UnchainedTV: Chef Mario Fabbri Reveals Life-changing Cooking Secrets!

0:00 Takes is one simple choice. Now, here's your host, Jane Velez Mitchell. Hello, everybody. I am so jazzed, delighted, excited to have one of my favourite people on the planet with us today, Chef Mario Fabri. He was one of the first vegan cooking shows on television. And you can see he did it for a long time because he has a lot of different hairstyles. It's unbelievable. And we are so thrilled that right now on Unchained TV, 22 episodes of Trying Vegan with Mario are streaming. So you just can go to watch.unchainedtv .com or just go to unchainedtv.com and you can see this incredible cooking show.

0:45 Take a look at some of the dishes. Oh my gosh, that avocado toast, totally taken to the next level. Chef Mario Fabri, wow. How did you learn to cook the way you do? Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad to have all my shows on your streaming service. It is such an honour with everything that you've been doing for the vegan movement, the transformations that you've had in people's lives is incredible. So it's just an honour and pleasure to be here. And learning how to cook, I mean, it goes way back. I guess we'll start with the inception. So I actually was born to the father of an owner of an Italian sausage factory.

1:26 So I grew up in the food business my entire life. My first job was 14 years old at a pizzeria. And growing up working at a sausage factory, I always thought I'd be a part of the food business in some way or another. And I remember being just a little kid in the kitchen with my grandma, Rosie, testing different spice blends for her Italian sausages and Italian beefs and just being fascinated by the food industry, but not even realising that many years later, I would go the complete opposite direction, still in the food industry, but leave the meat supplying industry, become vegan and start learning how to cook vegan food. So I always knew I was interested in the food, but I didn't know in what way it would turn out.

2:09 And once I turned about in my early 20s, I witnessed one of my best friends go through an incredible transformation. He lost a tonne of weight, totally did the whole glow up thing, got new energy, transformed his attitude about life. And that was one of the first things that really inspired me to rethink the food that I was eating because what he had mentioned was he just started eating more plant -based food and that's what started to transform his body and his health. He ditched the fast food, he ditched the Italian sausage, and I saw it make a huge difference in his life. So I thought, you know, I know a lot about food. This is something that I wanna commit my life to, but now I'm starting to think maybe that eating sausage for breakfast, lunch, and dinner isn't necessarily the best way to do it.

2:56 I was blessed living in Boulder, Colorado, where I was getting interested in videography and film. And I thought, you know, why not start making some cooking videos where I learn about food and share the things that I'm learning? And through that whole process, I read a tonne of books. One of my favourite books was Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman and that book really put the science and the data and the research behind the transformation that I saw, happen in my friend. So was I saw a doctor talk about how he was reversing serious chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes, and even talking about the effects food can have on cancer. And then not only was he talking about it, but he showed me and introduced me to people who had gone through this transformation where they went from the standard American diet, you know, eating the sausage patty breakfast sandwiches from McDonald's, and now they're eating healthy whole foods, they're eating plant-based, and they no longer have issues with heart disease.

3:56 They are no longer needing these dramatic heart surgeries that are supposedly gonna save their lives, but all they really did was change the way that they eat. So once I saw the transformation that food can have on your body, it made me realise that, you know, I need to start eating some of this food. And I'm not gonna lie, the first time I ate a kale salad, I couldn't even get it down. So from there, I went back to my roots of testing different spice blends and trying to figure out the best recipes, the things I grew up learning about, and decided to apply it towards food. So I took that inspiration and that background in the food industry and just started studying and learning and studying.

4:39 And I'm a firm believer that you can learn how to do something through experience. You can learn how to do something from your self-research. And one of the best ways to learn how to do something is ask people who know how to do it. So as you can see on my cooking show, one of the things I did to learn how to cook was I started inviting these expert chefs, like there's a picture on the screen right now, that was me with a chef near the Grand Canyon, and he prepares these incredible vegan burgers. He teaches me how to whip together something that's hearty, that's filling, that's delicious, but it's plant-based. One of the main ingredients in that burger is hemp seeds. It's just so good for you. And I was able to learn from a pro who manages the kitchens of five different restaurants, came into his kitchen, he taught me some tips, and with my background and my learning and passion for videography, we started turning it into a cooking show that eventually became Tryin' Vegan with Mario.

5:34 There we have a tempeh bacon sandwich. There we have, I'm out with some famous DJs, Cruella. I had fun teaching them a recipe. But it really was that dedication to making food that I could actually enjoy because I was so addicted to the high-sodium, high -fat, high-meat diet that I had grown up on, that I was accustomed to, that I thought I wanted to do for the rest of my life. So it was just a quick knowledge from experts and trial and error. Well, I'm so impressed. I have so many questions, but we've already got a caller. Michelle from Los Angeles, your question, your thought for Chef Mario Fabri of Tryin' Vegan with Mario, now streaming on Unchained TV.

6:23 Hi, Jane. Hi, Mario. Thanks for having me. Very inspiring story. I also was able to help my mom get off of her diabetes medication, heart medication, and all of that, high-blood pressure medication, because I had to cook for her. I started as a vegan eating out all the time, and it wasn't until I had to cook for her that I started cooking for me. So I guess my question is, what advice would you give as far as shaking it up and making it less boring with the spices and everything? Because I don't really cook, but I've become a cook, and I don't know how to combine things. I just test things. What's your best advice for that? And what's your favourite dish to make that's easy?

