Topics:
1. A quick update from Diane [1:58]
2. Introducing our guest, Chef Pete Servold [2:40]
3. Paleo sauces with a good fridge shelf life [10:20]
4. Favorite staples to have on hand [14:05]
5. Go-to quick home cooked meal [18:51]
6. How to cook a whole chicken so it’s not dry [22:50]
7. Freezing seasonal veggies [25:54]
8. Olive oil: to cook with or no? [30:57]
9. Meals to prep that maintain integrity [35:07]
10. Can’t live without kitchen utensil [39:54]
11. Favorite meal to cook and to eat [43:04]
12. Passions outside of the kitchen [45:10]
13. Most rewarding part of building his company [52:21]
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Balance Bites: Episode #212: Paleo Cooking Tips with Chef Peter Servold
You’re listening to the Balanced Bites podcast episode 212.
Welcome to the Balanced Bites podcast with Diane Sanfilippo and Liz Wolfe. Diane is a certified nutrition consultant, and the New York Times bestselling author of Practical Paleo, The 21-Day Sugar Detox, and co-author of Mediterranean Paleo Cooking. Liz is a nutritional therapy practitioner, and the best-selling author of Eat the Yolks and The Purely Primal Skincare Guide. Together, Diane and Liz answer your questions, interview leading health and wellness experts, and share their take on modern paleo living with their friendly and balanced approach. Remember our disclaimer: The materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only, and are not to be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Diane Sanfilippo: Hey everyone! Welcome back to the Balanced Bites podcast. Diane here, without Liz this week, but with a very special guest who I’m pretty pumped to talk to. So, before we get into my interview, let’s first hear a word from one of our sponsors.
Liz Wolfe: We are thrilled to have Paleo Treats back on our sponsor roster. We love their treats, from the Mustang bar to the Bandito and everything in between. They have been serving the paleo community since 2009, and were recently recognized by FedEx as one of the top 10 small businesses in America. Which of course, speaks to how much paleo and healthy eating is growing, but it also speaks to how passionate our friends Nick and Lee and the Paleo Treats team are about what they do. Use the code BALANCEDBITES one word, no space at http://www.paleotreats.com/ for 10% off.
1. A quick update from Diane [1:58]
Diane Sanfilippo: Alright; actually, before we even get into the interview, I do need to give one very quick update. If you are listening to this episode when it airs first, which will be Thursday October 8th, then the 21-Day Sugar Detox Coaches Program is still open for enrollment. I’m not exactly sure how long it will be open for. It may be until October 12th, which is Monday; maybe slightly longer. But if you’re listening to this and you wanted to get into the coaches’ program and become a certified 21-Day Sugar Detox coach, make sure you visit 21DSDCoaches.com.
2. Introducing our guest, Chef Pete Servold [2:40]
Diane Sanfilippo: Alright, so today I’m talking with Chef Peter Servold.
Pete Servold: Hello.
Diane Sanfilippo: Hey! One of my buds, and longtime Balanced Bites podcast sponsor. Peter is the owner of Pete’s Paleo; it’s a national ready to eat paleo company that provides and ships ready to eat meals around the country, as you guys know, as well as paleo bacon and other paleo products soon to be on the shelves in retail outlets.
Peter has worked in the culinary and restaurant fields his whole life, starting as a dishwasher when he was 13 to running front of house operations in multiple restaurants before attending culinary school. After attending Le Cordon Bleu in Atlanta, Georgia, he worked at restaurant Eugene, learning the true meaning of farm to table dining, working with the best possible ingredients from the best local sources. Shortly thereafter, Peter met his wife Sarah.
Thanks to many years of living the chef/restaurant lifestyle he was in desperate need of some Crossfit and paleo in his life. They did a challenge for 30 days together, and that planted the seed for what would become Pete’s Paleo, where the slogan is, bringing fine dining to your cave. What’s up Pete? Welcome!
Pete Servold: Hello. That was a great intro.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Pete Servold: Thank you for that.
Diane Sanfilippo: Well, thank you to Amazon for your {laughs} complete bio.
Pete Servold: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: Well I’m really excited to talk to you today. We were recently hanging out just a few weeks ago when I was down in San Diego, and you and Sarah have been good friends to me and Scott from the very beginning, and then you guys were out in New Jersey at the big…
Pete Servold: At the nuptials!
Diane Sanfilippo: At the big paleo wedding.
Pete Servold: That was really cool. Thank you so much for having us, that was so sweet.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} I’m really glad you guys made the trip, and I know you had a really cool event actually happening in New York City that same week, so that was pretty sweet.
Pete Servold: Yeah that was a big deal. That was like a big checkmark off of the list of a chef, for sure, getting to do a dinner for all those editors and all those publications.
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s awesome. So, really quickly, I think a lot of our listeners have probably heard bits of your story here and there, and I know most of our listeners are familiar with you from Pete’s Paleo; obviously you guys have heard the ad for Pete’s Paleo on the podcast for quite some time, but I don’t know if everybody really knows your story, obviously in that quick little intro I mentioned about your lifestyle really needing an overhaul. But you have a really big health turnaround story, and you had a really big health scare that I don’t think many people know about.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: Do you want to tell that story a little bit?
Pete Servold: Yeah, I had always wanted to be in food. I ran home and watched Great Chefs of the World after school all the way until I got my first job in a restaurant, and I knew that was it. But that life, by the time I was in my mid-20s, I was 215 pounds at 5’10”; ok 5’9”.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Pete Servold: {laughs} I started having chest pains and really bad heartburn all the time, and basically the inside of me was just an inflamed mess from a horrible diet, not sleeping, always having high stress. I’m sure I had adrenal fatigue, if I had gone and gotten any of those tests at the time. But it led up to me having pericarditis, which is this really scary thing where the sac that’s around your heart that is supposed to make it pump easy, it’s called the pericardium, and mine had become swollen and was squeezing my heart shut.
So two weeks after I met Sarah, my wife, I woke up at like 4 in the morning and I had like 104 degree fever, and every time my heart beat, it felt like someone was stabbing me in the chest.
Diane Sanfilippo: No big deal.
Pete Servold: {laughs} Needless today, I’m scared out of my mind. I’m 26 years old, the last thing you think is going to happen is you’re going to wake up thinking that you’re having a heart attack, basically. I mean, how would I have known that wasn’t it, you know?
