an Interview with Janet Johnston, Star of new Food Network Show, Spice & Easy

I had the pleasure of interviewing Janet Johnston yesterday, star of the Food Network show Spice & Easy that premieres this Saturday at 9:30EST. With her husband Mike, Janet is the owner of the Savory Spice Shop in Denver and both are avid home cooks. The message of the show is simple: to convince Americans to breathe new life into classic dishes with spices. Saturday's premiere will show Janet putting together a Moroccan spread for her book club including Chicken Skewers with Herb Sauce, Mediterranean Spiced Cucumber Medallions, Five Spice Carrot Cupcakes with Ginger Frosting, and Vanilla Bean Sugar Cubes. I love that this new show celebrates cooking and ingredients instead of gimmicky reality show components.

Often group interview conference calls can be a bit dry, filled with awkward poses, but Janet's contagious enthusiasm about spices was impossible to resist. It's easy to see why a feature on the Road Toasted with the Neely's show led to an invitation to headline her own show from the Food Network. Janet Johnston makes the world a more interesting place, and more importantly, inspires the desire to cook.

I got to ask Janet three questions. Here's what I asked her and excerpts from a few of the other call participants:

Me: If you could only have five spices in your pantry, what would they be?
Janet: That's such a great question and I get asked it a lot. It's a tough one because I have close to 500 different products in my store.

I would have to go with Saigon Vietnamese cinnamon - it's a kafia - not a true cinnamon. It's the strongest cinnamon ever, it has to be fresh ground and I love to bake so I have to my cinnamon.

Then a Greek oregano, and a good vanilla extract, for sure.

And the other two would be blends.
I think everyone should have an Italian blend of herbs, heavy on the basil.
I also think everyone should have a mild chili, a mild yellow curry just to use as an ingredient to build flavor. This is one thing we like to do at Spice & Easy, take a blend that's really accessible to people and turn it into something else. Take a mild curry and add maple sugar to a mild curry and the results are amazing.

Me: How often should spices be replaced? I know that's a fear for home cooks. I get into exotic supermarkets and I'm so excited that I want to buy everything but I worry about how long they'll last.
Janet: As I own a savory spice shop, I would want to say very, very often, but in reality probably more often than you would think. That huge discount container of cinnamon will begin to taste like sawdust after a while.

Most spices kept in a cool, dry place, not over a stove, will last a good year to year and half. Away from sunlight, away from heat. Whole spices like peppercorn and nutmeg can keep 2 to 3 years even because they still have their oil. Something like cinnamon, which has a low level of oil and evaporates really quickly once its been ground, I would say 6 months.

In our store, we like to offer small batches, you can come in and get half an ounce of a spice. That's how we want America to start buying spices. No longer should you be forced to buy an overpriced probably very old jar of oregano from the supermarket. You can buy a half-ounce, you can have a choice between a Mexican or a Greek, and even though it's a dried flake, it should be bright green.

Me: I'd love to kick my desserts up a notch. Other than cinnamon and vanilla, what are some other good spices for dessert?
Janet: That's so exciting to me because I love to bake, it's one of my favorite things to do. On the premiere, I use a Chinese 5 spice in my carrot cake. Chinese spice is an Asian spice that is beautiful with meats like duck or pork, but the basis of it is baking spices. Instead of peppercorn, we put black pepper and ginger in ours so it's got this wonderful baking base that gives it an edge, a little bit of heat with that peppercorn. Replacing your cinnamon with that Chinese 5 Spice can be amazing. That's what I've done with this carrot cake along with some fresh pineapple and it's to die for.
Something that's simple but crazy sounding as putting a yellow curry in pumpkin pie. A mild yellow curry is wonderful in sweet dishes. I love to take  blends, things you can easily, nothing too scary, and take something all-American like carrot cake or even apple pie and turn it on its head.

