022 Carla Ramsdell on Cooking with Purpose

Find Your Sustain Ability

Host Laura England welcomes Carla Ramsdell to the studio for a discussion of sustainability and cooking. Carla is a practitioner in residence in Appalachian State’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. With a background in physics, mechanical engineering, and 17 years of experience as a thermodynamic design and test engineer, Carla integrates sustainability and climate content into her teaching and community outreach. A self proclaimed "Cooking Evangelist," Carla has developed innovative programs like the "Sustainable Physics-Inspired Culinary Education lab" (SPICE lab) and the Sustainable Food Cooking Challenge, using food as a creative way to engage individuals and communities in sustainability and climate change awareness.

Show Notes

Carla would like to emphasize that she is supported by College of Arts and Sciences and receives a course release to accomplish many of the initiatives mentioned on this episode. Their continued support is greatly appreciated.

Email: [e-mail]

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www.knowwattscooking.com

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Community FEaST Tuesday, October 22, 2024 from 4:30pm - 6:00pm

Transcript

Laura England
Welcome everyone to the Find Your Sustainability podcast. I'm host Laura England from the Department of Sustainable Development, and as of the start of this fall semester, I'm working full time as Director of Academic Sustainability Initiatives, with my main focus being co-leading App State’s Pathways to Resilience Quality Enhancement Plan, a five year climate literacy initiative. Today, I'm delighted to get to talk with an App State, Sustainability and Climate Literacy champion and the wonderful Carla Ramsdell. Carla Ramsdell is a practitioner in residence in the Department of Physics and Astronomy here at App State, where she has woven sustainability and climate content into her teaching for the past 15 years. Carla has a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's degree in mechanical engineering, and worked in the energy sector as a thermodynamic design and test engineer for 17 years. In addition to being a scientist, engineer, and educator, Carla is a food enthusiast. For years, she has combined these threads of her expertise and passion to support the transformation of our food system such that it better supports individual health, community health, and planetary health. Carla has created and led numerous public outreach programs, drawing community members into sustainability and climate conversation and action via a shared love of food and cooking. Carla also performs research on energy efficient food and cooking. And speaking of energy. Carla has tons of it. She's among the most dynamic teachers I know, and it has a lot of dynamic teachers, so that's really saying something. We've invited Carla to the Find Your Sustainability podcast to talk about the work that she's been doing, as well as the launch of her new sustainable physics inspired culinary education lab, or space lab, and how she plans to use that to grow her reach even further. In addition to sharing her bio, I should also share my personal connection. I've had the pleasure of collaborating with Carla in various ways for most of my 15 years at App State, and I've always admired her incredible ability to connect with people and ignite their interest in sustainability and climate change, often in indirect ways, like through the joy of food and cooking that really resonate deeply with people. So, Carla, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Carla Ramsdell
Thank you for that amazing introduction. I hope I live up to that expectation, but thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here. Loved working with you for the past 15, whatever it's been years. I think we have really been great partners in this work and you inspire the work that I do. And yeah, I'd love to continue this relationship and this conversation. So thanks for having me.

Laura England
Absolutely. And it's been such a pleasure to work with you. I've learned so much from you over the years. You're leading so many wonderful outreach programs around food, sustainability, and climate. It's hard to know where to start, but I'll start with one. So a couple of Earth Days ago, the Yale Climate Connections News Service highlighted your sustainable food cooking challenge. So let's start by talking about that. Can you tell us about that program, sort of your approach with it, and then maybe talk more generally about your approach to engaging people on sustainability and climate through a shared love of food and cooking?

