Big Blend Radio

Vegan Food and Wine Pairings

Celebrate International Veganuary Month on this episode of Big Blend Radio's "Wine Time with Peggy" podcast with Peggy Fiandaca and Chef Candy Lesher who discuss vegan food and wine pairings. Check out Chef Candy's vegan Cannellini Casserole Recipe here: https://blendradioandtv.com/listing/cannellini-casserole/

Along with her winemaker husband Curt Lawrence Dunham, Peggy Fiandaca owns and operates LDV Winery in Arizona. Learn more at https://ldvwinery.com/

Chef Candy Lesher is a culinary wellness coach based in Phoenix, Arizona. View more recipes and learn about how she helps clients achieve their health goals at https://www.yourkitchenrx.com/

"Wine Time with Peggy" airs every 1st Wednesday at 4pm Arizona time. Follow the podcast here: http://tinyurl.com/42j5zucj

This episode is also being shared and featured on other Big Blend Radio Network Channels including the "Big Daily Blend," and "Eat, Drink & Be Merry." Check out our network of podcasts: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-network/bigblendradionetwork

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Duration:: 52m
Broadcast on:: 02 Jan 2025
Audio Format:: other

Welcome to Big Blend Radio's Wine Time with Peggy Show, featuring Peggy Fiendaka, who along with her winemaker husband Kurt Lawrence Dunham owns and operates LDV Winery in Arizona. Welcome everybody and happy new year. It is actually January 1st 2025 and January is also known as Veganuary and who knows if I'm pronouncing that correctly but it sounds okay to me and of course we're here on our Wine Time with Peggy Show featuring Peggy Fiendaka, who along with her husband Kurt own and run LDV Winery in Arizona. The Winery is in the southeast Churkawa area of Arizona and then the actual tasting room is in the downtown region of Scottsdale and I'm telling you January is the brilliant time to be in Arizona so check out LDV Winery.com and we're going to talk about vegan wines with Peggy and we also have Chef Candy Lesher, who is known as a culinary wellness coach and we met her first through the Don des Spofier International Phoenix Chapper. They came on the show Linda Cassam, she has been on twice with us talking about what their work is and recipes and cooking classes but I do want you to go to Chef Candy's website which is your kitchenRx.com and she's going to talk about vegan cuisine. So welcome ladies, how are you? terrific happy new year ready to get the year started in a healthy way yes I love this and I love that we can say we're going to eat healthy and we get to still have wine so that's important. So being vegan and I have done that being vegan is a lot of a lot of people do it for health right and I think that's where you come in Candy, Chef Candy but also it could be a spiritual belief everybody does it for what they want to do it for and sometimes people do it just for almost like a cleansing to get their health back and so may do it just for the month of January so that's exciting so Chef Candy can you give us an overview exactly what a vegan is what because it's vegetarian world has all kinds of names well exactly and people get vegetarian and vegan confused sometimes and they're similar but not a vegan is not going to have anything that is animal or insect based and if you say insect well think of honey, honey is not vegan um however um you know there are plenty of alternative sweeteners that are vegan. A vegetarian is not going to worry about honey so you have these differences like that and a vegan is going to hopefully be very conscientious about the nutritional quality of food going in because because they're not having any meat products at all it's very easy to have some deficiencies nutritionally so you really need to work on making sure you have a very rounded nutritional intake on a regular basis and so and that's one of the reasons why I shared this recipe because it is extremely rounded in what it offers your body and the protein and the nutritional quality so it's so important as a vegan though if you're going to go vegan that you become extremely aware and really kind of track what you're having so that if there are any deficiencies in there you can recognize them and take care of them and a nutritional and wise fashion. I love this and everyone the recipe is a cannellini recipe but she gets to say the whole name um but well and we want to get into that but I'm going into the nutritional quality which is again another reason a lot of people go vegan is for environmental reasons and also for animal um animal rights animal you know we want to take care of animals and do it in that way so um everybody like I said goes into this for a different reason and I appreciate all of them I really do um but I think one thing I messed up with I did really good when I started cooking whole foods and I really embraced veganism and started eating vegetables that I never thought or knew about you know and I really did a healthy thing and then I got into the processed um foods for vegans and I did not do well at all in fact got a little bit of an autoimmune deficiency and it I went from looking really healthy my body tone was like I can't I'm like that was me holy cow I need I need to go back to that time because I was like I didn't recognize myself like I lost a lot of weight but I had muscle tone but I was also very active but it was like wow and then when I got like what I'm going to say stupid and lazy about this it it wasn't fun anymore because I actually enjoyed being vegan and doing the whole food cooking and really learning different things um and then I didn't do well