 healthy planet, the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet on the tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Dr. Grace O'Neill. Joining me today is Michelle Yang of the Yankee Trading Company. Welcome, Michelle. Hi, thanks for having me. Thank you for being on the show. And why don't you tell us a little bit about Yankee Trading Company for those of us that don't know? Yeah, for sure. So it's basically a family business between my parents that my parents started back when I was in like the fourth grade. They, my mom is vegetarian and she was basically looking for vegetarian products, meat alternative products, just ways to diversify her meals. But also looking for products that she felt comfortable like consuming regularly, because she has a very sensitive health and she's very sensitive about ingredients in her food. So a variety of factors involved, but primarily that led to us having our current kind of family business that's gone on for like two decades now. But yeah, so we eat all of our products. We eat regularly ourselves. And that was very important to her. She's like, it can't be too strong of flavor. There can't be too much flavoring, no preservatives, no MSG, like all kinds of stuff. So that if she, like if she's comfortable eating it, then at least we won't feel bad about like selling it to people. Yeah. So your products you were saying don't have any MSG? Yes, they do not have MSG. They have, for flavoring, they might have like mushroom flavoring, like mushroom extract, but no like synthetic MSG. That's great. And you were saying that you have non GMO, non GMO soy, correct? Because a lot of the products. Yes. Okay, that's. Yes, absolutely. And in regards to people who are gluten free, how are your products for them? Like which ones are gluten free, which ones are not? So people know. So most of our, so I would say about like half and half online, we have all of our dry products right now. I'm working on the frozen ones, but all of our dry products, basically, I think the TVP are the only ones that are not gluten free. And that's because they require like a little bit of gluten to give them some form. Otherwise they're just going to be crumbles. So those are not gluten free. The, the, everything else, I think the vegan pork floss, the tuna sauce, although they use soy sauce, but soy sauce in Taiwan traditionally does not use wheat. So those are gluten free. Oh yeah. So for our frozen products though, we, it's basically like the same thing. Any soy based products that have form, they would not be gluten free, but other products like our vegan shrimp, our vegan squid, our vegan fish balls, fish cake, things like that, those would be gluten free. Are they marked gluten free? Or they are not currently. And in terms of label product labeling, because we have a lot of labels that are printed beforehand. So those will take a little bit of time to update. But I am in the process of updating the website to reflect that. Oh, that's wonderful. So let's run through some of the pictures of the products Michael. So these obviously are not gluten free, right? The texture. But these people are interested, right? Yeah, for sure. These are often, these are used for a lot of things. I mean, like, you know, very simple. If you were to do like a vegan beef and beef and broccoli, a lot of Vietnamese restaurants in the area actually use them to like be the beef in like vegan pho or vegan, any like soup base. How about this? What is this usually used for? Those can, you know, you can, I think, at least for us, we eat very simply, we don't really like do like crazy dishes. We often just like stir fry them or we put them in stews. Similarly, though, they can be used for anything that you would want like to replace ball type meats in the dishes. I'd say tannerls. Yeah, so these are, I don't know if you've ever had like gluten rolls, like the full, they're like kind of this long and they're like frozen. So but they're frozen, so they're not as they're not as shelf stable. These are basically those but sliced into like slices and then and then they're fried to become be like dry and shelf stable. So these are much tougher than TVP, but they get softer the more you cook them, the more you boil them. So they're really great for like soups, stews, things like that. Anything that would boil for a longer time and like really absorb flavor. So what would someone use it to substitute? I guess the question would be. So you could, I like, I don't know if you've ever had like Chinese zhajiangmian. So what you could do is like after rehydrating them and kind of getting them to the texture you want, you can cut them into smaller strips and then they could be, they're like really good replacement for the meat bits for that. They're also great for just like in Chinese dishes, they tend to do bao a lot, which