Carla Ramsdell
Yeah, absolutely. So that was just sort of an idea I had in 2022 I think it was. Just to, you know, try to look for creative strategies to communicate climate knowledge and literacy, urgency, but also mitigation strategies that people can go home today and start to do. You know, I think the urgency of climate change really elevates the need for us to come up with new creative strategies, not just for the scientists in the trenches, but for everybody. And, I think it was inspired partially a lot of this work by, you know, these little moments in your life that sort of change your path. But I remember sitting in IG Greer Auditorium many years ago next to who was then our director of sustainability, Lee Ball for a film showing of, I don’t even remember the film, but I looked around the room and realized, I know the people that are here for this sustainability film, and they're not necessarily the people that need to hear this message.
And, you know, Lee Ball answered by saying, but these are our agents of change. So, you know, we need to continue this vibrant community. But in that, I realized the need for some more creative communication strategies that would draw in a broader community that aren't going to come to a climate change film or a renewable energy talk or something. And, I'm Italian. My whole childhood and life have really revolved around delicious food. Cooking is my number one hobby, and so pivoting to this work of applying my love for science and my love for climate literacy, with my love for cooking just was so natural and joyful. So, yeah, I just started scrappily filming some little clips and putting it out on social media to try to again just broaden the reach of this. So that was a more concentrated effort to say leading up to Earth Day, let's do a recipe a day. Yeah. But I've just kind of continued that work in social media, sort of outside of my normal day job work, just sort of playing with recipes and figuring out how to bring in this audience, introduce some new flavors and ingredients, and also weave some climate knowledge into that work.

Laura England
It's really genius.

Carla Ramsdell
Oh. You're sweet. It's very fun.

Laura England
Well, tell us about one of the meals that you have in this sustainable food cooking challenge. What makes it climate friendly?

Carla Ramsdell
There's so many. Let's see. We could...so lentil tacos are you know my go-to because I think they present for us an opportunity to see how we can slowly pivot from an animal centric diet to a plant centric diet. So my childhood and even my early motherhood, all of my meals were designed and planned around an animal. You know, it was pork night, it was chicken night, and it was fish night, and then it was beef night. And then the other things fell into place around the animal. And so when I transitioned to plant based, I'm not vegetarian, but I do eat predominantly plants. I realized that there would have to be a whole restructuring of how I think about meal planning, because the animals may be a flavor additive or a side note, but it's no longer the main sort of focus of the meal. And so lentils become a really great ground beef replacement. And so and so many of the meals that we do, from shepherd's pie to tacos to even salads, we throw together to have some cooked lentils on the go in the refrigerator, they're always there for me. Sprinkle on top of a pizza, whatever. They have great surface area to volume ratio, so they take on flavors really well. And so we start real simple with just transforming them into tacos. Also, if you're not ready to go all the way vegetarian, cutting your beef in half with lentils makes an enormous difference in the greenhouse gas emissions. So yeah, I think that was one of my easy go tos and one of the ones of that challenge. Also,

Laura England
I love that one. I tried that one of my family, my family is all, big fans of lentils in general, though I had not put them in tacos until you inspired me to do so. And that was a hit. So thank you for that.

Carla Ramsdell
Super. Yeah.

Laura England
Yeah, and I really appreciate this approach of, you know, it's not a black and white. We don't have to give up this thing. It's more of the flexitarian approach.

Carla Ramsdell
And I think it's more about amplifying what to eat rather than trying to say what not to eat, you know? So I think it's human nature that if you're told you shouldn't eat a hamburger, I just really want a hamburger at that moment. Yeah. You know, like there's something that rises. It's like, oh, that sounds delicious. Whereas when you take a beef burger and add in a bunch of minced mushrooms, you extend the beef. So you're using less beef. And actually taste tests show that people enjoy that more. They don't even recognize there's a bunch of mushrooms in there. It makes it more moist. Mushrooms have this umami, which is what we typically only get from meats, but we get from the mushroom. So, you know, there's a lot of really creative things we can do to not necessarily relinquish the things that we love so much, but to augment them and also make them more sustainable. So highlighting those things, I haven’t done a video about that yet. Perhaps you’re giving me an idea here. So yeah.

Laura England
And I think your approach can be applied in other areas of climate communication too. You know, for so many years the focus has been on the problem and what we need to not do and stop doing. And it's not that those things are untrue, but presenting the broader public and decision makers with, you know, sort of beautiful, delicious visions of what we could have is much more inspiring, you know, invokes action and that sort of thing.