like my body went down rapidly and quickly so this being smart about it is important. It is because the processed foods unfortunately are are when you have those you're beginning to integrate things that your body at that point especially if you've been 80 clean is not going to react well to seed oils can't go there you have to stick with your your healthy whole oils your olive oil and your avocado oil um and there are so many processed things in those quote vegan items that are just counterintuitive for your body your body is not going to work well with them so that's why it's important to make sure that whatever base recipe is you're using how do you traditionally sound and not just do pasta for 20 years and also pasta can be done in so many ways but um I stayed away when I first started doing it too hydrogenated oils went out the window 100 percent I said none noted this um and yeah and I'm thinking I'm going to have to go back to this now I think I see what's happening in January bring all the bacon beforehand right no but January I think you guys yeah might have to cheat tonight but um tomorrow I'll be good is that okay that is great and I'll tell you what you're really not going to feel like you're missing anything when you have a meal like this or or comparable meals they really focus on flavor and texture and and um balance and yet they offer so much nutritionally in a vegan fashion and you feel good actually doing something where you're taking out time just to do something special for yourself and your body knows it but I think this is important because you're starting to taste things which means it's part of the wine tasting process is pairing tasting so instead of just you know stopping at a fast food and all of that kind of thing we're actually being very um we're taking time with with what we're doing and have putting value into it and and appreciating the quality which goes to Peggy's wines I mean ldb winery quality I mean period which are vegan and I love talking about vegan wines because everyone just goes well wine is automatically vegetarian or vegan so Peggy it's off to you like because you made a choice to be vegan too and I want to hear what a vegan wine is and then why you chose to be vegan absolutely you know personally I am not a vegan um but I all about uh purity and eating as pure and and drinking wine as pure as possible so when we started the winery we said we're going to make the we're since we control the entire process from from the the seedling all the way to the glass the bottle of wine leaves are tasting room we control the entire process so we wanted to ensure that we were producing the highest quality grapes possible in the purest way and once those grapes get into our winery we want to just celebrate those uh and honor those grapes and not do a lot of additives to the wine so that when you enjoy our glass of wine you know you're getting pure juice just about it's truly um a really high quality wine so people are always shocked when I say aren't you know that our wines are vegan and they're they're shocked by that but the reason why is that our there's a process called fining which is when you towards the end of the winemaking process when you want to basically make the wine look pretty shiny and clear and and ensure that all the sediment is out of that wine that um a cheaper wine or probably the majority of wineries actually use what's called a fining agent that is added to the wine so that it then grabs on to the sediments and it falls to the bottom of the barrel or the tank or whatever it's in so that it can be removed and those fining agents are things like egg products milk products fish bladders um plastics things that you really don't want to know about and um a lot of people are allergic to them and fish that some wine gives Nancy and I we get weird and we start not being able to breathe correct correct and legally a winery doesn't have to tell you that they use those products in the winemaking process and there will always be residual in the wine even though they they put it into the wine they find it they pull out the sediment there's still going to be some residual left in the wine we don't do that we do a gravity process process that over time since we age our wines a long time over time the sediment sinks to the bottom of the tanks and we remove them every 60 days basically in our process so it's a much more natural so you're going to get potentially in our big reds as they age you're going to get some sediment in the bottle but um that's just that's those bitsies that say that your wine your winemaker loved you because they're getting good care of the wine and and not putting any additives so we we go so far as we don't even use manure in our field to because again then you'd have residual on your grapes that then come in into our winery so our process from the field to the the bottle is is sure we do very little additives and that it goes also to your dedication to keeping your natural environment pristine as well so you try really hard to not bring in like 10,000 chemicals and things like that into absolutely absolutely and where you know our soils are the one of the most important parts of our vineyard and so we are four times a year we do a chemical analysis of our soils to make sure that they're healthy and we do additives to the soils to make sure all of the minerals are in balance in our soils again it starts from the soil and we produce really high quality grapes and and we take care of them once they're in the winery so you know ours are they're vegan gluten-free zero residual sugar and the very low sulfides oh see