This episode is presented by Shacksbury Cider. Hi, I'm HRN's executive director, Katie Moseman Waddler, with a preview of this week's episode of Meet and Three, our weekly food news roundup. So every day the shutdown continues to grow is another day that there will be a backlog. This week, we're looking at the unexpected ways the government shutdown has impacted our food system. There are nearly 1.6 million New Yorkers who rely on snaps to feed themselves and their families every single day.
There is a real impact on our friends and neighbors. A lot of farmers rely on commodity loans at the end of the year. Since the offices are not open, those loans aren't available to them. Tune in to this week's Meet and Three on Heritage Radio Network. That's M E A T plus sign T-H-R-E-E.
Available wherever you listen to podcasts. Brooklyn. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez back from her fantastic important meeting last week. How are you doing, Nastasia? Yeah?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got Matt in the booth. How you doing?
Hey, hey, hey. Yeah. So Nastasia, uh, we already talked about how you were like you tasted the rice at my house, and you were like, garbage gyro rice. I know. How high are are my tastes if you're Jiro Rice?
But she's like disagreed. She yeah, I'm like, yeah, true, true, fair. I'm like, but do you take that as a compliment or as a slight? His rice is as not in I don't like his rice. Right.
Like, and the and the thing is, people, people, we have had other people sushi in Japan. It's not just a case of dumb Americans go to Japan to try to tell the Japanese how to make their own product. It's not like that, right? Right. His rice in particular, you know.
I take more exception with the Michelin guide reviewers. You know what I mean? Like who gave him like the three stars and like blew him up into this giant thing. Cutting impeccable. Cutting, great, gorgeous.
Everything cooked was disgusting, hammered, right? And the rice was not to my taste, but it is, I think, the way that Jiro wanted it. And you've mimicked it for some reason. Nastasi's disgusting Jiro Rice. So uh how you doing?
Fine. You enjoying the subway? No. So people It's bad enough that we live here and the weather's like this and it's awful, and you have to walk everywhere and you have everything on your back. But then, what else?
Well, I mean, everything in your back look like Mitch McConnell, like a crap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, all your junk with you at all times. Well, the subway uh has decided for some reason to skip every stop around.
And then go super slow. Yeah, doot doop doop doot. Yeah. Love it. Love it.
Love it. So Nastasia, I don't know why you were taking my subway line today. Um Stassi has a secret. Nastasi and I used to go to a secret hair salon. Uh, and really the there's two reasons that we went to this place.
One, no one spoke any English at all, so there's no possibility of communication between ourselves and the people. So it was like the only like 45 minutes of basically non-communicative silence, like just like kind of self-space you could get and still be with other people in the city of New York, right? It was amazing. Uh and the other reason was is that the head shampoo is like out of this world. And also Nastasi, and I don't know if you know this, cheap, very cheap.
So, you know, it was like it's like sixteen bucks, it's like 45 minutes long, includes like half hour hair, you know, hair shampoo. You know what I mean? But Nastasia now has found a new place. Do you go there? I I switch.
I've been I've been to both, you know, recently. We can't tell you where they are because we don't want a bunch of English speaking people showing up and making it so that I can understand what people are saying around me. If I can understand what people are saying around me, then my mind will tune into what they're saying. If I have no comprehension of what's going on around me, it's great. It's great.
It's the best. Had enough time to get here, but yeah. Well, apparently not. So now we need to schedule like eight hours to get here. We need to leave the night before and sleep over.
We should just sleep in the Matt, can we sleep here? Absolutely, you can. Sleep in the army tent. You know what? There is already a caller on the line, and I'm I'm sorry to say they do speak English.
Oh, well, well, that's fine for now. That's that's our job. It's like please. We want our downtime. Yeah, our downtime, we want to be completely without any form of human communication.
Oh, okay. Well, I just wanted this to be relaxing for you, you know. No, no, no, don't define. If I feel relaxed while I'm at work, shoot me. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Noted. Yeah, caller you're on the air. Hey y'all, thanks for taking my call. Uh my name is Devin.
