DANIELLE WALKER TRANSCRIPT
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Each week, we bring you chats with the coolest culinary folks around. Today's guest is Danielle Walker. She has devoted the past several years of her life to helping people lead healthier, happier lives. As a 22-year-old newlywed, she was diagnosed with a debilitating autoimmune disease, and in time found she could manage it through diet. She's been on an incredible food as medicine journey, and has shared it via her five books, website, talks, and classes. Danielle's latest cookbook, Healthy in a Hurry, was just published, and she'll join me in a minute to talk about the book and the road that led her to helping so many people. Danielle is such a bighearted generous person, and I can't wait for you to learn more about her.
Kerry Diamond:
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Kerry Diamond:
Also, don't forget that Jubilee early bird tickets are on sale for our 2023 conference taking place Saturday, April 15th, at Center415 in Manhattan. Jubilee is our annual conference that has become the largest gathering of women in the food and drink scene in the entire U.S. I still can't believe that, but it's true. We've had amazing speakers over the years, from Ina Garten to Danielle Walker, today's radio guest. Visit cherrybombe.com to snag your ticket, and don't delay because tickets have sold out every year. I would love to see you at next year's Jubilee. Now, let's check in with today's guest. Danielle Walker, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Danielle Walker:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Kerry Diamond:
And you are in the middle of your book tour. Congratulations.
Danielle Walker:
I am. Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Healthy in a Hurry came out a few weeks ago. It's a fantastic book, and it is your fifth. Well done.
Danielle Walker:
Thank you. Thank you so much. It's hard to believe that it's my fifth. I think when we first met, I might have just launched my first or second. It's been a long, fun journey.
Kerry Diamond:
It has, and it didn't start as a fun journey.
Danielle Walker:
No, it did not. No, it did not.
Kerry Diamond:
You have the saying where you took pain and turned it into purpose, right?
Danielle Walker:
Yeah, I didn't set out to, but I can say that in hindsight, that I was able to take my pain and turn it into purpose. And I think that's really what helps us press forward when we do go through traumatic experiences. You can't delete that experience, but if you can turn it into something that maybe helps other people or helps you understand a little bit more about why you went through something, it certainly takes the sting off a little bit and gives you something to kind of keep pressing forward for.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, let's tell people what we're talking about when we talk about pain. You were a new bride, and you discovered something about your health. I'll let you tell the story.
Danielle Walker:
Yeah. Yes. My husband and I were high school sweethearts. We dated all through college and planned my wedding during college. And two months after we got married, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Something didn't feel quite right, kind of leading up to the wedding, but I just figured it was stress. But after lots and lots of doctors and different hospital visits, finally I got a diagnosis of ulcerative colitis, which is similar to Crohn's disease. I think most people know Crohn's disease more. Very similar though, just different parts of the colon, but similar symptoms and technically a lifelong incurable disease.
Kerry Diamond:
And they don't know what causes it.
Danielle Walker:
No, they really don't know what causes it. They know that there can be some sort of hereditary kind of piece to it, and that things like stress and diet, things like that can kind of cause it to flare up. So we're not exactly sure why, all of a sudden, at 22 years old, I just almost overnight was diagnosed with something, but there's a lot of different kind of components and puzzle pieces. And I feel like they're learning more and more about autoimmune conditions as we go. Back then, I mean, this is 2007, it was a very fresh concept, and so there wasn't a lot of information out there. Even the doctors that I visited in the San Francisco Bay area weren't able to tell me a lot about autoimmune in general, but also just about my disease.
Kerry Diamond:
It's got to be so hard because I would imagine there's a part of you that gaslights yourself. What is wrong with me? Is this all in my mind? And sometimes the medical profession can do that to you as well.
Danielle Walker:
Yes, absolutely. And especially at 22, you just don't really know what to ask and what to advocate for yourself when you're in the doctor's offices or in the ER like I was, what kind of tests to ask for. And when you're just kind of brushed off and sent out, at that point, I think I was told to add a cup of fiber to my smoothies every day, and it just made everything worse. But yeah, you do, you start to believe what they're saying of, “Oh, there's nothing really wrong.” And then even fast forwarding when I started to ask about food and diet, all the doctors told me that it didn't matter and it couldn't help it. And so I just, in my own brain, kind of felt like there's got to be something that I'm eating or that I'm deficient in, but because the professionals were telling me “no,” then yes, I started to think, okay, well maybe it is all in my head and maybe I really just need to continue down this path and take the medications and kind of resign myself to feeling like this forever.
Kerry Diamond:
It always surprises me when a doctor doesn't ask, “What are you eating? How have you been sleeping?”
Danielle Walker:
Yes. And trying to find the root cause of why we're having these symptoms and why we're being diagnosed with these diseases. I think there's so much, just prescriptions and quick bandaids and quick fixes put on it. But that was always my thing. I'm like, I want to know why this is happening. What have I done or what can I do that might be causing this internal kind of root cause of all of this? And I will say I'm kind of grateful that I had a digestive disease, because over the years I've now learned that there's hundreds of different autoimmune diseases. And I've heard from hundreds of thousands of people over the years that are using diet and food as medicine for various different ailments.