7:06 That's a good one. So my advice for that is, a good way to start is think of a cultural essence, because a lot of different cultural foods have core spice blends. Like when I'm thinking about Italian cooking, it was anise and fennel and kind of these hot peppery, but add in a little bit of sweetness. So we got anise, we got fennel, we got garlic, paprika, onion powder. So that's kind of the core in Italian cooking. And then if you think of something like Indian food, you got your cumin, you got your turmeric, you got more of these kind of earthy, like hot, kick you in the back of the throat spices. And then there's Mexican food, and there's so many different varieties of cultures.

7:50 And if you just do a little bit of research into like a cultural food, you'll find that there's typically like four to six spices that go in almost every single dish. And then once you find the ones that combine well, and you know like, oh, this is like the Italian spice blend, then it becomes like so easy to just apply that to everything. So I'd say, you know, think about like a genre of food that you like, and then try and master their spice combinations pretty simply. And then on top of those spices, like throwing in like herbs help a tonne. Basil is one of my favourite things. A quick little tip on basil is that basil and a lot of herbs they release their flavours when you just like gently rub the like leaves.

8:38 So if you just have a basil plant at home, and I have one in my kitchen right now, you smell it and then take one of the leaves and then just rub the leaves. You'll feel like a little bit of oiliness on your fingers. And then you smell it again, and the scent and the flavour is like a hundred X. So using herbs, and then you don't even have to chop the herbs. If you just take your fingers and you gently tear them and you kind of like massage them. I don't know if you've ever massaged kale. That's another technique for transforming the texture of kale. But if you just kind of like tear and massage your herbs, it releases like a tonne of flavour and a tonne of aroma that's gonna enhance your cooking a lot.

9:18 And then I'll say like my favourite kind of quick, easy recipe. This isn't a full complete dish, but it's something that goes great with so many things. And it's a very introductory recipe. And backing up to my cooking show, you can watch this whole episode on Unchained TV. But I do this episode with Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank. And a lot of us know Mr. Wonderful for being hardcore, just kind of like the Grinch of Shark Tank. And you know, somebody who's just gonna grill you. And he actually- You're talking about Kevin O'Leary. Yeah, Kevin O'Leary. Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank. And I'm a big Shark Tank person. You know, I don't necessarily agree with a lot of the capitalistic values of the show, but I will say as someone who grew up watching it, it definitely inspired me to take an alternative path.

10:09 And I don't think I'd be where I am today if not for content like that. So I do have a lot of appreciation for it. But Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful, he said he's got a son who has a vegan girlfriend. They do a tonne of family dinners and he has no idea what to make for his son's girlfriend. So he came to me and I decided to teach him super simple cashew cheese. And Michelle, you might've made this before. It's like one of the first things you learn in vegan cooking sometimes. But all it is is cashews, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, olive oil. I like to add in hemp seeds. Hemp seeds have like an extra creamy, nutty fattiness to it.

10:50 And the way you make it is you start with a cup of cashews and you soak those in water overnight. So you just take your cashews, you pour them in a bowl of water and you let those soak, leave them in the fridge overnight or for at least two hours. What that's gonna do is it's gonna soften up the cashews. You'll even see after if you take cashew out of the water and you squeeze it through your fingers, it's gonna break up pretty easily. So it's gonna soften the cashews. And then it removes this like kind of like film layer that's on the outside of a cashew nut that's a little bit harder to digest. And it's not the most appealing flavour of the cashew to it. So you soak your cashews overnight and then you take that one cup of cashews, you put it in with a drizzle, you put it in a blender with a drizzle of olive oil, about a teaspoon of garlic powder, about like, I go like two or three tablespoons of nutritional yeast, because I love that stuff.

11:40 And then add in about a tablespoon of hemp seeds, a sprinkle of salt, a little juice of a half of a lemon. And then you blend that and you can eat it right out of the blender. It's really good. If you refrigerate it, it'll firm up a little bit and have a little bit of a thicker texture. But that cashew cheese, spread it on a sandwich, throw it in your pasta, even like top it on a salad. If you know with Mr. Wonderful, he made a Greek salad, which is basically just like cucumbers and tomatoes and red onions. And a lot of times those Greek salads, they'll have like feta on top of them. So they'll have like a crumbly cheese. And I told him just, you know, take the cashew cheese and drop a dollop here, a dollop here, a dollop here.

12:21 And that'll be like your cheesiness to your Greek salad and it'll make it be. And so that cashew cheese is a really good first recipe I love to teach people. We've got another caller, Nilo Farr from Dallas, Texas. Your question or thought for Chef Mario Fowbry, whose 22 episodes are now streaming on Unchained TV. Hello, I'm an animal activist in Dallas, Fort Worth, and I'm so thrilled to get acquainted with your work on Unchained TV. According to the abolitionist approach to animal rights, the moral baseline should be veganism. For example, Dr. Fuhrman is not a vegan physician as he discusses minimising animal products and veganism is about taking a stand against speciesism.