Uh Nastasia, I hope you get the mojo back. I'm sending some good vibes your way. For the Super Bowl, I'm trying to make some sausages that will taste exactly like gumbo. I have a gumbo recipe I like. I've made fresh sausages and blood sausages as well.
The blood is the binder. But I can't just figure out how to get the texture that I want. Do you guys have any thoughts? Uh huh. Well, so what have you tried so far?
Like, so you want it to be super loose on the inside, or you just want like the flavors like the green pepper and uh and all of the other things that are in in the gumbo. Is it gonna be like you're gonna do like a shrimp and a sausage base? Like what do you what are you doing on the on the inside? Well, traditionally the uh proteins have been some wild game meat and uh some sausage. Um I I should have specified I do want the combination of the gumbo and the rice.
So the texture I'm going for is almost like a Korean blood sausage where the blood is the binder, but I just want it to taste like gumbo and have the other you know traditional gumbo ingredients that I've been using. But it's not in other words, like you're not worried about like the exact like texture. You're not like going for like a feel, you're not like worried about like uh an internal sauce like like uh we're not gonna have like a filet versus kind of okra kind of a situation here, right? Like in other words, it's just the flavors that you want and you're looking to do like a like a like a binder, and you're not doing any sort of uh you're doing mainly sausage and I don't know. There will be rice in there.
Uh I'm just using uh a darker roux. Um and it was, you know, ideally it'd be something that's sliceable, like you would slice maybe the Korean blood sausage or the Polish type or a morcia or something like that. Yeah, well, I mean, I think it should I mean so you're looking for something that's not you're looking for something to bind the way blood would, but that doesn't have a heavy blood taste so that the sucker tastes like gumbo? Exactly. Because I've tried it just by mixing cooked rice and my gumbo and tasting it uh it was too loose and too wet on the inside.
Right. What I wonder what would happen. I wonder what would happen so like so typically in these sausages right the rice is expanding and absorbing to kind of solidify and you end up with the kind of like depending on how much liquid etc etc how loose it is but the the we when you put it in do you parcook your rice or do you put it in how do you do your rice when you do your blood sausage it's been so many years since I've made a a blood sausage. Do you do any par cooking to it at all or yeah the rice is fully cooked. Fully cooked fully cooked.
So it's not going to absorb too much water. So it's not like it's not like you'd do for like a like a haggis or anything like that. You're you're putting in fully cooked product. Okay. Right.
So you get to choose the kind of uh texture you want but you want it relatively loose so in other words you wouldn't want to do like an emulsified sausage or like a a force meat or like uh like a mousse and then like fold the rice into it and then stuff it that way. Because that would stuff easy but you'd have kind of a a denser you know more like you would for like um like a seafood sausage or like an emulsified like uh like you know an emulsified sausage but you're not looking to do that. Right. Just from a a technical perspective I'd have to figure out how to get the emulsion right and then uh I think that would introduce too many variables but I'm willing to explore if if that's the way to get the result. I mean, I know that would hold as long as you don't break it and get it, you know, as long as as long as it doesn't break.
Like emulsified sausage is not as hard as people say it is, as long as you keep all the stuff cool, right? And you add enough binder to it so it's not gonna like it's not gonna fly apart on you. Now, most of the time I cheat and I'm doing like uh, like I say, seafood base, and so I'd I basically just make a standard canal mixture and then put it into sausage casings and go. I know that would work with rice, but I don't know what would happen if you took it away from that kind of base and turned it more into a um so you're doing hmm, I don't have to think about this, but I don't have too long to think about it. And you Matt, you should open up the chat room to it too as I think.
The word you would use a minute ago, canal? Yeah. I'm not familiar with it. How do you spell it? I'll look it up.
Oh, Q-U-E-N-E-L-L-E. Oh, okay, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah.
And you know, that's just you know, it's just uh like a seafood moose. It's a moose type thing. Yeah, it's just a moose. It's a seafood moose, and you know, for if you're doing a canal, you just take your your spoons and go chak chak chak chak and and then you you poach them off. Or you could take, you know, fundamentally the same mixture and pipe it into a casing because who doesn't like the snap of a casing, right?
