S8 Ep 32: Eat Adventurously: Embrace the Unexpected Flavors of Overlooked Local Ingredients with Becky Selengut
“The individual decision is the difference maker.” —Becky Selengut
Our local markets and farms are brimming with a diverse array of ingredients. Yet, many of us pass them by because of their peculiar appearance or because we may be unsure of how to incorporate them into our cooking. But, by moving past our assumptions of how food should look like and embracing the unique qualities of these “ugly” and “misunderstood” vegetables, we can unlock a world of delicious, nutritious possibilities and transform our palates and perspectives while forging a deeper connection to the land.
Becky Selengut is an author, chef, and educator who has dedicated her career to inspiring home cooks to embrace overlooked, locally-sourced ingredients. Through her books, cooking classes, and advocacy work, Becky encourages people to look beyond the familiar and explore the diverse array of produce available in their own communities.
Join the conversation as Justine and Chef Becky highlight specific examples of overlooked local ingredients, the reasons these ingredients are often misunderstood, the importance of curiosity, experimentation, and a willingness to try new things when it comes to expanding our culinary repertoire, the impact of individual food choices, the divide between eating organically versus domestically, and how eating locally contribute to sustainability and improved local food systems.
Connect with Becky:
Becky Selengut is an author, instructor, podcaster, and chef based in Seattle. Her books include: Misunderstood Vegetables, How to Taste, Shroom, Good Fish, and Not One Shrine. Selengut is the co-host of the local foods podcast Field to Fork. When Selengut is not the chef aboard the M/V Thea Foss, she forages, makes a mean Manhattan, and shares her life with her wife April Pogue, their lovably loony pointer mix Izzy and their semi-feral gray floof Jinx.
Episode Highlights:
00:34 Misunderstood Vegetables
07:29 “Ugly Vegetables” for Global Problems
13:14 Eating Locally and Sustainably
19:38 Organic vs Local
23:00 Individual vs Systemic Change
28:55 Reduce Plastic
Tweets:
Looks aren’t everything— that is also true with our local food ingredients. Tune in as @jreichman and @ChefReinvented share how we can spice up our plates using “ugly” and “misunderstood” ingredients from our local markets. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #Season8 #uglyvegetables #foodchoices #foodsystem #foodimpact #homecooks #sustainability #wildfood #powerofchoice #foodEd
Inspirational Quotes:
03:00 “The intimidation factor is a huge barrier to a lot of people to make changes in what they're eating.” —Becky Selengut
04:02 “We're going back to what we can grow in our kitchen, how to use it, and why it makes sense, and the impact it has on our health and wellness but also on the environment.” —Justine Reichman
11:45 “We treat other people like we treat some of these vegetables— we think that they're ugly, we've had it before and they tasted bad; we had one bad experience with it. We need to push ourselves to get past these kinds of things if we're going to solve some of the problems that we need to solve.” —Becky Selengut
13:11 “By having some of those vegetables and understanding what you do with them you expand what you can eat locally.” —Justine Reichman
19:05 “Eat domestic— that will cut out so much damage to our earth. Start there and make that simple choice. If everyone did that, it would be a huge shift.” —Becky Selengut
21:00 “For those who have the privilege use that privilege for good. Pour your money into regenerative organic agriculture.” —Becky Selengut
23:09 “You can make a choice around which things you want to get, and that it makes a difference.” —Justine Reichman
25:41 “The individual decision is the difference maker.” —Becky Selengut
26:24 “Individually, we're not going to change the world. But if everybody does a little bit, whatever that little bit is, that's better than not being mindful and not doing anything.” —Justine Reichman
33:20 “Vote for the people in power that you want to see make changes for climate change, it is the most important thing right now.” —Becky Selengut
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Good morning, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. With me today is Becky Selengut, and she is an author and a chef.
Welcome, Becky.
Becky Selengut: Hello, Justine. Thanks for having me on.
Justine Reichman: Thanks so much for your patience in this journey of getting us on here today, so welcome. So Becky, if you would, I know you're both an author and a chef. Let's start with your book. So for those not familiar with your book, what is it called? And can you give us your 32nd pitch on it?