this is I love your ones you know Nancy and I love your wines it's like you know it's like we're there are babies to us this is these are just amazing you know you've you want to share them with special people in your life or new friends you know it's a good way to make new friends you go I got a bottle of L.D.V. what do you have right and I don't think we're we're short-changing the the taste of those wines in any way the they're very intense fruit forward wines so just by doing what we're doing isn't sacrificing the taste or the quality of the wine in my opinion it's enhancing them and you know so many people say I'm allergic to red wine and they point to the sulfites as the culprit for their allergies most likely it is not so few people are truly allergic to sulfites that it's most likely the finding agent that was used in that wine that isn't labeled on that bottle like a nutrition label it is on other products so most likely they're milk intolerant or egg intolerant and that's what's causing the energy not the sulfites yeah some people get headaches from red wine and I haven't if you have the good we have good red wine you don't and I wanted to ask you to you know people getting those you know that that oh you know the red wine gives me a headache or I get sick with that or whatever it's not it's about keeping it clean and pure and for us it feels good I mean look at that what I was just saying about eating whole and healthy non-hydrogenated and here you are also keeping with the environment because when you're talking about the finding agents you're talking about plastics and plastics are not good for our bodies either I mean we need them for certain things but environmentally as we're dealing with climate change or global warming whatever anyone wants to say whatever's going on with the environment we know that plastic is not good it's not good for the soil it's not good for our bodies and it does leach out so I love that you're you're not working with that in there you know I know yeah plastic is everywhere and everything we do right that's one of those things you know I was looking at that with a mayonnaise jar now all days now we have to have double the plastic on a mayonnaise jar so we can have it upside down yeah make your own make your own it's so easy to make your own mayonnaise yeah it's so easy I mean we forget how easy it is to prepare really nutritious and wonderful foods that have taste and it's good for your body and it just takes a little bit of time and if you do it and celebrate that process of making great wine like we do or making your food it's an honor then to to enjoy it with friends so it's easy to do it just takes a little bit of time and thinking about it you know a lot of people are allergic or get a headache from wine it's usually they're they get dehydrated and they it's or it's that second bottle of wine that they just finished that's going to give them a headache you know or they had that they had three cocktails before dinner wine correct so I want to say have a glass of wine but then drink the glass of water have a you're going to have your second glass of wine follow it up with another glass of water so you're not that you keep hydrated yeah that's a really good point but I think it's a small percentage of people in the world who deal with this very small but I love your attention to quality and thinking of the environment and thinking of you know your your clientele's health you know healthy being that works for them a doctor as a doctor candy chef candy well you are a doctor to me you know because you're you're using food as medicine right as part of your wellness exactly so making your own make and it does basics that was part of it for me as a vegan because when I started to look at things like mayonnaise I started looking at they have all these different things in there and I'm like okay we're back to more than three ingredients on things like that so that part of it is kind of doing some of these things from scratch and learning to enjoy it and take that time and have a glass of wine while you're doing it absolutely I mean the best way to cook is with a glass of wine in your hand I'm just saying so especially when it's a great class of wine like L.E.V. and one of the things too on creating everything from scratch what you learn to do is learn what's important to do from scratch for instance mayonnaise especially if you're vegan make your own just make your own and there's plenty of recipes out there you can you can find some great ones some people can't have soy and a lot of the vegan mayonnaise's will use like a soft tofu as part of their base so but there's so many other options a ways of doing things so what you do is you just go through and find the things that are important to you that you use a lot that's one of the things I always remind people if you're going to eat it a lot make it the best quality for instance people who eat apples all the time they eat it apple a day good for you but definitely make sure they're organic if you eat one apple a month it's probably not as important to make sure it's organic but the things that you eat a lot of those are the things that you want to have come in clean like your wine then definitely like your wine exactly it's my priority you want good clean wine well you know this this is the thing also um you're making a really good point too on the fact of learning about what is it that you really like you know we travel full time so whenever I'm in store I'm always going like looking at where we are what can we make what can we do what's quick what's easy maybe you know sorry and