Colorful Quick And Cardio-Friendly: 3 Must-Try Recipes

Introduction and Chef AJu2019s new book 0:00

Well hello everybody. Welcome back to reversing heart Disease naturally summit third year. And we have a superstar that I am so excited about. I've been, lucky to call chef AJ. And I'm sure everybody watching this has become familiar with chef AJ. But we've known of each other for, a dozen years, including actually working together on some video shoots at our home that used to be in Southern California, but now she's relocated near Sacramento Auto, a big vegan community up there. Thank you chef AJ.

Oh thank you doctor. It's such an honor to be invited to this prestigious summit, which I have watched every year. Oh my God. Thank you. And we talked ahead of time that you do what you do best when you make delicious food that's hard to healthy and gets everybody so excited. In fact, let's go right to plugging. Show us your new book. Oh thank you. And I want to be making. You make me one recipe from it okay. Sweet indulgence. But despite that gorgeous, gorgeous dessert on the cover, you set oil free, salt free, sugar free, gluten free recipes.

Some vegan calorie plan face. Yeah, some. Some are splurges, but many are just absolutely consistent with the stunning way you teach, you know, healthy weight loss through no S.O.S. cooking. So it's fantastic. You well, thank you. You know what? You know the seller of choice and get sweet indulgence by Chef AJ what brought you here? That's your fourth book. Yeah my fourth book. Thank you. And it's my favorite because it literally has a color beautiful color photo for every recipe. And what we did is we rated each recipe just that in terms of how rich they were or indulgent being low fat, medium fat or high fat, but how sweet they are by using my favorite fruit strawberry.

One for subtly sweet to for pretty sweet and three for superbly sweet. So I tried to have something for everyone in this book. Well thank you. And before we forge right ahead into some great cooking, I mean, I just want to give the audience a shout out. You and I also share a bond because 1977 was a very special year for both of us. It's right that a plant based diet and I did the same thing, that it's our 48th year of doing this. Absolutely. My my vegan anniversary was September 1st. Do you happen to remember your day?

It was first week of freshman year. University of Michigan. So I celebrate basically that first week of September because that is when, right. That's when I was I was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. The same thing. There's something about being a freshman that makes people go vegan, I guess, and people. Are scratching your head and saying, she looks 35, but she was a freshman in 1977, so. I wish thank you so much. All right. So we talked ahead that let's pick three healthy heart healthy foods.

And we picked pomegranates and oats and kale. And it's kind of like you know the show chopped on TV. You had to come up with something to prepare. So I'm going to, you know, turn the mic over to you and you, you run with it. I'll do a little color commentary if I feel I need to. Absolutely. Thank you doctor.

Pizza kale with pressure cooker 3:28

Kind and welcome everyone. So you actually said Greens. You didn't say kale, but I chose kale because, you know, I always think about greens and heart disease reversal from you and other doctors. And I want people to know that kale is sometimes an acquired taste. If you've been eating the standard American diet or junk food vegan diet, you're not going to go from that to steamed kale. But there's ways to make kale delicious. And I'm going to show you right now in one of my favorite recipes called pizza kale.

This is so good, you'll want to eat the whole thing. Also, I want to let you know that greens are so important for so many reasons and if you find them bitter, then get the baby greens. So for example, kale comes in baby kale. Spinach comes in baby spinach and it comes in baby arugula. That will help counteract some of the bitterness that comes from the thylakoid. But those thylakoid are magical for so many reasons. I like to just buy them already washed and shredded and distend. You can certainly do this yourself and Trader Joe's, which is near where I live, is wonderful because they have the standard kale and they also have the Tuscan kale, which is darker, but generally if it's darker, it's going to be a little bit more bitter.

I'm using an electric pressure cooker because it's so easy to cook things quickly, and it's only going to cook for maybe three minutes. You could probably do as few as one minute, depending on how green or verdant you like it. Five is good if you like it a little bit more, cook, but I'm going to do three. So in my electric pressure cooker I have a half a cup of water which I've already heated up. If you start with a pot of boiling water, any time you pressure cook, it will go more quickly. But if you forget to do that room temperature or even cold water is fine, it will just take a little bit longer.