13:07 Springboarding on your major TikTok and Instagram success, do you occasionally insert ethical arguments? Thanks. Let me answer that first and then I'll give it to you because this is something that I heard from Jean Bauer of Farm Sanctuary, which is we accept people wherever they are on the journey. Very few of us were born vegan. I just did a podcast this morning where I explained to the host how I went vegan after the fourth generation cattle rancher turned vegan activist Howard Lyman was my interview subject. And then he basically confronted me after the interview and I was a vegetarian and he convinced me to go vegan in about two seconds by calling dairy liquid meat and pointing at my nose.

14:03 But the point is that I had a long transition and most people have a transition. It's a process, not an event. For some people, it's an event, but for 99% of the people, it's a process. And I know you started your cooking show before you were 100% vegan and now you are. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, correct. So the inception of the show was I was actually representing non-vegans. I was Chef Mario or not even Chef Mario at the time. I was just Mario who worked at his dad's sausage factory who grew up eating the most insane meat diet.

14:43 And then all of a sudden out of the blue learned about health benefits of plant -based food and then also started to learn about the consciousness inside of an animal and the way that we can treat animals with such more compassion and view them as a different thing other than just meat, especially growing up around a sausage factory. Like I literally, I mean, it's gross to think about and talk about, but like a sausage factory, it's just pork carcasses. We would get carcasses shipped to the factory and then they'd get cut down and then they'd get ground up and turn into sausage and meatballs. So that was like so normal for me.

15:24 And the show was all about, can I be, can I transform my opinion? Can I find food that I like? And it started out as just being a cooking show and it started out being like learning about food because I got brought in from the health benefits. But I eventually early on in this actually met Jane and she was the first person that really opened me up to the animal's perspective of the food that I had been eating previously. So for me, it was a long transformation. And then even from there, it was so heavily inspired. And then I wanted to go back to my dad and tell him, dad, we got to shut down the sausage factory.

16:08 And I remember coming home for Christmas dinner and transforming all of his family famous holiday recipes and trying to veganize them. And we got in a serious argument and a serious fight. And I realised that for me, it took some time. So for me to come home and just expect him to change overnight, especially when his life was ingrained in this way of thinking even longer than mine was, my grandpa started the sausage factory. My dad was working at it from birth, grew it, took over the business. And now I'm expecting him to just change overnight, quit his business that is his income and completely change his perspective because I come home for a holiday dinner.

16:52 And I realised that for some people, it is that light switch. For some people, I do think for sure that you don't even recognise animal slaughter and then you see it, then you realise it. I think that that approach might apply a lot better to younger people. I don't know how graphic we wanna show the food industry towards people who are like under 14 years old, but I think the earlier you start, the earlier you make that connection that you don't wanna be eating this animal. This animal is just like your puppy. This animal is just like your kitten. You have that youthful, that your brain is a little bit more plastic in your way of thinking that I think perhaps that's a quicker way to make that transition.

17:35 Again, I noticed in my dad, this has been his entire life. So I definitely think that for me, it was about taking a slower approach with certain people. Definitely jumping the gun and trying to express all my feelings for the animals right out the gate. But if that didn't click, then it was, I really wanna get through to this person. And I understand it could be hard for some people. It could be hard to make that connection. It could be hard to change your beliefs about anything, anything you've believed your whole life for 50 years, all of a sudden someone's trying to change it in an instant. That could be challenging. So I definitely think that there is a different change that could happen amongst everybody.

18:21 And it's my mission, especially through my cooking show, I don't talk as much about the animal advocacy. My main goal with the show is make food that tastes so good that people don't even think about it. Make food that makes people not even acknowledge the fact that they're changing the way that they eat. And then that connection might become easier for them. That's just my approach, but I certainly, you know, am open to feedback and other ways of doing it. But that's kind of my approach. Well, you absolutely do that. As I was uploading all your videos and I had seen the show before, but I really got a chance to study it. And honestly, I was taking notes because I wanna make a cauliflower wings and you have a great cauliflower wings recipe.

19:10 Just for example, I love to make vegan cupcakes. That's a little more elevated. I don't know if I'm there yet, but I think I can handle the cupcakes. But the other thing that I really love about your show, and it's particularly when Dr. Joel Fuhrman is on, is that you talk about the nutritional value of vegan food. Like tumeric, like hemp seeds. Let's check out this little clip and we'll talk about it on the other side. Tumeric right here. Tumeric, very powerful anti-cancer material. That's right. Yeah, exactly. It's anti-inflammatory. Yep, and it stops the cancer cell growth, right? It's increasing. That's why this whole dish is so spectacular. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

19:50 Squeeze in, we got one tablespoon of peanut butter. All right, good. Well, here's the, and then we're gonna add the hemp seeds. The hemp seeds are high in protein, but keep in mind, this recipe has no oil in it. All the fat's gonna come from the peanut butter and the hemp seeds and the coconut. In other words, whole food fats, because the whole food gives you nutrients, but the oil doesn't give you any nutrients, and no fibre, and no protein. Hemp seeds are high in protein, the peanut butter's high in protein. So when you take something like hemp or olives, and then you, what's the word for it? You squeeze it, you just crush it. You squeeze the oil out of it, you threw in the fibre, you threw in the oils. Exactly, you refine it, and then you're just left with that fat, and that fat is what's gonna make you fat, right? That's right.

