Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Carry On Friends, the Caribbean American podcast. I am so excited today because I get to talk about food and belly full and things. So welcome, alvia, to the podcast. How are you?

Speaker 2: 0:17

I'm doing good. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me on. I can't wait to talk about my favorite things Caribbean food and Caribbean food Food food, food.

Speaker 1: 0:28

You know, I was just telling my friend earlier this morning that I said, boy, we need to lose some weight because, boy, we're depend on some eating thing all summer. And I say, you know what, when the good food eats, you why just can't resist it. So why don't you tell the community of friends a little bit about who you are Caribbean country, you're present, and I think they have an idea that we're going to talk about food but specifically the work you do, yeah, I'm Alvia Brown.

Speaker 2: 0:54

I am a Guyanese American food blogger. I specialize in Guyanese food, like all the traditional foods, but also I remix it to fit my lifestyle and so I do a little bit of Caribbean paleo type food. We can talk about that, answer any questions you might have. Carrying it.

Speaker 2: 1:09

I know a lot of people don't know what paleo is and why does girl even mess up with these recipes so we can get into that. Like you, I do struggle too. You know food is good, food is love. It makes you feel good. It's from our ancestor, top notch. And so trying to make sure that I make my Guyanese food also make me feel good and like nourishes me and builds me up and not just always make me feel a little bit, you know, not so great and if you don't struggle with things like that, eat your food, don't even try. But if you're like me and some of the things don't make you feel so good, I've sort of got some tweaks to share and talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 2: 1:55

My blog is metemg Metemgcom. Metemg is a Guyanese stew of root vegetables and coconut milk and like a really rich broth and I wanted people to really feel like they're having metemg every time they came to my blog and signing my blog metemg, and also a lot of Guyanese people can identify with it. So that's kind of me in a nutshell. I am also an author, so I just wrote my first book, caribbean Paleo. You can get it wherever books are sold. Do my little plug, so excited to talk about that too.

Speaker 1: 2:31

Awesome. So let's dive right in, because when I hear Caribbean Paleo, I remember when my daughter was younger she said she wanted to be paleontologist. So explain to me Paleo, this Paleo diet.

Speaker 2: 2:44

Yeah, paleo really means exactly like it comes from, the word paleotology, and it talks about like eating, the way cavemen eat. Like cavemen weren't eating cereal in a bowl, they weren't necessarily eating bread, they were eating whole foods that came from the soil and they were eating a lot of protein and meat that they hunted and gathered. So the idea of having a paleo diet brings you back a little to those principles. And if you think about how Caribbean people cook, at the root of how we cook we use a lot of things from the soil, a lot of wholesome ingredients. We use all of the parts of like the cow, the goat, the chicken, whatever, and so Caribbean food at its root follows some of the principles of a Paleo diet. So it was really easy for me to say, hey, I'm going to be Paleo, what am I going to eat? How am I going to start doing that? Why am I even going to do it?

Speaker 2: 3:36

And the reason why a lot of people go Paleo or follow a Paleo diet is because some of the things in the standard American diet, everyday diet, don't necessarily agree with them and might be causing them some gut and digestive discomfort things like gluten, things like grains, like rice, flour, corn, lots of peas and beans, and a lot of people might have what's called a leaky gut, which might make them not be able to digest food, may feel uncomfortable, you might experience bloating. You know when you're done eating and we're like, oh, the itis is hitting me. That's not necessarily a response you're supposed to have every time you eat and that's the response I had every time I eat, no matter what I was eating like, no matter how much I ate. That's how I felt and come to find out it was actually some of the things that I was eating that was making me feel sick and I never thought that, like food that I grew up on eating every single day would make me feel sick until I started to really examine what I was eating and said, like Yo, my mom is making a roti every single morning for us to eat. When we were growing up, every morning that was our breakfast roti and some kind of stew, so pumpkin stew by gun choka, whatever, that's. That's what my mom was cooking.

Speaker 2: 4:53

And I always felt this when I didn't realize that, like, I can't digest gluten and that's why I feel that way. So when I found that out, I was like oh, my God I've been like so poisoning myself my whole life, and so that's why I kind of gravitated towards this and I would say I'm paleo-ish, because if my mom shows up here right now and clap to roti, I'm eaten, we'll deal with the bellyache and the problems after, and that's not really the mindset everybody needs to have. I apologize if that's not the posture child for paleo, but that's how I am. Some things are worth it for me.