Danielle Walker:
But I don't know that I would have looked to food if my disease wasn't located in my colon. Because of the symptoms that come with ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, they're all digestive related, so to me, I'm like, I'm eating things and it's going through that spot in my body. If I had arthritis or something that was not related to the gut, I'm not sure that I would've looked at food. So I am a little grateful that I had this little sense of literally everything I'm putting into my mouth is going through the part that is diseased in my body. So what's going on there?
Kerry Diamond:
I will take this moment to point out that neither Danielle nor I are doctors. We did not go to medical school.
Danielle Walker:
No, we did not.
Kerry Diamond:
We are going to talk about a lot of different things today, but just keep that in mind. And if you do have something that's seriously wrong, you should talk to your doctor about it. Let's go back to you. You're 22. This is happening to you. It's debilitating enough that it's interfering with your life, right, and your plans.
Danielle Walker:
Oh yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
I know you wanted to be a mom. You wanted to be a magazine writer. You wanted to do all these things back then. What was going through your mind?
Danielle Walker:
Yeah, well that was the first thing I asked my doctor when I woke up from the colonoscopy. I remember he said, you have ulcerative colitis. And my first question was, “Can I still be a mom? Can I have a family?” We were newly wed. I had my whole life planned out. And yes, I wanted to write for magazines or be in PR. I worked kind of as an intern through college, so I knew that it was a pretty high stress kind of go, go, go type of a job. And at that point I was thinking, I'm not going to be able to do any of this.
Danielle Walker:
He said “yes” and was like, “you'll be fine.” Just take this stuff and head out the door. But after a few weeks of being on one of the medications, I just had so many side effects. And over a couple years time, there's a lot in the middle there. I wrote about it actually in a memoir that came out last year because it's 12 years of my life that sometimes I have to condense. But it's a journey. That's what I always say. So there's a lot of detours along the way. It's never been linear for me.
Danielle Walker:
But long story short, I ended up at one point being on medical leave from my job. I was still putting my husband through law school at that point, so I was just working a job that could provide for us. I hadn't started to venture out into what I wanted to do for my career yet. But I couldn't even walk up a flight of stairs, and I was pretty much bedridden. So we ended up taking medical leave so that we could be making something while he was in school so that I could recover.
Danielle Walker:
And I just spent so much time in the hospital and so much time on these medications that caused me to not sleep, that caused severe joint pain. I lost so much weight that I was just incredibly deficient in everything, and just had to grip on to the staircase handlebar to be able to even get up one step at a time to get into our little apartment as newlyweds. And so I kind of saw all my plans, my type A plans that I had been planning since I was probably 17 years old, just flashed before my eyes and think, “Okay, I'm actually not going to be able to do any of this.”
Kerry Diamond:
When did you realize that food might be the key to feeling better?
Danielle Walker:
It's an interesting story. We traveled to Uganda to do a humanitarian trip, and unfortunately the 48-hour journey there just put too much stress on my body, and I ended up in a hospital in Kampala for about eight, nine days there. And the British doctor that took care of me was really the first person that introduced any sort of a concept of food. But more than anything, he talked more about just the gut and the ecosystem, healthy bacteria. And I had never heard of any of that before. I think I might have seen on a few yogurt commercials back then. I mean, this is 2008, but if you ate yogurt, you got some probiotics, and that's probably the only understanding of that word that I had. And he talked to me a lot about that.
Danielle Walker:
And so that was really just mostly a seed. I was too sick during that time and ended up actually having to get rushed back to the U.S. for a blood transfusion. But it was a seed that was planted that made me think, oh, there's something going on in there, and the things that we eat can affect it, and how over-sanitized things are can also affect it.
Danielle Walker:
And so I came back to it a couple years later, and I stumbled upon something called the specific carbohydrate diet, also the GAPS diet. It was a book called Breaking the Vicious Cycle, and it was written for Crohn's, colitis, and autism. And it had everything to do with clearing out the foods that caused unhealthy bacteria to grow, and really trying to foster healthy bacteria to grow in your gut. And it eliminated grains and dairy and refined sugar. So that was really the first kind of foray I had into food and really seeing that it could have an effect on my day to day symptoms.
Danielle Walker:
The woman who wrote it had a daughter with Crohn's. They did this way of eating for two years and she went into complete remission. And then I actually met a neighbor, we moved neighborhoods, and I met a woman that lived two doors down from me that had been in remission for two years, and had a little girl, and had the same disease as me. And so those were those first moments where I was like, okay, there might be something to this whole food thing.
Kerry Diamond:
But you really didn't have much culinary experience.
Danielle Walker:
Oh no.
Kerry Diamond:
And not even culinary school. You just didn't really even cook.
Danielle Walker:
No. You know, I grew up around food. My grandma is Italian. She's 87 years old and will still cook us a full feast if we let her. We don't let her anymore. So I'm like, come here, we will host you. You've done it for years. So I grew up around food, and she made everything from scratch. And I loved the idea of food gathering people. But yes, I mean, we're talking straight out of college. I didn't do a whole lot in college. I'm not sure how many of us did. But I did start to become a little interested in it. I spent my mornings while I studied having the Food Network on in the background, and I was picking up food magazines and flipping through them. But I had no experience in creating my own recipes. If I did cook, it was line by line. And I was very simple, very, very, very simple foods.
