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This episode is brought to you by 100 Bogart Street, a co-working building in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Need a professional place to work from? Learn more by visiting 100Bogart.com. Hardcore is a new series from Heritage Radio Network. Over six episodes, we're taking a close look at the rebirth of American cider.
Really, it wasn't until about 10 years ago that cider started to be revitalized in the United States. From the science of fermentation. So yeast. It's a fungus. It's a unicellular fungus.
To the magic of terroir. What really excites us is thinking about communicating that very sort of spiritual aspect of knowing a piece of land. We're setting aside our cider donuts to gain a deeper understanding of this singular beverage. I love a cider donut. You don't have to have a cider donut with your cider.
And I will die on that point. Subscribe to Hardcore wherever you listen to podcasts. Yeah. We were same in a we're waiting for our theoretical special guest, Phil Bravo! But he's late.
Only Phil. There's Phil Bravo. He's staring around like he doesn't know what a studio looks like. The man teaches recorder and triangle to children and doesn't know where a sound booth is. Makes no sense.
He'll be in here in a minute. Uh joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing? Good. Yeah?
Yeah. Getting ready for the Thanksgiving. We should talk about our sale. We will. We got Matt back in the booth.
How are you doing? I'm great. Yeah? Yeah, where were you last week? Were you having fun or not having fun?
Uh oh, I was at jury duty. I was having fun. Ooh, jury duty. So, jury duty, they sent me a notice to my wrong address and then said they were gonna throw me in jail. But here's the hilarious thing.
Uh I just got it. It was like super late. Here's the hilarious thing. They're supposed to get their jury stuff from voter records, right? Yeah.
Well, my voter records are at my current address, so you know, one ass doesn't know what the other elbow is doing. Well, with me, they actually managed to do it the other way. They somehow found me, even though I had not yet updated my voter registration. They found me and sent me a thing. So, you know, sometimes they get it right.
Were you chosen? I was not chosen. Nothing interesting happened. It was like my own private library. It was a great day.
I just worked. Yeah, I don't know. There's something about uh something about it, just like I I was on a jury once, but sitting in that waiting room is just, I don't know, man. I mean, I want I want to be selected for like a very limited run trial. I don't want to be there for weeks, obviously.
Yeah. Well, I was once selected for one that they they tell you when you go to jury duty that you need to schedule, I forget X number of weeks, like two or three weeks. That's basically like the thing. And so then if you can't do that, they're like, well, then don't even come to jury duty. Get it postponed.
So I went and the judge was like, once the trade judge was like, this trial's gonna last for three weeks. I was like, Oh, you said two, you said two, and the third week I'll be in China. This was years ago. And they were like, get out, you jerk, you moke, butt lord, get out of here. I mean, so I'm paraphrasing slightly.
Listen. And then how long did they let you they they promised me I would not get called until eight years from now. Well, it's a funny thing. I gotta look back. The last time I I served on a jury that, you know, went to verdict, I was the foreman, in fact, Matt.
Why? So important. Uh it's alphabetical order. And uh they didn't let us choose. And uh there was no amuldsons there that could beat me out on the on the Arnold, so yeah, you will always be the foreman.
Well, until, you know, Barney A. Moldsons in there, and then I'm host. I'd say being foreman has its privileges. You know, anyway. Uh so now we are joined in the studio by Phil Bravo!
How you doing? I'm doing all right, how are you doing, dude? Oh, listen, I need you to use that sweet, sweet voice, Phil, to tell people about the Booker and Dax Black Friday holiday sale. Yes, Phil, go. Have you heard about the Booker and Dax Black Friday sale?
Dave, is it crazy? It is bananas, Phil. B-A-N-A-N-A-S bananas, Dave. Like, what was it? How does the Grinch say it?
Uh oh, uh with a with a greasy black peel. With a greasy black pee. With a greasy black peel. Yeah, yeah. So uh you were late, so we made fun of you teaching recorder and triangle to small children.
