How food can help you understand the Catholic Faith

[Music] welcome to catholic feedback i'm your host keith nester on this podcast we connect the eternal truths of the catholic faith with everyday life send in your questions and comments to feedback at catholicfeedback.com this podcast is brought to you by down to earth ministry a ministry of stewardship a mission of faith and by the generous support of our patrons for more information please visit downtoearthministry.org that's down the number two earthministry.org let's get to it welcome to catholic feedback i'm your host keith nestor and what a treat we have with us today actually it's kind of interesting that i said what a treat because father leo paddling hug is well known as an award-winning chef he's not just a priest but he's also an incredible chef too and fun little fact for you guys i love like cooking shows like gordon ramsay's my he's my jam and uh so so the fact that father leo is into all this cooking stuff it's it's super fascinating to me because someday it's one of my goals to learn how to be an amazing cook so maybe father leo can help me with with that so please welcome our guest today father leo paddling hug and we're going to have a great time so welcome father leo thanks keith i appreciate it and in your opening comments there were obviously two food references and it just comes literally naturally you said it's feed back and the whole idea is that's food and you talked about treat obviously we just finished trick-or-treating and so food is who we are it's what we do and it's what we're supposed to become that is i think that is is very interesting and you know most of the people on my podcast that watch catholic feedback are people who are interested in you know different ideas around catholicism and how do they incorporate them into their everyday life but i think sometimes what we what we can do and i remember as a pastor i used to try to do this all the time was i would start the other way find things that are part of my everyday life and figure out how to how to connect them to my to my spiritual truth and i think what you do is a great example of that because obviously food is something that is universal to everybody and if you look at just who we are as human beings god created us with that in mind for he created food for us for a purpose and and we're going to get into so many things but tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into using food and cooking as as part of your ministry i just think that's that's incredible absolutely but i am going to also just say right off the bat i'm going to be an answer to your prayer i'm going to teach you how to cook i'm going to teach you how to feed yourself because if you don't feed yourself then who knows who's going to feed you because it could be the devil that's the reality so it's either to be god and yourself feeding yourself with the good things or it's going to be someone else feeding you basically crap and let's admit you are what you eat so we're going to get super deep into theology but as far as who i am i'm just a i'm a priest uh not just but i am a priest a catholic priest and i know this is very weird because i'm a different type of priest altogether i'm a priest member of a community of consecrated life called voluntas dei which means the will of god we're called a secular institute which means the work that i do isn't like in a parish or in a church or in a school in a hospital or even a prison i work literally in the midst of the world and i believe god's called me to use my strange gifts and talents to build up his kingdom in the midst of the world as leaven and so before priesthood i was a breakdancer i'm a martial artist uh but then god called me to the priesthood and so that's the next logical step right and then after that the next logical step is to have a cooking show so i actually host a cooking show every sunday on ewtn called savoring our faith sundays at 4 30 eastern and i host and founded an international food and faith movement called plating grace yes and i the reason is because we have the beauty of the truth in the catholic church but we're really bad at plating i mean we like serve up either leftovers or we shove food down people's throat or we give them only sweet stuff and so really what i've got to do is plate grace and so people will ask and i'll just answer this immediately my style of cooking is to elevate the accessible so whatever you can find in grocery stores we want to elevate that because as a priest i have to make the elevated who is god more accessible so it's a real kind of synergy between who we are and what we can find and how we're supposed to become more like god because god became something so basic bread and wine pretty awesome wow you you said so much stuff in there that i i could just like dig into you you know uh i'll try not to do all the cheesy puns um total cheesy i'm a dad so i have all the dad jokes you know rocking but um let me ask you this which came first for you was it the interest in your faith or was it the interest in food oh um interest in food before i was cooking before i became a priest and i was kind of like a typical 80s kid so it was like a time when michael jackson was still black and madonna was still a virgin and so that's kind of who i was and how i grew up all right so i grew up and all that but i i also just love cooking and food because my mom because i'm her favorite child she talks to you all of uh she taught me all of the family recipes and well i mean i'm