And then uh and then go, but and I know that would be easy to fold rice into, but I don't know if that's gonna be the kind of texture you want. And I've never done it I've never done it with other than seafood. I have made regular emulsified sausages before, but I've never then folded anything into my emulsified sausage. Of course, people do it all the time. People, you know, fold cheese into their sausages all the time, you know what I mean?
Other things into their emulsified sausage all the time. So um, I mean, that's gonna be the easiest, easiest way to go is to I think do like a mousse like that to pipe it in and then and then poach it off. But I don't know if that's gonna be exactly what you want. I'm gonna try to give it more thought. No problem.
I I appreciate it. I think I just gotta do some more work than uh in exploring kind of the use of the emulsification then. That's something I've been avoiding up till now. But it's like, yeah, I mean, like depending on to get that bind, right? Yeah, right.
Depending, I mean, it is true that it is easy to F up a like uh like a standard like a hot dog emulsion, right? For some reason those go kind of grainy pretty easily. But then if you just look at like the standard like moose-based sausages that you know French people cheat with all the time, they're pretty easy to get going. You know what I mean? Like they very rarely die on you.
You know what I'm saying? Um so maybe you know, splitting the difference somehow is uh is the the way the way to get it to work. But please uh hit me back, uh like either call in or tweet to a cooking issues and let me know where you're getting with it. I want to know your final solution so that in the future I will know what worked. Gotcha.
I'll take some pictures as well if things go well. Uh I got some experiments to do, but I appreciate your help. Cool. Have a good Super Bowl. Thanks you too.
Nastasia, you're gonna do a Super Bowl party? What does he mean? I he hopes he gets my my I get my mojo back. Because you've lost your complete mojo. I don't know.
Maybe I was talking crap about you last week. Maybe I was talking crap about you last week. Matt, was I talking to you sex life? No, that doesn't just mean your sex life. Wait, what?
What? What was it? What does mojo mean? Oh, mojo is used uh more generically than that now. Much more generically.
You're just saying you were complaining about the city, city getting you down. It's like life force. Yeah. So you're so when you listen to the doors, you're only thinking about his about his mojo rubber. In the case of Jim Morrison, yeah, that seems like the right interpretation.
Yeah, but that's because that's all Jim Morrison thought about. I mean, I don't know. Nastasia is like the Jim Morrison of cooking issues. Wow. There's only two.
Wow. Yeah, I know. It's not saying much. Does that make me Ray Manzaric? Yeah, yeah.
You like steady, you steady the ship, you make sure things happen. Well, that's because Nastasia freaking hates the doors. I don't know who she hates more. Ray Manzarek or I do not. Really?
The doors are an overrated bar band. Come on. What? First of all, everyone hates them, so how can they be overrated? Dave hates the Eagles.
I don't know. Everyone hates the doors. That's not true, though. I'm supposed to hate them because instead of a bass player, they have a keyboard. Right, that's terrible.
But Ray Manzarek is great. His keyboard is good. He's a great keyboardist. Yeah, I think he is good. I think Jim Morrison is overrated.
He's supposed to be like a rock god. Well, I mean he is sexy. I guarantee you he was terrible in concert because he was wasted all the time. You know what I mean? Actually, I should ask uh my stepfather.
My stepfather saw them in concert at the at the garden in Boston. Um we have another caller on the line with a question about the doors. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey, uh uh emailed in two questions last week. One about pressure canning and the other about milk.
Ah, milk. The reverse osmosis? Yeah. Yes. I so uh here I found, see if I wrote it down for you.
There's someone. So clearly it can be done. I looked it up, and clearly people do this for a living. But you were mostly interested in how to kind of steal time from your buddies who make maple syrup, right? Correct.
Yeah, so if we can run milk through the RO without affecting their maple syrup production. Right, right, right. Now, I didn't have time to read the full article, right? But two things you might be interested in is uh someone, I forget her name, someone in Denmark wrote a story on uh the impact of reverse osmosis on milk quality, and it was her findings that the quality of milk is not reduced in any way by there there's some change in the uh amount uh in the amount of time it takes to curdle if you're gonna make cheese out of it. Um but but besides that, like reverse osmosis is gentle as you would expect it would be on the components of uh of the milk.