Kerry Diamond:
Did that book have recipes? How did you start this journey?
Danielle Walker:
Yeah, it did have some recipes, and they were very dismal, and they kind of dimmed my light. There were no photos. It was this paperback book, but there were a handful of recipes to get you started because they had you do a pretty strict elimination at the beginning. And so they gave you a few things that you were just supposed to eat every day.
Kerry Diamond:
And explain what elimination and elimination diet is, because folks might not be familiar with that term.
Danielle Walker:
Every practitioner, doctor, book can do it a little bit differently, but essentially elimination diet is cutting out foods that could potentially be inflammatory, or that could potentially have some sort of reaction with your body. So at that point it was grains, dairy, legumes, night shades, which is tomatoes, eggplant, white potatoes, peppers.
Kerry Diamond:
All the things your grandmother probably loved to cook with.
Danielle Walker:
Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Italian. Yes, definitely. But yeah, cutting out foods that could potentially be inflammatory. And then really the most important part of the process after you cut it, and certain ones do 30 days, a couple weeks, two months, whatever it is. But then the most important part with an elimination diet is adding one item back in at a time. It's really your very simple science experiment that we used to do when we were kids. It's like, you have to do one at a time because otherwise you won't know if your body is reacting to something. And they do it with food allergies as well. If you have a suspicion that you might be allergic to certain things and you cut those out, but then you add back in gluten, dairy, and sugar all in one meal, you won't know what your reaction is to.
Kerry Diamond:
So you start cooking, you start developing your own recipes, you start sharing them and you start a blog. This was still fairly early on in blog land, I guess.
Danielle Walker:
Oh yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
And you build an audience. Who started to pay attention to what you were doing?
Danielle Walker:
First off, I never intended to build an audience. I was sharing the recipes because I was cooking things in my kitchen. I would take them to my husband's work or I would take them to family, and they would ask for the recipes. And I was like, okay. So I started the blog really just so my grandma, my mom, my sister, my husband's coworkers could get the recipes. And then what happened was I started to notice that I was being annoying on my personal Facebook page. I was constantly sharing food and I was like, my girlfriends from college probably don't care that I made a dairy-free and grain-free chicken Parmesan yesterday.
Danielle Walker:
And so I set up a business profile that went along with my blog and started sharing recipes there. And I'll never forget when I saw comments from names that I didn't recognize. My sweet grandma, who I talk about her all the time, Grandma Marge, she was one of the most frequent commenters, and she's so sweet. You know, see people's names on Facebook, which she would always sign off on her comments, say dash, love, Grandma Marge, like she was writing a letter to me.
Danielle Walker:
And so when I started to see other people's names coming in, and then also blog comments coming in, and they started slowly of just like, oh, this recipe was really great, but then pretty quickly people started sharing their own stories. And I, all of a sudden, had this realization of, oh, the way I'm eating is not just for digestive diseases because people would leave comments that say, “I have rheumatoid arthritis and I've been using your recipes and I'm feeling better,” or “I have type two diabetes.” Gosh, I mean, just so many different things, MS. And I just kept hearing all of these different autoimmune diseases and ailments. And again, I mean, we're talking now, I might be 23, 24 years old. I had never heard of any of these diseases in my life. So I'm researching them as people are leaving comments, and I'm trying to understand why they might be using my recipes and why they might be helping them too.
Danielle Walker:
I remember specifically lots of young women, women that kind of were a similar age to me, between 20 and 30, were kind of my demographic at that time. And I was astounded that an audience was starting to grow. My real deal chocolate chip cookies, and then I did a sandwich bread that was made from blended cashews. And those were the two that I'll just never forget seeing the shares on Facebook. And I'm like, okay, this is a little more than just my mom and my sister at this point. Those were the two, and then I realized people that are having to eat a specific way are really missing comfort foods, and the things that we might have baked with our grandmas or our mom growing up. And so I started really trying to focus on creating more of those types of recipes.
Kerry Diamond:
You became such a champion to so many people with autoimmune illnesses and other things. It's really remarkable, Danielle. So you blog for a few years, and then you get a cookbook deal. You work on your first book. Tell us about that book because that was a big hit.
Danielle Walker:
Oh gosh. Yes. It was titled Against All Grain, just self-titled right after my blog. And quite honestly, when I got the call from the publisher, I mean, I didn't know it was real. I didn't know that people other than Ina Garten and Giada could write cookbooks. I actually thought you could only write a cookbook if you had a TV show. I didn't know that you could do it as a blogger. I didn't know. And so I had a call with them, and I had been looking at publishing just an ebook at that point because the cost of testing the recipes, plus I had, he might have been one and a half or two at the time, I had my first son, and I was starting to get a little childcare here and there so I could actually test and clean and photograph and style the recipes. And so I was like, I need to make a little money off of this if I keep putting out this many recipes a week, because I think at that time I was putting out four, five recipes on the blog a week.
Kerry Diamond:
Were you monetizing the blog?