then it's like okay wait well we could do this salad and we can you know avocados are my go-to for absolutely everything because I just got to the point when as being a vegan if I was gonna have bread it was normally actually Nancy started baking bread but we and would do like a sourdough which could be vegan and you know you can do some wheat in there too because you can do a wheat sourdough and I would just do avocado toast that would be instead of butters and all these other things and eggs I was just like I'm just gonna have avocado I like it I can spice it up and that's good so I had to kind of change things but also go with things that I really liked and go that way and find the flavors I really like so cheese is a huge problem with cheese for me that's you know cheese and wine are like luckily dark chocolate is vegan but the cheese I started making using lemon pepper as a replacement and nutritional yeast as a replacement for cheese that was my thing nutritional yeast in fact the recipe I've got here one of the notes for cheese lovers at the end is if you're a vegetarian and you're a cheese lover go ahead and put a little Parmesan on your model if you're vegan then you want to add nutritional yeast but again we're talking about pumping out the nutritional value and especially for a vegan utilize your nutritional yeast it's very important because it's got such a nice great profile of nutrients that are important especially if you're vegan so let's talk about the cannellini um casserole so this is great because it's a casserole which means there's leftovers right so let's talk about this not no no not necessarily casserole this not necessarily mean leftovers casserole is how it's presented so this can go into a casserole dish but it can mean it can actually be just uh threw it together for the family put it in the bowls things you don't have to present it that way but because we're kind of in that holiday season and because that's cold when you're getting ready to make great changes in your life sometimes being a little better to yourself makes you feel like i'm i'm not denying myself look how beautiful this is look how the great presentation and the aromas from it and sometimes you kind of have to to nudge yourself on the back a little bit to take those extra steps into that next healthy realm because that's not easy let's faith it not so give yourself those little extras for instance the beautiful toasted sunflower seeds on the top if you don't want to have breadcrumbs because you're gluten-free take that little extra moment to post the sunflower seeds and put it on there and you're like oh that made it taste even better and you feel happy that you're having it not oh this is what i have to have because i have to be healthy that isn't what we're looking for we we want happy food you can enjoy great class of wine with this that's what we're looking for so the cannellini bean is article has a really good texture it's it's like a meaty bean oh my wrong actually a cannellini is if the best description of it is a white kidney bean now cannellini beans are actually much more buttery and i prefer them heads heads and tails above uh kidney beans but the the good part about cannellini beans um and the bad part is that there really are good canned cannellini beans i would love it if everybody would search out good organic cannellini beans soak them and gently cook them with maybe a little bit of garlic and a little you know sea salt but not everybody has time for that so the canned cannellini beans are actually a very good substitute but i always ask you to look for organic ask me why why okay because the organic cans of beans don't have the bht on the inside of the cans okay that's why and that's again going into that plastic stuff that we don't want in our bodies right that is correct that is correct so that's why i always remind people if you're going to buy canned beans pay that extra 20 to 40 cents a can and get the organic uh good good good stuff to know and i love the ingredients in here you've got that little bit of lemon that's what i i always go to it's that the black pepper you've got shallots and i just learned to cook with shallots um about a week ago and it was fun oh my gosh the flavor i you know i learned i learned all about okay so in england we used to have those little pickling onions those little pickle onions um and pearl onions yeah and they were always being pickled you know that was like pickled onions are like pickles in this country but pickled onions are a big deal there or it was when i was growing up there but so i was like oh these are i don't remember having these fresh well so now of course i go crazy is sweet onions it was all that all we were doing with uh Melissa's produce we had a ball made our upside down pineapple cake i don't know if that was vegan but it was kind of close i think you could make it vegan um and it was a fresh pineapple no cans um but when it came to these onions where i was actually being able through this cooking process taste the difference wondering okay let's use some in a salad to see what the difference is then cook them saute them oh my gosh oh i'm like a onion freak i want them all well shallon's shallon's have shallon's have that bit of garlicky i think note to them they're just awesome you can crisp them up and put them as a topping on top of things you can caramelize them beautifully uh you can um saute them with wine can they just and mushrooms mushrooms shallots wine yeah yeah bring mushrooms bring every mushroom to me see now that's something i can mushrooms are healthy right we can do that yeah mushrooms