Carla Ramsdell
Yeah. That's great. So, I mean, I work with a lot of people in the space both at App State and beyond, and I feel a burden sometimes in the work they do in their communication. I think sometimes when you're really in the trenches and seeing all the consequences and the slow movement of action, it can be a dark place. I mean, I think some, you know, struggle with their own mental health through the work that they're passionate about. You know, I feel like through this work, there's so much action that we can do. Cooking in general is mentally grounding. You know, you get the smells and all these, I don't know, these feedback loops that are really helpful to our mental health. And also at the same time there are climate solutions. So it's a light and beautiful place to have some climate solutions I think.

Laura England
I love it. I want to talk about some programs that you've created and co-led on this campus that offer opportunities for students including ones that are upcoming this academic year. One is called Cooking with Purpose. Can you tell us about that program? It's goals and ways that our students and other members of our university community can be involved.

Carla Ramsdell
Absolutely. Yeah. Cooking with purpose is super fun. It's a great community, sort of a small but mighty group of faculty and staff and students who come together. And the goal of the program is really to intertwine delicious food that is inexpensive and healthy and also sustainable and simple to prepare could be done by people living in dorms. So we're kind of asking a lot of these recipes to try to put all those pieces into one program. If I go back a little bit and talk about the history of how we got here, I was teaching a physics of food and cooking class, and then Covid struck and, we used to do a little bit of cooking demos in class pre-COVID. And, you know, there was this cooking component to a physics of cooking class. So when it pivoted to Covid times and I had to go online, I was thinking this was going to be a disastrous transition and then just said, okay, here, you know, all of you buy a couple, like, simple laboratory equipment for your kitchen, a scale, a thermometer, whatever. Let's meet once a week and cook together. I'll be in my kitchen. You be in your kitchen. We'll take data, we'll chart differences. It was fabulous. It was so much fun. In a time when people craved community granted zoom community is not as great as face to face. But at that point it was lovely. Right? And so kind of buoyed by that success, I approached Jennifer Maxwell, who has been just a rock star in this work in our Office of Sustainability, and asked if we could approach, you know, try to develop a program for people using the Mountaineer Food Hub as a way to talk about how to use the items that are typically in a food pantry, like the lentils, rather than the grab and go mac and cheese in a styrofoam container that you know nutritionally are pretty not great. So she was all in very enthusiastic. And so that really was the birth of cooking with purpose. And it's been, you know, a transition. And we've had to make some real significant changes during Covid. It was very popular because again, people were just looking for anything to do. So we had these cohorts and they were vibrant. They showed up every time. And we had great community. And then post Covid, we saw a real drop in attendance a year ago in fall of 23, we had, I think, 12 people in the program, you know, so we went to a conference...Sherry Nikbakht in the mathematical sciences she is faculty and one of my partners in this work, and we went to Mexico for a food studies conference and presented this work as a dying program. This like, obviously after Covid, this isn’t popular, but asked them for suggestions...all these people in the food space that are doing this work. We got a slew of ideas. We implemented all of them in the spring, and we had 107 participants. So yeah, you know, also a point this is to say like, let's not try to reinvent the wheel, lean on the experiences of these other people. This semester, we've broadened it a bit to welcome staff and faculty this time. We're super excited to launch this semester. The first session will be this coming Wednesday, September 4th. And then they'll run every other Wednesday for four Wednesdays. It's a voluntary program. Just drop in when it works. It's time well spent. After the hour, an hour and a half, you have this meal you can share with friends. So we welcome anyone to sign up. Even up to the last session, we never close enrollment.

Laura England
We're going to publicize all four of the sessions through the resilience.appstate.edu website. And so come learn about it there and sign up.

Carla Ramsdell
Yeah. That would be great.

Laura England
Yeah. We'll also put the link in the show notes so you can access the registration there.

