Question
Randall McNamara
You’ve fielded countless questions as a Chef and public health crusader. What is a question or comment from a student or community member that changed your cooking or approach to life?
Answer
Well, I will tell you, Randall, this will make you laugh. I spend a lot of time working in under-resourced communities, and one thing that I particularly love, it's called a cooking class for older adults, and I like to call it peer education. And so when people who might be medically compromised come into my class, they all breathe a sigh of relief and will say things like, "Oh, if I mention the name Jack Benny, I know that you're going to know who that is. So if I tell one of his old jokes, you're going to laugh, right?" And I would say yes. But the funniest thing was one time we made carrot dogs. And some of you, if you've never made carrot dogs, here's a simple part of it. You take that marinade from the baked tofu recipe, and you take some carrots and you kind of shave them into looking like a hot dog, and then you simmer them in the marinade, and then lo and behold, when you grill them, they really do have the texture of and flavor of a hot dog. And this 92-year-old man complained about this. "I don't know why I can't eat a hot dog." And I have to put this in parentheses. One place where I teach is a library on the first floor. The second floor is a pediatric clinic, and the third floor is a federally qualified health center where physicians will oftentimes send me people who have comorbidities like high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, whatever. So they come, and the physicians and nurse practitioners all hope that they will glean something from coming to my classes. But when he ate the hot dog made from carrots, he said to me, "We ought to sell these down at Ballpark. You could make a million dollars selling this." And at that moment, I thought to myself, well, we meet people where they are and don't throw too much expectation, and that will work. So, yeah. And Randall, I want to tell you one other thing. One of the things that I really like to do, because again, you want to meet people where they are. We will make recipes using only frozen vegetables because not everybody has access to getting fresh vegetables. And even the Dollar Tree or dollar store sells frozen vegetables. So you want to sort of increase the opening to access. So frozen vegetables is a great way to go. And people will come back and say, "I went to the dollar store and I got spinach and peas and carrots, and I made a stir-fry." So those kinds of things, those little baby steps. And I also have to share that, to your question, I've been working with some of these people for 10 years, and I get two responses from, "Oh, no, here she goes again," or, "Oh, I make this all the time. Yeah, Chef Char, this is really easy." So sorry to ramble about that, but you asked some really good questions.
