Chef Christina Pirello - Beating Terminal Leukemia Through Diet and Lifestyle, and Building the Christina Cooks Brand

On the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast this week I have chef Christina Pirello of Christina Cooks. After already losing her mother to cancer, Christina was diagnosed with terminal leukemia in her mid-20’s. Not wanting to undergo traditional treatment for cancer, she ultimately changed her diet and lifestyle, and her cancer went into remission. She’s been cancer-free for more than 35 years now.

Christina wanted to share what she’d learned about food and cooking, and Christina Cooks was born. She started a cooking show on PBS (and won an Emmy in her first season), and has published eight cookbooks. While Christina maintains a vegan diet, she isn’t preachy about it.

We talked about her early days working in a professional kitchen, her journey to wellness, and how she built and grew the Christina Cooks brand.
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Christina Pirello
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Christina’s Instagram https://www.instagram.com/christinacooks/
Christina’s Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Christina-Cooks-128390873854198/
Christina’s Twitter https://twitter.com/christinacooks
Christina’s YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBXoC4tWh8HHUJr7SuPm1hA
The Christina Cooks Website https://www.christinacooks.com/

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Transcript

Chris Spear: 0:06

Welcome to the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. I'm your host Chris Spear. On the show, I have conversations with culinary entrepreneurs and people in the food and beverage industry who took a different route. They're caterers research chefs, personal chefs, cookbook authors, food truckers, farmers, cottage bakers and all sorts of culinary renegades. I myself fall into the personal chef category as I started my personal chef business perfect little bites 10 years ago. And while I started working in kitchens in the early 90s, I've literally never worked in a restaurant unless you count Burger King. On the show this week, I have chef Christina Pirello of Christina Cooks. After losing her mother to cancer, Christina was diagnosed with terminal leukemia in her mid 20s. Not wanting to undergo traditional treatment for cancer, she ultimately changed her diet and lifestyle, and her cancer went into remission. She's been cancer free for more than 35 years now. Christina wanted to share what she learned about food and cooking, and Christina Cooks was born. She started her cooking show on PBS and won an Emmy in her first season, and has since published eight cookbooks as well. And while Christina maintains a vegan diet, she isn't preachy about it. We talked about her early days working in a professional kitchen, her journey to wellness and how she built and grew that Christina Cooks brand. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you love it, please consider subscribing on whatever platform you listen on. And if you're on Apple podcasts, please rate and review the show. It really means a lot. Thanks so much for listening, and have a great week. Hey, Christina, how's it going? Thanks for coming on the show.

Christina Pirello: 3:07

Thanks for having me. It's I'm excited to be here. I love the idea of what you're doing. I think it's great.

Chris Spear: 3:12

I love the idea of what you're doing. And I was just saying before we started rolling here how I feel like it was like 15 years ago, when I was living in Pennsylvania. I remember seeing you on TV and watching your show. And my wife and I were vegetarians at the time we have transitioned away. We're not full vegetarians, but that's such a big part of like our how we eat at home. But remember, you know, watching your show and trying to pick up some tips, tricks and recipes, because I was relatively new to it at the time.

