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Select Cooking Issues in the designation drop-down menu. Thanks for listening to HRN. Hello, welcome to Cooking Issues. Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues. Uh, we had to re-record uh the intro.
The original recording was lost. Um, but we want to start this week's show by talking about a longtime supporter of Cooking Issues listener, caller, uh, and supporter of Booker and Dax. He, you know, had the products, been, you know, talking to us for years, was a um really, you know, loved member of the cooking issues community, took his own life last week, and we just want to take a moment and um talk about it. And you know, uh, he wasn't actually in the hospitality industry, but you know, it's also a huge suicide's a huge problem in the hospitality industry. We just want to take a minute.
Anyone that can hear us, you know, please, if you feel hopeless, you don't know where to go, or you don't think there's you know any way that you can get help or that someone can help you, um, there is. And if you're thinking of taking your own life, there is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is 1-800-273-8255. That's 1-800-273-8255. Remember, there's help out there, and even if you don't think that you're worth saving, other people do. Please, please take, please take that last little bit of of effort and call and get some some help.
Don't hide the fact that you need help. Don't think it's silly that you need to go get help. Please, please do. So we do not have Matt in the booth today. We have uh, because he's getting married.
Oh. Yeah, he's getting married. And for some reason he believed that uh getting married was more important than coming in and engineering our show. Yeah, I feel about that. Well, what?
Our show is way more important than marriage. Well, more important than his marriage to you. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, but if like, you know, if like Paul McCartney was gonna be somewhere you would cancel like all the rest of the shows like forever.
Oh, we should say the boondoggler. Oh what? Well, Rebecca the Boondogler. Yes. Is engaged.
Oh, didn't we already say that? No. So we'll have a post-engagement boondoggler on here. I don't know if she's planned her wedding yet, but uh we'll be a real boondogger. We'll rip her up up one side and down the other.
Uh so in the booth today. Uh, call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So uh in the booth today we have Max. How you doing?
Doing great, how are you? All right, is this your first this is your first time? It is. So uh tell us uh because this is how we do this, tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure.
Uh I'm crazy for craft beer and I love whole. Oh, we've got a caller. Wait, hold the band? Yeah, hold the bands. Oh, the holes in general.
Oh. Uh caller on the air. Hello? Hi. Am I on the air?
Oh, yes. Okay, great, great. Hey Dave and Patchet. Uh this is the Crystal Chili guy. Oh, hey, what's up?
I'm calling about uh making stuff that people actually want to eat. That sounds like a better idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Yeah.
Uh wedding. Speaking of batch cocktails. Right. We want to make some cocktails the day before. We got a book about batch cocktails out from the library.
Almost every recipe had uh lemon juice or lime juice that said, you know, oh, add that two hours before and not earlier. Um so what are some good cocktails that are still uh sort of maybe pretty? We're thinking like one sort of lemonade one, another sort of whiskey peach based one. Um are there any techniques that we could use to make fruit juice used cocktail using cocktails? Is it who when you say we, is it you and your wife are making them?
Uh me and my husband. You and your husband. Okay. So are you, but they're for your wedding? Yeah.
Okay. Here, I think, how long do you have? Uh four weeks. Okay, you have time. The good news is I know you don't have time because you're planning, but you do have time.
So uh first mistake people make in life in in is trying to trying to force a particular life in cooking, especially catering cooking, is trying to force a recipe into the scenario instead of choosing the recipe for the scenario. Does that make sense? That does make sense. Right. So there are many recipes that don't require the the juice, lemon or lime, to be uh fresh, but they're not necessarily the c you know the normal things you'd think of.
So right off the top of the bat, so we're talking about a summer wedding. Where do you live? How freaking hot is it? Vancouver, not super hot. Right, right.
So okay, so you don't have to worry too much, but there are recipes that are built on the all of the ingredients being aged. So old school punches, for instance. Not that you want to do an old school punch, but old school punches that are made primarily with peel and oleosacarum, these things last a long time. They're also, and uh are like how are these being served? Do you have some sort of cater waiters who are gonna be pouring this out?