A few other questions:
Christine from the Examiner.com: Can you talk about the health benefits of herbs?
Janet: That's not really my specialty so I don't really touch on that except to recommend that people use herbs instead of salt and extra fat. You don't need to add extra fat or salt when you have flavor. Healthwise that's the kind of stuff I'm touching on.

Karen from Rockin' Mama asked: I've never used spices before. How do I get started? typically mostly use salt and pepper. How can I start incorporating more spices in my cooking?
Janet: Begin with a particular profile you know you like, say you love cinnamon. Experiment with all different types of cinnamon and use it in different ways. Make it savory, then make it sweet. You could also beign looking into the type of cooking you like. if you love Italian and pasta, start researching the spices around that: oregano and fennel and explore those spices.Don't be afraid to try something new.

Karen: Do you have ideas for getting children used to spices? I tend to do the same old boring dishes for my kids.
Janet: I don't have children but I have a lot of friends with kids. Kids nowadays amaze me because they know about flavors like sushi that I didn't know until I was in my 20s. Children's palates are more diverse than when I was a child.

There's the whole hiding stuff in foods but I don't think that's necessary. Open them up and educate them about the spices that are out there by intorducing stuff that is kind of mellow, add maple sugar and a touch of black pepper to a yellow curry and put it on pork chops and you have something sweet, and mellow. Use sweet to get them interested right off the bat.


Troy from the Deadbolt - Is it worth it spending the money on good quality saffron?
Janet: Saffron can be affordable although it is a pricier spice. The beautiful thing about saffron that kept in a cool, dry place, it can last up to 7 years. A quality saffron is worth it. You use a tiny bit at a time. People want to be generous with this expensive spice, but too much saffron makes dishes bitter.

Me: I'm playing around on your site and amazed by the products there. What are the products you would recommend I buy to get a sense of your offerings?
Janet: To really get a sense of what Savory Spice Shop has to offer I would focus on the blends. Our new Peruvian Chili Lime is amazing. Our chicken cordon peru should now also be available on the site.

I would also get some basics.  Wash Park is our garlic pepper. Mt Elbert is a wonderful base.

We also have some specialty items which are really hard to find and are really fun. We have a black garlic which is basically fermented garlic bulbs. It is jet black from Korea. I use it in a shrimp pot pie which is to die for. Grains of paradise, Korean chili threads are really fun, really different. Szechuan peppercorns which were banned in the states for years and only have become available in the last three years or so.

Lindsey Jacobellis Interview: a Glimpse into the Life of a Snowboarding Olympian

On Friday afternoon, I picked up my son from school and parked in a nearby lot to join a conference call with Lindsey Jacobellis, a 2006 silver medal winner in Women's Snowboard Cross, 2009 X Games gold medalist, and was a favorite for a gold at the 2010 Winter Olympics before being disqualified from her semi-final run, coming in fourth place, just shy of bronze. I can't even tell you how thrilled Jack was to listen to this incredible young woman who we'd just watched on TV a few nights earlier, answer our questions on the phone.

Jacobellis began snowboarding at age 11, entered her first X Games at age 15, and at age 25 is now leading a dream life, flying around all over the world to compete in a sport she clearly loves. She's one of the few snowboarders to compete in boardercross, slopestyle and half pipe snowboarding events.

She spoke to us not only about her training, her life, and her dreams, but also gave us a great glimpse into what goes on in the Olympic Village between events. Jack listened with baited breath and was greatly inspired to be in the Olympics just like Lindsey. Sadly I'm not sure what inspired him more... all her skiing... or the allure of free, all-you-can-eat McDonald's in Olympic village.

Here is a transcript of our interview:
Do you travel with an entourage?

I don’t have an entourage. Our team has 11 guys and three girls. We travel to all the events together as well as a trainer, a couple of wax techs, and two coaches. But we all start at different places in the US and we meet up in one central location. We all pile up in the rental cars, we load them all up, and we pack the stuff up in the cargo vans. It’s not as though I have someone continuously with me.

