Building A Nourishing Asian Kitchen

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Sophia Nguyen Eng was in the tech world when she decided to make a dramatic shift. She left her high-paying corporate job, exchanged it for a homestead with chickens and sheep, and began cooking real food for her family. The next thing she knew, she was working on “The Nourishing Asian Kitchen” cookbook in an attempt to preserve the rich culinary traditions of Vietnam, China, Japan, Korea, and other Asian countries.

Today, she tells us what drove her shift. She talks about her family’s health concerns (like her husband’s eczema or her mother’s heart issues), where she began to overhaul her kitchen (hint: in the spices, sauces, and oils in the cabinets) and how we can make similar shifts for health and healing. She also describes which recipes are the easiest to attempt from her cookbook for the Asian cooking novice and why eating out at Asian restaurants can be problematic.

This episode was recorded in front of a LIVE audience of Weston A. Price Foundation members.

Visit Sophia’s website: sprinklewithsoil.com

Become a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation

Go to realmilk.com for information on raw milk

See our sponsors Paleo Valley and Optimal Carnivore

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Building A Nourishing Asian Kitchen

Why would a successful businesswoman leave her day job in the tech industry to start cooking from scratch, buying hens, and leading her sheep and goats, start a homestead, and write a cookbook? This is episode 469. Our guest is Sophia Nguyen Eng. Sophia is the author of The Nourishing Asian Kitchen and the host of the Call to Farms Podcast. She tells the story behind the book, the podcast, and this completely different lifestyle shift that she made.

She covers her family’s health issues and how the work of Sally Fallon Morell inspired her to put down on paper her own cultural culinary traditions. She also gets specific about favorite childhood dishes, which recipe to try out in her book if you want to give Asian cooking a crack, where we might want to start making shifts in our own kitchens toward real food, and why eating out for Asian food may not be the best way to go.

Before we get into the conversation, do you ever wonder about the safety of raw milk or about its availability where you live? Go to Real Milk, a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation. Real Milk is a source of reliable information on real raw milk. There are articles, blog posts, videos, and podcasts that explain why raw milk is healthy, its amazing benefits, and where you can go to obtain it. In the United States, you‘ll also find insights into the politics and economics of the dairy industry. Go to Real Milk.

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Visit Sophia’s website: Sprinkle with Soil

Become a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation

Go to Real Milk for information on raw milk

See our sponsors Paleovalley and Optimal Carnivore

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Welcome to the show. We have the privilege of welcoming to the show Sophia Eng, the author of The Nourishing Asian Kitchen.

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Welcome, Sophia.

I am so glad to be here.

I’m glad you’re here too. I wanted to ask you. You once had a high-paying corporate job out in California. I understand that you were once working in the tech field out in California, and now, you‘re a homesteader and an author. What shift did it and why?

The Shift In Sophie’s Career

It was because of that high-paying corporate job that I let my passion project sit on the back burner for so long. What shifted for me was the events that happened around 2020 and being in California in the Bay Area specifically and realizing that we were having our groceries delivered to us in the Bay Area through an app called Instacart and Whole Foods. I was very dependent on Whole Foods, getting all of our food delivered to us within the hour. I was thinking that with this modern technology, we were pretty much insulated. It wasn’t until March 16th, 2020 that I realized when all the grocery stores shut down that we really did not have security in our food system. That‘s what did it for us.

I had already found Nourishing Traditions and started eating clean twelve years prior when my daughter was born. That‘s how we went down this path, but it wasn‘t until that moment that we went on March 16th during lockdowns and curfews. When that hit California, I found a woman North of San Francisco in Mill Valley. She sold egg-laying hens at that time. We left that night on the 16th and bought three egg-laying hens for $300 each.

Did you know anything about hens before that?

Not at all. We had no coop prepared. We brought them home in a cardboard box. I had my parents quarantined with us. Our children and my sister quarantined with us. When everything shut down, it became a real moment. My parents were immigrants from Vietnam. They left Vietnam during the fall of Saigon in 1975.