Speaker 2: 5:31

Some things are worth a little bit of discomfort and I don't have celiac, so please understand that. That's why I can flex a little, whereas like people who actually have like an illness and they get like sick, do they have to be hospitalized? Don't want to play with that and be strict, but that's kind of where I am, so that's kind of my take on paleo. So in my book you'll find a lot of traditional Guyanese recipes that are naturally paleo, like there are no grains in them, there are no beans or peas or anything like that, and then you might find a few that I've changed to be paleo so that I can enjoy like the flavor and the intent of the dish without getting sick.

Speaker 1: 6:13

What's interesting is that, as a Caribbean person, there's a lot of rice and beans in a lot of our dishes. I mean Jamaica rice and peas. You know, yeah, you know.

Speaker 2: 6:22

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Stew peas and rice, you know. Yeah, I cannot stop yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:28

It was hard, it was hard, it was hard, it's still hard. I just took a break again. So I take breaks from rice because I can't eliminate rice from my diet completely and I just have to. I keep testing it and I keep testing to see, like, let me see that this thing that usually makes me now feel so great, if it's going to make me feel crappy when I eat it this time, let's see how far I can push this. And then I have to dial it back a little and say, all right, I think you meet your limit.

Speaker 2: 6:53

I think you need to just go on a break, give your gut a break and come back to this for a little bit, because the idea is that you want to be able to enjoy everything. You really don't want to have this diet where you're limiting all this stuff and I think, like being on a pillion diet, being on any sort of elimination thing, is designed to heal you and then allow you to enjoy things in moderation. So understand that. That's also why I say I'm pillion-ish, because I'm never judging people who are eating all the things. I'm like God. I wish I could be like you. I wish I could just eat this Rice, jupies and rice. Oh, I wish I could eat that every day. I would eat that every day, shoes. I grew up eating that every day. So no, I hear you.

Speaker 1: 7:35

Yeah, you know I love that. You said that because I like rice. I don't think it bothers me, but I do recognize the impact of rice. Right, they put on all this weight because obviously rice is the easiest thing to cook when you're in a hurry. You know, just waps up a thing and eats rice with it, and so thinking of it like giving your body and your gut a break to heal itself is really a good way of putting it, as opposed to thinking of it as restrictive. Because no matter how hard I try, kariyan cannot give up Jamaican hard-dough bread. It just will not happen. Jamaican hard-dough bread is my middle name, that's it. I can't give it up.

Speaker 2: 8:13

Yeah, well, well, you can't have your jerk chicken if you're not having hard-dough bread, right, Listen?

Speaker 1: 8:19

our festival. I mean, oh my gosh, all right. So what's interesting is that and you know what, now I'm thinking through it A lot of us have nutritional issues that we cannot, and we're not advocating for people to self-diagnose, but a weirdness of our bodies is what you're saying, right? Because if, based on your story, a lot of us might be experiencing things that we consider, you know, this always happened to me, but this isn't normal, right? So are there some things that you know that are common, things, that, if this keeps happening, you may need to talk to your doctor and a nutritionist about these things? So could you tell us a little bit about what those are?

Speaker 2: 9:05

No, that's a terrific question. Here's the deal. I thought how I felt was how everyone else feels, no doubt I thought that it was normal, until I had a conversation with my husband and I said you know, every time I eat I just feel so like full and uncomfortable. And he was like. I was like don't you feel like that, tini? He's like no, I never feel like that. I feel fine, like I could go run after I'm done eating. I can't run after I'm gonna run, after I'm gonna run after eating. I could. I need to lay it out. I'm like laid out, that's me right. And so that's when I started thinking like wait, that's when I started asking other people right, do you feel like that's what you eat in there? Like what are you talking about? You're crazy. That's the how you're supposed to feel.

