Sophia Nguyen Eng, author of The Nourishing Asian Kitchen Cookbook.

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello. I'm Sophia nuinn Ing, author of the Nourishing Asian
Kitchen Filled with Nutrient DNSE recipes for health and healing,
and this is the Good Foods Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
All of us are on a journey towards better health
and we're grateful that you've allowed us to join you
on your quest.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
In this episode, I was the one grandchild that I
like to hang out with my grandfather. He taught me
a lot of things, but one of the most poignant
things that he taught me always be next to him.
As he would say, and it soon linga sonda and
which means eat to live, do not live to eat.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
This is the Good Foods Podcast And now here's your
host show Dan.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Sophia, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Thank you so much for having me chardon.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
It's an honor.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
So before we dig in, I want to get a
bit of housekeeping out of the way. How was the
weekend event with doctor Bil Schindler at the Modern Stone
Age Kitchen.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Oh, it was amazing. It was a triple sold out event.
We had surdough pizza on Friday and cooking broth making
class with doctor Bill Schindler Saturday morning. And dinner, private
dinner I'll sold out and it was a rainy day.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Great time to eat foe.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
It was perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
And then of course there was the Thriving Vegetable Summit
with Michael Kirkpatrick and the crew in Ohio. How was that?

Speaker 1 (01:29):
That was wonderful. We had over fifteen thousand people sign
up for the event with other speakers as well. But Tim,
my husband, and I were on there and we were
talking about how to identify and buy land for your
homestead and small farm.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
So I'd like to start where your family fled Vietnam.
You hadn't been born yet, but what stories did your
parents share with you about that experience?

Speaker 1 (01:55):
So many stories Charnan from what they had to endure
before the day of on April twenty ninth, nineteen seventy five,
was when they left, and they had a whole dinner
table full of rice about ready to eat dinner together,
and they got word that they needed to flee then
on a little boat. So every single one of our

(02:18):
family members left all of their bowls of rice on
the table, hopped on the boat. And even then, you know,
it was a pretty dangerous excursion than to leave. But
you know, I grew up with stories from my mom
and dad talking about during that time how there were
curfews and lockdowns and it was really rough. And I

(02:39):
would tell them, you know, mom and Dad, don't tell
us see stories. It's never going to happen. We're in America.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Lockdown. What is that word? Mom?

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Exactly what does that mean? And you know, growing up
in America, born and raised in America, we just never
had to never heard those words until what until I
turned thirty thirties?

Speaker 3 (03:01):
And so your parents and your family they fled like
and the next day sygone fell right correct?

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah? April thirtieth? Was it all of Saigon? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (03:10):
So eventually even your grandparents moved from their homeland to
join your family in California. How special was it for
you and your sister to have the wisdom of your
grandparents around?

Speaker 1 (03:22):
It was really good. My mom and dad were busy
working full time jobs to make ends meet. My mom
at one point when I was in when I was
a little girl, she had two full time jobs. And
while they were working, my grandparents when they moved here,
they moved about a block away from us, so they
would watch over me, my cousins, and my grandfather loved

(03:46):
to spend time in the garden. I was the one
grandchild that I liked to hang out with my grandfather.
He taught me a lot of things, from the soil
to how to make your own fertilizer, human nu or
natural pesticides, how to deter birds from eating his apricots.

(04:06):
But one of the most poignant things that he taught me,
always being next to him, is he would say, and
which means eat to live, do not live to eat?
And I didn't quite understand that until I had my
own children and started looking into what we were eating
and how we wanted to raise the children and how

(04:27):
they wanted I wanted them to live.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yeah, it's funny you say human or I had never
heard that until the Joe Salatin came on the second
time and he mentioned that. I was like, is that
a thing? And he was NodD in his headline that's
the thing. I was like, Okay, that may makes sense.
Or if you have nothing you know, or not cattle
or whatever or access to it.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Right right, they're in suburbias. We didn't have any chickens
or cattle. Then the immigrant mentality is use what you
got where you're at.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Tell us about the part of your journey where you
ended up in Silicon Valley and what exactly does a
growth marketer do.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
So I was born and raised in Silicon Valley, heart
of Silicon Valley, in San Jose, California. I went off
to gw and I grew up this way, eating economically.
My mom would buy these pasture raised hens that still
had the guts and the feet and the head attached,
and so she would bring them home and I would

(05:26):
dissect them and I would growing up. I think that's
why I wanted to get into medicine, because I was
so fascinated with dissecting the bird. So when I went
off to college, I was doing my BAMD at George
Washington University and did four years there. Finished my four
years in biology and realized it only took one class