still learning some of them as well but i i got very involved in cooking i was working at a pizza place as also well as a gourmet place and my family is all about hospitality so that's just who i was and i questioned faith for many years found my faith uh and i didn't think that like when i became a priest i would be doing cooking i'd be doing breakdancing or martial arts but strangely while i lived in italy i studied in the vatican for six years that's when something really strange kicked in and i started to realize maybe food has something more to do with than just feeding the body and then like as i'm praying and meditating in front of you know like the eucharist which is bread i'm starting to like hear god speak to me and say you know figure out why i became food and figure out which monstrance i'm supposed to dwell in the one made by human hands or the one made by god's hands and so all of these deep things kicked in but it wasn't until i beat bobby flay shameless plug beat bobby flay food network throwdown that it really grew into a full-flown full-blown ministry so food came first because that's how god is god wants to feed you before he converts you and he uses food to change you from within so yeah i mean we could talk we could talk forever about how food and faith can intersect and you've already alluded to a few of those things i love the idea of plating grace because you know like i told you i'm kind of a i'm kind of a gordon ramsay groupie and i and i love watching those shows and i feel like you know one of the things that's so incredible about is how they make the food look and how just that idea of presentation is so important in food but it's also so important when it comes to our faith because we all know this and that sometimes it's not about what we say it's about how we say it because we can have the truth but if we say it in a way that makes it either inedible or indigestible you know like something that's that that we can't that people can't receive then what good is it you know same thing with with food if you if you give it to someone and it looks unappealing can we expect them to be attracted to it same way with our faith how do we make it look appealing well i mean you know this well as a protestant i mean former protestant that is i mean and still to a degree you've got that evangelical character in you no doubt about it so the idea of how they were able to take the eternal truths of the faith and present it and make it attractive i mean like we're talking chick-fil-a attractive here and that's why people go because it's that protestant ethos that makes chick-fil-a so great i don't know where they are now i know there's a lot of politics and stuff that go around but that mentality of that protestant welcome that kind of sense of hospitality that type of cleanliness and what i call protestant kindness that's what we as catholics need we had it but we became kind of centralized in our service and everything became legal and canonical we have forgotten many times the basics and so if you were to ask who are the most successful catholic churches it's the ones who understand hospitality who understand that we have to give them the sacred but in a way that even the secular can understand it's those that kind of touch all of the senses and not just the cerebral part of our catholic faith so what i do is when i travel around the world obviously not during covert times i would give these high level theology and deep dish discussions but you're also being affected by hearing the chopping and the sizzle and then you smell the food and then you taste it and then we figure out this whole psalm taste and see the goodness of the lord it starts to make sense i i love that and i feel like you know when you really think about it there are so many so many parallels in the scriptures between food analogies and our faith and i think we sort of just take them for granted we kind of just let them blow by us because we're not paying attention or we're not thinking about him but if you stop and really look at it how many times have we seen for example you know like you just said taste and see that the lord is good or all of the parables about the wedding banquet and the feasts and we see what jesus does at cana and and all these things that are related to this experience of food why do why do you think that is well it's a total shameless plug here again i wrote a book called epic food fight a bite-sized history of salvation and it really literally chronicles the theology of food it talks about how god uses food from beginning to the end and we forget about it because we are so arrogant we take the common for granted and we think that in order for us to be holy we have to be like oh super high and lofty and edu edumacated i'm like no i mean he said it very clearly especially in the in in the gospels uh for the feast of christ the king 20 20. so if anyone was listening to this later on in the year 2020 look to the gospel for the feast of christ the king it would be the 34th week of ordinary time he tells you how to get to heaven and the first thing he says is did you feed my hungry did you give drink to the thirsty i mean we're forgetting the basics and it's so funny because in our desire to be holy we elevate ourselves too much and what did the elevator do he literally became accessible this is gonna blow your mind he was born in a town called bethlehem which in aramaic means house of bread and in arabic it means house of meat and he was placed in a manjar a manger which means to