Christina Pirello: 3:38

Yeah, it's been the show has actually been on the air for 22 years now. I know. I keep thinking Wait, what? And then I go back and watch one of the old shows my god Oh, yes, definitely good 20 years, because my style has changed some and I'm better at it. Which you know, I remember my very first season on the air, one of my producers at the time, who is no longer a producer, thank God would come in and put his hands on the counter after every take and go, well, that sucked. And I'd be like, what, like, what do I do with that information? You know, and then I would watch the dailies at the end. And I'd say to my director, like, how come I'm never looking at the right camera? And he'd say, don't you know, look at the one with the light and I'm like, don't they all have lights? It was I was so like, such a novice and now you know, a nice to throw up before every take. I'm not kidding. 543 Hang on, she's throwing up and then so I don't throw up anymore after 22 years. That's a big step for me. But I will tell you that TV is not anything that I ever thought I would do was not that kind of outgoing, gregarious, like I loved being a pastry chef because I was usually alone. I baked from four in the morning till 10 in the morning, went back for dinner service and like you know I went out with my chef friends at the end of the night I would I would never go to a table. If I heard the maitre D walking around saying, you know, where's chef, she's wanted at table nine, I splashed something on my jacket. So like, there, it was really, I was not outgoing. So I started, oh, gosh, my family is Irish and Italian. And the Italian side, of course, is where the food comes from. Italians are either having breakfast and talking about lunch or having lunch and talking about dinner, you know, and it's, it's a, I like to think of it as a healthy obsession. Because we're always thinking about the pleasure of the next meal. It's not so much. Oh, God, I have to cook dinner as Oh, God, I get to cook dinner, you know, so, and now I spend a lot of time in Italy working. So it's it's wonderful that I grew up in that household. And because we were Italian and Irish, we were not. Well, I was but the group in general was not a shy group. There were big political discussions at dinner and active and yelling, and you know, you had to yell to be heard. So I was never heard because I wasn't a yeller. But I noticed in the kitchen that the women were never yelling, there was singing and drinking wine and telling stories and great smells and the food. And I thought at a very young age, yeah, this is this is it. This is where this is where I want to be. This is where I want to spend my life. I want to do this. And when I was four, my father was who was a woodworker, as well, as a butcher, asked me what I wanted for my birthday. And I told him, I wanted a stool. So I could reach the calendar and help my mother in the kitchen and he made this little wooden stool. And he had painted little animals on it and little vegetables, and it was really cute. I don't know where it is, but so I would climb up and my mother would have me, you know, roll meatballs, or, you know, I don't know, clean the vegetables in the sink or something. But she was always she did engage me in a way that a lot of parents, I don't know if they do, or it's it's certainly a hassle. Certainly I was slower than she probably wanted me to be or whatever. But she really took the patients instead of my aunts and my grandmother and you know, growing up, we would come home from school and my mother would get home from work around four. So we would go upstairs to my Nana's and growing up I thought everyone came home to an after school snack of fresh baked Italian bread and either beans or soup or like something like that to eat. I didn't. Until I went to a friend's house. I didn't realize they were like, well, the Twinkies are in the cabinet. I'd be like the Twinkies. No, don't you have like a snack? You know? So we were we were very food driven as a family. And we had a huge garden, my Italian grandfather had a huge garden. And the irony was my mother, who was a hippies, hippie, and a wonderful cook, was like into an Wigmore when she started on the Rodale brothers and what's all at once this thing called organic, but she served all of that to us. She sat at the head of the table every night with a cigarette, a cup of coffee, or whatever chocolate was in the house. Like she would eat pizza or pasta, but like not, you know, we had to eat the brussel sprouts that they grew in the garden. We eat the zucchini, we had to eat the, but she would eat whatever she chose. She had like this arrogance of knowledge. You know what I mean? Like she knew all this stuff, and did none of it. Interesting. recycled. Yeah, it was so weird. We recycled before people recycled. We would drive for miles with tied up newspapers and crushed cans and whatever. So she was kind of ahead of her time. But I don't I don't know. I don't know why she never did it. So when. So when I turned 16. I said to my father, who was the butcher at a big hotel. I'm like, I would like to work in the kitchen. And he said, Yep, girls don't do that. And like me, girls don't do that. And he goes, they just say don't do it. It's sorry. And I said, Well, you should try. You're the butcher. So he comes home a few days later and says, I got you a job in the coffee shop. And I'm thinking maybe I'm making cookies. I was the waitress. I lasted two days, because I just I'm not a waitress. I can't. I'm not graceful in that way. I just spilled coffee down a patron. I mean, it was terrible. And finally the manager said to me, You have to go to the kitchen. Just Just go to the kitchen. And I think how would have done it two days ago. So I ended up in the kitchen. And the chef there said so I understand you're a terrible waitress. I said, Yeah. He said, All right. Well, I'm stuck with you because we can't get rid of it because your father is the butcher. So for the first three months, I was allowed to wash vegetables. That's it all I did 12 hours a day. The second three months I diced onions. All day dice are halfmoon all day, the third, three months I shredded cabbage for coleslaw and julienned carrots for coleslaw because it was coleslaw on every table during lunch of this hotel. The fourth three months, he came to me and he said, so you're the vegetarian, right? And I said, Yeah. He said, Do you really want this job? I said, I do. He said, so for the next three months, you're going to clean the insides out of roasting chickens. And we didn't use gloves back then. So I did it. I wanted the job so badly. I did it. Like, I don't care. I'm doing it. At the end of the three months, he said to me, Don't ever leave my side. And he taught me everything he took me from the beginning, grandma j sauce, get everything right through to standing next to him on the line watching him cook. And knowing full well I would never cook half the things that you know, he was cooking. But I learned how to make sauces. All the mother saw, like everything. And then I went to pastry to try it out, fell in love studied pastry. And as a vegetarian, it was easier to you know, I was still eating dairy at the time. So it wasn't as troublesome as working in a kitchen where I had to cook meat or fry fish or, you know, whatever. And my first, you know, I know chefs have the reputation that they have. But my first chef was amazing. And it took a while for me for me to figure out why he was always so happy. But he knew he wasn't a clipboard chef. He stood at his station and he cooked and then he would move he would turn move to the past, put the food out, come back, you know, like he never left, like within a four foot area. And above him on the metal shelf on the stove was a big bowl of ice and a cup measure of I thought water. And I thought was smart guy. It's hot in here and stays hydrated. So I was working next to him one and he got called away and I thought screw this. I'm having some of his water and it was vodka. Oh. So now I knew I was so relaxed all the time. Just take

Chris Spear: 12:05

that edge off.

Christina Pirello: 12:07

Yeah, exactly. So um, so that was how I came into the like actual kitchen life after cooking my whole life. And certainly home cooking is very different than, you know, kitchen cooking, but I never fell out of love with it. You know, and kitchens, you know, kitchens were rough. When I when I started, girls were not that welcome. And kitchens were rough. I often say I knew that I was at work because somebody's hand was on my ass. And I knew I was not at work because there were no hands on my ass. But you kind of either toughened up or quit it, we didn't, it wasn't like now where you could, you know, go to somebody and say, Hey, Chef was inappropriate or whatever. And I think I'm not excusing them by any means, you know, everyone should be treated equally and with justice. But it's such a hard job. And it's so hot and so sweaty, and you're so close to each other. I think that there's an intimacy that comes whether you like it or not, you know what I mean? And you have to kind of step to it and defend yourself in order to survive. And that's men or women. Now, if you're not, I always say to my students at culinary school, if you're not excited by every garlic code that comes across your cutting board. And if you don't think you can step up to defend yourself, you should go sell shoes, because this is not the job for you.

Chris Spear: 13:29

Well, and you also talked about this like extended period of prep time, what I've seen is like today, you bring in a cook, who has like no experience and you know, a week into just doing basic prep, they feel slighted that they're not working the line, like they've come in and cut onions and carrots. And six days later, it's like, oh, when do I get to do that? It's like,

Christina Pirello: 13:49

Wait, am I exactly right?

Chris Spear: 13:51

You just got here. I mean, I'm not one who feels like you have to quote unquote, pay the dues for an exorbitant amount of time. But it seems like everyone, well, not everyone, but so many people want it like overnight. And I think there's a middle ground.

Christina Pirello: 14:05

And I also think that's celebrity chef, which is a weird phrase that we use now really contributed to that a lot. You know, you're going to go cut carries for four days, and you're going to be a star and it's like wood doesn't really work that way. You know, you work really, really hard. You know, and and, you know, even people like Julia Child who never worked in a commercial kitchen in her entire life and was the pioneer for all of us, particularly women who do what we do in a kitchen or on TV or whatever. You know, it's kind of like you know, you look at Julia and she was amazing because as she came into sort of popularity, Betty Friedan was also coming into popularity telling women to get out of the kitchen break the chains get out, and Julia actually stood up to her saying, cooking is not about being a housewife. Cooking is not is an art. It's a life skill. It's, it's the it's the skill of the intellect. And she was amazing to watch and to listen to. So, you know, she made a big difference for women in and out of commercial kitchens, even though she never actually worked in a restaurant.