All right. So there's that, but then here's what you want to look. Someone wrote, and here's why I didn't have time to go through it, it's 350 pages long, but if someone wrote their dissert their dissertation on exactly what you want to know, and uh they were from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. This was written in 2015. I forgot to write down the author's name, but the name of it is fouling and cleaning of reverse osmosis membranes in the dairy industry.
So if anyone has the information for you, it is the person who wrote that 350 page thesis on I'll sit down and read the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, because then nothing but time on my hands. Right, because you know, uh, you know, presumably if they published it, this person uh adequately defended their PhD. So instead of saying, instead of going to your maple buddies and being like, hey, some knucklehead in Bushwick says it's not gonna hurt your your your membrane, you can be like, well, this guy wrote a PhD or a woman, I don't know. I don't for I forget who wrote it.
This person wrote his PhD thesis on it, and look, and then they have charts and data, so it's gonna be all set one way or to the other. And what one of my questions with it that I I don't think I expressed in the email without a emails, is um everything I read about pri uh so I'm doing it to pressure can I'm a pressure canning kick right now. Um commercially they're not boiling down. They're doing some they call it an evaporator, but I can't figure out what the evaporator is. And I know, like with maple syrup, when you put it through an RO, the quality of the maple syrup goes drastically down because the sugar is in the pan less time, so you get a lot grade A, but a lot lower uh quality syrup and and less robust tasting syrup.
So I wasn't sure if that's the same thing that crosses over with the milk if it has to be boiled, or are they commercially to get a product uh similar to commercial can they even be used reverse osmosis so that the boiling time is greatly reduced. Okay, so right. So evaporated milk, I mean the here's the issue, right? When you're when you're when you're boiling maple, when you're making maple syrup, right, the goal is to make something that has flavor, right? So i i if you I mean you could take sap and you could completely without applying any heat to it with a high enough vacuum, suck it down to 66 bricks, right?
It would be a pain in the ass. Yeah, but I'm at pain in the butt. It would be a huge pain in the butt, but you could do it. Now, what you're telling me, and I've never run the experiment, so I don't know, but what you're telling me is is that if it doesn't have that heat applied, it doesn't have the flavor people like, right? Because it doesn't matter.
Oh, right. Well, so that's that's your difference between the different grades and the different colors. Um so you get different years. So this year producing was a really low sugar year because of the weather in the SAP. So all the SAP people that produce boiling without reverse osmosis is really, really dark this year.
Um if you get this year's syrup from anywhere in the northeast that's a really light color, it's been through reverse osmosis because that's the only way to get the light color. Yeah, because it it's it's not spending time in the pan. Right, because the longer remember the longer you're the longer you're boiling it, the kind of more um the more kind of breakdown you're gonna get of whatever stuff is in there that's not pure and the kind of darker it's gonna get. And also, I I might add also, I don't know this, but presumably, uh, you know, the sugar is there in a certain amount, but also other stuff is there in a certain amount. So if your sugar is low, it doesn't necessarily mean that your other adjuncts in it are at the same lowness.
So to concentrate to the same bricks on sugar, you're probably gonna get more of that other garbage. So it's more of a mineral. Right. So but uh but maybe not. If you're telling me that if you just evaporate it with RO, it's just as light as it used to be.
That's saying that if you do just remove the water without heat, then it's not it's not browning as much. So I guess that means that that's not the case. An elderly couple that I help do their sugar and they've got 150 taps and I run their arc um in it or their um their arch and it's always it's dark syrup this year. I've got some friends that have half a million taps that everything that runs through RO and then it goes to uh some bourbon producer down south. Um but their their syrup is at the right bricks, but it it doesn't taste hardly tastes any maple at all.
So I wasn't sure if if that same theory would affect the way that the milk turned out. Okay. Well, what I think the good news for you is is that in general, commercially, they I think they do do it under vacuum because if you cook milk down, it will naturally kind of myard brown on you. You know what I mean? Like it it will brown on you.
