Uncommon Cents

Episode #06

Mastering Monday’s podcast that provides tools and ideas to help you live better. I’m your host, Erik Bowman, owner of Bowman and financial strategies were personalized. Financial Strategies help you achieve a fulfilling retirement.

00:29 There is no shortage of diet plans for any number of health concerns, weight loss, weight gain, muscle building, belly fat reduction, heart health, brain health, digestive health, and on and on. It goes. Your health and your body are unique to you. There is no one size fits all or no cookie cutter. Mold in your food choices should reflect that Connie Pshigoda, founder of wellness for all seasons, author of the award winning the wise

woman’s Almanac, a seasonal guide with recipes for new beginnings that never go out of season and wellness. Columnist for Shine magazine shares a seasonal approach to a healthy lifestyle. Her farming roots taught her how to best use available seasonal foods. Her education and career path include fitness and ballet instructor massage therapist for 24 years. Nutritional educator and author, all of which have provided Connie with a knowledge and understanding of the human anatomy and it’s nutritional needs are fast paced lifestyles often make it difficult to follow a dietary program. So Connie is simplistic. Seasonal

approach offers an easier and more sensible way to achieve or maintain vibrant health, whether eating out or at home. Connie is a wife, mother of two grown daughters and grandmother of two granddaughters, six and nine. She loves the outdoors especially playing in her yard and garden hiking and mother daughter, granddaughter events.

01:55 Well, today for my podcast I have Connie Pshigoda, the author of the wise woman’s Almanac, a seasonal guide with recipes for new beginnings that never go out of season. Connie, thank you for joining me today. My pleasure. Erik Thank you.

I read your book and although I know a lot of the topics and the title certainly insinuate the systems of focus for women, but

certainly many of the topics are going to apply to men as well. I just kinda wanted to get that on the table to all the listeners of the podcast today that there are definitely things to take away from it, but I wanted to start off with just the an overarching question because there there is a focus to some extent on cooking and recipes and seasonal eating, but then we’re going to dig into the more personal concepts of self development and

self inventory and I thought we might just start with maybe you could tell me exactly what is seasonal eating.

Connie: seasonal eating is just that eating and choosing foods that grow naturally and a particular environmental seasons, spring, summer, fall or winter, and obviously there’s not. In our Colorado climate, there’s not a lot growing in the wintertime, but springtime brings foods that are very cleansing, very

detoxing, very high in nutrients and that’s what our body needs. That time of year we’re. We’re getting rid of the residue and the

excess of heavy winter foods so the body is ready to refresh

with clean foods and I hear women say all the time about April

they say, oh, I would just killed. I have a Christmas Green Salad,

so our bodies intuitively know that they don’t want pot roast

and chicken pies and the heavy winter foods all year long. We

need that seasonal change. Summer comes along. We’ve got

gardens, we’ve got fresh produce, Sun ripened, vine ripened

foods that are that are very cooling in nature, which is what our

body needs to get us through the heat of the summer and the

fall foods that come along. As the garden comes to a close, you

think about those winter squashes, you think of the hard winter

root vegetables and our body needs the nutrient density lower

in calories, but they help keep the body warm in the winter, so

when we choose foods according to their season, we’re giving

our body exactly what it needs nutritionally in that season.

04:27 Oh, one of the challenges for many people is that when they go

to the grocery store, the same food is pretty much there all year

long, but I think a lot of people notice, for example, that

oranges are better at certain times of the season. How does

somebody work around the idea that everything is available all

the time at the grocery store to make sure they’re picking the

right foods for the right season?

04:48 Well, that is a difficult challenge for the consumer because it all

looks so enticing and when you walk into the produce section

and see all the colors and textures and know that the flavors are

different and just a little education of knowing what foods are

ripe in which season gives a lot of benefit to the consumer. Just

because blueberries are on the shelf in January does not

necessarily mean that’s what our body wants or needs in that

season.

05:17 Is it outlined in the book pretty clearly. For example, here are

the vegetables and foods you should be looking for in the fall

and in the summer and so on.

05:26 Yes, I do give what I called nature’s pantry. A list of foods

traditionally grown in those seasons. Some foods are grown

year round now. We’re traditionally, they were a seasonal food,

so again, just a little wisdom before you go to the grocery store

knowing what you’re looking for. Having your recipes in mind so

that you can make those choices and choose citrus in its season.