Chris Spear: 15:14

Yeah. So and then you lost your mom of cancer when she was like in her mid 40s, right.

Christina Pirello: 15:21

49 she, my mother, my mother looked like a 40 pinup girl, even after having four kids and she was very committed to fitness. I grew up coming downstairs to breakfast before school to the little black and white TV in our house with Jacqueline lane. I grew up coming down the stairs to 5432 I got moms at it again. And so when I got older, I was also an athlete and in college, I, my first year in college, I worked for Richard Simmons health clubs teaching exercise. And my mother used to come to my classes. And you know, one day she said to me, I don't know you and your stretching, I pulled something in my butt. And you know, many, many doctor visits later, they discovered she had colon cancer at 47. And we knew I knew nothing. I mean, you know, we, we were in Italian, Irish family, I don't know anything about health or wellness or whatever I exercise to like that was it. So she went through all the conventional treatments. And at the end of two years, you know, passed away. She was about five, eight, and weighed about 67 pounds when she passed away. And I remember thinking and I'm not a medical basher, I just remember standing by her bed at 25 thinking, Man, if I ever get sick, I'm not doing this. I don't know what I'll do. But if I ever get sick, I can't, I can't I can't do that. I was too afraid of it. It was terrifying to watch what she went through. So after my mother passed away, I decided to move to Philadelphia, from Florida where my dad was, it was still living. And my brother was in Philly. So I was like, Well, I'm just, you know, come up to Philly, new life, new whatever. And six months later, I get diagnosed with what would be considered stage for leukemia, although I don't stage leukemia. And I remember sitting in the doctor's office thinking, are you kidding? Like, are you kidding? Like, I just Are you kidding? And I remember thinking it was so long ago that it's really hard to kind of go back to that girl. But I remember thinking as I was in the elevator, leaving his office that if I could just memorize the pattern of the carpet in the elevator, I wouldn't start screaming and have a total meltdown of panic. And it was a gray carpet with Maroon floor delay. And I remember stepping outside into the sunlight. It was a beautiful day and thinking people are just going about their lives. And I've just been told mines over in six months, like I'm out of here, before I'm even 26 years old. How, how does this work? So I went home to my upline, they wanted me to go immediately to the hospital and start treatments. And I said, Well, what are the chances and they said, well, you're terminal. And they kept saying terminal, Terminal Terminal. And finally, I'm so frustrated. I'm like, that's a big building at the airport. What do we do? And they said, we'll try everything we can. And I thought oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not. No, I'm not spending whatever time I have left sick and bald like my mother, I'm not doing it. I don't want to lose my hair. I don't want to be sick. I'm afraid of needles. No. So they agreed to let me go home and think about it. And I sat in my apartment for 24 hours, and thought, I'm just gonna move back to Italy. When I was 21, I had gone to Italy with my younger brother as a chaperone of his high school band. He came home and I stayed for a year. And I said, I'll just go back. It was wonderful. And when I'm dead, I'm dead. You know, they'll always remember me as young, whatever, you know, you're stupid at that age, I don't know. And I went back to work. I was working as an illustrator at the time and decided because I was decided to be out of food. I wasn't strong. I just couldn't hold up during a shift. So I just worked as an illustrator. And a friend of mine who worked with me said you know, you should meet this guy. He eats seaweed and says it cures cancer. And I thought wow.

Chris Spear: 19:12

Awesome. Sure, why not?

Christina Pirello: 19:15

And he said no, no, you got to meet him. He's really smart. And I was like, well, not leaving for a couple of weeks. So what what am I got to lose? So I meet Robert perello who obviously it worked out and he starts telling me about macrobiotics and food and you know you can change your blood quality with food. And I'm thinking man, somebody should tell these five grim oncologists who are telling me I'm out of here are you and he's like you should you should try it and I thought well, I don't really care what I eat right now cuz I'm dying. So you're at Brown rice and not eat pizza fine, only brown rice. So he took me shopping at a co op in the city which was like stepping from 1983 into 1968 you know hairy legs flowing windy and cotton skirts and I'm buying things like turnips and rutabagas that I thought you said to horses. I know I seaweed, something called me so and I'm thinking, oh my god, what am I doing? We get back to my little apartment on Pine Street and my husband open husband to be opens my pantry and said, Yeah, all this has to go sugar, cocoa powder. All this has to go and I'm thinking, but he kidding, this is like my my life. So I started cooking really half assed. I mean, I thought the food was boring. I, you know, I had no taste it was you know, I just ate because that's what I supposed to do. I went back to get my blood monitored. And two months after I started, stopped eating sugar and started eating whole food. I was in remission

Chris Spear: 20:42

in just two months.

Christina Pirello: 20:43

And just two months. Now, I didn't stay there. I kind of went in and out of remission over the next nine months. But when they gave me that sort of inspiration of urine remission, we don't know why I thought, yeah, I'm learning how to cook this food. That's it. I'm learning this because this might be my only shot. And for about nine months, I went in and out of remission and then started to get progressively better. And they started calling my condition spontaneous regression. I was like, Okay. And then 14 months after I was diagnosed, they I went for my bloodwork. And I remember the technician kept coming out and taking more blood. And I thought to myself, either something's really wrong again, or we're feeding every vampire in the area, I don't know. And she said, the doctors need to see you. And I went in and he said, You know, you're terribly anemic. And I said, Well, in light of everything else, shouldn't we be happier about this? And he said, Well, we can't seem to find any leukemic cells, and we don't know what's going on with you. So we want to monitor you closely. And I said, Okay, and so I finally told him, I said, you need to know I'm doing this food thing. And here's what it is. And they were like, yeah, that's nothing to do with anything that's happening to you. And I said, Yeah, but I'm not taking any treatments. I'm not I'm so what do you think this is? And they said, it's called spontaneous regression. It won't last I was like, Okay. But I had no leukemic cells, and that was 30, almost 35 years ago.