Uh yeah, we got a bar at the venue, and we'll have some observers there. Okay, so this is no offense to all of the cater waiters out there, but I have seen the vast majority of cater waiters, and again, I'm not trying to insult the whole category, but that I have met, uh, they're just doing this to make a couple of bucks before they do whatever they're gonna do with their life. And the translation of that is they do not care about your cocktail. So if you say to them something like, please make sure these bottles are on ice at least four hours beforehand, and then please don't pour them over ice. What they will do is not chill the bottles at all and then pour them over the world's crappiest ice with a lot of water in the bottom of the glass.
I'm telling you this from bitter experience. Okay? Right. So uh you have to like the good thing about punch recipes, uh, many of them I should say, is that they are relatively bulletproofed against wide variance in dilution and temperature, and they're built to be aged. Right?
So right away you're you're kind of winning there. You might want to jack the alcohol a little bit because you know, I don't know. If people know it's punch, they know they're about to get like eighty, you know, 30, 40 cups of this stuff fine, and the cups are small, but you get what I'm saying. Like modern cocktail people want uh alcohol level that's a a little bit higher. The second thing you can do is you can use cordials.
Now, cordials, I've been saying for many years, uh people need to get wrap their heads around cordials again. Uh now, cordials don't taste like fresh uh juice, but think about this. Do you really here's where you need uncl like like cloudy, unclarified fresh juice is for shaking cocktails, right? You're not pouring, you know, you I'm not, I should say, I don't know, you I mean I've spoken to you, but I don't you know I don't know how you feel about cocktails. But my point is is that is that like I'm only using unclarified fresh juice really in shaking cocktails.
Uh and you you do not want a cater wear shaking your cocktail, right? Now, a clarified juice, yeah, it's only gonna last uh you know a day before it starts going off. But run a test. So if you want to clarify some juice, run a test and see how long it lasts before you don't you don't like it anymore. Maybe you can do it, do it beforehand.
But really, cordials are bulletproof. Now they don't taste like fresh juice because they're not supposed to taste like fresh juice. And they've gotten a bad name because Rose's uh lime is not a uh, you know, uh no offense, Rose, but like you know, her lime juice isn't the best. You know what I mean? It like when I say it's not the best, it's bad.
But you can make like uh lemon cordials, you can make um you can make lime cordials. As an alternative, if you acid if you must use a fresh juice and you're gonna shake something, acid-adjusted orange juice lasts a lot longer than lemon or lime juice does before it goes bad. So, you know, yeah, you get like a couple of days out of acid-adjusted orange juice. It's a different flavor, but it's something you can use in lieu of uh in lieu of the fresh lemon or lime, and it won't get a detergent off taste, which is kind of the way I characterize old lemon or lime juice. Any of this making sense?
Yes, definitely. Alright. So you have four weeks. So what I'm expecting is that, you know, if you have any more questions, welcome to call back. Is that in I don't know whether you're going on honeymoon, but uh in six weeks, I want to hear how the cocktail went.
I want you to call back and I want you to tell me how the cocktail went. We'll do. Alright, and uh congratulations on uh the wedding, I'm sure it's gonna be great. Thank you. Alright, cool.
Dave, why do you think all these people want to make cocktails at their own wedding? Well, because it you paint, it's it's very frustrating. You get a lot of calls about it. It's very frustrating to pay someone a lot of money to do a bad job at something. You know what I mean?
It's like it's very frustrating to pay someone to do your plumbing and have them do a bad job. It's very frustrating to go to a this is why if you're a cook, you like restaurants can piss you off sometimes because it's very frustrating to go to a restaurant and pay someone for food and have them do a bad job. Bobby Murphy is here. Uh beverage director from uh beverage director, right? Beverage director.
Beverage director, yeah. Beverage director from uh existing conditions, formerly of uh next restaurant in Chicago. So you may also call in any of your Chicago, uh also from Iowa, uh your Iowa related, your Grant Akitz related questions, your Tales of the Cocktail Cap program running uh questions, or your cocktail questions, your beverage directing questions, and your non-alcoholic uh beverage questions to uh Bobby Murphy here. Speaking of which, we've got a question from Positive MD. Alright, what do you got?