20:31 No wiser words have ever been spoken. That fat is what's gonna make you fat, and you're absolutely right. Honestly, it was a while back that got the wake-up call from somebody who said that I was pouring all this oil, and I never even thought of the calories. Like when you look at an ice cream, a vegan ice cream or a vegan cake, you think, okay, that's got calories. But you don't honestly think about calories and oil. Now I have the spray, and I just try to spray a tiny little bit if I need to spray, not taking, I'm no longer drenching anything with oil. Yeah, like one tablespoon of olive oil is like 120 calories.

21:16 It's a lot. And that clip is kind of a great example of where this show came from and is gone. You know, that was one of the earlier episodes where I didn't really know what I was doing in a kitchen. You know, I was like trying hemp seeds for the first time. Now I'm preaching hemp seeds. Now I'm eating tonnes of hemp seeds. So it was people showing me the food that helped make that transformation for me. So yeah, that's a good little tip from Dr. Fuhrman. Again, he's the doctor expert. And yeah, very grateful to learn those lessons. And I've taken those recipes and I make them all the time today. So let me say that I find your personal story fascinating. You are third generation in the meat industry and you had a change.

22:00 So I'm very curious about a couple of things. First of all, I'd like to say that some of the leaders in our movement, one is the heir to the Baskin Robbins fortune who went vegan and has become a bestseller and a very, very huge proponent of a plant-based diet. So it happens. There's another man I know who was an heir to some kind of meat fortune. And I only found that out surreptitiously, but who runs a major vegan site. So I think it's not as uncommon as we think, but I wanna go back to your father. I don't know if your father and your grandfather are here with us, but have they changed at all?

22:40 How do they think about, how do they feel about your show and your transformation? Yeah, so my dad is with us and I mean, he loves it. He supports anything that I do. And he'll like, it's a point of pride anytime he eats a vegan dish. He hasn't totally transformed the way that he eats. And he's very supportive. We even experimented with making vegan sausages and trying to see if that was attainable for his business. And I'd have him test out different vegan sausages from the grocery stores that I would bring home or he would test out my recipes. So he's certainly been supportive. He's continued to educate me on how to make the best foods.

23:23 He's a little bit of a food scientist. So he knows how to create emulsifying ingredients. He knows how to let proteins sit and rest that they form a more meaty texture. And he knows how to apply that towards different types of ingredients, even in the plant -based realm. So we've just really scratched the surface. It would be a dream. My girlfriend and I joke about starting our own vegan sausage business and having him be our food scientist. That's the long-term dream. But right now we're kind of at that stage where my dad just brags when he eats a vegan meal, he eats more of them than he ever did before. He hasn't totally made the shift, but baby steps.

24:04 Absolutely, baby steps. We gotta, I always say, we don't wanna be an exclusive club. We don't wanna be a club at all. We wanna basically hit the tipping point and become the norm. And the clock's ticking. We have a very short period of time to make that transition. A point that actually Dr. Silas Rao, and Unchained TV did a documentary about Dr. Silas Rao. He recently was part of a team that won the Oxford Union debate. Oxford Union is a debate club associated with Oxford University. And it's very prestigious. The likes of Albert Einstein and Mother Teresa have spoken there. And he was recently a part of this debate.

24:47 And he made the point that we've got a very short period of time to make the transition to a plant-based diet. Let's hear a little bit about what he said in his winning debate argument. And we'll talk about it on the other side. It is undeniable that human civilisation has adversely impacted life support systems on the planet. Scientists have identified nine planetary boundaries that we must stay within for the sustainability of life on earth. At the moment, we have transgressed six of them. And any one of these transgressions is enough to kill life as we know it on this planet. The good news is that when we go vegan, we help resolve all six of them.

25:33 That's the power we have as individuals to reverse our existential crisis. Animal agriculture is the leading cause of ecological destruction because it uses 37% of the ice-free land area of the planet just to graze animals, while bottom trawling an area of the ocean floor the size of South America every year. So, first of all, thanks to Plant-Based News for giving us that clip. Again, while I want to take a relaxed approach and give everybody all the time they need, there's also this sense of urgency that due to the destructive nature of animal agriculture and the accelerating climate crisis, I mean, here in LA, we just went through three days of unprecedented storms with catastrophic flooding.

26:28 I'm happy to say I'm okay, but a lot of people are not. I know just this morning, I found out that a party I thought it was going to was cancelled because the home was completely flooded. It's happening. It's happening now. And a solution is to switch to a plant-based diet. In fact, there was an Oxford University study recently published in the New York Times that no other publication picked up on that shows that a heavy meat eater, which is most Americans, can reduce their emissions footprint by 75 % by switching to a plant-based diet. Of course, no other media picked that up when they spend hours covering what I call catastrophe porn of terrible things happening as a result of climate change.

27:14 What are your thoughts on that? How do we balance being laid back and kind and take it slow with the approaching, let's face it, climate apocalypse? Oh, wow. I mean, I just wanna highlight something you said there, which was catastrophe porn, which unfortunately has become a lot of people's favourite consumption of media these days. Just overwhelming amounts of kind of fear that's happening. And it seems like a lot of it is driven by certain types of agendas. So I don't know how we make this one, the one that seems to be one of the most impactful and could have the greatest effect on us a part of people's priorities.