are very healthy very good for your immune system and your brain bring the mushrooms i keep my brain back and there and mushrooms are a perfect pairing with wine i i mean it's it's like uh you you do a medium-bodied red with mushrooms it's like a a pairing made in heaven um you know so or cooking with mushrooms wine and mushrooms um are beautiful together oh this is exciting i love this recipe because you've you've got some you've got some kale in there i knew she was gonna throw something extra in there too for a little boost of health well and the nice thing is the technique that we're using on a kale is something people can use in multiple different recipes it doesn't have to be just this but what we're doing is we're stripping off the thick stem because that that doesn't add anything at all and it's gonna just could be fibrous and then we slice the kale and then we put it in a kind of a wide bowl so it's easier to work with and you put your lemon juice on and what you do is you start massaging the lemon juice into the kale and think ceviche how um for people who do have seafood um pescitarians there we go um the the acid and the lemon juice actually cooks the shrimp well what happens here is it's kind of doing the same thing with the kale but it makes the kale very soft and very pliable and it's not like chomping into a piece of raw vegetable it becomes um much more appealing and by taking that softened kale you don't have to saute it just by taking that softened kale that you massage like that with the lemon juice and then add a little salt to it and folding that into the rinsed and and leading beans that you've already got marinating in olive oil that you've just gently heated thinly sliced garlic and of course you could add shallot in there too um for shallot lovers but that and the Aleppo pepper and the oil takes on that beautiful flavor and fragrance and it just becomes bold and and and enticing and you put the beans in that and let them absorb that and then you add that kale and then you add a little bit of fresh basil leaf and you know again a little shallot if you want and then top it with a little zest of lemon zest and either ponco braid comes if you're okay with um with gluten and if not I love love love using toasted sunflower seeds which also very well with wine by the way um and you've got this incredible casserole that is so healthy and you can serve at room pit you can warm it in the oven gently and I try not to warm it too much because you don't want to overdo the the balance of the oils and the kale you just really want to get it to that that nice serving temperature and you've got heaven you have a couple glasses of wine with that you are not feeling denied let me tell you I love this now I want to go to the pairing of this because my mind goes vignet immediately but I could be completely wrong piggy I actually would go with a light red with this because of the Aleppo pepper and the layers of flavor that this has I might go with I mean if you like our you could go with our rosé of garnash which is a full bodied rosé with it or I think our garnash would be a nice one even all the way up to our red blend would pair beautifully with this if you went with a white I would probably go with an oaked white you know an oaked Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay or an oaked vignet like ours but I think it needs a little body to the wine because there's this what I have always talked about on our show when we're doing food pairings is to think about the layers of flavors you can get into the food to make it really sing you know and anything that I cook has multiple layers of flavors to it and this recipe does also and that's how we make our wine we want our wine to kind of be intriguing as you drink it because you're getting the nuances with every sip and so that's where I'd go with the pairing I think I don't know what do you think Andy actually I was taking your red blend that was when I was working on the recipe kind of doing a little fine-tuning that was what I had in my mind with your red blend and it's like I want it now yeah I do I do why why didn't I open a bottle right now my gosh but a red blend is perfect because it's a blend so I'm just saying but I wanted to go back to the doing the reds like you're talking about because with beans there's always this earthy quality to them same as as mushrooms depending on how they've been prepared so doesn't that also a pairing just on earthiness with with like your red wines pegging just because it's not like a heavy earthy this is no earthiness exactly and no it does and I think like what I love about cannellini beans is that butteriness of them it just has this wonderful mouth feeling because I am not a bean either just the only ones I like are cannellini beans and black black beans and those multi-color red beans I can't think of what they're called but Anastasis no I can't think of what they're called but no no no no no but the butteriness so you need a wine that's going to be able to cut through that butteriness and compliment that so you don't want to light up a wine to acidic a wine would I think clash with this so that's why I went to more of a blend or a lighter red would go beautifully oh and the best thing is you could just sit there and taste away on the different wines and figure it out that way yeah don't forget start with the vignette as you're cooking and then graduate to the reds you know as you get to the actual dish this past Christmas for our Christmas holiday party or my staff we had them all over the house and I cooked for them and half of them are either vegans or