Cooking at Home with Jessica Formicola

george grombacher 0:02
Jessica Formicola is a psychotherapist turned CEO of savory experiments. She’s a TV personality, a cookbook author, a recipe developer. She’s been featured in Better Homes and Gardens parade mashed and many more. Welcome to the show. Jessica.

Jessica Formicola 0:16
Thank you for having me. excited

george grombacher 0:18
to have you on. Tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work, why you do what you do?

Jessica Formicola 0:26
Well, I kind of fell into food. I was a psychotherapist for 12 years, I worked with dually diagnosed patients, I was the director at an outpatient psych program and a college professor. And we had some struggles in our personal life, we went through a lot of fertility treatment, and I was finding myself needing my own kind of personal therapy and outlet. And TV wasn’t doing it. I couldn’t always go to the gym because of the fertility treatment, which was another one of my outlets, and Happy Hour was off the table. So I needed to find something else. And I always enjoyed food and cooking. And we would start to host dinner parties at our house and friends would ask me for the recipes. And I realized pretty fast that I never actually followed a recipe was always a little bit of this and a little bit of that and customizing it. So I started writing them down. And one day at work when a patient no showed for their appointment, I Googled how to start a blog. And I had no idea. I had no idea where I’d be 1314 years later, and I certainly had no idea how many food blogs were out there. I mean, this is long before. This was when Facebook was the only thing around there wasn’t any Instagram or Twitter or anything else. So that is that is how it started. It was very simple. And as life has gone on the bar has continued to be raised and between social media and I started writing for larger publications like Better Homes and Gardens, I got the opportunity to start doing our local news doing cooking demos. And now that’s rolled into larger cooking demos. I just filmed with Campbell’s and the National Beef Council and a whole bunch of other brands. And now I’m a food judge on a debate on a NET Web web al improvs more but our first publication on the on their app. So it’s just kind of snowballed into something completely different. But it’s a lot of fun. And I’m just rolling with it.

george grombacher 2:24
laughs a funny thing.

Jessica Formicola 2:25
It is. It is awesome.

george grombacher 2:29
We were talking just before we get started here, and I forget if I said or you said it, you said food is easy. And I thought I think that’s a good way to start to show. Because is it? You know, we all I think it’s kind of like money. It’s like we all use money. But it’s money easy. We all eat food. But it’s food easy. I don’t know.

Jessica Formicola 2:54
I feel like money is a little bit more complicated than food. Food can be easy if you want it to be easy. And it can also be really good and easy. It doesn’t have to be complicated. I am a busy mom, I’ve got two kids, I work ridiculous hours and often early and late. I don’t marinate things for 48 hours and then subi and expect my life to You know, it’s a four hour cooking in the evening. I need 30 Minute Meals too. But I still want them to have those restaurant quality elements and and it can be done. But food is something that every culture shares. It’s something that everybody does every single day. And it’s what you make of it. So a lot of what we do is talk about how to reframe it. Instead of looking at cooking or eating as a chore and something we have to do. We talk about it being something we want to do and kind of taking it back to old school times where you spent time in the kitchen with your grandma and asking questions and learning about things and spending quality time together but also teaching kids about food. I find that nowadays especially with the millennials, that is missed. You know, there are kids that can’t fry an egg or make even a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese let alone saying okay, make your Kraft macaroni and cheese but let’s elevate it a little bit. How can we make this a better meal? And I want to bring that back to the kitchen. So again, a lot of this is reframing. How can we enjoy cooking and making it an element of all of our family lives or our personal lives instead of it being a chore?

george grombacher 4:34
I absolutely love it. It seems to me that the more busy we are, the more we recognize the need to spend quality time with our loved ones. And I certainly want my two boys and my daughter to be able to make elevated mac and cheese or to be able to fry an egg or to just to be self sustaining and to make healthy choices instead of just going doing a Um, takeout or going through a drive thru.