I had only been with Sarah, we had just been dating for a few weeks, I didn’t want to freak her out, so I was like, I just need to take some Gatorade and Tylenol, and I’ve got to go. {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: Oh my goodness.
Pete Servold: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Whoa.
Pete Servold: I’m fine. And I did what any grown man does, and I ran to my mom, and then she took me to the hospital {laughs}.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughing}
Pete Servold: And they diagnosed me. And they ran; pericarditis can be caused by a lot of scary things, scary infections or just bacteria. You just never know what can cause it, so they ran pretty much every test, and nothing came back. So it was all from lifestyle, stress, and inflammation from diet. I’ll never forget; I was 26 years old, and the doctor is telling me what’s wrong with my heart, and that that’s going to be wrong forever, and it’s going to keep happening because now you have scar tissue, yadda, yadda, yadda.
We started doing Crossfit and eating paleo less than 2 weeks later; fast forward to meeting you guys and starting the company. I lost 60 pounds, 65 pounds, became a pretty decent crossfitter, pretty fit, and more than anything I went back. I have to get yearly EKGs to test my heart to make sure that it’s ok after that happened, and two years ago when I got it, they thought I was the wrong patient. They said there’s no way someone could have a resting heart rate that ever went through this. There’s no way that anyone could have no scar tissue. They had to check; they checked my record twice to make sure I was the right patient. And then the doctor finally came in, and asked me all these questions. And then the last question that he asked me was; alright, what are you doing for exercise and your diet? And I said, I do Crossfit and I eat paleo. And he goes; oh that’s what it is.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Like, of course.
Pete Servold: So, it was a life changing experience in so many ways, when it first happened and I finally got woken up before, fortunately, anything permanent happened. And then all the way to this doctor; I take the right steps and start working out and eating good, and literally the last thing that they thought that it could possibly be was {laughs} diet and exercise. They went through every drug I could have been taking, they went through every; oh, your potassium is a little high, how much energy drinks do you have? I was like, oh I don’t drink those things. Ok, it’s not that. It was the last question. So I learned a lot about myself, and a lot about the health industry and doctors and kind of what priority they put over nutrition and exercise versus just trying to fix stuff. But yeah, that’s how I got into paleo, and why.
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s pretty crazy. I know our friend Russ Crandall had a pretty crazy story; not the same, but something similar where he had crazy heart issues.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: A very, very rare condition; I don’t know, it’s just really, really whacky, but you know, leading to some pretty cool stuff and a very strong conviction thereafter, not only to do the whole farm to table thing just for the sake of what’s sustainable for the land and for farming; but then realizing how important it is to our health to just change what we’re eating.
Pete Servold: Oh gosh. Yeah. In a way, it was like a horrible thing, but now I’m so lucky to have that perspective.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.
Pete Servold: I’m so lucky to just know, really know, health is a whole ton about taking control of it yourself.
3. Paleo sauces with a good fridge shelf life [10:20]
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. So, we have a lot of questions.
Pete Servold: Ok, awesome.
Diane Sanfilippo: From a bunch of folks over on Instagram, a handful from Facebook. We actually have a smattering that were kind of in the archives of questions that had come in, so there’s a few that are random here. I don’t know if we even have names for all of them.
Pete Servold: OK, awesome!
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} But I think, feel free to answer as quickly or you know, with as much rambling as you like. Whatever comes naturally to you.
Pete Servold: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: It’s fine if it’s a quick one, and it’s fine if it’s not. So we’re just going to go into some culinary questions and all that good stuff.
Pete Servold: Awesome.
Diane Sanfilippo: So the first one is; paleo sauces, to make without sugar that have a decent shelf life. There was not actually a question mark in there, but I think the question was, what are some {laughs} paleo sauces that have a decent shelf life? And I don’t know if this person means in the fridge shelf life or cabinet?
Pete Servold: I was just going to say.
Diane Sanfilippo: I’m going to say fridge. I’m going to say fridge; because I think people are ok with sticking things in the fridge.
Pete Servold: Well that opens the door. I cannot recommend you learning mayonnaise at home yourself more. It’s such a base sauce for so many things. A lot of your cream sauces; like ranch dressing and Caesar; you can make paleo versions of that, but it all starts with a base of mayonnaise. And it actually has a pretty good shelf life. It’s easy to make dips; it’s one of those things…
Diane Sanfilippo: How long in the fridge would you say, if you’re using a good pastured egg yolk?
Pete Servold: Oh, I would say 2 weeks in the fridge is fine.
Diane Sanfilippo: Ok. I just want to throw it out there that I know a lot of people are buying some of the paleo, like premade mayos, which is ok, but the difference is, when you make it yourself it doesn’t have any seasonings in it up front, which some of the premade ones that are out there now do. Which, they can taste great, but then what Pete’s saying about using it for other things, it kind of limits you. Whereas if you make it yourself, it can be much more like a blank slate. So anyway; ok, what are some of the; ranch and some other dipping sauces?
Pete Servold: Ranch, Cesar, thousand island. You can get a paleo ketchup and a little bit of some really good pickles, and that with a little bit of the paleo ketchup and mayonnaise is thousand Island dressing. That is the secret. I just revealed it.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Pete Servold: {laughs} That is pretty much the Big Mac secret sauce; mayonnaise, ketchup {laughs}.
Diane Sanfilippo: Totally. I was like, why is this called secret sauce? We make this in my house all the time.
Pete Servold: Exactly. And then any vinaigrette. In learning how to make an emulsion when you make mayonnaise, the first step to that is just making a basic vinaigrette. And I know that maybe that sounds, maybe not exciting, but it’s really up to you to take stuff from the farmer’s market, take fruit from the farmer’s market and incorporate it into vinaigrettes, take all the different acids that come to you throughout the seasons and the different citruses. In the winter, you can make great blood orange citrus vinaigrette and have it with fish, have it with chicken, have it with your salads in the morning, and it’s super easy to make a huge jar of that and just kind of use it for a week. And then the next week you can kind of change the flavor. Do rosemary and garlic, or thyme and lavender, whatever you want to use.
Diane Sanfilippo: I like it. I like that a lot. People ask a lot; they’ll ask us about salad dressings that we buy, and I’m like; I don’t buy salad dressing. I know for so many things that I’ll buy that are really convenience oriented; I don’t do my own cold brew, all of that.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: Salad dressing; I’m whisking it together. It takes like 30 seconds to make it, so I’m making it all the time.