Chris Spear: 22:09

That's amazing. And, like, it's just so disappointing that mainstream health care professionals don't want to give any credibility to this at all.

Christina Pirello: 22:19

35 years ago, they're better now, although I would not go so far as to say, you'll find an armies worth of doctors saying you can cure yourself with food. We have many more now on board saying you can prevent disease. But when it comes to curative, there's not that many who are like really on board yet. There's a few and they're wonderful, but it's a slow process. And it's actually I don't want to say it's not their fault, because they could be proactive, but they don't really study nutrition in the way that nutrition is presented in a holistic manner. Like, once I got better, I thought, Oh, yeah, I got to figure out, like, why did I get better? Like, I don't understand this. So I quit my very lucrative job as an illustrator, and went to work for $7 an hour in a natural food store cooking foods for a lunch counter, broccoli, and tofu, tempeh and whatever. And the customers kept asking me, so why did you put this with this? Is that supposed to be better for my health? And I'm thinking, I don't know. I don't know. So there's the recipe on the wall. So I went to school and studied, I got my master's in nutrition, I went to acupuncture school school, although I don't put needles in anybody. I but I wanted to study anatomy from that perspective. I studied Ayurveda, I studied Chinese medicine, I sat with anybody who would, you know, sort of mentor me to understand the impact of food on wellness and realized that maybe 28, that my life's work is this, you know, helping people to figure out whether you're vegan or not vegan is actually irrelevant to me, I'm not very good vegan in that way. I think that giving people information that helps them make the best choices for themselves, will naturally lead them more toward vegetables and grains and beans, and away from factory farmed animals. So it's more of a allows to kind of meditative approach than a finger shaking, you know, you're all in or get out. Like, I have friends who are vegans that I love to death. But when you said earlier, we were vegetarian, they would have said, this is not the interview for us. And I just believe that, I think that if we make everybody welcome at the table, no pun intended, then everybody's welcome at the table. And that's how you learn. That's how you discover, you know, so for me, being a V i often try not to use the V word because it sets you up immediately for prejudice.

Chris Spear: 24:57

Well, it sounds like you weren't necessarily the healthy As vegetarian, and we found that as well, you know, it's like, why I found that, you know, a chicken breast from pastured raised chicken was going to be more healthy for me to eat than a processed Morningstar veggie burger like I just health wise it wasn't working out for me. So, you know, we found balance. So now when we eat meat, it's coming from as much as we can, you know, a local farm and buy organics and write stuff and trying to stay away from processed foods. But we still enjoy eating meat and dairy. But being having vegetarian cuisine, and quite often vegan, that's still a big chunk of our diet, but we're not all or nothing,

Christina Pirello: 25:38

right. And also, I feel like if more people you know, started moving toward that way of eating, then you're naturally going to eat more vegetables. And if we were farming animals in that way, there wouldn't be the impact on human health and on the planet that we're seeing as a result of factory farming, because everybody has to have a 49 pound steak on their plate. Do I think there's good news about animal food for our wellness? Not that I've seen, but I do see people who thrive on it. So it's not for I feel like it's not for me to judge. I feel like I learned from a very wise Asian teacher who whose expertise was you would come to him when you had a life threatening condition. And Michio Kushi would counsel you on what to eat. And he would go through this big long booklet and you know, eat this and this and don't eat that, you know, people would either do it or not. And they would pay him and they'd go and I remember a particular very tough case, I was working with him to learn. And so I was taking notes and every page that he turned in the booklet this woman was like, No, I can't do that. No, no, no, no, that's not gonna happen. Every single thing he suggested, I mean, she was stage four liver cancer. This was do or die, pizza or death. What are you going to do? So and I'm getting frustrated, because I knew the impact that it had on me, I knew that she could, she may not survive, but she could transform her health so that the time she had left was more comfortable. So she leaves and I am ballistic. And and Michelle said to me at one point while you are Italian, can you please tell me what's wrong? And so I told him, I can't believe this. And he said to me, yes, but answer this. I always felt like grasshopper in that bag, kung fu show. He's like telling me this. Did I do my job? Yes. Did I give her the information she requested? Yes. Is it my job to make sure she does it? No, don't be attached to the outcome, just do your job. And so I learned that a long time ago. I mean, I think we have to be a little attached to the outcome. Now because it's planetary, you know, we're at a tipping point, we either start eating less factory farmed animals, or we're screwed, you know, our kids are not going to see a lake, we're going to show them a photo. See that thing that's on fire over there that used to be this lake. So I think we're kind of at a place where we have to let go of our cowboy culture of, you know, I gotta have a huge rack of ribs and half a cow and whatever, and start taking vegetarian cuisine more seriously in terms of the planet. And in terms of human health. We're also in crisis. I was watching an interview with a doctor from Tufts University cardiologist who said, one of the reasons that the pandemic is so devastating to Americans is that 77% of us are metabolically unfit to fight disease. And I thought that was terrifying was much higher than I thought. So for me, it's also about human wellness, you know, like, certainly have compassion for animals as a vegan, you can't not have it. But my compassion is primarily for humans and the suffering that we go through, because of the choices we make, not because of something that's been imposed on us, except conditioning and advertising. But, you know, you watch TV at night, and every ad is for either diabetes, psoriasis, you know, a fib and you think food, food, food, food, food. So for me that that's kind of the the job the mission for me.

Chris Spear: 29:17

Yeah, we talk about that a lot at home. My wife used to be a chef, she went back to school, so she's a diet. She's a dietician, a registered dietitian, and certified diabetes educator. And as of last week, she just completed her Master's in Public Health. Yeah, so you know, we've always have these conversations at home, but especially this past year with COVID, and looking at the percentage of people who are diabetic or have really bad, uncontrolled diabetes and the obesity and all that, you know, I think it's hard because recent in recent years, I feel like people are saying, stop talking about Wait, stop talking about fat shaming. It's like we're we're not doing that. But there is a certain point where someone is not healthy and it should be addressed. Like if someone's 600. Now, if someone's 600 pounds, that doesn't seem like that's a good thing, like, you might need to work on that, right?