So I'm going to take my entire bag of kale and place it in the food processor. Because it's so shredded finely, it's going to be a lot easier to eat. So if you've heard of kale salads that are massaged, maybe they'll be massaged with some type of a tahini dressing or avocado. The other thing is, if you want to cut it small, it will be much more palatable and easier to eat and easier to chew. So to make it taste like pizza, I'm going to be putting in what my favorite toppings for pizza are. And so one of them is artichoke hearts.

These are frozen artichoke hearts that I've simply defrosted. You can also get them in a can, but they might have some salt or citric acid. And in which case you could always rinse them. And you can certainly put them in for like this. But usually I just take the food scissors and I just chop them a little bit just to have more pieces of it, because then I get more artichokes per bite. Artichokes are probably my favorite vegetable. I don't eat them as often as I would like, mostly relying on things like broccoli and other greens.

But if you have an electric pressure cooker, which is one of my recommendations for people really wanting to start eating healthier, you can easily cook artichokes in the pressure cooker in seven minutes, four of them and I remember when I was little, my mom would cook the artichokes on the stove. It it would take like a whole hour, even more so just to have the water boil. So I'm just going to chop this up so that I get more per bite. I will say I just had for years we watched you with your pressure cooker at my house and my wife is a fabulous, you know, plant based cook.

But we didn't have one. I think it was five years ago. We broke down and, got our first one and it sits on the counter and is used every day. It's become such a staple of, cooking, and it seems so easy to use. I've actually never turned it on. I'm so happy to hear you say that, Doctor Con, because I believe that if people get them and keep them on the counter, they will use them every day like we do. So I'm just going to place my artichokes in there. The water is already in there. You always want to make sure you have at least about a half a cup of water when you're pressure cooking, and if you would prefer to use no sodium or low sodium vegetable broth, you certainly can.

One of my favorite things, and I know that when you came on my show many years ago, Healthy Living with chef AJ, we did a lot of tomato recipes because I'm sure that even though tomato wasn't one of the ingredients you told me, I'm sure that there's some benefits to this for people with heart disease. So these are some dried tomatoes. There's no oil in them. You buy them in a bag. These are actually smoked. They're delicious. There's no oil and salt, but they give you such a burst of flavor with every bite.

These are Julianne cuts small because I think it tastes something like 3 or 4 pounds of tomatoes just to make, like three ounces of sun dried tomatoes. So these are great. And like I said, I'm just basing this on what I like to have on pizza. When I have pizza, of course you need garlic, so you certainly are welcome to use fresh garlic. But in a pinch or even not in a pinch, there's nothing wrong with using garlic that you can buy on the shelf that is already minced. You just want to look for one that just says garlic, or maybe garlic and water and citric acid.

And they also have it roasted too, which will give it even more flavor. And so you can just use as little or as much as you like. I'm going to use it all. It looks like there's about two tablespoons left in this jar. You know, they always say that you measure garlic with your heart. So you know I always feel with garlic it's a little bit is good. More is better. But feel free to use fresh if that's what you prefer. I'm going to place it on. That garlic is in water. Yes it's in water. So it basically says garlic.

Cooking your no oil rules so good. Right. So garlic water citric acid. So I'm sure different brands are different right. So I'm just going to place the top on the pressure cooker. A lot of people struggle to get the top on. But if you would just think of the middle of the pressure cooker where the clock is as 12:00 and always place the top at 11:00, you will have no problem. We have a little button that says sealing or venting. So for cooking we want it sealed away from us. And there are a lot of buttons on this machine.

