Cincinnati, the market is quite hot in the Midwest, and, but it's just starting to show some signs of of possibly slowing with interest rates going up and all that kind of stuff and the supply just being so low. But I think people are getting tired of the really high prices, and so we'll have to see how that shakes out. But that is the idea at the moment. So if you have any, um, if you happen to own a VRBO or you have any insight into some fun places, we haven't booked everything up yet. If you've been around, you also might know that we are snowboarders, so in the winter we like to be in places where there are mountains. So that will be part of the plan as well. Uh, this was actually going to happen even before we decided to sell house, um, since both of us can work from anywhere, which is awesome, and our boys are going to be away at school. We are spending a month in Utah near my favorite mountains, which, um, if you don't know about that, there's a little Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood in, uh, most people think of Park City when they think of Utah for skiing, but on the other side, Little Cottonwood and Big Cottonwood Canyon was where Snowbird and Solitude and Brighton are. And they get about twice as much snow as the other side where Park City is. So we always love going there. That's our favorite place to snowboard. And we've gotten really lucky in the past with some huge amounts of snow. So that will be February. So that's sort of set. First place, first stop is our— some of our family is in Michigan and stuff. So we're just going to go up there for a little while and spend some time with them. And that's a wonderful place to be in August. They have the most beautiful weather. Yeah. So I think that is sort of all of the updates. As usual, still over here living the low-carb life, being in ketosis, having a clear brain, getting lots of work done. That's all good things. Oh, I do— shoot. I do have two other things really quickly. I'll also put these in the show notes. So I'm participating in two summits upcoming. One is called something like Creative Side Businesses for Women. But I think there will be some awesome information in there for men as well. I'll put that in the show notes, but my interview really wasn't based on any kind of side hustle. It's more based on health and wellness ideas and tips for entrepreneurs and why being very healthy is important for entrepreneurs. So I talk all about that with the host Carrie, and there are some free resources we're giving away. I'm giving away some copies of the book as well as, oh, something— I think it was a like getting started with keto resource guide, something like that. And then The next one is called the Summer Health Bundle, and that is basically a whole bunch of people that banded together, all focused on health and wellness, and all of the people in the group are offering some sort of free resource. So you might get, uh, again, I think with mine it was like a Getting Started with Keto masterclass. Other people have ideas about how to get organized or how to— just everything having to do with health and wellness. It's something like over 800 or 2,000, a crazy amount of value for free. Um, you just have to sign up with the link and then you can go through and pick all the ones that you want and download those. So those are both coming up, uh, pretty quickly here. So I'll put those in the show notes. I hope you can take advantage of that and just get some great free resources, learn about some other wonderful content creators, and just, you know, take advantage of free education. I mean, that's one of the— as a content creator, it's one of the frustrations of the internet, but as a consumer, it's absolutely amazing because there is just so much so much wonderful free content out there, uh, and most of us, you know, we just put our heart and soul into it and hope that it helps somebody. So that's all it's for. Uh, okay, and now I will wrap up. So thank you so much as always for listening to the show. If you enjoy the podcast and you haven't left a review yet on iTunes, I would so appreciate you doing that. It's the only way that people can find us. There is so much content out there in the world, and there are certainly lots of health and wellness related podcasts So if you like this one, and if you like supporting my work, one great way to do that— it's free, it's easy, it's quick— is just to pop over to iTunes, write in a comment, give your honest feedback, rate it with the stars. Of course, we love a 5-star review, but any, uh, constructive criticism or suggestions are always appreciated. If you don't want to leave that on the review, which I would, you know, I also appreciate— some people, some people, times people like go kind of crazy on that stuff— but, um, you can always email me and give me feedback as well, or reach out me on the social channels. You know, I'm Heal Nourish Grow everywhere. So yes, so that's everything I think for now. Again, thank you so much for being with me. You're what makes this possible. Knowing that I even help you in some little way, um, when I get comments from people or hear from people, it's just, it makes my day. It's what makes me keep doing what I do. So, uh, always love helping you. Always love ideas for shows, for things that you wanna hear more about, uh, for what kinds of episodes you like, all those things. So I will talk to you again next week, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.