Marty Davey, MS, RD, LDN is the alter-ego of international YouTube star, LaDiva Dietitian! LaDiva Dietitian’s hilarious YouTube video recipes have been viewed globally, including by US troops in Afghanistan. LaDiva conducts cooking classes and demonstrations while Marty educates about no-cholesterol nutrition. Marty teaches nutrition at Victoria Moran’s Main Street Vegan Academy. These gals are finishing an E-Book, You’re Not Dead, Yet: Nutrition for the Over 50 Crowd. Marty writes the nutrition verbiage while LaDiva creates video recipes making healthy dining de-lish. It should be released November 2014.
What inspired your career as a dietitian, and your hit La Diva Dietitian’s Cyber Cinema?
I have always loved food. My 16th birthday party was a dinner party for 8 using the good china and my mother as a maid. I planned the whole meal. Yep, pretty weird.
The idea that food contained various components being used by different body parts to do all kinds of stuff has fascinated me since high school health class. However, I took to the stage instead of the lab for the first 30 years of my work life. Then, my life changed and I could see that my career was not going where I wanted. On January 1, 2000, I decided to expand my day job as a reflexologist to include nutrition counseling. Seven years later I had an alphabet soup after my name.
My cyber cinema came from the fact that I hate writing long prose. Every time someone would find out I am a dietitian they would immediately start confessing how “bad” they ate. First of all, the correct grammar is “badly” and then, how dull is that! I wanted to make food yummy, easy and, oh by the way, keep your girlish figure. My friend and fellow RD, Jill Nussinow, The Veggie Queen, suggested I start my dietetics career locally. Well, you can’t get much more local than your own kitchen. Since I had spent years on film and TV sets, I knew how to use a camera. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
Describe your current personal eating style?
FAB, of course. Sometimes I feel sorry for mere fast-food mortals. Other than that, I generally have a smoothie for breakfast and nut butter on toast mid-morning. I have leftovers or a large salad for lunch, about 8 cups of beans and a few seeds. Fruit and/or dessert in the afternoon. I really like something sweet in the afternoon. Dinner is at least a 3-cup salad, some starch: grains, potatoes, pasta or legumes with my latest sauce and a BIG helping in steamed greens, plus other veggies. Lots of soups and casseroles in the winter. I have mock meats in the house for the other inhabitants and for quick meals – meals that need to be done in 10 minutes or for special occasions. I drink about 6 cups of green tea during the morning to afternoon and water afterward.
My afternoons can get really jammed with deadlines. So, I have started to make dinner in the morning while listening to the news and eating breakfast. I get ingredients together, chop up stuff, rinse lettuce or whatever I can get done at this time. Then, later I actually finish making the dinner since it is already started. The downside is that it has put a dent into my local Chinese restaurant’s profit margin.
Since I live with the best bartender on the planet, we have a cocktail at 6 a few nights during the week depending on our schedules.
My personal food philosophy is – Does your food do what you want it to do?
My martinis do not make me prettier, smarter or closer to winning the Nobel Peace Prize. However, they fulfill my purpose in drinking them. They separate the week from the weekend. I am willing to deal with the damage they do to my liver allowing them to fulfill their “separation” purpose. So, they are successful in my diet.
If I have more than one, I will not sleep well, I will have a headache and probably skip dinner, except for olives. This does not fulfill my purpose and now martinis are not a successful food and are NOT doing what I want them to do.
What are your must-have plant-based foods?
GREENS! Potatoes. I can give up chocolate and martinis before baked potatoes. One of my FAV dinners is Colcannon – mashed potatoes, onion, cabbage, and kale. Fresh picked tomatoes and corn, onions, garlic, mushrooms, bananas [for texture in smoothies], cocoa powder, chickpeas [great for millions of dips], limes, nut butters, barley, berries, flax meal. My latest cooking craze is Ethiopian.
How do you work to inspire healthier habits among the public?
There is one thing I try to include in my recipes – ubiquitous ingredients. My recipes aren’t made with expensive ingredients. I think it is great to only buy local, organic food. However, not everyone has that option. I want folks who have to work and then run out to the corner grocery store to feel that they can feed their children eat healthy foods, too. In fact, when I was earning my Master degree I fed 3 people on $50 a week.
I work at a residential treatment facility for teens with anger management issues. Most of the kids are sent to us from the court, have a long history of foster care and only one parent either alive or not incarcerated. Not only do I conduct nutrition assessments but I teach 2 vegan cooking classes a week and run our garden.
One of the funniest moments was during the class where we made various smoothies. We made one with pineapple, soy milk, mango, silken tofu. Another was banana, soy milk, blueberry and strawberry. Here I am with 5 inner-city Philadelphia kids, who can name every dollar menu item from any fast food joint, telling me, “Don’t put a banana in the next one, Ms. LaDiva. We just want the one with the silken tofu.” Two months earlier, they didn’t know what silken tofu was. A couple of the kids asked their mothers to get silken tofu for pudding on their home-leaves. Wish I had a camera for the moms’ reaction to that.
There is a small farmers market where I live. Every second Saturday of the month, I gather ingredients from the vendors and conduct a cooking demo showing how customers can use what is right in front of them to make great food. Creating a radish dip with local garlic vinegar can be a challenge, but it opens the public up to new ideas, keeps me on my toes and helps out local businesses.
Any cool resources you provide on healthy food?
No, just look for local businesses that are making something you can promote.
In a DRY, hot skillet, sear the onions for about 2 minutes. Add a teaspoon of water if they are sticking to the bottom of the pan.
Add the mustard and stir for 15 seconds. Add the wine and vinegar. Bring to boil. Boil for 10 seconds. Turn off heat. Add basil leaves and cover with lid. Let sit for 5 minutes.
Pour into bowl and blend with immersion blender until smooth.
Add 2 Tablespoons of sauce to rinsed, dried lettuce leaves. Toss for ONE FULL MINUTE.
Serve over tofu, greens, barley or quinoa.
Notes
*The flavor of the wine must be fairly bold. I use an oaky chardonnay or a fruit wine. If you use a lightly flavored mustard, like a dijon, then you can use a lighter flavored wine.