Uh Positive MD is coming to New York, and he wants to know your suggestions for interesting bars, restaurants. Uh he is already planning on going to existing conditions. Well, you've made the right choice there. Yeah, that's the first choice right there. Yeah, probably don't need to go anywhere else.
Alright, so uh I would say I don't really Nastasi and I don't talk about it, but like three years ago I would say that no one knows better where to eat in New York than Nastasia Lopez, but I don't think she goes out as much as she did two or three years ago. That's not true. What? Alright, well, so okay, I'm gonna divide this into portions. I'm gonna have Nastasia.
What? Why would that have changed? Well, because, you know, you're a misanthrope. You used to used to be forced to go out. You know what I mean?
Okay. Okay. Apparently I've been corrected. Nastasia Lopez is going out. All freaking cylinders firing, as much as she ever did.
As much as she ever did. So Alright, Bobby and Nastasio. Go, Bobby. Yeah, where should positive MD go? Um, as far as bars?
Let's start with bars. Um, I mean you kinda have to like knock off all the classics, you know, Moria Margot, Def and Co. Uh, of course, existing conditions. Um first of all, Mori Margot, Death and Co. East Village.
Just just do like an East Village bunch. Then we can do like Yeah, Mr. Paradise, uh throw it to the our friends and family, Mace, uh the cabinet, which is a nice new Mescal bar. And I always tell people too, like, when you come to New York, um By the way, literally, this is what everyone does. He just pushed out all of the Cocktail Kingdom Greg Bone related bars at you that are on the East Village, and then we get over to our side of the of the city, he's gonna push out Katana Kitten, our sister bar.
Just wait, just wait, just wait. Katana Kitten. Uh by the way, we're up for Katana Kitten. The two of us are there's four bars up for Best New Bar. We're one of them.
Katana Kitten's also there. So, like, kind of no matter what happens, it's gonna be an awkward family picture. Uh no, but I would just say to anybody that comes to New York, don't burrow hop and like pick a neighborhood. Because if you're in the East Village, you could go to ten bars and Bobby. I want people to village hop from the East Village to the West Village, because we're in the West Village and I I, you know, come from East Village bar culture.
So, like, I kinda want people to hop from the East Village to the West Village. It's not that far, people. Speaking of hopping, uh, Johnny Gagel is asking, where's the best place to grab a bagel in New York? Oh, Jesus! You can't ask that question, because I don't know you well enough.
For but let's do restaurants. Okay, look. You have to make a choice in life over what style of bagel do you want. Do you want a puffier, doughier bagel of the Essa slash absolute family? Do you want a like a tall bagel?
I think I which I can't remember what tall bagel does. Do you want more of like uh, you know, a smaller bagel, like the old Union style bagel suppose? He wants to open a bagel shop in the UK. And he says the bagels suck. Yes, of course.
Figured New York is the best. Yes. How how does he do that? The water's different. Uh no, it's not that.
It's just people don't. Look, people don't, people make bad bagel. New York water is not interesting. Let me just tell you that. People who come here, except for Saratoga, New York water is not interesting.
It's it's relatively low in dissolved solids. Ain't nothing special about our water. You know what it is? We have a we have a large food culture and we have a large Jewish culture here. And that's why we rule at bagels.
Now, those Montreal people, some people like those bagels. I have have not been to Montreal in many decades. I've never eaten at any one of their fancy bagel stores. I like the bagel store, Montreal style bagels that are here, but could they add salt to them, which they don't in Montreal? Anyone that doesn't add bread to salt is a bad person.
I'm looking at you, Tuscany. Terrible people. And uh, so I don't know. What do you think about those? I think uh Orwashers is like the only one that has a dog in the fight, like of all the Montreal bagels I've had.
Black seed's pretty good too. Yeah. Um but what do you think about New York? What's your favorite New York style bagel? Well, I mean, that's a tough question, too, because you gotta think like, are you just going for the bagel or are you going for toppings and fixings that are sounds cow?