(05:46):
in nutrition, which again, you know, I think because of
what my grandfather and my mom instilled in me thinking
about food as medicine, I thought that medical school or
being pre med would have the discussion on how we
should think about nutrition and food being medicine first before
medical intervention. And I think I do believe that there

(06:07):
is a time and place for medical intervention and pharmaceuticals.
But if there's anything that we can do to prevent
that from happening before we get to that point is
what I was really excited about. So then I went
on to get my masters in clinical psychology. And my
dad also had issues with manic depression and obsessive compulsive disorder,

(06:30):
so he would go to Stanford doctors and psychiatrists and
none of them would help. When I was growing up,
he really struggled and still struggles today. So I wanted
to take on that caretaker role, which I still do today,
but I guess as a young college grad, I still
had that responsibility to take care of my parents, and

(06:51):
that's what I went into clinical psychology for. But when
I got married to Tim, my husband, he's a West
Point grad military, I became a military spouse and realized
that it was going to be hard to hire military
spouse because of the fact that we move around so

(07:12):
much and the remote culture. It wasn't what it was
the way that it is today, and so I, again
with the Immerican mentality, had to use what I had
where I was and started a few businesses, photography, wedding
photography being my first, and then shortly thereafter, after I
got pregnant, we started a self surfers and yogurt shop

(07:33):
which was a brick and mortar, and I thought, okay,
I could hire employees. Ultimately, my mom has some heart condition,
just atial fibrillation, hypertension and congenital heart failure at one point,
so she was in the Bay Area and I found
myself having to fly back and forth quite often, to
the point where I realized, you know, it was going
to again fall on my shoulders to take care of

(07:54):
Mom and dad. I moved back to the Bay Area,
but before that I had to figure out what kind
of career I could get. And you know, the way
that I grew up, the way that we ate, the
way that we lived, was using everything that we had
the most accessible in optimizing it for you know, whether
it be most nutrient dense food or how to be

(08:15):
most efficient with our time. It lended really well to
a career in growth marketing, although it wasn't called growth
marketing when I moved back to the Bay Area. That
was something that started a couple of years later. But
the concept of optimization on your website for businesses, that
is what my career was in. So growth marketing is

(08:37):
basically using whatever resources you have, which lends well for
a startup company, which is where I worked most of
my time and my career in the Bay Area. So
using very little resources to grow a business and a
brand as quickly as possible. And there's a term called
growth hacking. I founder Sean Ellis, who wrote a book

(08:59):
on and growth and E coined that term. But it
essentially is how do you grow brands and businesses as
quickly as possible using what you have or little to nothing.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
And so you mentioned Tim, your husband. How did you
How did you two meet?

Speaker 1 (09:12):
We went to high school together, although we were rivals,
so we didn't start off as high school street guards.
Well but you both won, Yes, yes, we both wanted.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
So you're a nose to tail cook and he's a
San Francisco treat kind of guy. What was that light
bulb moment when Tim and I guess you realized that
his diet had to change. What was happening at the time.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
I think when we first got married and we moved
in together. I started to notice very quickly that, you know,
when he was eating when we were hanging out and dating.
I thought, okay, well, yeah, I could eat that way.
It's fun and it's just for the weekend. But then
when we got married and we lived together, that's when
I kind of saw that, Oh he eats two scoops

(09:57):
of ice cream every day with a glas of coke
and a bag of Dorito's Nasho cheese chips. And I
almost like wanted to die. I couldn't believe it. I mean,
in our culture or the way I grew up, if
you had soda in your house, I would think you
were rich. All I had at home was water and milk,
which is all that we have today, only because it's

(10:19):
now by choice, he ate that he would eat you know,
boxed food, clean cuisine, rice aroni, all of the process
and packaged foods, which, again, because I didn't grow up
this way, I always thought people who could eat that
way that was a luxury. And now you know, here
we are seventeen years later in our marriage and we've
completely swung the other way, and I realized this is

(10:42):
the luxury to be able to live and eat nose
to tail and from scratch. But yeah, no, we had
a lot of we had a lot of disagreements when
we first got married, and I think the AHA moment
for him was, you know, he suffered from eczema quite
a bit and still does if he eats unclean processed foods.

(11:04):
But what happened was we went out to eat at
a restaurant in Albuquerque and they had grass fed grass
finished steak, and so he ordered that and that night
he slept just fine. Growing So, you know, when we
were in California, the thing is there's earthquakes all over
in California, and you know, in the middle of the night.

(11:26):
There were many nights that I would wake up thinking
that there was a huge earthquake, because I would wake
up and the bed would be shaking violently, and it
was because I would turn around and I would see
tim scratching. And I thought that we ate pretty healthy.
We cooked our home cooked meals, we wought USDA Choice meat.

