SATISFY YOUR SWEET TOOTH WITHOUT USING SUGAR - HOW A SUGAR ADDICT WAS FINALLY ABLE TO DITCH SUGAR

show often by myself i'm the host the producer if you will but every now and then i've got something to say and i will do a live by myself which is really weird because i get so used to interviewing people that i forget what it's like to talk so i just want to give a little bit of a background story or housekeeping especially because you know with youtube this might be your first time seeing me and if it is welcome and i hope you'll consider subscribing to my channel and also hitting the notification bell because what that does is it tells you whenever i go live we do go live every day actually i have gone live in case you're unfamiliar with my work and my show i've gone live every single day since march 20th 2020 and i've done that when the pandemic began actually it was sheltering in place and i just got to make sure that i'm live because i'm not seeing it on youtube and if that's not the case i'm going to start over because this is too important charles am i live ah okay well maybe nobody's typing in the chat that's why i didn't know all right well good to know so if you want to know what the schedule is and today is show 1157. please consider signing up to be on my mailing list at chefaj.com because every week usually saturday but sometimes sunday we send you a schedule of who the guests are so the guests are on my regular show which is called chef aj live it airs every single day at 11 a.m pacific time and it has for two and a half years now we've never missed a day and there's many days that i've gone live twice even up to five times a day these are not necessarily scheduled shows so you maybe would like to know and to know that you would want to be subscribed on youtube to know for the bonus shows but the regular shows were pretty consistent so i just got back from rancho la porcha and i want to tell you a little bit about that experience because there's been lots of questions on social media about the experience and the desserts that you're seeing and that's kind of what this we're going to talk about today is how to satisfy your sweet tooth without using sugar and how i actually after a lifelong well let's say 43-year sugar addiction i was finally able to find a sweeter life with permanently giving up sugar and that that does tie into why i was at rancho la puerta so i'm going to tell you that story but first i just want to say a couple of things i forgot what they were i should have taken notes about the show okay so you know about the show it's 11 o'clock every day and okay i'm just gonna jump into it because sorry i'm a little bit tired when i fly i get a little bit uh tired but let's let's get to the topic in hand as i mentioned i just got back from rancho la puerta and if you follow me on social media and by the way youtube where you're watching now is social media and i want to really say this before we get started that this is a youtube show i use a platform called restream which allows me to also stream it to facebook and twitter but i don't go on there i can't see your comments there and so a lot of times we have doctors on the show dr mcdougall dr lyle they come on every month and you guys have questions and i would love to be able to get those doctors to answer your questions but because i can't see what you write on twitter and facebook i can't i can't answer the questions so if you would like to interact with me in what i call the zamunity which is the community on zoom where we meet on youtube every day there's several hundred of us we know each other by name we even take roll you need to be watching on youtube now of course if you're watching the replay it doesn't really matter where you watch but if you want to communicate with me in real time which is what i do even while i'm hosting you've got to be watching on youtube so that's the way it is you don't have to necessarily subscribe but you do have to watch there if you want to ask the question either to me or one of the guests now when the doctor is on especially dr lyle dr mcdougall one of the big wigs dr goldhamer dr greger we can only take questions that have been sent in to our mailing list in advance and that is the reason why you would want to subscribe to the mailing list to find out who the guests are or if you don't want to subscribe you can still send the question into help chefaj.com but we do give priority to our subscribers and those of you that have sent questions in in advance know that to be true all right so a lot of you know me now as a person that's slender and i have a whole life before this before the age of 62. i write a lot about it in my book let's see if you don't know my primary job believe it or not is i am an author and then i write books and i also teach classes both in person and online and i wrote a best-selling book i think it was 2016 or 18 called the secrets to ultimate weight loss where i chronicle my story of being obese from the age of five to the age of 52. really i've only been slender for 10 years now i call myself the nouveau then but the reason i was obese was because i believe i suffered from a food addiction specifically sugar addiction and giving up sugar was the best decision i ever made that's why i appear in a lot of these summits that aren't even vegan like the kick sugar sum at the quit sugar summit because even if somebody is unwilling to go vegan i really do believe there's a benefit in quitting processed food and sugar that's why i wrote another book called unprocessed so my uh my abstinence or my sobriety date is july 6 2003 that is the last time that i had sugar it was a sunday and i remember it because it was a very profound day up until that point up until the age of 43 pretty much all i ate with sugar and processed food and at that point i had already been vegan for 26 years but i was not unprocessed i basically ate vegan junk food which when you think about it was pretty hard to do back then because we didn't have you know guardian meat and impossible burger and better than whatever all this stuff is and day of cheese we didn't even have vegan processed food when i became vegan which was over 45 years ago on september 1st 1977 but you know an addict will find a way and i found a way to basically just eat crap started my day with coke slurpees if the sugar and caffeine wasn't bad enough i would add eight pumps of vanilla syrup i would have a dr pepper big gulp every day for lunch 48 ounces because 20 years ago that was the biggest size and basically instead of eating from the healthy food groups that i recommend today fruits vegetables whole grains and legumes i eat from my own food groups candies cakes cookies pies maybe five food groups ice creams it was vegan but it wasn't healthy and that's how i got to be close to 200 pounds but even more than being obese because i've been used to being obese i was obese since the age of five i weighed 160 pounds at the age of 11 when i wasn't even 5 feet tall i developed what they call pre-colon cancer from basically eating just sugar sugar flour oil you know caffeine and really no fruits and vegetables no fiber whatsoever that's why i'm so passionate about this especially because so many people in my family had their colon removed or died of colon cancer and i don't want that to happen to any of you so i really believe that giving up sugar is one of the best things that people can do whether they're overweight or not whether they're vegan or not sugar is not a food it's a poison and when i look at it it's a white powder i look at it the same way i would rat poison i wouldn't eat any white powders whether it's rat poison or sugar or cocaine or flour or salt well like salt snakes and obviously if you travel i was at rancho i can't always guarantee but i don't i don't add salt to my food so july 6 2003 was the last day that i had sugar i was dropped off at the i was picked up actually at the train station in san diego i was going to the optimum health institute in lemon grove and i heard that if you got caught with contraband in your room they would kick you out and not give you a refund and i'm a very frugal person and at that time i 175 dollars was a lot of money to me so i figured you know i'm going to do what they say as difficult as it was i remember i had the cab driver take me to uh 7-eleven which was my stomping ground it's really you know when i think back i mean it's so hard to even remember those days of being an addict because i you know nobody's proud of being an addict but the things i did to get my fix but i remember the one time that we had to move i i only could live somewhere that was walking distance to a 7-eleven because when you're as addicted as i was to both sugar and caffeine you i mean i couldn't even drive to get my fix some days my husband would get it he really didn't want to enable me so i had to live walking distance to a 7-eleven and it's funny because i found a place in studio city where i was working as an activity director in a retirement home that was literally equidistant between two 7-elevens which is important because when you're an addict if what if one of the coke slurpee machines was broken and i remember yelling at them when i couldn't get my fix because sometimes the machine was broken and i'm not going to have like another flavor like cherry or you know whatever they had seven up because i needed both the sugar and the caffeine and lots of it to start my day so on sunday july 6 2003 the cab driver picks me up he takes me to 7-eleven i buy my last coke slurpee my last dr pepper drinking it on that quickly is not that fun but i knew that you know that the writing was on the wall and i remember working with the psychologist there if you've ever been to the optimum health institute it's a fabulous place and i don't know if dr bob is still there but basically we did we did these exercises like role playing where we're basically you know i broke up with my favorite doctor at the time dr pepper and of course the coke slurpees and you know sometimes i think you know because on july 7 7 or july 11 7 11 gives away free slurpees and it's always been hard for me to re resist free food i mean i think that's the case with everyone dr lyle has talked about why that is now i always think well maybe i should just get a small one and taste it and see what it would be like and i don't think it's going to put me back into my addiction but i don't think i would like it i think first of all i'd be too sweet and i think it would be very very chemical