— Rachelle Grant

So if you grew up like I did, uh, anytime we ate grains, there was lots of salt and there was lots of butter. So I think, um, unwinding that behavior was probably one of the hardest things for me to do. So I would first make certain that you have a well-stocked spice cabinet with lots of dry herbs and spices and, uh, you know, I go through things pretty quickly, but before I was plant-based, I would like put the date of things on the bottom. But I think I've had this for two months because I've been making a lot of curried cauliflower soup, uh, and use that. But, um, you wanna avoid the oil and you wanna avoid the salt. So there's, you can cook your rice in a stock, which is very flavorful, and if you have made the simple cabbage soup recipe, you know that making that stock is the stock is the real star of that soup. If you, I have made it, I've made that soup with like a store-bought stock, and it does not taste the same at all. So start saving your vegetable scraps to make a delicious and nutrient dense vegetable stock for you. Um, fresh herbs, for example, um, when I was in Italy last fall, um, at the end of a dish, uh, the chef would add finely minced mint to a dish because basil was out of season and they only eat seasonally. So if you have, uh, fresh herbs that you're growing, whether it be rosemary or mint or basil or whatever, uh, you can use those in terms of the texture. You can take nutritional yeast and mix it with a little bit of water to make a paste and then throw that into your rice. And it kind of gives it a, a, a creamier texture to it, or that you could make the white be of Mel sauce that we have, uh, in our curriculum, which seems to be a favorite with everyone. It has a cashew nut base. If you can't do cashews, you could use can beans instead of the nuts if you wanted to monitor a lower fat and not have as many calories. So that bechamel sauce. Um, I personally love cooking with mustard. Uh, it's my favorite condiment. So I will add mussel, excuse me, mus, I will add mustard. And I just wanted to say one of the biggest crisis going on right now on the internet is, uh, this salad dressing that's made with equal amounts of tahini and pickle juice. So if you have a jar of pickles in your refrigerator, and maybe there's one pickle left, but there's maybe six ounces of the pickle juice, uh, you can make that into a luscious creamy sauce to put on your grains. And I'm also thinking of a watered down hummus, which also gives the same creaminess that you might be looking for.