Dori Durbin: Welcome to That's Good Parenting, the podcast where we search for simple steps to reduce your parenting stress. I'm Dori Durbin, children's book illustrator, book coach, and podcaster. I help experts kid-size their big ideas into children's books that families can use and love long after this podcast is over.

Dori Durbin: And speaking of experts today, why not in the kitchen? Because if you've ever stood in front of the refrigerator at 5:00 PM with hungry kids behind you, and you're still wondering what to feed them it's such a bad feeling, right?

Dori Durbin: And I have personally experienced that often. But the other end to this is when your kids look at you and they say, "Well, not that again." Or, I wanna help you, Mom, but you've never let me." You've probably been on that end of things too. Really, when it comes down to it, I am excited about this guest for so many levels.

Dori Durbin: My guest today is Chef Dennis Littley, better known as Ask Chef Dennis. Dennis has spent decades in the food [00:01:00] industry as a professional chef, culinary educator, recipe developer, and food blogger. He's also worked directly with children and families, so he knows that cooking at home isn't just about making great food, and it's all about real life.

Dori Durbin: Dennis, welcome to the show. 

Dennis Littley: Thank you so much for having me on today, Dorie. I am excited about this. This is a, a little bit of a departure from me from what I do, so I'm happy to be here. 

Dori Durbin: I really love being able to talk to you about this, because whatever you teach the adults is what actually happens to the kids, right?

Dori Durbin: I love the fact that you came into this quite honestly. So I want you to spend a little bit of time talking about your background. What made you just fall in love with cooking

Dennis Littley: oh, well, number one, and most importantly, I love to eat. I, I was a chubby little boy, and I still, you know, okay, I'm a chub- chubbier older man.

Dennis Littley: And yeah, food was just, it was fun. You know, I, I had a Mexican grandmother who used to pinch my fat little cheek and feed [00:02:00] me till no end, and you know, I, I would just eat everything she put in front of me, and I just carried that along with me. And my mom was a nurse, and she worked, and she would work nights so she could be home during the day.

Dennis Littley: Well, that meant she had to sleep, so during the summer I, I woke her up enough, but I would allow her sleep, so that meant I had to make lunch, and that's kind of when I started getting adventurous. You know, I was picking berries and selling them or, or back then you used to collect, uh, bottles to take for back and they would give you, you know, two cents a bottle.

Dennis Littley: So I'd take that money and go to the corner store and I would buy something, and I'd try to decide what I can make out of it, and that's kinda how it started. And then- It's going back, I think I was 12, 13 years old. There was a guy on TNB, his name was Graham Kerr. He was the Galloping Gourmet, and, uh, he was, oh, he was suave and debonair.

Dennis Littley: He wore an ascot. He had an Aussie accent, and not that I knew what it was, but he was drinking wine with all the time and having such a great time. And when he [00:03:00] would bring people down from the stage at the end of the show to taste his food, they would moan. They would literally moan, and their eyes would just kinda roll back.

Dennis Littley: And I went, my subconscious went, "Wow, that's a really great way to make a living," ma- making people happy with food like that. So that kinda stuck with me, and I did the journeyman thing of, uh, you know, jack of all trades, master of none, and I finally ended up in the kitchen, and that's where the magic started to happen.

Dennis Littley: And, uh, that's when I realized this is where I was supposed to be, and it's carried me through life. And, uh, even, I always tell people, even when times were pretty bad, I always had that to fall back on, and I got satisfaction from it, and it would bring me some joy. So I try to share that now. I, people have to have joy in the kitchen because food is about joy.

Dennis Littley: Food is about bonding. You're sharing something very personal, and it, and it can turn a table full of strangers into friends. 

Dori Durbin: [00:04:00] That's beautiful. That is so beautiful, and it's so different than a lot of the stress that we put on ourselves- Oh ... of trying to prep. I remember doing my first Thanksgiving, and I was a mess.

Dori Durbin: I was sweating through my clothes, like, because I wanted it to be so good because I thought it had to be this certain level of excellence- Yes ... for people to enjoy it, and what you're saying is it doesn't, right? 

Dennis Littley: No. People try too hard, and one of the philosophies I carried I was, as a chef, I was not the, always the happy chef.

Dennis Littley: I was more the soup Nazi chef. Yeah. And, uh, when I went to, I started working at an all-girls high school, and when I went there, my wife says, "You became the kinder, gentler Chef Dennis," because I came home with a vegetarian cookbook one day, and she goes, "Who are you?" 'Cause it was before, "Oh, you'll just eat vegetables."

Dennis Littley: And so now I'm cooking for my girls. I had vegans, and I'm, I'm trying to make things that they could eat because I cared about them, and I wanted them to be taken care of, So it's, it's been a kind of a, a journey for me along the... but you're right, food should [00:05:00] not be stressful in any, any way, shape, or form.

Dori Durbin: Yeah. I love the ties that you had, too, of having the memory with your grandma. I too had a Hispanic grandmother. And the cheeks pinching, all those things came flooding back to me. Oh, yeah. But she made tamales. Ah. And, yeah. Wow. And no one, no one in the family can get even close to making...

Dori Durbin: We've tried, and we've gotten pretty close, but it, there's just that person, that memory, that feeling, whatever their special little thing they did. Yeah. All of those add up into those memories and those experiences that are just precious, that you can't duplicate. 

Dennis Littley: Oh, not at all. I mean, one of my oldest memories was her sending me...

Dennis Littley: I, I think I might have been four at the most. It, it wasn't totally unsupervised, but her giving me money and sending me up a couple b- not many, not very far up the street to Alejandro's. It was a store, and they sold red corn tortillas, and she used those to make enchiladas. [00:06:00] So I went up there to get a package of it, and she was probably not far behind me, making sure, you know, I got there okay and back, and, uh, came home with those.

Dennis Littley: And then she... And I always remember, she was putting chopped onion and cheese in them. She was frying them up a little bit. And I'm, at four years old, so I'm eating raw onion and I don't care, 'cause she just kept putting them on the plate and I kept eating 

Dori Durbin: them. I love it. That's awesome. And then you weren't worried about it because it was healthy, fresh food.

Dori Durbin: Yeah, yeah. Beautiful food. Red tortillas are beautiful. Oh, yeah. Like, yeah, all of the color. I'm really gonna get hungry by the end of this. I'm just gonna move it- I, 

Dennis Littley: you know, I, I am too right now

Dori Durbin: I love this segue also because I think one of the things that I worry about as a parent is actually feeding my kids with healthy food.

Dori Durbin: And we were s- talking a little bit before this podcast about the fact that it is so much cheaper and easier just to buy the packaged stuff. Yeah. And I don't know if you've heard about the the cellular grown meats now and- 

Dennis Littley: Oh, yeah ... 

Dori Durbin: like, just all of the stuff that y- y- I mean, I'm getting to the point where I'm going to the grocery store [00:07:00] and I'm like, "Ah, do you buy packaged, do you buy..."

Dori Durbin: You have to pay attention, right? Yes. So when it comes down to it the healthy aspects of it, so much healthier than this packaged stuff, and so much more of that satiation, right? Like, you fill. Mm-hmm. Do you find that when you're, you're cooking with people? Like, this is a hard thing to undo for people, to spend the time.