pescatarians or vegetarians so I had and I am not but it was a lot of fun for me so as a you know don't be afraid to to experiment even if you are not a vegan so what I did was I had the main course which I had a protein for I had prime rib for those that ate beef but I had salmon herb crusted salmon for those that would eat fish but then all my sides were were grains or salads and they weren't just the same old I think you fall into a rut when you just okay I'm just going to serve them a pasta salad or I'm just going to serve them potatoes or whatever but I did not want to do that at all and so my new favorite grain is pharaoh and so I made this wonderful pharaoh and corn salad and made a beautiful green salad with apples and pomegranate and cranberry and a wonderful dressing and then made a black bean and green bean or harka bear salad with this wonderful mustard dressing on it and everyone enjoyed that even though the salads were all vegetarian or vegan everyone around the table enjoyed them and never felt like they dised out on something at that time that pharaoh is awesome there's a recipe I think we have for pharaoh with apple as a salad and it's like a vinaigrette too I mean that that no one talks about that very often you never hear about that Peggy that's awesome yeah so it's one of those true I had an adventure it was a lot of fun and the key was it had a lot of fresh herbs in it because we have a wonderful garden that had I grow all kinds of herbs we use the apples from the vineyard in the the one salad and the key is the layers of flavors um so that it's just not a one note taste that you're getting multiple flavors in it and the pharaoh is really a high fiber high protein it's a Mediterranean ancient grain it's anti-inflammatory so I think it's I think candy you would approve actually one of my favorite little salads that I do as a side is the pharaoh but I take the kale that I pulled them out and this recipe and and finally chop it a little bit more and lots of fresh parsley and green onion and it's kind of a a unique almost a almost like a tibuli because you've got all these vegetables and those lemony kale and and so you said pharaoh in my brain went yeah this yeah this this didn't have this had arugula in it it didn't have the kale but it I probably offered the same kind of flavor to it with the and I had lemon zest also in it it's just wonderful okay you're all making me hungry now now what can we do with hickelman now let's bring out the hickelman that's one thing I started going from potato chips to making my own hickelman chips by slicing them and then putting a little bit of lemon you just dip them in the lemon and then dip them in the different chili powders and then I started getting into making my own spice blends I don't know I was like well I want a little bit of this because that's I love to make chili and so when I make chili I'm using curries and cumin's and I'm using it turns into an african dish like a north african thing it's it's interesting it's a good word and I think we've talked about in the past I've given you my secret to hickelman tacos right that's right all right you slice the hickelman on with uh on the really really really thin on the um the what you call it the the slicer mandolin mandolin thank you I couldn't think of the name of on the mandolin and soak them so they're pliable and they make incredible shells for shrimp tacos so you could do avocado in there you could put your ferro salad in there like to me this is I think it's one of those vegetables that get like looked aside at yet there's some little bit more nutrition than they you know it's not heavy nutrition right but it's well better than the relationships actually the important thing with um hickelman isn't necessarily the nutritional profile from a base like vitamin C, vitamin D the important thing about it is hickelman is a huge prebiotic so in each the healthy gut biome which is really important to maintain too for your health especially if you're vegan wow okay okay I want to know this one thing because I know people who are thinking about going vegan always say this one thing not all of them um there's not enough protein you know I had to ask that question being a vegan you're gonna knock head enough protein for your body if you eat nothing but processed vegan food that is correct if you eat whole foods with lots of beautiful legumes and healthy grains and freshly prepared foods you're gonna be just fine that's a bunch of bularchy all right I love it even I see sports people do become a vegan and they're like doing you know heavy lifting and stuff like that I'm like cc sorry peggy so even the pharaoh is high in fiber and protein so it's a healthy grain that that offers both to your body yeah and isn't it when you put a legume and a grain together they make a perfect protein there's like a certain thing with that they they they make a more balanced protein yes your body absorbs better okay so um so you know what on that note take some leftover cooked pharaoh make it a casserole as you were saying and add some of that into our beautiful um homage to kalani I like this I like this so um I do want to touch base with you all because it's january peggy um what is going on at the winery and what's happening in the vineyard we always have to touch base and we do need your word of the of the month of course of course but before we leave I wanted to about cooking vegan you know I was thinking of some tips for people I always like to give some tips um think about think about your whole grains look for whole grains I think is very important when you're choosing your vegetables