Becky Selengut: Sure. My latest book is called Misunderstood Vegetables, and it's kind of a tongue in cheek attempt to get home cooks to look more closely at the vegetables that they walk by in the store. The ones that have been used in cultures for hundreds and hundreds of years that a lot of Americans are like, oh, ugly. Don't understand it. So getting them to accept those vegetables, learn about their secret mysteries.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. So what prompted you to write a book about that?
Becky Selengut: I love writing about things that I feel like haven't been written about or things that I feel like need to be made more approachable to your average person, your home cook. And so I've built a career around taking the unapproachable and debunking myths around breaking it down, packaging kind of sustainability in food and food systems in a way that it can be funny and fun and not intimidating, overwhelming for your average person who's just trying to get dinner on the table. So I did that with sustainable seafood, which is a huge confusing topic in a book. And with mushrooms, which people tend to either hate or obsess over, and a bunch of other topics. So I really just love to take these kinds of edgy, obscure kinds of things that people get overwhelmed with and make it a little bit easier, more fun.
Justine Reichman: I think it's so important because a lot of people are not familiar with some of these ideas. How to incorporate them into their diet? How to take them and be inspired for them, whether they're innovating to build a new business, or to put food on the table. And I think it's super interesting and inspiring to be able to have access to that kind of information. I get inspired when I go out to dinner. Not here where I live, but when I go out for a meal at many places. When it's a special experience, because it inspires me to want to go home and figure out how I can either replicate or do it. And so when you're talking about something in the sustainability space, and people are really focused on that these days, and the impact it has on our environment, what a great way to be able to break something down and feel like you can be successful in it at the same time.
“The intimidation factor is a huge barrier to a lot of people to make changes in what they're eating.” —Becky Selengut
Becky Selengut: I am also a teacher. I do a lot of different things. I've been teaching for about 20 some odd years, and I find that like just the intimidation factor. And the overwhelming factor is a huge barrier to a lot of people to make changes in what they're eating. People just jump on the latest fad. I'm pretty anti-fad in my education. I'm kind of like old soul wisdom to food systems. Growing up in my grandmother's garden and learning about food from a really young age, about just the kind of connection that we can have to food. It doesn't have to be so overwhelming, and it shouldn't come from millions of miles away. It shouldn't be out of season and all those things. It's a privilege to be able to eat that way. But I think that we've made it a privilege in this country to eat that way.
Justine Reichman: Yeah. And I hear you. I think a lot of that. There's two things that I wanted to just touch on. One is that we're really going back to our roots and how we did things many years ago before we came up with all these ways to extend the life of a vegetable, or pick it early so that people can get it, travel and send it. We're going back to what we can grow in our kitchen. How to use it, and why it makes sense. And the impact that has both on our health and wellness, but also on the environment. So that was the first thing I just wanted to touch on because I think that that's really meaningful. And that's a great conversation for us to talk about too. But second, you said you were a teacher. I just wanted to find out what you teach.
“We're going back to what we can grow in our kitchen, how to use it, and why it makes sense, and the impact it has on our health and wellness but also on the environment.” —Justine Reichman
Becky Selengut: I teach cooking. I also speak a lot about sustainability issues, or foraging, or wild foods. And I wrote a book called How to Taste, teaching home cooks how to develop their palate. I'm just a total nerd, and I just get really obsessed with these topics. I have always said that I'm a terrible business person because I write books that people don't yet know they're interested in before the idea has kind of taken off. I'm too ahead. I think and I wish that I wasn't that way. My first mushroom book went out of print because it wasn't selling well. And then four years later, everyone was going nuts about mushrooms so they brought the book back. And now, it's doing well.
Justine Reichman: You're a leader, you're not a follower. You're leading. It's just about the timing, and you're ready for it.
Becky Selengut: Yeah. I always joke with my publishers. I'm like, no one is interested in this yet. They will be. I'm obsessed with seaweed right now, and I really want to put out a seaweed cookbook. But like, no. I don't think any publisher is going to take that right now. They will in four years.
