Episode 014: Hygee cooking & living
In Shake It Off Episode 14 Lauren and Kendra speak with special guest Louise Rakers, the founder of Nordic Cooking.
Louise is a dutch plant-based chef, and recipe creator, as well as a plant-based restaurant consultant, that focuses on a less is more plant-based approach.
Kendra and I talk with Louise about our travels and work abroad over the past decade and how to incorporate more plant-based eating into our everyday lives, as well as different ways to shop more cost-efficiently and sustainably.
You can find all the podcast episodes at https://www.drlaurenhodge.com/podcast/
We created this podcast to give you the tools, strategies, and stories to handle the unexpected BS that life throws your way. We plant ourselves firmly at the gates of truth-telling and we discuss how to optimize and prioritize your physical and mental health.
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*This is not medical advice. Please get in touch with your doctor or healthcare practitioner before making any changes to your healthcare plan.*
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Kendra Till
Welcome to shake it off a podcast that gives you the tools, strategies and stories to optimize and prioritize your physical and mental health. Hi everyone and welcome back to the Shake It Off podcast. Today Lauren and I are speaking with Chef Louise Rakers who is the owner of Nordic Cooking, which is based in Charleston, South Carolina. Louise is a plant based chef, recipe creator, as well as a plant based restaurant consultant.
Lauren Hodge
Louise, thank you so much for joining us. We are really excited to have you on the podcast because we love your lessons and concepts of plant based cooking. And what I love about having all three of us gathered here on this podcast today is that we all have so many stories from having traveled the world and worked in different countries. Louise’s from Denmark, I actually spent about five days in Copenhagen, probably five years ago now, when I was speaking at a conference and the food and the culture in Denmark really centers around hygge, and to me, this is really everything that you embody Louise and everything that your business really stands for, and it’s a Danish word that kind of describes the cozy and charming feeling that you get in a special moment in time. Is that right?
Louise Rakers
Absolutely. There’s a saying if you don’t feel it, you’re not doing it right. It’s a word you can use and it actually translates into so many aspects of what we do. So it’s more than just a word.
Lauren Hodge
Yeah, I definitely can say that, after attending your plant based cooking workshops, that everything there with the candles, and the whole feeling is really based around that hygge. So while you were studying and learning about other cultures, and how they eat and how they nourish their ecosystem, both for their family and the environment. I’m curious to hear how all of this kind of transpired into you moving into doing the plant based cooking, and maybe just take us back to the beginning and tell us how you started to incorporate plant based cooking in your life. I would love to hear more about that.
Louise Rakers
Of course, and thank you so much for having me here. I am a big admirer of you Lauren, like all the stuff you’ve done so far. It’s always exciting to hear about your work and your travels as well, and I know that’s where we started connecting. Because I too, had been in Australia for some time and love that place more than anything. But yeah, back to the beginning. I mean, where do we really start right? We have to go all the way back to my young years in college where we partied a lot and ate a lot of steak and did all of the good stuff. You know, we as we were living like there was no tomorrow and boom, I hit 25 I’m done with college. And I started working in a very stressful job as a social worker and I walked into working in family consulting and getting deeper into very stressful and hard areas of that environment. As I navigate through that, at that point in my life, I know absolutely nothing about how to take care of yourself with yoga and meditation, or food.
So I started numbing all of that pain that I’m feeling were like all that stress I’m feeling with food with wine with maybe an extra party here and there and before I knew it, my body was just in a burnout state and I was 26 at the time and probably ready to retire my body, my mind my soul everything I was done. And I had gained a lot of weight and I felt miserable where I was at in my life at that time. And I actually go on a vacation where I run into my old friend Natasha who’s a holistic health coach and the thing about Danes were very direct you know, it’s like if you see someone and they gained weight since you saw them last they will look at you and say oh hello, you gained weight, huh?
Lauren Hodge
I did not realize that okay,
Louise Rakers
Yeah, and she didn’t exactly say like that, but she did have the look in her eyes and she was like, are you doing okay? And I was like, “yeah, what are you talking about? I’m fine. I have this amazing job and I have all the things I want and an amazing car, an amazing apartment.” I have like materialistically seen like, right I had everything. Except for the fact that I was deeply unhappy. So she probably spotted that on my face because she used to know Louise, the one that’s always bubbly and smiley and loves life and all of that. And she said, “Why don’t you move to Spain and live with me?” And that sounds a little bit crazy. So I went home, right? I was like this crazy person telling me to come live in Spain. Who does that? But apparently, about a month later, I did.