And um, so the I think uh, you know, and obviously you can see that it's accelerated in a in a in a pressure cooker, it goes brown brown brown in like under an hour, right? So if you were gonna co boil concentrate something down, the more concentrate it concentrated it gets and and the hotter it is, the browner it's gonna get. And most people, when they're marketing these products, don't want those brown flavors. They want it to kind of be as light and as as little Myard reaction as is humanly possible. And so for those people, I wouldn't be, you know, surprised that they make sure that the milk is not too basic when it goes in because basicity will obviously jack myard, and they probably try to keep the the temperature as low as they can.
And so applying a vacuum on it would be one way to do it, but then also presumably applying RO to it would be another way to do it, right? Now or and and then like you know, the ultimate I mean the the advantage of RO is it's relatively low energy input for water removal compared to boiling, right? Um, and also uh like a no heat, a no heat situation. I mean, but the I'm you know, the maple people probably just do it because it's energetically favor favorable for them. Is that true?
I mean, I don't really know much of it. Yeah, you can you can produce uh, you know, there's no way that you're without RO you're doing uh uh half a million taps and then and boiling boiling off conventionally. Um it's gotta go through the for the RO what bri what bricks do they take it to in the RO? Do you know? I say they take it to whatever the minimum legal is for the standard of the state of Vermont to call it Vermont Maple syrups which I is either 66 or 67.
Oh they do it they do it a hundred percent RO no so it's finished it's finished in the um in the arc but it's or the arch sorry I keep getting it wrong it's finished but once the flow starts going into that thing and as it's oil burned and the chimney gets red hot I mean you get like three or four gallons a minute minute out of it. Right right so it's pretty close when it goes in. But are they putting it in at like 30 bricks or are they putting it in at like 40 bricks or like all the way this way around like 45 so it's pretty pretty dang close. They're not getting rid of that much water huh? No not at all.
Not at all. And there's a huge the huge flavor discrepancy between that and stuff that's been actually boiled. Yeah now let me uh let me ask you this um when you so when you said this year because this is kind of interesting to me when you said this year was a low sugar year like so uh well from what I gather you're looking at about a 40 to one reduction to take sap to syrup right roughly uh a little bit higher than that but yeah okay so but like so like if it if it's like what it's 42, what was it this year? Like as much as fifty or like was it even worse than that? Uh it was it was worse than that.
So um I've I I have written down not here at my house but in the sugar shack. Um I think for every I don't want to quote myself and have it way wrong but we we our yield was really low this year. Um so the the amount of I think we it was like up like thirty percent for the amount of gallons of sap needed to produce a uh a gallon of syrup. Thirty percent, geez. So it's like it's not like a big difference.
And and but and your and your run was the same, your run was the same? Like in other words, like you you you got the same number of liters of raw sap and you just got 30% less syrup out of it, or did you want to do that? No, so they uh more liters of sap. So the trees actually produce more liters of sap because they they kept thinking coming in and out of hibernation, so they kept cranking it out. Huh.
So uh the the the draw time was a lot like it was an extra month of collection. Um so the sugar is instead of going super concentrated up, I don't I don't know the science behind it, but we had like an extra month of drying sap this year, and so that really dilutes down, but because it was so uh warm, the the melt off from the snow that like that moisture is available in the ground for it to draw to push that sugar out to the leaves. Alright, so I think what our listeners want to know is is our strategic maple syrup reserves okay this year or not? Oh, I think they're fine. I mean it I wouldn't I don't think there's a problem.
All right. I'm plenty of maple syrup anyways. So I've got tons of mason stars in the basement. But are you telling me we should buy from a smaller producer that doesn't have an RO unit because the RO grade A amber is gonna suck this year? I I well, no, because I think it sucks every year.
That's a matter of opinion. And you know, I grew I grew up in Vermont having made a syrup that came from a small producer that was boiled off, and that's what I grew up with. I didn't grow up with the RO stuff. And uh when I go somewhere and it's really light syrup, I'm really disappointed. Where a lot of people that they think, oh, really light syrup, really high quality, and and that's what they like.