And honestly, I've never even read the manual. All I do is rely on the one button that says pressure cook. And then I want to do three minutes on the clock, 1 to 3 and that's it. We set it, we forget it. And this is the brilliance of pressure cooking. Now we will want to release the pressure when it comes up to pressure, because if we don't think that little beep is lady, is this what you want it? Yup. If we don't release the pressure with things like vegetables, like broccoli or zucchini or greens, there's not a problem there.

It's just we will continue to cook and this will actually get brown. But I want this bright and green I want it is appetizing as possible. So while this is cooking I'm going to make my next recipe which is from my book Sweet Indulgence. And it is called the Thumbprint Cookie. A lot of people ask me what my favorite of the 157 recipes are. And the reason I say thumbprint cookies is because, well, I love them because they're delicious, but they're all they're so easy to make and they only bake for five minutes.

And truthfully, if you wanted to have them uncooked, you could have them ready even sooner. It also doesn't make a lot. So if you're somebody that maybe struggles with having a sweet treat in the house, it makes about 6 or 8 cookies. And so I think that's fantastic. And the varieties are endless because it's filled with jam that's sweetened with just fruit or chia seeds. If you make the recipe from my book. And so sometimes I'll just do like and flavors and it's really fun. So let me grab the ingredients.

You just say the name of the cookie again. I couldn't quite hear it. Thumbprint cookies. Thumbprint. Print. Song print. Sometimes they're called jam, jam, print, but these are thumbprint cookies. Most, most kids know about these because they're fun to make. Because you stick your thumb in to make the little well for the jam. But I don't make a little well for my jam. I make a big well because I love a lot of jam. You know, we're lucky now that we can get so many healthy items in the store. The year that Doctor Khan and I became vegan in 1977, they didn't even have plant milk in a box.

And now there's probably 20 different kinds, and you can even get things at Walmart and the 99 cent store. So it's very easy to make your own fruit sweetened jam simply by taking fruit that's ripe and sweet, and adding chia seeds to fresh or defrosted frozen fruit. There's a recipe in my book for that, but if you don't want to go to the trouble, there are so many brands now that are just fruit sweetened, which have fruit and fruit pectin, and sometimes grape juice. Raspberries my favorite. So that's what we're going to use today.

We have few ingredients in this recipe. In most of my recipes, I try to keep them to seven ingredients or less of easy to find ingredients, and I always strive to have every ingredient in some form available at Walmart, because I know that sometimes people don't have a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe's or a sprouts. Here I have my oats. I use gluten free, but if you're not gluten free, you can use any kind of oats. And then I have my vanilla bean powder, which is superior and my feeling than just liquid extract.

But if you have vanilla extract, you can substitute in an equal amount. And this is optional in the recipe. But I'm putting in a little bit of cinnamon just because I love it. And I'm sure that there's probably lots of health benefits to it. I'm using a food processor next dry. You want to make sure that if you're grinding or processing things like oats or nuts into a flour like consistency, that it's dry because sometimes if you wash it, it takes a while for those last little bits of water to dry.

And that will, you know, make your recipe wet. So I learned from my sous chef, Rebecca martinez, that if that happens to you, just get out your blow dryer and then you'll have a nice dry food processor. I'm just going to process this into just a flour like consistency. You don't have to do it very long. And truthfully, I've done it with just adding the dates and not processing it at all. You can also use oat flour if you prefer, and an equal amount, but that's going to be more expensive. So I just use the whole oat.

Did you turn the microphone off or there's that a silent food processor. So that was 10s I know that because it says it on my food processor and they're just like little fine breadcrumbs. And it's okay if there's pieces of oats in the toothsome. This is actually, in my opinion, a very nice quality. So I have here my dates. I haven't eaten at least knowingly processed or refined sugar since July 6th, 2003. It's been over 20 years. I get my sweetness from the fruit, the whole fruit and nothing but the whole fruit.

So I use things like dates and bananas and apples or applesauce or even sweet potatoes. So here I'm using dates. These are the Diglett, and the reason I use them is because they're the cheapest that I can find at Costco for 269 a pound and they come in and. But if you'd rather use the more expensive medjool or a bar date, they could be four or 5 or 6 times as much expensive. But if that's what you prefer, you can do what the main thing is. They are permitted. A lot of times they'll say pitted, but you'll find that rogue pits.