(11:47):
But it wasn't until that time that we ate that
grass fed or he ate that grassfed grass finished steak.
He didn't have any reaction at all. And I realized
at that point, what are the cows eating? Like, what
is that react that he's having. And even though he's
having their action and I may not, it must have
an effect on me somehow. Still and so that's just

(12:09):
kind of led us down this path, you know, especially
after my oldest daughter was born twelve years ago. And
we can talk more about that, but that was his
AHA moment for him to make that change, because before
that we just would get into arguments and disagreements about food.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
I mentioned Joel Salatin, and I'm probably getting the timeline
out of sync. But when Joel Salatin came and gave
the speech at Google headquarters, was it then that planted
the seed about creating your own homestead or was that
already kicking around in your brain.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
I never thought I wanted to homestead. I didn't know
what that was. I didn't even know that was a term.
When I heard Joel Salatin speak at Google, he planted
the seed of, hey, there's a better system out there
where we could put a chicken coop outside of the
cafeteria and all of the leftover food. Instead of trucking
them into diesel trucks to take to a landfill, we

(13:01):
could just drop them up on the rooftop or by
the side and a recycle all of that compost and
then get eggs for the cafeteria. And I thought, how
come we haven't thought about this because it's so weird,
just so accustomed to working our full time jobs, making
the most money as we can, chasing this American dream,

(13:23):
and then becoming trapped into system where we are only
consumers taking that money going to the grocery store, buying
our groceries there. But you know, keeping the cycle going
is just completely unsustainable. So that really made me think
about it. I did not know at that point that
it would lead us down this path, but I'm so

(13:43):
glad it did because now twelve years later, Droles a
mentor of mine, and he endorsed the cookbook.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah, he did, absolutely, And so was it shortly after that.
I guess that you and Tim you had your quarter
acre backyard homestead in California at this point.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah, so in twenty seventeen. By that time, we stayed
up enough money to buy a quarter acre, which sounds
like it's a small sliver of land, but it was
very expensive for the Bay area. But yeah, that's what
started it all. And it was around that time that
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, also bought Whole Foods,
and so, just to give you a little context, before

(14:19):
I purchased that home, or before we even put in
an offer. There's this app called Instacart that you could
have food or your amenities delivered to your home within
an hour based off this app if you punch in
your zip code. So before we put in the offer,
I said, well, let's try this. See what delivers to
the zip code. And I made sure not one, not two,

(14:42):
or three Whole foods, but four Whole foods at that
time delivered to that home. And I thought, okay, this
is good, and I embarrassed to admit that, but that's
just to show you how quickly and how much you
can do in just a span of a couple of years.
But it wasn't until Jeff Bezos and he bought Whole
Foods that hopefully's no longer delivered through Instacart. But it

(15:04):
also made me question if organic food and labeling was
truly organic. And that was when I started with a
little planter bed outside of the garden for mom, and
then a few more raised garden beds, and then when
twenty twenty hit, we already had a full garden going
didn't have a protein source, but at that point we

(15:25):
had to look into introducing protein because everyone was quarantining
in our home and all the grocery store shut down.
And that's when I heard of lockdowns and curfews for
the first time in my life.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
You know what you could have told your mom, you know,
you told me about lockdowns, But I got to teach
you or mom homestead and she'd probably be wied, what
are you talking about?

Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, did my appearance. Had thought I was nuts. I
mean to start a farm, and then we moved it
across country. I mean, blesshem like, they have a lot
of patients with me as their daughter. But one of
the things that I did tell them was, you know,
Mom and Dad, yours Saigon is my California, And you

(16:03):
know that really hit home for them. For me to say, hey,
I have to go. It is stressing me out too much.
And we had to go find a community that also
believed the same things we do about health and food
and especially when you get into homesteading, I realized that
we couldn't do it by ourself. We after that quarter acre,
we ended up buying six acres in Lincoln, California, so

(16:26):
north of Sacramento, because we still do real estate, and
I thought, you know, I still we wanted land, but
we still wanted to be able to be around for
our clients and do business. But ultimately, there was no
community that truly felt the way that we felt about
how we wanted to farm. And you really truly can't
do it by yourself. You do need a community where
you can you know, barter and trade or borrow equipment

(16:51):
or you know, if I can't grow zucchini here, I
can barter it and trade out for milk for one
of my milk clients. So it's it's a beautiful to live.
I just you know, did not grow up this way. Again,
We're blessed to be able to live this way. Go
back to the land.