Pete Servold: I think, honestly I think learning how to make vinaigrettes is a great window into; you know what, cooking isn’t that hard.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. Totally. Or making sauces in general.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
4. Favorite staples to have on hand [14:05]
Diane Sanfilippo: Alright, so this one. Some of these Instagram handles I can’t read names, so I’m just going to read the question. {laughs}
Pete Servold: Ok.
Diane Sanfilippo: What are some of your favorite staple ingredients to have on hand for quick and easy meals?
Pete Servold: I think I always try to keep a spaghetti squash, or some sort of big squash on hand, whatever is in season. Even in the fall, just to have a pumpkin. For a lot of people, it’s the thing that just sits there on the counter, and it’s more decorative than anything else. But at our house, we always use them. You can toss it in the oven, you can toss it the slow cooker, you can steam it. Whatever you want to do. You can put it in water and then mash it. It’s great to have those quick calories; especially if you’re bulk prepping. So I always have the starchy vegetables on hand.
Diane Sanfilippo: And squash, like a pumpkin, or delicata, or acorn, they kind of last a while, too.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: So if you do have it on your counter for a week, two weeks. {laughs} You can kind of forget about it for a while, and then be like oh yeah, I have that squash over there.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: It’s just kind of waiting for you to eat it.
Pete Servold: And I feel like; again, that’s a big part. You start cooking all the time, and you realize; oh, I should just always have those around and you just kind of buy a different one every time you go to the store. Because they all kind of cook the same.
Another one is the right kind of oils. First of all, make sure that you do a clean out of your pantry, because if you leave rancid oils in your; if you leave a Crisco oil or a canola oil in your pantry when you go paleo, when you run out of avocado oil, you’re going to use that. Because you’re going to be cooking, and you’re going to be in the middle of something, and you’ll be like; oh I’m out of that oil.
Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm.
Pete Servold: And you’re going to use the bad oil. And then you’re going to say; you know what, it’s so much cheaper and it doesn’t taste any different. And you’re going to be {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: You’re going to slip back into your old ways. That’s actually really good advice that people; I think some people don’t do the full pantry clean out at first ,and I think that it is a really important step to get rid of that stuff completely so that then you’re not ending up using it just because it’s there.
Pete Servold: Yeah. And you’ll have a reverse effect of that where, once you start filling your pantry up with paleo stuff you kind of forget that you buy it, but then when you raid your pantry later on, you’ll actually have something that you can cook with, as opposed to something that you’re not supposed to be using.
Lots of the right proper fats; so that means a good amount of animal fat. So whether that means that you keep the bacon fat that you cook, or you have some sort of lard or schmaltz that you make from rendered chicken fat, or if you’re really lucky duck fat; ghee, any kind of good grass-fed ghee. I feel like that’s one of the number one things that people don’t have on hand, and they just end up using olive oil.
Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm.
Pete Servold: They’re like; well this is paleo. So they just cook everything with olive oil, which is a waste on a lot of different levels, but I think someone else asks that question.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, we’ll talk about olive oil. So what about proteins that you tend to keep on hand?
Pete Servold: I always have ground pork or pork butt, I think that a lot of times people use burgers they just think ground beef or maybe ground lamb or something like that, but I like to use ground pork a lot. I think it has a better fat to meat ratio. And just last night I made dill and garlic pork burgers for dinner, and it was really, really good. And they cook up super fast, so it’s something that you can put together in a hurry.
Diane Sanfilippo: Nice; I like it.
Pete Servold: And then you’ve got to have some sort of meat that you; again, just like having the starchy vegetables on hand, you’ve got to have a baked, low and slow type hunk of meat hanging around. So whether it’s a pork shoulder, a beef brisket or a beef shoulder, a chuck roast. Something that you can be like; you know what? We’re going to be running all day, and then we’re going to gym before or after work, we need to be able to eat when we go home. So we have the brisket in the Crock Pot and you roast the spaghetti squash when you get home, and you have this nice full meal ready to go.
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5. Go-to quick home cooked meal [18:51]
Diane Sanfilippo: Nice, nice, nice. Alright, so on the heels of that one. What’s your go-to home cooked meal when you’re in a pinch and need something on the table fast? So you talked about squash and you talked about slow cooking, which those are things; roasting a squash is not super fast. Maybe if somebody is going to microwave it, that could be fast. But what would you make; let’s say you come home and you have 20 minutes to make dinner before the world is going to explode.
Pete Servold: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} What are you going to make?
Pete Servold: Before Lois explodes?
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Exactly.
Pete Servold: {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s his daughter, not his wife.
Pete Servold: That’s my daughter; yeah. {laughing} They both get hangry.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Pete Servold: You want to go with vegetables that are going to cook really fast, so asparagus, broccoli. If you shave Brussels sprouts, like just slice them up, they’re really delicious. It’s a different kind of texture than you’re used to. And they cook really fast. Peppers, onions; just things that are going to cook really fast, and then always chicken thighs. If I need a fast protein, but I need it to be really delicious, it’s always chicken thighs.
Diane Sanfilippo: Like, boneless, skinless, cut them up in a skillet? Or bone-in, skin-on, you’re going to throw them in the oven. Because that’s going to take you more than 30 minutes to roast those chicken thighs.
Pete Servold: I was going to say, give me 40 minutes, you can have the bone-on.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Pete Servold: But 20 minutes {laughs}. Sorry, I’m reaching. But if you had some boneless skinless chicken thighs, which you can get from good sources pretty plentiful now a days, in most markets.
Diane Sanfilippo: I like that. I’m a big fan. I go through phases of different types of protein; and you want to hear something weird that I almost hate to admit? Scott and I are in a boneless, skinless chicken breast phase. It’s weird.
Pete Servold: I kind of like the idea of trying to figure out how to cook that perfect.
Diane Sanfilippo: We have it down, my man.
Pete Servold: {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: We have the; first of all, indoor grilling. It’s a little sad.
Pete Servold: {laughs} It’s a little sad.
Diane Sanfilippo: We have the grill pan, and it’s like an apartment, and we’re always setting off the smoke alarms. People are like, how do you do it? I’m like, I don’t. I don’t do it any better than anyone else. We’re a disaster every time; we’re setting the smoke alarms off, it looks like I’m trying to kill all the animals in my apartment because there’s so much smoke in here.