I grew up with stories about the fall of Saigon, lockdowns, and curfews. As a child who was born and raised in America, I would hear these stories and would tell my mom to stop telling us these stories because it was scary and it was never going to happen in America. Nearly 40 years later, this came down to us in the Bay Area. I sat both my parents down and asked them. It was a humbling moment. I was like, “Please sit down and tell me what happened in Vietnam.” That’s what really catapulted me from being dependent on the grocery stores in Silicon Valley to then starting our own farm.

Fast forward three years later, we’ve traded those 3 hens for ourselves to 3 dairy cows and we are pretty much self-sufficient on our homestead. The cows feed us with our raw milk, dairy products, yogurt, ice cream, and butter to our animals. We clabber with the milk for the chickens. Any leftover way, we pour it out into the garden. Even more importantly, we are able to provide real nourishing food for our community.

My mom has had atrial fibrillation. She even had a TIA. She had congestive heart failure. All of Mom’s health issues were always around the heart. She had hypertension in her 50s. I remember that was part of her normal day. My dad suffered from major depression and OCD. That‘s one of the reasons why I was pre-med in college and then went to get my Master‘s in Clinical Psychology. It was because all of the doctors at Stanford University in the Bay Area couldn‘t help him with any of the SSRIs. In this industry, as I‘ve learned more going through and learning about what we know, I realize that wasn‘t the right path.

My husband, Tim, suffered from eczema his entire life. It was a very slow twelve-year progress. It wasn‘t until I had my first daughter when she was born at six months that we were starting to introduce solid foods. It was looking at these baby cookbooks that I was handed down specifically about how to make applesauce. In our culture, we didn‘t cook our fruit. It was as simple as, “How do I make applesauce?” I didn‘t want to go to the grocery store. I didn‘t have it in myself to eat the baby‘s applesauce at the grocery store that was brown and gray. I‘m like, “If I can‘t eat this, I don‘t know how I could feed this to her.” I had to start from scratch and learn how to make applesauce.

It was through these cookbooks, and they weren‘t even health-focused. It was from Williams Sonoma. It said, “Make sure that you source organic apples to make applesauce because the baby‘s body is not yet developed enough to process the toxic harmful chemicals from herbicides and pesticides.” I thought, “That‘s interesting. That‘s fine. I‘ll go to Whole Foods and buy the organic apples for her to make applesauce. At what point will her body be able to digest and process these harmful toxins?” Twelve years later, here we are with our own farm, growing our own beyond-organic apples, making our own food, and raising our own animals because I realized that our bodies were never designed to process these harmful toxins.

Source organic apples to make apple sauce because the baby’s body is not developed enough to process the toxic, harmful chemicals from herbicides and pesticides.

I can‘t believe that was in a Williams Sonoma cookbook. That‘s wild.

I know.

You‘re talking about making applesauce. What foods were you raised on? Were you raised on traditional Vietnamese cuisine?

Yes. My mom and dad worked full-time. My mom, at one point, worked two full-time jobs. My grandparents lived about a block away from us. I spent a lot of my afterschool time with my grandparents. Whenever mom was home, I spent a lot of time with her in the kitchen because that‘s all she would be doing when she was home. It was in the kitchen or I‘d hop in the car and go to the grocery store with her.

I grew up eating traditional Vietnamese food. We are in the Bay Area, so we are in the mecca of a lot of diverse cuisine. We‘re spoiled. I got to eat a lot of different cuisines like Thai, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Korean. When I was pregnant, all I was craving was Korean food. There are a lot of diverse Asian cuisines growing up in the Bay Area but none of it was based on Nourishing Traditions. We had cooked from scratch at home, but we were still heavily dependent on the Asian condiments at the grocery store.

Aren‘t those condiments traditional?

Not the way that they were sold to us in the Asian grocery stores. There are a lot of preservatives and a lot of flavor additives in there. They have to be to be shelf-stable. I didn‘t realize that until I found Nourishing Traditions at the same time that I found Food Babe which really talked about MSG. That opened up my eyes to realize, “This might be causing what mom is suffering through.” Whenever we went out to the restaurants and we would have our Asian food there, if we didn‘t cook it at home and we ate outside, she would come back with reactions all the time.

Reactions like heart atrial fibrillation?

Yes. Palpitations. She would say, “I‘m so tired. I can‘t walk.” I hadn‘t realized before that there was a direct correlation between us eating out and her heart problems.

 

Did she start to put two and two together?