Speaker 3 (17:07):
So what were you raising there and growing in your
garden in our quarter acre in California? Yes, and our
small quarter acre, I had definitely the herbs, and then
I started growing Asian veggies, Asian squashes, things because we
had Asian grocery stores, but they weren't organic. So that
was something that I said, well, cool, this will be fun.
And at that time, it was fun before twenty twenty,

(17:32):
and then when twenty twenty hit, it became serious. And
then we took that little quarter acre. We bought six acres,
but we ended up growing on about an acre worth
of food, and I had a dream to start a
CSA and provide not just regular head of cabbage, but
also include Napa cabbage and start filling in, you know,

(17:56):
instead of just let us we'll do bak choi and
just versifying the type of food that people are typically
get from a CSA. I wanted to introduce more Asian vegetables.
And then, of course, you know, just naturally, if I
can introduce Napa cabbage, I can show you how to
make kimchi.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Which back then I would say it wasn't as mainstream
as it is today where I see them into our
regular grocery stores. We're starting to see kimchi. Whole foods
Now is selling chicken feet, chicken liver, chicken heart organic
from Mary's. And you know, when I if I go,
I remember early on when I that's where I would

(18:35):
buy my chicken feet, I would have people ask me,
what are you going to make with it? What are
you going to do with it? It's no idea what
to do with it? And you know, I was so
happy to be able to buy it at an organic
version of it versus at the Asian grocery store. But
It's been a slow progression of like, how do I
replace what were so dependent on in the grocery system,

(18:55):
the stores, and you know, support our small farmers, if
not become one ourselves.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
Well, when I read this in the cookbook, it stopped me.
In twenty twenty, what was the Sofia price for three
egg laying hens in California?

Speaker 1 (19:08):
We were paying three hundred dollars each.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
I'm sorry. I saw that and I was like, what, yes, okay.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
And you have to understand that was the day of
shutdown March sixteen, twenty twenty. They were talking about lockdowns
and curfews, and again all the stories that I had
from my parents were if you stepped out of the
house when you weren't supposed to, you would get shot.
And here I am with you know, both my parents,
my children, my sibling with me, all quarantined and I'm

(19:39):
responsible for providing everybody with food because a grocery store
shut down and we didn't know when they were going
to open up again. So I said, well, my budget's
one thousand dollars. I thought i'd get more than three hens.
I'm still paying off for those eggs. Was tim like,
these are the most delicious eggs. Ever, I have to
say that, honey, because wow, right, I mean, it's it

(20:01):
was a crazy world.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
What's a crazy world? So was it a leap of
faith for you both to leave your successful careers and
start homesteadying or did it just feel right from the start.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
Yeah, it was a definitely leap of faith. In twenty nineteen,
I kept at the height of our career, we were
working at both working at Southby's at the time and
then Humpass, a real estate which big luxury brands, and
we were in Hawaii five times that year in twenty nineteen.
We were helping them expand a branch out there, and

(20:35):
so I never once thought I hadn't even heard of COVID.
None of us were really watching the news at that time.
But there was something inside that kept nudging me to prepare,
and I kept hearing prepare, prepare, prepare, and specifically around food,
and I didn't get it because I couldn't even keep
a succulent alive at the time. And so it was

(20:58):
just to go from that place and have a whole
community of our old friends and to have all of
our creature comforts. We were both born and raised in
San Jose, So it was all of our families there,
our friends are there. But at the end of the day,
we knew we had to go find the homesteading community

(21:20):
because even if things went down again and if there
was another lockdown or curfew, no one else is going
to be in position that we really felt that we
could trust. And that was one of the biggest things
that we said, well, we really have to pray about
where this is. And we looked into Texas, Oklahoma, and
East Tennessee and we interviewed all of the communities that

(21:44):
I had already identified, and we really found that East
Tennessee and the Appalachian Mountains was really special for us.
I had set up a luncheon where I did a
community speed luncheon speed dating, and I just went down
the line with everybody and asked everybody the same questions,
like what would you do if this happened? What did
you do? And where do you think everybody would be?