28:04 And it's, Jane, that's a huge question. I don't know how we can do that. It's even overwhelming to think about within myself because a lot of what I've been talking about today has been taking the baby steps approach, but hearing that guy speak, it seems like baby steps might not be enough at this point. Well, you're doing your part. And I think if everybody did their part the way you're doing your part, which really is huge, having one of the very first vegan cooking shows on television, mainstream TV, I think we'd be further along. Let me go to a quick caller. We've got Karen in Venice, California.

28:45 Your question or thought for Chef Mario Fabri, whose series is now streaming on Unchained TV. First of all, I commend you, for all that you're doing, especially with your upbringing. I apologise for the noise. I'm in the car, by the way. The question to you is, I know that your way of getting to people, having them try to go vegan is through your cooking. What do you do when you're not cooking and you meet somebody and you're having conversations about vegan? What's your elevator, your 60 second, what do you talk to them about to try to help them think in another way?

29:35 Very good question. And I can reveal that Karen is a chef, a spectacular vegan chef, who actually has her own show on Unchained TV called Cook Out, which she started during the pandemic where we were cooking outdoors. But yes, you're always as well, Karen, carrying the messages. What's your answer to that? My quick elevator pitch for someone who's interested in being vegan is, if I can do it, you can do it. I grew up working at an Italian sausage factory surrounded by meat carcasses, thinking that it was the most normal thing on the planet. Not once did I ever view them as a living, breathing, conscious animal that has a heart and a soul.

30:17 And take a look at a dog and a cat and see that inside of every single other animal. Is that something you'd want? Is that a type of harm you'd wanna have to those animals and pets we call our loved ones? That's a quick one. And then another big part of it is, again, trying a few recipes. Go home, try and make something good. I'll refer them to the cashew cheese. I'll refer them to a stuffed shells recipe. A lot of times 60 seconds turns into me sending them a link for a recipe. So I like to start with, if I could do it, you can do it. And then here's two or three tools that you can take with you and actually make some good food. And a lot of times people are surprised and then I think the other approach is rather than giving my pitch, it's asking them questions.

31:04 It's inviting them into the conversation. A lot of times it's helping people make the discovery for themselves. Would you wanna kill an animal for food if you had to? The answer most definitely for almost everybody is no, unless they're completely closed-minded, then you almost don't have a chance. But that starter question really opens people up. Because a lot of times they'll say no, but it tastes so good. And that's when I throw in a recipe. That's when I throw in a food suggestion. So I'd say, starting with my story, how I changed and then asking them, if you didn't have to kill an animal for food, would you prefer that? And a lot of them will say yes.

31:44 And then, Karen, you sound like you got some recipes. Give them something to eat or if they're local in Los Angeles or wherever you're at, drop them a place that they can order some good food from. I like to refer a place called Butcher's Daughter, a place called Sage, Crossroads Kitchen. Those are a couple of my favourites where no doubt non-vegans will show up, eat something that'll blow their minds. And it might be the thing that starts them on that path. Yeah, and another one, you're Italian, I assume, and Tara Punzone has Pura Vita, which is an Italian restaurant. And she has a similar story.

32:25 You guys should get together and have a chat about this because she grew up in an Italian family where her parents ran like a deli kind of restaurant. And she decided at a young age, she wasn't going to eat meat. And she started kind of creating her own little place at the table. She said Sunday dinner was always a big family affair. And she was starting to make her own ricotta, vegan ricotta, vegan this, vegan that. And then she noticed that her other family members were like, I'll take a little bit of that. I'll take a little bit of that. And next her part of the table get bigger and bigger. And now she's got two very, very successful restaurants here a one in Redondo Beach and one in West Hollywood.

33:13 Her food is mind blowing. Like, I'm glad that I'm not that close because it'd be 500. I mean, it's so good. The vegan Italian. Can you comment a little bit on, it seems like Italian food is very conducive to vegan recipes. Yeah, I'd say vegan food and Italian food. I mean, it can be a challenge because you think about a lot of Italian dishes. It's almost the same version of noodles, meat and cheese sauce, noodles, meat and cheese and sauce. Which one are you going to choose and how are you going to combine them? But I think like the cheese has come a very long way. One of my favourite recipes is for stuffed shells.

33:55 Stuffed shells was my favourite thing in the world to eat growing up. And you have those little shell shaped noodles. You stuff them with cheese, you cover them with sauce, you bake them in the oven. And a lot of times that is like a ricotta cheese inside of there. And what I've done to transform that and get the right texture. And this is tested on my father, who is my artist critic, my greatest supporter. He liked the stuffed shells. And what I do for that is I make that cashew cheese I mentioned earlier. I set that aside and then I'll take some tofu and I'll crumble up that tofu in a bowl. And then I'll add in some rosemary, some thyme, some garlic powder, onion powder, a little bit of salt and crumble that up.

34:35 Then you add in the cashew cheese to that. Then you mix all that together. Now you have this tofu cashew cheese, spiced up crumble. And then I'll saute some spinach and some shallots and some garlic on the stove. And I'll have that all chopped up pretty finely. And then I'll throw that in that mixture. So now we have the cashew cheese, we have the tofu, we have the sauteed spinach, shallots and onions. And then that becomes our stuffing for stuffed shells. And it's better than, I'm sorry, grandma, my grandma's stuffed shells. And I think that that to me is like one of those kind of, it unlocked a little bit of a secret for me in terms of combining a bunch of different things to make something good.