Speaker 2: 9:50

I think the point where I was like something is really not good was I had gone back into a traditional work environment after being at home with my son and every time we went out to for meals, for work like we'd had to do a lot of business meals I would come back and have to run to the bathroom and I was like what is going on? Like what's wrong with me? And then I started getting all of these migraines and then I started getting like severe acid reflux and I went to a doctor and he was like, yeah, you have GERD. Like you have GERD and that's like severe reflux, and take these pills and when you wake up, take them on 30 minutes before you eat anything for the rest of your life. And I was doing that. I was like, oh, okay, I'll do that. So I was like popping. I wake up in the morning, I'm like pop these pills and then have my breakfast and my coffee and whatever. And I was fine.

Speaker 2: 10:40

And then one day I was like running out of my office because I'd forgotten to drink this pill, to go to like the drug store and get it. And my coworker was like where are you going in such a hurry? Like what's going on? I'm like I have a meeting, but tell this person, I'm gonna be right back because I'm about to like pass out in here because I feel this thing coming up. And she was like tell me about it. So I started telling her and she was like you know what? I bet you have food allergies. And I was like what? No, I eat everything. Like I'm good.

Speaker 2: 11:07

And I went out and got in and she was like, when you tell me to meet and come talk to me, we'll talk about it. And we started talking about it and she was like I bet you have food allergies. That sounds like food allergies. You should actually try an elimination diet and see what that looks like. And I was blown away. And she gave me like this book to read, called Against All Grains, and I started reading it and then I was like I might try this and I tried it and I did this elimination diet called a Whole 30 for 30 days and after that I felt like fantastic, I mean like my waistline felt right, like no bloating, 30 days, right. And so I was like, oh my God, this must be actually what's going on.

Speaker 2: 11:45

But you know, next weekend I went to a party, jumped right back into it, went back to my eating, had no plans, knew nothing, felt deadly ill. And then I was like something is wrong. Let me go back to my doctor, let me talk about this. And then we started talking about it and he was like, doing all the tests, no, you don't have CLARG, but you do have a gluten sensitivity. Yeah, it looks like your blood sugar spikes when you have any kind of sugar. Yeah, this happens, that happens.

Speaker 2: 12:10

And I think that in that moment I was like what I was experiencing before was not normal. After those 30 days when I felt fantastic, just eating, I was like what I was experiencing was not normal. I'm telling you, I used to live in New York and at the end of the work day I used to feel like I could pretend I was pregnant so I could have a seat in the subway going home, like that's how uncomfortable eating, like my belly would be out here and I'd be like in my brain, nobody would know if I like rub my belly and have a seat, cause you know it's transcoded and I tell the search but I have to say something. He's like you're crazy. I'm like no, that's how I felt At the end of the day after eating. That's how bloated I was. I used to get so bloated that I couldn't decide what I was gonna wear to go out tonight during the day. I had to wait at night to see what of my clothes would actually fit me, because I was so bloated and uncomfortable and I didn't know that nobody else felt that way. I didn't know that was because of the food. I didn't know that having acid reflux is not normal. You know, people like, oh I got. Guys would be like I got burned stomach. I just ate this. Oh my God, my stomach's burning and you think it's normal, but it's not. Other people aren't feeling this way when they eat, and it really is.

Speaker 2: 13:27

A myriad of things could be happening, but sometimes, most times, it's the food that we're eating and I think about how our food is filled with so many things, so many fillers. Our seasonings have fillers. And you think back about like how your grandmother cooked. She would probably go in the kitchen garden, pluck up her greens, grind it up, chop her things up, make, season her food and put it. Then somewhere along the line Someone's like here's this cube, here's this bouillon, this is gonna have all the flavor, put this in everything. And then you go through the ingredients. You're like I can't even call the names of some of these things that are in here, and that's kind of how it starts right. And then it's like our food gets infiltrated and then we're suddenly like feeling sick. And I tell you that there are a lot of people when I talk to them about like having acid reflux. They're like oh my God, yeah, I have acid reflux too.

Speaker 2: 14:17

Or they're like yeah, my chest hurts sometimes when I eat, and then I just drink a pepsi or whatever, and then I'm feeling better you know, and I think sometimes I'm feeling better, and those are short term, but I guarantee you, if you try to heal your gut, you're gonna feel so much better.