(22:06):
Where are your sources? You know, where are the people,
how far they'd from one another? Those are important things
for me at that time because in California we were
getting threatened by not just federal but even local government
to say that they were going to do door to
door health checks.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
So on your homestead in Tennessee, are you and Tim
self taught like Katie Crachie or did you already have
a working knowledge of this life because of how you
grew up.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah, I wouldn't say we are we were taught any
of this by our parents by any means. We are
first generation Asian Americans and first generation farmers, so it's
been self taught for the most part. But we learn
very fast, very quickly, and we make it part of
our homeschooling curriculum too with the girls, and we visit

(22:54):
different regenerative farms. We had an RV and so during
twenty twenty to twenty twenty two we spent a couple
of years while we were building up our farm visiting
other farms to see how people were doing different things
and even though they were doing similar things, their methods
were different, and so we were just we understood the
philosophy behind regenerative farming. We wanted to be more permaculture

(23:15):
self sufficient in a sense and use things off of
our own land and be less dependent on fertilizers that
are coming from Russia or Ukraine, for example, where there
could be supply chain concerns, and then in the process
of that learning that actually, if you use what you
have and you ferment it, like Korean natural farming, it
is actually better for you to inoculate the soil with

(23:38):
what you have available. Your animals are eating that grass,
you keep it as local as possible. You're improving the
microbes in the soil, but they're the same microbes that
are in your gut, which then keep you healthier. And
through this process, we're working on book two because you
know Book one was the cookbook for us, which you

(23:59):
know was getting down mom's recipes in the kitchen for
traditional nourishing recipes more nose detail. And you know this
whole closed loop system though, happens in our soil where
we bring everything back that we don't use into the
soil and we use that to ferment. And a lot
of this has come back to traditional natural farming, and

(24:21):
there's Korean natural farming, Japanese natural farming, and so we've
looked into a lot of this and the natural fertilizer.
This is farming beyond organic where it becomes a natural
pesticide and herbicide for us without having to be dependent
on any chemical uses on our farm. Am I allowed
to ask what the next book is about. The next
book will be about traditional natural farming and using everything

(24:44):
that we have where we're at, but honoring how we've
traditionally farmed in the past, and a lot of it
is actually tied to Asian traditions.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
That's awesome. So I love the name of your website,
Sprinkle with Soil. How did you come up with that?
And what's the story?

Speaker 1 (25:00):
That's beautiful? Thank you for asking. A lot of people
don't ask, and so I'm glad you did. So when
you finish a dish, you often get directions to sprinkle
with salt. That's one of the most important things, is
that seasoning the flavor and salt is so good for you. Well,
I don't want to just talk about and we don't
just talk about our food again, it's very important to

(25:22):
talk about the closed loop system and bring it back
to the soil. So that's where Sprinkle with Soil also
comes in, because truly, if you want to be healthy
and nourishing and want to grow your own nutrient dense food,
whether it's vegetables or your meat, it has to start
with soil well.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Bringing Joel back in. I asked her about, you know,
can you tell at this stage if soil is healthy?
And he started telling me about how the different smells were,
how it tasted, and I was like, I mean, I
remember eating soil as you know, mudpies as a kid.
I still remember how it tastes. But it was just
so amazing to hear him tell that story of it.

(26:01):
You know, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Haven't heard it, but I can't validate the taste. I
also have not tasted my soil recently, but that would
be a good test that I think maybe you can
go back to traditional farming.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
So your podcast is called a call to farms podcast.
Tell us about your approach there and the message that
you try to convey through it.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah. Absolutely. My husband is a military again, he's a
West Point grad and he's always led with servant leadership
and for us, you know, this has been a calling
to farm. And one day he said, you know, I
think we should rebrand it because I had it as
homegrown podcasts. It was just me and I had my

(26:44):
guests where my children like it was just for fun
in twenty twenty. But when he said, hey, let's record
our conversations at night, because that's the only real time
we have time to connect, was usually around midnight and
when the kids go to bed. We wanted to document
our journey because we did take them during probably the

(27:04):
most enjoyable times in California and living a very life
full of convenience to literally pulling them out and moving
to the mountains to farm, and so we didn't want
them to reach their teenage years and have resentment. And
so we also wanted to share the reasons why and

(27:25):
document our stories and what mommy and Daddy were thinking
and who are the people that we talked with, Joel
Salatin being one. We have a really special guest in
the next coming week that you know, in the last
four years, since you know, twenty twenty.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
We have.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
Had a lot of lockses of old friends who have
thought we were a little crazy for just making that
huge switch. But in the last four years we've really
gained a lot of really cool friendships and a lot
with doctors now like doctor Bil Shindler being one right
and just really getting to the truth of health and
food has been really important for us, and so we

(28:05):
wanted to document that. But our goal for the podcast
is to help empower people out there to understand where
the food comes from and to help answer the call
to farm, whether that is helping your local small farmer
understanding where your food comes from, or if you're interested
in homesteading or want to be a small farmer yourself.