Dennis Littley: It is, because they typically want the easiest route. I mean, we're, we're people. That's what we do. We don't always look for the hardest way to do something. But honestly, once you get used to it, it's not hard. You know, you just have to plan ahead. And I'm not saying there's no place in my life for a jar of spaghetti sauce if I don't have any, there's... Or and I will tell you one thing that I do eat, and it cracks my wife up, is, and I, it's something from my childhood that I've never stopped liking, and that's that blue box of, uh, orange [00:08:00] glow in the dark cheese from, from the- ... you know who. I ha- I have some downstairs right now, and I always have a few on hand for those days, like, I'm alone and I don't wanna make anything.

Dennis Littley: I'm telling you, all those movies where they see the chef comes home after work and he lays all the ingredients out, he's preparing all these things, and he's decorating. Oh, that's a bunch of crap. We get home from work, we're so sweaty and dirty, the only thing we wanna do is stop at Taco Bell on the way home and try and fight the urge to do that 

Dori Durbin: oh. 

Dennis Littley: But, but when you have time and you can plan ahead, and, and that's what it comes down to. And finding the ingredients. Like, people say, "How do you decide what to make?" I sit there at night and go, "Oh my God, what am I gonna make for dinner?" My wife can't cook, bless her heart at all. And I go, "Oh, I know why they took Valium in the '60s, 'cause what am I making for dinner tonight?"

Dennis Littley: I says, "I have no idea." You know, it's like, but I go to the grocery store and I go through the produce aisle, and I wanna see what's freshest. What do they have that just came in? [00:09:00] What looks the best? And I kinda plan my meals around that. So what vegetables can I use and incorporate into something that I'm gonna, that people are gonna eat?

Dennis Littley: And it, it can come down to like, all right, the, the zucchini. Right now we're in New Jersey, so we have lots of fresh produce. Zucchini looks good. You know, mushrooms aren't far from us and, you know, uh, where they grow them, and, uh, they're always fresh. What greens are good? So I might take those, cook them up with some other things and get a box of pasta, throw it together, and then just find a way to, to season it up a little or add some kind of a sauce to it or maybe some fresh crushed tomatoes in it, you know.

Dennis Littley: Just to kinda toss them so it's different, it's fresh, it took me all of about 20 minutes to make. I always tell people a lot of my dishes will take you as long to make as it does to cook the pasta. So 

Dori Durbin: I love that. 

Dennis Littley: Yeah. 

Dori Durbin: And it's gotta be more fun to go to the store with a sort of a, a loose plan in mind- Yeah

Dori Durbin: where you can just kind of find the things that you wanna [00:10:00] cook, versus going in and saying, "Okay, I've gotta get exactly this- Yeah ... exactly that." You know, 'cause then that's stressful too. 

Dennis Littley: Yeah. I mean, you know what you need. You have a list of basics. You need milk, you need butter, you need eggs or whatever, you need bread.

Dennis Littley: And then you take a few minutes and make it your happy time. You know, like for me, when I was working a lot, as hard as it was for me to get to the grocery store, when I got to the grocery store, I could take a breath, relax, and go, "All right. Let's see what they have. Let's see what adventures they have today for me.

Dennis Littley: What can I find that's different or new or, or fresh?" Go through the meats and, you know. That's a big one for me, finding someone that you can trust to buy meats from. I, I order online all the time. I try to get small farm meats. And when you stop and look at it, they're a little bit more money, but they're not, they're better for you.

Dennis Littley: And early in my career, someone said, "Well, Dennis, you can use all these cheap ingredients, or you can [00:11:00] use better stuff, and you can save money now, but you're gonna pay for it later when your health declines." So one way or the other, you're paying for it. 

Dori Durbin: That's such a good point. And I think, you know, when, when kids are little and you're not thinking that way, it's- Yeah

Dori Durbin: later, they get braces and they have teeth issues. 

Dennis Littley: Oh, yeah. You're, "

Dori Durbin: Oh, if I woulda done," you know. 

Dennis Littley: Cavities, you know, all these different things that we do and we don't think about all the sugar that they're getting. You know- Yeah ... now, you know, when my, my grandchildren were young, I would load 'em up with sugar and send 'em home so they'd run around the house up the walls.

Dennis Littley: This 

Dori Durbin: is on record, by the way. 

Dennis Littley: Yeah. No, I, well, I never did that. Never did that. No. Honestly, not that much, but sometimes. And it's hard to say no to grandchildren. It's a whole different game when you're a parent and you have to really be responsible. You know, when you're a grandparent, you can get away with a lot of stuff.

Dori Durbin: Um. I love that. I love that. And 

Dennis Littley: so- Um ... 

Dori Durbin: okay, actually, this leads up to my question that I had [00:12:00] next, was, um, if you're a busy parent who's thinking about letting their kids help- 

Dennis Littley: Oh, yeah ... and 

Dori Durbin: really wants to let them help, my first thought is, "Send them to grandpa's now." Um, but my second thought, my second thought is, how do we do that without feeling like you're asking for a complete disaster, or is that part of the process?

Dennis Littley: It's a learning process, you know, and it is part of the process. We, we learn by failure. You know, if we succeed at everything, we never learn how to fail, which is- I think a lot of times what's wrong today with kids, they don't really learn to fail, and that's how you learn to get better. So it's okay.

Dennis Littley: You know, I always tell people one of the best shows, the most popular shows I had was when I went to open the freezer and I forgot I had all the stuff on top of it, and it all fell down on me live. And the next day I had... There was a meme put up. It says, "There is hope for us when Chef Dennis makes mistakes."

Dennis Littley: So [00:13:00] it's like, it's there. So let them make a mistake, but don't make a big deal out of it. Find a way to fix. I had this one instructor that pretty much all he did was teach us how to fix things we screwed up, you know, because he was teaching a culinary course, and we would get things backwards.

Dennis Littley: "That's fine. This is how you fix it. This is how you fix it. This is how you fix it." So say, "Hey, that's an interesting way to make that. Let's turn it into this instead." Or sometimes like, "Okay, we learned that that's not the way we want to do it. Let's try again, see if we can get it closer this time." But getting them involved does a lot.

Dennis Littley: It's not just teaching them a life skill, but it's, it's teaching them It, it's giving them a reason to eat what they've made because they've made it. Now, they don't like it, they've got themselves to blame. And one of the things along that line is people think sometimes recipes were sent down from the mountain chiseled in [00:14:00] stone.

Dennis Littley: They're not. If there's something in it that you do not like or your child does not like, replace it. Take it out. You know, use something else. There's a whole lot of different ingredients, seasonings, vegetables. If they don't like broccoli, don't try and make them eat broccoli. Not a lot of people really like broccoli.

Dennis Littley: They eat it because it's good for you. It's when you get older, you go, "All right, I gotta eat broccoli now." But, um, there's other vegetables that they do like. Green beans. I love green beans. You know, s- spinach. Swiss chard. My wife cracks up because we grew that, and that was one of the only vegetables I really liked to eat was Swiss chard, and I would love to have that.

Dennis Littley: So find something, let them pick it out. "Now, what do you think looks good? What would you like to try?" And if they don't like it, go, "All right, here's a rule. You have to try everything three times. If you don't like it after the third time, that's fine." Because sometimes it's getting your palate ready to accept the flavor.