Speaker 2: 14:33

You're gonna feel like just lighter and you're gonna get past those like, oh, those discomforts and things that make you just not feel your whole self. And I'm telling you that you're right. There are a lot of people that don't know that how they're feeling when they eat is not normal. And you're right, we don't want people to like self-diagnose themselves, but there are a lot of like self-tests that you can do, that are structured and you can, you know, try eliminating these things for a while and then reintroduce them and see how they make you feel. And then, if you notice a difference, go talk to a professional, talk to a nutritionist, talk to a dietitian and get some real hardcore help to figure out and narrow down what's happening, so that you can get to a place where you reintroduce all those things and you feel fantastic. Cause wouldn't it be a great world if you can eat all the things and feel great?

Speaker 1: 15:28

Absolutely so about we're in 2023, about 2018, 2019,. Specifically, I changed my diet completely at the end of 2018, I had a baby and I was just like I was pushing 200 pounds. I was like never in my life right.

Speaker 1: 15:44

But what I learned as I changed my diet was I've always had a headache, always, and I would say always tension headache cause I'm stressed, you know, and I would get the muscle relaxants and whatever. And then I went on this juice cleanse and then I realized what was the cause of that problem. I love sweets, but sweets don't love me.

Speaker 1: 16:13

Yeah, let me tell you Now I'm like this is a sign that you're really old, right, cause I remember my grandmother everything too sweet are too salty, right. And so the minute I have something that is way too sweet, immediately headache and I just feel everything in my neck and my shoulders. The inflammation is instant, whereas before I was like chugging the juices, eating sweets and candy and just had this ongoing dull headache and thought that was just me being stressed. I'm here, put my here in a bun too tight. I always had it in one, so I can't testify to going on a healthy cleanse or something like you said.

Speaker 1: 17:01

What do you call the diet? Again, I call 30. Yes, right, something like that to help you, you know, figure it out. And that approach works in everything you know, like in IT. Something's wrong with my computer? All right, let's install one by one all these different things to get to the problem, right?

Speaker 1: 17:19

So it is an approach that I can say has worked for me. So I know that, as much as I love sweet, I cannot cut it out, but I can tell my friend who's a baker Listen, just eliminate this sugar and use honey, please, or something else. Right, because you know like I'm gonna catch a headache really quickly. So it's these little things to kind of be aware. So I love that you said that. Love, love, love that you say that. So let's flip to the other side, right? So there are all these diets, right? What is an unhealthy way of approaching a new way of eating? As you respond, or you're listening to your body, because there's two sides of a coin, right, people do it healthy and some people they go on the extreme. What is an extreme way to avoid? You know?

Speaker 2: 18:12

Yeah, I think that diet culture plagues us. Right? The word diet, which really means a way of eating, has been replaced to mean a way of losing weight, right? Or maintaining weight. And so the minute somebody hears diet, they're like am I gonna lose weight on this diet, am I gonna lose weight on this diet? And that becomes their singular focus, and I think that is unhealthy, right? And people will start to have an all or nothing mentality around it. Right, oh, I'm going to do pillios. So now you're judging everyone. Everything everyone else is eating is bad and everything you're eating is good. And you become trapped in this mindset of like, oh, I can only eat that and I can't eat that, and that's gonna make me feel this way. Well, guess what? These things change and a few years from now, someone will be saying there's this new way of eating and this works and that works.

Speaker 2: 19:05

And I think you have to understand what works for you and help to figure out your like, bio-individuality, like what is it that works for you and makes you feel good? Because, guess what? I love doll, and some people can eat doll and be fine. I can eat doll in small amounts and be fine, and so I allow myself to eat doll, right, even though it's not pillio, and I'm not gonna be out there saying to someone well, it's pillio, you can't have doll. Doll is like the food of my ancestors and I wanna enjoy that. And the same thing with rice, like I said, like I try to add back in rice and see how I do and then take a break from it and see how I do again. And do that because I don't want to get to that extreme of like all or nothing and jump in head first and say, hey, note, I'm gonna be pillio and this is how I'm gonna do it.