No, no, no, bagel. Bagel. Oh, yeah. Anyone who knows anything should get their fish one place, their bagels another place. Sure bagels absolute for sure.
Oh, I love absolute. But absolute's Essa style. So Absolute comes from Essa. It's a little, you know, different. Um I liked uh even in that neighborhood, like neighborhood by neighborhood.
So Columbia University area used to have, I don't I haven't been there in again in like decades, but used to have three top tier bagel places. There was absolute, there was Columbia, which was also good, which was a denser, thinner style of bagel and not that big doughy thing that kind of absolute pushes out. The kind of classic fight, like in the 70s, the classic fight was H H versus Essa. You know what I mean? Like Essa style bagels and H H.
But even down where Essa is in the in the like low 20s, right? Like even down there, there's tall bagel, which Dax is Dax's favorite. Like these bagel things tend to accumulate. Uh Kosar's bagel, Kosar's Biales, which made excellent biales, used to have uh kind of their own kind of different kind of bagel. They've changed hands, their recipes changed a little bit.
Um but anyway, the reason that the the reason that it the bagels are good here is because there's a lot of bagel competition and a lot of connoisseurship of of the bagel. Who's Barney Greengrass bagel? What do they serve? I believe they're H H. So bars.
A lot of the old school Upper West Side people are uh are H H H customers, which is H H the same as it used to be decades ago? I know they went bankrupt once. Uh there was one right over by my house in the upper west side, and it was it was pretty good, but I'd prefer absolute all the time. And I always tell people like you you moved to New York and you like don't have very much money, and so pizza's like the first thing, and then bagels are like the easiest thing, and it was like a real hard problem for me for like the first six months not to go to Barney Greengrass and order a $22 surgeon bagel every day for breakfast. Yeah.
Well like a drug problem. When you go outside, so you're a UK, but even when you leave New York and you go out, you look at, and basically they're just bagel-shaped breads. You know what I mean? They're just they're garbage. They're they're they're just not made right.
You know what I mean? They're just they don't like the recipes are online, people. I've made them. Nastasi and I may or may not do a bagel thing when we do our videos because we bought a 19 like 90 like bagel maker, which is fundamentally just a little boiling kettle for bagels. But you can make a decent bagel.
Uh, I think the reason people don't make good ones is because they don't have people that care or will buy a good bagel. Maybe people don't even like a good bagel. I don't know. Uh I just always feel like people don't spend enough initial time on like their dough recipe. Like that's like number one, and then proofing whatever it may be, like they just don't keep consistency.
Like you need the malt, you need to boil. There's a whole bunch of stuff you need to do. Uh, but anyway, it's not rocket science, it's bagel science. Alright, so back on uh on well, what about restaurants now? Hold on a moment.
We've got a question from Elvin. What's up? Elvin wants to know he he says it's a terrible question, but what's another place in the world that I can get a decent booker and Dax existing conditions slash liquid intelligence style gin and tonic. Oh, I don't know. I don't know.
Bobby? No, I don't know. I'm sure there are places, yeah. But like uh not that many people do recarb on um not there's not that many people doing recarb on that kind of drink. Uh right?
Yeah. What's uh or if they're recarbing at their bottle in it which means how do you pronounce Stephen Hope's uh bar in Puerto Rico? Penultima La Penultima. I haven't been. They do it there, I know that.
I mean, I've heard a lot great things about La Penultima. I love Steven and those guys down there, but I I've just never been. But that's like the only people I've ever heard of like redoing like gin and juice or the actual gin and tonic. Yeah. Yeah.
I'm anxious to go next. If I ever make it to Puerto Rico, I'm anxious to go. Let's go next week. Uh yeah, next week. Yeah.
My Nastasi and our summer is full. Yeah. Full. Full. This episode is brought to you by you.
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But there's no food radio without you. Go to Heritage Radio Network.org slash donate before July 31st to do your part to ensure a bright future for your favorite food podcasts. Alright, so uh but restaurants now. I don't I haven't been anywhere good. What?
Little recycle out every day. Yeah, but that doesn't mean I've been anywhere good lately. Alright, Bobby, what about the what about like uh like all of all the all the you're not a kid, but you know what I mean? All of like the crew is going out to places like Boons. What are the places like that?