Jessica Formicola 5:03
Don’t get me wrong, we still go through a McDonald’s drive driver and soil. I mean, everybody wanted the blue basket during Halloween. But you know, it’s all about balance too Isn’t life balance? And food can be that but with kids too, oh gosh, there are so many kids now. And I hear this from parents all the time. They’re like, Well, my kids eat earlier. And they eat hot dogs and chicken nuggets. And then we eat after they go to bed and we make you know, a meal for ourselves. And I asked what a missed opportunity. This is why kids these days don’t have palate that they eat a lot more stuff, our kids eat what we eat. Now if I have a spicy sauce, I might leave it on the side. Or I might make something a little bit different for them. For instance, salmon is is a flavor that a lot of children still haven’t quite developed the palate for. But ultimately, we figure out a way for our children to eat the same thing we’re eating and we still make a family dinner time. Even when one of us is traveling for work, we still make it an effort to sit down with the kids and eat and talk about the food and have that conversation. And even though my daughter is only in kindergarten, she could tell you what’s her starch? What’s her vegetable, which one’s a root vegetable, which one isn’t where that protein came from, which for us. If you eat proteins, it’s very important to respect the process of ranching and farming and where these things come from. And most Kitteridge can’t do that. I mean, my daughter has eaten truffle pate on her path. Does that have butter and parmesan cheese, so it’s possible.

george grombacher 6:36
I feel like that’s probably the first step is setting the intention. The first step is in fact truffle pate. You must know what truffles are and you also must know what pate is need to figure out how to marry those two things. And then get a child to eat it. Do you call it truffle Pate and she still ate it?

Jessica Formicola 6:55
You do and honestly I just I buy it in a jar off Amazon. It’s not even that expensive. It’s not like really good shape truffles, like just regular black truffles. But anyway, neither here nor there. But yes, she knows what she’s eating. She She we travel with our kids do. They will I mean she ate at first in Italy where she was eating a dish that was for and and truffle pate on pasta. And that same day, somebody walked up to me an American and said Italy is no place for children. If there’s tons of children in Italy, why? Why in the world? Would you say something like that? But anyway, it just goes to show you that you can do anything with your kids, and they’re going to be more well rounded for it in the long run.

george grombacher 7:36
Yeah, for sure. There’s there’s no doubt about that. So your daughter you mentioned she’s in kindergarten. When When can you get a child involved in the kitchen? And how what are some of those kind of baby steps or maybe initial steps.

Jessica Formicola 7:51
My children had been in the kitchen since they were infants. They were sitting on a bumble on my counter watching me cook and talking. And for us we did a process called Baby led weaning. If you’re not familiar with it, you basically skip baby food, and you go straight to solid food and the concepts behind it are that they don’t get used to sweetened flavors that are in baby foods. And they learn how to chew easier and reduces the risk of choking later on in life because they don’t just swallow like you would with a baby food. So we started pretty early on and we did the same thing she ate what we ate, she shared entrees with mom and dad instead of ordering off the kids menu. very truthful. My son who is four is a much pickier eater than my daughter who is six. And so he’s a bit a little bit trickier. But they all started done. And as soon as I could get her to stand, she was doing stuff she was mixing cookie dose. She was tasting the food as I made it, she was seasoning things, sometimes things got a little salty, but you know what, it’s one meal of one day. And you’ll make another one tomorrow. And that’s how we learned about salt, and what it tastes like and how it affects food. And they also sell these kids safe kitchen knives. I don’t know if you’ve seen them. They’re kind of plastic so she can help me prep salads. And we taste the vegetables. We taste them how they taste raw and how they taste cooked and the difference and and so they do they help they love helping in the kitchen. And they think again, it’s a reframe for parents. So if you’re just trying to get it done fast, and it’s easier for you if they just get out of your way. Or do we say you know what cooking dinner Dinner might might not be a 30 minute meal, but this is going to be my quality time with my child. I’m going to be able to ask them about their day and they are going to actually tell me instead of staring at an iPad, or the TV or doing their homework, and it becomes an enjoyable experience that everybody looks forward to.

george grombacher 9:51
I think that’s such a cool and powerful and really wonderful thing. And I’m guilty of letting expediency get in the way of Have lots of things like I need to stop putting the shrewd my kids shoes and socks on to get them out the door on time, they just need to be able to do that. And instead of me cooking the food just involved in a couple of extra steps and knowing that, hey, we’re gonna make a little bit of a mess, and it’s going to take a little bit longer. But we get to have those those those serendipitous conversations or whatever the term is, that wouldn’t be happening, because to your point, they’d be focused on something else.