Yeah, that was what I was very busy doing. Uh I was on the train just giving out recorders to people to brighten up uh everyone's community. He brought out the recorder, and then the two-year-old at the party was just blowing it all over. Uh the recorder is a terrible thing. That came out as you expected.
Oh, oh, family. Oh, yeah. Also, we can't curse. Yeah, the record the recorder is uh possibly the worst instrument of all time. Uh I mean, exactly, which is why I go around giving it to children.
Just, you know, spreading music. Yeah, yeah. You're like, you're like, I got some good news and I got some bad news. It makes a terrible sound, but it can only make one sound at a time. That's the good news.
The thing is uh it's not polyphonous. The two-year-old was able to make quite a good sound by like he had like half of it entirely uh just swallowed at that moment. And still, you know. It's like covering some of the holes, like exactly. Yeah, and so you just like just.
How do you make no noise when the whistle part is covered, whatever that's called there? You know, life finds a way. Yeah, yeah. What's that called in technical jargon? That little whistly cutout in the front.
Or I think twistly cutout. Yeah, yeah. You ever you ever made a uh do you know that you can take young moosewood saplings, which is a striped maple, uh, in in spring, cut them, hit them with the back of your camping knife to free the to free the bark, then push the wood out of the bark, leaving the bark as a straight tube, then cut a notch into it and pull it back and make a slide whistle out of it. It's a thing. It's a thing.
It's well, well, in the Northeast in the 30s and 40s, it was a thing. And might have been a thing all the way up into the 50s. But if you are a connoisseur of 19, let's say, let's say like 1890 to like 1950 American tree and forestry stuff. Then if you just happen to be. Yeah, or you know, if you read all of the works of Harlow, for instance, of which there are probably only like five, so it's easy to get them all.
Like there, you're multiple instructions on how to build you a slide whistle out of a out of a moosewood setup. Doesn't it only do one thing? You know, beep beep beep beep. Can you play it though? Yeah, it's like a sad trombone all the time.
Well, it's like a happy on crack trombone. It is true. And also, if you have, do you know that if you have a drill and a parsnip, you can also have your own recorder? I would like to hear about this. Is this food related?
This is food related. Finally. Yeah, finally. Yeah, so give me some. Uh, I mean, that's pretty much it.
You just need a long drill bit, you go right down the middle. You can do make your own little whistly bit in the in the top. If you use the top joint of a recorder, it's cheating a little bit. That's cheating a lot. Um, yeah.
Why parsnip and not like carrot? Well, I mean is a parsnip softer. Do you have to soak it in water first? Literally, you could do a carrot or a parsnip. I just think the parsnip uh has a little bit more character.
Yeah. Well about the tone. Exactly. It's a little bit of a woodier tone. Oh.
I said with no no data to back out of it. Yeah, uh, so like it wouldn't work on something that's entirely water without a lot of structure, like not a daikon. I think a daikon would be like as as uh soft as you'd go. I think a even a potato would fall apart pretty quick. Yeah, also like there is more kind of lignified crap on the inside of a carrot or a parsnip, which is let's face it, a non orange faky carrot.
It's true. Yeah. Uh so I don't know. What's the difference between a part of a parsnip and a carrot? I mean, they're different, but I mean, like, if someone was like they're not as sweet, eh?
What? No, they are parsnips are sweet. Carrots are sweet. But parsnips are like a roasted parsnip. I like a roasted parsnip, but I'm saying it's kind of like a bunk carrot.
I that's nonsense. This is nonsense. I mean, I like parsnips a lot. I cook parsnips. You know what my uh this is not related at all, but you know what I like a lot, but I don't like as leftovers?
Uh all of the stock uh of the amazing Black Friday sale. Oh bringing it back, Phil. No leftovers for you. Rutabagas. Rutabagas.
All right. I love rutabagas. I don't think I could pick a rutabaga out of a lineup. They're they're kind of look like waxy Charlie Brownheads with a little bit of right? Yeah.
Stas, you really have to do that. You know how you get one of them uh waxy uh Charlie Brownheads? Yeah. Yeah. If you if you're in the supermarket and you see a waxy Charlie Brownhead, Azar that's a rutabago.