Like Uncle Boone's and all that. What are the places people are going now? Well, Boons will never get old. If I had the money to eat a boons every day, I would eat a boons every day. So when you say go there, that's something you would if you were coming to the book.
Yeah, like I whenever my family comes to town or anybody that's like visiting, I'd take them there like immediately. And mostly like unanimously they love it. Um I don't know. For me, like, I haven't really done a bunch of like uh I would say like upper tier restaurants here. I I did before when I didn't live here, but I'm just always trying to like source out like ethnic food right now.
Hey, hey, see if you Bobby, see if you can figure out who I am. I eat all the time! What are you talking? I can't think of any restaurants. No, no, no.
I haven't been anywhere where I'm like, damn, that was good. Also, it's about the experience, like who you go with, too. Were you just quoting NWA? No. Oh, it's the end of the.
She was just quoted the end of straight out of content. Damn, that shit was stuff. Ooh. That uh eaten a lot of Chinese food in my life, and then when I moved to New York and found Sejuan food, very hard for me not to just want to eat Sejuan food all the time here. Uh well, alright.
Anyway, check this out, people. This is not this, but I have a new, I have a new cheap, you know how everyone in New York, people in New York, everyone's got like, okay, Popeyes is delicious, right? But like most neighborhoods, there's a ch there's a a cheap fried chicken or a different like in semi-independent fried chicken joint. Yep. I found my local one.
Ready for it? Kung Fu chicken. Oh, you're telling me about it with the squid too, right? They so like, yeah, they have a bombing giant squid, which I actually I think is a cuttlefish. It's that big flat one, it's got that chew to it.
They fry the whole thing and then they hack it up and and serve it to you. It is on point. They're like their poppers are on point. They put some sort of like MSG in the in their coating. It's good.
Yeah. On point. Highly recommend. Even the kids like it. Yeah?
Yeah. I don't have any locals. Kung Fu chicken. I just moved though, too. Yeah.
Alright. So apparently, even though Nastasia Lopez goes out constantly, she has not one recommendation for you. Oh, I'll think. I'll think. Yeah, yeah, okay.
Uh alright. Check this out. Uh I don't have the name of uh I don't have the the name of this person, but hey, Dave and Nastasia, I'm all caught up with the backlog and decided to listen from episode one again. This is likely ill advised for a rational person, but I've never claimed to be said person. Listen, I'm gonna give you the same advice I give uh Dax.
So Dax rewatches Bob's Burgers and Parks and Rec like on a like like constantly. He's like, I play more Bob's burgers. Watch something new! Dave, it says right there. Serena.
Oh, Serena. Serena, watch something, listen to something new. I can't stand listening to myself the first time around. You know, Nastasi and I constantly want to murder each other. True or false?
Mm-hmm. Oh my god. Did we told the story about the about the bananograms? No. Talk about it.
We've never talked about the banana grams? No. No. I'm gonna finish this question. Dave and I are really good at bananograms.
Uh we are actually okay at banana grams, but who's the who's the king of bananograms? Robert? Yeah. Showed up at the bar. What's Robert's last name again?
Sexy. Yeah. What? Sexy. Saxy.
So he like, interesting story, which I'm not gonna play. I'm just gonna say you that was the least I've ever heard you talk. I know. Six hours, yeah. I know.
But he was dominating. I mean, I beat him. Once. But he also beat me. But he was so dominant that Bobby went over into the into the existing conditions archive and pulled out a banana costume.
Oh yeah. And he wore for half of our service on the birthday of the bar, he wore a banana costume and was playing bananograms. Alright, so I'll talk about this before I do the question. So he's we're sitting there, Karen Stanley, who is the new manager at Booker and Dax, congratulations to us for having Karen Stanley. What?
What'd I say? Wow, Dave. Existing conditions. Sorry, man. Getting old, getting old and losing it.