Justine Reichman: People are doing things with seaweed now. You're familiar with Akua Burgers, and what she's doing there. So I think that if you're in the right place at the right time, and you're writing it now so that when it does come out, your broader audience, as we in Essential Ingredients, starts to bring people on to talk more about seaweed and more of these innovations. That's the goal. And then you provide the books for them to dig deeper into their lives.
Becky Selengut: I love your enthusiasm. The only problem with cookbooks is that you need to get the advance before you can write the cookbook. It's unlike other kinds of publishing models. And so you just can't do the work until you actually can do the work with the funds that are necessary. So it's a chicken and an egg thing. So anyway, I think you asked a question about what I teach. So I definitely teach cooking. I've taught at Bastyr University for a while. I mostly have taught at the oldest coop in the country, which is Puget consumers Co Op, which is in the Seattle area. I've taught there for 17 years. Then I taught at the pantry cooking school in Seattle. Taught there for 10 years. I also teach in my private business. So go into a home, do like a six, eight course dinner and teach in between courses. Have people come into the kitchen giving them a little bit insight about an ingredient I forged for, or something I got from a farmer friend or whatever. And then there's a lot more meaning when they sit back down again. So I do a lot of education throughout everything. I just love learning, and I love passing it on. I'll never be rich, but I am so rich in information, aha moments and community. I think that that has made me feel very successful in what I've done.
Justine Reichman: I hear what you're saying. But I actually think there's a difference between feeling rich and being successful, and being rich and you're successful. You're successful because you get to do what you want. You get to honor your vision, your goals. Teach people. You get to create, change, and empower people to change. And think about all the people you've done that with not just the people in person that you're teaching, but the people that are reading your book. The people that read your book, and then talk about it. And then as a chef, whether you're cooking in a restaurant, or cooking here, or in people's homes, you're also delivering that message. So when people bring you back, to me, that is success. And you're also instilling on them all those values that you have around sustainability. So to me, I feel like that's pretty rich. The impact of that. And it's a mindset to whether you're rich and successful versus poor, whatever, or middle class. When I was younger, my mom always said, listen, it's all about the way you think about it. You go to school every day, you do really well, you're having success. So that's the way I look at it. I didn't mean to go on.
Becky Selengut: You're good, and I completely agree. I actually like to clarify, I've never had the aspiration to be rich, especially these days. I just want to pay my bills and live. I do live a comfortable life, but not have to be so month to month with a kind of gig economy. Finding the next gig. I feel very rich in my life.
Justine Reichman: And what you offer with the community. What you offer to your friends, what you offer your clients makes you really rich, in my opinion. Because we are a great resource, and you're a great wealth of knowledge. And to that end, I'm really curious what drew you in particular to let's just say ugly food or sustainability specifically on some of these things, which are really big topics now because people are talking about the ugly fruits, and upcycling, and the ugly vegetables and incorporating that with sustainability. So I'd love to hear what drew you to that, and what where your expertise came from?
Becky Selengut: With a misfit, misunderstood ugly vegetables, I'm not a vegetarian. But I've been trending more towards a plant based diet in my life and in my career. I do eat meat from time to time, and fish for sure. So this is my first vegetarian cookbook. I wanted to challenge myself to write a vegetarian cookbook, that was the first inspiration. The second one was, I just kept walking through grocery stores and wondering who was buying the rutabaga. Waxed sad rutabaga that is always in these US supermarkets, but you never see anyone buying it. So is it just like a stunt vegetable? I just didn't understand who was buying it because I've never heard anyone use it. I've never gone to anyone's house and had them serve it. It's like the joke vegetable. Not any recently published recipes in the last century. I'd say maybe the joy of cooking. So then I started with that. Started with vegetarian, and it started with the sad rutabaga, and then I started looking at a lot of the vegetables in the produce sections, celery and all these different vegetables. I'm like, I know who's a home cook who's bringing these into their homes on a regular basis, and why not?