don't just steam them roast your vegetables with herbs or stir fry them with a good oil try something different and and mix your vegetables don't just throw some potatoes in the oven and call it a day but roast your cauliflower with carrots and celery and and herbs um make your own vegetable broth it's easy to do you can walk away from it and let it steep on this on the stove um and use those roasted vegetables that you did to make your your veggie broth don't buy over-the-counter vegetable broth learn to blanch your vegetables properly I think you'll enjoy them better when you learn explore all the squashes I think we did we recently did a show on squash and our recipes on squash there's so many wonderful squashes especially at this time of year to explore and then get familiar with herbs and spices and seasonings and that's how you begin to add the layers of flavors to your food that's those are my tips for the adventure that's the adventure that is really the adventure is starting to learn what you like and what you don't like it's okay to not like something right so what we're doing in the vineyard it's um my word of the day is dormancy um it it's right now the vineyard looks like it's dead you know the vines are dead but it's an it's they're all kind of tucked away and it's part of like it's a crucial phase of the life cycle of a vine is that it um helps them prepare for the next growing season so dormancy is a very important part it usually starts in the summer and heads all the way through march when we start getting the vines coming to life it allows them to grow new roots and to absorb new nutrients so in january we'll test the soils to see how depleted they might have been from the past growing season and we'll do some augmentation of the soils it also um the vines are converting the sugars to starch in the trunks and in the roots and so that's an important part and they are you know hardy plants uh so because it does get cold at the vineyard it hasn't gotten too cold yet and in fact we still haven't gotten a lot of rain so we're still watering the vines um but the canes and the cordons um you know the canes are the ones that go up and the cordons are the ones that go vertical they're turning brown and of course the leaves are gone and uh they're put to sleep until one break in the spring cool well everyone needs a break right this is part of it and that's how i think about cooking is like it's a way to take a break from everything going on in in your life put some music on start cooking and drink some wine you know have a conversation if you can some of us can't have a conversation when cooking but if i do i may blow things up but but it's it's awesome it's it's this i love this adventure story today um this conversation and so the winery at the actual uh tasting room all right so i want to make sure everyone understands we are i know the holiday season is over but you can drink healthy wines and it is still shipping season and you want to know this because at a certain point when it gets too hot in the desert peg you cannot ship you wine so you need to stock up now yes yes please get on our website you can order online or um just give me a call you'll get you'll get me when you call but we'll be able to ship till may probably in the beginning of may and uh so stock up perfect time to come to Arizona in the winter time um perfect time to come visit ldv at the in downtown scott'sdale or we have great patio right in the midst of all the activity that's going on there's all kinds of festivals um sporting events golfing tournaments horse uh Arabian horse show all kinds of things happening in Arizona in the scott'sdale region so come visit us play on a trip to Arizona awesome awesome so um i want to go over to you chef candy tell everyone how you work with them so if someone's looking at going vegan and maybe has oh dietary it's like for me i i can eat tree nuts which really sucks when you're vegan because i love cashews and macadamia nuts and all those wonderful things but maybe once i clean my system out it won't be so bad so um yeah how do you work with people um that maybe be wanting to do this kind of change well what i do is i help clients who have usually they're hitting a they've hit a devastating milestone in their health um just an example oh my gosh i suddenly this person has diabetes and they're like the doctor gave me the stack of papers and they said this is what i need to do now how do i translate that into my chicken fried steak and pizza diet and it's like well let me help you so i take them by the hand and we start working through and figuring out what it is they don't want to give up so we come up with an alternative that gives them the same satisfaction but isn't going to kill them literally right um and we start walking through step by step i don't prescribe a diet what i do is i help them meet what their medical professionals have said they need to do and i help them find that path to get there because there's a huge gap between that stack of papers they give you and what you're currently doing that's all those situations yeah well you know what those stack of papers is like reading labels in a grocery store once it's past that three or four ingredients i'm like i'm out of here because now i feel like i'm going to end up in that stack of papers that's how i look at it you know it's and that's what a culinary wellness coach helps with it it kind of takes them by the hand and walks them through and it's a very individualized thing so i i don't usually have more than two to three clients at one time because they're constantly calling me you