is like a stew with that like cooks for a long time with sauce and stuff in it. These go really great with that as well. And these are just different like flatter slices. These are, so the other slices they have, I think cocoa powder as or something like that for for color. These slices are, you know, just without that. So they're just regular colored, probably if you want to do like a vegan chicken dish or something like that. Sure. And these are extra big slices. They're really big. Like I think these should be XXL like double, they're huge. I actually have a sandwich video coming out soon that I'm working on like a recipe video and I used these. I initially had hydrated like four of them and then they hydrated and they got so big that they filled up the whole sandwich and I only needed two because I was making two sandwiches. They're huge. They're ginormous. So if you wanted to make any like cutlet type dishes or like vegan steak dishes, these are perfect because they're ginormous. And all your products are vegan essentially or tell us about the products. Yeah. So they're basically all vegan. There are a few products that we don't mark as vegan and none of our dry products are marked as not vegan, but there are a few of our frozen products that we don't mark as vegan just because the manufacturer, we have multiple manufacturers in Taiwan. So some of the manufacturers, they also work with egg. And so because of the potential for contamination, we don't want to say that it's like vegan because I can't absolutely guarantee that there's no contamination. These are small, tiny, straight. Yeah. Yeah. So I think sometimes they'll make gambian siji dough, which is the like dried fried, what is it, green beans. Those sometimes will have meat in them. Yeah. Yeah. So those sometimes will have meat in them. This could go with that. And I think if you were to make like a vegan taco, these would probably fit in those as well. Anything where you want like little strips of. Yeah. That's a great idea. For tacos. How about the tomb sauce? Tell us about the tomb sauce and the mushrooms. Oh yeah. So the tomb sauce is very popular and common in Taiwan. And it's actually not that common here. So I was really surprised by that. But it's, it's all over the place in Taiwan, possibly because they just have like a bigger vegan community there. But it's basically made of this plant, this Chinese plant, the Chinese mahogany, which is also known as the tomb plant or the, what is it, beef and onion plant. But basically it's this plant and it gives us, it has this very like savory flavor to it, kind of reminiscent of beef and onion. And vegans in Taiwan because of, most of them are vegan because of Buddhism. They actually don't eat onions either for a lot of, like so if you go to vegetarian slash vegan restaurants in Taiwan, usually they also won't have onions. So this can help replace that flavor. But yeah, it has this very savory flavor that's kind of reminiscent of beef and onion. It's a very chunky sauce. So I know some people have been like, oh, like they were surprised that it was chunky. It is actually kind of a chunky sauce. There's TVP in it. The actual tune is kind of chunky as well. And then there, it's a oil based sauce. And then there's mushroom chunks as well in there to kind of give that extra flavor and extra umami. So all of that together is just this like first flavor. Yes, it's great. I love it with like just very simple add some soy sauce, maybe some chili flakes, you know, it's very fragrant sauce. And what kind of oil are you using in the sauce just so people know? If I remember correctly, and I can't remember off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure it is soybean oil I think. That's not something I have actually committed to memory. That's okay. We can go to the next slide. So tell us about pork floss. Yeah, so pork floss is something that a lot of Asian families grew up eating. I myself as well. It's this like flossy meat, dried meat, and it's kind of like cottony. I think I've heard it described. I'll be honest, I haven't had it in a hot minute, like a long minute. But it's, I remember when I was little, just like kind of eating it all the time. I had it on everything, like obviously with forage, but like with noodles and all that kind of stuff. I had it all the time. And I would also, it's one of those things where you're not supposed to kind of just, I couldn't eat it but I did. I loved it so much. But it is made of pork. It's not vegetarian or vegan. And so obviously, like my mom couldn't eat it because she's vegetarian. But I also very quickly couldn't eat it because I became vegetarian. So for that reason, you know, there's actually very few, I think vegan pork floss options on the market, if any, depending on where you live, there might be some if there's like a lot of Asian food. But