“We treat other people like we treat some of these vegetables— we think that they're ugly, we've had it before and they tasted bad; we had one bad experience with it. We need to push ourselves to get past these kinds of things if we're going to solve some of the problems that we need to solve.” —Becky Selengut
I looked at a celery root, and I literally looked at it, and it has these twisted gnarled kind of rootlets coming out the bottom that are often packed with dirt. It looks like 19 ballerina legs all just swimming in the soil. And it's got like a beige, dirty, dusty, or the whole thing is not the sexiest vegetable on your produce down by a mile. And I thought, well, we treat some of these vegetables the way we treat, and just forgive me for being so, I don't know, cliche or pollyanna. But I feel like we're having so many problems in our world, and we really treat other people like we treat someone with these vegetables, that we don't understand them. We don't relate to it. We've never met them before. We think that they're ugly. We think that we've had it before, and they tasted bad. We had one bad experience with it. I started to think, why do we do things so easily, things we're not sure about. And it comes down to just hardwired evolution about flight, fright, freeze, and the unknown. We really need to push ourselves to get past these kinds of things if we're going to solve some of the problems that we need to solve. So clearly, writing a cookbook about Misunderstood Vegetables is not going to solve life's and world's problems. But it's my little way in my corner of the world that I like to live in where I can get people to challenge their assumptions a little bit, break out of their molds, and try something new, and pass it on and not be scared of something. And so that's kind of where it came from.
Justine Reichman: I think that's amazing because that story can be told by so many people when they go to the grocery store. And so it's very accessible, approachable and relatable. Relatable is really the word I was going for. Because when we go to the stores and we see that, we're like, that's not in any recipe I have, I don't know what to do with it. I don't know how to use it. And so it doesn't enter the refrigerator, and then it doesn't become one of the elements that you're looking to put into a recipe. And to that end, I also think it's by having some of those vegetables and understanding what you do with them. You expand what you can eat locally. Absolutely.
Becky Selengut: That's the most important thing that we can say on this show right now. That's exactly the other most important thing I wanted people to take away from this, or have it be a result of this is you don't need to fly a tomato in the middle of winter to Seattle when you have a parsnip that is so sweet. And so wonderful. All these different things that people don't know anything about that can be grown locally. People are like, oh, I eat chard sometimes. I know what swiss chard is. But maybe your average person is seeing swiss chard maybe three times a year. Maybe it's just not something that is in their regular rotation. Swiss chard is so delicious. So many different kinds of ways if you knew exactly how to use it. Everyone talks about kale, but there's so many other greens that can be grown in the winter and in temperate climates. I think you live in California, so you get everything all the time. Some of these things can force you to eat locally, or it makes it easier to eat locally. It can help your health. They're full of vitamins that we're not accessing by eating corporate hybridized food that has been changed so much to make it sweeter, less bitter. The bitter components, a lot of these things actually contain more nutrition. And so when you're getting the sweetest corn you can possibly eat or whatever, it's not necessarily the most healthy thing that you can have. And when you learn how to deal with bitter vegetables like radicchio and some of the other things I'm talking about in your cooking and how you're pairing with other ingredients, you're then going to get a huge boost of nutrition that you didn't otherwise get. So there's many, many, many benefits. Money too. A lot of these ingredients are cheaper because they have to drop the price to get people to buy them. So a lot of these ingredients are less expensive. So there's so many wins in learning about a diversity of vegetables that we ignore in America and the rest of the country, the rest of the world. You look at them, they're like, what is wrong with you? We've been eating this vegetable for 100 years. Italy has radicchio festivals. Everyone in my class when I taught misunderstood vegetable classes, I would hold up a radicchio, and at least half the class would say cabbage.
Justine Reichman: That's interesting. I love radicchio.
Becky Selengut: You're a food person. People who are really into food, it's not cabbage. But when someone sees a purple orb from a distance, they're like, that's cabbage. Nope. And then they're like, oh, ridiculous. That sounds like a Harry Potter spell.
Justine Reichman: What you're doing is really important in the sense that you're encouraging people to eat locally. I just wanted to figure out, or better understand the sustainability role within this conversation for you, and for what you're trying to communicate, and how you integrate that.