(28:27):
That we hope to go through some of the challenges
and discuss those challenges, but also bring in experts who
come from all the different backgrounds that we really respect
in their research, from Joel to Bil Schindler will be
on there as well, but we'll be interviewing doctor McColl
in the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
And it's wonderful that you're sharing that knowledge and that
experience to have other people do it, you know, and
maybe have it be easier for them. But I just
want to honor the fact that you are giving this
gift for your children because decades from now they can
listen and hear you guys, you know, and just relive that.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, I hope that they will appreciate it. I know,
teenage years. I'm now dealing with the preteen, so I'm
kind of bracing, but I hope that they can see
the why behind it, and the cookbook truly was for them.
As well. It wasn't supposed to be a published cookbook.
It was a ten year long journey and dream of

(29:26):
mine to write mom's recipes down for the kids. Mom's
now seventy five and my oldest is twelve. So I thought, gosh,
by the time my oldest is twenty, Mom's going to
be in her eighties and it's going to be really tough.
So I took the last year. I was only supposed
to take three months off and get the recipes and

(29:48):
the photos down and go to FedEx, get them printed
off a spiral bound book and gifted to everybody. But
you know, it was an honor. Sally Fallon Morrell endorsed
it only endorsept wrote the foreword for the book, which
is a huge honor. She doesn't do that for just anyone.
So she really saw my heart in the project and

(30:10):
really saw that the world needed it, and I'm really grateful.
She recommended that I reach out to Chelsea Green and
pitch and so it's been a beautiful journey.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
Well, you're a Western a Price chapter leader too, mentioning
Sally Palla Mourel. What is that?

Speaker 1 (30:26):
So? The Western a Price Foundation is based off of
doctor wester and a Price's research if you're not familiar
with that. Doctor west and a Price was a dentist
and he traveled to indigenous tribes all around the world
to learn how people lived and ate that still had
you know, no cavities or no malformations in their mouth,

(30:48):
and comes down to twelve principles. But you know, simply put,
it is going back and eating and living, you know,
back to the land, eating raw dairy, you know ours,
which are the most nutrient dens, no seed oils, no
industrial oils, using animal fats, soaking and fermenting our grains,

(31:08):
fermenting our vegetables. And so those are the principles. And
as a Western New christ chapter leader myself, I have
a list of approved farmers and vendors that I trust
for my local community. I mean, it was just because
I needed it for myself. But in part of that,
we grow and raise our own We have our own microdairy,

(31:32):
not because that we ever wanted to, but that we
couldn't really find anybody who wasn't feeding corner soy to
their dairy cows during milking, and we just wanted to
stay away from conventional grains. So often like what we
found that has led us to this home setting lifestyle
is not finding that the standards were high enough. And

(31:55):
so if you have high standards, you unfortunately have to
do it yourself. But fortunately, because we are, we're now
able to bless our community with our raw dairy products
and our Mutnamese broth. That's all healing and nourishing as well.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
So what's in your garden now? Was that picture of
the humongous sunflower in your cookbook from your place in
Tennessee or California?

Speaker 1 (32:17):
That was our very first garden in California and a
quarter acre. How the mammost sunflower? I think it hit
like eighteen feet.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
I mean it was taller than tim and your daughter
was on you know, a ladder exactly. It was big.
It was big. Let's just say it was big.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
But we did have a lot of So everywhere we farmed,
my little one, that's what her job is. She will
just scatter the mammos sunflower seeds. So wherever we farm,
you will find Mamma's sunflowers everywhere, and then she just
continues to scatter them into the wind and they just
pop up everywhere, which is just beautiful because it does
remind me of her, and it makes me smile because

(32:55):
farming's not easy.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
Well, are there some things that are more difficult to
grow because of being in Tennessee versus California.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
There are a lot more challenges here in Tennessee. Just
because the soil is so fertile. You could grow a
lot of things, but the pests love them because it's
so fertile. And as an organic farmer, that's one of
the biggest challenges is how do we prevent these squash
vine bores from eating all of our zucchini. But I've

(33:25):
also found that it differs from we are in a
micro climate in air in the mountains here, so it
really just differs between where you're growing and again it
just goes back to why it's so beneficial to live
in a community of other people who can grow it,
because this other women may not suffer or struggle with
squash fine bores. But as we're amending our soil and

(33:48):
improving the health of our soil, I feel like by
this year we can start trying zucchini again because I
grew it straight out of the ground when we first
moved here, because it was May when we got here
two years ago. And it was just at that point
just getting seeds into the ground, and because of that,
our soil wasn't yet amended properly. And I think at

(34:08):
this point we can probably grow most things and have
an infrastructure in place where we can support it.

Speaker 3 (34:14):
You know, Sophia, your cookbook is different in the sense
that it tells a story about your family's history through memories,
food and recipes. Do you have a favorite recipe and
the story behind it that you can share with us?