I sold everything I had, and I moved to Marbella, and Spain and I moved in with Natasha, which was the beginning of the plant based journey. Natasha from day one put me on a plant based diet, I couldn’t drink alcohol anymore, there was no more gluten, there was no more nothing. So I spent a long time really detoxing from stress and detoxing from the environment I had been in. And I was very shocked to see how long it actually took me to really detox fully from that. But that’s also then where my traveling starts, because I realized that I am full of parasites at that point. And I’m very, very, very ill. So Natasha takes me to Thailand, and we are doing a parasite detox retreat.
Lauren Hodge
Can I ask a question? How do you find out or know that you’re full of parasites?
Louise Rakers
So after doing about a month and a half of really intense detoxing, like just eating fruits, yoga, meditation, all of that I was still not getting better to the weight like it to the extent you you should be at that point. My stomach was still really bloated, and I felt this extreme fatigue and anxious and depression feeling and it would just wouldn’t leave my chest. And Natasha said that it could be a sign that this might be happening. Then we did a liver flush, we did all the things like basically cleaned out the system, we fasted, and I was just not getting better. And we took that phone call with the lady in Chiangmai, who runs the detox retreat. And she’s like, it sounds like you potentially could be a candidate for this retreat, and I went out there. And the thing is to learn, most of us have parasites, if we’ve ever had sushi, or had a steak that wasn’t cooked all the way through, we probably have them and they live in our gut system and create a lot of small or bigger problems.
And I think that everyone could benefit from a detox retreat for sure. But it was the beginning of mine, and whenever I went out there three days in, I started purging the parasites. And that’s when I told myself I’m never ever again in my entire life eating meat. And it’s just, I’m done with it. Like I’m not, it’s not worth it. And then on top of it, I started realizing that I felt so much more happy and light and my whole metabolism was working for me, for the first time in my life, I had struggled with my weight my entire life. And for the first time in my life, I felt like whatever I was doing, it wasn’t about a diet or weight loss or whatever it was just eating what I wanted to eat. And I felt so nourished, and so happy. So I wanted to learn. So that’s where the whole thing started. And that’s when I decided I’m going to become a chef, and I’m going to cook for other people and teach them what I now know.
Lauren Hodge
That’s incredible. I bet so many people can actually relate to that feeling of being burnt out and being in that state of your body being so fully depleted and fatigued and anxiety and all of those things. Because I guess the question is, is it the burnout that comes first, or is that the partying that leads to the burnout? But either way, usually if you’re at that habitual stage of burnout, there are a lot of things happening as far as what you’re eating and what you’re taking in, whether all or drugs or whatever.
Louise Rakers
Whatever works at that point, right? I was 25 years old, and the only thing I was focused on was, why am I still single? It’s all about the fact that I’m actually taking care of myself and nobody can go into a relationship when you’re in that state. I had to learn to take really good care of myself before I could let someone else come in, and supply me with all that love and the gift of a relationship is.
Kendra Till
Did you find too, for me personally, when I was on a very similar journey, and I found when I really stepped back and started really looking at the foods that I was eating and you realize that eating is such a mindful practice and even before that, how do you get your food. I know my husband and I really enjoy going to the local farmers markets and that end itself just creates this mindful practice of like, what am I buying? Where’s it coming from? And what am I putting in my body? So did you find a similar journey for yourself?
Louise Rakers
Slowly, but I also do believe that for me, that element comes in from being Danish. We’re so focused on sustainability and farm to table, it’s all about what can we get and what’s in season, what’s local. I would always pick up things from the neighbor if they had something growing in their backyard. If you look at Copenhagen right now, they’re aiming to be 100% self sustainable on green energy sources. They’re not relying on gas or anything like that. They want everything to come from Mother Earth. Then when I moved here, I was mortified in so many ways to see, there’s no sorting of trash, there’s nothing going on that really takes care of the environment and all the plastic wrapping at the supermarket. I mean the list is long, and I can keep naming things that I was really shocked by, but yes traveling taught me a lot about sustainability. But my upbringing, and really my childhood was probably more so my biggest lecture on sustainability and doing local things and close by stuff.
Kendra Till
So I’m curious. So in regards to eating a plant-based diet, in your opinion, why is it important, and who can really benefit from eating plant-based?
Louise Rakers
I think everyone can benefit from eating plant-based. So here in Charleston, I host cooking classes that aim to help everyone really to incorporate more plants into their daily lifestyles. And probably 90% of my clients are not plant-based. They just enjoy learning how to incorporate more plants into their daily lives. I always say don’t subtract add. So instead of trying to remove all the things that are a no-no, and you can’t do this, and it’s so strict it and I always say well start adding stuff, and then naturally, you’re going to start shedding some of the things that you already know that doesn’t make me feel great, and that’s really what we aim to do.