eat his first miracle you alluded to it but we just have to go back to the book of genesis and we realized that before god even made humanity he made food and in us he created hunger and i think in our desire and our hunger to be like god we almost act like so supernaturally smart when in reality if you really want to act like god then just freaking feed people just feed people that's it the hungrier you are to be like god then the more we're going to respond to the hungers of the world that's what made saints for goodness sakes that's just why mother teresa became a saint because like she didn't give people the eucharist she gave them soup and curried rice which is so delicious but that's what she did and we just have to get back to the basics you know that's a powerful thing because i also think about one of the evidences of jesus literal resurrection when he meets the disciples on the shore and they're like are you ghosts are you real what does he say to him he says do you have something for me to eat and he eats food it's like it's almost like we see that that connection is made place there because that's how he shows them his humanity his his because what his point was yes this is actually my flesh my body has risen from the dead and i'm going to prove it to you by eating something you got that right literally in the post-resurrection account and talking to disciples in the upper room where the eucharist was convicted he asks about the food and then along the shore he says have you caught anything to eat and then when they finally make connection with him he says to peter three times do you love me do you love me do you love me and if you say yes then what's the response then feed my sheep the food references are there throughout the entirety of scriptures even till the very end where jesus will even say in revelations i knock on the door of your heart if you let me in i will enter and i will have supper with you i mean these are some deep things and it's all about what you put into your system and if what you put in your system is of god then basically the impurities will turn into basically you know toilet stuff but the blessings remain in you and you become literally what you eat you literally are nourished by a presence of the divine within you and that's why kind of i why people i'll be honest with you keith people make fun of me because all they think i do is cook on tv every 4 30 of course but no like no i'm here trying to touch people's hearts and minds but we all know that the easiest way to do that is to go through the stomach that's a powerful thing you know i think about how one of the things that we need to be always aware of is how we can take whatever it is that we're passionate about and turn it into a ministry you know when i was a pastor that was one of the things that i spent a lot of time doing with people was trying to help them discover what their spiritual gifts were what they could do for the lord and what we would always start with is what are you into what and and i remember there were a couple times where people would say nothing i can't do anything that's of any value you know all i like to do is go to the mall and hang out with my friends and i remember we said okay i was working with youth at the time we started a little bible study group at the mall after school one day a week we'd go there we just hang out people would come up we talked to him about jesus and and do that so anything that you can do you can turn it into a ministry if you have the right mindset for it you know and i feel like with what you're doing it's not only something that you've just sort of taken and used it's it's a central theme of the scriptures and of who we are like you said in the beginning you know food is who we are it's like there's so many things and i go back to the whole idea of what we take into us is what's going to form who we are our influences the things we allow into us and there's so many things we could learn from that i want to i want to shift gears just a little bit because i could talk like about all this this kind of stuff but i want to talk a little bit about what you think that most people miss when it comes to you know like let's say for example the significance of meal time because there's this idea that i mean we're all super busy and they're it can so easy i mean when my kids were younger it wasn't it wasn't often that we would all sit down at the same time because people have practice they have this they have that we got jobs like what do you think about people when they're in their consumption of their food and their relationships and how how that needs to look so plating grace is uh is the umbrella group for all the different things that we do and ultimately if people ask what i do i'm a content creator that tries to feed people body mind and spirit so the body part is easy i make recipes and i try to make it accessible for the spirit i'll give sermons for the souls and all of this is constructed within what is called the academy which is basically an online community that i host and people can learn about it at platinggrace.com but it's the feed the mind part that is very challenging because i'm trying to get people to make connections to their food their faith their friendships and even what i would call fun my favorite f word you know it's just to make these connections and so what i've discovered is that most people are trying to be uh they're doing way too much they just kind of need to pay to scale back and slow down and and feed the mind