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Well that was the biggest challenge because Chelsea Green during
my final edits, they said, can you use another word
beside favorite? All of your recipes you say it's your favorite? Like, well, yeah,
I mean that's my book. Favorites in there seventy four times, Sofia,
can we yesska exactly? Could you take a third of

(34:48):
it out? But my absolute favorite is that oxtail beef
bah which is on the cover of the cookbook if
you haven't seen it yet, but that is, you know,
one of my favorite rids because the oxtail is something
that is flavorful. It's got a lot of meat, but
it's tender, and it's got a flew of things we

(35:11):
have cooked brisket, and then there's rare beef as well
that gets cooked when you pour steaming hot broth over it.
It's just really comforting. And more often than not, we
have fu on our stove most days out of the week,
whether I rotate it from chicken to beef or even venison,

(35:32):
even duck, we'll have. But the children love it, and
actually the entire family love it. My parents. When I'm busy,
they'll still have it if anybody's sick, so we rarely
get sick. That is one of the things that we
just have a lot of it. Well, I need to
apologize because I called it faux earlier and it's fa.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
I'm sorry about that. So who were your teachers in
the kitchen growing up?

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Mom? I was always her sux chef, and the only
time that I had with her was when she was
in the kitchen. When she was home, she was the kitchen,
and if she wasn't working and she wasn't home, she
was in the grocery stores. And so I learned hands
on from her as a little girl, how to chop
scallions cilantro in like ten different ways, and specifically how

(36:17):
we should have it topped for each dish to go
into the grocery store, and she would say, you know
a lot of people will pay ninety nine cents to
pound for apples, but you need to know which apples
are good and which apples are bad because you're all
going to pay the same. So, you know, I learned
little tips and tricks from mom and really didn't think

(36:39):
much of it until I started to, you know, go
to college, and it was on my own and then
of course having children and my own family where I
really needed to be economical and think about how I
wanted to care for them, because somehow, ironically, after having them,
I cared about food a lot more than when I
was feeding myself.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
It was really important. Yes, it was like Tim comes
in the picture, you're kind of focused on food now
the kids really passed or we're just like to the
tenth degree now, right, and.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
We tell them all the time, you know, we're here
for you guys. We want you to learn how to
do this, whether or not you're going to grow up
to be second generation farmers or whatnot, but you need
to learn it so that it's intuitive. What happened to that,
Like why haven't we been taught these things? If it's
just so simple, seemingly simple to put seed into water,

(37:32):
you'll get sprouts. But why weren't we taught these things
at school? So let's just start there and you can't
go wrong.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
Was there any recipes growing up that you had difficulty
mastering desserts?

Speaker 1 (37:47):
As I guess in our Asian culture, Tim says so too.
We didn't eat a lot of dessert. A lot of
it was mom cutting up fruit like apples or oranges,
and those would be our dessert after dinner. Even when
you go to Asian recstaurants will often give you sliced
oranges or dessert at a Chinese restaurant to kind of
just cleanse your palate. But then it wasn't until And

(38:08):
also I think the challenge was because mom has always
been a cook, like you know, home cook. She didn't bake,
she rarely baked, but didn't really make dessert, And so
I just didn't grow up with any of that until
you know, of course, having kids and they are growing
up in the American culture and love pastry. I still

(38:30):
haven't mastered it, but one day I.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
Would imagine that when you were creating your cookbook, besides
maybe checking in with your mother and other family members.
Did you learn or hear any news stories along the
way about your family's history?

Speaker 1 (38:43):
I did, I didn't. That was the whole point of
spending intentional time with Mom to capture her stories, because
even though they lived with us for twelve years, I
would hear stories here and there, but it wasn't sit
down and intentional, and so that was the whole But
just sort of the book was to just finally get

(39:03):
those stories down mom. I can't remember which dish off
the top of my head right now, but there was
several that she said would only be available as street
food in Vietnam, and as a little girl, she would
get in trouble all the time to sneak out and
buy that dish, but she would eat it and then
come back. And the man knew her because she would

(39:26):
come by and sleep by every day. So it's just
sweet stories to capture her childhood and what her food
stories were.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
You know what would be interesting if you're not already
doing it like you and Tim recording the podcast, but
doing that for your daughter's be interesting for you to
have that conversation with your with your parents and have
that daughters down the road.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yes, so I do, but I have it as voice memos,
and you know, because they're speaking to me in Vietnamese
and so I'm interviewing them in Vietnamese. But I just
haven't put it up on our podcast, and I definitely could,
I just know, but.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
I think that's maybe something for the family. And you
know what, just voice then your daughters can hear it
anywhere at any time, and you know, the imagination is
going to take over and fill in the gaps. Yeah,
that's amazing. So as Sally Fallon morel inspired you, I
wonder if there is someone out there that's been inspired

(40:21):
by both of you ladies and is working on nourish
and traditions the Latino version, because I would love to
see that.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
I haven't heard of it yet, but I think that
would be very neat if we had one for every country.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
What was one of the happiest moments in creating this cookbook?