tasting so how this pertains to rancho la puerta is that um i've been going to rancho la puerta for 11 years i've probably been there 22 times now and it is not a vegan spot so those of you interested in going this is not what this session is about just please email help chef aj.com and we'll give you all the information because we are starting i didn't know we could do this but we're starting to get groups that go specifically to see me i just got back there and because it was such short notice this was a fill-in date this wasn't my schedule date we only got five people but we had a fabulous time being with like-minded people and and you know spending time with people that are already like us that eat like us and so we have another group planned in july where there's already 30 people so that's the limit by the way 30 people so we're going to try to get other dates but anyway the point is the reason i chose next july for my day to rancho well one because it's discounted rates anyway because of the summer and then discounted rates because you're going with me but because july 6 will be my 20-year anniversary of not having any sugar and so i'm very proud of that and we're going to celebrate at a place making sugar-free desserts which is my specialty because i was a pastry chef at a place that basically doesn't use sugar i i mean they're you know i they do sometimes put a little bit of you know agave they in a recipe but for the most part they really don't use sugar or flour or processed food and even oil and salt very very minimal so i'm very happy about that anyway so i was posting my my classes on social media because we do these hands-on cooking classes they're fabulous and uh so we make desserts and we made the chocolate mousse that's a really really popular one uh in general and within the apple pie that won't make you die and people keep asking me for that recipe and there is a way to get it i'm going to tell you at the end of the class but it's like literally probably one of the i don't know if it's the best recipe i ever created because it really depends on what your palette is but it's it's probably my favorite because it's the one i make every week it's charles's favorite and it's as clean as you can get in terms of not having any sugar or flour or you know any i obviously don't use oil or salt and also being low in fat and so i'll tell you how to get apple pie that won't make you die and also the perfectly pear recipe in a little bit but i want to tell a little bit about my story because you know those of you that started watching because it's a show that i interview guests may not know much about me and you know hey here's your chance to learn so we have the holidays coming up not by the holidays i don't mean just you know christmas or kwanzaa or hanukkah or whichever you celebrate or maybe you don't celebrate in new year's eve and new year's day and of course thanksgiving but we have i think one of the most dangerous days of the year for people that are sugar addicts and that is halloween and i have seen more people relapse on that day and i'm not joking with a fun size snicker bar than any other day of the year it's the egregious amount of candy that's available that time of year and it's not just for people that go in it'll be different if like you went trick-or-treating to get it which some people you know children do i'm not telling you not to do that but i'm telling you that if you're a sugar addict or food addict if the kid bring it back in the house you know let him have his few pieces and you know donate the rest of the armed forces or there's places that will actually turn it into cash for you because they know how bad it is usually dental offices will do that but i've seen people like once they have sugar they don't easily recover from that relapse of sugar you know it's kind of like an alcoholic one drink one drunk and people that are very vulnerable to sugar addiction like i was we can't have a little bit here and there and bounce right back we can't have a drop a morsel or a crumb and of course there's going to be genetic variation if it's going to be on a bell curve there might be some people that can have it once in a while but if that's you then you don't need my help you just keep doing what you're doing and there are people that are happy with their health and their weight and i always tell them do the least restrictive plan you can do that will get the results you see but there are a lot of people that really suffer from food addiction and it's usually sugar addiction you know it's not so much the salt that has made them you know have i mean salt can be a problem too but the good news is is you can make amazing desserts without salt you really don't need it that's not what makes dessert delicious is the salt it's the sweetness which we're going to talk about how to satisfy your sweet tooth without using sugar but i have seen so many people relapse on halloween because you go to the bank and they have the candy there you go you know wherever you go and it's very hard to resist because you might be able to control your own environment but if you're going to leave your house you know you're going to see that and the thing is is like especially if you're like me you're like oh my god it's so cute you know i mean you know it's just it's just a little piece it's one size oh i didn't know this one came fun size and then there you have it you're just going to have one piece and then you eat the whole you know plastic pumpkin full and i you know i can't say this person's name but i literally you know have have seen i remember this one gentleman and he had his own business and so he felt we have to have the candy there and the truth is if you're a business owner you don't i've worked with people in that situation and they started giving away other things like pens or bottle openers with their company names that were much more valuable and appreciated by the customers those that felt they had to have food we're giving away miniature lara bars or fruit bars that are fruit only i think they're called just fruit you can get them at costco or even little bags of nuts or cutie oranges so you don't have to have food you're working if you're a human resource director you really don't let me come work with your company that's what i used to do in la is i would do luncheon words and in services because the human resources person was the one responsible for ordering all the crap from costco in the break room and i've worked with companies where they've done challenges where they actually instead of having you know the pretzels with the peanut butter in them and all the crap actually got a vitamix at costco and started making green smoothies because you know when employees are sick it doesn't benefit the company and and sugar is so inflammatory that even if you somehow manage to eat it and maintain your weight it it it's not going to help you with your health and you know i have not had any plastic surgery these you know people say i use filters okay well they're not very good filters because you see all these lines here but i will tell you that for the last 19 years of being off sugar and eating a large amount of fruits and vegetables which i didn't do my skin health has improved i wish i could find pictures from that long ago but they all were destroyed in the earthquake but my skin was horrible i had spots all over they were called melasma and between not eating sugar eating fruits and vegetables and also staying out of the summer if i'm in the sun using a full coverage hat at 62 my skin is better than it's ever been so if if you don't want to go off sugar for health reasons maybe consider going off it for vanity you know before i became a chef or 20 years ago i was an activity director a retirement home and you really could see the difference in people as they age whether or not they drink alcohol or ate sugar the ones that drink you know you can talk all they want about the blue zones but i'm telling you for years this was my job and i could see in front of me because alcohol was allowed and sugar was allowed they could have ice cream all day if they wanted the ones that ate healthy aged better they looked better not just in terms of being more slender and having more beautiful skin but the ones that well obviously smoking is the worst thing you can do for your skin and your health hopefully you know not to do that whether you eat sugar or not by the way i don't if you know that they actually put sugar in cigarettes as if they're not addictive enough but the ones that ate sugar and drink alcohol they did not look as good and they always always want even if they weren't overweight the old people always seem to want candy like they always had like a werther's you know in their mouth or something like that so uh it's a it's a lifelong addiction for some people i remember this one lady named birdie 101 years old i mean she was as bad of a sugar addict as i ever was so um you'll age better without it and actually starting tomorrow we have longevity week on chef aj live where we have people vegans in their 60s 70s and 80s that look amazing and uh i don't think any of them eat sugar we'll find out this week though to to um to be sure about that so let's see i'm going to look at my notes because i don't want to digress so um got off sugar yeah 20 years ago what what you mean oh the halloween thing so um he had the candy was snickers bar it was a fun sized snickers bar and he literally went down such a dark place that within three months he was um he was on dialysis and then he had a kidney transplant i mean that's an extreme version but what i hear all the time is that you know you know like they say on the commercials once you pop you just can't stop once people succumb to the temptation of the pleasure trap but specifically sugar it's really hard for them to get back on track and they gain quite a bit of weight between halloween and january which you know depending on when you google it they'll say five pounds sometimes it's 15 pounds but what the research has shown when i've looked into it is that's weight that's not generally ever taken off or easily taken off and that's why as busy as i am right now because i have a three book deal with my publisher and i'm late already for the first one and i'm in trouble uh we teach so many classes the last quarter because that's when people seem to need the most support because they're not getting it from their family and friends okay so what you may not know is this because you only some of you've