Yeah, but you know, that that's the weird thing. If they want super super light, then why not just why not just use sugar? Right. Why not just use corn syrup with uh fake maple? Yeah, pancake syrup as it's called.
Pancake. Pancake syndrome. Alright, well, listen. Well, one one last word of suggestion. Uh, you might not want to tell the people whose RO units you're borrowing that you think their product is garbage.
Uh, they know it's garbage. They boil off their own for themselves. I mean, it's it's a business, right? I mean, if you some barber producer came to you and say we'll we'll buy all your production, you go, okay. You squeeze every penny out of it.
I mean, I they know it. All right. All right, very good. Uh I have one other one other question for you, but we're gonna skip it. Um, my daughter who listens with me had a question about seeds, but she decided that she wasn't gonna eat her lunch because it had rice in it, so uh we're gonna skip it.
All right, well, uh, like, you know, uh email it in. We'll get it next time. This episode is brought to you by Shacksbury Cider, who believes cider can be daring, complex, and eminently drinkable. Located in Virgins, Vermont, Shacksbury make a broad offering of ciders, from the bright and fruity rose to inventive small batch wild apple fermentation. Each fall, Shacksbury takes to the hills of Vermont to forage for the wild and forgotten fruit that make up their lost apple project.
Shaxbury, producer of the first American-made Petnat Cider, continues to experiment every year with limited edition ciders designed to spotlight locally foraged fruit. To learn more, visit Shaksbury.com or follow them on Instagram at Shacksburg. Are you enjoying this podcast? Heritage Radio Network has plenty more. My name is Jimmy Carboni, and I'm the host of Beer Sessions Radio here on HRN.
My show is an audio ale salon, celebrating the world of craft beer, cider food, and more. Through discussions with industry insiders and knowledgeable beer fans, my friends and I explore every aspect of the brewer's craft from grains to pint glass and tasting to toasting. You can find Beer Sessions Radio wherever you listen to podcasts and on Heritage Radion Network.org. Uh call her you're on the air. Oh, hi, Dave.
Hi, Stoff. Is this my roommate? Claire. Hey Claire, how you doing? I'm good.
How are you guys? Alright. Alright, what's going on? So I have a very important question that stuff, my roommate, and I would love your help in settling. Temporary roommate.
Yes, temporary roommate. We will be living together for about two months when all is said and done. This is the first Nastassi's hearing of it. She has a surprise face on. And by the way, we will not on air ever, and don't ask me, discuss Nastasia's roommate rules.
They are Oh, they are perfect. They are not the first one, Claire. Dave, don't only masturbate in the shower. Oh my god, this is a family show. What the hell?
I said we will never discuss this on air. I mean, that was actually. Why did she ask me that then? I mean, she that was a trap. It was not a trap.
I specifically said, and when she told me the rules, I was like, this is horrifying. And also I also whatever. I don't want to like. That's the only bad one. The others are only brush your teeth in the bathroom.
No suitcase explosions. Um take the trash out. Let's get no cups, no cups left around. You're now going over all of the rules. Rent the runway bags, go directly to recycling.
That's an add-on for me. I thought you had to give the bags back to them. No, the plastic they're gonna be. No, the plastic. Hey, rent the runway people.
Here's a new problem. They send you they send you two or three things in one bag, but if you only want to send one thing back, you don't have enough bags anymore. Well that's why you have to have a mate who's uh uh rent the runway mule for you. Yeah. And the Clinton.
I'm really living the dream. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, listen. So Stas and I have something called the junk microwave, which is where we basically store all the naughty snacks in the microwave. That's terrible idea.
Okay, but yes, I would concur because the microwave is like hot. Well, that's not the only reason. First of all, why is your microwave hot? Yeah, wait, I have questions. Because I there's something, I don't know.
It's just always like the light on the light. Oh, yeah. The light. You have like a low rider light underneath it? Yeah.
What kind of light? It's like a heat lamp, and she insists on keeping it on when I'm sleeping. Because I don't know. Why do you keep a heat lamp underneath a microwave? Do you also store French?