Speaker 1 (40:36):
The happiest moment was being able to take my mom
and dad with us, along with the children and Tim
and myself to visit Joel Salatin's farm and Sally Fallon.
So there's those two pictures in the cookbook because it
meant so much. Dad is always kind of you didn't
like to travel when I was little. But in writing

(40:58):
this cookbook and in farming, he has really come out
of a shell more or less to be open to
who these people are. And I think a part of
me feels that, you know, they have only seen me
in California, they only knew California, they didn't know any farmers,
they didn't know who Joel was, and they've not really

(41:18):
been a part of that world. And so a lot
of times they've been trying to slow me down. My
dad sat me down one time and said, you and
Tim need to slow down. You don't need to buy
a tractor for your farm. Everything's going to be fine.
And then, you know, for him to meet Joel, see
his farm and see the number of tractors, not that
we're going to get to that point, but to see, Okay,

(41:40):
this is what my daughter's trying to do, this is
who she's inspired by. And then to meet Sally as well,
and have Sally talk about fats and hey, mom and dad,
maybe cholesterol's not bad, you know, opposed to what they're
hearing from my very well educated family members and cousins
that work all over the Bay Area. As well, to

(42:01):
have this different perspective and to see the people who've
inspired me and to see the type of life that
they live and what they stand for was really important
for me to have my parents see that, to know,
not to justify it, but in a way to say, hey,
you know, I'm not crazy.

Speaker 3 (42:18):
Joel took my grandson and I in a private tour
this past summer and we were about to go on
it and I said, so, that's the trees, the tree
line you're telling me about, and yes, and he's like,
he starts pointing out right and that part of the
you know, this part of and I'm like, Joel, just say,
his line of sight, that's just as far as I
can see is what you had. This is your place right,
the road's there, and then it's all of this. Whatever

(42:41):
you say. Wherever the fence is, I don't I don't
see the fencing. But okay, what do you wish that
people gain more than anything through the release of this
cookbook and the lifestyle that you're living and sharing with
other Sophia, I truly.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
Hope that people can see that living intentional lifestyle is
something that they want. I think in this age of
modern technology and modern conveniences. We trade a lot for that,
and that I mean that sometimes that means if I
know my food is delivered to me, I don't have

(43:15):
to spend time in the kitchen. I don't have to
think about cooking from scratch. But those are missed opportunities
with your children, with your partner, even with yourself, to
connect with the food, connect with the farmer who grew
the food, and you know, and take the extra effort
to try to plant a seed. I think that you
know that people will be able to be inspired to

(43:36):
see that if we could do it, and we live
a pretty busy lifestyle, that they could do it in
their own way.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
And finally, Sophia, what your parents and your older sister
went through just to get to this country. There's that
logo that states no Fear. They don't need a T
shirt to let people know that they went through the fire.
How has their strength influenced your life and that of
your daughters.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
I think the fact that they were willing to give
up so much, and that my dad was a military
and my husband's military veteran. I think that you know,
when we hit our challenges and our rough spots on
our journey I always go back to, well, it could
have been worse, right, Tim could be back in Iraq
and looking for IEDs, or Mom and Dad could be

(44:22):
back in Vietnam and things could be really it could
be to that time again, and it's not. So it's
something to remind myself that we can overcome it. And
sometimes if Tim and I are traveling and things get
really rough and we're separated for a little bit of time,
I think, well, it's not a deployment. It's still better
than a deployment. It's not We're not having to go

(44:44):
through that again. I appreciate what our servicemen and women
do for our country and for our freedoms.

Speaker 3 (44:50):
But it is tough, Sophi.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
You.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
I think the publisher got it wrong. This isn't a cookbook.
It's a history of love recipes. And I thank you
for coming on the podcast and sharing your story with us.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Well, thank you so much, shoutdown for having me. It's
an honor to be here and have this time with you.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
The Good Foods podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The claims, comments, opinions,
or information heard should never be used in place of
your medical provider's advice or your doctor's direction. Thank you
for listening, Follow us on social media and wherever you
get your podcasts. Good health through good food, good foods,
grocery

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Sophia Nguyen Eng, author of The Nourishing Asian Kitchen Cookbook.

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Sophia Nguyen Eng, author of The Nourishing Asian Kitchen Cookbook.

On Purpose with Jay Shetty