Carla Ramsdell
Spread the word. It's a great program. Super fun. We laugh, you know I think it’s different also from watching YouTube. There's so much out there is that you're actively cooking with us. Yeah. And so very often a student will be making pizza dough and they'll be like, I don't know, something's not really going right. And we'll just say, you know, point your camera down, let's see what's going on. And it looks like you need a little more water, a little more flour. Try this or that. So there's active feedback there to help improve the cooking. So I mean we have people come to the series that don't know how to cook pasta. Like literally zero cooking skills and we welcome that. Everything is simple enough for that to people who cook a lot and get in a rut and want new flavors and ingredients, or people that just come for the sustainable tips and tricks. And so yeah, anybody is welcome.

Laura England
And there's not a limit.

Carla Ramsdell
There's no limit. It's zoom. So just come on.

Laura England
Well I so appreciate that you've opened it up to faculty and staff. And you mentioned food ruts. I think lots of us who have children can identify with getting into food ruts. And so you've timed this perfectly. I can be working, you know, with my husband to cook a family meal, watching Cooking with Purpose.

Carla Ramsdell
Of course. Yeah. And I really applaud...I think Sherry Nikbakht has really helped me in that way. She just cooks really passionately about food and flavors that aren't something that I use typically. So my flavor profile has changed just by working with her. And then Jennifer Maxwell also bringing in like this focus on community. That's one of her big drives in this work is to connect these people to each other. So we try to have some events outside of those four Zooms also where people can connect or join in their own kitchens. We had groups that, you know a group of four friends that just went to their kitchen and cooked together and then shared the meal together, and were happy. It doesn't have to be one person in one kitchen. It can be roommates or friends or whatever. We’re very open to creativity in cooking in this process. So there’s prizes too. So every session we’ll have...Karla Rusch in the Off Campus Student Engagement has provided some prizes like cast iron skillets and an immersion blender. So after each session for people who are there and actively engage with us, cooking with us, with their cameras on, they’ll get entered into a drawing for prizes. At the end of the four part series, we do a grand prize drawing for an Instant Pot, so those are only available to students because student fees are paying for those prizes. But, there's some extra perks to the program.

Laura England
So fun. Well, you mentioned community, so that's a nice segue to talking about Community Feast, another one of the genius programs that you started on this campus and co-lead that's been going on for this will be the eighth year. So tell us about this program and ways that members of the campus community can participate this fall.

Carla Ramsdell
Yeah, absolutely. So we are super excited to announce Community Feast for this year, which will be on Tuesday, October 22nd. And it is down the middle of Sanford Mall. It's a 100 yard long, continuous table, and we serve a community meal. It's free. It's open to anyone. There's no registration or tickets, and the focus is just to engage in a conversation about the importance of an equitable, sustainable food system. So there's several goals of the program. It came about eight years ago when a group of us across campus from all these different departments and programs, realized we were all doing food research but not communicating with each other. And we thought we could augment each other's work by meeting every once in a while and sharing ideas. So we called ourselves the Apple Fresh Collaborative, and that stands for Appalachian Food Research for equity, Sustainability and Health. And then we kind of grappled with, well, what can we actually do together collaboratively and Community Feast was born from that. So we have seen pictures of these long meals at other locations and thought, let's give it a try. Yeah. So it's definitely a community effort. We all kind of fall into place and, and do, different parts of it, from gathering the band to ordering the tables to getting the food ready and engaging students and set up and cleanup and conversation starters to put down the table.
So it has become an Appalachian tradition. It's just a beautiful gathering. I think it helps us all recognize the significance of that commensality. Commensality means gathering around a table and eating food together communally. And it feels great, you know, on Covid also, we had to pivot that to zoom. It was well attended. Nothing like gathering around the table. The next year we went picnic style, so we weren't in such close contact with people. And then the next year that we came back in person, it was just…it was lovely. We couldn't get people to leave. Like, you know, we actually had to clean up the tables and chairs because the rental company was coming to pick up and people were just lingering and talking, and there was just really a beautiful feel to it. So last year was our biggest year. I think we were at 500 or something. Yeah, it is, it's growing maybe beyond the capacity of our 100 yard long table, but we try to have it long enough where there can be two sittings and order enough food to accomplish that. So yeah, please come. It's open to anybody. Community, community feast. Feast stands for food, engagement and storytelling. So it's really about let's share our stories about food. From traditional food ways to new food ideas to charting future food ways. And the more diversity we have around that table, the richer that conversation becomes. So we want diversity in every possible way. So faculty, staff, students, but also community members and family members, whoever dogs.