If you're an English person, a Swede. For some reason the English call them Swedes. They call them Swedes. They call them a sweet. Who knows?
Rutabaga is a sweet? Swede. Yeah, sweet. But they're real waxy on the outside. So you cut off the wax and they're great steamed, but like the next day I never like them as much.
I mean, like, maybe if you mash them and put them in a soup, they're fine the next day. But if you just have like, like, let's say you're doing a prep where you I don't know if you know this. Uh, if you know, for those of you that like only cook at home, but you know, in general, like you you you'll pre you'll parcook or fully cook your veg and then reassemble and finish at the fire, right? So, like, I don't like like parcooked, steamed freaking rutabaga the next day. I mean, who does, Dave?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, maybe many people. Swedes, perhaps? Perhaps a sweet. I don't know. But I think that the rutabaga is a deli I'd be more people should cook with rutabagas.
They are delicious. And I like the word. Brought to you by the Rutabega Council. Rutabagos. Say say Rutabaga with a serious voice.
Listen. Rutabaga. Oh, see? Now, Stas, don't you want to eat that? Yeah.
Waxy Charlie Brownhead is. So what is this in this bag here? We're going to. Wait, well, let's wait. Let's finish our Black Friday crap.
Okay. So Nastasia Lopez and I went to China a couple of weeks ago. China. And uh we had some good word. We visited the factory that makes the the spinzalls.
And we have a new agent, right? Uh over there. And uh, which that the new age is not related. We visited the factory, and Nastasia has never been to China before. So I was there, I was like, listen, just you know, I'm gonna turn this lady loose on you.
Nastashi's like, poof, poof, bang, poof! And uh, and they were like, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. We'll lower the prices on future on future spinzalls. So we were able to bring the price of the spinzall down based on our future, and assuming, of course, that the tariff gets lifted, which you know, who knows, but like bring the cost of future stuff down so that we're off uh able to now offer the spinzall for the low low price, Phil. He doesn't know, I don't think.
I think a oh I did know 499. That's right. Yes. Was if you if we have a YouTube, so Nastasia, we're like, we're gonna do a YouTube video about it, about the sale. We also did some infomercials, I haven't cut them together yet.
Yes, but this video was my idea. What? The whole thing. What? That's crazy.
That's crazy. So she not being from New York, so she has no idea what she's talking about, right? And don't don't shake your head, Miami man. Like she I watched enough Seinfeld to know. So Crazy Eddie, you grew up as Crazy Eddie.
Because we were doing a bunch of Billy May style stuff, which we haven't done yet, but this is like Crazy Eddie was a guy, he went to jail for some kind of a fraud, but he used to put on like the goofy sweater and start screaming that his prices were insane and throwing stuff around. It was like a it was like uh kind of a local PC Richards. Which then on Seinfeld became I'm the whiz. Oh, the whiz is an actual thing too. The whiz is also a thing?
The whiz is a thing. Alright, I'm from Florida. Yeah. Uh yeah, but the whiz wasn't New York. The whiz, the whiz discount store, also like kind of a local PC Richards.
I never went to it, was uh didn't have a it had a like uh an over-the-top kind of voiceover stitch, but not like a face, like not a singular crazy Edward in the way that Crazy Eddie was a guy. Or in the way that, for instance, Dr. Zizmo was a guy on the New York City subways. For those of you that, you know, I told you uh Dr. Zizmoore's daughter became a food writer bloggist, at least for a while, and she came to interview us.
She said her last name is Zizmore, and we're like what? She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, the Z is more? Dr. Z?
And she's like, yeah. I was like, oh yeah. Anyone who was alive during that time period, which lasted up until like probably 2014, probably. Yeah, I was uh I was in New York for that. Yeah.
Uh he must have retired or something. I don't know. I don't know. But the man had impeccable skin. So he like they had he also had all these commercials where where like they'd have these random, and it's like only in New York do you get this kind of person.
Like the person who's like kind of doesn't want to be on camera, is kind of looking around, like, thank you, Dr. Zizmo. You know what I mean? Like, my skin was completely messed up. Thank you, Dr.