Speaker 2: 19:56

The other way that I think you should try not to approach new diets is not being prepared, not understanding what it takes, meal prepping, planning out your menus, knowing what kind of things you should avoid, and that stuff. Some people jump into it. I jumped into my sort of story of how I became pillio without having a plan. I just did it and then kind of like had no thought, went to part and was like, all right, I'll just eat whatever I want, and then kind of have to backpedal and say, okay, I did the 30 days, I felt good, I did this weekend, I felt terrible? Or can I meet in the middle? How can I figure it out? So a lot of times, what I do, my family is not pillio. Let's just put that on. I was about to say that.

Speaker 1: 20:41

No, I was about to say one of the hardest things about trying a new way of life is that your family will not always be part of that, and so, as a mother, you know the two work hard to something you know like. This is not a restaurant right.

Speaker 2: 20:58

I'm not a short article and I'm making two pots, right, and so, like my husband, he's done the whole 30s with me He'll eat whatever. But he's like I don't have a problem eating roti, I don't have a problem eating this, so I don't. So I feel like if I say this is a pillio household, we're never having those things, it's punishing them from experiencing things that are not even impacting them, right, there's no good or bad food. There are things that, in certain quantities, will impact you differently than it impacts someone else. Having some candy is not necessarily bad, but you've identified that when you have candy it makes you feel bad. But somebody else could have like five candy bars and be fine. It's the old lady that's like 95 when she says she was having a coke and a pack of cigarettes every day. You know like it's just you might not be affected the same way, and so when I cook, I try to make, like the main dish, a thing that we can all enjoy, and I make the sides a little bit different.

Speaker 2: 21:56

So let's say I'm making some jerk chicken, right, I'm gonna make the jerk chicken. I'm not putting brown sugar in that, I'm gonna put some coconut aminos, I'm gonna put all of the fresh herbs and spices. I marinate it, I'm gonna grill it. If I spray it with some beer, I'm gonna do a gluten-free beer because I wanna eat it and I don't wanna get sick, but at the end of the day it's gonna taste like authentic closest ever you can get to jerk. And then the sides I might make rice and peas for them, I might make roasted vegetables for me, you know, and so like that's how I kind of flex it and everybody's gonna eat my side as well. I'm just not eating the things that make me not feel so great, and I think that's the approach that I would love for people to have when they explore new diets and they figure out how can I make this fit into my life, because you need something that's sustainable.

Speaker 2: 22:47

The other thing that people love to do when they jump on your diets is try to make all the things. They're suddenly like oh my god, I saw these recipes, I'm gonna go do this and do that, which is really weird for a person who actually makes recipes and write recipes for a living to say but take it easy, because in your normal life You're not doing that, sis, sis, you're not doing that, so don't do it, because then at the end of it You're like exhausted and you feel like it's not worth it and you fall back into your old habits. And then you feel like you're in this hamster wheel of a diet and you're like, okay, what's next? Okay, I said keto, let me try keto. Okay, well, I couldn't sustain that anymore.

Speaker 2: 23:25

I have to offer that Okay, let me try to paleo. And then you have to oh, let me see this is it's eliminate that, let me try that. You know. And so I think those are like the unhealthy aspects of it. But have a plan and stay focused, like everything else in your life, and it's hard work like eating a certain way is hard work. It's not gonna be easy, but you can try to make it sustainable by having a smart plan.

Speaker 1: 23:48

Absolutely so. Again in 2018, after I had the last baby, I just made a decision to do something. That was always a Trend in my life. I just stopped eating me. It wasn't ethical. I just never liked. I barely ate it. I just I didn't care for it.

Speaker 1: 24:05

You know, there was one meat that I really loved Kidney, okay, and everything else it was just like I don't really care. So I stopped eating it, and so my friends and I, we said that we're Flexitarians, because we're not cutting out meat entirely. We just, you know, most days maybe we don't want meat and some days Maybe we have some meat chicken or shrimp, you know. But even getting to that point, right, I look back and it was just a gradual. You know what? Maybe once every two months I'll make a meat dish, I'll have chicken or something, but then over time, it was just less and less and less. My husband will still eat it, I ain't touching it. So, you know, I'm just like I'm over it. Yeah, but when even something as simple as that, it takes a lot of planning because at some point you're like, as a human, you get into. I'm tired of this. I'ma try something, and that's what you're fighting with, right the the autopilot to go back into a routine and if you don't have, like you said, a plan or a structure, then it's just going to be hard, and I think for me the easy thing was I can make stupid, but I don't need to put the the beef in there anymore, just take it out. It's still still the pig, yet that worse.