Do the coaches ever sit down and give you advice?

No. I mean we can, there’s definitely times that we sit down and discuss certain things like how things will go for the season, how we are going to approach a certain event. For example this year, an Olympic year and I wanted to get some good training in and you want to go to as many events as you can, but there’s risks involved every time you ride because there are so many things you can’t control. There was a race in Switzerland and I got landed on so the coach sat me down and said there’s the XGames and the World Cup and we don’t think you should do both. So I told them I would rather do the X Games because it’s one of my favorite events and that is the type of thing we will discuss.

When you’re not on tour do you work with a coach or a trainer?

In the summer I work with a trainer in Connecticut at home, but this summer I’m not really sure what I’ll do because I’m relocating. Just kind of winging it. I sort of go from week to week, that’s how my life has been going for the last 6 years. It’s kind of hard to plan to plan more than a couple months down the road because I really don’t know what I’m going to feel like.

Do you have any plans for the summer?

I plan on spending a lot of the summer in So Cal so I can surf and also because I have a lot of friends there who are in the snowboarding industry. I haven’t seen them a lot because I don’t do the half-pipe competitions. I plan on doing that in Mid-May. But tomorrow I’m planning to go to Colorado to do some freeriding and possibly do a photo shoot. Then I come back for 2 days, do some laundry, change things up. Then I repack my stuff, go to Europe, finish my last two world cup races of the season. Then on the 21st go back home, finish out the month in Vermont, and then the beginning of April I’ll go back to Colorado for another sponsored photo shoot and then after that I plan to go to Alaska to do some backcountry riding.

Is the life of a snowboarder as fun as it seems?

Well, it is pretty fun. Our sport has a lot of highs and lows but I can’t imagine someone having as much fun as I’ve had even when I’m done competing and riding. Skiers and snowboarders can exert so much and be so focused and then can just do it for fun and do some free riding. Not every sport has that luxury.

When you look back to your goals six or eight years ago, do you feel that you have accomplished the things you were hoping to? And if you have, does it feel like you expected it to?

When I started this sport 11 years ago, it definitely wasn’t something I thought I would make money from. 

My parents just tried to give me every opportunity when I showed passion for something. They put me in sports right off the bat. Team sports like t-ball, softball, lacrosse, field hockey. Anything I showed any amount of interest. When my family started to get an interest in snow boarding because we were always the weekend warrior skiers, it started becoming a thing where we were skiing in the morning and snowboarding in the afternoon and it slowly turned over into just snowboarding all the time. And then we got introduced to this bordercross racing on Friday nights at Stratton and it kind of took off from there. I got recognized at Stratton Mountain School and everything kind of fell into place. I made my mark early on as a dominating USAA rider and started to get involved with bigger and more prestigious events like US Grand Prix. 

All I’ve wanted to do in this sport is to make myself known as a rider who has changed and added to the history of the sport and I feel that I’ve done that and marked myself as a female rider and that’s very rare thing to say. Later I plan to go back country riding which I’ve never really done before and do slope style stuff. I feel that I’ve definitely accomplished a lot in the sport and I think I can accomplish more so there’s really no reason to stop. As long as I still continue to love it then there’s no reason to stop.

I’d like to hear about how your family has empowered you to triumph over disappointment.

When you’re little, when you strike out playing softball, that’s when your parents are there to help you move on, to tell you that it’s just a game, to ask you what you learned from it. At an early age, they helped me overcome any times that I’ve had upset in the sport or haven’t gotten the type of result that I wanted to.

These last Olympics, I know I had the ability to win, but it didn’t come together for me. But my coaches were telling me, “this doesn’t define you as a rider because we know you’re an amazing rider. You just have to move past it.” I’ve done it over and over again and it shows that I still have a passion for the sport and I don’t want to stop and I have fun doing it with my family and friends.