what you just discussed prior about how you would just encourage people to turn a hobby into a ministry you help them to discern and discernment is actually a key part of the work that i do i make people think what are you putting into your body what are you putting into your soul and what are you feeding your mind with like there's a lot of garbage out there that's why so many people are literally becoming relativists and socialists because they are not discerning how they're actually feeding their mind and allowing literally a political candidate to literally become their god their religion their gospel and so people don't like it because i sometimes have to feed the bitter herbs of truth and that's not an easy thing to do nobody wants to take medicine but let's admit that the greatest form of medicine was just a healthy diet and you apply that to body then apply that to the soul and then apply that to your mind how are you feeding your soul and your mind because a lot of people just limit feeding to just the body so it's a real challenging thing and what i ask people to do is what you try to help those mall preachers do discern what are you hungering for and where do you go to be fed or to whom do you go to be fed because if you don't go to god then the devil will be very happy to feed you that's the temptation of adam and eve they just didn't want to eat what god was providing so the devil stepped in and made sin and stupidity and evil look delicious yeah that that makes a lot of sense you know i think about when you're trying to get healthy there's two ways you can approach that well at least two ways you can either say to yourself all right i've gotta cut out all this bad stuff and then you get focused on what you can't have and then how do you act you're always hungry you always feel hungry you're always focused on being deprived and thinking oh if only i could eat that or this or whatever but what i've what i've found to work better is if you identify the things that are good for you and fill up on those things then you're physically going to begin to feel better and also your appetite for those things that are bad for you is going to diminish and it works and the same thing is true spiritually too if you allow the devil to fill you up you know let's say you want to get healthy spiritually and you focus on oh well i can't watch these kind of videos anymore and i can't listen to that kind of music anymore i can't do this or do that then you're gonna feel like oh god's just after my he's trying to kill all my fun but if instead you fill up on so many good things your appetite for sin will decrease there's so many parallel truths with that and i feel like the more we step into that you know what you just mentioned about adam and eve i've never really thought about that before but that's exactly that was the fruit the fruit that that the devil tempted them to eat that was the beginning of original sin and of and of the evil in this world it all came through that that misuse of that gift and it's it's really developing the virtue of humility so that you can become obedient because that's exactly what made jesus god was his obedience to be like because he was one with the father and let's admit if there's one thing that we are in today's world is that we're just kind of arrogant we want to literally play god we want to become god that was the temptation of the evil one eat this and you will become like god and so you know what if we literally are seeking the hunger of our heart let's admit it we all want to be god and we have a way to be like god you know what it is it's the eucharist amen eat him eat his presence and you become more like him so even god knows the hungers of our hearts and he provides the answer to our desires the grumbling of our souls to become more like him we have to receive him take and eat the goodness and you become more like god that's why saints are so fascinating to us and you know in their protestant days keith you may have not experienced the fullness of the truths that come from saints but who are they they're kind of like not demigods but they are definitely more like the image and likeness of jesus how they acted how they lived how they prayed and how they lived their life directed to heaven and why it's because of the eucharist i mean every one of them would just say it's the eucharist yeah i mean i can i can i can definitely relate to that you know you look at at what makes a saint and there's this this conformity to the to the the image of christ of course that goes along with that and a lot of that has to do with what we allow ourselves to consume and what we allow ourselves to to become and you know it's you are what you eat spiritually and physically and in every step of the way um i want to talk with you or ask you this question in all your ministry and different things i mean i'm not a chef like you i wish i could do awesome i'm excited for whatever you're going to teach me later but how do you see regular people like regular everyday catholics guys like me or whatever how can we use this idea of food because it's something we all have to we all have to experience right how could regular people use food as a way to do ministry and to bring people into the faith okay three ways that i can think of right off the bat one is going to be personal one is going to be communal and the other will be uh for service so the first way is to discern what you are eating and to help you stay connected so this whole plating grace movement started because i