Becky Selengut: I started with fish and seafood, because I live in the Pacific Northwest. Seafood is a big, big deal out here. I worked in restaurants for many, many years, and I worked at a restaurant where we were hyperlocal. We tended to serve food that was either grown or we knew the person who caught it. It's a fine dining destination restaurant in Seattle. And I worked there for many years. I learned more and more about how unsustainable most seafood is that is sold in the United States. And when I did a deep dive into it, I wanted to write a book about it. So that kind of got me interested in the sustainability side. I also knew that the lack of education was a big part of why most Americans were not eating more sustainably. They're overwhelmed, and they just didn't have access to the right information. So around that time, this was in the early 2000s, I produced a free online website that would give people the exact seasons for all of these sustainability. What are the seasons? So that you knew when to buy what, when. And it was used by chefs too, because a lot of chefs needed to be educated, including myself on the micro seasons for some of these vegetables. Now, this has all changed due to climate change, and that's rough. But that was kind of the beginning of least my interest in connecting my role as a chef to my responsibilities as a steward. And that I feel very strongly that in order for me to cook this food and get people excited about food, I have a responsibility to make sure that other generations can still have access to this food. And it's something that's a huge concern. I think chefs are in a lot of ways leading the way in a lot of this education work, and what this chooses to have on their menus and political activism. We see it in the sizes of this fish coming into us being smaller and smaller. We see it in how the products look and how they taste. I can feel in my lifetime the changes in the food and the system. I want to do my part to fight back against the changes we're seeing from climate change, and that involves changing how I eat, how I teach, all of that. So that's kind of where that comes from that piece.
Justine Reichman: But what are the top three things within that context, that when you're teaching, you hope, create or inspire change for your students?
Becky Selengut: I think that the easiest thing, especially for people who are like me, I'm so overwhelmed by everything is just to say, if nothing else, eat domestic. You make no other changes in your life. You go into Costco and you're looking at something and it says it flew from China to get to your plate, don't get that. Just get something that's from the United States that will cut out so much damage to our earth from all the flying and shipping of products that doesn't need to happen. Get shrimp that came from the United States. Just start there and make that simple choice. If everyone did that, it would be a huge shift.
Justine Reichman: With regards to that, there's a big conversation that we've had often many times. Do you choose local or organic?
Becky Selengut: I am a firm believer that organic is really for people who have lots of money at this point. Personally, I use my food budget for organic because I have the privilege to be able to do that with my money. But for your average person, domestic.
Justine Reichman: So if we're talking about domestic, and we're talking about agriculture, when I said to you domestic versus organic, what are your thoughts as it relates to the kind of agriculture that were growing here versus elsewhere? We have regenerative agriculture, then we have people that do lots of different things. How do you decide to make the right choice along that line? Because regenerative agriculture is meant to improve the well being of the climate, so how do we inspire people to bring that into the equation when they're making that choice?
Becky Selengut: So I feel like with this conversation, I just want to be really careful because I think so much of this is based on privilege.. I'd like to say for those who have the privilege, use that privilege for good. If you have that privilege, if you have that means you care about these issues, pour your money into regenerative organic agriculture 100%. And it doesn't have to be certified organic. There are many, many great farms growing organically that are not certified organic, because it's expensive.
Justine Reichman: So expensive for the whole process.
Becky Selengut: Growing organically is more important to me than certified organic. So regenerative agriculture is hugely important. If you have the privilege, pour your money into it. If you are someone who's listening to this who is struggling to pay bills, just eat more vegetables. Try to get access to more vegetables. And if possible, try to get vegetables that were grown domestically, and do what you can do. And when you have more privilege, part of that privilege is to use that for greater good, for a greater number of people and start thinking this way. We're gonna have to do a lot of work very quickly for ourselves. I don't want to be preachy about this. I just really feel like for so long, eat local, eat organic is another way of shaming people who can't afford to make those kinds of decisions.