Jessica Formicola 10:28
Let me tell you, my kids love using the spray cleaner too. So even if they do make them, they then get fight over who gets to use the spray cleaner to clean it up again. So you could make even those types of things. Part of the experience? Yeah,

george grombacher 10:41
yeah, for sure. We’ve got a lot of parallels going on in our households. We’ve got spray guy, and everybody wants to be spray guy for sure. So totally get it. How you frame it? Yeah, well, that was a percent. Now, if I grew up in a house, let’s just say that I’m not the excellent Cook That I am in real life. If I was not, how do I how do I dip my toe in there? How do I how do I take baby steps to being comfortable cooking myself so I can help my kids be involved. Also,

Jessica Formicola 11:11
just start find a couple of recipes online. And you know, food bloggers get a bad rap because of all the junk that’s in their posts before the actual recipe. But if you’re following some that do this for a living like I do, those posts are actually very informational. They teach you things, at least mine teach you things about technique, and ingredients so that you don’t just use it in that recipe, you’re not just following a recipe and moving forward, you’re learning about this ingredient to build your own competence in the kitchen. So next time you see it in a recipe mine yours, you’re creating your own, that you feel comfortable and confident being able to manipulate it and do something different with it, and work with it. And that’s kind of the whole point behind savory experiments is it’s unsavory experiments.com is the website, it’s learning how to feel comfortable and competent in the kitchen, I don’t want you to follow my recipe, I want you to use my recipe as a base. And I want you to learn technique from it so that when you go forth and you do more things in your kitchen, you can do that. So the first step is just to make a recipe. And that can be the simplest recipe out there. But as soon as you start dabbling a little bit, you’ll start to become more curious. So we also play a game in our house where we find an ingredient at the grocery store, no one’s ever used. Or I let the kids pick an ingredient or a vegetable or fruit. And we research it sometimes even just at the store a quick Google search. And we’ll figure out how we work with that ingredient. And again, it’s also spending time in the grocery store, I take my kids grocery shopping, we play the letter game, my daughter is learning how to read. It’s all you know, it takes longer, but it’s all part of that quality time together and teaching them about food. And we come home and we experiment with that, that ingredient, and sometimes it fails miserably. And that’s okay, you can always order a pizza. It’s not the end of the world. Again, it’s one meal one day out of your entire life. And that is not horrible. Even if we just eat string cheese for dinner, it’s fine. It was the process and the bonding and the learning that really got you to the end.

george grombacher 13:19
I love that. I think that that is awesome. So could be any random ingredient in terms of putting a meal together? How do you do you start you say this is our foundation if we are meat eaters, which I am to say we’re going to have have beef of some kind and how do you sort of build that out? If I’m explaining and are asking correctly? Yes,

Jessica Formicola 13:41
certainly, you got to start someplace, right. So I guess it depends on what your star is. So if I’m working with an ingredient that I haven’t worked with before, or maybe I’m just trying to make some more interesting vegetable side dish, I might start with a vegetable and then figure out how to pair a protein and add some like flavors. But often for people it starts with whatever the entree is whether that’s a pasta or a protein or something along those lines. So you start there and you build out. One of the elements I always talk to people about is color. I like to have a colorful plate even as an adult I want to eat the rainbow. So and proteins are often very brown. They’re kind of boring and lame, right? So it starts there with building out color and figuring out how I’m going to make my plate look pretty just in terms of color. And then we use philosophy we call it the five s philosophy. So we’re looking at Salt and I love salt. I’m obsessed with them. It’s kind of ridiculous. I’ve been curious salt in my purse, sauces, because sauces are the one thing you’re going to see on restaurant menus versus home menus that kind of take things to the new level, seasonings, all those seasonings that you never use that are in your cabinet that are probably old and expired and have no flavor anymore. I’m going to teach you how to use those and understand them. then add them to recipes. And then we look at five your five senses, and how it looks, how it tastes, how it smells. All of those things come in to food because we see it we see a sizzling plate of fajitas go by we smell it long before it ever hits our hits our mouth and then also the feel and not just the feel of our fingers. But our mouthfeel which is a word everybody always cringes at. But chefs and food critics will use it all the time. What’s the mouthfeel of the food and we can relate to that? Is it smooth? Is it crunchy, I always like to add texture to meals. So things like crunchy sea salts and stuff like that. So all of those are going to be the elements we’re looking at when we’re building out a dish we want to make sure it’s pretty we want to make sure it has texture we want to make sure it’s flavor and we want to make sure that it tastes good. I love it