Laura England
Kids.

Carla Ramsdell
Kids! Absolutely. Yes. Great music. And yeah, we just hope for good weather every year. But so far it’s been pretty good.

Laura England
I've been able to come most years and it really is a beautiful and meaningful event.

Carla Ramsdell
It’s lovely. And just, you know, the whole community that pulls it together. It couldn't happen without the Office of Sustainability. Their sustainability ambassadors just like show up and there's this pile of tables and chairs. And before I know it, there's a table set with tablecloths and flowers and vases. And, you know, we have the art department that has helped through the years to make vases that are then for sale, that the sale of which helps the Mountaineer Food Pantry. And there's food drives that we usually have concurrent. Community groups can come and table like Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture, hunger and health coalition groups that are involved in sustainable work in our community. And they gather more volunteers through that. So just yeah, that storytelling and opening a dialog and gathering about the importance of all these pieces is, yeah,

Laura England
You're multi-solving which we’ve talked about on this podcast before...programs that have co-benefits.

Carla Ramsdell
Oh lovely. Yeah, yeah. And we eat too. And that's always good.

Laura England
Yeah. It's delicious and fun. So you're doing all this amazing work on our campus. And you're also part of a network of faculty members at universities around the country who are working at this nexus of food and energy and water. And this team recently published a paper titled Implementing Interdisciplinary Sustainability Education with the Food, Energy, Water Nexus. What's it been like to be part of this sort of national level collaboration?

Laura England
What have you learned? What’s it meant for you?

Carla Ramsdell
Oh, it's been fabulous just to connect to other people who are passionate in this space. So the FEW Nexus we tend to call this is and this was an NSF (National Science Foundation) funded grant through Virginia Tech. It's exactly about sort of building relationships with people in the same space to help us inspire the work we do. And there's been several sort of takeaways and lasting relationships. We all attended a conference in Philadelphia recently and sort of shared the work that we're doing collaboratively. Yeah. Like any community that comes together around these things, I just get so many great ideas and and sharing. And I think the other part that's been great, part of writing that paper collaboratively helped us to see that, you know, this collaborative nature, this this collaborative work that will be critical in solving climate crisis also represents some real struggles, especially in academia, when we are tend to be historically siloed. To try to break those silos and work across those lines is challenging. In the same way that writing this paper was challenging because we came at this from such different backgrounds. So to put the words of that paper in a language that was meaningful for all of us and intertwined all of our work was, I would say, more difficult than writing a paper with a bunch of other physicists. Sure. But I think richer because of that struggle and that dialog. And I think we even said that in the paper that this sort of highlights, you know, the importance of this work. It was a better paper because of it, but also a little more of a struggle. Right. We have to learn to talk in each other's language. We can't just throw around these acronyms that we tend to do in our own individual spaces. We have to expand the dialogue and the communication. And I think that's yeah, it's been great. It's not over. We are going to continue working together as a team, and we've applied for books and whatever. And I think it's really a great thing that NSF would fund something that's really focused on community building like that. And we'll have some real significant impacts.

Laura England
And thanks for representing App State in that national collaboration.

Carla Ramsdell
Absolutely.

Laura England
So coming back here to campus, there's a really exciting new opportunity on the horizon with your new facility, the SPICE Lab, the Sustainable Physics Inspired Culinary Education lab. Can you tell us how this project came about? You know who is involved and what are the labs capabilities? What do you imagine you'll use it for in the coming years?

