Pun stars Janet and Greta Podleski have written the nation's four most popular cookbooks including their latest, The Looneyspoons Collection.
Janet will be offering advice and insider knowledge about how she and her sister grew to be Canadian publishing icons, and experts on eating well to live better, during the free Healthier You Expo at the Civic Centre on Sunday, Oct. 19, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
"My sister and I dream in pun," Janet laughed. "With our four books with well over 600 recipes that we had to come up with ridiculous titles for, we only got stuck once and that was in Crazy Plates (book two) where we had an eggplant parmesan and we just couldn't come up with anything."
They asked the public to help.
"We had about 300 people submit and they were all really bad," laughed Janet.
And by that she doesn't mean a groaner of a pun, she just means really bad.
Finally in the latest book they decided to go with Eggplanet Hollywood, with a cute cartoon to go with it.
In the latest book, The Looneyspoons Collection, there are 325 recipes, including 150 gluten free because of the high demand.
"My sister is like a genius with the recipes and she uses common everyday ingredients that are in your fridge or in your pantry already and that's really important," said Janet. "This book is our favourite by a million trillion billion, that's for sure."
The sisters Podleski took their first two books out of print about eight years ago because they were geared for the 1990s when everything was low fat or no fat, not caring about sugar or carbs, but nutrition has changed so much since then.
"Now we know fat is not evil, in fact experts are saying we need fat and that's the opposite of what it was all about back in the 90s," said Podleski, who also co-hosts with Greta, the Food Network Canada's Eat, Shrink and Be Merry, also the title of their third book.
During the hour-long talk at the Healthier You Expo, Janet will be sharing details of how they got started and offering tips on living a healthier lifestyle.
"I'm jamming the hour with really good information and the first half an hour I'm telling our really inspirational against-all-odds story of how my sister and I did what we did," said Janet. "How we had no money and no publishing experience, no culinary experience and somehow we managed to write four of the best-selling cookbooks in Canadian publishing history."
There's so much in that story.
"People laugh, they cry and I feel that no matter what the goal is, whether it's to lead a healthier lifestyle or whether they want to change their career or change their lives in some other way, listening to the story it seems to really ignite people. It's one of those if she can do it, I know I can do it kind of things," said Janet.
Their first cookbook, Looneyspoons, published in 1996, with the help of David Chilton of Wealthy Barber and Dragon's Den fame, became one of the fastest-selling books in Canadian publishing history, selling 850,000 copies. It spent eight months on the national bestseller list at number one.
In the second half hour Janet switches into high fat-burning gear.
"I will give people my absolute best-ever tips that I've collected over the last 18 years," said Janet. "I call it How to Win the No-Belly Prize. My best tips on how to create a healthy body. So there's all the latest and greatest in cutting edge information but also very common sense. I present it using all of my puns and lots and lots of humour, so it's not preachy. I think there's a real difference in telling people what to eat and telling them about all the things that are going to kill them or make them fat. I think there's enough of that in the world."
Janet wants to inspire change and make it fun, she said.
"It's almost like they get healthy by accident."