george grombacher 15:52
fajitas the the greatest personal branded food out there greatest department whenever they walk past probably

Jessica Formicola 16:00
they’re colorful. They can hear the sizzle. You can smell the I mean I’m wanting a margarita right now totally.

george grombacher 16:07
What kind of salty having in your purse Jessica what’s good Scott, you’d like to turn it over and just salt comes up what’s going on?

Jessica Formicola 16:16
No, I don’t think I have I have I have like this is embarrassing. In my in my desk drawer. I have two assaults. This is Jacobsen which is like a finishing salt. It’s like a crunchy almost looks like a prism salt, but it’s a less salty salt, if you will. And then I have Bill salts which is if you’ve ever been to Utah they swear by Real Salt. It’s as like a pink salt from the salt flats up there. But it’s a fine sea salt. Also used in flavoring things to be more for like a salad and this would be more for protein. But I always keep mouth on sea salts on my on my table. It’s they’re like They’re fun. They’re little prisms, my kids call them the pyramids, because that’s what creates that texture but also the light salt flavor. And then of course I cook mostly with coarse kosher salt, sometimes a fine sea salts but never ever an iodized table salt, because it’s a metallic. It’s the saltiest of them highest in sodium because even though it’s all salt, they do have different sodium levels and salty factors. So learning about salt is also going to be one of your keys. But the best way to do that is to play with it to buy salts, taste them, and figure it out. All about experience and trial and error.

george grombacher 17:33
Yeah, I think that that’s awesome. I love the five, the five S’s and you hit the nail on the head with the seasoning. Like we’ve all got had the best designs or were gifted all these different jars or whatever bottles full of a green things that are now just just brittle dry.

Jessica Formicola 17:56
Seasoning starts to lose its flavor about six months in if it’s dried, and opened. So yeah, so even after six months, you might need to double the amount you use in a recipe. See, these are the little tidbits that are in the blog post that everybody complains about. But you might you might learn something if you read it, but I teach you how to revive it a little bit with a lot of the dry herbs you can rub them between your palms and get some of the natural oils to come back. You can double the amount in the recipe and for most of them I also have some swaps. So if one of your recipes didn’t work or maybe you don’t feel like buying an entire jar of rubbed sage because it’s expensive and you don’t use Sage that often you know what can we swap out for that? Or what are some other recipes that we can use rub sage in so you’ve got to got picked choose your own adventure in terms of, of stuff like that. But yeah, if you’re dried herbs are over a year old, just toss them. Just toss them by small jars that have jars and toss the old stuff because you’re not gonna get much out

george grombacher 18:53
of it. Got it? Well, Jessica, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How do we how do we dig into all this?

Jessica Formicola 19:01
Sabir experiments.com We’ve got over 2000 recipes, we have tutorials we have a free eight day how to be a better home cook email course that anybody can sign up for. I’m a real person back here and on all of my social media so I do interact with people if you’re on Facebook and you say yum it is me personally saying thank you behind the computer, and I love working with people and hearing from people so please don’t be a stranger reach out.

george grombacher 19:30
If you enjoyed as much as I did, so just feel your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to savory experiments.com And it’s a beautiful website with like Jessica said 1000s of different different recipes and take advantage of that of that free home cook course and just start that first. Just take that first step to cooking for yourself and involve your kids and I’m sure that you will find yourself healthier a happier person all those good things thanks again Jessica Thank you till next time remember do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.