ours, like again, like I said, my mom's super picky about like flavor, ingredients, all that stuff, like she has to like it. So I think ours is super delicious. We used to have like a lot more flavors, but we've kind of narrowed it down to these two because they're the most popular and others have kind of died out over time. But yeah, these two, they're great. And I actually like them more because they're also a little crunchy. I think floss, like real actual pork floss right off the bat is really not, it's not crunchy at all. It's like it kind of gums up very quickly. But these actually start off really crunchy. And then as they hydrate, they can start getting more of that like hydrated floss kind of flavor or not the texture. Yeah. So how are these two different ones? Seaweed, another has kelp kind of similar. Yeah. So one is seaweed. The other is feng maotai, which is not absolutely kelp. It's in the seaweed family. It's like, and I've actually struggled finding the English name for it. It's much more like common in Chinese culture. As an ingredient, it's like this kind of hair ish, like thick, glossy, it's much, it's much thicker and flossier in texture. Kelp is kind of the closest name I think we were supposed we could find to it, but it's a different type of seaweed. It's not as like thin and crunchy. The seaweed one is more like nori kind of seaweed, whereas the feng maotai, the red one, that one's more like thick and flossy and textury. Is that supposed to be a binder or how? No, it's just like it's an ingredient. Okay. Yeah, it's like there's bits of TVP and then there's bits of seaweed or like there's bits of TVP and then there's like little bits of seaweed or the other seaweed. So these are both the floss and the vegan Toon Sauce is safe for gluten-free people pretty much. All your products are pretty much like vegan, but some are manufactured with other products that like the frozen ones. And then so you can get the Toon Sauce, the TVP, the floss all online, right? Yes, they are all on our website. And you've been in the Bay Area essentially for 20 years now, but your parents are from Taiwan. Is that correct? Yeah, so my mom emigrated from Taiwan in her 20s, like early 20s, and then my dad in his 30s after they got married. So I was born here, but they are from Taiwan. And that, yeah, so that's a lot of the connection. And so you said that you are vegetarian and your mother is as well. Can you tell us about her journey and then your journey and how you came about to decide to be vegetarian? Yeah, for sure. So my mom, she wasn't born vegetarian. She was like, and by born because there are a lot of kids with families in Taiwan that like might be born into being vegetarian. But she grew up with a very kind of sensitive health, as I mentioned before. And at some point she was just really sick. And so my aunt and this like very abridged spark, that's for sure. But so my aunt went to the temple and Taiwan is very Buddhist. And so they went, she went to the temple and she prayed and said like, you know, she swore like, if you can help my sister get better, then I would, I'll go, I'll become vegetarian because Buddhism is very big on vegetarianism. So she was like, you know, please help my sister get better and I'll go vegetarian. And so my mom did get better, better. And so my aunt became vegetarian and my mom was like, well, my sister went vegetarian for me. So of course I have to become vegetarian. So that was long, like much when they were much younger. By the time she was pregnant with me, she was fully vegetarian as well. So when I was growing up, I didn't like vegetables like all other kids, but I also didn't like meat. And I thought all kids were like that. I thought all kids didn't like meat or vegetables. Later on, I found out that no, most kids like meat and not vegetables, but I didn't like either of them. And so I just like wrote not really liking meat. I had like a very short phase of kind of eating a little bit more meat products just because like friends and all that stuff. And I very quickly found out that I would get full super fast and not be able to finish like the food that I'm really enjoying. And that really bothered me because when I don't like to waste food, but to like, I want to, it's good. I want more. So for that reason, unless for a really long time, I was what my boyfriend, what my boyfriend called a full vegetarian, because I would always pick the vegetarian options unless there wasn't any like, there wasn't any or there wasn't any good ones or any of that. And then basically eventually later on my boyfriend and I like for him, because for health reasons, he went vegetarian and then I was, he didn't technically go, I was influencing him. And so since he went fully vegetarian, since he went fully vegetarian, then I was like, well, I'm as well. And I didn't give up very