Christina Pirello: 30:13

But it's not, it's not about fat shaming, fat shaming is, it's a Hollywood thing, you know, you're not assigned zero. So therefore, you can't walk the red carpet, a designer won't dress you, you know, the designer wouldn't make clothing for Melissa McCarthy. So she had to start her own line of fashion or whatever. Like, that's fat shaming. But when somebody knees ankles, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease forms, as the result of the choices you're making, that have created the body that you're living in, you got to look at it with reality. And you got to say, maybe I should work on this a little. It's not about becoming a size zero, you know, and social media, the sewer of our lives at this moment, although I use it for business, I was reading something not too long ago about the singer lizelle. She started the new year and did a 10 day cleanse, because she'd been partying or whatever I don't know much about her music is great. But you know, I don't I don't really, I'm not a celebrity obsessed person. So I have no idea. And she was getting killed apparently on social media because she's heavy. And now she was betraying all these fat girls and saying it's not okay to be fat anymore. She didn't say a thing about weight. Because I found her post. I'm like, let me go see what and all she said was had been partying too much. I'm doing a 10 day cleanse. She didn't say I'm trying to lose weight. She didn't say I want to change my body. But I think and this is just me, I think it's because we do know, we do know, it's not healthy to be that big. And we're not saying that if you're big, you are stupid and lazy. We're saying somewhere, something went off the rails, and maybe we should look at getting it back on the rails a little. I always say like, at what point do you say, I'm done? I can't fight this anymore. Is it? 20 pounds is 40 pounds is 100 pounds. At some point, you know, you put your clothes on and go, Oh, maybe I shouldn't have had that. Whatever. And you stop for a bit, right?

Chris Spear: 32:06

Yeah, I talked about this on the podcast this past year. So in February, I was like 287. And now I'm down to 250. Right. But like, for me, one of the moments was we went on vacation, we went to Disney and I went on one of the rides and they could not pull the lap bar down on me and I and they had to like kick me off the ride, right, which is embarrassing. But then I hadn't weighed myself in a while and you get home and you're like, this is just it's not good and had a physical and I was pre diabetic, my sugar was too high. My dad had diabetes, my grandmother had it. We know that's not good. My wife's a certified diabetes educator, right. And I'm like, I just need to change, like, I'm gonna start working out and I'm going to start eating better. And you know, I eventually lost over 35 pounds, and I've been able to keep it off. And I still have some ways to go. But for me, it was just like, I wasn't feeling physically good. It wasn't that I looked in the mirror and thought, you know, I don't look good. Like, the stats are telling me like, I'm in danger of having a medical condition that is going to be very dangerous to me, especially at a time where people are dying of COVID of diabetes. I mean, that definitely was weighing on my mind.

Christina Pirello: 33:14

Right? So really sure, where all that went off the rails that suddenly it's like, you know, we're fat shaming people if you're trying to give advice, but I think we have to find, I mean, look, there's certainly an incredible level of cruelty around the way anybody looks, if they're different, whether they're happy, whether they're short, whether they're whether they have red hair, I mean, I got a I got a message on social media about a week ago, it said, I'm telling this because I love you as a personality on TV. And I thought, here we go. And it was very long. I'll keep it very short. And it basically said that if I want to be successful, I have to choose any other hair color except red, because it is the least popular hair color in our culture. And then in perenne said, meaning no one likes you. You're welcome. Wow, wow. Like what do I do with that? I'm a redhead, redhead my whole life. But it's kind of like, you don't want to take asking someone to change something that they can change, like their weight to that kind of level. No one likes you because you're heavy. Yeah. But it has to be more of let's talk about, you know, if this is where you want to be, then that's your choice, although it does, you know, impact all of our health care. But if this is your choice, it's your choice. So I kind of leave it to people don't don't don't ask me if you don't want to know like if you want to know I'll tell you, but I will never offer advice. And mostly because being in public, you know, in the public. You get way more advice than you would ever want. So and most of it not fun. Shall we say? So I get it. But we have to find a way to, to become healthier as a collective population. And not just because of COVID. But in general, we can't go on like this. I mean, the only people that are thriving in the modern American culture are pharmaceutical companies. I mean, they've never been happier.

Chris Spear: 35:21

So how did you get into Christina cooks, you know, becoming this multimedia kind of food personality, right? Where you've got a TV show and cookbooks? How and when did you start that?