Speaker 1: 25:21

I know my eight now, but you know what I mean. I was the picky child. Anything that had a very, very gelatin, like that texture, I hated it. I just was like, right, if the gravy congealed like I was not eating. My poor grandmother, mother that is sitting around the table, finished eat this and then, like you said, going out to parties are, going out to other households that aren't Eating the way you eat. You have to figure out how you're gonna navigate those spaces.

Speaker 1: 25:55

So I'm really glad that you said that and you know this idea of a diet. The brain just say you know it's a, it's a different lifestyle. I'm living a different lifestyle. Yeah, so I can be healthier for my future self and my family. You know, because, gosh, I mean you shouldn't be eating every time enough a dust off to the bathroom or, you know, like writhing in pain.

Speaker 1: 26:20

You know, like all of these things that I've explored, like have a dull headache the whole life and think you know, this is normal, oh yeah, and just wait. No words cannot describe the feeling I had when I said wait, this headache come from somewhere. This is what I've been feeling all my life, and it was just like I just ate that pizza cake and it was enlightening. And so I tell people I love sweets, but sweets don't love me, so I'll eat in moderation. So thank you. So let's talk about your book a little bit. So, like, what's going on in the book? What kind of recipes can we find in the book? And then how people can find it. I guess they can go for Amazon, but you know, tell us.

Speaker 2: 27:04

Yeah, yeah. So the book I have it here. It's called Caribbean Paleo. It's available in the US anywhere books are sold, so all the major bookstores. It's also available in Amazon and in Amazon Canada and in the UK.

Speaker 2: 27:19

I'm taking some of it to Guyana for a book launch. People can get it in Guyana as well and trying to figure that out. But in the book you're going to find 75 recipes that are paleo, paleo-focused, but, like I said, there are recipes in there that didn't require any sort of tweaking or anything like that, because they're just naturally paleo. Good for you, food from our ancestors, deliciousness, right. Some of the recipes are from my mom, like exactly how she made it, like her red stew chicken. I know everybody knows brown stew chicken. In Guyana we make a red stew. We don't even call it red stew chicken, we just call it chicken stew, and so it's just tomato base and delicious and needed no tweaking Like. This is my mom's recipe, this is how she made it and you can enjoy it and have paleo Right up front.

Speaker 2: 28:10

I list like my favorite recipes. So if you get the book and you want to know where to start, start there. Try those recipes first. It even has, like my paleo version of jerk chicken, and the only thing that makes this recipe paleo is that most jerk seasonings have added sugar. They love to put sugar in everything because sugar is addictive and so it makes you buy it and eat it more, right? And so it sells more and it has sugar. So that's the only thing.

Speaker 2: 28:39

Everything else is traditional or normal, except that I don't cook it over pimento leaves and that stuff, like I just cook it under grog. That's what I have, and so the other thing that you'll find in the book that I'm super proud of is I have a gluten-free, grain-free potato roti, which at first I thought I would never crack the code on this recipe, but then I did and I was like just in time to include it in the book, and it's delicious and fantastic and I can enjoy a part of my childhood without, you know, balling over in pain because, you know, gluten makes me sick. So there's also coconut sweet bread, which is also gluten and dairy-free but tastes amazing. I don't want to say it tastes exactly like the regular version, because that would be a lie, that would be a total lie. It does not, but it's delicious and it tastes amazing, and if it's good enough that my husband, who's always rolling his eyes at him like, come taste this gluten-free thing, eat it. And it was like damn, this is good, it's good.

Speaker 1: 29:44

You know, I bet you can't guess which recipe I'm trying.

Speaker 2: 29:49

Not that one, because you're gonna try that one, because it's sweet Of course I will try it. I love sweets. It doesn't have any added sugar, it has maple syrup, so you get the sweetness and then you get all the coconut and everything else and it has like almonds and stuff. It's delicious. There's also a really easy one. It's just it's like a plant in cinnamon roll and so it's just ripe, planted like the ripest you can find. Those are my favorite.