Zizmo. You know what I mean? Like that kind of a thing, but it's like a very New York kind of commercial. Pushed him onto the camera. Yeah, push him onto the camera.
Total dog, give me some more, give me a free fruit peel. Anyway, uh I just came out of that out of my head because I know nothing about Durban. This is the second time in a week that Zizmore is coming out. I know. We talked about it last night.
Yeah. Well, not on the show, you mean in Nastasia's life. In Nastasia's life. So look, I mean, like, you know, there's there's uh, you know, the for those of us that ride the subways, those kind of like long-term like subway ads have a like they're come become part of your life in a way that I think a non-New Yorker wouldn't kind of understand. You know what I mean?
Because you're you're smashed in. It used to be, by the way, it's a lot different now on the subway than it was, let's say, 40 years ago, 30, 40 years ago. Like when I was a little kid, I was very, very much instructed, don't look at anyone. Don't look, don't look at anyone. Stare at the ceiling, stare at the ground, do not make eye contact with anyone.
Now, you know, now that we, you know, you know, live, you know, in the in the New York of nowadays, I feel that I could just like stare a hole through someone's forehead, and odds are they won't do anything. You know what I mean? Yeah, but what do I wait for when we take the subway together? So uh for those of you that have ridden one of the so in in New York City, most subway stops are about two minutes apart. Like, give or take, they're all about two minutes.
Except there are a few long hauls. So one of the long hauls is between 59th and 125th on the blue and the orange lines. But another fairly long haul is the tunnel under the water uh that the L train takes as it travels from Brooklyn, thankfully back to Manhattan to take me back home. Thank you for explaining why I was late. Yeah.
Uh so anyway, so if you happen to go on the L train midday and you're in one of the more center center cars, there are groups of people that come on showtime. And they say, it's showtime. And then if tourists, there are tourists, and then there's also friend of the show, Paul Adams, who also like obstinately would not move out of the way. Just like he he went in like full cow mode where he was just kind of standing there and like not being moved by the guy's like Showtime, Showtime, Showtime. Paul's pretending like he doesn't know what showtime means.
Anyone who has ridden New York City subways knows what well, who's written a lot, knows that the showtime is. They put on crappy beatbox music. There is always there's always at least two, sometimes three people, and one plays the hype man while the other one does their kind of routine, which generally involves some form of pole dancing parkour kind of a situation. And the worst of all is the hat catching. Please, showtime people.
Get rid of the hat catching. Not interesting. Maybe the first person that flipped a baseball cap and caught it on their head. Maybe that was cool, but now it's almost as bad as bottle flipping. For those of you that remember the bottle flipping trend of a couple of years ago that I was tortured with by my children.
Listen, Nastasia Lopez's only goal in life is to get me kicked in the face by a showtime person. Now, I have never seen anyone get kicked in the face by a showtime person, but Nastasia is convinced, convinced, that they're gonna get on one of these poles and spin around, and one of their like you know, sneakers is gonna hit me square in the face. And she can't wait. You put up my nose! She's like, I just want to know if you're gonna get angry or if you're just gonna sit there and stew.
Just take it. Yeah. I'm not sure which one's gonna happen. What's better? I don't know.
Just stand there like like coldly staring with blood running down my face. What's now? You'll be excited because the thing has finally happened. What thing? Well, Nastasia will be excited.
I will be bleeding. Are you sure you won't look at her and you'll be like, Nastasia, it happened. But the people, the thing is, is Nastasia makes me like every week makes me get on the most crowded, dumbest car. That's nowhere near where I need to go. Another thing that you you might not know.
Hopefully, we'll do some more food now. But that the other thing you might not know is that uh everybody who rides the subway every day knows exactly what car to be in for where they get off. Okay? So Nastasia makes me go in not that car, right? Just for the just for the slim hope that, you know what's gonna happen one day?
I don't want to, I'm not gonna spoil, but anyway, one day she's just gonna push me into the guy's foot. Yeah, maybe no, I wouldn't do it. You'd be so mad he'd punch me. Yeah, it's about the anticipation. I would not punch you, Nastasia.