only known me for maybe this is your first time seeing me or a few years but what you don't know is really the whole story of how i was able to successfully quit sugar and the way i did it was i inched into it and what i mean by that and you know this is really important especially if you're somebody that's interested in permanent habit change there's a book called uh tiny habits by bj fogg and he talks about how most people when they're making a permanent change do like baby steps so in other words we we do the truth about weight loss summit and then we do a 21 day program and the program is the way i eat now which i think is the healthiest way to eat if you're able to do it which is a plant exclusive diet of whole foods without sugar oil flour alcohol salt and caffeine but it's too austere or draconian or strict for most people to go from here or from here to here or we want to do it or here to here here to here many people have to transition slowly and the thing is if all your if your only problem is excess weight transition as slowly as you need to a lot of times the people that come to this though they're really under the threat of dialysis or the surgeon's knife and they don't have the luxury of doing that but you see i did have the luxury of going from the diet that i was eating which was a junk food vegan diet made up primarily of sugar flour oil and caffeine to the what some may say plant perfect diet a la gold hammer that i eat today but i didn't do it overnight and so there's a piece of my story that a lot of people are missing and hence this is where desserts come in because you know people people get upset with me because they think like you know i don't want to be like bruce wayne or what's his name i love this actor adam west i thought he was that growing up the two handsomeness actors in my opinion were chad everett from medical center and adam west from batman and you know he was a great actor but once he did batman yeah he never really could work again in any other capacity and because people know me in the space of weight loss or food addiction it's like they don't want me to do anything else at the end of the day i'm a chef first and foremost hence the name chef aj not food addiction expert chef aj not weight loss expert chef aj i am a chef that is what i love that is what my passion is i do these other things to help people but chefing is what i love to do teeth my favorite thing is teaching cooking classes and so i'm going to talk about one that's coming up that i think you'll really like but what you need to know is that i didn't transition overnight i did get absent of sugar right away so that's the truth i stopped eating sugar meaning white sugar doesn't matter what you call and this this is this is a trap that a lot of people get into and dr goldhamer talks about this a lot he says well just because something is less bad doesn't mean it's good so people want to argue for their addiction so in other words well i don't eat white sugar i eat brown sugar i eat honey i eat maple syrup i eat agave i eat coconut sugar i eat monk fruit i eat stevia aspartame xylitol erythritol if you're an addict that's like if you're an alcoholic that's like saying well i don't drink vodkas i drink scotch i drink beer one thing you need to learn and hopefully whether you ever see me again or take any of my classes you'll understand that sugar is sugar just like flour is flour and oil is oil salt the salt yes some may have marginal nutritional benefits you could say well molasses has some b vitamins but so what we're not eating sweeteners to get our b vitamins we're not eating salt you know to get our minerals that's what food is for that's what green vegetables are for that's what produce is for so when i say sugar i need all sugar except for fruit and my tagline has always been to satisfy your sweet tooth because i've been teaching sugar-free classes now a lot of you don't know because you're they're not on my mailing list or you don't live in and you're not in my meet-up groups but i've been teaching for over 20 years at culinary schools a class called satisfy your sweet tooth without using sugar where we sweeten everything with the fruit the whole fruit and nothing but the whole fruit so we don't use you know any of those alternate zero calorie sweeteners which by the way are worse for your microbiome and worse if you're a food addict and sugar addict and uh or any of the sweeteners and we do use a little date syrup i i personally don't use it but there are some recipes that i can't get the way i need them to be just by using whole fruit and the more i evolve the more i'm not even using dates or dates syrup i'm finding ways to use other sweeteners like bananas or things like that but i'm going to give you some don't worry there's going to be some value here we're going to learn how i do it or how you can do that yeah jesse's saying we like to argue for our addictions yes well i smoke filtered cigarettes you know i i smoke menthol cigarettes yeah people people like to argue that their addiction is better than yours but the thing is is the truth is if you look at the fact that what is it now is it 87 or 82 of americans are overweight and 42 obese i mean come on everybody's an addict it's just we all have different drugs and we want to argue that ours is the least harmful well you know what it's all bad if it's not a whole plant found in nature if it's manufactured in the plant if you can't make it in your own kitchen my advice is not to eat it but of course that's hard and if you can eat it and be happy and healthy then god bless you but i can't and most of the people i work with can't so i had never eaten a date in my life like i didn't know what it really was i remember like sometimes um my grandfather was a doctor and my mom worked for a doctor and so like patients would give gifts and sometimes it would be like you you see them at costco today it would be like from hadley's or from oh not pepperidge farm what was that place that had the petty fours and get a farm at hickory farms and it would be covered in plastic would have this little fork and it would have like a pineapple ring and a maraschino cherry and some walnuts and dates and it's like who eats that like ugh dried fruit you know i never eaten a date i didn't really know what it was i mean i you know because i've never seen one they look kind of like cockroaches to me and i'm like anyway so i think i mean i you know i don't know because i don't know everybody that's in this space but i think i was probably if not the first one of the first people that were plant exclusive using dates exclusively as my sweetener and i was doing that at the restaurant where i was a pastry chef in los angeles it was called sante restaurant from 2011 2007 to 2011 so for five years and then the restaurant was sold and that's when i started writing books so i had a whole life before unprocessed came out on february 2nd 2011 where i was a chef and i worked at a restaurant when you work at a restaurant you know i can't vouch for all restaurants because i only worked at one after i got out of culinary school you um you know you basically you don't you don't really have like an interview like you do for another job your interview is you just go to work for free for a day and you just make a bunch of stuff and then they see if they want to hire you at least that's how it was for me and that's sort of kind of cool how my name became aj because it helped a lot getting these interviews because they seem to have a preference for males and by having chef aj they didn't know if i was male or female a lot of times i would get to these i don't it's not that i don't care for date syrup but it's my least favorite of all the sweeteners i use we can talk about that when we get a little bit but it'll be helpful to have the questions more towards the end because i don't want to forget what i'm going to say but that is a great question becky so moderators if you're there please make sure i i get that one capture that one so that's aj is my name so i i only cook the way i i know i eat i'm not gonna use something else so i made these recipes and they hired me and they didn't care that it was vegan or oil-free or salt-free or refined sugar-free i i did i did use a little bit of flour and a couple of the recipes but most of them were raw desserts and these were rich desserts by the way don't don't think for a minute that a lot of the desserts that i make or put on you know my social media are are low-fat you know like mcdougall gold hammer approved desserts but people get mad at me because they they just think well you're in the weight loss space you're in the food addiction space how dare you you shouldn't be posting it here but it's my facebook page and my instagram page so i think i'm kind of allowed to post what i want and i'm you know if it triggers you i'm sorry you don't have to follow me i'm sorry to lose you as a a friend but you know that's the way it is because if you're you know there's a saying if you're a hammer you see everything as a nail and if you're struggling with this addiction you just assume everybody else is but there's a whole world of people out there i know them because i've got this meetup group with 500 people and most of them aren't overweight and they can eat some sugar i see what they bring to the potlucks and so you know these are people that i you know also want to service especially because i feel my my greatest gift is is creating delicious recipes within the parameters of what seems like many foods that are excluding whereas you know when you try to help somebody with weight loss or food addiction i mean it's really hard because there's so many excuses there's so much recidivism any other field would be you'd be a dismal success but with helping people learn how to create delicious desserts this is something i'm very good at because i've done it and i still do it at rancho and the thing is at rancho these are hands-on classes so i'm with the people i'm watching them prepare the desserts and i'm helping them things like that so um i'm losing my space because i looked at the chat i shouldn't have done that i was talking about oh yeah so i started creating desserts after i quit sugar in 2003 permanently i never went back i i had one relapse the september of that year i tell the story where i saw dr lyle and dr goldhamer uh at the san francisco vegfest where i was a speaker and i had several pieces of a raw vegan tiramisu that the owner of the culinary school i went to made and it had agave