Pete Servold: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: We try to put fans to push it out, but we butterfly the chicken breast and grill it that way with; we do use some olive oil to marinate it and a bunch of spices, and then sometimes a squeeze of lemon while it’s grilling; which that will make more smoke, I know, but.
Pete Servold: But it makes it taste better.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, and about 4-5 minutes per side is really all it takes on pretty medium high heat, I guess. And they come out perfect every time. And I really like that on my salad. I’m really enjoying the perfectly grilled chicken breast. Which, actually I have the recipe in the Sugar Detox book. But if you want that recipe Pete; you know.
Pete Servold: There you go.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} You can go get my recipe. I’ll tell you what though; I actually figured out how to do that when I had a meal business back in the day, because I would buy this nice, organic chicken breast, and you guys, I had a meal business but I was not a trained chef. {laughs} So I would look at this protein, and be like, I better not screw this up.
Pete Servold: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: Because if I screw it up, I don’t have other protein and that’s some expensive stuff. Anyway. I digress.
Pete Servold: Chicken thighs, for me, also because they take flavor so well. You don’t need to marinate them too long. One night you can toss them in a little cumin, a little salt, a little garlic. Serve it with some cilantro. You know; you can do it completely different, and it only needs like 10 minutes of the spices sitting on it for it to really grab on to it.
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s perfect. And I know chicken thighs, too. People get so weirded out about cooking them because after so long of eating chicken breast, it’s like, what about the skin and all the fat. But the cool thing about chicken thighs is they’re really hard to overcook. They stay moist, and really yummy.
Pete Servold: {laughs} Yeah. They are the B-teams best friend, that is for sure.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Pete Servold: {laughs}
6. How to cook a whole chicken so it’s not dry [22:50]
Diane Sanfilippo: Alright, here’s another chicken question, actually, which this one came from Instagram also. This one is, how can I cook a whole chicken so the breasts aren’t dry with undercooked thighs? This one I didn’t quite understands because I think it happens, ok maybe with turkey because they’re so big, but I’ve never really heard of this issue with chicken, but that’s the question.
Pete Servold: I think that; well I think the problem is that most people don’t eat chicken thighs, and legs often. They normally eat breasts, right, like we talked about. So when they ever do roast a whole one, and they taste the dark meat finally, they’re like; this breast tastes like crap! {laughs} Like who would ever eat this again? You know? Or it’s too dry.
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s very possible.
Pete Servold: Compared to the other sides of the meat. The biggest thing is you might be cooking it a little too hot. If you’re cooking it over 375, that’s probably, you could dry out the bird. But the one way to guarantee that never happens is to brine the chicken, which is to just let it soak in a mixture of salt and water with some spices added overnight in the fridge, and you dry it off and just throw it in the oven at 350 with just a touch of salt and a lot of black pepper for about an hour, hour and 10 minutes and it will be perfect. The brining actually chemically fills the meat up with juice, and it also denatures the protein, which is another word to say it tenderizes the meat.
Once you get it down and you have a good technique, you can actually make almost like rotisserie style chicken in the oven.
Diane Sanfilippo: That sounds pretty good.
Pete Servold: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} I don’t really experience an issue with that happening too often, but yeah. I like that. And I’m so impatient; to brine a chicken that long in advance; you will never get me to do that. Maybe never.
Pete Servold: Well, you know, if you want it to be really, really good, you could brine it.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.
Pete Servold: But the other thing too is that you’re probably having that problem because you might be getting the more commodity chickens, which tend to be in the 5-6 pound range. When you get the fryers; the younger, smaller, more properly raised chickens that are only in the 2-3 pound range, everything kind of cooks at a much faster pace and it’s also a lot easier to cook it evenly.
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s a really good point.
Pete Servold: When you have the ones that look like they could be turkeys?
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Pete Servold: You know, those big Perdue, yellow and blue labeled ones that are like 7 pounds.
Diane Sanfilippo: Oh, yeah.
Pete Servold: That’s another big issue that I’ve found. Because I agree with you that once you’ve moved to a better product, you’re like; this just comes out better.
Diane Sanfilippo: So, part of the problem might also be if; and I don’t want to make that assumption about this person, but it’s possible they’re buying a more conventional chicken that they’re bread to have larger breasts.
Pete Servold: Exactly.
Diane Sanfilippo: Because that’s what people are looking for, is the white meat. So two things; one is the cooking technique, and one is possibly switching the type of chicken. Just a good little note to have.
7. Freezing seasonal veggies [25:54]
Alright, this one is, “Chef Pete.” This one is very formally introduced, here. {laughs} “I tried to cook, blanch, and freeze a whole bunch of potatoes and veggies the other do so that we could enjoy them longer, and I just noticed many potatoes turned black, and some veggies are already mushy. Do you have tips for freezing seasonal foods to enjoy over the winter? Love your book and can’t wait to try the bacon everyone raves about. Keep up the amazing work.”
Pete Servold: Well that was very nice.
Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm.
Pete Servold: All those things, thank you very much. I want to; I’m a little confused because she said she cooked, blanched, and froze the vegetables. So, definitely when you blanch something is to just put it in boiling water briefly to partially cook it, and then to shock it in cold water, and then typically you roast it after that.
The problem with freezing cooked vegetables is that you’ve already broken down the cells through cooking them, and then when you freeze the moisture inside that, it really tears the cells apart, and it does just make really mushy food.
So, if you’re going to freeze the vegetables, you just want to chop them up so they’re a good size to work with, and you can just freeze them raw. And you can take them out and thaw them and use them later.
Diane Sanfilippo: It sounds like he or she was trying to freeze them the way sometimes; you know you get frozen broccoli sometimes. Well, you probably don’t ever buy frozen broccoli {laughs} but we do.
Pete Servold: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: And it’s definitely pre-blanched. So she was probably trying to do that, you know?
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: Because you get that broccoli and it’s really not raw when it’s frozen. But that was probably what she was trying to do.
Pete Servold: Yeah, you could partially cook it; especially greens, because of the amount of fiber in green vegetables.
Diane Sanfilippo: Mmm.
Pete Servold: They’re going to be the ones that hold up best to this process. But anything like potatoes that are our paleo version of a simple starch, it’s going to break down super fast when you cook it, even for a small amount of time, and all the starches start to come out, and all the sugar. If you ever soak potatoes in water, the sugars start to just pull out of them; all the starch. Yeah, so that.