much. I mean, like, I think I gave up like curry fish balls or pretty much it. Yeah. So let's go to some of the recipes you have on your website. Looks like this is just yeah. So the top there left, that's the vegan tune sauce and how you can use it, correct? Yeah. So because it's got like chunks of TBP and mushroom, it's really good at like kind of recreating the like the meat bits on in bolognese. And then as well as it being having that like beef and onion flavor, it just makes it really easy to you just, you know, do the sauce, put some tomatoes and whatever other seasoning you want. But you know, it's makes it super easy to make a vegan bolognese. And then on the bottom left, you have the version of Zajangmian, right? And with the recipe for it. Yeah, that's actually a collab with like, with a plant-based instant noodle company. And it was using our tune sauce in combination with their shiitake soup packets. So and their noodles, of course. But yeah, so that was also one of those like, you know, very bold, traditionally, more complex recipes that using our sauce plus their instant noodles made it super easy and delicious and healthy. And then on the bottom right, it looks like you have a really good looking sandwich, were those the chicken cutlets TBP that you used or what we're using for that? Yeah, so this is like a like onigiri, but like a sandwich onigiri, which is like kind of like a food trend here in the Bay Area. But that's basically what that was. I actually for this one had used fried tofu. I hadn't used TBP in that one yet, but I do have one coming out soon for a sandwich that does use the like extra large TBP, as I mentioned. One slice, China was like, did it all. So how do you get your inspiration for the recipes? So some of it is, well, a lot of it is like what I personally have grown up with. So obviously, like there's porridge on there. There's like just very simple noodles rice. So a lot of it is that some of it is stuff that I like eating in restaurants. And I like to learn to make stuff I eat in restaurants that I really like so that I don't have to pay for them anymore. So like the steamed, there's like steamed, what is it, steamed noodles, rice noodles, the tangfen. Those are, I love them at dim sum. I get them every time. So there's that. And then there's like, there's just other things where it's just, you know, things I like to eat. But we don't necessarily like make them at home a lot, but it's a good opportunity for me to learn. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, how did you, you said you were always involved in your family business and now you're kind of taking on the social media? Like how did you guys all get started? Yeah. Growing up. Yeah, of course. So I remember not like perfectly, but in like third to fourth grade age, because we started in fourth grade. But for a while, my dad was made several trips to Taiwan to kind of figure out like what we wanted to do like business in. And eventually that landed on where we are, like on vegetarian food, which is where we are now. And from there, he had a lot of contacts from his previous jobs in the Bay Area, a lot of supermarkets and restaurants. So it wasn't hard getting our products in the stores. But obviously, you know, you put in the stores doesn't mean people are going to buy it. So it was just the four of us. Every weekend, we went to a local supermarket, Marina, Lion, and we hung out by the freezers. We had all our stuff in the freezers and where we had them in boxes out in front of the table. And my sister or my mom would be cooking our food. And then I would be in the front with like toothpicks and like, you're like, come care of food. And I like Costco. Oh, yeah, 1000%. Yeah, it's the it's the whole thing. And, you know, it's when when it's your family and your business, you really kind of like, need to bust your butt and you want to like make sure you sell everything. And then also the other thing was for me as an incentive was just like, you know, if we don't sell everything, then we have to clean it all up. We got to bring it back. It's a whole thing afterwards. And then it takes longer to go home. So you sell it all, you don't have to bring anything home. You don't have to clean up as much stuff. So yeah, that was like a lot of it. But everything from like, we had containers, and we're unloading things or putting things up in the warehouse, like low fourth grade, fifth grade me like pushing big boxes around with my parents, getting them in the stores. We were very involved, me being like the immigrant, like the child of immigrants who grew up here, you know, when like Asian parents are like, you know, you have to be the lawyer and in elementary for yeah, so I was calling the FDA to figure out FDA stuff in elementary. I remember one time the lady on the phone was like, how old are you? I was