Dennis Littley: And a lot of times it's a shock and you go, "Oh, no." And then you sit [00:15:00] back and go, "All right, let me try it again. All right." And then the third time it's like, "You know, that's not that bad after all," once you get over the shock of things. So that's kind of a rule I would tell parents. And it's okay to tell them up ahead, "This is what we're gonna do.

Dennis Littley: I want you to at least try something three times, and if you still don't like it after that, honestly, you won't see it again." 

Dori Durbin: That's a great rule, and I think it does give them the exposure, it gives them bravery to try new things. 

Dennis Littley: Yes. 

Dori Durbin: Um, because a lot of kids are really, really anxious about trying new food.

Dennis Littley: Oh, absolutely. And again, it's, it's starting them at an early age, of ... I see little kids, like, ordering oysters out and I'm like, "My God, really?" Yeah, I know. Or, or some of the things that were like, I would never have eaten that at that age. You know, I ate almost everything. It's like, it's how the parent projects it.

Dennis Littley: And if they see Mommy and Daddy eating it, they're gonna wanna try it, you know? And if they, like, make a face and spit it out, it's like, okay. You know? [00:16:00] Maybe ... And explain to them, you know, "As we get older, our palates change and refine. You're just not ready for that yet." 

Dori Durbin: Ooh, I like that. Yes 

Dennis Littley: Like I, I love blue cheese Roquefort, Gorgonzola.

Dennis Littley: My wife, oh my gosh, she couldn't stand it. So I started her on what I call the gateway cheese, which was Gorgonzola, and it was the sweet, but not sweet, it was dolce, but it was the softer, less pungent version. And then we went to the stronger version, then we went to blue cheese, and then we were on a cruise and she ate Roquefort and loved it, and I'm like, "There you go."

Dennis Littley: So you start them out and, and you, and you say the palate does refine as you learn more about food. You know, that's something that you wanna tell them. And, and it's, and a lot of things about life. That's a lesson in life. You don't like science. Well, all of a sudden it might click and go, "Oh, chemistry's really cool.

Dennis Littley: I didn't like all those other things we were doing," or, "Biology's really cool." So it's, it's giving them a [00:17:00] choice, but explaining to them that things change, you know, and that's normal. We change, and that works with food and everything else in life. 

Dori Durbin: Yeah. That's such a good tie in. Such a good tie in. I'm just...

Dori Durbin: You brought back a memory to me of my son. Um, he, when he was little, he's very adventurous palate. He's our octopus eater- Mm-hmm ... our fish eater. Uh, we went to the store and he saw a star fruit and he's "What is that?" And I said, "I have no idea. Let's go get the apples," you know, instead. And he's like, he says, "Well, can we take it home?

Dori Durbin: I wanna try it." And I'm like, "Sure." And luckily YouTube was around at least at that point- Yeah ... so I could like YouTube it and find out like how do you even eat this? Do you eat the skin? I don't know. You know, but it's that, that same kind of apprehension that I think parents fight of like they're the ones that sort of are supposed to know what is, how you do things, how it works, you know, and the kids come to them.

Dori Durbin: But we don't [00:18:00] always have to do that. We can all find out together at times too, right? 

Dennis Littley: Oh, absolutely. So, you know, I don't know, let's try it and see, or I have no idea, let's, let's try Mr. Google and see what Mr. Google says. And, and now with the AI, you can ask it questions and it really can, you know, if you teach it right and it gets used to you it kind of knows you more as much as anybody else does.

Dennis Littley: So, um, it's a good way to look at things. Now, the only flip side of that, and I understand as parents, you know, money's tight, so you can't afford to buy something that no one's gonna eat. So that's where some of the reluctance does come in and, and I, I understand that. It's, it's a whole different game when that's part of the equation 

Dori Durbin: Well, and that might go back to a question I had too, because when I'm thinking about people making just food in general- Yeah

Dori Durbin: much less something new are there some prep hacks or some cooking hacks that no matter what it was, we can at least go to and you [00:19:00] know, if it's chicken, if it's something else, I know e- everything's gonna have its own, um... See, look at me not cooking. Its own procedure or process. 

Dori Durbin: But are there some things that would make things feel easier and, like, trying new things wouldn't be so stressful?

Dennis Littley: Sure. Uh, th- there's... If you make something, let's say you make a chicken dish, and you just don't like it. Rinse it off. Let's make some soup out of it. Mm. Let's make some chicken salad out of it, you know, you can doctor up the flavor. It might have a little different taste to it, but if you put it in soup and you season the soup right...

Dennis Littley: You know, in the old days, all the scraps made soup. Everything you didn't eat made soup. I mean, that's, you know... And then all of a sudden, soups got trendy, and we have recipes for soups, and everybody wants it exactly the same way every time. Well, that's not what soup is. Soup was, "Let's clean the refrigerator and s- and make dinner," and, so- One of the biggest problems I have, I know everybody has, and I know if I have it everybody else has it too, [00:20:00] is I buy produce and I don't use it. And then it goes bad. So here's where this, a good time to make soup is. You know, even if you just start it, you know, start cooking it down and free- and putting it in some liquid and freezing it for another time when you're gonna have time to make it.

Dennis Littley: You know, we eat what I make. It's not like I, well, I give it to some of the neighbors. It's not like I'm selling it. It's like if we don't finish something, it goes in a bag and it goes in the freezer until I have enough of something to make soup, and then I make it. Now, if I'm making it for the neighborhood, I start with all fresh stuff, but if I'm, if it's just the two of us, you don't waste.

Dennis Littley: And if you're a family, that's the perfect way to save it. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, well, let's make a casserole out of it, okay? That's the catch-all for everything. And then, you know, God forbid you use a can of that red and white label soup, but if you have to, you have to.

Dennis Littley: It's okay. It's okay. Don't do it all the time. But you know, I, I had a friend who was really, really big [00:21:00] on organics, Mamavation. She is just a genius. And I was talking to her about hot dogs and finding good hot dogs. She goes, "Dennis, do you like hot dogs?" I said, "Yeah, I do." "Do you eat them often?" "No, I don't."

Dennis Littley: "Just then buy whatever you want. You know, buy whatever you want. Don't worry about everything all the time. It's okay every now and then to get something, as long as it's not a major part of your diet." 

Dori Durbin: Yeah. Yeah. You know, that it... I remember throwing away stuff, and now I'm thinking, "Oh man, I could've kept so much of some stuff."

Dori Durbin: Oh, yeah. Because it didn't turn out. Nobody ate it. It wasn't, it wasn't what we expected. Um- 

Dennis Littley: Repurpose. That's what we like to say in the kitchen, "Let's repurpose that." 

Dori Durbin: Well, you would do with other things. Like if you did a clay project, you would save all the scraps and build something out of it, 

Dennis Littley: and- Yeah

Dori Durbin: you did that with art, you know, like as far as painting and all the other things, so why wouldn't you do that now? Yeah, and- 'Cause it's food like that. 

Dennis Littley: Yeah. It's food, and people just like... Well, we'll s- well, we've gotten to the point, you know, first world problems for a lot of us, that we turn our nose up on things.

