Not A Single Fork

We dive deep into Filipino food in this episode with Chef Anthony Santos.If you don't know Filipino food or even if you do, you're going to love hearing about the how Chef ended up with his own food truck cooking his favorite foods. It will make your mouth water.Halo Halo is a traditional Filipino dessert with a sweetened condensed milk ice cream and Chef original idea was to have an ice cream truck with five different flavors of Halo Halo. Lucky for all of us, his wife and ride or die, Missy, convinced him to cook the Filipino food of his childhood. The ultimate goal? The first Filipino restaurant in our city! And we can't wait!!We are also lucky to have Chef Anthony cooking for us in a virtual cook along next Thursday. You can be a part of the festivities and the delicious recipes by going to the website, www.thegirlcancook.com. There, you can see the recipes he will be cooking along with the ingredients and buy a ticket for your entire household. Not only that, we will be recording the event so you can watch it and cook his food whenever you like.You can listen wherever you get your podcasts and see the unedited, show and tell version on YouTube @thegirlcancook.Thanks for listening.

Chef Anthony Santos is our guest on today's episode. The chef and owner of the food truck Manila Ice, he is making quite a name for himself by offering up the only Filipino street food in the area. Actually, the only Filipino food, period, outside a native Filipino's home.We were lucky enough to spend most of one afternoon with Chef Anthony and you get two episodes as we talk to this very interesting, talented and nicest guy in the world. In our first installment (that would be today), he takes us on his chef's journey. How he first became interested in food, the many kitchens across the world he cooked and learned in and how he ended up back in Tulsa.Believe me, we are the lucky ones because his food and his story are both off the hook.We've got a virtual cook-along coming up on Thursday, October 12 at 6pm CT with Chef Anthony so go to the website, The Girl Can Cook, and get yourself a ticket to what is going to be an incredible evening. You can see all the recipes (in no particular order) and either cook with Chef that night or get the recording and cook with him later. You can also ask questions to your heart's content!As for today's episode, listen wherever you get your podcasts and watch us unedited and out of control on YouTube @thegirlcancook.Thanks!

Foods to make your head spin? What do we mean?Part of our mission on the podcast and in the studio kitchen is to broaden people's food horizons (or at least try). To that end, here is another attempt to introduce you to foods you may not have heard of but that we think you should seek out to try. Have we tried all of them? Almost but we're willing to try just about anything...short of the weird food challenges they used to have on Survivor.So we go around the world with some strange and not so strange foods to try. Natalia had her own food adventure a little closer to home with Afghan bread, also known as Afghan naan. It is made a lot like the naan bread that you can find/buy in the grocery. It's also one of those experiences that we think you should give a try. If you see a sign in your neighborhood where someone is selling a particular food, try it! What have you got to lose and you're helping a neighbor out.You can watch us real and unedited on YouTube @thegirlcancook. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and thanks!

Did you have a garden this summer?If so, this episode is definitely for you.If not, it may inspire you to have a garden next summer or maybe even this fall!Although we are not vegetarians, we both love and appreciate vegetables. We're always surprised by the number of people (especially of the male persuasion) who don't eat vegetables. They won't touch anything green and possibly have never eaten vegetables their entire life. You people are missing out! Not only on the beauty but the variety of flavors and textures. It just wakes up your meal. Not to mention the health benefits of a balanced, veggie heavy diet.So we spend this episode talking about why we just created four videos on the end of harvest with eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes.Natalia loves basically all the vegetables. I am still working on loving zucchini. It's a texture thing for me mostly but if prepared properly, I do like a good zucchini dish.Hope you enjoy this vegetable-forward episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us up close, personal and completely unedited on YouTube @thegirlcancook channel.Thanks for listening and watching!

I love lists. It doesn't matter if it's a checklist, a to-do list or a list of foods. I'm all in. In today's episode, I read a list of exotic foods to Natalia and we dish about whether we would try them.Many interesting stories are told and re-told as we wind our way through durian, fetal duck eggs and the popular one around here, Rocky Mountain Oysters (euphemistic term for bull testicles).Deep fry anything and it will probably be somewhat edible, right?We love hearing about, talking about and thinking about all different kinds of foods and this list did not disappoint. Lots of things we didn't think of or even heard of in a few cases.You can see the unedited version on YouTube @thegirlcancook or listen in wherever you get your podcasts.Thanks!