Speaker 1: 30:16

I was arguing with my best friend because he was trying to get rid of the planting, because it was so, you know, like really really soft and me and his wife was like you could call in the planting police, but that's the best planting.

Speaker 2: 30:30

There's some people who are like planting snobs, that like when it gets too much she didn't want it, but if you fry that up.

Speaker 2: 30:35

That one is so good. It tastes like candy, oh my God, it's caramelized, ooh, yeah, so that same planted. And then you just put some cinnamon butter, you make like a cinnamon butter thing and you put it in the pan and you bake it and it's so good and it's so good and it's like you don't even have to put flour and all that stuff, it's just planted, goodness, so good. So that's kind of the principle of the book, like just taking whole ingredients and honoring flavors from the Caribbean and flavors from, like, my childhood and things that we would do. I'm kind of looking at it in a slightly different way. But there's also regular recipes. There's curry goat in there. That's just a regular old curry goat recipe, because that's how you make curry goat and it's perfectly fine. And paleo. There's some kalalu in there. There's other like roasted okra and stuff like that. So there's normal, everyday things that are like hey, I would make this, when it makes us paleo, absolutely nothing, it's just normal and it's delicious. And then there are, of course, the baked goods that I need to adjust and use like an alternative flour in there.

Speaker 2: 31:43

This book was a labor of love. I dedicated it to my two grandmothers, who were always in the kitchen, always telling us do this, do that, and we're like masters at creating things from nothing. I'm sure your grandmother was like that too. They weren't using any recipe, they just went to the fridge or the pantry or whatever and said this is what I got, this is what I'm gonna make and we're gonna make it work. And so I think I took a lot of inspiration from that in looking at and trying to remix and tweak recipes, and that was a way that I could honor them.

Speaker 2: 32:23

I mean, look at this, let me find this. I just there's ox tail in here too, but it's ox tail, but it's being served with cauliflower rice and of course, there's plant in there. And instead of using butter beans in the ox tail, I use some mushrooms, because it has like the similar texture of butter bean, and you can't have butter bean. It's paleo On paleo. So that was kind of like my, my substitute for that, but delicious. And what I say to people is if you wanna try something new, you wanna have a different outlook on the food we eat, give this book a try. You might be surprised at how some of the things that you're eating are fine, and some of them might not be.

Speaker 1: 33:11

And that's what I love about what you included in the book. It's a reminder that, like you said, regular curry goat this is curry goat, it's already. It already is paleo. And I think that is very helpful because I think, as a Caribbean woman, a Jamaican woman, where we eat certain things you hear these fancy diets. You're like what I want me to cut out now. Right, I like that you've really identified some of the foods we eat and say, well, this is already paleo, this good as is, and that's what people wanna hear. Right, don't take away everything. So this is. I really liked that you did that and included those in the book to say this is already paleo, I didn't touch nothing about it, this is it, and I think that is good for people as they try something new. So thank you for that. I'm excited.

Speaker 2: 34:01

Yeah, and I do. I make sure that when I come across those recipes I say it right on the top that, like, this recipe required no tweaking to make it paleo. It's naturally paleo Cause. I wanted to remind people that there's a stigma that Caribbean food is unhealthy and I wanted to get past that. But, like, our food is not unhealthy. The food that fed the people, that build the nations could never be unhealthy, right? And so I wanted people to get past that. Like, oh, caribbean food is unhealthy. And you asked me in the beginning about like plate enough Caribbean food, right. And that, like, there's this idea that it's unsexy. And you know what irritates me when a Caribbean creator, whatever, makes a food and then they wanna put the rice in the mold and try to make it look like a gourmet plate. Right, we don't need that.

Speaker 1: 34:50

No just just.

Speaker 2: 34:51

You can serve our food in a bowl and put it aside and make it look nice and make it look neat and not sexy, you know why? Because it's nourishing and because it's healthy and because it's good for you, and so all that stuff. I just roll my eyes sometimes, girl, I like. Here we go again with the bullshit.