get that seven a.m. phone call they have to go here today and this is what they're serving how do i get around you know so you're you're constantly helping them but usually it's about month three or four you're pretty much ready to walk on their own they've gotten the feel for it and i'm always excited to let them go off on their journey and then they call back after a month or so and go yeah kind of ran into this snag how do i get around it next time and we continue to confer but it's it's uh basically just getting them on the right path and helping them just start taking those first steps so they can be self-sufficient and autonomous i love this i know we do our shows with dr jack u bonnie every second wednesday she comes on and she's a cardiologist and her whole thing is like look at the mediterranean diet look at whole foods look at you know she said you know it's if you've got diabetes you're on your way to be hanging out in the heart disease department and we don't want you there she's so it's all it's all connected she said all of it because it all ends up with your heart and diet is one of the very first things you can change you don't have to be an athlete if you if you are not able to be an athlete start with your diet right and and it's fun it is and and the but it can be very overwhelming people are like i i too much i can't do this and that's where someone like me comes in because i'm like okay let's break this down let's let's not look at you know five screens of pictures here let's let's break this down to what you're doing where we need to get you and how we get you there because to say look at the mediterranean diet is great for someone who's interested in food and nutrition but usually the people who are needing that so it's it's helping them to digest it's taking a bite of the elephant one bite at a time and not overwhelming them and that's what you do yeah i i do want to close with this too in my tip is if you're going to go vegan or you're going to change your diet it's like when you say step by step one bite at a time don't don't beat yourself up if you turn around and eat a piece of chocolate cake get on with it and if you're going to if you're going to break the habit you know the good habit and you're going to have that chocolate cake you better have really good wine go to peggy but really enjoy it don't put yourself down while you're being naughty if you're going to be naughty go for it a hundred percent right but then tomorrow don't worry about it move on and just get back on the get back on the horse i i have to tell you because i think i may have told you this peggy when i was vegan i mean i was like insanely strict and i got really it actually caused more stress and it was because like you know i i yeah anyway so my one friend and i we were musicians and everything we finished a gig and at this lodge that we used to perform at and there was this wedding and they had leftover carrot cake i don't know how that can ever happen but there was this carrot cake it's like two in the morning and carla and i looked at each other both of us vegan both of us have been trying this and it was like a whole group of us really trying to do it for all kinds of reasons and we looked at each other and we're like we're in we dive bombed that carrot cake everybody else at the bar was like give us some we're like no no this is ours we ate it like and and that was not good that was not a healthy thing to do your body doesn't even know what to do with all of that so it's like don't um don't over stress yourself too that's kind of my point because you will eat the whole cake and you don't need to eat the whole cake if you're going to be bad you know so it's just you know you can have healthier i know you can bake as a vegan you have and and the whole bottom line is just be gentle with yourself don't as you say don't beat yourself up don't don't hold yourself to a level that no human being can attain just be gentle with yourself yeah i think with a glass of wine while you're doing it well vegan anywhere is like the perfect way to go i'm going to do one month just do one month and once you get through one month you may go okay maybe i want to do this every day or maybe i'm just going to do it once a week or start incorporating there's a the movement of reducerarians and the reducerarian is you just start reducing down on things like if i'm eating meat every single day i'm going to at least take one or two days out of the week and say all right i'm going to do something alternative so i kind of like that balance too but going going with your needs i love that thank you so much everyone i want people to know again your website doctor doctor see i'm calling you a doctor again chef candy go to your kitchen rx.com and of course ldv winery.com and also the recipe is linked in the episode notes as are the websites thank you ladies happy new year here's the good health and good wine and good cheers here here thank you for listening to big blend radios wine time with peggy show keep up with ldv winery at ldv winery.com keep up with big blend radio at big blend radio.com

Along with her winemaker husband Curt Lawrence Dunham, Peggy Fiandaca owns and operates LDV Winery in Arizona. Learn more at https://ldvwinery.com/

Chef Candy Lesher is a culinary wellness coach based in Phoenix, Arizona. View more recipes and learn about how she helps clients achieve their health goals at https://www.yourkitchenrx.com/

"Wine Time with Peggy" airs every 1st Wednesday at 4pm Arizona time. Follow the podcast here: http://tinyurl.com/42j5zucj

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