35:19 Still haven't mastered it. Still really working on like a healthy whole food plant-based, low oil, low fat without the additives, vegan meatball, but trying to develop some good emulsifying agents for that to really bind it together. Something I did recently that worked pretty well. It needs some tweaking, but is taking some bread and actually soaking it in plant-based milk and then combining that in with a bunch of like lentils tomato paste and tonnes of spices and seasonings and a little bit of a flax egg. And that kind of binds it all together, but still developing that. But yeah, I think it's fascinating. I think it's exciting. I think one thing that might be a big commonality is a lot of people in Italy grow their own food.

36:03 If you go to Italy, there are gardens everywhere. The Amalfi coast is just mountains and on every slope of the mountain, there's a little inlet and a garden, inlet garden. So they like to grow their own tomatoes. My grandpa growing up, he had the meat factory, but he also had tomatoes and cucumbers in his garden at all times. So I think that they have that salt of the earth relationship to their food and vegetables are very sacred in that growing process. So they're very familiar with it. They're very excited about it. And once you teach an Italian that it can be better for the environment, it's something that they can relate to because they have such a strong relationship with the earth. Because maybe their parents, their grandparents grew the food that they ate growing up.

36:47 So I think that that might be one thing. I think this is a perfect time for you to do your demonstration. I was so excited when you said you were willing to do a cooking demo live here on Voice America Radio and on Shane TV. Check it out. Awesome. So we're switching it up. It's not quite a cooking demo, but that's the perfect transition because this is a how to grow your own food demonstration. So I'm gonna show you how easy it is to grow sprouts at home. So sprouts, so packed with nutrition. I'm not a doctor, but I talked to some doctors and something like one broccoli sprout seed has as much nutrition as an entire head of broccoli.

37:27 And sprouts, I'll show you some right here. We've got some broccoli sprouts right here. This is where they start some seeds. So these are some broccoli sprouting seeds. You could buy these from the internet. You could probably buy them locally. I got them from a company called The Sprouting Company. They have really cool kits to help you sprout, but these are the seeds and they require no soil and no sunlight to grow. And it takes about a week and I'll show you how easy it is. So this is a little kit, okay, that you can get. And really all you need is a jar. This is a fancy jar.

38:08 I'll show you the other option. You could also do this in a Mason jar or a leftover air one jar if you're bougie. This is a jar and it has a little filtered lid. You're just gonna need that, some seeds and some water. Just literally three things, seeds, jar, water. This is what you do. We'll do it in my fancy one because I'm actually gonna run these. Take the lid off. And then we're gonna add about two tablespoons of broccoli seeds to our jar, one, two tablespoons.

38:55 And then we're gonna fill this with water. I'll get myself in the picture a little bit more. Fill it with some water, just enough to cover them all up. Then we'll pop the lid back on. And then the first thing you need to do is you wanna let them soak for about eight hours. So actually, let's put that aside. So you let these soak for about eight hours and the seeds are just gonna absorb some water. So you could just pour the seeds, let them soak and let that go overnight, about eight hours.

39:36 And then after you've let them soak for those first eight hours, this is the second step. Step one, you soak. Step two, you're gonna be rinsing them twice a day. Here's how you rinse them. You pour out the water. You could do this over your sink. I don't got a sink back behind me so we're just gonna do it here. So you pour out the water, you pour in some new water. And again, this has a little filter top so it's easy to pour in the water. And you could do this in a Mason jar if you don't have the fancy kit. So it's really, really inexpensive to do. So now this is the rinsing phase. Like I said, let's pretend that these have been soaking for about eight hours.

40:16 And now we're rinsing them. Give it a little shake, shake. If Jane was here, we'd be doing some version of the blender dance, the sprout shaking dance. Give them a little shake, little shake, shake. And then pour that water out. Okay, that was our rinse. Again, we're pretending this is tomorrow morning after they've been soaking. And then now, again, kind of shake them up. And we're just gonna let them stay leaning like that. And this is just gonna let any extra water fall out of it. And again, if you have a Mason jar, you can literally just do it in a bowl like that and the water's gonna lay out.

41:00 So that was that process. And then that was rinse number one of the day, pretend it's the morning. And then you just rinse them twice a day. So you rinse them when you wake up and you rinse them when you go to sleep. And the rinsing is fill it with water, dump out the water, leave it. Twice a day. And after about three days, you're gonna see little like sprouts. You know, you go to the grocery store, they're a gazillion dollars. They're these little long, little green, about three inch little strips. And they'll start to grow after one day. After two days, they'll get a little bit longer. Three days, they're longer.

41:41 And after like three days, they're edible. So literally two tablespoons of seeds, a jar and some water, soak them once, rinse them twice a day every day after that. Don't need soil, don't need sunlight. You could leave them in a cabinet and they'll be growing great. And after they're done growing, these two tablespoons of seeds are gonna be like a massive like bowl of sprouts. This whole thing is gonna be filled up with sprouts. And I've been doing this for the past couple of weeks. And it is just like such a rewarding process. And you can do it with broccolis.