was literally at a retreat eating in silence our retreat director was encouraging us to meditate on the food we were eating look at it smell it have it evoke thoughts discern the taste is it salty is it sweet is it sour and then imagine it going into you and what it's doing to you and also thinking of all the people whose hands were connected to just give you that bite of food wow that was super powerful for me so just being able to eat more slowly and eat more intentionally and if you are doing that for yourself then here's the second way it has to be with a community of people with whom do you eat so part of the secondary work of what i do is to try to encourage families to eat together because that's where you are strengthened in the holy communion for the domestic church at the family altar which is your dinner table so really intentionally focus on the family meal and because it's literally just being taken away from us because the devil knows if we can make people frenetic and busy then they're never going to come to the family table and as you do at home as you do a church people are so busy they don't even gather around the lord's table anymore so personally and then communally and then third service wise how do you use food to serve other people and i'm grateful for all of the food pantries out there that provide food but what i want to do is actually give lectures how to make sure that you're not simply slopping food on a plate but making sure you're eating with them making sure they're eating healthy food making sure that they're part of the cooking process as well as cleaning process because what we don't want to do is treat them with pity but really give them compassion that means suffer with them go ahead and eat with them and talk with them so a lot of organizations have brought me out to do some speaking on how to make sure that the food service that they provide isn't really just done out of pity because to be honest with you an atheist can do that an atheist can just slot food on the table but it's a christian who sees christ in the other and who sees christ in them and what did christ do he not only served the poor he ate with them and he eventually became food for them so personally communally and as a servant three ways to transform food into a sacrament okay so i want to just kind of just hone in on that now i just want to speak directly to my my audience here at catholic feedback i want you guys to to hear what father just said and i'm i'm going to lump myself in on this too you know let's let's do what we can to start moving in the right direction with this when it comes to our family meal times and i don't know what it looks like in your house and my house you know we're doing pretty good with it right now but um but to there was a long time when we weren't so i want to challenge you guys to move into that conversation and to try to let's say at least four nights a week i want you guys sitting down together as a as a family eating together and and taking that don't let the world rob you of that incredible gift so that's that's a powerful thing i just wanted to make sure i didn't forget to do that i have this friend of mine in our church and this is you know when i was listening to you talk about this i'm thinking about how this guy uses food as an evangelistic tool and he loves to cook he loves to make incredible food and the other day we were at a men's group and he just said hey i'm smoking 16 pounds of brisket so thursday night anybody wants to drop by um come get some and i'm like what in the world so i went over there i took my wife and my daughter over there we went over to his house and people all throughout the evening were dropping by and he was just giving them food like to go plates to take and there were some that stayed and ate together but it was sort of this idea that like this guy's ministry in our local church seems to be to literally feed people through men's nights and through different things but he's really really good at it and i think the fact that he's so good at what he makes means that when this guy invites you over you go you know if i invited you over for dinner you'd be like maybe i don't want to do that but when this guy says hey i'm making this food you there's a sense of of um you know desire to be there because it's so good and i'm thinking about how you know we all go to church we go to mass we look around we see people that we don't know what's what's a great way to get to know somebody versus say or you know a better way than saying to them hey let's go to lunch or why don't even better why don't you come to my house and i'll make you something i know we're kind of in a pandemic right now hopefully not for too much longer but that idea of inviting people into your eating space you know that's that's a pretty powerful thing you can do yeah that sense of invitation in hospitality those words are incredibly christian virtues i think of the word hospitality it comes from the understanding of just healing that's where we get hospital and so when we look at this though the image of hospitality is most evident in the scriptures and jesus uses what a samaritan the good samaritan a foreigner who jews did not get along with at all and vice versa and a jew who was known as a rabbi jesus who is god will use a samaritan as the example of healing and hospitality so this is a mind blow for a lot of people in jesus's time and i think because we've heard it so many times we don't even think about it but what we need to do if we really want