I’m very curious about the Olympic experience. Can you tell us about what goes on in the Olympic village. Have you had the opportunity to mix with people from other countries? Have you met people from different sports that you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet if you weren’t at the Olympics?

The only different about the Olympics is that when you first get there, you’re thrown into press conference after press conference and interview after interview. You go through this whole processing thing where you all get your jerseys, all your uniforms. That’s really the only different thing because we’re such an individual sport that even though you’re on a team, you’re still competing for yourself. This is a different feel because for the first time in 4 years we all get matching outfits and it really builds up more of the team based theme. It’s a cool thing when you’re looking around because I’ve always been involved in team sports, and since I’ve been involved in snowboarding it’s been much more individual.

When we were in Vancouver we actually got to stay in a house for a couple of the days before we moved to the village so I didn’t get to see a lot of people. It was actually really hard to access the other buildings. You had to get clearance to access the other buildings. We each had laniards and credentials but we were still restricted to enter all these places. But as far as meeting people from other countries, I do that in my sport all the time on the world tour. But at the Olympics you don’t get to hook up with a lot of other countries unless you talk to people during the opening ceremonies but even then they really keep you with your country.

There’s been some coverage that McDonald’s was the only restaurant in Olympic Village. Is that really true and if so, what did you think?

Fortunately we had a chef making us food when we were living in West Vancouver. But once we moved to Olympic village, there was a McCafe, and a McDonald’s, and a little pizza station, a grill station, and an Asian cuisine station that you could get different foods, but it really wasn’t up to par. I thought it could have been much better. I was very disappointed. 

We’ve been to a couple of training centers in the US where they have hosted the Olympics and it was very agreeable and had lots of different food choices that could accommodate all sorts of different diets and this in comparison felt a little bit under par. And just the fact that McDonald’s was the choice for athletes was pretty ridiculous.

Did they charge you at McDonald’s?

No. Everything is free. When you’re in Olympic village you can pretty much access anything. I think there would have been a revolt if McDonalds was the only thing to eat and then we had to pay for it.

Have you encountered sexism in the sport of snowboarding?

Well, sometimes it’s hard to get a sponsor as a woman. Sexism exists for sure. 

After the last Olympics, I rode for 2 ½ years without a board sponsor, I understood that the economy wasn’t what it was, and our industry is small, but it was discouraging that a silver medalist couldn’t get a board sponsor. I don’t know if it was because I was a female or not, but it was hard.

You grew up in the East Coast but is VT your favorite place to snowboard or do you prefer out West or even Europe?

I love coming back to Stratton. I know everyone here, it’s like a giant family. I absolutely love riding out West in Colorado because I have so many friends out there so I can just head out there like I am tomorrow because I know I’m going to find someone to ride with just by making a phone call or two and it’s not something we have to overly plan so it’s a cool thing it’s where snowboarders have united because it’s a great place to go. I’m going up there to visit a friend who has injured this year so I’ll get to hang out with her. I’m allowed to have two favorite places!

It sounds like you’re having so much fun snowboarding. Where do you see yourself after?

I’m pretty much going to keep snowboarding until my body says it’s not happening anymore. 

I see myself going into sports rehab, therapy of some sort, because I have so much experience with that injuring so many parts of my body. Or maybe sports announcing because there’s nothing more frustrating than hearing an announcer talk when they know absolutely nothing about the sport. It’s so much more fun when the announcer really knows what’s going on and has a great way of explaining things to the casual listener. A great example of that was watching the X Games, I know what all the tricks are in the half pipe but he just explained them so well that anyone watching could figure out why and so he made the point system and the judging that anyone could follow and that is a cool thing to have.

* A HUGE thanks to Heidi from c2cmom and New Jersey Moms Blog who coordinated this conference call with Lindsey Jacobellis and got us a glimpse of the life of a professional snowboarder. The questions above were not all asked by me, Heidi and Heather also peppered Lindsey with questions. I transcribed it all to the best of my ability.