I put it together. It was one day where I spent going into the kitchen. I took out a garbage bag, one of those big black garbage bags, and I went one by one through our pantry and then through the refrigerator. I turned it around and started throwing these glass jars into this garbage bag. Mom came running out and said, “What are we supposed to cook with then if you‘re going to throw all of these away?” I said, “I don‘t know, but we‘ll figure it out.” That‘s why in the cookbook, I started with the sauces because those are the basic condiments that we needed to start with to replace one by one all of our recipes.

I know in your book, you said it was a twelve-year journey to bring this cookbook to fruition. I can‘t help but notice that your child was born several years ago. Was she an influence? How did the cookbook start to take shape?

Shaping “The Nourishing Asian Kitchen”

She was the influence. She was the one that opened up my eyes. I found Nourishing Traditions when my husband was deployed. His last duty station was at Kirtland Air Force Base. There was a family of eight that lived in the Taharaa Mountains, and it was a coworker of his. We went up to the mountains and visited them. We were in our early twenties. This was before children.

She had eight children. They had their own dairy cow and she had me try raw milk for the first time. I remember thinking, “This is how I‘m going to die.” She told us that this yellow book written by Sally Fallon Morell was what changed her life and her family‘s life. I flipped through it. I was expecting photos and didn‘t see any, but still, I said, “I‘ll go home and buy this book.” It wasn‘t until I had my daughter. That applesauce was what did it for me. It was because of the applesauce and looking into the chemicals that it brought me back to Nourishing Traditions and realizing, “There might be something that I can learn from this book.”

As I started cooking Nourishing Traditions recipes at home, Mom and Dad were missing the umami flavors. Umami flavors are 1 of the 5 basic tastes, sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. It‘s the savory taste that they wanted. That‘s very indicative in long-fermented foods like miso, fish sauce, and soy sauce. Slowly, I said, “Let me start replacing what you guys are used to eating but using Weston A. Price principles.” That‘s what started this journey.

 

Throughout the twelve years that I started cooking alongside Mom and replacing all of our recipes to be more Weston A. Price and Nourishing Traditions inspired, I started thrifting the dishware. All of the dishware that I have in the cookbook has been thrifted, and I had dreams of one day writing a cookbook with Mom. With all the money that I was making in my successful career in tech, it didn‘t make any financial sense to take off time to write a cookbook.

It wasn‘t until Mom and Dad turned 75 in 2023 that I said, “If I don‘t write this down now, Mom‘s memory might wane. Here I am standing in the gap between mom and the children. If I don‘t write this down, it‘s all going to go when mom goes.” I took the time off and we spent over a year writing the book. I was only supposed to take three months off because, in the tech industry, you don‘t want to take that much time off. As I took the time off, AI came into the play. It‘s been having to learn how to navigate through that and still stay relevant.

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Coming up, Sophia answers the question, why should we cook from scratch in the first place? Can’t we eat nourishing Asian food in a restaurant?

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What was a dish that you were like, “Mom, we have to put this one in?” It’s a dish that you love, your parents love, and your kids love.

It‘s the beef oxtail pho. It’s on the cover of The Nourishing Asian Kitchen.

Can you tell us a little bit about what goes into that and what makes it so nourishing?

It’s a perfect combination of slow-cooked oxtail, tender brisket, and rare eye of round, which is cooked when you pour the hot broth over it. I love pickled onions. My dad will often add a raw egg yolk in there. That‘s all represented in that cookbook cover. It‘s part of our family. I cried as I was taking that photo and putting that dish together for the cover because it‘s everything that‘s representative of our family and the way that we love to eat.

I love the wider rice noodles in there and my dad with the eggs and the rare beef. The girls love that. It‘s such a hearty broth and very healing. It was one of the first dishes that I asked after I gave birth. In my postpartum period in our culture, we have something that’s called the fourth trimester where the mom’s only and sole job is to rest. At this point, your mother-in-law or your mother comes to the house and they cook for you 24/7. It‘s often broth and healing broth. That was the first dish that I remember asking for. I wanted a hearty beef oxtail pho. That‘s on the cover of the book.

I love it so much. I had an oxtail dish with my cousin from Cuba. I feel like it‘s one of those ways in which traditional cultures would honor the whole animal nose-to-tail, right?