So today I took the trouble of squeezing every single one to make sure we have no pits. So I'm going to place it in the food processor with the oats, the cinnamon, and the vanilla. And this could take a few minutes. I'm going to process it until the food processor starts to slow down and a ball starts to form. How long this will take will depend on how full you feel your food processor. Maybe you decided to double the recipe and how powerful your food processor is, but I do recommend a food processor, not a blender.

Even if you have a good high powered blender because you need the surface area for the blade to turn. So I'm going to turn the food processor on now. Well, we certainly would give thumbs up to cinnamon, you know, important in blood sugar control. And we surely would give thumbs up to the dried tomatoes. And I do love them, too. And so rich in vitamin C and lycopene. A great, great, great and accident. Our fruits and veggies are so packed with antioxidants and fiber and there we go. So that was 45 seconds.

And I don't know if you could see, but I could hear and feel that it was starting to slow down and so, you know, it's ready if oops, that little beep means that my kale is going to be ready in three minutes to may have to switch gears. You know, it's ready if simply you can just grab some of the dough in your hand and it forms a ball. And also if you can break it in half without it fumbling. This is called the break point. If you, for whatever reason, are avoiding oats, you can do the same thing with nuts so you can take a nut of your choice like an almond or a walnut or pecan.

Do the same thing. Grind it into a flour like a breadcrumb consistency with your cinnamon and vanilla, and then add your dates. So now what I'm going to do is I'm just going to pour this on a nonstick silicone baking sheet. And I'm going. And show you how to make the cookie. Now if my pressure cooker comes up to pressure during this time, I am going to stop because I don't want it to keep cooking for it will get that not very attractive gray color that you sometimes see when greens have been overcooked.

If you don't have a nonstick silicone baking tray, you can certainly take any baking sheet and then line it with parchment paper so it won't stick. So right now I have a ball and I could make a giant cookie or a tart with this. So usually what I do is I don't worry about it being perfect. If you are worried about that, you could take a cookie scoop or a food scale, but I generally just break it in half and then I have to make the decision. Do I want six cookies or eight cookies?

Thumbprint cookies with fruit jam 17:20

I'm going to make six. So I'm going to just do each half into about thirds. Oh yeah. So I don't worry about it being perfect. And then what I do is I just roll it into a ball. You can eat this now, by the way. And if you are a raw food or following 100% raw food diet, my friend Lissa says that you can now get sprouted oats that are raw so you can actually eat this just as it is. It would be delicious, but we're going to bake it for five minutes just so the stickiness comes off of the little bit of the date's stickiness.

And also, for some reason, when I when I do cook it, rather than eating it uncooked, it, it makes me the jam just nice and glazed. And it just looks absolutely beautiful. So, you know, one is a little bigger than the other. We don't have to worry about that or we can fix it like that and roll it, roll it, roll it, roll it. It's a very easy recipe to make. And you know, it's funny because we talk about oh go ahead. Sorry. Oh, I said you made a comment that we're going to make 6 or 8 cookies and not more because we made, you know, these are going to disappear in a moment in my house.

I think you're. Absolutely I think. You're famous. You're famous for the saying, if it's in your house, it's in your mouth. I, I agree with that. And it's it's as true for me as everyone else. So we have these six little balls right now. And if you want to just eat these as opposed as them, you can. So what we're going to do is we're going to take our thumb and press it in each one. So you can get the kids to do this. Oops. But as I mentioned, if the kale got ready we were going to tend to it. It's going to beep I think ten times.

And I think it does that because then if you're in the other room, you know it's ready. So what I'm going to do first is unplug it. Because then it stops the cooking. If you don't unplug it, it turns itself into a warming or crock pot like setting. And we'll continue to cook. Now I'm going to release the pressure. I have this little diverter here so that the steam goes side to side. And also make your own with a piece of PVC pipe pipe from Home Depot. You could put a towel over the promise. That towel will get very wet and it will be very hot.