It’s more nutrient dense, it’s much more when it’s ripe in season

and not picked green and shipped out of season. So that helps

in the taste factor as well as recipe selection.

06:07 I think as I read the book that there are two distinct

components. There’s the cooking piece and the seasonal aspect

of food and then there’s really the self awareness, wellness and

well-being component, and you actually have many, um, or you

call them your turn, quote unquote, which are time for the

reader to do a self evaluation and actually right inside of this

book and start to annotate a different answers to questions that

you’ve posed. Can you tell me a little bit about why you

incorporated that into a book about seasonal eating?

Speaker 2: 06:44 I guess I’ve been around long enough to notice that the more

modern our world becomes, the further away we get from

nature and our ancestors were very closely related to the

nature around them. So they experienced that more closely

than what we experienced it. And we find ourselves in a one

size fits all brown paper bag lifestyle rather than embracing the

changes that come along environmentally and even

chronologically, I think women in their twenties or early thirties,

which could be considered the spring time of their life. They’re

perhaps going to college or graduated from college, but getting

careers there at that beginning season of their lives and as they

mature into the summer season, maybe they become more

established in their careers. Maybe they start their families. So

we have that seasonal aspect as well to consider. But I think just

taking a few minutes and slowing down the pace makes a huge

difference that we evaluate or that we assess where we are in

our particular time of life. I know a lot of women are not looking

forward to going into their sixties. I’m elated. I feel like I have

some new beginnings, but I’m not in the springtime of my life

because I’ve been there, done that so I can use the wisdom I

gained from those experiences and create new beginnings at

this time of my life. So I think just slowing down to look at

where am I right now and what does that look like for my

tomorrows.

08:28 Connie, can you describe just a little bit of how you chose the

approach of seasonal eating for a topic to write a book about?

08:37 You know Eric, this came about as a career choice quite by

surprise because I grew up that way. As a farm kid, you pretty

much live seasonally. You eat what’s grown in the field or in

your garden course. I had wonderful German grandmothers

who were great at canning and preserving what we grew in the

garden and I never dreamed that lifestyle would become a

career choice. Of course, the seasonal aspect is nothing new.

The ancient Chinese have followed that for thousands of years.

The eastern Indian Ayurvedic Culture has a three season

approach. Any of your indigenous groups, the, the native

Americans, the Amazon rain forest people, they all lived with

what was available seasonally and I think we’ve gotten away

from that with our prepackaged convenience foods. And please

don’t misunderstand. I love convenience, but I always ask at

what price. I don’t want to sacrifice vibrant health, I don’t want

to age any sooner than I have to because I’ve made poor food

choices, so eating seasonally, just for me, it makes it very

simple. I have my recipes organized by seasons and that just

gives me the opportunity to eat something fresh and new and

different every season. I don’t get stuck in the same ole, same

Ole, same ole recipe.

Speaker 1: 10:00 How do you actually catalog those recipes by season? What’s

your method for doing that?

10:05 Well, I’m a champion page terror outer of magazine, so when I

see a recipe that seems enticing, if it is a fruit or a recipe or it’s a

garden summer garden recipe, tomatoes or cucumbers or

summer squash, then I catalog those with. I’d have a notebook

that has four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter, and then I

just had my little clear plastic page and I stick that magazine

page in there. Or if a friend shares the recipe, I’ll tuck it in that

little plastic holder and then I can just go to the tab for

whatever season.

10:43 That’s smart. I know we have a. my wife Heidi does the same

thing. She pulls them out, but we don’t necessarily have a way

to keep them readily accessible. You end up getting a pile of

these papers, but you’re saying like a three ring binder with

clear folder type pages that you can put these magazine pull

outs or even a handwritten recipe that somebody gives you that

you can just put in there. That’s how you.

11:07 That’s ideal. Now please don’t misunderstand. I have stacks of

recipes in my office as well because I usually tear more pages

out. Then I get cataloged right away, but that makes it easier for

me and I tell people I can eat just about anything that I want to

eat. I just choose to eat seasonally and then I feel like I have a

variety. I don’t get tired of the same old foods and my body

doesn’t build up an allergic or sensitivity because I’m repeating

the same food choices over and over and over.