Yes. There‘s only one tail per cow. If you raise it like we do, grass-fed and grass finish, that takes us 2 years or 24 months to get that one oxtail. It‘s so special. On this side as being a farmer and a homesteader and realizing all the love and care that goes into raising our animals, we don‘t want to waste anything. It goes back to what I grew up with, living with mom and dad, having to grow up this way, and eating nose-to-tail because that was what we could afford at the time. We couldn‘t afford to throw away and be wasteful.

Speaking of your parents, when you introduced Nourishing Traditions ideas, did it resonate with them? Were they like, “We ate like this back in Vietnam.” You said your mom was scandalized when you were throwing out all the ingredients and spices, but did she understand, “We ate differently back in Vietnam.”

Yes. Part of this book was capturing all those stories and her realizing, “This is how we ate,” and this is how her grandparents ate. Coming to America, I remember things like having those gummy bears in the bulk section at Safeway. I remember as a kid, the red gummy bears were my favorite. She would tell me, “I‘ll let you eat it, but you can only pick the clear ones,” because she was very skeptical about the food coloring and preservatives in it. This is her not really reading much English or having access to any scholarly research articles but knowing that this wasn‘t what she grew up with and this isn‘t what was accessible to her then and questioning what we were doing to our food here in America.

Was there one recipe that she was insistent on appearing in the book?

She says the pho is hers. Her favorites are the shrimp fritters and the sweet potato fritters. She had so many stories about how as a little girl in Vietnam, this was street food. She would sneak behind and always ask the vendor there if she could have some. Some days, she didn‘t have the money, but he would give her some of these shrimp and sweet potato fritters for her. It was sweet to have her relive those memories and capture them. They‘re not my favorite, but they‘re in the cookbook to remember that.

Your husband Tim is from Taiwan, right?

Yeah. His mom was from Taiwan. Tim is second generation. I’m first generation. Meaning, I was born here in America. He‘s second generation. His dad was born here in America. He grew up on Rice-A-Roni. He grew up on Lean Cuisine. A lot of our early disagreements and arguments when we first got married were around food.

He was that far removed from it all. What helped Tim come around? I know there are a lot of people who reach out to us and say, “I‘m into this, but my husband is not.” Talk to us about how things changed for him.

When we were dating, it was fine. When he was eating two scoops of ice cream with a side of coke and a bag of Doritos almost on a daily, it was fine when we were dating long distance, but when we got married, I was like, “I don‘t think this is healthy. You shouldn‘t be eating this.” I remember what he said to me. He said, “Why are you taking away my joy?” It was at that moment that I realized, “There is a huge emotional component to this. It’s much larger than what I think.” What my grandfather always said to me was, “Eat to live. Do not live to eat.” I always carried this notion of food as medicine. Here I am watching someone that I love abuse himself with it. It was really hard.

Eat to live. Do not live to eat.

It wasn‘t until we were in Albuquerque at Kirtland Air Force Base. There was this one restaurant that we went to. We went on a date night and we tried grass-fed and grass-finished beef. It was the very first time. We came home that night. Typically, I would wake up in bed in the middle of the night sometimes thinking that we were having an earthquake. I grew up in California. We were always trained to think that whenever you wake up or with something shaking, it‘s an earthquake.

Many nights in our early marriage, I remember I would wake up thinking, “It‘s an earthquake.” I turn over and find out it is Tim scratching in bed. I would hit him and say, “What is going on?” That night when we had our date night and we tried grass-fed and grass-finished steak, he didn‘t scratch that night. That was a moment where I told him, “There might be something to this. You didn‘t scratch.” I realized that because I may not have this issue with eczema, it must be affecting me in some other way as well by eating this way.

This is to go back to say in our culture or the way that I grew up, my mom would say, “Go and buy the USDA choice meat at the Asian grocery store.” That was the best premium meat that you could buy at the Asian grocery store. We thought that was good enough. When I learn about grass-fed and grass-finished beef, I‘m learning so much more as a farmer.

I have to ask our local farmers, “What are you spraying on the grass?” Even though they‘re grass-finished, some of these farmers will say, “We spray Grazon.” Grazon is another, if not worse, form of Roundup and has glyphosate in our grass-fed and grass-finished beef. This is why we farm. This is why I want to talk about this because a lot of people don‘t know about what our food is even eating.