Carla Ramsdell
Yeah. I am just beyond excited to finally be in a space that's completed here. It's been about a four year journey from when my department gave me this fairly small room that was available to sort of expand the work that I was doing. It's a 10 x 24 ft space, and there's been this evolution through these four years to try to see how I can transform that into a space that has a wider reach than just our campus. And it's also included a really exciting integration of other parts of campus. So an interior design student did the design work for me about four years ago. An art student handmade the clay tiles that are on the back wall that are spectacular. Patrick Richardson, who's a genius in our department, electrical engineer, wired the whole lab so that every outlet and every oven and refrigerator are data logged. So when people join a zoom class, they can go to a website and see actually the curves of energy of everything I'm using, from the mixer to the convection oven to the induction versus radiant cooktop. And I actually think it's the only place that does that. I haven't found anywhere else in the world that has this kind of cooking energy component that's sort of live action energy use. So yeah, I am delighted. I'm so thankful for all the support I've received. My department, the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been behind me and supportive of me from day one, from just encouraging these initial ideas of what about a physics of food and cooking class? Through giving me a space through supporting the, you know, the growth of that space. I do want to do a shout out to the REI which is the Renewable Energy Initiative on campus, which uses student funds to fund some really important renewable energy projects on campus. And they funded the construction of this space into this redesigned cooking laboratory. So, yeah, I really appreciate that. They recognize the outreach work that could occur in there and how that could expand the knowledge of renewable energy and energy knowledge. So I think my background as a mechanical engineer in the energy sector has allowed me to see food as a critical energy resource. And those corollaries I can make between the electric energy grid and the food energy grid have been really fun. And also sort of merge at some point too, right? So we can talk about microgrids in electricity, which might be a PV panel on your roof or in the food sector might be a backyard garden. And the grid is this connectivity of copper cables in the electric world. But trucks and trains and ships transporting our food network. So making those connections has been really fun. So very excited to see where the SPICE LAB goes. I think one of my biggest challenges will be to focus the work in there into ways that are most impactful. The list of ideas I have is longer than the years I have on Earth.

Laura England
I bet. You’re very creative.

Carla Ramsdell
Well, it's just there's, like, while some may think that, doing climate education through a food lens is, is a narrow communication mechanism, I actually think that food is universal. Right. And so instead I can see opportunities to plug into so many other initiatives that are already happening with this food content. So, you know, just trying to find a community that I can work with in that space, too.I don't intend to just be by myself in there. I love working and being fueled by other passionate individuals. So stay tuned. We'll see. My physics of Food and Cooking class PHY 2220 will be taught sort of hybrid out of that space. As a starting point, cooking with purpose will be taught out of that space. And then from there, yeah, it's just wide open. So I'm very excited.

Laura England
It is so exciting. And I hope some time I'll get to come join you in the SPICE LAB, to see you in person, in action.

Carla Ramsdell
Please! Yes, you are welcome to cook with me. I want co-chefs in there. That would be fabulous. So bring your favorite recipe. Be happy to do that.

Laura England
So Carla you have a website called know watts cooking and that's knowwattscooking.com

Carla Ramsdell
I say it's know as in knowledge watts as in power and cooking as in delicious. So yeah it is a tricky website.

Laura England
But also really clever. And there's a lot of really great information and resources that students and others listening can access on your website. So I encourage folks to go check it out.

Carla Ramsdell
I will be clear that it is a work in progress. I am still working, you know, understanding how to do that, but there are links in that to a TikTok and to Instagram and Facebook and little videos that, you know, may be interesting to some people. So. Sure.

Laura England
Yeah. Absolutely interesting. And on your about page one of the phrases that caught my eye is cooking evangelist. Tell us about what it means to be a cooking evangelist and how you became a cooking evangelist.