So the reason for the diverter is because let's say you have it under the counter. You don't want to, you know, have it go on the paint of your cabinets or ceiling. So that was pretty fast. How long it takes to release the pressure depends on how full the unit is. You don't have to worry about these exploding. All the stories I've heard about pressure cookers cook cookers exploding, or for people that had the stovetop version, not the electric version. So that little metal thing you can hear, it comes down when it's ready.

Oh, look at that. It's beautiful. It's green, it's verdant. What we're going to tend to this while it's beautiful. And just put the cookies here for a second and then get to them. So let's get the other components for this recipe. Very easy. So what I'm going to do is I like to have beautiful presentations unless I'm eating it myself. So I don't care what it looks like. I just want it to be fast. And so I have a platter here and I'm going to just stir it around and all the water has pretty much been absorbed.

I'm just going to give it a nice stir, and then I'm going to just place it on the platter kind of family style. And again, if you want to use the Tuscan kale it'll be a different color. It'll be a different shade of green. And they're both delicious. So I you should have a green. Yeah. Yeah. And these are not too well cooked for me. I mean you could go a minute, like I say, or even zero minutes if you want it. Just barely, barely cooked. But we do want to serve this hot. And I'm going to show you in a second how we're going to make it taste like pizza.

And what we're going to do is we're going to sprinkle a little of what I call so parmesan on it. And it's funny because you had mentioned oats is one of the ingredients to use. And so parmesan is made out of oats. Really. All it is is oats nutritional yeast which is very cheesy like substance that is high in B vitamins. It's grown on blackstrap molasses and a little bit of your favorite seasoning. I use a salt free seasoning for it, but if you if you include salt, you can certainly do that. Now, one of the things I love on my pizza when I have pizza are kalamata olives.

So I'm just going to take a few and cut them in half. You can cut them smaller if you want. They usually come pitted and whole, at least at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. But also be mindful that you can get them in water or oil. So if you're avoiding the oil, you want to get one that is in water and you don't need a lot, but it just imparts an even more delicious flavor to your pizza. Kale, which you can have every day. My husband eats greens every day for breakfast, but not always quite this elaborate, but he does love this recipe.

So then we have our olives. And now what we want to do, and this is optional, is just a sprinkle of this faux parmesan, which is oat based. You could use nuts instead. Pretty much every recipe I have that uses nuts, you could substitute oats and sometimes you can even substitute beans. It just depends on what you're making. So we've got our little cheesy component here and it's always nice to garnish in my opinion, with some fresh herbs. So I have these wonderful herbs scissors actually they were a gift for Doctor Hon Steel.

And they're fun because what they do is they make these beautiful little strands much easier, in my opinion, than making a chiffonade with a knife. And I'm just going to cut that over the top, because then it really, really tastes. Like placing basil or. Yeah, fresh basil, basil and basil. And I'm just doing a little bit over the top with my herbs, scissors. As much or as little as you like. See these scissors? Because they have ten blades. They make these beautiful little ribbons and it's very easy to use.

So there we have that. And then a little bit of balsamic reduction. You can buy this glaze in many stores even Walmart. Or you can make your own fairly easily just by reducing any kind of balsamic vinegar on the stove till it gets thick and syrupy. And then it's always fun to just shoot it over the top. Wow. Oh my gosh, I'm not kidding, doctor Khan, when I tell you I could eat this whole tray by myself, I do usually share it with my husband, but it is really delicious. Nitric oxide like. Yeah, absolutely.

So let's put this aside for now and go back to the cookies. And I know as everybody watches are going to do what I am doing and say, bravo, bravo. Oh, hopefully their mouth will water. Okay, so back to the cookie. So we can make these little cookies simply by pressing our thumb in. And then we have like a little circle and that's great. However, then you're only going to get a dollop of jam. And I want a lot of jam because I love them. Fill this with other things. If you have ideas like any kind of like I make a pumpkin mousse, for example at the holidays, you could fill it with that.