it had coconut oil it had coffee it had chocolate it had salt it had i mean it had literally everything i didn't need and yes so i did have one relapse but that was like it i learned my lesson uh because you know it's so hard to detox that at least my experience of having been a sugar addict for 43 years it was so difficult to detox at the optimum health institute you feel so sick physically and i felt so sick physically when i had that tiramisu that i never had another relapse so i started creating desserts and i think i'm one of the first people that did desserts exclusively from fruit that were also oil-free and you know salt-free and mostly flour-free a couple of my desserts do have flour and and actually the ones that do i found alternatives to do it without flour but in the in the bakery i worked at you know kind of harder to make a cake a german chocolate cake without flour and so the reason i'm bringing this up is because i did not go from coke slurpees and dr pepper to the a plus diet i eat today there was 2003 and then i got real serious in 2012 so we're talking nine years of me eating these desserts until i really started eating the ones like the apple pie that won't make you die the ones that are really low in fat that are basically just fruit or maybe fruit and oats i'm very good at figuring out how to use the fewest ingredients and the least harmful ingredients to make something decadent now again if you're such a bad sugar addict that you're eating like snicker bars my some of my desserts might not even be sweet for you enough for you but if you're somebody that doesn't already use sugar i think you will really find my desserts delicious so at the beginning i was using things like nut butters i was using things like raw almond butter i was using unsalted peanut butter i was using chocolate unsweetened chocolate not chocolate that had sugar in it you can get chocolate that is just chocolate so i was using these things but the thing was is i wasn't really concerned so much about my weight at the time because i feel like the process of overcoming an addiction and weight loss are two different processes and unfortunately people come to different groups and they want to do both at the same time and you know that's sort of like learning how to juggle and ride a unicycle at the same time you can learn to ride a unicycle which is something on my bucket list and you can learn to juggle which is something on my bucket list and people that do both well can actually juggle on a unicycle but when you're starting out you don't ride the unicycle while trying to juggle and so too many people are trying to overcome and manage their addictions and trying to lose weight at the same time i think you should do one and i believe the most important one is to overcome those addictions first because it's those addictions that are causing the excess weight so that's just that's my story that's how i do if you can do both at the same time go ahead too many people just try to lose weight without even looking at the fact that they have addictions and that the food that they're that that little bit of oil and sugar and salt that's sneaking in is causing them to have cravings and overeat and then uh i really do think if you work on the addiction first the weight just comes off so that's what happened with me so i use these richer desserts as methadone because realize all i ate for 43 years was dessert if if i had you know i often say oh gosh you know i wish i had met dr goldhamer earlier but i really feel like when the student is ready the teacher appears and if i had met dr goldhamer earlier i think i would have failed miserably because i don't think when i was at that place of having coke slurpees and dr pepper that i could have done his program i think i would have failed and i don't know if i would have had the success but when i finally met him i had nine years of sobriety from sugar oil flour and salt and it was very easy for me to adopt the next steps of doing it low-fat and doing you know doing like the sequencing things that have helped me maintain my slender figure but i think if i had met him back then and he was around you know he'd been he's been doing that for 40 years i think for me at the time the opera health institute was the best choice so again i looked at these desserts as methadone and they helped me not crave the other crap not never go back to sugar but as time went on they started being too rich for me they started being too sweet for me so if you look at the trajectory of the desserts i created it goes from very very rich like i would say probably the richest dessert i make is the peanut butter chocolate cheesecake it's two it's four layers to desserts that are very simple with very few ingredients that are are less sweet but it took years to do that and then it started like for example when i went off of coke slurpees i didn't go eat kale for breakfast which i realized now it's going to be really hard for people to do my program if they're coming from the place that i came from when i first went off coke slurpees i started having a chocolate green smoothie for breakfast because it was still better than a coke slurpee so that recipe is in my book unprocessed it's called nutrient rich chocolate smoothie and it's made with unsweetened chocolate almond milk realizing no sugar it's made with cocoa or cacao powder a little bit of pomegranate juice it's made with blueberries banana flaxseed and dates and it's very sweet it tastes like a chocolate milkshake and it's delicious it's low in fat it really wasn't that many calories maybe 400 but that was my breakfast for a while because that was the best i could do coming from where i came from and that was a recipe that when i used to teach in the churches i did a volunteer at churches in los angeles that was something that even children would eat because they couldn't see the smooth the spinach in it they didn't you can't make it in front of the kids but after it was made they didn't know it had you know half a pound of spinach in it but after a while it got too sweet and so i switched from the chocolate smoothie to a regular green smoothie without the dates so it was kind of like these rich desserts were sort of like training wheels like when i first learned to ride a bike when i was seven i had training wheels and then eventually i was able to balance and i didn't need the training wheels so it it was a period of time and a lot of people don't realize it was a nine-year period for me to go from you know obese and sugar addicted to starting my journey of not being obese and eating the way i eat now so i think people don't give it enough time as far as chocolate i don't have a problem with chocolate even though dr goldhamer does the reason that i personally don't eat chocolate is because i can't because i found out from going through an immunologist where i found out i went to the best guy in the world he unfortunately passed away at ucla and uh it was it's not an allergy but every time i ate chocolate i got a migraine headache and it was bad i didn't make the connection because an addict doesn't want to make the connection but it was clear as a bell that it was and the medicine that i needed for the migraines was called max salt and at the time my insurance didn't pay for it and it was something like like a hundred dollars a pill and i got to the point like is it really worth it to eat this to spend a hundred dollars to take a medicine so that i can eat this it's sort of like people that take uh reflex medicine so that they can eat you know foods or things like that or people to take pre leaf so that they can eat foods that aren't on their plan it didn't it didn't make a lot of sense to me and at the time i was volunteering at uh a retirement home in pasadena and i was poker dealer and the residents always had candy there and i would eat candy but i wouldn't eat something non-vegan and they had you know seized candy and they were always offering me candy and they didn't quite understand veganism or why i couldn't have a piece and so finally one day i just said you know and this was the truth i said you know every time i eat chocolate i get a headache so i it doesn't make me feel well and a new patient that had just come in was a prominent uh immunologist at the huntington hospital in pasadena he goes well that's because chocolate is high in histamine and he gave me the name of this prominent doctor at ucla and i got tested and and so uh he literally because i was still addicted to chocolate even when i wasn't doing sugar those of you that have my first unprocessed might remember a recipe called fakiado my husband and i were apartment managers then and the residents drove us crazy and every day after our shift was over we said this is a good time for a fakiado basically it was a caramel based on the caramel macchiato at starbucks and it was it was still low in fat it was completely sugar-free but it was basically dates and cocoa powder this this amazing extract from watkins called caramel extract and you know it wasn't very caloric but it still had chocolate and so i knew it was going to be hard for me to get off chocolate but you know hey i've gotten gotten off cigarettes i smoked in college i got off sugar which was really hard so what the doctor did that was really helpful to me is he wrote on a prescription pad and i still have it must avoid chocolate and so of course it was hard but i did it so the last time i had chocolate i remember was sunday november 7th 2010 it was a little fudge truffle vegan of course made by chef eric le chasseur at an event i was producing called healthy taste of la and i had the worst migraine the rest of the day so it's not worth it for me to have chocolate and luckily my husband has a congenital heart issue where he can't have caffeine so he can't have chocolate so or a chocolate-free home but again i'm not really against chocolate the way gold hammer is other than you know it is high in caffeine and you know i wouldn't have it like late in the day or things like that so hold on one second here for a minute let me see for if i'm where i'm at okay so that's always a trajectory it was it was a journey of me just just getting cleaner and cleaner and it didn't feel difficult because i didn't deny myself these treats along the way so i felt that these healthier treats that i used as a trans as transitional as kind of methadone these were the gateway to a healthier life for me and permanent abstinence from these richer desserts which i don't think and by the way