Carla Ramsdell
Yeah, I think it just comes out of this like the joy I get from cooking. And I think the importance of this cooking gathering around a table get regain gaining control of our ingredients. Right? We relinquish all of that control when we start eating, you know, processed foods or take outs or whatever. And you know, it is just an incredibly grounding event for me. I feel particularly fortunate to be doing this work in a college campus, because I feel like college is the first time typically a human has a kitchen of their own, and so they get to make this decision, am I going to use that space, or am I going to rely on processed foods or takeout foods or whatever?
And so just to sort of nudge a little bit toward the give that place a try, the kitchen's beautiful. It's mentally grounding. It's not as hard as you may think. I think we maybe have dropped the ball a bit on passing simple food preparation strategies down the line. And so some students come into that space with only, you know, knowledge from YouTube videos or what have you that are really overly complicated sometimes. Sure, have at it if you want, but I don't think it has to be like that. And so just sort of evangelizing to go in that space and learn a couple tricks. I'm a huge fan of sauces, like that's the place to start. If you don't cook, just get five sauces that are just amazing. You can transform a piece of chicken, a bowl of pasta, some rice or potatoes.
It's always about the magic sauce. So if you want a place to start, sauces take like five minutes to pull together and, just sort of I guess that's where the evangelism comes, is just trying to nudge students into that space. I think often they're like, oh, so busy, and we have exams and whatever, but that is really important time spent in there, creating those things, sharing them with friends and what have you.

Laura England
And there's a whole course worth of tips and information that you teach related to cooking and energy and sustainability. But can you give us some quick tips? Yeah.

Carla Ramsdell
Oh my goodness. So, you know, just having things on the ready, I think maybe one of the best tricks would be always double cook. Always make a double batch. It takes maybe 10% more time to make a double batch of anything that can be granola bars, pasta, stews, soups, whatever. And then you...It's like a gift to your future self. You know, you now have the pre-frozen, processed or to-go food on the ready in your refrigerator. So that one simple hack I think really can elevate the amount of home cooked food that you're eating. And you know, when we start to think about that, not only are we in control of our ingredients, but we're reducing packaging enormously. Right. And all these other secondary effects of our food system. And then also just again, kind of having things on the ready. So this lentil trick, I always have a half pint of lentils in the freezer without liquid in them. They're just the lentils frozen. You can pop those in the microwave for a minute and they are ready to throw on anything.

Laura England
So they’re already cooked.

Carla Ramsdell
Already cooked. Exactly. Yeah, that's on my TikTok if you like to see how to do that. But also, you know, then you, you have that base. It's like you already have pre-ground ground beef and then whatever you want to do with that, it's ready to go. There's less cleanup. And so I think, you know, we all get those, I come home, I don't really want to cook. And having some of that stuff ready to grab and go is great. So when I cook those lentils pre cook them I'll do 2 pounds at a time. It's a lot of lentils but they freeze beautifully. You have them ready again. It took me no more time to do that. And so thinking you know a little bit more about big batches which can be frozen for later use.

Laura England
And less energy use per volume of food.

Carla Ramsdell
Yes! Also thank you for highlighting that. Yeah for sure. So you heat an oven, you better just let...If you heat an oven, you're heating 35 pounds of steel. So the more things you can do in there while it's hot, you bake a loaf of bread. Also, maybe roast some vegetables for tomorrow's lunch. One of my favorites is to throw in a tray of granola. It can cook passively while the oven cools down, so it's kind of free on the energy scale. And then you have some really inexpensive, nutritious breakfast for the next morning. So yeah, I think there is an energy component there also. And just yeah, while you're in the groove, just make a big batch and your future self will thank you.

Laura England
I love that. And I'll never forget probably more than a decade ago. And it may not even have been a work conversation you talked about, just put a lid on your pot when you're boiling the water, right. So simple. Yeah. Explain why that matters so much.

Carla Ramsdell
I have a little jingle for you. Would you like the song? I literally did this when my daughter was in second grade, I came and talked about the energy efficiency of cooking to second graders. Which one would have the question why I did that in hindsight. But anyway, I thought that a jingle would be helpful. So my jingle goes something like this. Put a lid on your pot when you cook, don't be tempted to open it and I look because the food is in your pot and you want to keep it hot. Put a lid on your pot when you cook.