Christina Pirello: 35:34

Well, I was teaching a while after I finished my studies, although I still study but when I finished my sort of formal studies, I went to my Japanese teacher and said, like, what do I do now I have all this information in my head. And he said, You should teach cooking. And I was like, a great, because I'm a chef, and I'm a girl, I should go teach cooking. But it occurred to me after I argued with him that I could talk to you for four hours about what a carrot does. And then you leave, and you have no idea what to do with that carrot. What did I give you really, but nothing useless information. But if as I'm talking to you about what a carrot does, I teach you how to cook a carrot. Maybe I've done something. So I became a cooking teacher, we started in my kitchen. No, it was not this kitchen. 1987 ish, we had a loft that we rented for people became eight people, because it was kind of like word of mouth, you know, the food was good. And she's kind of funny. So she actually makes the joke about being a vegan before you get to make the joke. So it was kind of like this entertaining thing they came to and got lunch for 20 bucks. And then it grew and grew. And then we moved into the house we currently live in where my kitchen is 14 by 21. So I would see 25 people uncomfortably in the kitchen. Finally they spread into the living room into the dining room. You know, we had what we called the cheap seats. We had to rent a space because we were getting 50 6070 people on a Saturday and I was hiring people to come help me cook because there's like a catering job every week. And then after the show, The class was over, we would come back my assistants and I would sit in front of the TV and watch PBS and watch all these chefs. And I'd go Yeah, we could veganized that, let's let's make this recipe. Let's do that. And my husband walked in one day who is in advertising and said, you shouldn't do this on TV. You should go on PBS and do this. I'm like, yeah, sure, make it happen. And then I'll do it. Two years later, he raised the money 1998, we went on the air. eating foods was our first sponsor, God bless them, they saw the vision and agreed with it. And we actually met with the Discovery Channel, as well. And they were wonderful. They were like, this is a great idea. We'll just gonna need you to throw a chicken breast in here. We're there to make the food familiar for Americans. And I was like, No, no, that's you're missing the point. The point is, you don't need any of that. That's why it didn't work for them. And then I was the Food Network was also just sort of starting. And I was I was at an event with Japan and Emerald, ironically, and Emerald was saying you should go to the Food Network. It's going to be great. You'll make a ton of money. You'll open a restaurant and like I don't want to open a restaurant. I've worked in restaurants. No, no, no, no, you'll open a restaurant and like, no. Then I'm sitting there next to Shaka pan who was like talking to melted butter. He's so lovely. And he said to me, You don't want to go to the Food Network. You want to come to PBS, you own your content, you decide what you're cooking. As long as the production value is good. You'll never regret it. Okay, so I listened to Jacques, obviously, and I don't regret being on public television ever. I love public television, the hard thing is you have to raise all of your production money. They don't help you in any way. They just put it out there. And as long as you meet the production value levels, you know, you're on it, you're in business, like they don't cancel you if your ratings are low. It's as long as you have good content. And it's educational, which was important to us. This was not about I'm going to show you how to saute an onion. I'm going to show you why you subterranean onion. Like for me it was about teaching. So we started doing it. And the very first year we went on the air we were so weird. Like we were so weird. We were cooking tofu and dry daikon and dried mushrooms. And I think people were watching and going, what the hell is she doing? And my producers decided to submit the show for me. And I'm like, Oh, you gotta give me so we get nominated

Chris Spear: 39:32

in your first year.

Christina Pirello: 39:33

Yeah, my very first year when I was terrible. I like didn't even know what camera to look at. So I'm like, you guys are nuts. But okay, so we go and we went for outstanding achievement for hosts and I'm thinking it's because we were a freak show. Like they didn't know what I was doing. So we won. And you know, and and it's become easier to do TV certainly now for me, and it's still the biggest classroom in the world.

Chris Spear: 39:59

So And that's a whole weird thing like, yeah, I guess Did you just like teach yourself how to be a, quote unquote, personality, I mean, because like, as I've got this podcast now, like, I went to school for culinary, it's literally the only thing I've ever studied and people are like, you should start a podcast. Sure. I'm only in the, this is gonna be in season two, listening to the first episodes, I'm like, ah, and I had some really amazing guests. And the production quality was horrible. I didn't know how to interview any of it. And it's cringe worthy listening to some of that stuff. But I feel like it's getting better and you come into your own you just the repetition of it.

Christina Pirello: 40:39

And for me, I you know, I, I somehow went from being someone who wouldn't even return something to a store, to standing in front of a room of 20 people and teaching cooking in a way that they found engaging, because I get bored easily. So if some if I'm listening to someone lecture, they need to be engaging, or I'm out, you know, so I knew. And I also knew the subject matter invited jokes, so we may as well make fun of ourselves before anybody even does. So I became sort of like this self deprecating funny, and I guess I'm, I don't know, naturally have good timing or whatever. And the first season, I look back at those shows, because create TV will run them. And I think we have to get those off the air, we have to get those off the air. First of all, I didn't know you could wear your hair naturally. So they would tease it up and bring like the top up, like I was going to the prom. And I would think I hate this but and I would say something to my husband because you can't say anything. I'm like, Can I get fired? And he's like, Well, no, it's your show. But so and I didn't know, I didn't know how to let use a mic. I didn't know. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was growing. It was growth. And it's funny, because this season that's on the air now. We film at the culinary school where I teach. And it was very new crew very small. I've used them for three seasons now. And they're like family. And these guys are totally into it. And they're funny. And we do these like silly, sticky bits on the show now like there's a show coming up. We just watched it and editing and I thought I cannot believe PBS is gonna let me do this. It's so silly. I give my chef something my backstage chef something I said you need to rinse these noodles for me it goes okay, I'll go downstairs and does that thing where you know, you walk behind the counter and the guise of public television are like oh my god, we're so glad to see that still works. It's so funny. And you know we'd so there and my director, who's 52 predive diabetic cholesterol through the roof triglycerides that were nuclear said, you know what he called? We were in Rome, called us and like, why is Scotty calling us in and they also like joked about the food we go to while while while we had lunch kind of thing, but they always ate the food. So he called us in Rome and said My wife has stage one colon cancer, you have to help us. Like, okay, it's a big change. I know. They did adopted it. She's fine. It's been a year and a half. She just got her first scan. Totally fine. Scotty has lost 60 pounds looks like a teenager. His cholesterol is normal as blood pressure's low, he has no pre diabetes. He's like a new man. He literally looks like a teenager. His kids are like everybody's so into this new thing for them. So you know, that kind of thing is really gratifying. And I said nothing. Except here's what I would do. If I were in your shoes. Here's exactly what I would do. And they were like, okay, we're doing it. Okay. And look, fear is a great motivator. They say the word cancer or diabetes and suddenly you're into change. Okay, I'm in. I say why wait, but I waited. I didn't you know, I went from healthy food at home to a diet of snicker bars and Diet Dr. Pepper and Oreos because they were vegan.

Chris Spear: 43:58

So how do you keep creating new recipes? I mean, the cookbooks the putting them out on the internet the show like, at some point do you feel exhausted trying to come up with something new?