11:37 Does that actually occur that if you eat the same thing over and

over, it can cause issues?

11:41 I think some people with very sensitive systems may experience

that. I know not so much with with nature’s pantry foods,

garden foods, more so with your process foods or

11:57 I mean things in bagels. Every morning comes in a box. Yes.

12:00 That I think our body creates sensitivities and possibly allergies.

I’ve heard a number of people say, I used to eat this all the time

and now my body doesn’t like it or I’m allergic to it and I think

that we need the variety, so by choosing seasonal foods, you’re

giving your body a variety of the nutrients that it needs all year

long.

12:19 You’re defining current marketing from all the manufacturers of

food by eating seasonal vegetables and fruits because that’s

what they’re putting in front of you is something that’s in a box

that may have been manufactured six months ago and you have

access to it and you’re doing what? I guess what I hear you say

is historically doesn’t happen naturally. That that’s an unnatural

thing to have access to the same foods every single day of the

year.

12:46 That is true and I. I know that convenience is a wonderful thing

in many circumstances. However, the amazing human body

needs enzymes. It needs fiber, it needs antioxidants, it needs

vitamins and minerals that they can function in the bodies,

right?

13:09 Why don’t you dig in a little more on the thought starters. This

thought starters of the book are intended to help the readers

get in touch with their environment and how

13:19 they fit into that space or place. We often live on autopilot and

forget to engage, so taking the time to respond to these

questions or thoughts gives us a glimpse of our inner garden

and that’s where our feelings, our beliefs are rooted. I think it

helps to get things out of our heads and onto paper.

13:43 If somebody were to go through this whole book and read the

book and take part in all of the different interactive and selfinventory

and thought starters, what would you want

somebody to get out of the book if they’ve actually completed

thoroughly and took advantage of the time to sit down and

reflect? What would you want a woman to get out of this book?

14:05 First? I believe the interactive activities really allow us to slow

down. We get so caught up in the hurry up of living that we

frequently get stuck in the sameness we’re doing everything

that everybody else is doing or that the marketers tell us to do

with the commercials suggest and we forget that we are very

individualistic and my health is not your health and my health in

my twenties and thirties and forties is not the same health I

strive for today. So I think that just taking that time to be

interactive with yourself. Like you said, you’re. You’re asking

yourself the question, what have I eaten today? What, what are

my cravings or what? What do I really disliked? To many

Americans are mindless eaters. Sometimes we just have great

elbow action. We, we, we go from plate to mouth and we don’t

really think about why am I eating this?

15:06 What is my body telling me? Do I need this? Am I really hungry?

Am I sad? Am I mad? Am I glad I’m in a hurry? So stopping down

to answer these questions I think gives us a deeper look at what

I call our inner garden. How are we cultivating that? And the

first part of my book, I use a lot of my farming experiences,

watching my dad cultivate the soil and use soil conservation

methods to really get the soil ready to plant the crop. We need

to do the same thing with our bodies internally. So what I would

want the reader to take with them is just an awareness that

even though we see the same seasons on the calendar year

after year after year, the spring time can be very different as we

in Colorado, no, we can have a very sunny spring in April or we

could have a blizzard, but we have to adapt to that and I think

having that adaptability with our physiology just makes us

stronger mentally, spiritually, emotionally and physically

because ultimately I’m the one that puts that food in my mouth.

16:15 About a third of the way in your book page 51 to be exact. You

have one of your your turn sections and you asked the reader to

list three new habits that they want to cultivate this month. And

the title of that chapter is internal cultivation, developing

healthy habits. Can you talk a little bit about what you wanted

to accomplish or the message you’re trying to get across with

that?

16:40 I think we are all products of our habits, whether it’s financial

habits or health habits or relationship habits, but as more

specifically to eating. I again, I think we become mindless in our

fast paced world today. We just go with the flow when we don’t

stop and think, why am I doing this? Why am I eating this? And

I, for me personally, I don’t like to follow a list of to do’s, but I

read many years ago in a wellness book that if we would divide

our food choices by percentages and you’re a numbers man so

you understand percentages. If we divide our food choices into

percentages, we can cultivate what works well for our lifestyle,