Diane Sanfilippo: Ok. Yeah, I think like butternut squash, for example, I feel like they sell that frozen, and it really doesn’t hold up that well shape wise. It’s not as starchy as potatoes. But I wonder what she made; she said the potatoes turned black. I wonder why they turned black; any idea about that?
Pete Servold: They were probably just getting oxidized. Between being boiled and then frozen, all the sugar comes out just the way you’ll have a brown spot on the potato if it’s been sitting too long. I think she might have just done that to the whole thing.
Diane Sanfilippo: Interesting.
Pete Servold: But I don’t know and also, that answer completely depends on the variety of potato and when she got it, because potatoes can do different things depending. We get a certain type of sweet potato from our farm that the skin doesn’t look good, and it’s an ugly skin, so she wouldn’t grow it for anyone else because people wouldn’t buy it in the produce market. But it grows; it’s a better tasting product, and we peel it anyways. So, potatoes come in way more varieties and can do way more weird things than people think about.
Diane Sanfilippo: Very interesting. And you know, what they’re doing in the mass production of blanching and freezing; they’re flash freezing, so how quickly these vegetables
Pete Servold: Right.
Diane Sanfilippo: Get frozen is so different in your own home versus how it would be done en mass kind of from the grocery store. So I think the thought and motivation behind it was really good and solid; but then the execution was probably a little tricky.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: Because we just don’t have that same capability.
Pete Servold: I would say that’s a really good point that you said; the flash freezing makes a huge difference. Because in a residential freezer at home, the crystals form so slowly, which means they get so big, and they really break up the food. Whereas the flash freezing, it happens so fast.
Diane Sanfilippo: Hmm.
Pete Servold: That’s why liquid nitrogen ice cream is so creamy.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Pete Servold: Because it freezes it so fast that the crystals can’t form.
Diane Sanfilippo: So nerdy.
Pete Servold: It’s good. {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: I don’t know who his or her name is here, JKeebler611, honestly it seems like; I know you were just asking Chef Pete, but I would just buy the frozen veggies.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: If that’s the route you want to take, buy them already frozen. It’s not ideal; or if you have seasonal stuff, I would make it into something else. Make it into soup or something where you kind of don’t expect it to hold that same structure based on what Pete just said.
Pete Servold: Yeah, to actually give them some advice as what to make and to store, I think you’re right. Make soups and things like that that freeze really well; but don’t expect, if you’re going to do raw, just buy them frozen already.
8. Olive oil: to cook with or no? [30:57]
Diane Sanfilippo: Alright. So we have a bunch more questions here. This one is about olive oil; Mountain Goddess77.
Pete Servold: I love. {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: Olive oil; to cook with or not to cook with? At what heat point is it best to use a more stable oil or fat? That was her question.
Pete Servold: I’ll be honest. Like you just said, I’m a nerd and kind of a dork when it comes to food, so I don’t really cook with olive oil very often. I use it a lot in my vinaigrettes, and in sauces, and I use it to finish vegetables when they come out of the oven, but I very rarely sauté with olive oil. It kills the flavor. The flavor is killed so fast from the heat, that it makes all the money you spend on it not worth it. And I think; I can’t remember off the top of my head, maybe you can help me Diane. The smoke point of just regular olive oil is like 200 something?
Diane Sanfilippo: I think it’s pretty high. I’m looking at my own cooking fats chart.
Pete Servold: Show me your cooking fats chart.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} My cooking fats chart; it’s not that low of a temperature. Realistically, most fats in general, if you look at this chart, most of them are fairly high temperature. But, that’s not really the only thing that matters. I think what you’re talking about is the thing that I’ve been talking about for a long time, and when any part of the flavor or structure of the fat breaks down because of the heat, then you’re damaging the fat to some degree.
Pete Servold: Right.
Diane Sanfilippo: And olive oil does have some vitamin E and some polyphenols and things that do protect it from oxidation, but I honestly think that’s one reason why it may not go rancid as quickly, just kind of in the jar, you have the dark green bottle.
Pete Servold: Mm-hmm.
Diane Sanfilippo: You keep it out of the way of heat, etc. but like what Pete’s saying; I think a lot of higher end chefs will use it as a finishing oil, especially if it’s extra virgin, which is a nice quality oil to be using. I just think that people are so used to a liquid oil, that they are thrown off to use something that’s solid.
Pete Servold: Right.
Diane Sanfilippo: You can use coconut oil, leave it next to your stove and it will be liquid. Or ghee will pretty much be liquid, or it will be liquid in 2 seconds when you get it into the pan.
I’m curious what your take is on this approach, because another chef I know took this approach where, instead of putting the fat in the pat while the pan heats, which could potentially get the oil to the smoke point faster and then ruin it, he would heat the pan up; again, this wouldn’t be a nonstick pan because that could ruin the pan, but he would heat up a stainless or a cast iron pan a little bit before he puts the fat in, and basically just puts the fat in with enough time to melt properly right before he puts whatever else in there. What’s your thought on that?
Pete Servold: That’s going to be an effective thing as long as you’re ready.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.
Pete Servold: As long as you have all your veggies cut and you’re ready to go. Because it will happen fast, in just a few seconds, and if you are ready, as soon as you add those ingredients to the pan, it’s going to suck all the heat out of the pan.
Diane Sanfilippo: Right, it’s going to lower that temperature.
Pete Servold: And it’s going to lower the temperature quite a bit, so you’re going to be safe from oxidation and from the smoke point, and that will be effective. But you definitely want to be, you know…
Diane Sanfilippo: Ready.
Pete Servold: Say mise en place and have all the food ready to go.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Pete Servold: When you do that.
Diane Sanfilippo: I didn’t want to expose the chef if you didn’t like this idea, or this approach, but that’s one of chef Nabil’s things. I watched him cook something in the house they were cooking for Mediterranean Paleo Cooking, and I was like, why don’t you have any oil in the pan? And he was like, well if I put it in while it’s heating then it might get ruined, but if I just put it in right before I put the steak in there, or whatever he was cooking, then it will keep the stuff from sticking and it won’t get ruined. And I was like, oh cool, alright. I like it.