“You can make a choice around which things you want to get, and that it makes a difference.” —Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: I totally felt that way. When I moved to California from New York, because it wasn't as much of a conversation, we didn't have many choices. They're in the middle of New York City while you have the Union Square, Farmers Market, etc. It wasn't as much of a conversation 10 years ago. Because where I live in Northern California was very forward thinking and really advanced in what they've created organic grocery stores, and all these different things that I kind of felt a little ashamed when I'd go to the store. I might not choose the right thing. I thought people were looking at me and like going, oh. But I've also become more educated that you can make a choice around which things you want to get, or are organic. And that makes a difference. And with the context of this show, we want to give people and talk to everybody so that they can break this down and make the right decision for them, which is what you've done exactly. You've made it accessible for people on every level. If they can afford certain things, they can still make a difference by buying domestically. They can still buy those additional vegetables that maybe they don't know what to do with. But hopefully, you'll share a couple recipes with us. We could put in the newsletter to help and inspire those people to maybe go out and buy some of those vegetables that they never heard of or didn't know what to do with. And equally, we've expanded that conversation to talk about regenerative agriculture and the role it plays. Because one thing that you said to me that really stood out is that you got to take care of yourself. You may not have enough resources to be able to buy organic or do regenerative agriculture, but if you can, this is how we can do it. So there's options at every level that you've laid out, which I just think is so beautiful because we're not leaving anyone out.
Becky Selengut: Exactly. And also not shaming people who already have such burdens placed upon them. And I feel it's about taking care of yourself 100%. Like I said before, using your privilege to help the greater good is a responsibility of having that privilege. And you can choose to hoard all that extra resources for yourself, or you can try to equalize the playing field by putting back into the system some of the privileges you've been given so that you can have a comfortable life. Life that everyone deserves with health care, shelter, and basic food. And then not hoard all the riches on top of that. I feel very strongly about that. And I think that comes down to just the community. I'd like to see around a table, which is not broken down by cast, but it brings everyone together.
Justine Reichman: The playing field too. It gives everybody access to the information. And if today you're in one place, but six months from now you're in a different place, you can still make different choices that are good for you, good for your well being, and good for the planet.
Becky Selengut: Last thing I think I want to say about this is there's too much pressure on the individual in these conversations that the individual decision is the difference maker. And it's actually another layer that we put on individuals that, oh, I threw that plastic bag away. I'm the reason why everything is terrible. And really, it's governments and huge corporations that are making a lot of these decisions. The military industrial complex, so many things are causing these problems. I like to also take away some of that overwhelm on the individual.
Justine Reichman: I think that's super important, because we're hardest on ourselves anyway. We don't need to be any harder on us. And we all try to make different choices that are the right choices that we feel. Individually, we're not going to change the world. But if everybody does a little bit, whatever that little bit is, that's better than not being mindful and not doing anything. And you're not going to solve the problem yourself. And you're not going to solve it overnight.
Becky Selengut: You care about these issues. I'm not saying DON'T do some of these individual things, but to kind of shame each other about how we're living our individual lives is missing. It's missing the point, and it's awful. It doesn't help each other in the desire to go forward, and this put pressure on the power holders. Vote for people who care about changing these issues, and stop attacking your neighbor for the plastic bag that was in their, whatever.
Justine Reichman: Or they chose to drink water out of plastic instead of glass.
Becky Selengut: You can shame them. Just kidding.
Justine Reichman: I think even within our own households, we all have different things that we focus on that are important to us. I think you gotta stay true to yourself not try to do it all and make that impact with whatever choice you're making. Make an impactful one. Do all of them. That's just overwhelming. I feel like a failure when I try to do everything so I try to be really happy with the small things that I do.
Becky Selengut: Here's an example. I also work as a boat chef. I go out for the summer for three months. It's a corporate yacht that I work on. And in the winters, I work for the same corporation doing their retreats at a farm. This company, who shall not be named cart's bottled water. Cases of bottled water to these events that they own the property. So instead of shaming an individual person for drinking bottled water, I just talked to people to see about getting just a water dispenser. So that happened. We were able to get a water dispenser there, and then people wouldn't use the water dispenser because they were so used to going and grabbing a bottle. And so then behind the scenes, I just worked on not providing the bottled water because then there's no choice anymore. And if people were thirsty, they could get it from the tap, or they could get it from them. And then they said, sure, we'll try it. And then no bottled waters, and no one was shamed.
Justine Reichman: That's amazing because you facilitate it, creating change by only giving them one option.