You could probably just fill it with fresh fruit. These are like little birds nests. But what I want to do is I want to expand that little circle. And so I'm just using my fingers to push it out. That's why we have opposable thumbs to almost make these, like, birds nests, but bigger. I don't know if you've heard of birds bird's nest cookies that are often served at Easter with little jellybeans inside and coconut to look like grass. But that's what I'm doing with my finger. I used to be a pastry chef at a restaurant, and I just always had an affinity for desserts because I feel like whatever kind of eating style a person's going to follow, most people aren't willing to completely dessert desserts for the rest of their life, so I wanted to make them as healthy, wholesome, and nutritious as possible and not make them too hard for people to make.

So again, the more time you spent fussing it out, the bigger your surface area to fill your jam. And these four sweet jams, even the ones that are homemade, come in so many flavors and colors. So there's always strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, blueberry. There's orange marmalade. There is. They even have one that's apple cinnamon. And it's just fun to use the different colors. And now the stores have them with just two ingredients, at least the stores near me where it's just fruit and chia, which is how I make it.

Sometimes you do need to add a little sweetener, because if you're using frozen fruit like strawberries or raspberries, they're not always super sweet. So you might want to add a little bit of whole date or date paste or even date sirup. So one more. And again, I could have done this with eight cookies, but then each cookie will be smaller. This seems to be like the perfect number. And again these these could be eaten right now. But like I said, I'm going to cook it for five minutes to get that nice shiny glaze on top.

And then I have my jam right here. And I'm just going to fill each one. Yeah. I was thinking, you know, it's, we celebrate the fall season in Michigan, where I am with the color change, and that's when all the cider mills open. So there's apple butter everywhere. That really only has one ingredient. It's apple. Oh. You can use apple butter. You know, in the fall I'll just putting a dollop of apple butter in each one of those. That would be fantastic. And you know, if you want, I could do what I have. Apple butter.

Do you want me to get one? To do one with apple? Yeah. Yeah. Let's keep jam and jam. Yeah. We're jam. And right now I. Do you live anywhere near Holland, Michigan, by any chance? Other side of the state. But we're going to. Plant, okay. Because they have a good job. Oh, we're going to put Tulip Jam. No, they want these these bowls these wooden bowls that are just so cool, so beautiful. Anyway, and they have tours too. Okay. So there we go. I tend to overfill them and they sometimes overflow. But that's what happens with me and jam.

And I'm just going to place these in an oven for five minutes. Wonderful one I did not preheat my oven but it's it's I've used the Breville air fryer so it won't take too long. And I have one more recipe. Wonderful. We are. Okay, so you had mentioned pomegranate and. I assume you mean the seed? I know the pocket. And just in case. Yeah, I picked pomegranate. And not only are they beautiful and delicious, but there is some data that they can help reverse black in your arteries, which for a delicious food that's a pretty special talent to have.

Well, that is amazing. So sometimes I have not had the best of luck when I bought pomegranate seeds in the refrigerator section. They sometimes are. I don't know if it's rancid, but they just aren't good. And I'm not very skilled at getting the seeds out myself. But I'm lucky that the stores near me sell frozen pomegranate seeds all year round. And what's great is they're consistent. They I've never had these be bad. And I know and I'm sure you've tell your patients, doctor, that there's nothing wrong with using frozen fruits and vegetables.

They're often every bit as fresh and sometimes more so. So these are my pomegranate seeds. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to use them in a delicious quinoa salad with fresh herbs. So one of the great things about pressure cookers is you can cook things like grains, like quinoa in one minute, and it comes out perfect every time. Instead of. And so I did cook my quinoa in advance for one minute, because I need this to be chilled for this salad. And then I chilled it. This is tri color organic. Why?