If you liked French fries, I would think you were storing French fries underneath it, like on a perma basis. But you hate French fries. So, yes, this is another thing with Sasha's. I think the real issue here is that we're basically, are we not creating a breeding ground for junk food bacteria? Well, no, I mean those things are designed to be, you know, relatively I mean you could get roaches in there.
They like heat. Is there any is there any moisture near there? Roaches can invade microwaves. Roaches can invade microwaves. What feels moist.
Oh, if it's moist, then yeah, I mean Yeah, but the junk food is like nuts. That's not junk food. First of all, there is no such thing as junk food. I don't believe I'm not, I don't allow anyone in my house to use the term junk food, and when they use the term junk food, I berate them endlessly because it like you're just creating a false desire for something because like, oh, it's junk, I want it, oh, I can't have it, I want it. Would you it's food.
There's food that you can, there's food that you should have sparingly, and then there's food that you could eat as much as you want. Nuts are relatively dry, Claire. I wouldn't worry about nuts. What are you worried about? Okay, that's well, okay.
What I'm worried about is like the um pop chip bag that's opened. Pop chips are a dry food. Yeah, but I'm telling you that there's moist, it feels damp and hot in the microwave. Look, first of all, things do feel m more moist when they are warm, strangely, because things give off. But but like if the if pop chips in particular, well, are they the sweet ones?
Those are kind of a garbage product right there. That's a fake that's a fake junk food. It's garbage. What? It isn't it just a fake rice chip?
Yes. Uh okay, look, I would just eat real salt and vinegar potato chips. Those things taste delicious. But anyway, my point is that uh a pop chip, because it is just uh expanded uh rice starch, or isn't it right? Is it rice or is it corn?
Rice. Alright, it's expanded rice starch. Uh uh, so it's it's fundamentally it's styrofoam, but it's made of rice starch. So if it's moist at all, it will lose its crunch. So if there's any moisture in there, it is also garbage.
Like bacteria require sour patch kids that grow bacteria, right? Sour Okay, look, they're able they are individually wrapped. Sour patch. Your sour patch kids are individually wrapped? You sit there and you individually wrap each sour patch child.
No, they're the Halloween. I think it's I think it's a family. Like I think there's four in a pack. Okay. Listen, anything with a water activity, uh, pop chips have uh a very, very low water activity.
Bacteria require several things. They require a high water activity, um, they can't have too high of a salt level, um, and there can't be things in it that actively kill bacteria. So what what happens is is that your pop chips, unless they're wet, which they won't be, and then they won't be pop chips anymore, they'll be gruel, right? They are safe. Yes, they're safe.
Uh the water activity in a sour patch kid, first of all, it is sour and it's got very, very high uh amount of like sugar, it's fundamentally a solid. Nothing can really grow inside of the sour patch kid. But if you have condensation, like if you have like condensation or a mist forming on the inside walls of your microwave, now that can grow bacteria, and then when you when your hand goes in, it wipes across the biofilm of crap. Then when you put your hand into the pop chip bag, which I don't recommend, by the way, I recommend you throw away the pop chips and buy salt and vinegar potato chips. When you put your hand into the pop chip and and now you've contaminated it with that disgusting biofilm, that's when you start having problems.
Exactly. That's what I'm talking about. But may I suggest something else? Why don't you get you what's called a bread box, an old school bread box? It's just meant to keep large vermin out, right?
Like mice and whatnot. It's got it, and air can move in and out of it because it's got like a little screen, but not so much air that stuff dries out. Put your snack foods in there and reserve your microwave for microwave usage. Like, what if you want to melt chocolate? Right.
Yeah. This morning I had to take everything out and put my oatmeal in. Wait, you don't like oatmeal and stash? Or you don't like microwave oatmeal. You know why I don't like you know why I don't like the most oatmeal that people kind of make?
They don't salt it. People are disgusting. I don't salt mine. Salt your oatmeal. Not like a lot.
Don't make it because that's the way God wants it. Add a little salt to the oatmeal. Do you add sugar? No, no, I'm doing the fast metabolism diet. What is that even anything?
What does that even mean? What is it? What does that mean? Fast metabolism diet. What is that?
What what? What does that mean? Are you familiar with the term the great oat rush from the 90s? No. Where like people were like, No.