Dennis Littley: They go, "Ew." You know, my wife does that. [00:22:00] Like I always know when she doesn't like something because she becomes five and she starts just moving it around the plate. She's not eating it. She's just moving it around the plate. It's like, all right, that was not a hit, you know? So we won't bring that back on the rotation, um- And Pat, being a food blogger, I was making all kinds of crazy stuff And some of it she just didn't, not an adventurous palate.

Dennis Littley: I've taught her a lot, but not an adventurous palate. 

Dori Durbin: Well, it's probably good that you have, you know, somebody who's working against you a little bit so that you can make sure that it comes out well. 

Dennis Littley: Oh, yeah. That's one way to look at it. But, you know- 

Dori Durbin: That makes you better. 

Dennis Littley: Oh, yeah. Try- I do It happens ... it, it annoys me, but it's just like next time she's gonna eat that I'm gonna make it so it's, it's more palatable.

Dennis Littley: It's like salmon. I did not like salmon. Okay? I, I mean, it's good for you. So in the restaurant I made it every way humanly possible I could think about it in the hopes that I liked it, and I never did. But [00:23:00] my patrons, they came in like, "Oh my God, look what he did with salmon today." You know, the ones that liked it were loving life big time because they'd get it all different ways.

Dennis Littley: And then I found out about Pacific salmon, and I went, "Oh, this isn't as bad." I didn't say it was good. I said, "It isn't as bad." It was tolerable. I could eat it, you know? So. Oh. It's, it's all about finding something that maybe... You know, 'cause there's different types of products these days, too. Finding something that you like.

Dennis Littley: And one of the reasons I went to s- organic products in the beginning when I started using them was I bought chicken, and I took it home and it didn't taste like chicken. And when chicken doesn't taste like chicken there's something wrong. You know, everything else tastes like chicken, but chicken doesn't.

Dennis Littley: So I'm like, "Hmm." So I started buying organic, and then I went to small farm ones. And the other was milk. You know, growing up I remember milk was really good, and then it got so thin and tasteless, so I bought organic milk and I went, "Oh my God, this is delicious." The other thing was [00:24:00] when I bought grass-fed, I didn't have any allergic, allergy problems, and I do have a little bit of milk allergy.

Dennis Littley: So when I bought grass-fed it was like it didn't bother me at all. 

Dori Durbin: Wow. Have you had to curtail a lot of your recipes because of all the allergies that patrons might have, like the gluten-free, all of the... Yeah. 

Dennis Littley: I, I am not, I tried gluten-free for a while. I had psoriasis really bad, and I went to a naturopath, and one of the things she asked me to do was to go off gluten.

Dennis Littley: And I was like, "Ah." I always go back to John Pinette, he was a comedian. He goes, "I don't know what gluten is, but evidently it's delicious." You know, and it was. And I went gluten-free on everything. It didn't help my psoriasis, but the funny thing was I could think clearer. It was like a fog had been lifted off me, and there's actually books about that, you know, um, about what gluten does, wheat brain, what it does to you.

Dori Durbin: Yeah. 

Dennis Littley: And, a- and it's mostly because of what we've done to wheat. 

Dennis Littley: What wheat was when [00:25:00] it first sprouted and was feeding us, it was a healthy grain, and we've taken it and we've perverted the hell out of it to make it grow faster, to make it grow hardier, so it could take winters, so it could do this. So we have changed the whole structure of wheat, and like, you know, that's kind of what has driven a lot of it.

Dori Durbin: Yeah. That's crazy. But yeah, it's something that our body just doesn't like. Mm-hmm. We can cut that out. 

Dennis Littley: Yeah. Do- Now, a lot of my recipes you can swap gluten-free flour. You know, b- back when I first started, it was science. It was really science, 'cause you had to get the weights, like the regular flour is like 11.5 or 7 grams per, you know, f- for the weight of the flour, and gluten-free flours will run like 5.6, 14.9.

Dennis Littley: So the whole trick I learned was to combine them so you had that average weight of around what regular flour was, and then it would work like regular flour. You know, to a point. Not in bread as much, but to a point. So then, but there's so many cup [00:26:00] for cup blends out there that are just really good if you...

Dennis Littley: And if you have it, there's so many ways to use non-allergic things. Uh, some of the non-butter butters taste really good, like Earth Balance. I, I discovered that in the naturopath, you know, and it's, it was really good. Of course, I eat butter now, but I discovered it, and there are alternatives. But if I was really sick and had the affliction, I would, would do it, but right now, I don't need to do it, so I enjoy... You know, going back to Graham Kerr, he, this was back in the late '60s, I wanna say. He was voted the most dangerous man in America by the American Heart Association because of butter and heavy cream. Butter and heavy cream. And that was my mantra when I first learned to cook, was butter and heavy cream.

Dennis Littley: Oh. When I was at the school one time, I told them that we got an award for the state of Pennsylvania for using the most butter and heavy cream in the whole state. And they looked at me and go, "Really?" I went, [00:27:00] "No, we came in second." 

Dori Durbin: Close. So close. 

Dennis Littley: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 'Cause I was feeding those girls good. 

Dori Durbin: Oh my goodness.

Dori Durbin: These weren't lacrosse players, right? They're... 

Dennis Littley: Oh, they were. They're, you know, they were very active brilliant girls. They were, that was the best job I ever had. I went there as a form of retirement. I wasn't supposed to cook anymore 'cause I had had two carpal tunnel surgeries. Food was so bad- I couldn't do it.

Dennis Littley: I just couldn't sit there and do it. You know, they were eating garbage. Uh, so I, I told the cook, "I'm sorry, you have to... Those people at corporate said I had to cook. They know I'm not supposed to." So I just went back into it, and I didn't know what to feed them, you know? Y- I fed them like adults, and it was like a TV movie after that point.

Dennis Littley: They made a, painted a mural of me on the wall. They were coming in to see me. You know, it was like they're undoing a button on their shirt going, "Damn you, Dennis. No, I'll take another one." And when I was having a really bad day, [00:28:00] I would go out in the hall with a tray of cookies and I would give them away.

Dennis Littley: And it would be, "I love you, Dennis." "I love you too, honey. Good. Thank you." And it w- I'd feel better about myself, 'cause you can im- you can change someone's day with a cookie at that age, and I think we forget that sometimes, 'cause cookies are good. So you can still change people's days with a cookie.

Dennis Littley: You know, if they're in a bad mood, have a cookie. It's hard to be in a bad mood when you're eating a cookie. 

Dori Durbin: So true. So true. I think as adults you can still have that happen. 

Dennis Littley: Oh, absolutely. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. They're yelling at you, have a cookie. You need another one. All right, no, one more. Ah, there we go.

Dennis Littley: We got you. 

Dori Durbin: Thank goodness. That's so funny. That's funny. Okay. I want, I wanna hear more about this, but I also wanna ask you. 

Dori Durbin: So since you've been teaching people for so many years and have these, these great memories- 

Dennis Littley: Yeah ... 

Dori Durbin: what is something that you feel like you hear them say over and over again that really stops them from really fully embracing the experience?

Dennis Littley: I [00:29:00] don't like to cook. 

Dori Durbin: Oh. 