Just because I think it's prettier. But any quinoa would work. And then I'm going to add all my beautiful fresh herbs, which I cut with this little herb scissors. I have scallion, or at least the green part of the green onion. I have Italian parsley, which I like a little bit more than curly parsley because there's more surface area. And one of my favorite herbs, which is fresh mint. And this is all going in if you go to parties, picnics, potlucks. This salad is always a crowd pleaser with everyone, regardless of how healthy they eat.

And then I'm going to take my secret ingredient salad dressing, which is just lime juice. That's all it is. And people are like, well, what's what's the salad dressing? It's just lime juice. But it's amazing. And if you use fresh limes, I use the bottled organic because I find limes are difficult to work with. They're very stingy about giving up their juice. You have to roll them on the counter often, microwave them just to get like a piece works. And, if you do use a fresh though, you can use the zest.

I teach hands on cooking at Rancho La Puerta in Mexico, and they always insist that this recipe is included. And so now we're going to put our beautiful pomegranate seeds. This is a wonderful recipe for all year round. Also for Christmas, because these little seeds look like Christmas lights and the green is just beautiful.

Pomegranate quinoa salad and closing discussion 30:40

When I had a whole food salad bar that was Designated Chef Age Recipes in Pasadena, this was one of the recipes as well as the hail to the kale. So we've got everything in there. This is perfectly fine to eat now. Now, as you know, in the plant based world, things like oil and nuts and even salt and coffee and alcohol are controversial. So if you don't use nuts, you don't have to use them. But if you do, my favorite nut in this salad is a pistachio that is not salted, that is raw. You could use a roasted one, but preferably unsalted because this dish doesn't need salt, to be honest.

Because when you use things like citrus, like lemon juice and lime juice, it tastes salty. Anyway because your taste buds for sour sit next to taste buds for salt. So you can always add salt. But I don't cook with it. I let people add it at the table so the nuts are optional and so is the dried fruit. But the dried fruit I like to put in here are currents, not fresh currants, dried currants because they're so small they disperse and then like you get this little burst of sweetness in every bite if you can find them.

If you can't, raisins work absolutely fine. I've had people tell me they use dried cherries, goji berries in here. No problem. If you are going to add the nuts, however, you want to add them right before serving because otherwise they can get soggy and they won't be quite as crunchy and delicious. So if you're taking it to a picnic or a potluck, put everything in but the nuts. Stir the nuts in right before serving. So I'll have this for my lunch today. I don't eat a lot of nuts, but in this recipe I really, really like them.

And it's pretty and it just makes it just so delicious. And what I like also like, oh sorry, go ahead. And say pistachios happened to be very rich in arginine. And if we're talking about eating your beautiful kale pizza for nitric oxide, when we have this side dish of, beautiful quinoa salad with pistachios, we're getting, our arteries are just saying bring it on, chef AJ, you're giving us what we need. Well thank you. And you know I mean I've had regular people eat my food okay. So that little beep means that the oven is preheated.

So it's going to be about five minutes till I can bring the cookies out. But this is going to be a delicious lunch for my husband and myself. We're going to devour this kale. And then we have this wonderful salad which we could serve over more greens like lettuce. And then for dessert, will each get well. I think I'll have four cookies and give him two. I'm going to split them evenly because I love them too much. This is phenomenal. So we are using, you know, color and texture and taste and healthy ingredients.

And you know, we're just supporting good GI function and artery function and brain function. And it's just wonderful. I mean, you don't need to get too biochemical about food. But we do know food is medicine. We all understand that. And you basically created like a, you know, a super pharmacy here, a super powered pharmacy of health and wellness. And I think this is the thing is, is it's delicious. Even if it wasn't healthy. This is delicious food. I mean, unless you're eating at McDonald's every day, this is delicious food, I promise you. I wish you could taste it through the.