Danielle Walker:
So I had just started monetizing it with affiliate links. I mean, it was Amazon affiliate links. That was kind of the first move. And then I think we eventually got some sidebar ads just through Google ads. But I wanted to put out a little ebook, mostly also because I was creating recipes so quickly that I couldn't get them on the blog fast enough. And I was like, well, it'd be nice to put out 20, 30 recipes in one little PDF for people to kind of get all at once, because I was so excited about releasing them. And I got a phone call from a publisher. The woman who worked there had a child with a really severe chronic illness. I don't remember if it was autoimmune or not, but she used to make my nut-based grain-free granola to send to school on cereal day with some almond milk, because her child felt really left out every week when everybody else got to eat Cheerios and all the things that they would bring.
Danielle Walker:
So she reached out and just said they loved my work and they wanted to present me with a cookbook deal. And I remember asking who would photograph it, and they asked if I would. I did not feel qualified. I was still learning to photograph for the blog. And I also didn't know how to write a recipe. I mean, I was stumbling my way through. I had read a couple of food writing books and read some blogs about how to food write, but to write an actual recipe for a book, I had no idea what I was doing. But I said yes, against my better judgment. I'm really glad I did now.
Kerry Diamond:
Was there a moment where you thought you should say no to it?
Danielle Walker:
Oh yeah. Yes. I mean, I just didn't think I was qualified mostly. I will say, I did not know how much work it would be going into it. And they wanted 100, I think we ended up at 165 recipes, but they wanted 150 new recipes. They didn't want me to pull from the blog. And I ended up talking them into it later because I showed them some statistics of the Google analytics. And I'm like, look, these people are using these recipes constantly. They would love it in an actual printed book. So they agreed if I photographed and then kind of revamped the writing of it. So I flew down to LA the day after I signed that contract and took a one day food photography intensive. We cleared out our savings, and I bought myself a decent camera and a few props.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, so you did photograph the first one.
Danielle Walker:
I photographed, styled, designed the pages of both my first two books. And then I moved publishers and realized that people actually hired photographers, and it was the best thing that I could have done. It was a huge investment, but backing up, for those first two books, I had no advance, no advance, not even a couple hundred dollars. So I couldn't have hired a photographer. I couldn't have hired a food stylist. I was barely scraping by trying to get... I mean, we're still newlyweds with a toddler at this point, and my husband fresh out of law school, so we didn't have a whole lot to be able to spend on it.
Danielle Walker:
So it was honestly quite a gamble. I mean, spending that much of my time, creating that many recipes to put into this book that I didn't know if it would sell or not. I think my goal was to... I can't remember this far back, but I think my goal was to sell 1,000 copies. I think that was my ultimate goal, and I always said at the very least, this is my one and only cookbook. If it's on the coffee table for my son to be able to flip through when he's 20, that'll be worth it. Thankfully we were able to get back our investment.
Kerry Diamond:
Wasn't that first book a New York Times bestseller?
Danielle Walker:
It was.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh.
Danielle Walker:
It was, and I did not even know what that was. When my publisher called me, I was like, is that good?
Kerry Diamond:
Boy, did you get a crash course in cookbooks.
Danielle Walker:
I sure did. I sure did. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. Okay. Well, let's jump ahead to the latest because you are, as folks can imagine, a lot more seasoned now. This is your fifth cookbook. It's a fantastic title. It's called Healthy in a Hurry. And I think that just sums up what everybody is looking for, Danielle, so great title. What led to Healthy in a Hurry?
Danielle Walker:
It came from my last book being out on tour. When I launch a book, my favorite thing to do is just to be out with people who have been cooking the recipes, people who need these types of recipes in their life. And even though I've just launched a book, which most people would say, you're absolutely crazy for even thinking about the next one, but that's just always the way I've been. I just always really want to service my audience to the best of my ability.
Danielle Walker:
So I asked them on tour. I'm like, okay, you've got a whole book full of comfort foods. You've got your chicken pot pie and your biscuits and gravy that you've been asking for for years. What do you want next? Most of my audience, they're either busy working people, or they're moms like me, or they run their businesses, and they want to eat healthy and they need to for their health, or they want to feed their kids healthy meals, but they don't always have the time. And so that was the thing that was requested the most, was just easy, healthy meals that are less stressful.
Danielle Walker:
And when I started to work on it actually, it was when we were all stuck at home. I had my three kids at home. They were doing school full-time at home. Both my husband Ryan and I were working from home. I was running a full-time business with employees that were in various places of the country. And my kids never have eaten so much than when they were at home. I don't know if it was boredom or if it's just when they're at school, I don't need to think about as many meals, but I felt like I was in the kitchen constantly. And then I was also tasked with testing this book by myself. I usually was able to have some sort of a test kitchen assistant that was able to help me grocery shop or do some prep or clean up, and I was just solo in the kitchen.
Danielle Walker:
So it really made me even rethink some of the recipes that I had already kind of planned pre that time. I scratched them all, and I was like, nope, these actually aren't easy enough. When I'm in the kitchen alone doing this and have three kids that need me, I need something that's even easier. So that's really where the book came from.
Danielle Walker:
It also came from a place of hearing over the years so many times that somebody wanted to eat healthy, but they just felt like there were too many barriers, whether it was budget, whether it was time, whether it was ingredients that they just didn't feel comfortable with or didn't know about. And so for this book, my main goal was that it could break through some of those barriers, and people that might have even seen my cookbooks in the past but didn't pick them up because they just felt like too much work, might actually give this one a shot and really see their health changed for the better because of it. So every recipe was really written with all those things in mind.