like when i go to rancho i can't eat the chocolate mousse because of the fact that it has chocolate but when i'm at rancho i'm not gonna not eat one of my recipes that the student makes just because it's richer i mean as long as it doesn't have chocolate or something else i'm allergic to like black pepper but we make the things with the knots and things and i'll eat them while i'm there you know i just don't make them at home so i'm not as um gold hammer as people seem to think okay so all right um yeah so i i believe that for a lot of people having these rich desserts at the ready you know there's some people and again at the end of the day you have to know yourself if you can't make this without eating the whole thing this might not be an experience for you but i feel for many people who completely deny themselves any sweetness in life having permission to indulge in healthy desserts even a lot especially during the holidays can prevent a major relapse into a really dark area where they're eating real sugar real flour now these may not lead to weight loss during that period but when i work with people around the holidays i would call it the 63 days of abstinence from thanksgiving to january 2nd my goal for them is just to be abstinent from sugar and flour and alcohol not to necessarily lose weight at that time so i think that for a lot of people having the ability to make healthy desserts that are fruit sweetened is what can prevent relapse because too many people are denying themselves oh i can't eat that really because you know what i if you took my apple pie that won't make you die maybe because you've been denying yourself so long maybe you would eat the whole thing but i don't think you would continually eat the whole thing because basically it's basically oatmeal but i found a way with textures and techniques to make things out of ingredients that people are already using to make them delicious what i found is that the holidays are particularly difficult for people when it comes to abstaining from sugar you know when i see people relapsing when i get the text from people that have been in the mastery program that you know very few people have my phone number unless they work with me as a private client or been in mastery there they don't text me on thanksgiving day because like oops i had a piece of white meat turkey or oops i had the um what's it called that green bean casserole it's always because they relapsed on a rich dessert so they ate and edna's pecan pie or pumpkin pie and i find that if they have had the experience of being able to create delicious plant exclusive high or low in fat depending on their needs desserts that are free of sugar and had that planned and had that with them and by the way if you learn how to make my pecan pie or my ultimate pumpkin pie you can see the thing about my desserts is because i was a pastry chef you can just bring them to your holiday gatherings people aren't going to eat my pecan pie and say you know oh where's the egg where's the corn syrup it's made out of dates they're not going to know because dates are 70 sugar dates are so sweet you can do anything or i can do anything with dates that anybody else can do with sugar and that's the neat thing about desserts it's also vegan people aren't going to eat the desserts i make or that i can teach you to make and say well you know where's the berry where's the egg even in cheesecakes and so i think that if people had the ability to create healthy desserts and have them in their freezer have them at the event they wouldn't relapse on the rich desserts and once they do game over for most people till january 2nd when they're 15 pounds heavier and then they're all saying well can you work with people privately no i can't i have group programs but i don't have time to work with people privately because like i said i got three books i got it right and i'm under a lot of pressure if you live locally you know of course we can do uh classes or if you'll come to mexico so let me see what else i want to say here oh okay anyway i'm going to give you i want to go into some tips on how you can sweeten things without sugar but first i just if you don't mind i want to tell you about a class i'm teaching that i'm really excited about it's a really small class and i know that a couple people here are signed up like jesse and susannah so maybe they'll be able to tell you how excited they are to do that but it's basically a dessert master class and the reason i'm doing it now because i was really going to do it in january but then i i had so many people saying are you going to do your 63 days of abstinence you know this year and i'm like well no um because i got to write my book but i am going to teach this class because it is something i'm passionate about teaching people how to make healthy desserts and i put a little link if you want to check it out um what's really different about this class and thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about it and then i'm going to tell you if you don't want to take the last some tips on how you can make your own desserts is it it's interactive so you know the the price of the class is about the same price as taking a hands-on class with me at rancho so if that gives you perspective it's or made it very very affordable for a 40-hour more than 40-hour experience with me live my dessert cookbook will not come out till at least to 2023 so if you want that apple pie that won't make you die in the exquisite pear pie and all the new recipes you're seeing on social media the only way you're gonna get it is in the class because i'm not gonna just put it on instagram sorry but you know these recipes take a long time for me to make and to figure out and test and refine that's if i can get the manuscript in in time but then it might not come out till 2024. so my team and i you know a couple of wonderful people that work for me morgan and linda you might interact with them if you write the helpdesk and of course my husband charles we took a lot of classes because we wanted to create something that wasn't already in existence and there's a lot of wonderful online classes don't get me wrong but in my opinion if you're trying to be a great chef you want to take as much in-person classes as you can so that the chef like we do at rancho so when they're making the food i'm tasting it and then i'll say well okay i have an opinion but you know i work with them like what do you think it's neat you know some of my recipes like cauliflower bisque were created at rancho working with people like in recipe development like what do you think it needs and that's how we decided to add the chipotle powder and the smoked paprika so obviously i can't have you in my kitchen or be with you but what we're doing is we're making a class where we're actually cooking together and this is i think i've not seen anything like this in the world correct me if i'm wrong or at least in the plant-based world because most of the questions the courses i've seen and i've my team and i pretty much signed up for all of them and took all of them and yes you can watch it over and over for life but they're pre-recorded modules and there's really no interaction very much with the instructor maybe they'll have you take a picture of it afterwards but i'm actually watching you cook now let me tell you how i got the idea for this when the pandemic began i started teaching classes with a company called chibo some of you may have taken my classes they were owned by general electric and my classes the limit was 100 people and all the classes i taught sold out like that now i teach other classes that didn't sell out like in in an hour and even in person classes but what the difference was is with chibo people were cooking in real time with me and there was a lot of people that are not expert chefs or dessert makers that needed to be able to ask me questions in real time not make the recipe write me at the help desk me answer them in a week it was very valuable for people to cook with me in real time so that i could see their technique i could see what they're doing and answer questions and they wouldn't have to wait that's why the class is 40 hours now of course if you can't make the um the live cooking segments that i'm doing you can watch those but the the the the cooking lab if you can't make the cooking labs it may not be the best class for you because that's where i'm going to actually watch you cook the problem with chebo is that they only did it audio and so in other words the people were really cooking with me they could see me but i couldn't see them and so what would happen is they would ding me and like i'd have my hands all dirty from doing something and then i'd have to wash them and push the thing and hear their question they could talk to me but i couldn't see it so they so they they would literally say on an auditory medium well why does it look like this and i'm like well i don't know you know can you text me a screenshot so i'll be able to see what you're doing and that's very valuable i think also because you'll get what's called stage time you know some of you know i do stand-up comedy and one of the concepts is you get better by doing and if you only are going to make a dessert once a year you're probably not going to be as good at it as somebody like me that was working you know five years making desserts all the time i could do it in my sleep and unfortunately i'm i was so fast which worked against me because i wasn't a salaried employee i was hourly but you know when you do something over and over you get better on it's kind of like this idea of 10 000 hours to become a master and you know what you're going to be doing is you're going to be practicing the art of dessert making and by the time the holidays come you're going to hopefully be a master because you're going to have me to coach you but it's not going to be auditory it's going to be visual and this is why i'm so excited and this is why the class has to stay small and we already had so many sign ups we don't have very many spaces left but click the link if you're interested in enrolling the going is really a 12-week class but because i know that it's difficult sometimes for people to make a class after thanksgiving we're going to do a bonus session extend it to 13 weeks and that cla that saturday after thanksgiving we're just going to do something fun that's like a bonus so don't worry if you have to miss it the class is going to be two to five so it's a long class uh saturdays starting next