Oh, that's the thing. The only regret everybody watching today, is having is we can't use some Elon Musk app and just zoom right into your kitchen and be there with a fork in the spoon, because it's it's making my mouth water. So I want to thank you so, so, so much. I think this has been so good. I know we have cookies. So hold up your book one more time. Just I. You know, they came in to, watch just a little bit, before your introduction, but sweet indulgence and sweet. Indulgence. Thank you. You know, doctor, kind of everyone in my family other than me and my sister had advanced heart disease and had all the procedures from open heart surgery to the one where they cut the neck and they scoop out the carotid.

But my sister and I, we took another path and we even even with a very strong family history of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart disease, we've managed to avoid it. Now, that's where this is called the Reversal Heart Disease Summit. But the better goal, the real goal is prevent it. So you never after versus. It's also easier to prevent it than it is to reverse it. Once that plaque is stuck in there, particularly that calcified plaque, we don't have a great way to get that out. We get some of this soft, fatty like plaque out, with the doctor Ornish, Doctor Esselstyn, doctor McDougall.

Like a burn doctor firman program. But, better to prevent it. So, you know, that's what the real, real solution to the health crisis in America is. We want to get kids to this food and teens the there's food and people in their early 20s. And when they do that, decade after decade after decade, that's when we're going to see, you know, this chronic disease, pandemic, epidemic maybe is a better word, you know, stop because it's so much driven by food. I've been a doctor for a long time, and I wonder why you think that most people wait until they have a health crisis before changing their diet?

Yeah, in my field, it's the nature of heart disease. It's there for really decades with no, warning. I use a meme that says if heart disease attacked your face instead of your arteries, you get treatment for decades earlier, and it's. Absolutely. Thing to think about. But, you know, we see it and we deal with it. Just like we had an outbreak of some kind of rash. But it's a terrible disease that's silent. The medical system doesn't search for it routinely. That's starting to change. But I said that 25 years ago and it's barely move the needle.

And as I say, the secondary goal is to find it early and try and stop it and reverse it. The primary goal is never to get it. And then, you know, we think 80, 85% of disease that we could start eating at the age you started, 17 or 18. And the age I started. And I can claim, you know, in my mid 60s to have extremely good cardiovascular health. And I don't think it's an accident. And so if people listening are at 40, 50, 60, 70, it's not too late. Eat this food. You may have to be focusing on halting heart disease and reversing heart disease, but introduce it to your kids and your grandkids and get them hooked on this gorgeous, gorgeous, delicious food that you know, you can see we've been spending we've spent about 35 minutes.

You made three courses. Now, of course you did do a little prep, but, obviously the most common complaint is it's a lot of work to make fresh food. You know, I can throw a steak on the grill and be done, but, you know, you want a long, healthy life independent of medication. Steak on the grill is not the best choice. Oh, I'm melting, I'm melting. I want people to know they don't desert. And so it's always better to let them cool on the tray. But I just want to plate them because they're delicious.

And I. I mean, I make these I, you can keep them at, you know, room temperature. You should keep them in the fridge just in case. I don't get to them right away. Right. And there you go. Look at that. Okay. The first one, you. Know, I am sharing. I'm sharing this video with my wife as soon as we're done. Because as wonderful as her recipe list is and her skills, those cookies have got to be, maybe tomorrow we'll do that as a joint project. Right. Thank you so much. And, you know, healthy eating doesn't have to be boring.

No. While you're, I know, the most exciting presenter that's in, our wonderful community of of, you know, chefs, thank you for your skills and excitement. Thank you. And really, I think, you know, people are going to watch this summit and hopefully get fired up about the idea that heart disease doesn't need to be part of their, future, but they need skills. And you just gave us, you know, three wonderful ways to, enjoy great health and beautiful health. So you and your wonderful husband have a great lunch.

Thank you. And I see you and everyone. Thank you. And I hope everybody goes out and buys not just your most recent book, Sweet Indulgences, but I personally have the other three, so they're wonderful. Thank you. And weight loss on the recipes. God bless you being well chef AJ love it.