Kerry Diamond:
I love this book, and I don't eat grain free, but I still found a lot of things that I absolutely loved in it. But I really appreciate that you talk about the stress that can come from cooking and trying to eat healthy, because that's a real thing. And I think the food media and the sort of health media gloss over that, sometimes. Things can be expensive. They really take time doing meal prep on Sundays or whatever day you choose to do it. It takes time. Somebody's got to wash all those dishes or load the dishwasher, whatever it is. So I appreciated very much that you acknowledge that in this book, and built an entire book around dealing with that.
Kerry Diamond:
Like I said, it's a great book regardless, if you just want to eat healthy, even if you're not eliminating certain things from your diet. And it does take into account things like meal prep, which I've become a big fan of. And I think that's a game changer. Once you can start to do that, things fall into place easily. You realize how much money you're saving. You realize how much time you're saving. But you do have to make that initial investment.
Danielle Walker:
Right. It's true. I always say cooking from scratch, no matter what way you eat, if you're grain free, gluten free, or you just eat regular meals, cooking everything from scratch just takes more time. And so the planning part of it can save you a significant amount of time. And like you said, you save so much money because you have a plan in place when you go to the grocery store and you buy things that you need, and you don't end up with as much food waste. When you also have a plan, you're not as likely to order takeout at six o'clock because you've already got those ingredients there and it's already kind of ready to go. So I think that meal planning is huge. I actually gave six weeks of meal plans plus grocery lists in the book, and then I did an additional six weeks of meal plans and grocery lists that you can download just to give people 12 weeks. And you can even put those on rotation where you can swap in a few things, but just to take a little bit of the guesswork and the stress out of it.
Danielle Walker:
And it's interesting. It took me a long time to realize that the way that I was eating was almost inadvertently stressing me out a little bit too. And stress for autoimmune disease is like fuel to the fire. And so even though it was a different type of stress, of stressing over what was going into my body or prepping the food, I realized it was just another stressor in addition to all of the other life stressors that we come against. And so trying to take at least one of those components out with the food side, I think has been incredibly beneficial for my health.
Kerry Diamond:
I was really appreciative that you have a chapter on freezing food because I need to spend some time on that because I'm not great at that. I love to cook, but I go out a lot. It's just me and my cat at home. I'm not cooking for a family of five, and it's not always easy to make a tiny meal for one person. So I do need to get better at freezing things. So thank you for that.
Danielle Walker:
Yeah. I use that chapter a lot. The recipes are mostly written in that you don't cook it fully through. You prep some of it, some of it has to be sauteed, but a lot of them you just throw it into a container or a bag. And then it's one of those things that you can pull out when you find yourself with little time, and you can throw it into an Instant Pot or a slow cooker and have it ready to go. And then the recipes that aren't in that chapter, a lot of them have freezer tips for once you have cooked that meal and you've got leftovers, or you're cooking for one or two, and you want to freeze the extra portions to take to lunch at work or send with your kids to lunch or things like that. So yeah, I utilize it a lot.
Danielle Walker:
And I think that a lot of the tips in there also... because one of the things that I do, I hate food waste. So if we do have leftovers of things, or we're going out of town, I usually just kind of shove things into the freezer. But then I hardly ever see them again because I'll find them months later with freezer burn on them. And so there's a lot of tips in the book, too, about how to really plan even for the freezer, because it's not just a sweep-the-fridge-and-throw-it-into-the-freezer type of a situation.
Kerry Diamond:
Right, and I know that. That's why I love that chapter. Because you think like, “Oh, can I freeze this?” And you're like, ugh, it's probably not going to be great if I freeze it. So that's fantastic. You know what's such a game changer for me? I label everything now.
Danielle Walker:
Yeah. Huge.
Kerry Diamond:
I don't use a label maker.
Danielle Walker:
No, I don't either. I use painter's tape and a marker.
Kerry Diamond:
Exactly. I do the same thing, a Sharpie and some painter's tape. It's amazing being able to open your fridge or freezer and see what's in there. It does change your mindset.
Danielle Walker:
It really does because I think just when we talk about those barriers, it's like sometimes if you open your fridge and freezer and you see a lot of stuff in there, but you don't have a plan in place, you sit there for a minute, and then it stresses you out, and then you're like, oh, I'm just going to close the door and get take out or get something that's from the freezer.
Danielle Walker:
The other thing I do for the fridge, I've just been traveling, I was just in New York, I cooked a bunch of things and I pulled a few things from the freezer for my husband and my kids to eat while I was out of town, and I have those wine writers that you use to put people's names on their wine glasses. And I wrote what everything is because he's kind of the same way. He'll open the fridge, and if I've got four meals stacked in there, he's like, I don't know what to do or I don't know which thing to eat first. What's going to spoil first? And so I wrote what it was and I said, eat by Wednesday, eat by Friday. And it really helps.