Lauren Hodge
What should we eat more of if we’re eating plant-based? What would you recommend people add in?
Louise Rakers
To be honest, one of the biggest fears in the US is fruit. I would recommend people start to integrate more fruit, fruit, fruit fruit, but eat it on an empty stomach, for example. Don’t start mixing it in salads or eating it with a big steak like it just doesn’t pair well. Now, I’m not a nutritionist, but living with Natasha for a full year, I definitely got my fair share of education from that beautiful woman. I do believe that fruits are like a major misunderstanding. We need it, and it’s not a bad thing. So if people could incorporate fruits more, that would be really good..
Lauren Hodge
So to clarify, you’re saying normally, you would recommend that people kind of add in new types of foods instead of taking out.
Louise Rakers
Yeah, nobody goes from a McDonald’s diet to plant-based overnight. It took me many years to learn how to cook for myself in a good way and like a plant-based way. So have some grace and just go slow with it. Practice makes perfect. I’m still learning, I still go study with other chefs, I still get out of my comfort zone and learn all the time. So, you know, one step at a time and try not to overcomplicate things. I think we talked a lot about this to Lauren in the class. It’s like you see all these amazing cookbooks, right? They’re vegan, plant-based, all of that and they look beautiful. You start looking at the ingredients, and you see a picture of ashwagandha. You see all these difficult ingredients, and you’re like, where am I going to find the king lion mushroom? It just over complicates things and people close that book and they never open it again and they think that’s just too much for me. That’s not what I do. I make recipes that’s easy to incorporate into a family that is busy. And I want that to be the keynote, right?
Lauren Hodge
Yeah, what are your top three tips if you had to give someone tips who wants to start eating plants based on what they would be?
Louise Rakers
Come to my cooking classes. I think a great thing is go through your pantry really quick and start reading the labels. See what you have in there that might contain something that you necessarily don’t love, like casein or whey or maybe it has like that sauce that nobody can pronounce Worcester sauce. It’s just like all those things where you might be consuming animal products without knowing it, you could start shedding those that would be easy because you might not even know it and there is a better alternative out there.
Also, I would start doing meatless Monday just to make it something that you can go and TikTok, you could write meatless Monday, there’ll be so many easy recipes that will just jump in your face. Then start there one day like you will be surprised how much that one day will do to you. Your digestive system is going to feel better and if we just look at the environment alone, one day, of a family not eating animal products at all. It’s 17 bathtubs of clean drinking water that’s saved just by that one family. I think that’s pretty impressive to think about what one day can do.
Lauren Hodge
Wow, that is incredible. I did not realize that statistic.
Kendra Till
I like that approach, though. Just starting out small, easy, digestible steps, no pun intended. But just getting those easy steps like you said, meatless Monday is a great way to get started. And it’s probably an easy way, especially as you mentioned, a busy family. You know, I’m sure there are a lot of parents out there that are just trying to just get through the days and the weeks. And so that’s just such a great approach.
Louise Rakers
I’m a mom now, too. I understand when you come home, and it’s already 5:30 like you don’t have two hours to study a recipe and then realize, oh, I don’t have three of the ingredients, and now I have to go grocery shopping, you need to learn how to cook with what you have. That is a lot of what I try to educate everyone about is like look in your fridge, what do you have, if you have zucchini and onion, and you have a few staples in your pantry, you should be able to make a solid dish out of that. So I want that part to be more normal, because that’s how I was brought up.
My dad was great about that. I don’t think he ever looked in the recipe book, he just basically looked in the fridge and then created stuff. That’s how I cook here at home. But I realized that doesn’t just come overnight. It’s something you have to be exposed to. But I do think we have the responsibility to like to do that for our family, but also do it for our kids. So they can take that with them when they have a family themselves.
Kendra Till
I really like that because not only are you producing less waste, you’re actually going through the items that are in your fridge and being more mindful about that approach. But also probably, it’s going to be more affordable too. Because you’re not spending as much money if you have a fridge full of really healthy food, utilize that instead of having to go out back to the grocery store and buy things that are not necessary.
