Episode Details

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Sabrina Rudin, the force behind Spring Cafe in Aspen and New York. She is also the author of Healthy with a Side of Happy, which comes out on April 28th, and shares her Five Rules for Cooking Vegetarian Food. Not trends, not rules for the sake of rules, but food that makes you feel good and keeps you coming back for more. We talk about what it actually means to cook and eat well without overcomplicating it. Skip the fake meat. Cook with what’s in season. Look outside your usual rotation. Make it satisfying. And most importantly, let the food do the talking.

What I love about Sabrina is that she doesn’t hedge. She’s not trying to trick you into eating vegetables. She’s not disguising them or apologizing for them. She cooks them like they matter, because they do. There’s confidence in that. You feel it in the way she talks about a squash or a bowl of lentils the same way someone else might talk about a steak. It’s direct, it’s honest, and it works. You leave the conversation wanting to cook, not convert. You want to make something that tastes good, fills you up, and maybe shifts how you think about what a meal can be.

Thank you to Lesley Suter & Noah Galuten for having me on Food Parents last week. We swap recipes for our kids, talk about the last wins we had in the kitchen, and I share how I sneak Red Boat Fish Sauce into everything.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz Today, I’m joined by Sabrina Rudin, who is the owner of Spring Cafe in Aspen and the author of Healthy with a Side of Happy, 100 Plant-Based Recipes to Feed Your Family. She shares her five rules for cooking vegetarian food and preaches the importance of foregoing faux meat when cooking dinner, that by experimenting with different cuisines and flavors, you will open your palate to a world of deliciousness and that just because it doesn’t have meat doesn’t mean it isn’t hearty. It is a great conversation for anyone who’s already foregone any carnivorous eating habits and for those who want to eat less meat and add a lot more vegetables to their cooking. So let’s get into the rules.

Opening Conversation

Sabrina, so nice to meet you. Thank you for making the time to sit down and chat with me. Excited to have you on the show. I’m so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. We are knee deep in the Winter Olympics, which I know is something close to your heart as a former snowboard instructor. Oh, gosh. What do you love the most about being out on the slopes? I love the peace and quiet of it. I love early morning tracks, either fresh powder or a groomed run, just getting out there and seeing all the snow and the trees and being in nature. I also love the adrenaline. There’s nothing like dropping into a run on your snowboard. Both of those two things combined just really does it for me. I love getting out on the slopes. I did as a kid and just got back into it recently. And what I found that hasn’t changed is that the food that I find at the lodges can be super heavy, not the energy I need. You can’t ski after it. You fo