to take this seriously is we have to ask ourselves who do we not like and go ahead and eat with them go ahead try it because jesus very well clearly said it he said it very clearly it was like you know what what good is it that you invite your friends over to eat no if you really want to love me you're going to invite people from the by roads of people you don't know and maybe even people you don't like because the fact is if you can't practice eating with people you don't like you might not like heaven because the mercy of god can even forgive that person and that person will be sitting next to you for all of stinking eternity and if you hate that experience then you ain't in heaven you're another leo you're sir you're serving up some some awesome truth bombs here i love it i love it that's power sorry about that it's kind of what i do and i'm a little hyped up right now because i've been in quarantine this whole time you know i've been doing nothing but just zoom conferences and and presentations online and to be honest with you it takes much more energy to do that to communicate with the people because when i'm talking live i can see their reaction they can smell the food i can hear them laugh and so when we're doing things virtually we have to know that that's not the way it's supposed to be in the same way when you're watching a cooking show like mine you have to actually make that food because if not then it literally becomes a theory and what faith has to become is incarnational incarnate in the flesh so i'm a little hyper because i'm trying to get your listeners and your audience to do something hey man themselves i i love it i'm the same way i mean i feel i feel 100 like what you're saying and i watched some of your your videos about you know with your your show and cooking stuff and i think to myself this looks so cool but i'm missing out on a key piece because i want to be there i want to smell it i want to taste it i want to be like at the table with you when you're making this incredible stuff so i can you know i can i can be a part of that and i think that that's something that we have to try to capture into our faith as best we can is you know there's there are people that are coming to your parishes that are they're starving spiritually but they're also starving for a hospitality community and when you invite them into your home and you you cook for them and you take care of them or you have to share a meal with them there's so many things that like one of the things i've noticed that i just appreciate so much about being catholic is how the catholic faith appeals so much to all of the senses you know we hear we see we we we're on our knees when we pray we hear the bells we have incense we're tasting i mean it's it's a whole sensory experience stuff that when i was a pastor we used to try to create things you know and and appeal to that it's it's baked in to catholicism and i think that's that just came to me sorry about that no no it's exactly what it is so i'm gonna it's true mind blow everybody again that all of the sacraments literally have to deal with food so from water for baptism and to make the water holy you use blessed salt the confirmation is oil it's the same for priesthood as it is for the sacrament of anointing and then you think about just the incense that we use that is smoke for that very reason and then here's a really beautiful thought too for marriage and priesthood the sacrament of marriage and priesthood is only valid when it is consummated consumed when it's literally one taken into the other like you would food consumed and so all of the sacraments are food oriented and that's kind of what i write about in the book epic food fight because we forget that the ultimate battle is how do you get to heaven it all depends on what you hunger for because heaven is supposed to be an eternal banquet and the devil will use food to destroy us and jesus will become food to save us i love it i love it that'd be a good t-shirt right there you know um so i know you like you said you mentioned you're you're like a lot of us you're kind of stuck in your in your your house quarantined but what are some things that you've been doing in 2020 to feed your soul and to keep you keep you excited and what are some things you're interested in what are you growing in yeah so first of all i hate technology but i've had to grow in it well you're doing great really kind of baptize it and so we've been doing a ton of online conferences for the work because my normal job is to be a speaker and to be a content creator and obviously i do large events and travel and we can't do any of that right now so my income has been like but that's all right because it's required me to shift and reorganize so we've been doing smaller dinners in the area including some of for the holidays and then i've been doing a lot of zoom conferences and not just cooking demonstrations but online conferences for even different groups all together and then i've been working mostly on getting a food truck up and ready because my non-profit group works with um with we support the spirituality and supporting chefs and people in the hospitality industry because they're really hurting now they're really but before that they were working hard and no one even paid attention to them and it takes like the suicide of may his soul rest in peace anthony bourdain to realize that a chef is just like an artist and they need spiritual support you know and so right now the whole movement in chefs is tattoos and piercings