Dennis Littley: I don't like to cook. "Why don't you like to cook?" I don't know, I just don't like to do it. That, that's the biggest stumbling block. And when I tell people part of the reason is because they're, they think they have to follow a recipe exactly. They think it's difficult. They have, think they have to have all these different ingredients on hand, all these different spices on hand.

Dennis Littley: You don't. You know, there's just, you stock your pantry with a few things. Like, someone just asked me what to put in. It was, I said, "You should always have some canned beans, rice, pasta, tomatoes, uh, breadcrumbs." Different, different things. And seasonings, you know, I was a very simple seasoner at, you know, at my restaurant days.

Dennis Littley: Because if something didn't taste good with salt and pepper, you weren't gonna rescue it. You know, you were gonna mask it. You know, you were gonna... You know, the French make exquisite sauces. I was not that kind of sauce person, you know? I, I would use them as an accent, but I [00:30:00] wasn't, that wasn't the main focus of the meal.

Dennis Littley: It was still- Yeah ... you know, like seafood. You know, people are afraid to cook fish. It's really simple. There's number, there's one number one rule with fish. Don't overcook it. That's... no, and people do. It's okay for it to be a little underdone. It's okay. It really is. It doesn't have to be pushed past the point of no return, you know?

Dennis Littley: It's, it just, at that point, you're gonna throw it away and you spent a lot of money and then you're gonna go, "I don't like fish." You know,

Dori Durbin: do you use the thermometer to tell when it's done? Is that your go-to? 

Dennis Littley: I don't. I usually, well, you know, maybe the first time you could. But you just kinda know, like 18 minutes is kind of a rule of thumb, depending on how thick it is.

Dennis Littley: You know, if it's a little thicker, if it's salmon, you might wanna go to 22 minutes at 350. 

Dennis Littley: If it's a flat filet. One other thing I always tell people, too, is like if they put it in a flat pan, put a little water in the pan. And I use the philosophy is the fish came out of the water, they need a little water.

Dennis Littley: If you put them flat on a pan- They're gonna [00:31:00] dry out. 

Dennis Littley: So if you put a little water in the pan instead of them drying out when they're cooking, the water will kind of evaporate and they'll hold their moisture a little bit better. And then of course it doesn't hurt if you brush them with butter too, so.

Dennis Littley: But you don't have to do that. Olive oil works too. 

Dori Durbin: That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. Okay. So I actually have a list here of things that people cook often that they- Okay ... may mess up. So can you give us the save out of the situation? Okay. So like, like for instance, chicken. Around here, chicken is a big deal.

Dori Durbin: Like- 

... 

Dori Durbin: Everybody disagrees if it's done or not. So what is a big mistake that people typically make when they're trying to prepare chicken or cook it? 

Dennis Littley: If they're trying to cook it, well, it depends what they're working with, but a lot of the times it'll be thinking that all the pieces will be done at the same time, because- Mm

Dennis Littley: they're different thickness. You know, like some are gonna take longer and some you just wanna cook longer because it helps them. Like a chicken breast, you don't wanna cook longer because you're gonna [00:32:00] destroy it. You know, a thigh, like I, I love to use chicken thighs because number one, there's more fat in them and they have more flavor, 'cause fat equals flavor.

Dennis Littley: And that's always been a kind of rule. Now you gotta temper it, you know. This day and age, it's like, if we were back in the '50s, we eat whatever we want. We have no care about cholesterol or anything, you know, we just keep eating. But now we know what happens. A good dark meat chicken, legs.

Dennis Littley: Legs are usually inexpensive. It's a great way to feed your family. And just simply seasoning them. One thing that people don't do, like when they take skin products, they don't dry them. They don't pat them with paper towels, okay? Or, save a special towel if you don't wanna u- waste paper. And just don't use it again after you pat them with it, you know, put it in the wash right away.

Dennis Littley: But dry them- 

Dori Durbin: Before 

Dennis Littley: you- ... then a little... Yes. Oh, before you season them. 

Dori Durbin: Okay. 

Dennis Littley: Okay? You wanna get all that extra moisture. And that goes for beef and for pork. You know, anytime you have a piece of meat, before you season it, [00:33:00] dry it. Get the moisture off the exterior. Like if you're gonna put kind of a rub or seasoning on it, it's okay to hit it with olive oil too, and then y- the oil's different than the excess moisture.

Dennis Littley: 'Cause what the moisture does is it steams rather than- Then lets it roast. Okay? So that's, that's what it's getting at first. A lot of times why skin doesn't get crispy, you know, that's one of the reasons. So, so dry it. If you wanted to use olive oil or you make a little paste out of olive oil and some of your favorite seasonings.

Dennis Littley: And again, like I said, I don't use a lot. I have garlic powder, onion powder and when I say powder, I'm talking about those granules. We used to call it granulated, and then people had no idea what granulated was anymore and it became powder, 'cause they have powders. I hate powders 'cause they clump. You want the ones that are still little granules.

Dennis Littley: Black pepper. I don't like white pepper. I don't care. I'll put um, and paprika. Paprika mostly for color. It doesn't add a lot of flavor, you know? And then if you wanna get adventurous, [00:34:00] buy a, a container of Cajun seasoning, buy one of taco seasoning, buy one of lemon pepper, one of Italian seasoning. So you really don't need a lot of spices.

Dennis Littley: And then you can change the flavors with the different seasonings, you know? And if, so if you're doing chicken legs, you know, you can make them lemon pepper one time or you can make them Italian another time and you know, and just mix that in with your seasonings and roast them. But cooking at different times, like wings for some reason, we like to cook them for about 45 minutes to get them tender and get them really the way we want them to.

Dennis Littley: Mm-hmm. I wouldn't cook a chicken breast ... And wings are tiny, but a chicken breast, 20, 22 minutes, depending upon how thick it is. And some things people don't think is you get these monster breasts at the store. Cut them in half, length- uh, you know, split them, okay? Right. 'Cause you don't ... You know, just so that they're half as thick And that way they'll cook faster and the outside edges won't get overdone [00:35:00] trying to get the inside done.

Dennis Littley: Okay. If you're making a chicken cutlet, which is one of my favorite things to do. Chicken cutlets are wonderful, 'cause you can use them for so many things. I'll get boneless breasts and I get a meat hammer, and if I don't have a meat hammer, you can use a frying pan to pound it out a little bit with, or get a regular hammer and u- and wrap it in foil.

Dennis Littley: And use the side. Don't use the head, use the side to kind of hit it with. Flatten them out a little bit and then bread them, flour egg and milk, and breadcrumbs. Fry them up a little bit. They don't have to be all the way done, but get them a nice color on both sides and then freeze them.

Dennis Littley: Paper between each one, freeze them or put them on a sheet pan and freeze them solid. Put them in a Ziploc pan, bag, and then tomorrow night if you want to make a chicken cutlet with mushroom gravy, if you want to make a chicken cutlet with a little spinach and, and cherry tomatoes on top of it or maybe a little cheese, or if you want to make a chicken parm, you got chicken in the freezer.

Dennis Littley: You come home, pull them out of the freezer, cook them from [00:36:00] frozen, top them. Dinner's on the stove. You know, dinner's on the table in like, 20 minutes. 

Dori Durbin: Yeah, that'd be a lot faster. Yeah. That's awesome. 

Dennis Littley: Yeah. And I do a lot at a time because I hate breading. I just... It's never been one of the things I like to do, 'cause I get so messy with it.