Speaker 1: 35:10

So here's the thing, right, I love eating my food out of bowls. I do. I love it because I just want it like, just pour it all in. I eat it from a bowl. I can't deal with the sexy plating. I'm like we're pritting it up for what, so go into my belly, yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:29

I just, I think, serve the food as you're going to eat it and it is fine. And currenmeat food can be gourmet If you make it and use the ingredients and you make a gourmet dish, please not, however you want to plate it, but everyday food. Please don't put my rice in a mold, please, please, just give me my rice and put my stew on top, and I'll put my plant into the side and give me the mold. I'm also a bowl person. My husband loves plates, but I love a bowl. For the same reason, you can just cup the bowl in your hand.

Speaker 1: 36:00

And you're good. Mix the top good right With the bowl, with the rice. It's great. I know what.

Speaker 2: 36:06

I think what happens is we're always trying to fit into these like Western molds and like European standards. And our food is so good, even like in Guyana we have I don't know if you guys have like the Kalabash bowl, yep, put the food in that, I don't care Like, let's show them that we have this rich heritage and this rich culture and that our stuff is worthy and is sexy and it looks really good. And you know what, if you want it to be fancy, add some color to your plate. Like add some colorful napkin or something and let that be it. But you can't tell me there's no way you can look at a plate of food that's like delicious and glistening and think that that's not sexy. Let the flavor be the sexiness, okay.

Speaker 1: 36:51

Listen, you talk it to me here. The lover of reaper posh Jamaican food.

Speaker 2: 36:57

You know the boiled dumpling.

Speaker 1: 36:58

I mean this is not healthy, but the boiled dumpling, the best part of the boiled dumpling, is the day after, where you split that into and fry it, fry it over.

Speaker 2: 37:09

No one came up with that idea.

Speaker 1: 37:11

But Lord, thank you Jesus that you did. It is the best thing. So that's also the beauty of our food right. We can repurpose this in entirely different ways that people are like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 37:24

And even you're like, oh you know, that's not healthy, it's actually okay and it's actually healthy. And a lot of new tritonists will tell you like, for certain dietary needs you do need stuff that are carb heavy. Just depends on who you are as a person, and if you're having that in moderation, if you have a one fry over dumpling, you're gonna be good as well. You're gonna want to eat five or five.

Speaker 1: 37:45

Listen, but again in moderation. Oh God, I like some fry over dumplings Anyway. So that's it.

Speaker 2: 37:54

We don't even make that in Guyana. I only know about these things because I have a lot of Jamaican followers that tell me about. Like when I share something, you're like, hey, did you know about this? Did you know about that? The only thing that we make that's similar to that is we make this stuff called Duff. We steam it and it looks very much like a steam dumpling and then some people fry it. So that's the only thing that would be close to that, and that stuff is delicious and amazing, so enjoy it whenever you can. Then go for a run.

Speaker 1: 38:21

The best thing, oh Lord, the best thing. Why don't you tell the community of friends a little bit about where they could find you on the internet, and if they can't smell the handle, just kind of spell it out for them?

Speaker 2: 38:35

Yes, okay, so you can find me online at my blog, which is metmgcom it's M-E-T-E-M-G-Ecom, and then you can find me under that same social media handle. So on Instagram it's metmg, on TikTok it's metmgblog, on YouTube, metmg. On Facebook, metmg. And then I have another Instagram that's called wholesome Caribbean it's just a little bit easier to pronounce where I share all the remixes to my traditional foods, so all of the gluten-free, the dairy-free, the sugar-free, not flavor-free, though everything's flavorful. You can find it on their wholesome Caribbean.

Speaker 1: 39:13

Awesome. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you for letting me and appreciate my food and my culture even more. Not that I didn't, but now I have solid answers. When people try to say this, I said well, althea said you know, you know knowledge is power. You could push back when people said those things. And you know, now I have somebody else who understand bowls to my ting, you know, forgetting on a plate.

Speaker 2: 39:44

I like my bowls Tables all the way. I don't think there's one plate in my cookbook. I think they're all bowls. I like scanning through it over here. I'm like, yep, everything's in a bowl. I'm team bowl.

Speaker 1: 39:55

I love that. I love that when I tell you I'm excited about this, because people are like why are you eating out of a bowl? Because it's a bowl. Yes it is. Bowls are trending, yes. So thank you so much for being on the podcast and, as I love to say at the end of every episode, walk good.

Speaker 2: 40:13

Thank you for having me. This was so much fun.