42:22 You could do it with, we got mung bean seeds right here. I got green peas seeds. They all have different health benefits. They all have different growing times. These ones, green peas, you could harvest these in two days. Two tablespoons of green peas, massive multiple salads in just two days with just water. So such an easy thing to do. The doctors I've talked to will preach the health benefits. I'm not going to, because they're talking about things like sulforaphane and all these complex elements of the seed that I don't fully understand, but they've done the research. I trust them. I trust you guys to do your own research. Don't take it from me.

43:03 I'm just a guy who cooks, who loves to learn. But sprouts, so healthy for you. So easy to grow. Even better for the environment when you do it at home, because it's so much easier for them to just send you a bag of seeds. Like one pound of seeds is gonna be 10 pounds of broccoli sprouts. This bag of seeds, so easy to ship, so easy to get to me. But if I was buying this from the grocery store, this would fill up the entire screen right here once it's fully grown. And then it's all in its own individually wrapped plastic containers. So it's like a 10th of the plastic, a 10th of the shipping cost, and you're doing it at home.

43:46 Can you tell me the name of the company to order these products? Yeah, so this company is The Sprouting Company. They are amazing, organic. They have these kits that are so easy to do yourself. They have all the instructions. It is absolutely fabulously designed. And this is something that I actually learned about recently. Hopefully we can get it up on your channel in a little bit. I'm working on a project. But I have a meeting actually tonight with the guy who created this company. His name's Doug Evans. He's raw vegan for 20 years, and he did like eating sprouts for 30 days. This guy is the sprouting king. And I'm going to his place later today, and he's gonna give me a whole education on sprouting and give me the whole lowdown.

44:33 So I'm so excited to learn more and dive more into this. What is the name? People wanna know, what is the name of that machine that you're, like if they were to order that machine? This is uniquely designed by The Sprouting Company. And it looks like a machine, but really all it is, is a jar with a strainer on the end of it. And then like a leaning container. And again, if you're like just trying to do this at home, this mechanism is the same thing as using a bowl and a Mason jar with a mesh screen. And these mesh screens you could get online for pretty cheaply. So this is a Mason jar that was just leftover from soup I got at Airborne.

45:15 So this- Well, keep talking for a second. I wanna bring you something that I do. And yeah. Love it. So this mechanism is very similar to this. This is like, you know, intro, you just got what you got around your house. This is like, I want this to look nice in my kitchen. And I'm obsessed with this. You know, this is the level up. And what's nice about them, The Sprouting Company, is they actually have seeds that come in their packages or organic seeds and they have tonnes of different varieties. The instructions come in the box. So it's like so easy, you know. And for someone, if you think, you know, if you think you're a plant killer, you know, if you try to kill your plants and you kill them, this will give you a green thumb confidence to do it yourself.

46:02 Okay, so I have a cat and she loves grass. So I have two of these that I bought online and I didn't think it was gonna grow. I thought, I'm gonna get this, it's gonna be a waste of money, but I'm gonna do it because I didn't like the plastic that the pre-bought came in. So sure enough, this one is reaching sort of the end and then I compost and here's the new one and it works great. I couldn't believe it, it's like a miracle. When you see things growing before your eyes, it's really powerful because we live in this process world where I grew up in Midtown Manhattan and I never touched, you know, I never grown anything, but the fact that I did this makes me open to what you're doing because I could actually think maybe it could happen.

46:54 So I have a couple of quick questions. One is, what's your favourite? Is it you eat it totally raw? And do you eat the whole thing? Like, for example, this is grass. I mean, you know, if I were to eat grass, which I'm not, you see what I'm saying? I'm trying to understand like once you grow this stuff and I also see a bunch of greens behind you and I'm wondering if that connects to what you were doing. No, these are just plants. No, on the table. Oh. On the table, there looks like a, in the back there. Oh, no, these are tomatoes, onions and then this is just a bunch of plants over here.

47:35 I don't have any fish ones with me right here because I'm going out of town, but yeah. So if you were to buy your computers or whatever it is, just Google like sprouts. Like, you know, I'm sure you've had them. They put them on avocado toast. Yeah, yeah. But they are so good just as a replacement for whatever main vegetable you're using in a salad. So if you're using spinach, if you're using kale, if you're using lettuce, just replace it with sprouts. Also so good on like a deli-style sandwich, you know. I love Unreal Deli. I don't know if you've heard of them. Yes. But I love Unreal Deli on a sandwich. You know, you get some, you know, you smear some mayonnaise on there.

48:16 You get some tomatoes, maybe some pickles. Then you plop a handful of sprouts on there and that's absolutely delicious. You know, put it on your toast in the morning. How long does it last before it goes bad? How long does it last before it goes bad? It's a pretty quick thing. So you do gotta eat them like within three to five days after they're done growing. So like, if you wanna lessen your load, like, and I wish, I'm bummed I don't have any finished ones here, but you could just do like one tablespoon. And then like, for me, like I just grew some, you know, I finished them like two days ago. I just took them out of the jar and threw them in the salad and like, boom, super healthy, ready to go meal. I eat them like before they have a chance to go bad if I'm being smart about it.