Danielle Walker:
And for the freezer, I don't know if you've done this too, but I bought whiteboards that are magnetic and dry erase markers. And this is really more for me because I throw so much in the freezer or I have stashes of meat, things like that. And so I just have a really quick list as to what's in the freezer because then I can just quickly look at it and I can be like, oh, I've got three pounds of ground beef in there. Let's take that out and use it up for dinner tonight. Or, oh, I forgot I threw in a lasagna that I had made an extra of and it's in the very back, so you may not see it when you open the freezer, but I see it on my little list. It just helps me know what's in there and not buy excess of things. That's been a huge game changer too. And then I just erase it once I take it out.
Kerry Diamond:
You know what I did that for? I don't have the whiteboard. This was just in my notes section on my phone. All the spices I have, because there's so many times I want to do a recipe and I'm like, “Do I have cumin? Do I have cardamom? Do I have this or that?” And how many times do you go out and accidentally buy duplicates of spices? So I totally reorganized how I did my spices. And another game changer, turntables.
Danielle Walker:
Yes. Lazy Susan turned. Yes. Yes. We use them for everything.
Kerry Diamond:
That has changed my refrigerator and my pantry game.
Danielle Walker:
Totally, because you can find things that otherwise might disappear to the back. Yes. Pantry. I do it for my kids' snacks. It's just a little, I call it a Lazy Susan of fun. It's like they can spin it and find something fun to grab out of it. But yes, I use them in everything too. I mean, it's funny because we grew up… every Sunday we would have taco Sunday as a family. My siblings and I were the ones who prepared most of it, and we had this huge wooden Lazy Susan that went on our table and all the different fixings would go on it and we'd spin it, and that's how you'd load up your taco. And I just never anticipated using them for organization. I just thought it was for food.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about when life intrudes and you do have to reach for something pre-made, processed.
Danielle Walker:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Cheap, convenient, all of those things. There's so much now that's plant-based, that's gluten free. I mean, it's really changed from when you were starting out and there weren't very many gluten-free options, but so many of these things are processed. What are your thoughts?
Danielle Walker:
I mean, gosh, the amount of options that we're getting is so much better. I do say I wish I lived in Los Angeles where they have that Goop dinner delivery. It's one of those ghost kitchen options, because it's all gluten free and I'm like, we don't have that here. I mean, we do. We fall back on it once or twice a week. My kids play sports. I'm busy. I mean, we are not cooking everything from scratch. I usually meal plan for five days a week, and then it's like, I know we're going to either do take out or leftovers on those other ones.
Danielle Walker:
But I do think that there's ways to eat healthier. I mean, I think there's a lot of... I mean, even Chipotle. I think my kids, we get Chipotle. They did away with some of their soybean oil that they use. So I think there's ways to do it now more than ever, and to even do it somewhat cost effectively. I do think cooking and having stuff in the freezer is going to still save you money no matter what, but there's frozen meals. Primal Kitchen came out with bowls that I'll sometimes grab for lunches. I feel like the options are out there and are better. I mean, even some of the meal kit delivery services have gluten-free options now. Some of the even ready-made type things.
Danielle Walker:
So I mean, like you said, gosh, I used to tell somebody I was gluten free or even grain free back in the day, and they looked at me like I had four heads. They're like, I don't know what that is. So I think it's grown significantly compared to when I first started. I remember a day, and I lived in the San Francisco area, and I still would have to go to three or four grocery stores to find all the things that I needed. And now, I mean, I just got back from being on the road. I can go into a Ralph's or a Safeway, and of course Trader Joe's. I mean, it's not just the high end health-focused markets anymore. You can find a lot of times a gluten-free aisle at those places. You can go into the freezer sections and find things. And they've gotten really good at labeling, I feel like as well, so we don't have to spend as much time flipping and looking at ingredients like we used to.
Kerry Diamond:
But you know what? You still do.
Danielle Walker:
Yeah. Well, you do.
Kerry Diamond:
I was in Maine this summer and my mom bought some hummus, she bought this red pepper hummus. And the front of it was non-GMO, organic, this and that. And I usually get sort of seduced by those things on the front of the label, so I don't always read what the exact ingredients are. And I looked at the ingredients and there was sugar in hummus.
Danielle Walker:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Why would anyone add sugar to hummus?
Danielle Walker:
That is true. No, you're right in that way. They call it green washing, and I think it's very true. I mean, I've had so many conversations with friends that are like, but I bought this because there was a cow grazing on grass. Or my favorite story was a friend who bought what she said was really expensive "maple" syrup, and it had a maple leaf on the front. And I flipped it, and it was brown rice syrup. Not a single trace of maple in it at all. So you do have to read them, but I do think with things like a Whole30 certification, the gluten free, it's a lot easier to at least see at first glance if something's going to work for you, and then some places will have the “P” on it for the paleo thing. But yes, I mean, you still have to analyze because they sneak sugar into a lot, and it can come by a lot of different names as well.
Kerry Diamond:
Danielle, I want to talk about you as a businesswoman in just a second, but I want to ask a question about Healthy in a Hurry while we're still on this topic. I really want to try to make everything in that cookbook. It's one of those cookbooks that you feel like you could just spend the next year cooking through very happily. What is a great place to start? What is a recipe that you would love for me or our listeners to start with?