and just being a quote unquote bad ass chef so to speak and they kind of kick god out and so what i'm trying to do is remind them that god is in the kitchen that's what saint teresa of avila said if you want to find god look for god amidst the pots and the pans the second group of people we support our ex-convicts returning citizens and so i turned 50 this past year most people would get like a convertible nope i'm getting a food truck because i'm going to give people a chance when they come out of the prison system to work with us to kind of learn how to be a better person by becoming a servant and dealing with food and then with partners hopefully be able to find good and stable jobs i've had some success already with a small group of people but our non-profit the table foundation we're going to be trying to get our food truck up and ready and that takes a tremendous amount of work wow i'm so inspired by what you're doing father i love all those ideas i think the the food truck ideas is incredible and i'm just excited to see to see where you take this and where god what god dark what god does through it it's awesome man it's hard i mean besides that i'm filming for my show and then i'm doing my own podcast which i hope to have you as a guest as well and that's that's on the record it'd be great to hear your story my podcast is called shoot the shitake you know it's pretty cheap but it's just me talking to people who have different experiences for me and even some real controversial topics because what we have to do is say that you know just because i disagree with someone doesn't mean that i hate them so like on my podcast i even interview a transgender and i talk to that person like a christian from christian to christian and and just try to hear the story and not judge them but listen to them and welcome them without saying that i agree with sinfulness or even their decision but i'm here to just try to show how to love people just by listening to them and so uh so the podcast is challenging in some regards but at the same time it's trust trying to put me in the position of christ who i'm sure did not like all the people he ate with as well i'm sure but he loved them and he showed he loved them by spending time with them and i say that if you have really good food we'll listen to each other because you can't talk with your mouth full i was just thinking the same thing i'm like that's one of the benefits of of you know meeting with people over a meal is that's going to ensure that you both get to talk and you know that's hope for sure well i'm intrigued i want to know what it is you're going to teach me how to cook today or teach all of us how to cook today what do you what do you got planned i mean it really all depends on what you're hungry for and so here's what i do a lot of people what do you have in your kitchen that you think uh you haven't used and i want to help turn it into something amazing for you or what are you hungering for and what's in your kitchen so that i can help maybe change it up a little bit so let's begin with the basics okay what are you hungry for well okay so here's this kind of running joke in my house my wife loves chicken and i'm always like all right chicken you know because to me it's always like i feel like it's kind of boring you know very boring so here's the thing now let me ask you yeah do you like crunchy do you like sweet do you like salty do you like sour what is it that you are hungry for i like all that i love spicy food i love i love crunchy spicy i'd say that's mine okay here's what we're gonna do let me ask you this all right have the following things in your refrigerator do you have do you have a type of a vinegar yeah i got apple cider vinegar is that work right apple cider vinegar do you have mustard yep do you have honey yeah do you have hot sauce oh yeah sriracha you have soy sauce yep okay so you're going to just take equal parts of all of that combine it as a sauce okay hold on i'm going to write this down apple cider vinegar mustard hot sauce um soy sauce right yep what was it was there anything else no but i am going to say if you want just add the same equal part of brown sugar okay so combine that in a sauce okay and maybe also add some olive oil as well for just any oil now what you want to do is you want to take your chicken and you're just going to do a simple breading and your breading is going to be season it with salt and pepper cut it into bite-size strips okay as well as broccoli into the same bite-size strips okay and you're going to dredge it in flour and then you're gonna put it in what is called an egg wash which is one egg beat with like a tablespoon of water okay shake off that extra juice of that egg wash and then dump it in some bread crumbs basically we're making the chicken chicken chicken slice it up in the strips with the with the broccoli i'm going to actually cubed it up that way it's the same size as the broccoli okay cube it up all right and then we're going to take that put it in the flour and the egg wash so so some egg into the flour so no nope uh i'm already mixed i'm already messed up nope you're gonna have three bowls this is easy okay okay three bowls one is gonna have flour yep one's going to have the egg wash and the other is going to have the bread crumbs and what's in the egg wash just eggs just egg with a little bit of water and you beat it okay gotcha that's it and then you literally go from flour to the egg wash to the bread crumbs all right and then in a shallow pan with like some