49:00 But they, yeah, they last about like three max five days. Well, first of all, I love this. One reason is that I've always toyed with having a garden, but the dirt, the, you know, all of that, it seems very overwhelming to me. And I don't know if I would do all the purchasing and then not follow up. So I've never done it, but this seems very doable. And I have Mason jars coming out of my ears. I got so many Mason jars. So I could see myself just ordering the actual peas, which I, somehow they appeal to me a little more than the broccoli, but I don't know. It's only two broccoli or peas?

49:40 No, broccoli, peas, mung beans, radishes, like pretty much anything. So these are just normal seeds that would grow into full plants. Like this is kind of like that initial growth phase for almost all vegetables. You're just eating it before it actually grows out of soil. So this is the same seed that I would put in the soil and grow broccoli from. But instead of putting in soil, we're putting in water and we're just sprouting it. It's like, it's just a different process, but you can do it with almost any vegetable seed. You can do it with lentils. You know, it's kind of infinite. Well, let me say, we only have a couple of minutes. I've been so excited about A, having you and your 22 episodes streaming on Unchained TV.

50:26 They are super fun. And I think more than anything, it shows that eating plant-based is not a sacrifice. It's an adventure. And I just want to play one quick clip because you had the famous Lauren Toyota on and she is really hot for food, is hot show. So let's just check that out really quickly. And then we're going to wrap it up. We've got our cauliflower right here. Just can you talk me through what we're going to do? Yeah, I mean, you don't need to be too intimidated, but you don't just want to start hacking into the stem. You want to be slightly, you know, nice and thin. Okay, yeah. So you just cut off the stem. Okay, I'm starting the stem.

51:07 You want to take your knife and kind of go in at the base of the stem. Okay. And then you get like, this is like a nice fork. You can use all purpose flour works, but we've got rice flour, garlic powder, and onion powder. We're essentially making like a savoury pancake batter here. Why'd you get into vegan food? Well, I had spent a few years like going back and forth from being vegetarian to being an omnivore. I love food. I always cared about what I was eating, wanted to be healthy, wanted to like eat the right things. And so I knew I had to make a change. I watched a documentary called Food Inc. Okay, I watched that. Yeah, that's kind of what got it going in my mind. Like I need to make a change. Like I don't want to contribute to this corrupt food system and started experimenting. And that's, I really started hot for food even before I went vegan.

51:51 There you go. Somebody who's a top vegan right now had really, again, not been vegan her whole life. Very few people. I know a couple of born vegans, but they're rare. Hopefully not forever. Final thoughts for this segment. We would love to have you back. You need to have your own show where you talk live about all these fascinating things on top of your cooking show. Thank you. Really quick, I found some. So I have some finished mung bean sprouts. These are what they're going to look like. They just look like little sprouts. You sprinkle them on a salad. The broccoli ones are a little more green. The radish ones are red, but I just want to show you that. Do you have to wash them again after they sprout? Oh yeah, you just rinse them.

52:32 You give them that final rinse and then you throw them in a container and put them in your fridge. Got it. Yep. Final thoughts, my dear. Again, we urge everybody, watch. Go to watch.unshanetv.com. Chef Mario has an entire category of many, many shows, hopefully with more to come, but they're incredible. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. So excited to have the show on there. Just shout out a couple of guests and a couple of things you could learn. I do vegan bodybuilding with Brian Turner. This guy is absolutely ripped out of his mind. He talks about how you can get protein as a vegan. He's a big YouTuber. He's done competitions. He teaches me about some high protein recipes.

53:13 Then we also have Cruella, these world famous DJs who say they try and eat healthier when they're on tour because it gives them more energy. They like Indian food, so I teach them an Indian mango kulfi and then they teach me an incredible salad recipe and it just kind of stems and grows and expands from there. So I've had some really cool guests. We talk about the basics. We talk about health. We talk about street food. So it's just kind of non-vegans exploration into vegan food and then the show kind of takes a shift, you'll see. I go from being the sausage guy learning from the vegan experts to now I am the experienced vegan teaching people like Mr. Wonderful about vegan food.

53:56 So you'll see me go and make that transformation in real time from someone who thought they were gonna work at a sausage factory to someone who's well-trained, enthusiastic and excited to teach people about everything I learned. And maybe starting your own vegan sausage factory. I see an entrepreneur with big things to come. And I love Shark Tank cause they support a lot of vegan products. Mark Cuban may be vegan-ish because he invested in Jenny Goldfarb's vegan pastrami company, Mrs. Goldfarb's Real Deli. You mentioned that you love her food. I love it too. So thank you so much for being part of the Unchained TV team.

54:39 We're really honoured to have you. You're doing incredible, incredible work and really making veganism the fun, fun experience that it is. So I would urge everybody, please download Unchained TV, the world's only vegan streaming network. We're available for free on any cell phone, on any Samsung smart TV, on any TV with Amazon Fire Stick Roku device or Apple TV device. And it's so easy, it's fun. We're mostly volunteer run. Check it out. You just can go to watch.unchainedtv.com on your computer, or if that's too much, just go to unchainedtv.com. There's a lot of ways to get to us and we're all about just saving the planet, saving the animals, saving your health.

55:26 See you next time here on Unchained TV. Thank you, Chef Mario. Thank you.