Danielle Walker:
I feel like they are all very approachable, but the skillet chapter, I think there's 22 recipes in that chapter. It's the bulkiest because it's the way that I find myself trying to cook is just one skillet, the vegetables and the protein are in there. There is a Philly cheesesteak skillet, if you eat red meat, that I think is absolutely delicious, super easy. I usually serve it over smashed potatoes, and it has this drizzle of an aioli on top, but it comes together really quickly. And then there's some sheet pan ones that we go back to time and again. There is a sweet-and-sour pork type of one that's actually sweetened with, it has unsweetened ketchup and then it uses some apricot jam. We love that one. My kids love that.
Danielle Walker:
And the nice thing about these, you said you don't eat grain free and dairy free. All of them, if you want to serve it with a side of rice and your body tolerates that well, it's such an easy add. And really the meals are focused on really great vegetables and healthy portions of meat. And so if you want to add something to it, it's so easy to do that. Same thing for dairy, right? It's like I do dairy free swaps in all of those, but if you want to sprinkle some cheese on it or you can tolerate goat cheese, sheep's milk, they're very, very versatile.
Kerry Diamond:
You have evolved so much as a business woman from back when you were 22 trying to figure out what the hell your body was doing to you. You have five cookbooks, you have this website, you're on tour right now for your cookbook. You're going to be in two other cities where people can go see you, Seattle and Houston, right?
Danielle Walker:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
That's coming up.
Danielle Walker:
Yes. Yeah. I teamed up with Williams Sonoma, so I'll be in Houston and Seattle at the end of September.
Kerry Diamond:
That's great. So you can find the information on Danielle's website, but you also do courses.
Danielle Walker:
I do.
Kerry Diamond:
How has your evolution as a business person been?
Danielle Walker:
I kind of call myself an accidental entrepreneur. I was very entrepreneurial growing up. My parents had us on very strict allowances and we were not allowed to spend outside of that. And so my brother and sister and I were always looking for ways to make money. However, when I started my blog, as I kind of mentioned, I really started it just as a personal kind of thing at first, and then went into it as I started to realize people were needing it as just wanting to help people. I felt like I spent so many years not knowing that food could help. So my mission was just to get that word out there as best I could. And I had a lot of trouble at first with even wanting to monetize the business because I was like, I just need these people to find this so that they can feel better.
Danielle Walker:
But over time I realized what I had to offer was valuable, and I had to tell myself that if people needed it, they would also see the value in it. And also you can't work for free for your entire life. So it started with charging more for a cookbook than I wanted to. I wanted to charge $9.99 for 165 recipes. My publisher was like, “You're crazy.” And then it moved into, as I started to develop these ideas for trying to make this lifestyle accessible for the people that were there for the recipes.
Danielle Walker:
There were a lot of other business ideas that came from it, but really always at the heart is creating things that I think can help make this way of eating sustainable, enjoyable. And so the courses came during the same time when we were all at home, and just seeing people wanting to cook more than ever, seeing people really wanting to connect with people. I had wanted to do online digital courses for a really long time, but just didn't find myself with the time to do them. So we kind of dove head first into that and just saw, I mean, amazing results. People, at 2,000 members I think over the last year and a half, to see them connect with each other. While I love doing the videos and teaching, most importantly was to see a community that formed around it.
Danielle Walker:
Other members who had similar ailments or autoimmune or chronic illness, or just were wanting to feed their family healthy meals, but didn't feel like it was accessible. And to see them sharing with each other, what recipes they were making or what swaps they made or where they found an ingredient or what their favorite restaurant was in their city, that was kind of my favorite part of it. And it's still going and still growing, and they're cultivating relationships with each other. I mean, a group of them actually had never met in person, and gathered, and were going to drive in for one of my book tour stops to meet in person for the first time.
Danielle Walker:
And I just loved giving people the tools to see something healthy made on camera. I mean, we're talking, there's not even a gluten-free show on network television, right? And so a lot of times people will see an ingredient list and they'll see coconut aminos or they'll see arrowroot starch, and that's foreign to them. But when you see it, coconut aminos look like soy sauce and arrowroot looks like corn starch. So there's a bit of the fear taken out when people can really see something made, and when they can see that it truly can be easy, but it can look amazing. It gives them more confidence to try something.
Danielle Walker:
So, the course was really fun for me because I got to give all my tips and tricks and do long-form videos where people saw step by step processes instead of this world of 30-second quick snaps of recipes. That was one thing that was really, really fun, and it felt like just another kind of arm that was natural to my business that gave my audience something that they had been looking for and asking for. Most recently I bottled and packaged my seasoning blends.
Kerry Diamond:
I was just going to ask about that. They look delicious, your Healthy in a Hurry seasoning blends.
Danielle Walker:
Yeah. So that was the same thing. So the recipes actually for the seasoning blends are in the book. If you want to make them from scratch yourself, more power to you. But what I wanted to do was give people a convenience item that they could also purchase, because like we said, cooking everything from scratch and taking the prep days and things like that, it's really nice to have one thing kind of off your list. Also, a lot of seasonings and spices have anti-caking agents in them, they have rice starch, they can be high and heavy metals if they're not organic, or they can be sprayed with pesticides and herbicides. And so they're certified organic, they're certified gluten free. They're made in a facility that's completely allergen free. They're certified Whole30, which means that there's no anti-caking, grains, anything like that.