It’s not you are what you eat. It’s you are what you eat eats.

I like that.

Why Cook From Scratch?

Sourcing is important. If people can‘t homestead, here at the foundation, we have chapter leaders all around the world. People can connect with them to find sources of real food and ask those questions that you are asking. It’s really important. One question I have for you is I got your cookbook. I did a few recipes and they were amazing, but it was also a lot of effort. Why cook from scratch? Why not hire somebody or go back to Whole Foods and do Instacart? That thing is pretty good anyway.

It is. It‘s through those questions that I realize that if I want to know exactly where my food comes from, I‘ve got to do it myself. Since we live rurally, it‘s not as easily accessible anymore to us. For example, down to the grass-fed and grass finish, but even pasture-raised, I go the extra mile. I realized, “Since we have cows, why not clabber with the milk?” Clabbering the milk is fermenting the milk to turn it into yogurt for the chickens. I‘m improving our chicken‘s gut health.

I continue to go down all of these rabbit holes and realize if we go back to the land or we go back to farming the way that it was intended for us to be and to live, one, being in a community of other people who also farm this way and also honor the animal and being with others. We can‘t do it all by ourselves. It‘s great to be able to trade and barter with others in our community.

It‘s so great to operate from this place of abundance and be able to share with others all of our extras, any of our extra milk, butter, and ice cream. If anybody‘s sick in our area, I bless them with bone broth because we have that. We have our chickens. We have chicken feet. We have an endless supply of bones that we can do this. It‘s a different lifestyle that I don’t think I can go back to anymore. I have gone too far down.

I really like what my friend Hilary Boynton, the author of The Heal Your Gut Cookbook, says. She says, “Simplicity is gourmet.” People don‘t have to get too fancy. When you talk about pho, that broth and that soup has nourished people for so long. It doesn‘t have to be complicated. Speaking of that, which of the recipes in your book do you think is the simplest for people to try who want to give Asian cooking a crack?

 

Asian Cooking

This is great. Chicken pho is the number one recipe that I recommend everybody try. Even as a busy mom, I still work. We homestead. We homeschool. We do all the things. If this is something that I can get done in 1 hour and a half with 5 minutes of active preparation time, anybody can do this.

It‘s as simple as using a whole broiler chicken that you can purchase from Whole Foods or your small local farm. Put it in twelve quarts of water. We have an organic pho spice mix using all of the mixes that go into our pho but it‘s all non-ETO, non-sprayed, and all-organic. We have that in a spice pack that you can tie and put in there. Set it and forget it with some ginger and some onion. Within an hour and a half, you have the most nourishing chicken pho broth. I released a pho masterclass to teach this because it is so simple that anybody can do it. I teach it so that my twelve-year-old can do it and my husband can do it too.

Benefits Of Shifting Towards Homesteading

That‘s awesome. Let‘s go back a little bit. I want to ask about your husband’s health and your mom and dad’s health because you said they were impetuses for this change. What changes have you noticed as you‘ve shifted to homesteading?

It has improved drastically. Dad and Tim have had PTSD. Both are war veterans. My husband, ever since we brought home the livestock, he‘s had the goat on a lead. He walked the goat when we first got her. It‘s been a very healing experience. When we first got into homesteading, he brought home 100 ducklings. It was so adorable to watch because they would imprint on him as the mom. He would spend time with them. I called them his little soldiers. Dad would be out there. Regardless of his OCD, he still went out there and fed the animals. He wanted to. There was a lot of healing there on the PTSD side.

For mom, she has so much joy. I have the garden right outside the back door. We are using permaculture principles. That‘s what I call Zone 1 because that‘s where she goes in and out the most. It’s very interesting because I‘ll rinse out a jar and she‘ll walk down the steps to pour it down into the soil. That‘s feeding the soil microbes that increase the nutrient density of our vegetables and our grass. There‘s so much healing. Mom‘s health has improved drastically. We‘ve gotten off a lot of the medication. She has not had atrial fibrillation in several years. We‘ve reversed her congenital heart failure.

Apart from the health conditions, it sounds like rolling up your sleeves and returning to these wise traditions have blessed your family almost in ways you can‘t quite quantify.