like, I'm like 12. And they're like, Oh, okay. I'm like, yeah, please, like we need our stuff very soon. And things a lot earlier on, when you're around longer than they're less like what's going on. But earlier on, they inspect things all the time. And we're like, we need stuff. We're out of stuff. We need our stuff. You can inspect it all you want. But like, please do it now. So make calls and be like, Hey, like, where's our stuff? And they're like, how old are you? So yeah, that happened a lot. And then later on, things were like more steady and more stable. And I'd still help out with things here and there, like, making sure that our labels are good. I did a lot of research as a middle schooler into the requirements of nutrition labels. So I did a lot of that, make sure that you know, there are things the right size and they fit right. And we have all the details that they needed. But yeah. So later on, as it was stabilized, I was much I was less involved and I went to college and all that I was working. But now I'm back to try to make this accessible to more people just because like there's very little vegan, Chinese, Asian, not even just Chinese, Asian food cravings all the time when I saw your stuff, all the stuff that I used to eat when I was a kid. And obviously I've given it up now. And, you know, just kind of like you crave that stuff still sometimes. I mean, you would never eat, you know, the real thing, because you know, the impacts on the environment and, you know, stuff like that and your health and everything. But I mean, this is a great alternative for people, you know, who are used to eating like that, you know, like the pork floss, I haven't had that in years. And even my husband, he's never had that before, but he's like, this is great, you know, it's like, it was very, you know, refreshing to have something like that available. And you guys do deliver to Hawaii, which is great. And it looks like, I mean, you deliver all over the country, right? Yeah. So within the US for all of our dry products, and I say that because very soon I'm going to get our frozen products up there, and that's going to be a slightly different story. But right now for our dry products, shipping is the same all across the US and orders of $60 or more is free shipping. I do have it opened up so that like, there can be international orders, but those I don't have like a flat rate shipping, I just have whatever I will be charged because I can't pay. You know, we're not big enough right now where I can ship out, I can dish out like the $20, $50 for international. But so there are a few international orders for people that really want it, because I don't want to be like, no, if they're willing to, you know, pay for that shipping. I want to try to, my goal is to try to make this accessible for everyone. Once frozen things come into play, then that that'll be like a slightly different story. But yeah, that's how it is right now. So for the frozen stuff, is it mostly like, you know, like the fish balls and the vegan shrimp like that kind of stuff made with soy or what kind of other products do you have? Yeah, so we have a lot of that are made with soy and those are not, those are not gluten free. We do have a lot that are gluten free that are made with a type of seaweed extract. I can't name what it is right now. I don't think it's the one that like people have allergies to, though technically everyone can have allergies to anything. But I know there's one that's specific like seaweed substance that people can be allergic to. This is not the one. But it's kind of like similar to agar. And it gives that like chewy texture. Yeah, now that is wonderful. Do you have any takeaway for our viewers? Because our time is up now. I mean, my goal is just to try to expand the varieties for people who are interested in vegan Asian food. And that's really ultimately why I'm doing this. You know, I, there's a lot of limitations to what I have and a lot of challenges and stuff. And so really, I just wanted to be able to share what I get to eat every day because I have this at home. But I wanted to be able to share this with more people and kind of expand the horizons for vegan Asian food. Yeah, no, and we are so grateful for you because there are a lot of people who really want vegan food out there like myself. So thank you so much. We have to wrap it up. I'm Dr. Grace O'Neill. This is Healthy Planet on ThinkTec Hawaii. We've been talking with Michelle Yang of the Yankee Trading Company. Thanks for being here. If you enjoyed this coverage and conversation, please hit the like button below and subscribe to our channel for more great content on ThinkTec. Check out my website at graceandhawaii.com or Instagram at Graceful Living 365 for more information on my show guests. Thanks so much for watching. I'm your host, Dr. O'Neill. Aloha everyone.