So Nastasi's like, uh so we're sitting there and we're playing, and Nastasia, as you might know, like uh, let's just say that she only cares about her own envelopes. Not true. So she we're we have we're all bananagrams, by the way, is like is like a floating board scrabble where you have to rearrange and keep putting new letters in, and you're trying to form a scrabble-like board, but it's about constant rearrangement. And if you're playing with Nastasia, don't you dare use two-letter word QI ever. She hates it.
I just don't like easy. Like, why why play it if you're gonna make it easy? Like, it should be hard. Uh oh. It should be hard.
And you should think. So when you play with Nastasia, everyone else in the world plays Scrabble rules in terms of like legitimate words, except for when you play Nastasia Lopez. She flipped a table on somebody once. She flipped a table. The first time she played with said person who I'm not gonna talk about, he used QI, and she's like, Well, if you really want to win that way, and he's like, I do.
And then, like But then he kept grabbing letters and putting them on the floor thinking I couldn't see them. Like that is right. So she flipped the table. She flipped a table. Yeah.
Okay. So what you should know is that you don't mess around with Nastasi Lopez when you're playing the game. Because she will shoot you like a like like a card player in the old west. Anyway, uh so we're at the table at the bar, playing bananagrams, and she reaches for a letter and punches the water glass all over my board. Which time?
Well, that's it. She punches the water glass, water everywhere, all over me, all over the letters, and then Karen Stanley, of course, immediately starts helping me clean up. And Nastasia, what does Nastasia do? Because remember, it's about who can fastest create a board. Keeps playing.
She keeps playing. She's still playing. So like, I'm like, Nastasia, what the hell are you doing? Why are you playing? Help me clean up this mess that you made.
So then she pulls over a towel, doesn't just start dabbing the water, like, like, like, like, like, washing machine mixes my board up with the towel while being very careful not to mess with her letters. So I'm like, BOM! And I just like smack her letters into like. Across the room. It was not across the room.
It was not across the room. So anyway, so we're like, like smear, like, you know, you know, pent up, like, like we're both like vibrating. Karen is horrifying. She's like about to go into a panic attack. She's sitting next to her.
She's like, I don't know if I want to play with you guys anymore. She doesn't talk like that. Anyway, so we finally get ready to play again. We start playing, and like literally, 45 seconds later, Nastasia Lopez, because Jack Shram was the bartender, puts the glass, refills Nastasia's water glass, puts it exactly where it was the set the first time around. She punches the glass again right into my lap, all over my letters, and I do this.
And he stands up and like, I thought he was gonna punch me. No, yeah, no, Dave, I thought you were gonna punch this. Nastasia Lopez makes up this. Nastasia Lopez makes this up that I'm gonna punch her because she wants me to seem like a violent person. But it is true that I jumped up, had my arms in the air, then I just stared and said nothing for about 30 seconds.
And then I ran off. No, that's not what you said. You just said, I'm gonna pee, and then you ran. She looked like my she looked like my dog Watson with like his ears pinned back and like looking up and like I was just I I hadn't said or moved at all. I was just in the air with my arms in the air, my eyes super wide.
That's when Karen tapped out for the rest of the night. Yeah, Karen, Karen's never gonna play banana grams again. That's a very classic camera move right there, though. Two words. I gotta pee.
Alright. Uh okay. So this is likely ill-advised for a rational person, but I never claim to be rational. With that said, I've listened to a few episodes about the Aero Press. Did you ever try it?
Yes, I have tried the Aero Press. Uh for a while that was my nowadays, you can get like so okay, listen, listen, listen. When I go have coffee, there's coffee for enjoyment, and there's coffee to get your motor running so you can head out on the highway. And when I'm traveling, my assumption is unless I'm traveling to a place that's known for coffee, that the coffee that I have will be bad, and I'm just I need the coffee, A, for to wake up, and B for, you know, my good friend Peristalsis. Peristalsis is one of my favorite buddies to have with me when I go traveling.
Because traveling can really clog up the old tubes, if you know what I mean. You know what I'm saying, Stas? Doesn't traveling wreak havoc with your body? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Except when we were in California, it was all good.
Well, you're from California. No. You was eating plenty of roughage and prunes and whatnot. No, no, all of us. That's the good food.