saturday you know one of the things that i have a problem with with social media is we live in a society where people expect everything instantly like you know um i remember when i had a personal facebook page and this was like i haven't been on facebook as a person for like 10 years somebody asked me a question and i didn't get back to them and and they were like well i'm unfriending you it's like people are expecting instant results you don't become a master you don't master something instantly and the problem with these wonderful influencer instagram reels is that is not how making food works you see these beautiful 30 second reels where they're creating something and you're like wow guys that's not how food preparation works you didn't see the four hours that they took to chop everything perfectly to do it that's not how life works and that's not how becoming a master works so the way it's going to work is on the odd number classes class 1 3 5 7 9 11. there's the curriculum if you look at the uh if you look at the information i am going to be making the recipes for the week and there's always going to be at least four i'm going to be making them in real time and giving you tips and tricks and advice on how to create recipes without recipes so you're going to watch me make those recipes and obviously if you're not there on the odd number weeks you'll watch the replay i'm not going to be able to answer questions instantly like right now you see i can't communicate to you in a in a meaningful way and then want monitor the chat i can monitor the chat when there's a guest but not when it's me so i really only see a little flutter of things coming up so the class starts on the 24th of september and it goes to i believe the 18th or whatever that saturday is before christmas in december of course all the modules are recorded so you still will be able to ask questions from watching me cook but just like today where you're going to have to wait for me to finish talking i will finish the kitchen segment and make the recipes and then i will go to my computer and then i will look at all the questions that have been asked and answer them and those of you that have taken courses with me like ultimate reboot know that even when a course is scheduled for two hours chef aj leaves no question unanswered even if i have to go which was my record four hours and 45 minutes for a class but i don't anticipate this because we're keeping it very small so then what you're going to do is you're going to practice during the week now you don't have to make all the recipes i mean if you want to you can these recipes most of them can be frozen and this will be a great way to make friends with your neighbors i have a new neighbor and he's very excited because his kid is allergic to dairy and allergic to um to to a lot of things and this kid is so excited that because i'm like what am i going to do with all this dessert i mean i will eat as much as i can but i mean still that's too much dessert if you have a job you can take it you'll make a lot of friends believe me when you do this so during the week you'll practice and you know you don't have to i don't want this to be pressure i want this to be fun and what the fun is in my opinion is that when we come to the even number of weeks 2 4 6 8 10 12 that's what we call the cooking lab i'm going to be sitting right here and watching all of you on zoom that's why i have to keep the class small so that i can see what you're doing and then of course you'll see me but i'll be watching you in the kitchen and we will be cooking together well you'll be cooking in real time i have found that if i cook and you cook in real time because i'm so fast and i talk fast and i cook fast that doesn't work it's different if you're with me at rancho or here doing hands-on so the way it's going to work is you can take all the time in the world so when we do the cooking lab if you're me you can do all four recipes if you're not you can do one but i'm going to watch your technique and i'm going to also recommend that when you come to the cooking labs maybe you'll have done one recipe during the week that you can show me either by maybe taking a photo or really maybe just showing me like maybe make it later in the week or freezing and say this is what it looks like and then we can talk about the results so i don't get excited very often because i've been doing the same thing for a long time and let's face it a little bit burned out in the weight loss food addiction space because most people don't do it it's too hard it really is i mean we've got some people here like susannah that are you know escaping the pleasure trap but it really we're not set up to solve this problem but i know i can solve the problem of having healthy desserts ready for you guys at the holidays so that you don't relapse on unhealthy desserts so let me see if there's anything i forgot to say and now i can answer your questions about the oh i was told i was gonna tell you how to sweeten without sugar so okay so [Music] just with sugar you you know this this is the problem and and and i get this all the time even from like my doctor friends of mine they'll give me a recipe for their grandmother's cherry strudel and say okay you know veganize it sos free it first of all just to veganize a recipe if you're willing to use sugar flour you know vegan butter oil salt that is not a problem every recipe that has been ever made in the history of the world from baked alaska to any kind of you know flan everything can be veganized taking out sugar and taking out oil is a little bit different because you can't just take a recipe and just take stuff out i mean you can but it's not going to come out and it's not going to taste good and that's the same thing with with savory recipes too and that's why some of the class we're going to actually be making recipes without recipes because i feel like if i only teach you to do my recipes you're going to never gonna be able to do your own and i want you to be able to have the skill you know i've been paid six thousand dollars for what you guys are getting for basically 25 a week i'm not kidding there have been chefs that have come to me and you know my rate to do this one-on-one when doctors send me you know it's you know it's a lot let's just say so i feel like this is a really good value because i really feel that before i discounted in 200 it was a good value but i know the holidays are coming and i want this information to to the people that need it so you can substitute a dry sweetener for a dry sweetener so in other words but they're going to have different densities so really you can't really just take white sugar coconut sugar brown sugar and substitute them you kind of can but the thing is it's hard just like it's hard to take a recipe that has white flour and put in wheat flour or or spelt flour these are hard things that's why people that specialize like in gluten-free baking or things like that that's why they write books because they have figured it out so you don't have to but what i have found and i know there was a question of date syrup why don't i like it it's not that i don't like it it's just that of good better best meaning the whole date being the best it's not the best because it really is processed now you can make date syrup in your own kitchen i've done it just like i've made reduced balsamic vinegar in my own kitchen but it's laborious it takes a long time and by the time you do it did you really save any money from buying the product you got to realize that these are not calorie-free desserts some of the desserts that we'll be making in the class especially the ones i eat all the time are fairly low in caloric density and very low in fat but you can't just um i mean you can but date syrup is it you know it's it's his caloric as other other liquid sweeteners it's about 60 calories that said i would still rather have somebody use date syrup in a recipe than agave agave is the worst guys it's it's higher in fructose than high fructose corn syrup fructose is metabolizing the liver that's probably the worst thing you could have is corn syrup and agave but agave can be substituted for maple syrup i mean excuse me well they all the liquid sweeteners in a recipe if you see a recipe that calls for liquid sweetener one cup two cups of whether it's maple syrup or agave the liquid sweeteners can be substituted for each other in the recipe will come out but you also have to realize that they are different in the levels of sweetness so molasses brown rice syrup they're not actually very sweet so if you have a recipe that like a cake that called for one and a half cups of agave and you decide well i'm going to use molasses or brown rice syrup or barley malt because it's healthier it's not going to be very sweet maple syrup is very very sweet but it's a little bit less sweet than agave so those two i find can be substituted and date syrup can be substituted it's going to be a little bit less sweet but to me that's good because the more you can learn to like something less sweet the better off you're going to be and it's a process and eating greens is something that really helps combat you know those sugar cravings but you can learn to really enjoy desserts the way they are in japan for example when i worked in japan as a as a stand-up comedian and as an actress they were largely influenced by the french there's not a lot of desserts in asia but the ones they had were small and they they guessed they did use sugar but they weren't as sweet as american desserts like sickly sweet like say a cinnabon that's why one of the first things we're going to be doing is the cinnamon buns that are good for your buns okay so liquid sweeteners can be substituted but you have to keep in mind that they're going to vary in sweetness from agave being the sweetest to probably molasses and barley malt being the less sweet than rice syrup then um date syrup and then maple syrup okay so that's that's that that's how i can do it but it's really hard and people ask me this all the time they'll go well this recipe calls for one and a half cups of sugar how much date syrup how much date pace you see i don't know and the only way and and i know that i love date lady has a formula on your website and actually i can what i'll do is afterwards i'll post in the chat but i'm not 100 sure it's foolproof because remember things have different densities so date syrup has a different density than date paste which by the way is dates and water and if you're doing my class you want