Pete Servold: Yeah, he’s great. He’s an awesome guy, and a good chef.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} I just love them so much.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
9. Meals to prep that maintain integrity [35:07]
Diane Sanfilippo: Alright, here’s one from an athlete. Ernesto is asking, as an athlete, what are some strong paleo; I like that, strong paleo meals or styles that I can meal prep a week in advance and still maintain original flavoring and food integrity towards the last few meals of the week. Thanks for the time.
Pete Servold: That’s a good question. I’d say properly; going back to the blanching and shocking. Being able to do that with a lot of your green vegetables at the beginning of the week, and keeping them in a really cold part of the refrigerator. You’ll be able to roast them, or sauté them, or do different things with them throughout the week in a much faster time if you already have them parcooked in the form of blanched.
But I would demure to you as far as what’s the best for athletes and for nutrition and things like that, other than a lot of; you know, more. {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. I think baking sweet potatoes ahead of time; sweet potatoes are pretty mushy no matter what.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: So baking them ahead of time, they’re going to last throughout the week. And then I think; in terms of integrity of the food, I think, as we’ve been talking about, chicken thighs or even chicken breast kind of lasts a pretty long time, once it’s cooked. Things like meat balls do pretty well, although obviously if the fat gets colder it can be a little bit weird in the fridge after a while. But I think prepping for the whole week is definitely lofty.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: When I used to do fresh meals for a meal business, and I don’t know how you guys do it. If you guys do it for the week; but again, I was not a professional {laughs}. I was just doing it. I made meals twice a week, because I just felt like; I don’t know it’s in your fridge for 3 days after that. I mean, I guess if you’re making it yourself and it’s foods you know you love, but after the third day of eating the same thing or eating whatever you made ahead.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: Don’t you want something that’s different? I don’t know, maybe not.
Pete Servold: Yeah, I think you’re; no I think you’re going to want something different. I think the way to do that is to kind of parcook the food as much as possible like I said.
Diane Sanfilippo: Mmm.
Pete Servold: Blanching and shocking the green vegetables; you had a good point with baking the sweet potatoes. Another thing to do is just make, like when you’re making a stock; just make a real basic slow cooked meat in the slow cooker. Do a big pork shoulder, but just do a couple cloves of garlic and salt and pepper.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, pretty plain.
Pete Servold: And a bay leaf, and that’s it. And then throughout the week, add in your fish sauce and paleo sriracha, and kind of sear it and make these great little Korean lettuce wraps, and then the next day you can add some rosemary and garlic and thyme and do all these fresh herbs, and really add flavors and cook it, kind of finish it slightly different throughout the week. And that way, it’s the same protein kind of over 3 or 4 different times that you could have 3 or 4 different ways. And then you have chicken or chicken thighs or chicken breast in the oven so you could cook something real fast if you need to.
Diane Sanfilippo: I like it. We definitely do that kind of deal. If we make chicken; I was doing this with the fresh spring rolls, where we grill chicken, and it had some kind of seasoning on it, it wasn’t too strong, and the next day I kind of shredded it down to put in fresh spring rolls, and obviously that had a totally different flavor profile going on, but because the base was pretty plain, we could translate that over to some different types of cuisines. I like that, that’s a good one.
Pete Servold: Yeah, make soup that last day.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.
Pete Servold: You know; save the broth from the Crockpot, stick it in the freezer, and then on the last day just dump the last bit of leftover pork or brisket in there with some veggies, and there’s your stew.
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10. Can’t live without kitchen utensil [39:54]
Diane Sanfilippo: Alright, this one; I’m not really sure how you’re going to answer this. {laughs}
Pete Servold: {laughing}
Diane Sanfilippo: I might have to edit it a little bit. But it says if you could only buy; because I already know what you’re going to say to this one, I think.
Pete Servold: Ok.
Diane Sanfilippo: If you could only buy one tool for your kitchen, what would it be? So I think there’s a few different ways to answer this one. {laughs}
Pete Servold: Gosh yeah. So, cooking utensil or like, I’m on a deserted island?
Diane Sanfilippo: It just says, if you could only buy one tool for your kitchen what would it be.
Pete Servold: I mean, I always say a good knife.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, of course.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: So, alright let’s reword it because you can’t do anything without a knife. How about, now let’s go into Pete’s world. How about in your home kitchen, if there was a tool that you guys, like an appliance or something, let’s do this two different ways. What’s the one that you have in your kitchen that’s not a super basic, cutting board, knife, etc.? Even beyond the slow cooker, let’s say. We’re already including that. What’s the one tool that you’re like; I really think people should have this and most people don’t. What’s that going to be?
Pete Servold: Mmm. I’m going to make sure that it’s one that most people don’t have.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Make sure it’s a good one.
Pete Servold: Well, I’ll answer it two different ways. If you want to just cook more and cook faster, you need to have a food processor in your kitchen.
Diane Sanfilippo: I’m with you.
Pete Servold: Yeah, to make sauces, you can take ground beef or different ground meat and mix it together to make your meatball mix, it’s really fast. There’s a million things you could do with it. You can get slicing attachments, so if you wanted to make a huge salad or if you wanted to pickle vegetables, it will slice everything for you really fast. Once you get used to using it and having it, it’s something that you’ll never kind of really stop.
And then kind of one that most people wouldn’t expect would be a scale. Some sort of small electronic scale. Just because if you are cooking, and you’re kind of experimenting and you’re trying new things; keep track of portions when you are making a new dish. And that way you can kind of make it again. Because you don’t want to forget.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} You just lost me on the scale one, Pete.
Pete Servold: I like the scale.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} When I was making meals for Balanced Bites when it was a meal delivery business.
Pete Servold: Mm-hmm.
Diane Sanfilippo: My dad was like, write down your recipes, maybe you’ll write a cookbook one day. {laughs} This was in 2007, and 2008. Isn’t that funny?
Pete Servold: {laughing} Your dad is a prudent man.
Diane Sanfilippo: It’s just so funny, and wouldn’t you know it, a whole bunch of recipes I used to make for the business ended up in Practical Paleo. But I don’t know that I wrote them down. I think I just; it’s not my nature. I’m like; I just know what to do. I just put it in there, and then I figure it out.
Pete Servold: I guess more for the bakers; the bakers need to have a scale, don’t use measuring cups.