We're like regular. All of us. I don't know, Douglas. I didn't, I didn't I I I don't You didn't check in with us. I no, I don't check in with Pete.
I don't like to check in with my Oh, speaking of which, we're not doing it this week for classics in the field, but Alexander Kira's The Bathroom is the classic study on bathroom technology and uh urination and defecation technology from the late 60s, I think. If one of you wants to hear that as a classic in the field, just tweet me over on uh Alexander Akira's The Bathroom, and maybe we'll do that for later episodes. It's it's an intense book. Bidet technology? Uh no, not just bidets, all bathrooms.
Like in other words, like from like how your culture influences, like how bathrooms are made. Like, for instance, one of the reasons that that in the US, all Western cultures really can't use like full squat toilets, like the hole in the ground toilets, is because they require you to completely remove your pants to use them. So if you come from a culture where everyone is wearing something that can be hiked up around your uh waist, then it's reasonable to use the uh that kind of a uh a system. But that's why we can't do it, even though they're even though they're horrible on on your butt parts, right? You know, sit-down toilets are horrible on your butt parts.
Anyway, so all of this and more, including the the the physics of urine streams is in this book if someone wants me to do it uh eventually, because I think you know, we didn't do a good job at at the bar because we didn't have the money and it's about existing conditions. Someday I hope to be able to design a bathroom from scratch, and it will be glorious. Bathroom technology is so crappy. First of all, as an American, I'm ashamed as an American that our bathroom technology is so garbage compared to Japan. Still garbage compared to Japan.
But even so, like, like a properly. Now, when I was younger, I feel like I'm gonna go into it, even though I don't have the book of it. Dave, you don't know. When I was younger, I wanted to fully like lead insulate my bathroom so that no noise can make it in or out. So that like the the the people screaming at you, whatever couldn't come in.
There's no sort of in or out. The bathroom was a private, holy meditation zone, right? Uh and you didn't have to worry about making your own private noises while you're reading. I know, I know a billionaire who did that to all his bathrooms. Well, here's the problem.
As I get older, or as I had kids, I'm like, what if there's an emergency? You know what I mean? What if there's an emergency? My uh that's my biggest fear in life is getting murdered in the shower. And people are like, why?
And it's like it's not just like a movie thing, but when I'm in the bathroom, no thoughts. Just complete peace at whatever I'm doing. So I could sneak up behind you. You don't think in the shower? No.
No, not for at least the first 15 minutes. You blank? The water just hits me and it's just dude. My grandpa, like, my grandpa, you know the mean one? Yep.
He uh he didn't believe that showers, he didn't understand the restorative properties of showers. So he once, when I was in the shower, was like, that's enough water, and he reached in and turned off while I was in the shower. It would turn off after 10. But as someone who uses their brain to think, I can't think without a long shower. Dave's never naked ever in this.
Well, in the shower, I am. You said you your washcloth. I was I was being a little bit jokey. I am naked in the shower, but I do have the washcloth, and it's moving all the time. So anyway, uh so yes, I have tried the AeroPress.
I used to carry it with me and the grinder, but now because I've just accepted that I'm not gonna have great coffee, and since everyone has at least some form of espresso somewhere, like what I'll do is I'll research where the local shop is. I will get up extra early before I have to meet people down enough time that I can go down. I always order it. Give me a quad. They're like a what?
Give me four espresso shots in one cup, and then I drink it on the way back to the hotel room, then I do my you know daily routine and get it going. So that's what I do. I no longer carry coffee uh products with me. Although for camping, it might be. You have to start classics in the field now because five minutes.
Give me a second. More importantly, have you tried the mini presso or nano presso from Wakako? My co-worker, I don't know how you pronounce that. Wakeo, Wakako. Uh my co-worker has one, and it's pretty nifty for traveling, especially in countries where the coffee is hot garbage, which is hot garbage is my next band.
It's only garbage cover tunes. Which is a great I love garbage, the band. Yeah. Yeah. Uh but at work I'd rather lug my butt to the fourth floor to go to our legit espresso machine.