Christina Pirello: 44:11

This is gonna sound very cheesy, but no, I I love I love what I do. I am one of those people who's excited by every garlic clove that appears on my cutting board. I love the collaborative art of working together with my crew. I love the solitude of writing at the same time. So you know, it's like I love my crew. I love working with them and I could never do this without them without my husband without my unit manager who's been with me for 22 years. My you know the person who comes in and does makeup. You know what everybody and everybody on our crew. Everybody on our crew is treated exactly the same from the kid who runs for coffee to me. There's no divas. There's no hierarchy. We are all there to serve. The mission of telling the story of you know how food has an impact on your wellness. So I love that. And when it comes to creating, I mean every food magazines, I read other people's cookbooks, I'm always veganizing things like this past weekend, I get a magazine called bake because I am a baker at heart. I feel like maybe a hater cooking is great. But it's like the warm up to the baseball game. It's all about the sweets. And it was an orange brownie cookie, and you know, had eggs and butter. And I'm thinking there's no way I'm going to get this texture. No way. But I'm trying it. In fact, right now there's orange peel candying on my stove, which I'm hoping isn't over cooking. So I may pick up this phone. Because I don't want it to overcook, because I'm going to try them again and make sure I was right. And it's perfect. Okay. So I guess I am obsessed with food in a good way. I worry constantly about the planet, which inspires me to do better. I worry about waste. You know, do you know do we need this? versus Do we want this? Do we recover? We compost? You know, it's what's exhausting is the impact of your choices. Like every choice has an impact. A year ago, we bought a floor lamp for the living room. I was on a I was on a morning talk show. And there was this these two African American women who decided that every woman needs bling in their life. And they had created this floor lamp that was sprayed with gold glitter. It was the most awesome thing I'd ever seen. said My husband has to have that lamp. And he's like, okay, but we have a floor lamp, which we've had since we got married in 1987. So we actually debated as to whether or not what we would do. So we gave that floor lamp to someone else that didn't on the landfill. And we bought the new lamp but and that's just an example. But what I'm saying is, that's what's exhausting to me is the impact of our choices, the creativity of working with my people, creating new recipes, figuring out a new way to cook a carrot is inspiring. And yeah, there's days when I think I just want to order a pizza. But they're very few and far between. We bake bread we and not because of COVID we always did. So no, that was very long. Sorry. But no, I don't find it exhausting at all. I find it consistently inspiring, because I love my work. I love my work. And now I travel with groups to Italy when we can travel. And I show them. You know, these other cultures, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Israel. And often it's through the eyes of the food, you know, who we're eating with? Who's hosting us who's in cooking class? You know, it's it's like, food is it's like the universal way we speak to each other. It's the one thing where we can come together, I think and and maybe create unity again.

Chris Spear: 48:02

Yeah, I love that I talked to so many people about bringing we've had some conversation about conflict resolution around a dinner table, right? I just think less and less people are sitting together and eating and I think, grab a plate of food and you know, have a great conversation around it.

Christina Pirello: 48:18

Yeah, I mean, think about it. It's you know, at the dinner table, you learn everything from sharing to communication to social justice, you know, compromise. You learn it all at the table. And as Michael Pollan famously said, you don't find people standing around the microwave, waiting for the thing to spin around and eat that. But you do find them around the table, not willing to jump up just that, oh, let's have one more glass of wine. Let's, you know, let's, you know, you delay the process so you can stay at that table longer and live and hang with your friends and family longer. And I think one of the worst parts of the pandemic for people is that, I mean, thank God, you're home. Hopefully, you're home with someone you love. I mean, alone is alone. We're not meant to. We're not single sort of creatures. We like to be together, we like to need each other. You know, somebody asked me once, what superpower or what superhero I would be. And I always said the Wonder Twins, because there were two of them. So you always had each other. So you were always together. And they were like, Yeah, but you're together all the time. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, we need each other like we have to realize again, and I think food is a great vehicle that we need each other. We can't go on like this.

Chris Spear: 49:33

Yeah, I have twins at home. They're eight years old. And we said, you know, that's one of the big things because they're not playing with friends. At least they have each other and while they still bicker back and forth, they become much closer since Oh, yeah. In the in the past year for sure.

Christina Pirello: 49:48

Yeah. Yeah. twins are great.

Chris Spear: 49:51

Yeah, they keeps it interesting for sure.

Unknown: 49:54

Who are they identical?

Chris Spear: 49:55

No boy, girl,

Christina Pirello: 49:56

at least tell them apart because otherwise they would mess with you. Yeah.

Chris Spear: 50:01

What are some of your favorite underrepresented? Or what are some things in the pantry or vegetables that you think are great that maybe people aren't eating? You know, there's the classic like healthy foods that I think people have heard of, but what are some of your favorites that maybe don't get enough attention?

Christina Pirello: 50:21

I think I'm happy to see foods like Tampa Bay becoming more popular because everyone associates soy beans with tofu. And do you know, and tofu is great, but I think that 10 Bay, because of its texture is suddenly having a little bit of a Renaissance and, you know, it's like, oh, everyone's talking about tempo, which is kind of cool. I think that burdock isn't is highly undervalued, because it's considered more Asian, and no one really knows it, and you can't really find it. But it's really high and folic acid, it's a good blood purifier. It's strengthening, its warming. I think that daikon, you're starting to see more of and it's such a valuable veggie for us. But otherwise, I think, I think that chefs, one of the wonderful things chefs are doing is bringing great awareness to these more. I don't want to say exotic because exotic implies expensive, but these more diverse, yeah, diverse, interesting ingredients. And because people are more educated because they watch cooking shows because they you know now no words like sushi or, you know, whatever, that they pay attention to ingredients more and and might be more willing to pick up a rutabaga and say, Oh, I saw shepstone so cook this, let me see what it tastes like. So, but there are there you know, I think that vegetables are really experiencing a huge Renaissance too. And things like collard greens and bok choy as opposed to only kale. You know, all leafy greens are starting to see a bigger exposure out there, which is great.

Chris Spear: 51:56

Yeah, I love collard greens, we grow them every year. They're so hearty, they come back if you you know, depending on where you live, and I actually prefer them to kale. I mean, I don't love them raw as much but like I also don't kill them. I think a lot of people think of collards is like boiled for hours, like there's a recipe I found for carmelized miso butter, and you just take some miso and put it in a pan and dry and he didn't the pan for maybe like two or three minutes until it starts to brown. And then just add in rice wine vinegar and mirin to kind of de glaze it and then just hit it with a knob of butter and you know, you could use some kind of vegan butter. And that's it and then just saute the colors really quickly and toss that in there. And it's amazing and it's like the best like five minute collards.