Happy September 1st!It's still hot but not as and at least, it's not August anymore!Thought we'd have some fun today since it will be cooling off soon.We love to talk about, read about, learn about different food combinations so we're sharing a bunch that we found recently.We like to surprise each other so this time...I have the list and Natalia gets to respond, off the cuff. That way, you can never know exactly what she might say and that's always dangerous.The conversation ran from watermelon being described as a "crispy sponge" to a pretty cool hack using an avocado. The combos included peanut butter and pickles, watermelon and feta, and caramelized onions with everything.Not one to spoil all the content so listen for lavender and how to make sausage gravy with almond milk!Thanks for listening and watch us on YouTube @thegirlcancook. It's unedited and very real!Check out the cool picture below from a follower that I promised in the episode.My obsession with figs has spread to North Carolina. She used the fig jam recipe I shared in last week's newsletter.

Yes, there really is a test for how much you can tolerate disgusting food.It doesn't ask if you like oysters (or not), it digs pretty deep on what kinds of food and food hygiene situations that you can handle without being deeply disturbed. It is a free and pretty fun test to take. The drawback for me? The test is written in a way that makes it hard to answer. Double negatives (to me) are a big no-no in test construction. Here's an example: I like oysters. Straightforward. You can answer yes or no easily. But when you say, I don't like oysters. You have to stop and ask yourself? So am I agreeing with that because I don't like oysters or disagreeing because I don't like oysters. There were a lot of statements similar to that where you had to strongly agree or disagree, simply agree or disagree or be neutral. For me, if I'm taking a test for fun, I don't want to engage my brain. I want it easy.But if you're intrigued by questionnaires or quizzes and you want a little answering challenge, here is the link to the Disgusting Food Test. (https://www.idrlabs.com/food-disgust/test.php) Like I said, it's free to take and it's interesting to read the situations they describe as well as where you fall of the food disgust spectrum. Natalia and I are pretty low on the scale. That means we don't find a lot of things disgusting but we have a problem with food hygiene, poor food hygiene that is. You're welcome, Tulsa Health Department.Listen to us take the test and hear Natalia go off on people losing their sh*t over seeing a bug in the bathroom.You can find us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. To see us take the test in the completely unedited version, check us out on YouTube @thegirlcancook channel.Thanks for listening (or watching)!

This may be a silly question to those of you on the coasts but here in the middle of the country known as the "flyover" states, Trader Joe's is a relatively new phenomenon. I'm pretty sure a lot of people in our fair city have never heard of Trader Joe's let alone been inside one. Also pretty sure many would think it's some kind of commie, pinko plot to undermine the fabric of 'Merica.Whatever camp you land in, we love Trader Joe's and we're here to tell you what we think about one of our favorite places to shop. Just a little background, yes, Trader Joe's originated in California in the '60s so already suspect in this area. But if you will put all of that aside, what you'll find inside is a lovely, tranquil, dare I say, Zen-like atmosphere of the Pacific Islands and workers who actually like to be there and take pride in their jobs. I know, crazy, right?If you ask any Trader Joe's worker about any product, not only will they know what you're talking about but they will make sure you are satisfied with either finding it, explaining it to you or telling you when it will be back in stock. They really do care or do a very good job of making it seem that way.Even though, we take a few tangential side trips during this episode,as per usual, it's mostly all TJ's. Now, is it a perfect place? No. The parking lot and the store design are kind of nuts but otherwise, it's a very pleasant place to be.From the beautiful cut flowers just inside the door to the bargain basement wine prices, we can't say enough good things about Trader Joe's.If you haven't checked out your local store (and if you don't have one, sorry), get yourself over there for the experience.As for us, you can find us wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!And if you like the video treatment, head on over to YouTube @thegirlcancook. You'll get to see my daughter make an appearance in the background and everything else because it's unedited! It is real REAL.Until next Friday...

We get so many questions about knives and pans and tools and food and, and, and.. In this week's episode, we tackle your questions about saute pans (and skillets) and share all our opinions about them and of course, we have many. We also have a lot of pure information about the pros and cons of all those pans and which one should be used where and when.We also have a few words about dishwashers and how they've changed over the years...technology, man!And if you have a new stove or cooktop and you're inspired to buy a new pots and pans, you do you BUT don't let a salesperson talk you into replacing all your old favorites. If you bought induction, that might be the exception but otherwise, do what feels right and not what everyone around you is pushing you to do.If you want to see us unedited and up close and personal, take a spin on our YouTube channel @thegirlcancook.You can listen to Not A Single Fork anywhere you get your podcasts.Thanks for listening and please subscribe, rate and review!

Did you know the Japanese have almost 500 words to describe food sounds? English only has 130. Crazy, right?And we love crazy so we give you a rundown of just a few of the words the Japanese use to describe the sounds that food make when we eat them. To add to the fun, we made it a game so Natalia has to guess what the word describes.Then we took a trip down the canning lane to explain why we're NOT doing a canning video, what took its place and why you need to be very careful about eating eggplant that's been sitting in your fridge for too long.All that and more in this week's episode. You can watch the uncut version on YouTube @thegirlcancook.And of course you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe, rate and review!Thanks for listening (or watching).