Diane Sanfilippo: Well you know, you do, also. I mean, I think it’s relevant too, if you ever want to write down a recipe and you want to know how much of everything is in there, some way of measuring that obviously measuring cups and spoons go a long way, but yeah for sure, baking which I’m a terrible baker.
Pete Servold: {laughs}
11. Favorite meal to cook and to eat [43:04]
Diane Sanfilippo: Alright, what’s your favorite meal to cook and what’s your favorite meal to eat?
Pete Servold: My favorite meal to cook, mmm, definitely a really nice grass-fed steak on the grill with a really good reduction of a game stock with onions and mushrooms, grilled asparagus, and then roasted Yukon gold potatoes that you cook in the fat from the beef.
Diane Sanfilippo: Boom. We’re coming over. That sounds perfect. {laughs}
Pete Servold: {laughs} I mean, basically steak and potatoes.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.
Pete Servold: But if you get everything right and perfect; it’s just so, so good. My favorite thing to cook.
Diane Sanfilippo: Well, is that your favorite to cook or your favorite to eat?
Pete Servold: That’s my favorite to eat.
Diane Sanfilippo: Oh, ok. Alright, what’s your favorite to cook?
Pete Servold: My favorite to cook is fish. I love cooking fish perfectly. I love taking it off the bone, and getting it fresh, and finding the red gills and the bright eyes, just handling the animal really beautifully and just cooking it to perfection. I think that’s my favorite thing to do as a chef, still.
Diane Sanfilippo: I like that. I’m with you. I like going to the farmer’s market and just be psyched about whatever’s in season.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: I feel like the beginning part of this week and even some of last week we were just cooking some really fun, yummy things that were really colorful, and I’m like, why is our cooking game so on point? It’s like, we were just at the farmer’s market, and you just get so much more inspired and excited, and you don’t want to let that stuff go bad in the fridge, either. You know? You make it right away, and you don’t just let it sit there.
Pete Servold: It’s such a better experience than the plastic bags and the stuff that’s been sitting there for 5 months in a gas house, versus the person that’s still got the dirt under their fingernails.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Pete Servold: You’re like, ok I’m not going to waste this.
Diane Sanfilippo: I definitely handed somebody some produce to weigh whose hands were black from dirt.
Pete Servold: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: I was like, what’s up. Ok, alright, weigh the peppers.
Pete Servold: You’re going to want to wash those.
12. Passions outside of the kitchen [45:10]
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. It was like, ok. Alright, so, outside of the kitchen, what are some of your passions?
Pete Servold: Well, I really love my daughter and my wife. {laughs} I have a pretty great family, and I really am very lucky to have those two girls. That in turn has kind of driven me back into the passion of just sustainable food and kind of trying to spread the message of paleo and get people to realize that everyone needs to kind of eat like this, or something close to it. That’s kind of my main focus right now.
We just did that dinner in New York where we get to talk to the editors of different publications. I could tell when I sat down in that room that there were half the people that were there that were like; paleo is dumb and I was just here for the free meal. And I asked them; how many of you think that paleo isn’t sustainable because not everyone can afford to eat like this? And half of them raised their hand. And I said, ok, how many of the people raising their hands think that we can afford to continue to eat the way we are? And the hands went down. Because we can’t continue to eat this way, we have to figure out a way for more people to eat meats and vegetables, and whether it’s things like aquaponics and sustainable farming, or maybe god forbid you shift a few of the subsidies away from corn, and soy, and wheat, and to you know, sustainable farming. I think with the attitude of yes and how, instead of no and why, that we can actually accomplish a lot more than what we’ve given ourselves credit for.
Diane Sanfilippo: Pete for president!
Pete Servold: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} This was like, it felt like a platform. I like that; and you know what I actually think, too. It’s almost; it’s not almost. It’s not really about paleo.
Pete Servold: Right; exactly.
Diane Sanfilippo: We don’t really care that much if people don’t want to eat meat. Of course, as a nutritionist and as somebody who has seen people with a lot of nutritional deficiencies that come from avoiding animal proteins and things that break down in the body when we sort of shun our natural human diet; what’s evolutionarily appropriate and we try to intellectualize our diet, there can be a lot of negative health effects that come from that. Both in having people who are eating tons of processed foods, and it’s like, how long can we afford to do that, but also in, how long can we afford to believe what’s not true about how real food should nourish the body.
I think it’s really sad that people got to this place in the last 30-50 years to feel like we shouldn’t eat animals, and part of it is because of how unsustainable it’s become and how the farming has become, and people who farmed animals for years and years, and that was the livelihood, and you ate that. I’m sure there were vegetarians before it became a thing, but people had so much of a better connection to where their food came from and the respect for the circle of; these animals are here because we raised them to be here, and now we’re going to eat them, and this is how we lived.
And we so detached from that process. It’s so sanitized, you know? So by doing that, we become detached from understanding that it’s not meant to be this brutalized killing of animals. It’s just meant to be like nature taking its course.
Pete Servold: Yeah. It’s saying that, well the way things are now is horrible, so you shouldn’t eat meat.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, you should opt out. As if that’s going to solve the problem.
Pete Servold: You’re chasing an imaginary perfect, first of all. You’re never going to get to where that imaginary place is. It’s always going to be a work in progress, and kind of unforeseen consequences to decisions that you make, but you can’t just throw your hands up in the air and say; oh, well CAFOs are horrible so no one should eat meat.
Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm.
Pete Servold: Ok, well then we’re all going to be really weak, and not very healthy.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.
Pete Servold: And also, if the cows were out grazing in the land, they would be fertilizing the grass, the grass would grow, grass eats carbon. There’s a lot of good information out there that shows that if we got back to a more sustainable farming system, a lot of the environmental consequences that get thrown; especially if the meat industry would go away.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yep.
Pete Servold: But farmers need to be allowed to farm again, ranchers need to be allowed to ranch, and a lot of the laws are written against them being able to do that.
Diane Sanfilippo: I remember the husband of a friend of mine actually wrote; I have to see; there was an article in the New York Times’ magazine. This was back in 2012, and I just remember it so vividly, because I knew that this gentleman was a vegetarian for a very long time. But he had recently in that time become a farmer. And they have a farm up in Portland, Oregon.