There was a there was this study later, like found to be useless where they were like, oat fiber. Oat fiber can lower your cholesterol. So then all the oat companies, meaning Quaker and like the two or three other oat people on Earth, were like, if you eat a if you eat eight boat tons of oats, right, then all of a sudden your cholesterol is gonna drop. So then everybody and their mother, brother, sister, father, cousin, started pounding oats, and then all of the big companies started pushing oats on people, and it was called the Great Oat Rush. So I feel that there is some sort of like oat oat rush reboot that's going on here.
In what way is an oat supposed to boot your boost your metabolism? It's a diet. There's more shit. It's a it's staged eating. What the hell does that mean?
Welcome to my life. On Mondays and on Mondays and Tuesdays, you eat like gluten-free grains, vegetables, fruit, and then on Wednesdays and Thursdays, you only eat green vegetables and protein. And then on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you eat all of the above plus healthy fat. Healthy what? Fat.
Fat. And what is what is this particular diet consider to be healthy fat? Avocado and nuts. Okay, you're in a cult. You have joined a cult.
Let me tell you something about cults and cult dieting. It's a book. Because I many, many look, dianetics is also a book. But what I'm saying, no offense out there, but like what I'm saying is is that you are in a cult. Now the good news about cult diets is they can work because uh most of the studies show that the most important thing with dieting is uh A, that you get bored with it, because if you're interested in eating, you'll you'll eat more.
So most diets that work require that you become hateful of the food you're eating, right? Because that way you're you just don't want to consume that much of it. And the second thing that's super important is no choice. If people re remove your choice, then you also tend to eat less, you tend to eat in a more regimented manner. And that's really why most things kind of work.
You know, I and by the way, like I've I've you know been a yo yo-yo my whole life, up down, up down, up down, and if you just regiment yourself, turns out it might hurt you. Like, I've I've lost a lot of muscle mass in the past on certain diets. I've like made myself incredibly angry. I used to have a diet called blunch. And uh on blunch, blunch, brunch, it so when you combine breakfast and lunch because you want to, that's brunch.
When you combine breakfast and lunch because you're only having one tiny meal to tide you over till dinner because you're on a stupid cultish regimented diet, that's called blunch. And whenever I was on the blunch diet, I was a evil, mean, more evil, more mean, more vindictive bastard than I would be on on a normal day. And Jen would come home at night and I would like you know, bite her head off. This is before we had kids, too. And she'd be like, You blunching?
I'm like, Yeah, sorry. Sorry, Jen. I'm blunching, I'm blunching hard. This anger's all coming from the blunch, Jen. But the fact of the matter is is that these kind of regimented cultish things work, but choose one that isn't ridiculous and that doesn't require you to like like just be like, you know what?
Oh, I'm gonna have every day two eggs and some sauerkraut. And that'll work the same. Because you're just choosing one random thing. I'm gonna have two eggs and a sauerkraut. And you're like, ooh, that looks good.
Is it two eggs and sauerkraut? Then no. You know what I mean? Like, or hey, go raw. If you if you if you go raw, all the food you eat's gonna get blasted out your hind end into your toilet, and you're not gonna you're not gonna like you know get any of it.
You know what I mean? All I'm saying is just realize, I hope it works for you, but you're in a cult now. We gotta go. Uh so I had some questions I didn't get to, including I have to go on another pizza rant. Some person wrote in with some helpful stuff, but I have to talk about next year week about commercial ovens versus home ovens.
What's the difference? Uh you know, how like pizza steals and other things work versus stones, sauces, peels, making a lot of pizzas in a row, etc. etc. I also, someone um who wrote in before is uh Johnnyet. We answered some one of his questions, but he has a thing out there.
He wants to know people. Think about this for next week. He wants to know he's a small egg producer, and he he says he can produce an egg with a lot more yolk than white, right? Like, in other words, versus a standard supermarket egg. He says he can jack the yolk percentage up, and we'll talk more about it.
Maybe he'll write in again. But is this something out there that people would be willing to pay extra? Would you, cooking issues listeners, be willing to pay extra for a massively yoked egg? Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network.
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