Louise Rakers
I have a lot of clients that when I go to their houses and help them either set up pantries or I do a private chef service, I realize how many products they actually have. And they asked me, “What can I do with this particular vegetable?” because a lot of people in Charleston get that farm fresh box where it’s like a bunch of vegetables from local farms, and they’ll get like a beat and then I don’t know what to do. When I answer most questions about this, like people, clients ask me like, “Oh, what do I do with the eggplant, I have an eggplant and I don’t know what to do with an eggplant.” And then you know, my favorite thing is being able to chop it up in the crock pot, and then just dump this and then you have a stew within 30 minutes because they’re busy people and so am I and I need something fast. But I need to know that I’m eating and fueling myself and my family with food that is going to nourish us in the long run.
Lauren Hodge
I remember a conversation that we had. This might have been right when we met like a year ago about the importance of being really mindful when you go to the grocery store. You don’t need to go to Whole Foods, and spend your whole paycheck to get healthy food you can go to the farmers market or to Aldi or you know these different places, but to also be mindful when you go to those places of how much is in plastic because that’s one of the biggest contributors to the waste that’s in the landfills and that sort of thing, which I had only just thought about, maybe a month before a friend of mine is an environmentalist and she was telling me that it’s interesting. She was visiting here and Charlson she was saying it’s it’s interesting how well the campaign has gone, alerting people to the importance of using straws that are recyclable, to not use plastic straws, but that that actually doesn’t have an impact, it has such a small tiny slither of an impact on the actual environment that what would really matter. You are saying that you should use less plastic whenever you go to the grocery store, and I would just remember you telling me different strategies for using what you already have.
Louise Rakers
Right, and I think that using what you have at home is one thing. But now talking about the beginning of traveling, my time in Thailand, one of my favorite things was that everything was wrapped in banana leaves. And I saw recently when I went to Mexico, I went into a loom for a job down there, and I saw that a lot of places wrap things in the supermarket in banana leaves. That was great. But sometimes, to me, what’s so shocking is, it’s like a lot of the things that are wrapped in plastic are things that you have to peel anyways, it seems so unnecessary. I don’t understand it, but, but it is what it is, right. And I think as a consumer we have a responsibility to choose the right product. But I fear when I say that, for someone who’s not used to grocery shopping every day like me, for my business and my profession, that it would scare them.
Oh, now I can’t buy bell peppers anymore, because they’re always wrapped, or I will have to pay $4 for an individual bell pepper. And that’s not really what I’m saying. I’m just saying Be mindful of how you purchase your items. Think about maybe not picking every single item that has the plastic, if you see laying there, and you could just, you know, bring your own little bag or put them in there like the apples, put them in there loosely, you don’t have to take a plastic bag to put them in there. It’s not necessary,
Lauren Hodge
Right? I am actually used to that practice from living in Australia because that’s kind of how we always did things. I don’t remember us having little plastic bags to put fruit and stuff like that in the grocery stores. But I guess we went to the markets like the farmers markets are huge there. So that’s kind of just where you shop. And you just have your own take away bags, that you’re just getting all of your groceries in.
Louise Rakers
That’s what they do in Spain.
Lauren Hodge
So when I’m here, I think people, whenever they go grocery shopping with me, they’re like, “What are you doing, you’re not putting your things in plastic.” I just kind of lay them in the cart, because like you said, as if they have the peel on the outside or the shell on the outside, they don’t really require a bag but I fully relate to that. As far as for yourself, you’re a new mom, and you’re like planning meals for your family and that sort of thing. How has that shifted for you as far as mealtime prepping and any tips or things that you’ve been picking up along the way as far as managing all that?
Louise Rakers
Well, so I have to say, I’ve been shocked about how little time you actually have. I remember my friends telling me who said don’t have time to stand there and peel it, shred it and then just like, do all these other things and then cook for an hour. Like I need something fast. And I always thought “yeah, you just don’t want to.” But I realize it’s not because you don’t want it’s because you really really have your hands full.
Lauren Hodge
You literally have your hands full.
Louise Rakers
I will have Jack on one arm and be mixing with the other, then he wants to play with what I have in my hand and he’s falling into the pot. I plan more probably I would say, I definitely sit down every week, and I don’t necessarily write it down, but I at least think about what I could cook, and then I really think about cooking something that I can make a big batch of. So if it is a simple lasagna right? It’s a great way to use leftover vegetables from your fridge, you can just chop up anything in the lasagna and dump it in there. And then with some tomato sauce and you’re good to go right and you can just layer that up and it will always taste great. It literally never fails.
So but there I can make a massive batch and then I’ll freeze half of it and then that will feed us for like a few days right and my husband works from home I’m home a lot I’m home with Jack a lot during the day and he eat solids now to so it’s like we constantly just have food rolling. Then when I’m not thinking in terms of cooking in big batches that’ll last me for multiple days and be smart about that part. I really look to see what I have in my fridge and in my pantry and then once a week I do a haul to the market. I love that part because I love talking to the local farmers and I really enjoy what’s in season and I alternate a little bit between where I go but I am a big supporter of shopping as local as you can.