Dennis Littley: That, that one hand to dip and one hand to bread just never seemed right for me. You know, I got two hands, I use them both at the same time. 

Dori Durbin: I love it. What about for vegetables? 

Dennis Littley: Vegetables. You know, it... for... Now, what's the question on vegetables? I was gonna- Bales or? 

Dori Durbin: Yeah. Where, where do people typically ruin- 

Dennis Littley: They overcook them.

Dori Durbin: Yeah. They overcook them. 

Dennis Littley: They boil them. 

Dennis Littley: They boil them. That's, that's like, you might as well just save the water and drink the water, 'cause that's where all the nutrients are going. You know, in, in some places you would save it and make soup out of it. Really, because that's... You got a lot of flavor in that water.

Dennis Littley: But here's what I want you to try and do with your vegetables next time. Don't boil them. Get a little bit of oil on them, season them with salt and pepper, put them in the oven and roast them. I don't [00:37:00] particularly like beets, but I love roasted beets. Oh, they're so good. Okay? Mushrooms, broccoli even.

Dennis Littley: Broccoli takes a different kind of like... Oh, the one I love, cauliflower. I don't like cauliflower. You roast cauliflower, it's delicious. It just, it caramelizes. You're letting the natural sugars in all these vegetables really come to the forefront when you hit them with heat like that. So they caramelize a little bit, so they're really get some pronounced flavors from them.

Dori Durbin: Love that. And then what about pasta? 

Dennis Littley: Ah, again, overcooking. Overcooking is the, you know, the greatest sin against food there ever is. Uh, we have teeth. My mother-in-law, bless her heart, I would cook pasta al dente. And I, and I always buy De Cecco because you can't kill it. You really can't. It's hard to hurt that pasta.

Dennis Littley: You can overcook it and it still comes out nice. But we're s- and I remember my mother, she would break it up into pieces. I didn't know how [00:38:00] bad of a thing that was, you know. She would actually take linguine and crack it into small pieces. So we never twirled anything at our house. It was, it was almost like a spoon to eat pasta in those days.

Dennis Littley: But people will overcook it, and they think it has to be soft. You have teeth, you know. You, you, it's okay to chew it a little. There should be some texture to it. It's one of the reasons I'm not as big of a fan of, of fresh pasta, because it's always a little softer. I like a good... and again, the pasta, don't rinse it, because you're rinsing away everything the sauce is gonna cling to.

Dennis Littley: If you have to cook it ahead, well, then you have to, you know. But if, if you're not cooking it ahead, don't rinse it. If you're making some kind of a sauce and it gets too thick, save a little of that pasta water that you just had all that beautiful starch in from the pasta, and use it in your sauce to thin it out or to thicken it up, or to help if it, um, starts to get oily or something, you put a little of that pasta water in and it'll help bring it [00:39:00] back.

Dori Durbin: What if you let your pasta sit? I have always had pasta that stuck to itself. 

Dennis Littley: Oh, yeah. Well, you know, you really don't wanna oil it. But again, if it's something, if it's gonna sit, like say you're busy. I understand it, so you're gonna cook four pounds of penne tonight so you have it for the week. 

Dennis Littley: And you're gonna refrigerate it and put it in Tupperware or whatever those plastic things are.

Dennis Littley: Then you have to rinse it, you have to oil it. And you, you work with what you have. That's all. You know, a, a lot of bronze cut pastas are better 'cause they have little ridges that you can't see. That's one of the reasons I like De Cecco and that's why sauce clings to them, 'cause they have little ridges.

Dori Durbin: It's... Okay, I think this will be my last one. Homemade pizza. Oh, boy. It should be easy. It should be easy, but a lot of times it's not. 

Dennis Littley: You know what? I love that a lot of grocery stores sell pizza dough now. It's not difficult to make, but again, you know, if you have so much time in your life, it's a good place to start with that.

Dennis Littley: In a [00:40:00] pizzeria we would make sauce out of, we would look for six in one tomatoes, which mean it was really super concentrated or seven in one tomatoes if we could find them, 'cause then it was super concentrated. Pizza sauce isn't cooked. Pizza sauce is raw. So you season the tomatoes a little bit, and then you would put it on the crust and the cheese and bake it.

Dennis Littley: And in a real, in a perfect world, it'll come out round because you've been able to make it round. Uh, and it'll come out perfect, but that's not always the case. Um, pi- homemade pizza, sh- if it's not gonna be real easy, you have to make it real fun. Mm. Okay? 'Cause pizza should be fun. Just making it, and then being able to put what you want on it.

Dennis Littley: And boy, did pizza get expensive. Oh, my goodness. And it, I know it still only costs about $3 to make, and they're charging in the 20s now. It's like nuts. If you can make your own pizza dough, it's could be simpler to [00:41:00] make. It's flour, water, salt yeast. I don't know if there's any sugar in it or not. It's been a long time.

Dennis Littley: One thing about sugar and salt is they work almost the same way. They're both flavor enhancers, and they both affect a little bit of, of how things work. So I, I'll put a little sugar in a lot of things, and people get freaked out. I'm going, "Well, it's the same as putting salt in. It's just a little different way to go with the flavoring."

Dennis Littley: It helps enhance things. You just don't wanna make it s- taste like a candy bar or something. But, uh, you know, you can use a little bit. But pizza dough, you know, if you, if you screw it up, there's not a lot of ways of coming back from it. But you can cut it up into small pieces and re-cheese it a little bit, pop it back in the oven, or maybe oil, take a little olive oil and brush a cookie sheet and put it on that, and put it in the oven and let the bottom crisp up a little more from the olive oil.

Dennis Littley: It's like when you make [00:42:00] Sicilian pizza, you oil the bottom of the pan so that gets that nice crispy crust on the bottom, you know, while it's still nice and doughy inside. But I mean, that's one way to rescue pizza. 

Dori Durbin: That's 

Dennis Littley: great. Yeah, I mean- That's the way you end up tossing it. Yeah. No, I mean, really and some pizzas I find taste better the next day, strange as that is, too. You know, it's like the... And then with anything else, it's given the flavors a chance to build a little more. Like we have one pizzeria that people love around here, and I used to really like them too, but that was years ago, and they've changed.

Dennis Littley: But I found if I let the pizza sit for an hour, it tastes a lot better, wow. Hot, it does not taste as good, so yeah. It's funny. 

Dori Durbin: It seeps into the crust maybe though? 

Dennis Littley: I, it does, you know? And I don't mind it not super hot, 'cause it tastes so much better. The sauce just picks up more flavor. And for me, like, the sauce is the most important part of the base for it.

Dennis Littley: Cheese when we're talking about that, let's talk about cheese. If you cannot buy it, do not buy pre-shredded cheese. 

Dori Durbin: Oh, okay. 

Dennis Littley: Pre-shredded [00:43:00] cheese has anti-caking agents on it, so they don't... You know, ever notice that they don't stick together in the bag? But when you shred cheese at home and you go to take it out of the refrigerator, it's like, "Oh, a ball of cheese."