Becky Selengut: I just took away the choice. If you go into a bathroom and you have paper towels, and you have the air dryer, Justine, what do you use?
Justine Reichman: I use my pants. I don't know why I can't stand the noise of those air dryers. It drives me bonkers. Genuinely, I don't because it's warm here. But I'll tell you, if I was in New York, I'd probably have a different choice because I feel cold. So the weather also dictates my choice.
Becky Selengut: You are not the person I should have asked this question.
Justine Reichman: Somebody will be inspired to use neither, and then they just air dry them and put them on their pants.
Becky Selengut: I guess what my point was, if you go into a bathroom and are given the choice between an air dryer or paper towels, I'm going to use the paper towels. That just is the way it goes. And if you take away the paper towels, then they're going to use the air dryer, or they're going to use their pants, or maybe they will wash their hands. But honestly, we need to take away so many choices that were given because people hate change. If you don't have plastic in your kitchen, if you don't have plastic film and you don't have ziplocks, you will figure it out. Everyone does. We are smart people. We figured it out. Take away your choices and see what happens. My really good friend said she didn't shame me. I just went to her house and there were no paper towels. And I said, where are your paper towels? She goes, oh, we have these thin clothes that are pretty. They hang over the paper towel dispenser. And I was like, oh, gosh, that would never work for me as a chef. I need paper towels. I used it and then I was like, I'm going to try it. I'm going to take away paper towels, and I'm completely without a choice. You don't have a choice anymore. And it worked for us. I still have paper towels in the closet for gross oily things that need a paper towel. I go through one paper towel every couple months.
Justine Reichman: But you know they do have reusable paper towels. Have you seen those?
Becky Selengut: I have. But these clothes are so great. I can't believe we're getting so micro in this. It's hilarious.
Justine Reichman: I have those little micro, I have the little square ones. I like those. I think they're great. But there are times when you need a paper towel. What comes to my mind, which is totally off topic, is when my dog poops and I don't want to pick it up. So is plastic better? Or is paper better?
Becky Selengut: God, I'm on a team plastic bag because I don't want it going through the paper. It seems like a disease vector.
Justine Reichman: That's a question right? People don't know what's worse? What's better?
Becky Selengut: Here's what I would say. If you took away all plastic bags, and I had to deal with this issue, I would use a can and a little scooper. Put it in the can, and then what would I do? The can is going to be used for this purpose. I would dig a hole in my yard. Once you take away the choice and you get a group of people sitting together and thinking about it, that's when these inventions come up. But as long as you give people these choices, you can get really cheap shrimp from Indonesia where people are being not treated well, not paid well for their labor. And you pay nothing for this frozen shrimp. Or we take your choice and you then don't eat shrimp as often, but you eat wild shrimp that are much better for you and for the environment. People adapt, but we won't make changes easily if we have to do it ourselves.
Justine Reichman: No. And I agree. But I think my biggest takeaway from this conversation, the last part is really just about choice. And to just try to take something away that we don't want to use and see how innovative we can be around it, because what is necessary is the mother of invention. As cliche as it sounds, but it's so true. It's so true. Becky, if you encourage people to do one thing to take control of the food that they're buying for their homes or eating out, what would they?
Becky Selengut: Vote for the people in power that you want to see make changes for climate change. It is the most important thing right now.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. Becky, thank you so much for joining me today. You're having this great conversation, and I hope that it inspires those that are building businesses, cooking food, chefs as well, and consumers that are going to the store to purchase their products. So thanks so much again.
Becky Selengut: Yes. Thank you so much, Justine.
Justine Reichman: And for those that are interested in learning more about you, where might they find your books and learn more about you?
Becky Selengut: They can go to my website, which is beckyselengut.com. Or they can find all the books at your local bookstores, and online bookshops, or the company starts with A and ends with world domination.
Justine Reichman: I can't wait, I want to tuck into your book soon so I'm gonna have to do that.
Becky Selengut: Oh, I would love that. Thank you so much. It was really fun. I'm glad we made it work.
Justine Reichman: Thanks so much.
Becky Selengut: Okay, take care.