to use my ratio of water to dates that has a different density than whole dates that has a different density than date sugar and by the way date sugar you can't really substitute for white sugar because think about it what date sugar is is dates that have been dehydrated and ground so it's going to be a very heavy heavy result so my favorite thing to use is the whole date or the date pace i only use date syrup when i can't get what i'm looking for without it and i try to not not use as few dates as possible and use other things like my one of my favorite recipes which we're not going to be doing in the class because i wanted the class to be so simple that all you needed is some basic equipment meaning a food processor i mean you really you know you gotta have something to make it so i didn't want you to have to have an air fryer or a dehydrator or a ninja creamy um you know or a breville so you basically need a food processor it can be any food processor and some blender it doesn't have to be a high power but if you have those two pieces of equipment you're going to be fine and then of course even with the pans where you're going to see they're interchangeable if you don't have a springform pan if you don't have a cheesecake pan so we're going to be talking a lot about that so that's kind of what you're going to learn and i'm really excited about it so i'm going to now i'm gonna basically look at the chat and unless there's other questions about what i said and um this is this is why i'm so thankful for jesse and susanna being moderators because i miss a lot and i'm putting on my glasses which i don't normally do because i'm vain and remember my chat has disappeared so i'm only going to see what you've typed recently and always put four question marks before um okay so were there any questions maybe not anyway um if you don't want to get the class at least look at the page that toby made a beautiful beautiful synopsis of the class so it doesn't say on the page when the master class is um try this one because i'm pretty sure this one will say it's starts the 24th and goes to that saturday before tell me if it's if you can see it here it starts september 25th that's not it hold on that's why i don't like jumping screens that's why i can't go when i see facebook comments because i would have to jump screens so here we go let me this is just the information on the class it's not the checkout page so check that out let me see if he put the dates on it and accept cookies see you can accept cookies if you take my class you'll be able to accept cookies uh hey charles you know that's in charles um it's is it possible that the dates of the class aren't on the checkout page i'm looking at that now you guys could be right and if it's true i oh oh no here it is guys it is if you scroll down um here we go i found it and the thing is is i cannot offer refunds for this class because if the seating is so limited that if you change your mind somebody that wanted to sign up there i just posted the dates okay what is the dates that becky wants to know what's the difference between date syrup and day paste in recipes so when i'm trying so for me from my perspective if i'm making a cake like a german chocolate cake and i don't know if we're doing that one because we're trying to keep the class flower free for the people that have problems with that um we i need it to blend i need to blend i need it to be really really smooth right so date paste is it doesn't blend as smooth it doesn't blend as smooth as as date syrup would so if i'm using a glaze so for example um the pecan pie when i make it a true north i'm not allowed to use date syrup but when i make it anywhere else i'll take two tablespoons of date syrup and brush it over the top for a glaze as if it was corn syrup so if i need a glaze i'm going to use a date syrup so it's it's about dissolvability for example but um so that that's when i would do it so i if i can find a way to use date paste over date syrup i will uh it's cheaper because i can make it myself so i really use dates here very judiciously um when you have your event with takade i don't believe that rancho la puerta allows people to come just for the day but i don't know so you might be able to um you definitely can't visit i can tell you that you might be they might let you take my class because the class is not on the premises but my understanding is that is not allowed but i would definitely contact the ranch for that um well if you can't eat dates you throw them up you could use another fruit you could use figs you could use apricots so the idea is you can make a paste of fruit out of any dried fruit all right let's see i know there were questions earlier but like i said my chat goes really fast which is why um i don't see everything so maybe i can go look at the youtube and see if there was my biggest fear is that one day i'll i'll jump screens and i'll lose the whole show that's why i won't why don't you care for date service not that i don't care for it it's just that first of all when i buy it it's expensive compared to dates which i buy in uh bulk and very affordably organic it's just more expensive and to make it it's just too labor intensive so it's not that i don't care for it i think it's a better sweetener but again it's still a sweetener i don't know why i can't seem to find today's broadcast on youtube what's going on youtube oh here it is okay here we go on youtube oh there it is okay i haven't i haven't been here in a week so uh i mean my computer i gotta stop that okay so let's see let me look at the youtube chat and see if i miss any questions okay and moderators if you see anything uh no maybe i didn't miss anything okay um oh what i was saying is i didn't want any special equipment but my favorite recipe the one that i eat all the time the one that i brought pounds and pounds of at rancho to make sure you know i got enough calories because we're doing so much exercising that we're exercising from hikes at six in the morning to you know exercise classes that don't until five uh is my carrot cake granola but that requires a dehydrator because i've never really had success dehydrating in an oven uh gail says uh in gym i'm in japan and the sense of taste is different and that that yes the sweet is less sweet there i think the sweet is less sweet everywhere than the united states um okay so yeah becky the difference in recipes is i don't have an exact calculation of how much if you're going to substitute because again to do that i'd have to figure it out but like don't you know if i had a gun to my head and somebody said you're going to tell me how much state syrup to use in place a day paste this is a guess that for every um cup of date i did figure this out once a cup of date syrup date syrup sweeter it's more liquidy you might need a cup and i don't know i i don't want i don't go on record because that is something that i probably could figure out and where i could figure it out is if when we do the outrageous brownies okay so um yes all the weekly sessions are recorded no matter what if you miss them but i would say that if you're going to miss or if you need to leave early miss the the even the odd number ones where i'm just teaching because then you can watch it later don't miss the cooking lab because the idea so so susan we're not going to give you a shopping list right away and and the reason is is we're going to give it to you i don't even know if we're giving you a shopping list but i'm going to make a note to toby if you can create one because there's not a lot of recipes per week but we're going to give you the recipes after the first class because what happens if we give things in advance a lot of people they won't show up to class they'll just try to make the recipes on their own we really are trying to make you master pastry chefs to the best of my ability so we're not going to give you the recipes for the first module until the the first class is completed and then you have all week to shop and get but it's not going to be an extensive shopping list because again you're going to need some basics you're going to need dates you're going to need bananas you're going to need oats you're going to need some plant milk for some of the recipes they're going to be some richer recipes as we get closer to the holidays so maybe some nut butters and chocolate but the thing that's kind of cool is that i can take limited ingredients like apples and raisins and reconfigure them into many different things using the same ingredients you're going to need cinnamon i'm going to recommend vanilla powder so you know once people are signed up we can give a recommended list but you're not going to get it in advance because this idea is to treat you as if this was you know a real culinary course and if you were studying with me in person you wouldn't get that things in advance you'd get it when you show up that day okay let me just see if there's anything else which way do i go up or down i just saw something about makita um marley says it sounds like an amazing class i think it will be i don't know of any class like this where the teacher is available three hours a week every single week for interaction the other classes that we looked into there there really wasn't it was like here watch the video you do it and then you know if you have a question no we're doing this in real time because we want you to make you an expert um yeah usually when people somebody's saying people tell them they look too thin dr goldhamer once said to me that usually the people not usually always the people telling you that you're too thin or never as thin as you it's just so you know usually when people tell you you're too thin it's because you're exactly normal because everybody's overweight now um okay yeah thank you for the heads up about agave agave is the worst it's so and people think it's it's healthy people think coconut sugar is healthy and you know i mean the thing is is the american heart association the american cancer society so says that it's not it's really the amount and that we should first of all there's no minimum daily requirement for any sugar at all and if we do eat it should be less than five percent of our calories well if you're a woman that gets 2 000 calories and a lot of women i know don't even get that many we're talking like 100 calories of sugar so if you can limit it to 5 teaspoons a day maybe you're okay but if you have a soda that's 16 teaspoons right there okay let's see the water you soak in dates is considered date syrup no