Dennis Littley: Okay. There's no caking agents on... You get a block, and it'll generally be a little bit less expensive that way, too. So here are the kids. You know, get Band-Aids ready 'cause when they hit their knuckles on the grater, you know, you'll be ready, or buy them a cutting glove on Amazon, which is f- Mm

Dennis Littley: that's another good thing. If you got a kid and you're gonna let them cut, get them a cutting glove. They're not that expensive. It's a little me- I just don't let them test to see if it really will stop a knife, because I've seen them doing that with their... It's not meant to do that. It's meant to stop an accident.

Dennis Littley: You know, it'll still saw off your finger, but, you know, get a cutting glove, and then they'll think it's kind of fun to do that, and you can put a plastic glove on under it if you're worried about it getting, you know, wet or dirty or stuff, too, or, But use that. I mean, it's another way to get kids involved.

Dennis Littley: Let them do something. Let, shred cheese, let them shred it for if you're [00:44:00] making macaroni and cheese or whatever, you know. Let them. Teach them how to use a knife. You know, again, definitely get the cutting gloves on and, you know, don't get the super sharp knife. But again, a sharper knife's gonna cut easier, or a dull knife is gonna make it more difficult, and they're liable to get cut.

Dennis Littley: So it's, hmm, which way do I go with this? 

Dori Durbin: You know, um, a- as an illustrator, I really love to create environments, and you're, you're, in my mind, you're getting all these questions into my forefront. So if you could design an environment for kids to feel comfortable in the kitchen- 

... 

Dori Durbin: What would it look like?

Dennis Littley: I would either, I would have some, um, stands on the counter so they could reach it better. Because the worst thing in the world to try and have a kid help when he can barely stand and reach it. So either, you know, have somebody make a little platform that they can stand on. It's, that's a lot easier than, than building short counters and then you stoop down all the time.

Dennis Littley: To, in our old age, our backs don't [00:45:00] last that long. But I would do that, and then again, make it a happy place for them. Play music they like, or use it to teach them about other types of music. You know, "All right, let's play a song you like. Now we're gonna play a song I like." And like my dad used to always listen to big band.

Dennis Littley: I love big band music. You know, it's just something about it. He taught me how to appreciate that. My wife listens to opera. I still don't like opera, but I'll listen to it. Um, but you know, again, it's a, it's a place To get stories from. It's a place to get experiences from. It's a place to remember family from, the kitchen.

Dennis Littley: Not so much sitting down to dinner, but the kitchen is where the magic happens. The kitchen is where, you know, you remember being in there with your mom or your grandmother. I- some of the best comments I get are when I get a comment, "We made this and it's now become a family tradition. It's in my family cookbook, and it's gonna be passed [00:46:00] down.

Dennis Littley: You know, my daughters loved it. They're gonna be making it." You know? So that's, that's what it's about. You know, just because you get it from somebody, you don't have to invent the wheel every time. You don't have to make your own recipe. You can adapt. When I get letters that say, "I made this dish, but I took this out and I changed this and I used this seasoning," I'm gonna go, "That's wonderful."

Dennis Littley: You know, the old chef would've been, "Oh, what are you, crazy?" But now I go, "That's wonderful. You made it your own. You adapted it to your family's tastes and preferences so they would enjoy it and eat it and want you to make it again." So, you know, that's, it's, this is an opportunity. As busy you are, even if you did it one night a week, it's an opportunity for you to build memories that'll last past your lifetime into their lifetime that they'll pass down to their kids hopefully, so.

Dori Durbin: Love it. Oh, beautiful. And I love the suggestions too, because thinking about the height of the counter or just even the music. I mean, we turn music on when we make Christmas cookies. Yeah. And that gets, you know, [00:47:00] like, become the tradition. Like, turn the music on. Yeah. Everybody's dancing around, there's flour all over.

Dori Durbin: Yeah. It's a mess. Who cares? It'll clean. That's 

Dennis Littley: okay. In the end it's okay. Yeah. You know, it's just a little mess. Messes get clean. If they spill something, all right, it's only water. Just, you know, don't let them burn themselves. You know, teach them sa- You know, when I always taught classes, company I work for is very f- very proactive, and the first way you started every class was with a safety tip.

Dennis Littley: Mm-hmm. And it can be something like I, I would, my first one I would says was the cutting board. I would always take a wet paper towel and put it under the cutting board. And the cutting board doesn't slip that way, it doesn't move, it stays in place, and then knife safety. You know, a little thing, "All right, today we're gonna learn the pointy end of the knife is the one you wanna stay away from, okay?"

Dennis Littley: Something as simple as that . Make a little bit of a joke about it too, and says, "You know, and no really, this is how you cut," and show them how to cut. And if you don't know how to cut, look it up on YouTube, you know? Again we're talking about food here, not rocket science. You know, so o- most of [00:48:00] it you can pick up pretty easy.

Dennis Littley: And if you're not sure and you wanna make a game out of it, says, "You know, I really don't know how to do it. Let's look at YouTube and see what they say." And the kid'll like st- half the time pick it up before you will and go, "Wow, okay, that's it. No, Mommy, you're doing it wrong. It's like this." And I've had kids with parents come in and said, " My kid told me I've been cutting wrong all my whole life."

Dennis Littley: "They showed me how to do it." You know? You know, and they're, they're very thankful. They're not mad or anything, but they're like, "You know, look what, look what Chef Dennis taught me today." He says, "You've been doing this wrong, Mom." 

Dori Durbin: And that's another chance, I mean, for your kids to see you made mistakes, you learned, you move on to the next thing.

Dennis Littley: Everybody learns. Life is one big learning experience. You know, we don't come out of the womb knowing everything, and we don't die knowing everything, that's for sure. 

Dori Durbin: Well, listeners are probably wondering, Dennis, I know this answer, but I would love for you to share with 

Dennis Littley: them. 

Dori Durbin: Mm-hmm. How can they find out more about what you do, [00:49:00] and even hear more about these great ideas that you have?

Dennis Littley: You can find me, my website is askchefdennis.com. And, uh, I'm, I'm on all social media, although I had to start a new Instagram account. It got hacked and taken away. So, uh, that's, um, Chef Dennis Littley on that. But askchefdennis.com, we've got about 1,200 recipes on it. It's a family business now. Uh, my niece works for me full time, and she does a lot of family favorite recipes, you know, hacks.

Dennis Littley: You know, I, I went from being, "Oh, you can't use mixes. What are you, insane? We can't use pre-made gravy mixes." And now I'm like, it works. Go ahead. Go for it. Go for it. Let's use them. Let's use them. Let's save some time." I personally never liked to make salad dressing. It's one thing that I always bought, just 'cause I don't like to make them, but if you like to make them, that's cool.

Dennis Littley: My son works for me f- and he does a lot of smoke stuff and center of the plate things, and he's just... He's becoming a stronger cook. And, uh, so it's kind of a family business now. My granddaughter has about 12 recipes on the site, so I'm hoping she comes back to [00:50:00] do more. And, uh, it's... You can find a, a wide variety of restaurant style dishes, kind of from me, that won't take you all day to make.

Dennis Littley: Like I said, I don't have all day to spend in the kitchen. I'm like everybody else. I get done with work, I get home, I got about 15, 20 minutes to make something that we're gonna like to eat, or guess what we're ordering out tonight kind of a thing. Uh, so you won't... I won't kill you with time constraints, you know.