oil some regular frying oil you're just going to gently drop all of those in including the broccoli including the broccoli don't over crowd your pan don't like over stuff it like put like so that it's half filled so if you've got a a pan that can hold ten pieces full only add five pieces in and make sure that there's enough oil in there so that it kind of covers everything once that turns golden brown and i made it nug its size because it only takes about five minutes for both the broccoli as well as the chicken to cook you strain it all out you put it off to the side and then in that same bowl that you had that sauce in toss it all in there and just kind of like mix it all around i guarantee you're going to be very happy with this meal that sounds good it sounds good okay so here's what i'm going to do here's what i'm going to do father um i'm gonna this week i'm gonna work on getting these ingredients i'm gonna give this a try and i'm gonna record myself trying to do this and then uh you know i'll post this on youtube at some point in time and uh then maybe maybe you can you can critique how i did or whatever and we'll see how it goes how about this how about if you even want just do a live show and i'll coach you from my kitchen to yours or i'll even do it with you so that you can even see how it's done which is what i do i like that even better i'd be a fool to turn that down so all right you heard it here first on catholic feedback we're gonna do a cooperative food special father leo tries to teach you know keith how to make some awesome chicken so i'll we'll definitely make that work i like it i'm excited man i'm excited yeah i mean this is the whole thing it's hard work let's just admit it you should never think that cooking or feeding your family is always going to be like thanksgiving no some days you're going to open up a can some days you're going to pop something in the microwave some days you're just going to be eating leftovers over and over again and you know what that's okay not everything is a food network episode i mean you should have saw what i ate last night it was literally leftovers and i just threw it together it was freaking delicious because i know how to use it but it wasn't something that you'd oh no actually i did put that on instagram so never mind but the idea is that not everything has to be a feast there is something called ordinary time in the catholic church and we have to remember that there are feast days and fast days as well as just ordinary days but if you invite god to your meal no matter when you're eating it or what you're not eating if you're just fasting on bread and water you invite god to that moment i guarantee you're gonna have a meal that is meaningful that will have a message and that more importantly it will give you direction in your life any bite invite god it becomes a blessing i love it i love it father thank you so much for joining us here today on catholic feedback i mean you you've said so many things that that i feel i'm going to be um thinking i'll be chewing on them they'll be marinating around inside my brain and i'll be i'll be just thinking about them for a long time because it's so it's so true and i'm super excited for uh for our live cooking episode that we'll do here pretty soon um tell people where they can find you i know we've mentioned a few things but and i'll drop links to all these in the description you guys so make sure that you check out father leo's show and all this stuff so tell us where we can find more about you so the show the books the academy uh the podcast it can all be found at plating grace.com platinggrace.com awesome well i will definitely look forward to exploring more of that content i i took some time last week and watched a ton of stuff and i thought it was awesome it was super cool and um i just lo i love you i love your ministry i love everything that you're doing so once again uh thank you so much for coming on catholic feedback and you guys that are watching at home please feel free to drop any comments or questions i'll go through them and i'll send them on to father leo and look for us very soon in our our special edition episode of keith cook's chicken uh father leo style there you go all right it'll be good bless you guys thanks so much for watching and i appreciate every single one of you guys make sure you share this episode and and and um let's together continue to hunger and thirst for righteousness so thanks so much for being a part of catholic feedback you guys take care and god bless thanks for listening to catholic feedback with keith nestor send in your questions and comments to feedback at catholicfeedback.com this podcast is brought to you by stewardship a mission of faith and is also supported by our team at patreon.com forward slash keith nestor please consider joining our support team catholic feedback is a production of down-to-earth ministries for more information about down to earth or to bring me to your parish or event visit downthenumber2earthministry.org see you next time you

Channel: Keith Nester

Views: 2,819

Rating: 4.9565215 out of 5

Keywords: Keith Nester, Catholic Feedback, Catholic, Catholic Podcast, Catholic Talk Show, Catholic Radio, Catholic TV, Catholic Show, Taylor Marshall, Matt Fradd, Mike Schmitz, Robert Barron, Catholic Answers, Catholic Stuff You Should Know, Church Militant, Bishop Barron, Unpacking the Mass, Rosary Crew, Fr.Leo Patalinghug

Id: THF-ELkR9TI

Length: 44min 51sec (2691 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020