Exactly. We‘re in the Appalachian Mountains to slow down and live intentionally. Even while we were in California, it was hard for us to slow down. We were starting to take the beginning steps. Once we moved out here, it was saying yes to going back to the land and embracing it more, saying yes to our dreams, and putting things that I was putting back on the back burner like this cookbook. Even though I can‘t quantify the success of it, it has offered me these opportunities to share our story and inspire a lot of families and individuals around the world that I never would‘ve imagined. Even being here and having this conversation with you.

Don’t you even have a podcast too?

We do. We have a podcast called The Call to Farms. It is a play on our answering the call to arms.

That’s so cute.

We are an ex-military family. We want to help others who want to be inspired to embrace this lifestyle by supporting our small local farmers and understanding where our food comes from. My husband‘s the homesteading realtor. I do lending as well. I see on the lending side that our small farmers are getting squeezed out, our homesteaders as well.

In December 2023, we ended up purchasing another 22 acres to keep our local small farmers who farm the way that we do. They had reached out to us because they were leasing land and were getting kicked off. They had come to us to try to get financing and try to purchase a homestead, but they couldn‘t because they‘re on a 1099 income as most of us are. We have to have another job outside of the home to keep a homestead or to keep a farm at least in the beginning years.

They had opened up a farm store, which we had found them through the farm store. Since I‘m a Weston A. Price chapter leader, I wanted to come and ask them all the questions. They were doing everything right. There was nothing I could do to get them financing. Tim and I came back and we were like, “What do we do? We cannot afford to have them leave.” We can do the best that we can, but we wanted to keep our small farmers in case we don‘t have enough. We can happily support them.

We cannot afford to have our small farmers leave. We must make sure to keep our small farmers.

Help me understand because I don‘t have this big financial mind. When you say they‘re getting squeezed out, do you mean they‘re not making enough income from their farm store and they don‘t have a financially sustainable source of income so they were at risk of losing the farm altogether? Is that what you mean?

Absolutely. As a 1099 employee or self-employed employee, I need to use 2 years of income and I need to be increasing income. If there‘s decreasing income over the most recent year, I can‘t qualify. I asked, “Let me see what your farm income has brought in.” They had opened up their farm four months prior. That‘s not enough for me to be able to use that income.

On top of that, a down payment on land is pretty pricey. A lot of factors come in. If they don‘t have enough, I couldn’t get them qualified. I, as a mortgage broker, have access to 150 different banks and could not get them qualified. This is where Tim and I said, “This is an opportunity for us to step in, be a lender in this position, and take the risk for them to now lease the farm from us for them to continue to build out their farm store.”

Not everyone can do that. The Weston A. Price Foundation is always encouraging the 50/50 pledge, inviting people to find their local farmers and spend at least 50% of their food budget, supporting them. If we don‘t, they could go under and then all of our food is at risk. We talk about the larger infrastructure being fragile, which we saw in 2020 and 2021. In other words, we couldn‘t get meat shipped across the country. We were losing some opportunities there. The smaller is at risk as well, so we need to put our money where our mouth is and support these local farmers who are doing it right.

The cost of land continues to rise over time. We‘re squeezing small families who want to start this way or especially small farmers who want to grow. There are a lot of costs and resources that go into it. I didn‘t realize it until we became homesteaders and small farmers ourselves.

I have a couple more questions to ask you before we wrap up. You said you learned about cooking and nourishing your family from Nourishing Traditions. You had Sally as a resource. Where did you go when you wanted to get land and have more than the chickens? Where did you turn for some instruction? In case anyone is inspired and is like, “I want to leave my day job. I want to start my own homestead at least to have some resources for my family,” who did you turn to?

Joel Salatin spoke at Google headquarters in 2010. He talked about how Google should have a chicken coop right outside the cafeteria. Instead of taking all of the dump or the compost, driving it through diesel trucks to the other side to the dumpster, and wasting all of that energy into it, why not have a chicken coop right outside and have the compost go to the chickens? The chickens could make their eggs and feed the cafeteria. I thought, “That‘s a really novel idea.”