Laura England
That's amazing, I love that.

Carla Ramsdell
My apologies as that will likely run through your brain. Now for the rest of the day.

Laura England
Well, I haven't forgotten. I did forget the jingle, but I haven't forgotten the simple stuff. I mean, I took physics, multiple visual classes in college. I know PV equals NRT. I know the science behind it. But having the reminder just always have a lid on.

Carla Ramsdell
All that vapor coming off the top of your pot is just energy you put into the system of the cooking pot that you intended to cook with. That now is just escaping into the room. Now your air conditioning has to overcome that load. Also, there's secondary effects. So there's a lot of, yeah, fun additional tie-ins we can talk to you about cooking efficiently.

Laura England
Well hopefully this is just getting people interested in coming to Cooking with Purpose.

Carla Ramsdell
Excellent.

Laura England
Carla, you embody an idea that one of my favorite climate thinkers has put into the world. And I know you kind of follow her as well, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. She has done lots of things. Co-edited the All We Can Save Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis anthology. And in one of her Ted Talks, she introduces a tool to help people think about finding their own personal climate action niche. And it's a Venn diagram asking people to think about and get at the intersection of three things. First, what are you good at? Second, what is the work that needs doing? And third, importantly, what brings you joy or satisfaction? And you mentioned joy a couple of times. And I have my students work with this tool and in class.

Carla Ramsdell
I use that on my course also. Yeah. So great.

Laura England
It's really helpful for thinking about really what is your own personal intersection? And I always share you as an example. And your work is an example of someone who's really found and is living into that very personalized climate action niche. So I want to ask as a last question, you know, you're so inspired in your work, who inspired you along the way?

Carla Ramsdell
Yeah, so many people. You for one. So our work together, you know, continues to inspire me and the things, the creative ways that you come up with. I love working with you and look forward to continuing to do so. If I really had to look at sort of, you know, heroes or people that set me on this path, I would look back to my parents and I think they uniquely sort of define where I am now. My mom is an incredible cook. So she...like literally our house was just always filled with smells and delicious food. It was a very strict rule that we were going to sit at the family table together. If that meant we had to wait until one of my brothers got out of play practice or something, that was just understood. And Sundays we were going to spend at home and always eating delicious food. So really, I have no formal culinary education. But that was all learned there, you know, and very openly and beautifully and continues to be. I'll call her and ask her how to make something I'm struggling with.

Laura England
I bet she loves getting those calls.

Carla Ramsdell
Oh, yeah. We love talkin’ food. So that's super fun. And I'm appreciative of that. My father is deceased, but he, I think really is a lot of how I chose physics. You know, I just remember coming home, even maybe in middle school, sitting around that dinner table, and dad would ask what I did. And it seemed like when I mentioned something related to the sciences, he would sort of tell me more, I want to know why did that happen? He was an architect. Very beautiful mixture of a left brain and a right brainer. And I think just his engagement and his interest and his prodding, I think, sort of gave me some confidence in that space. And then when I got to college, I had a bit of a hard time finding what I was going to do, in that space.
And, then just physics came naturally, was enjoyable. I think in the background I probably heard his voice saying, tell me more like that's exciting. And even when I got into my early stages of work at Westinghouse as an energy engineer, he asked me to show me what these turbines look like. And I pulled out the drawings and, you know, yeah, that constant feedback and encouragement from home, I think, got me to where I am, both in cooking and in science.
So appreciative of that for sure.

Laura England
Thanks so much, Carla, for sharing that about your story and for sharing about your work with us on the Find Your Sustain Ability podcast.

Carla Ramsdell
Thanks for having me.

Laura England
Yeah, it’s such a pleasure to talk with you and listeners, I hope you'll go to knowwattscooking.com. We'll put the link in the show notes, visit resilience.appstate.edu to learn about these upcoming events that you can participate in and Carla, I hope we'll have you back again sometime.

Carla Ramsdell
Love to be here. Thank you.