Also, do you think there are other useful things that can be made with this thing? Thanks in advance, Serena. I haven't used one. I was gonna get one. They're only like 30 bucks.
I should get one, but I'm on like a uh my house is full, and so like I'm on a not acquiring things kind of thing. You're you're in a giving away phase, right? Yeah, we gave away so much stuff and threw away so much stuff. Uh I threw we included Nastasia and I threw away the original, the original spinzall. I saw that.
Somebody picked it up. Uh no, nobody picked that up, but people did pick up like any other piece of garbage I put down. Hey, we've got George on the line. Putting through? Yeah, George, what do you got?
George, what's up? George. By the way, George George. Hello. Hello.
What's up? What up? Um, I need to know if there's reusable um CV bags. Uh there are. I have not used them.
They're silicone bags, but you know how like I said on the show many times that all of us have like kind of mental things. And like used bags gross me because they here's the thing. Like, let's say you had a reusable bag. It's a great idea. Silicone bags, and they're they're out there.
Silicone bags are out there. Reusable silicone sous V bags are out there. Uh if you had some sort of a rack that you could open it and dry it fully open, and actually a rack that you could put into your dishwasher so that it could wash on the inside of the bag effectively. Then it could be pulled out. Like you ever seen those baseball hat drying things?
Yeah, or the boots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the boot drying thing. If you had one of those, then I would say, let's do it. In fact, why don't we look into it?
And then and then I would be like, yeah, use it over and over and over again, because why wouldn't you use it over and over and over again? It's very easy, by the way, to seal inside of. So for those of you that don't want to look like you're using a vacuum bag, I don't know, let's say you don't want to use look like you're using a vacuum bag. I don't know, this is a like a hack. You can get a Ziploc bag, freezer Ziploc bag, seal it, put your put your product in, seal it, then cut off uh the corner on the bottom side of the bag, put that over the seal bar and run a ziploc through, and then you can have a vacuum-sealed Ziploc bag.
I'm not saying that I do that and pretend that it's not a vacuum bag. I'm saying you may do that. Um but uh so it would be trivial to figure out a way to um it'd be hard to get. So I'm trying to think of like using one of these bags in an actual commercial machine that uses a heat sealer, because the one-way valves have a certain have certain limitations in terms of like how hard of a vacuum they can suck because of the pressure differential you need to go across them. But you know, when you're actually sucking water vapor off and it's pumping water vapor out, it might work.
I'm gonna say I'm gonna go ahead and say that if you could wash it effectively, it'd be a good idea. I do know they exist, but I haven't experimented with that. I worry about the bag juice. That's my next band. Bag juice?
After hot garbage, like the other band is is bag juice. We we always talked about it for years, and I I don't know if reusable is there yet, but I wish there was compostable. That's kind of the compostable. I've looked into it. Like, for instance, there's sealable PLAs and and things like that that are, but the the most bioplastics that are completely compostable or degradable.
The problem with them is is they need to be fabricated. And we're out of time. They're all they're they're fabricated in a way that makes them hard to store for a long time and then use. They have to be used relatively quickly and then put out. Alright, so apparently I'm not being I'm being told that I can't do classics in the field, even though I have Ruth M.
Griswold's uh The Experimental Study of Foods, which is an underappreciated and still free to buy classic in the field. I was gonna talk about home economics, about experimentation. Maybe we do one episode that's just mostly classic, or maybe we get here on time. Dan Price wrote about, you know, wrote in about uh genetically modified chestnut trees. I had someone on co-Tee hot cheese, had a lot of stuff.
I was excited about the classics in the field. I have all the post-its being told I can't see it. What? Those are the biggest post-its I've ever seen. They're the only post-its I could find.
Really? Yeah. At the house. Because every time that I come to do the show, I bring a whole pack of post-its with me and then lose it. Alright.
So get ready for Ruth M. Griswold, uh, the experimental study of food next time, classics in the field on cooking issues. Cooking Issues is powered by Simplecast. Simplecast is a popular hosting and analytics platform that allows podcasters to easily host and publish to apps like Apple Podcasts. If you have a podcast or are looking to create your very first, check it out.
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