I didn‘t realize that ten years later, here we go. When 2021 hit and we were thinking about doubling down and becoming chicken farmers ourselves because we were being threatened left and right, we said, “The one thing that we can do is raise chickens.” We went to Joel Salatin’s farm 3 times in 2021 and got hands-on training. We learned how to properly raise our chickens and butcher them. We came home and implemented it right away. We started harvesting our own animals. It grew from there. They say that chickens are the gateway animal. It is so true.

Chickens are the gateway animal.

I promised you a couple of questions, but maybe I‘ll toss this one in too. You hinted at it earlier when you said that your mom would have heart palpitations when you ate out. Why shouldn‘t we go to Asian restaurants to eat that food? Let‘s say there‘s pho or whatever. Why is that not quite compared to the quality of the home-cooked Asian meal?

The quality at most restaurants is going to be adulterated because most restaurants are thinking about profit. The way that we cook at home, whether it‘s with our chicken or with our bone broth, the beef bone broth is typically cooked over a 24-hour period to simmer for 24 hours. That is what pulls out those ami flavors naturally.

If you go to restaurants, especially Asian restaurants, that are cooking and making pho, what you‘ll often have is you‘ll have them use these bouillon cubes almost where it‘s full of flavor additives, flavor enhancers, and MSG. I‘ve seen them at the Asian restaurant supply stores. They turn them around. This is what they‘re using because it‘s a lot more profitable for them.

If we‘re out at restaurants because the family wants it and they are craving for pho but I haven‘t done my job to prepare ahead of time and we go out, I‘ll tell the children, “You can have the pho, but don‘t drink the broth.” That‘s one of the things that‘s the most ironic because the most nourishing part of eating pho is drinking the broth. We can‘t do that when we eat out.

How To Improve Your Health

Thank you for that word of warning and that reminder. I had no idea about those little semi-bouillon cube things going on there. When I eat out I think, “This should be so nourishing. It‘s traditional,” but it‘s very different in terms of quality. Thank you for that. I want to pose you the question I like to pose at the end. If the reader could do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?

Starting one recipe and cooking from scratch. Even if it‘s a simple dish like cooking rice, try that. Cook it with broth. Cook it on the stove. Add a little bit of butter or some ghee in there. Start with one recipe and simplify it. That‘s what I aspire to do with The Nourishing Asian Kitchen. It’s to make it so simple because I can understand a lot of people coming to me beforehand and saying, “This is delicious, but I‘m very intimidated.” This is something that I wrote with my mom while I was working full-time at startup companies and not having a lot of time. You can do it, and you can do it with limited ingredients and not have to go to the Asian grocery store.

That‘s right. You even have some suggestions in the cookbook as I recall for places where you can get spices and ways in which you can combine spices to get the flavors that you want without getting too fancy and out there.

My career has been an optimization, and it‘s carried through the way I cook too. I‘m always thinking about what are the minimum amount of steps and ingredients that I can use to maximize nutrient density and health and healing for our family.

I love that. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

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Our guest was Sophia Nguyen Eng. Visit her website, Sprinkle with Soil to learn more. Here is a review from timcmt. On Apple Podcasts, timcmt said, “Intelligent and upbeat. Phenomenal show. I learned so much from Hilda and her questions. Plus, she has a light voice and an upbeat attitude. The March 4th, 2024 episode is outstanding.” Thank you so much for this review. This means a lot. Thank you so much for tuning in. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

 

Important Links

• Sophia Nguyen Eng
• The Nourishing Asian Kitchen
• Call to Farms Podcast
• Real Milk
• Weston A. Price Foundation
• Optimal Carnivore
• Paleovalley
• The Heal Your Gut Cookbook
• Apple Podcasts – Wise Traditions
• Repair And Reset Your Body With Safety Signaling – Past Episode

 

About Sophia Nguyen

Sophia Nguyen Eng is a first-generation Vietnamese-American who left a successful career in growth marketing in Silicon Valley to start a five-acre permaculture farm in the Appalachian region of eastern Tennessee. During her time in the tech industry, Eng led successful growth marketing campaigns for startups and Fortune 500 companies like Workday, InVision, and Smartsheet, which led to opportunities to develop a certificate training program with CXL Institute and being a founder of the tech organization Women in Growth. A sought-after speaker, she has presented at Google HQ, GrowthHackers, and the global SaaStalk tech conferences.

 

 

 

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