And the article in New York Times’ Magazine was “Put Your Ethics Where Your Mouth Is” and he ended up writing; it’s like an editorial on this whole thing, but basically saying, this is the deal we’ve made. And the point of what he was talking about is how, just because we don’t want to eat animals doesn’t mean that animals don’t diet to grow our food, because the soil and the plants that we grow need minerals and nutrients that come from animals that have either done something to the soil or who have passed and left behind these nutrients so that the soil can be replenished. You actually can’t grow plants without dead animals.
Pete Servold: Right. Right.
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s the thing that people are totally missing.
Pete Servold: Well like you said; they over intellectualize it, and it’s like; no, this isn’t your planet you don’t get to make the rules. Evolutionary biology wise, we are a lot of cholesterol. Especially the parts that make us human. Our prefrontal cortex is all cholesterol; so you’re going to have to eat some. You can’t just make it. And I just; like you said, it’s just throwing your hands up at a horrible system and saying, that’s the reason why we can’t move forward. And I think that we definitely can.
Especially like aquaponics and the indoor farming that you can do that’s responsible; just look at Japan. They’re not saying; oh, what are we going to do, there’s too many people on the island? They’re just building indoor gardens and growing food.
Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm. Vertically.
Pete Servold: And figuring it out. Yeah, and just figuring it out.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, awesome. Well, I know this has been a long journey you guys; not only from the health and culinary side of things, but also just from building a business .trying to build a business that you feel is doing things the right way, from sourcing the food, to cooking the food, to even packaging and shipping and all that stuff.
Pete Servold: Yeah.
13. Most rewarding part of building his company [52:21]
Diane Sanfilippo: I’m just curious from a basic standpoint, for folks listening to this show; what’s been the most rewarding part of sort of just getting this company started, off the ground, and then building it? What’s been the most rewarding part for you?
Pete Servold: The employees that we have ,who have stayed with us for a few years, whose lives have gotten a lot better from gainful employment is hands down my favorite part. The second part would be the farmers and the ranchers. We have one farm that’s tripled in business, and we buy all of their stuff.
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s awesome.
Pete Servold: It’s a wife of a navy seal who’s gone a lot, and she’s got two little kids, and she runs the farm pretty much by herself. And she’s tripled in business in the past 3 years. So to be able to be a part of stuff like that, and create meaningful change, even at a small level, has been my favorite part.
Diane Sanfilippo: I love that. Look, you guys. It’s not because you’re getting yummy food from them; no I’m just kidding.
Pete Servold: {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: I think as a business owner, so much of the pride and reward that we get in the business, it’s not just in how our customers are affected; it is. In what we do as a business to employ others and help them kind of fulfill their dreams through the employment and also the vendors that we work with and all of that. So I think that’s totally legit, and I’m with you. I feel the same way working with the people on our team; I love that I get to give them work to do that they find meaningful and it makes a positive contribution, so I totally, I like that. It’s awesome.
Pete Servold: But all of that, obviously, if people wouldn’t have given us a chance, you know? If it wasn’t for the paleo community.
Diane Sanfilippo: Totally
Pete Servold: If it wasn’t for you, for you guys, all of your friendships, the people we’ve met. Mostly your listeners; when we started, we were one of the few companies that did this. We still have one of the craziest menus.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Pete Servold: That has lambs and duck and bison and rutabaga and parsnip root and all these things that you’ve never even heard of, probably. And it’s like, no you can’t change it. Yes you have to get these meals, because that’s what all the farms are growing and that’s what’s seasonal this week. And only in paleo would we have been able to do that. Would we have been able to find a receptive enough audience to grow as a small business .and for that, I am very grateful.
Diane Sanfilippo: I think sticking to your guns on that has been something that I definitely have a lot of respect for, because I’ve seen and experienced a lot of paleo meal businesses, and I would never single anyone out and put them down for their choice to run things the way they run it; it’s so hard to run these businesses.
Pete Servold: It’s so hard, yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: But I do think that you’ve added a level of; well, a level of complexity in the sense that you’re making it seasonally and you’re not willing to say, there will always be broccoli on the menu, there will always be this on the menu. But also, I think a smart business decision because you know that you can’t commit to that because the season and the farm will dictate what that is. So it is also a really good business decision because it helps to; I know people talk about the prices, but it’s like, this is local, organic sustainably raised food. It actually keeps the prices down to eat what’s seasonal and not try and eat broccoli or whatever it is all year round just because you feel like you want it. It’s going to cost more if it’s not in season.
Pete Servold: Right, exactly.
Diane Sanfilippo: I think that’s a really; it’s just a very high level of integrity, and I commend you guys for that. I’m proud of you guys, and I’m impressed by you, and I’m proud to call you guys my friends.
Pete Servold: Well, likewise, and likewise, and likewise. {laughs} You’re awesome, and thank you very much.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Alright, cool. So I do think at some point we’ll grab your awesome wife, Sarah. She and I are super similar when it comes to personalities which is why I think we all get along so well.
Pete Servold: Yeah, it’s great.
Diane Sanfilippo: But I think we will grab her and have at least the 3 of us do an episode over on Build a Badass Business some time. So for those of you guys who are curious a little bit more about some of the behind the scenes or some of the challenges and struggles as well as successes of the business itself make sure you hop over to the Build a Badass Business podcast and subscribe to that because we’ll try and get that episode going within the next few weeks at some point.
Pete Servold: Yeah, so they should listen to the brains of the operation, that’s for sure, to get something out of it.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} That’s hilarious. Anything else you want to tell people? Obviously they can find you at PetesPaleo.com.
Pete Servold: Yeah, I just want to say lastly that the meals that we’ve just made recently, we started adding bone broth and animal fat into the actual vegetables when we cook them, just exactly like what we’re talking about. So we’re using a lot less of avocado oil and coconut oil and a lot more animal products in the actual food for the actual meal items. Don’t worry; if you get the vegetarian stuff, we’re not mixing that together. But it’s just going to add another layer of mouth feel and sexiness to the food, but also another layer of nutrition.
Diane Sanfilippo: Love it.
Pete Servold: I’m very excited about it.
Diane Sanfilippo: Awesome. Thank you so much.
Pete Servold: Thank you.
Diane Sanfilippo: Alright guys, that’s it for this week. You can find me, Diane, at http://dianesanfilippo.com. Don’t forget, you can find Liz at https://realfoodliz.com/.make sure you sign up for email updates and you will get goodies and information that you don’t find anywhere else, not even here on the podcast. While you’re on the internet, leave us a review in iTunes. We’ll see you next week.