so that's date soaking water which is very good for people that maybe want to use it to sweeten a beverage and by the way when i make date state paste you you don't throw out that soaking water you're incorporating it because all the sugar has now been leached out of it so a date syrup is a more it's much more refined process and again you know we could have concluded it included in class but it's so labor-intensive you got to sit there and boil and boil and boil and reduce and blend and strain it's just not worth it for the amount of time it takes and i did include a recipe in my book for it but it's to me it's not worth it you know okay um and the water from date dates soaking dates it's not going to like sweeten like a cake it might sweeten like tea or something do i consider date paste a lip a liquid sweetener no i consider it a salad well a semi-solid sweetener you know [Music] all right and for those that can't do chocolate don't worry because there's there'll be substitutions for that class and also carrot powder is one of the best substitutes for chocolate especially if it's roasted it takes more like it okay all right um i've only tried medjool dates and got sick is it possible other day to work for me absolutely i mean they're different you know they're different they're different species if you will so uh okay class dates are posted on both the information page and sales page now don't worry susan if you know again moderators i appreciate you you never have to be here if you're busy but i appreciate you when you're there and susannah has like a hundred children well no actually i think eight but she's taking the class she's lost over 60 pounds and she's taking it because she wants her family who isn't on board yet to have the healthiest desserts possible so that's another reason to take the classes to just create the healthiest desserts possible you know um i was on cupcake wars with chef eric le chester and i remember uh neil barnard said to me you know um you draw him in you're meaning people that just you're trying to get to be healthy or be vegan he said draw him in with dessert and then hit him over the head with the kale so okay um jesse any more questions otherwise i do have to prepare for my next show with dr joe weiss who's going to be talking about jeans oh here's a question from hope i can see it without my glasses why do i use vanilla powder instead of vanilla extract because i'm a snob and and again i'm a snob when it comes to ingredients i i because i'm not spending money on medication and doctors and really even vacations because i don't have to pay to go to rancho i find that i really want good ingredients in my food it does make a difference and um another class earlier this is it for this year and if we run it next year it'll be way out so just so you know um it does make a difference and the thing is is if you know if you're making something and comparing it to something else you can't you can't know that it made a difference unless you have them both side by side and i've done that i've done that in classes as a matter of fact i've i've done it for um when showing people that oil doesn't make a difference when i started teaching cooking like 20 years ago i would make like like a black bean soup and i would do the obligatory saute the onion and four tablespoons of olive oil and then they would make another batch without and either nobody could tell the difference or they voted for the wrong one so about with extract when i started working at the true north health center 11 years ago i don't work there now but i often came for a special program two to five weeks a year called the holiday extravaganza dr goldhamer did not allow us to use vanilla extract because either it had glycerin in it which has sugar or it had alcohol in it and when i was a pastry chef at the restaurant we had a large celebrity clientele that was in rehab for a drug or alcohol addiction and even that small amount of alcohol they were not allowed to have and so i would make a vanilla water which ended up being not being long lasting and being as expensive as vanilla powder and the brand i recommend is just get the best you can afford if you go to my amazon store i put a lot of different ones in i usually just buy the one that's cheapest at the time and not the most expensive like the one that's raw uh nick devorne of local spicery has an excellent brand i have never had a bad brand of vanilla powder but you don't want to get the white kind the cook's vanilla that has sugar and all kinds of weird stuff you want to get it where it has one ingredient vanilla beans so for me i'd almost rather not use the extract if i can't have the powder and again this is not a huge deal breaker if you want to take the class and use vanilla extract it's just that those of us you know it's sort of like people that like oh i don't want to go to ninja creamy but then you do and you realize every other machine is sucks compared to it it's the same thing with the breville until you really start using vanilla powder you know dr fuhrman's a huge fan of it he has a wonderful brand it's just that he only smells smells he only sells a large amount that's like 200 i actually bought it once and it lasted over a year so it does make a difference and also because when you're making when we're going to be doing some of the crusts if you put the liquid in you get you get the crust perfectly using either nut and date or oat and date you get it perfect and then you add your tablespoon of vanilla and now it's all wet and liquidy again i just find vanilla powder personally works better and so that's just me um okay so i just saw jesse posted how excited are you for the class i'm very excited because this is what i'm i'm a chef i mean i i'm not a health coach i mean i don't know how to i only know how to say one thing stop it like bob newhart or don't eat that abstinence that's all i know because that's what worked for me and it seems the easiest easiest interest in helping others with that what are your thoughts looking what are your thoughts looking forward to not sure i understand my thoughts are that i want people to eat vegan over not vegan and i think the easiest way to enroll them in veganism is with a delicious dessert because when you give them a fake meat or cheese especially a fake cheese because you're not getting the casomorphine i mean it works for some people but like i said they know the difference they but when you give them a dessert they don't sit there if it's delicious saying well well you know where's the real sugar or where's the flower or where's the egg you know what i'm saying or where's the oil they don't know they just want it sweet and delicious so that really kind of was you know that was supposed to be my first book and then i got sidetracked because i lost all this weight and people wanted to know how i did and i told them but turns out people can't do it so it's time to kind of pivot and this is what i want to do is do these interactive classes because i feel like just that's why i'm retiring weight loss wednesday on october 12th because i do all these videos they get very few views of these recipes because i think really the way you know um you know i don't like to use a fish analogy but t you know give amanda give a man a fish he eats for a day teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime so i don't teach you to fish i want to teach you how to master the art of dessert making and be a master pastry chef like i believe i was in the restaurant i don't think the brand matters as long as it's not the white colored one that has sugar in it um okay okay so that's it i think um unless you guys have any more questions i might even have time to take a shower now and change my clothes before the next class anyway thank you so much for your attention for being here i hope that whether you take my class or not you'll consider a life of abstinence from sugar it's a very sweet life and is there an email if they're having problems yes thank you jesse and everyone just know that my email is help help at chefaj.com anytime you have a problem with anything related to chef aj help at chefaj.com uh maybe post it in the chat if you can if you're having trouble signing up maybe we've reached the limit that could be the reason it could we could have reached the limit already and um we're having a giveaway on october 12th for the 300th episode of weight loss wednesday we're giving away a nutrimilk machine and a ninja creamy so please be sure you're on my mailing list because you want to learn the what you got to do to win and also remember please watch from youtube if you watch on facebook i can't see your comments so you're not going to be able to win prizes so i know y'all that are on facebook love it but for my show and for my prizes please consider going to uh youtube thank you ruby appreciate all i'm doing and um yeah so you know these recipes are not necessarily for diabetics just so you know some of them may be suitable it really depends where you are in your disease reversal process of your diabetes if you're type 1 or type 2 so i would never say that these are diabetic friendly or weight loss friendly these are relapse prevention techniques to get you guys through the holidays so that you know that when everybody else is eating pumpkin pie and pecan pie you can do it without having to derail your plan and fall off the abstinence from sugar and flour wagon um you love my tops thank you most of them are gifts and i will say this i get a lot of gifts and i appreciate it people send them to my p.o box 50 never have a card and when i go to amazon and ask who sent it they are not allowed to tell me and i have all these gifts that i want to send thank you notes for and i can't so if you ever send me anything through the mail please um sometimes it'll have like an address but it doesn't say who it's from and i want to be able to thank you so please if you send me anything tell me your email or phone number so that i can thank you because like for example this was from amy this hat so a lot of the things you see me wear were gifts and that's cool all right i'm gonna go and i hope to see you in the class i'm excited that jessie and susannah signed up i appreciate their support and um let's just have some fun and let's uh make healthy taste delicious okay come back in a little bit for dr joe weiss thanks everybody

Channel: CHEF AJ

Views: 26,171

Keywords:

Id: M8HpiB85_oM

Length: 79min 24sec (4764 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 18 2022