Dennis Littley: There's things you can... One new section I'm adding to my recipes now is make ahead. It's something. So we're- We grow every day. We grow and change things on how we present material, because we're teaching. We're, everything we try to do now is teaching moments. We- we've gone, we've evolved.

Dennis Littley: We've gone from just sharing recipes to trying to create teaching moments with them. So that's what I hope you'll find. And if it's not a particular recipe, drop us a note and ask me, because we monitor, we answer every email, we answer every comment,

Dori Durbin: [00:51:00] that's amazing. I'm on your newsletter and I really like it, so 

Dennis Littley: Good.

Dennis Littley: Thank you. We're having fun with it. You know, I, I, I used to send one a week, and this guy I hired to help me with it said, you know, "Let's do three." And then he said, "You know, I think we should send them every day." And I went, "Are you crazy? I don't wanna get them from me every day." But I have gotten more positive feedback with people just love...

Dennis Littley: You know, maybe they're not gonna make everything, but they're getting all these ideas, all these ideas, and it's, it's reawakening what you're gonna make. And it, you know, it's helpful. It's like, all right, look, I won't do that, but maybe I'll do that. I get one person that writes me and says, "Oh, I know what I'm making all week now."

Dennis Littley: You know, she usually pick one of my emails and make everything on it,

Dori Durbin: that's really smart. That's a great idea. 

Dennis Littley: Yeah. And Alexandra started sending them out, too, so she's got her, uh, family more oriented quick meals. Uh, I think her one going out now is, "You've got 45 minutes before practice. What am I making?"

Dennis Littley: A thing,

Dori Durbin: love that. Yeah. Oh, I absolutely love that. Yeah. 

Dennis Littley: So we're growing. We're growing and we're gonna keep growing and [00:52:00] we're gonna keep expanding. And if you don't have time to read it, I have something, I have a web reader on there that'll read the whole post to you while you're working.

Dori Durbin: Ooh. So you can listen to the recipe- 

Dennis Littley: You can listen to- ... so- You can listen to every post. You can listen to it from top to bottom while you're- 

Dori Durbin: Wow. 

Dennis Littley: Yeah. 

Dori Durbin: That's super smart, and 

Dennis Littley: fast. Yeah. Yeah. Not everybody has, has discovered it yet, but I figure it's on there to help people. You know, everything we do now is to help people.

Dennis Littley: You know, that, that has always been my, my mission goal, was to get people to find joy in the kitchen, so go to askchefdennis.com. I got all kinds of stuff for you. 

Dori Durbin: Well, Chef Dennis, I always love to leave parents with something they can actually do rather than one more thing that is, hanging over them.

Dori Durbin: Mm-hmm. So for the parent who wants to have their family cooking and feel a little bit easier, less stressful in the kitchen, what is one thing they could do today right after the podcast to make a small shift? 

Dennis Littley: Right after the podcast, sit down and think about, or, or get your family together and say, "What do you [00:53:00] like to eat?

Dennis Littley: We're gonna start making some food. It's not gonna be every night, but we're gonna start make some. What would you like, what would you like to have for dinner? What would you like to have for dinner?" And make a list, take a few minutes, and then think about things that you like or that your mother or grandmother made for you that you would like to pass down.

Dennis Littley: I get those comments too. My grandmother used to make, I have a Jewish apple cake that is to die for, and it's like, "I lost that recipe. Yours is so close to what I remember," now I'm gonna save it and pass it down. These are the things. And, you know, you don't have to print the recipes.

Dennis Littley: Save them as PDFs and put them in a file, you know? That's what, that's what I do a lot of times with them, you know, so people think... 'Cause there's a lot of information on our recipe card. I try to put a lot of things in there. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so save it as a PDF, you don't have to print it, and that way you can just pull it up.

Dori Durbin: That's really smart, and you can have that just on your phone ready to go- Mm-hmm ... if you're at the grocery store or whatever. 

Dennis Littley: Yeah. And there are little, I think, checklists. Oh, and we have a new search tool that helps you [00:54:00] decide what to make too. It's still growing and learning, but it, you can actually tell it what you have, and it'll help you- Help you find things.

Dennis Littley: Yeah, 

Dori Durbin: it'll help you find different things. I, that's really smart too because it, um, I've never... I've tried to do that on Google before- Yeah, it's hard ... and Google was like, yeah, freaking out, like it didn't know what to do with it. But that's, I love that because it's, uh, sometimes it's just like I have these three things.

Dori Durbin: I- I'm tired. I'm, nothing's coming to me. What could I do? 

Dennis Littley: I know. 

Dori Durbin: So that's 

Dennis Littley: awesome. We all do that. We open the refrigerator. One of the things I would do in class when I wasn't prepared, like if I had had a really hard day at work, 'cause I would teach a class right after I worked at the school. I'd take the girls.

Dennis Littley: I said, "Let's go in the walk and see what we have. What do you wanna make?" And somebody'd pick up this, somebody'd pick up that, and somebody'd pi- and then we'd go out there and we'd make something out of it. That's when you have to put your thinking cap on a little bit. But, you know, but once you get the base knowledge of what you're doing, it gets a lot easier.

Dennis Littley: And it's not, like I said, it's not rocket science. It's food. You learn what flavors go with what, [00:55:00] sometimes the hard way. But, you know, you'll learn what goes with what and what doesn't, and then what you can do with different things. But again, save that stuff. Let's make a casserole. 

Dori Durbin: That's so smart. I, I, it, we used to have them all the time and it didn't even dawn on 

Dennis Littley: me- Oh, yeah

Dori Durbin: to do that. Yeah. 

Dennis Littley: And you know, they're good. Yeah. Casseroles are good. It's comfort food,

Dori Durbin: that's awesome. Well, Dennis, I hate to even stop you. You've done so much, like as far as like just expanding our brains with like creativity and giving us hacks to handle food that maybe we're not so confident with, and just an opportunity for us to connect with our kids.

Dori Durbin: And so- Yeah ... I just wanna first thank you for that. Like, thank you for the time that you've given us, um, as a gift to us to start to create some of these memories for our kids. 

Dennis Littley: Oh, it's my pleasure. And you know, if, if I can help someone find some joy in the kitchen, I've done my job. You know, I, I feel better about myself for that.

Dori Durbin: Oh, love it. I love it. Well, and to everybody who's listening, I hope this particular conversation gave you a few more ways to be cooking with your [00:56:00] family to make it easier and more fun. And if you enjoy hearing from experts like Dennis and others and you'd like to help those experts come into your family, I would invite you to bring the...

Dori Durbin: I'll have to go back and fix it. I'll invite you to join the That's Good Parenting club. Our club allows members to have the opportunity to preview, um, to give feedback on children's books by experts before they're even released. It's a chance for parents to help shape books that are being created specifically to support kids and families.

Dori Durbin: So Dennis, thank you so much for spending this time with our listeners today. Is there anything last that you would like to say before we go? 

Dennis Littley: No, just have fun. Have fun in the kitchen. It's about fun. Food is fun. Food is good. So thank you for having me, Dorie. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and to talk to your listeners.

Dori Durbin: Absolutely. Thank you, and listeners, again, one moment in the kitchen, it's an opportunity to say now that, that was good parenting. We'll talk soon.