Lauren Hodge
What is your favorite market here in Charleston?
Louise Rakers
See, I do like the one that is downtown whenever, during the season when it’s there, it’s just more like the aesthetics of it. It’s so cute and all that, I feel like I’m back in the 1940s and 50s And I walk in with my little basket.
Lauren Hodge
There are a lot of options there, too. That’s like a bigger market, right?
Louise Rakers
I do like the bigger markets because I do think when you see something at a farmers market, and you know that’s not in season, it probably comes from somewhere else. They have collaborations too, and I’m not sure how it’s connected. But I just like to find things that are full of dirt and I can go home and scrub it and I also think I have the responsibility to my son to show him like “hey, vegetables grow in the in the ground and on trees as the fruits and stuff”, because I used to run cooking classes in Spain for children. That’s actually what I did when I came back from Thailand from my retreat. I started doing cooking classes that are plant based for children. I had this amazing boy in there, and he one day said to me, I know where the carrots come from. ” And I said, “Oh, really? Where did they find it?” “they grow in the supermarket!” yeah.
Yeah, well, not quite. I was like they have dirt on them when you pull them out. And he’s like, “I’ll never eat carrots again. That’s so gross.” So we planned a field trip out to a local farm where they all saw carrots come out of the ground, and they have dirt and you can actually eat them straight out of the ground. That’s what I did growing up. Education, education, education. I think every kid has a right to learn and understand where foods are coming from, and I think if we can get that part integrated a little bit more here in America over the pizza and burgers that they serve in schools here. That would be great. That’d be gold for me to be able to go to school and like helping with some education.
Lauren Hodge
That’s a great goal to kind of…if you’re wanting to do something like that, that’s a useful thing for the schools hereafter kind of growing up in South Carolina and going to all schools, public and private,. Just learning about healthy eating and where food comes from. I definitely didn’t pick up on a lot of that until I got to Australia.
Louise Rakers
Australia is just so clean.
Lauren Hodge
Yeah, I went to McDonald’s, and I was telling a friend of mine that I was gonna go to McDonald’s, and they were like, you eat that, that’s actually something you’re willing to put inside your body. I was 21, I had no idea.
Louise Rakers
It’s so normal in the US to eat fast food. Whenever I went to high school when I was 15 for a year, they told me St. Louis Right, and they sent me off to the cornfields about an hour outside of St. Louis. I was very excited about Big City Life and I got something very different. But that’s where I found my husband Kendra. I love that area for everything it stands for, but one thing that I noticed was there was such a fast food culture like it’s normalized. A healthy option is like a chicken burger over beef, right? Growing up McDonald’s was not in the question the same way, it was very different and expensive. I remember Happy Meal, it was like $20 my parents were like, “no way, how are we paying $20 for you having like a tiny little french fry and a burger and a toy? I’ll make that for you here at home.”
Kendra Till
Right.
Louise Rakers
Got to eat that way.
Kendra Till
I’ve noticed there are subtle changes. So, my husband, and I drove through the Midwest coming back for the holidays, and when we stopped at a gas station or a service station, I noticed that they actually have a section now where they serve carrots as an option or cut apples. And it was just nice to see that, especially at a gas station because normally it was all processed, and it was just nice to see those options. So I felt I was like, wow, this is a nice little change. It’s little, but at least it’s something’s happening.
Louise Rakers
Well, I do believe that the industry is headed that way. That’s also why I know for a fact that what I do for a living, it’s not going to… I’m not going to be out of a job. I won’t have enough years even to complete all the things I would love to do, but the industry is definitely growing and it’s going in that direction because we can’t keep doing what we’re doing. It’s just not sustainable. People are getting more and more sick, we’re seeing cancer like never before, and heart disease like never before.
I actually didn’t know that South Carolina was one of the leading states in heart disease, it has to change. People are going to start demanding it because it is a right that we have to have access to food that is healthy and not full of chemicals. I definitely believe that we should all stand up for that right and demand that we have options that are better for us.
Kendra Till
Absolutely, I concur. I think what you’re doing, Louise is just phenomenal, and education is key, as you mentioned. I think it’s great that you’re working with kids in particular as well, just educating them through your career. It’s just awesome. So it’s just so amazing what you’re doing. So keep it up.
Louise Rakers
Thank you so much.