Danielle Walker:
So it was also just an opportunity for me to give something to people that feels safe, because when you do have food allergies or you have special dietary intolerances, worrying that you might get cross-contamination or that you might pick up something at the store that doesn't have an ingredient listed or that's in such a minute amount that it doesn't have to be on the label, but it could actually affect you is a big stressor as well. So I was like, here's an opportunity for me to give my community one more convenience item. And I really hope to expand into so much more, I mean, I eventually want people to be able to buy grain-free cookies and breads so that if you don't want to make all my stuff from scratch, you can go and pick it up. So that's an eventual goal.
Kerry Diamond:
Where can folks buy the seasoning blends?
Danielle Walker:
Yeah. So right now, at shop.daniellewalker.com, I'm really hoping to see them on some of the healthy online retailers, Amazon, and then on some grocery store shelves eventually, but this was kind of a I'm going to do this. It's my own personal investment. I'm going to just get them out there for now, and then we'll try to expand.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you have employees now or a business manager? How do you manage all of this?
Danielle Walker:
It's changed and evolved over the years. This year actually has been a huge transition year for me. Something that was concrete has changed. So I have a small, very small team, all remote. Two full-time employees, and then am thankful to have a couple, my literary agent. I have a business manager as well that's in a different state that helps more on the kind of financial side of things. She calls herself a CFO for hire. So she's not fully with me all the time, she's more of a contractor, but she helps really keep everything in order. Ryan, my husband, ran all of the operations and the finance side until about a year ago. So that's why this year's been a pretty big transition.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, it's great to see how much your company has grown, how much you've grown. You've got three beautiful kids. And I think, we mentioned, a new puppy, right?
Danielle Walker:
Yeah. Yes. We threw a new puppy into the mix. It wasn’t the smartest decision we've made. No, she's great. But my goodness, we joke, because I got her before the book came out in June, and I was like, “Oh, I've got time before September release to train her and everything will be good.” But the last time we had a puppy was before we had kids, and I was like raising a puppy with three kids is so different than raising a puppy as newlyweds who have lots of time on their hands to train a dog. So yeah, it's been a little more than we anticipated, but she's great. She's a good addition to our family.
Kerry Diamond:
What's her name?
Danielle Walker:
Her name is Layla.
Kerry Diamond:
Cute. Who named Layla?
Danielle Walker:
Yes. She came with the name.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, she came with the name. Okay.
Danielle Walker:
She came with the name, yeah, and this is a total tangent, but we lost our daughter, Aila, June 24th, 2014. And this puppy's name was Layla, and she was available for adoption on June 24th. So she was meant to be part of our family, which helps all the peeing and pooping accidents feel a little more worth it.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, Danielle, I didn't even know that. I didn't know that. I'm so sorry.
Danielle Walker:
Yeah. Yeah, we did after my oldest son, Asher. Thank you. I share quite a bit about it actually, and it's been a whole other piece of my kind of online presence of just all these women that have lost children that I've been able to share her story pretty openly. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you write about that in your memoir? You mentioned you also have a memoir.
Danielle Walker:
I did. I wrote about it in Food Saved Me, and there's a lot of blog posts about it as well as we were going through it. It happened at the time where I was launching the second cookbook. So it was something that we were able to share and kind of walk the journey. And I still talk about it. Grief is not linear, and even after having two more, we talk a lot about her life and the legacy that she's left.
Kerry Diamond:
Like we said earlier, you've taken this pain and you've helped so many, just thousands and thousands of people. It's really, I don't know. I marvel at what you've been able to do and how many people you've been able to help.
Danielle Walker:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
So thank you for that.
Danielle Walker:
I appreciate that. Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
No, well, we appreciate you so much, and I adore you, and like I said, so great to see your face.
Danielle Walker:
Yes. The feeling is mutual.
Kerry Diamond:
Just once again, folks can see you in upcoming dates, Seattle and Houston at Williams Sonoma.
Danielle Walker:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
So definitely go support Danielle. She is so worthy of your support.
Danielle Walker:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Regardless of how you eat, she just wants us all to have better lives, and there's nothing better than that. So thank you again, Danielle.
Danielle Walker:
Better lives with good food. That's my goal.
Kerry Diamond:
Exactly. All right. You're the Bombe, Danielle. Thank you.
Danielle Walker:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you so much to Danielle Walker for joining us. Her newest cookbook, Healthy in a Hurry, is out now. And as mentioned, you can see Danielle on tour in Seattle and Houston. Check out daniellewalker.com for more information, plus all Danielle's books, her seasoning blends, classes, and more. If you get to see Danielle in person, please tell her I said hello and give her a big hug.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you to Wild Planet Foods for supporting today's show. Be sure to check out our Wild Planet giveaway on Cherry Bombe's Instagram. And don't forget Jubilee early bird tickets are on sale over at cherrybombe.com. Our podcast is recorded at Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Thank you Joseph Hazen, Studio Engineer for Newsstand Studios, and to our assistant producer, Jenna Sadhu. And thanks to you for listening. You're the Bombe.