Christina Pirello: 52:40

Yeah, that might be collard greens for tonight. Thanks so much for that.

Chris Spear: 52:43

You're welcome.

Christina Pirello: 52:44

That might be collard greens tonight. Um, yeah, we have a CSA that was we're in a city. So my garden is limited. And usually in the summer. Not there's not 2020 of course, but usually in the summer, we're gone a lot. We're we spend a lot of time in Europe hosting groups. So I don't spend a lot of time in my garden this year. I did and grew more, but our CSA there. You can buy collard greens at any supermarket, but then you get them from your CSA and you just shred them. And you do throw them into a salad because they're small and they're tender. And they're just like, it's like almost like picked lettuce. Great.

Chris Spear: 53:21

I looked at a lot of your recipes, you use brown rice syrup. I've never even tried that. What's the benefit of that.

Christina Pirello: 53:29

So Brown, my syrup has a couple things going for it. One is that it's about 75% still complex sugar, because it's brown rice that's cooked with usually a cultured rice called Koji until it becomes a liquid and then it's fermented. So part of the beauty of it is that it's fermented so it's easier to digest. Part of it is that it's a bit of a complex sugar. So it digests slowly, and you're not an insulin trigger. And the third part of it is that it's a glucose based sweetener. So it's kind of what our brains really want. It has a butterscotch type flavor. It's not quite as sweet as sugar, but I've been using it for years because of that and on its own. Before you get hammered on its own, its glycemic index is not super low. But nobody drinks a cup of brown rice syrup. The minute is in a recipe with carbohydrates or fat. The glycemic index, as we all know is your wife with no changes. So you know, unless you're drinking with a straw, it's a it's a better sweetener than white granulated sugar. So I kind of use that and coconut sugar, which is a low glycemic sweetener, so yeah, but brown rice syrup is, you know, I love it. That's actually what my orange peel was candy and I think we have to pick some up and try that. So good. It's so so good. If you buy a brand called lundeberg, which is from California, be careful baking with it because it's a great product. They're wonderful organics. I'm in California, but they ferment their rice syrup with enzymes. And sometimes the enzymes can interact with baking powder and baking soda and not let them do their job as well. I use a brand called Susanne specialties, which we actually sell in our webstore. It's hard to find in retail because they're a big commercial company they sell to like Clif Bars and westbay, and all those guys. But they make it with Koji this fermented rice. And so it kind of doesn't mess with your leavening.

Chris Spear: 55:29

I've been messing with Koji a little bit. It's really interesting to see more and more chefs doing it and all the interesting things like charcuterie and just you know, it seems to be having a moment right now. And I guess we're gonna keep seeing that for the next few years at least. And hopefully, it'll continue.

Christina Pirello: 55:45

Yeah. And it's funny because we worked our way through me. So and even Naco had its moment and see vegetables, and it's like, oh, this is interesting. This is good. So yeah, I think that a lot of what we consider the exotic ingredients are going to become more familiar in the mainstream sort of vocabulary of food.

Chris Spear: 56:02

Do you have anything new on the horizon?

Christina Pirello: 56:05

Well, we have a new series that just premiered a week ago, all across the country. The next series will start filming in March, I am beginning the process of working on another book. But it's really at the beginning. And it was supposed to be written during the pandemic, I'm going to be home, no events, I'll just write the book. But I have a little vanity project on the side, which is an online vegan bakery that does cookies and treats. And it was always, you know, little, I think, one day a week, no big deal. During the pandemic, it became a hundreds of dozens a week of cookies. So writing went out the window, because all it did was bake, which was fine. I was thrilled. But yeah, writing kinda went out the window. So right now I have to sort of develop a small book for the next series because the current book back to the cutting board, I've kind of used almost all the recipes in it for the last two series. So I'm kinda have to come up with something so that it's kind of there are things brewing in my head, but nothing concrete yet?

Chris Spear: 57:07

Well, that's exciting. And the whole baking thing, I saw that you're selling cookies, and these little cakes, I mean, that's a great pivot, right? Like, can we still use the word pivot? I know everyone's using it. But I mean, yeah, why

Unknown: 57:19

not?

Christina Pirello: 57:20

It's a great, it's another sort of prong. And it's, you know, it's funny, because I was baking, I had this I had help in the little bakery, we were renting a space two blocks from here, and, you know, we'd be together we'd have music on it was collaborative. Now it's very solitary. So it's like, oh,

Unknown: 57:36

man,

Christina Pirello: 57:37

I need I need my pee. I need some pee. I need a little bit of people back.

Chris Spear: 57:41

I'm ready for that. Hopefully, things are getting there. Right. Let's get through winter.

Christina Pirello: 57:48

Yeah, let's get through winter.

Chris Spear: 57:50

Was there anything else you want to share? Before we get out of here today?

Christina Pirello: 57:53

No, just you know, everybody can follow me on social media. Everything is Christina Cox, the website Twitter, Instagram, Facebook is all Christina cooks. There's lots of free recipes on the website. If people want to go try, they don't I'm not gonna sell them books. I mean, we do sell books. But you know, if you want to just dip your toe in the water, go grab a recipe that sounds good to you. And if you don't do anything else in this life, eat more veggies.

Chris Spear: 58:19

Love it. And I always link all that stuff in the show notes. So people will be able to just click and go. Thanks. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Christina Pirello: 58:27

Thanks so much for having me. It was great fun.

Chris Spear: 58:29

To all our listeners. This has been Chris with the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. As always, you can find us at Chefs Without restaurants.com.org and on all social media platforms. Thanks so much, and have a great day. Thanks for listening to the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. And if you're interested in being a guest on the show, or sponsoring the show, please let us know. We can be reached at Chefs Without restaurants@gmail.com Thanks so much.