If it ever happens, you'd be so sad. No, you'd have nothing left to live for. No, she would find something else. No, no, I'd find something else. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Wait, so what's in this whole food store? So this is from Capri Sun. Capri Sun, the beverage manufacturing corporation? Oh, Capri.
Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, we have I was like, good, because uh I've made my I like you know, I've made plenty of fun of Capri Sun the Beverage to my children, but I guess not on air. Oh, speaking of making fun, you know who's supposed to be on air today? That's in uh two weeks. Aura King salmon was supposed to be now or a king salmon, you instead of this random conversation we're having about New York City subways, you could have been hearing about aquaculture, Icajima, you will hear fish anesthesia, importing fish from New Zealand, the taste of salmon with different slaughtering techniques, and uh my son Booker's favorite cured salmon at Russ and Daughters, which happens to be New Zealand King Salmon.
Uh, but what happened was this. It was a bunch of people, this is as Nastasia tells it to me. There's a bunch of New Zealanders. They they like were hanging out with an American friend, and they're like, I'm not gonna do a New Zealand accent because I don't really know what it is. They're like, tell me about this Thanksgiving thing.
And they're like, oh yeah, no one's doing any work from now until the end of the year. They're like, oh crap on that, I'm not going on that show then. No, they'll they'll be here in two weeks. Okay. Um, by the way, they also said this.
They were like, Do you want a list of questions for No, they wanted a list of questions? They want a list of questions, and Nastasia's like, no. We don't do that. We just don't do that. I mean, if you would like, I can talk at length about salmon slaughtering techniques.
No, you won't he will not know you. Is it accurate? No, do not challenge Dave. Um Radish Kimchi. You are then head spike caught 1121.
Is it frozen? Black sea bass. Ooh, Tata. Sea bass filet. Is it black?
Wait, blackfish or black sea bass? Black sea bass and black sea bass fillets. And then he made nothing. Thank you, Capriza. You have to get a name that is less like a crappy blue.
Well, he won't give us his real name. Uh homemade nothing fancy carrot cake and pumpkin pie. That's from that new cookbook. What new cookbook? Nothing fancy.
Please pretend you know what I'm talking about. Um dried lover. What's a dried lover? I don't know. Speaking of dried lover, uh, I finally purchased in America, oh, uh Laver.
It's Laver, seaweed. Uh yeah. Come on, get please pretend like people with seaweed. Read the thing. Laver.
Oh, oh, here's the. Ooh, is that a Kasukai? Does it have a dumb saying on it? I love I love a dumb Kassukai saying. This is the character.
It doesn't have it, it just has a mix. Uh okay, so listen, back to China for a minute. So Nastasi and I are in China, and we go to And that's why we lower the price on the spinzall. The Sears all, get this people. Now we're hoping this works.
Oh, yeah, okay, okay. So, like, so people are like, yo, yo, can you send me uh Searsol? And the answer is no, we can't because Nastasi and I strangely don't own any. And uh Amazon buys them from us and takes possession of them in China. Now we're also taking possession of them, a couple of them now for this Black Friday thing, because here's what we're gonna do.
Here's what we're gonna do. So please, if you know someone that's gonna buy it, please make our scam work. We're putting we're putting a small number, a relatively small number of Searsols available. Uh, and it's it's a big freaking thing, believe it or not, because we haven't I don't even want to get into it, like how nasty Amazon is with whatever, I don't want to get into it. But like we're putting up, we're putting a uh a block of them in, and we're gonna lower our price on like our our prime stuff there, and then Amazon will match it.
So, what we want you to do is buy Amazon's Sears Alls that they've already paid us for at technically technically, yeah. They don't pay us for like you know, like five months if they pay us at all. Well, it's too much to get into. So, anyway, if you're gonna buy it, just please click the Amazon one because that'll let us keep the sale going longer. What are we what are we trying to do to Amazon?
Give them the shkut and gorp, as my stepfather would say. Nastasi's like, what's the shkut and gorp? I'm like, you can picture it. Here's the fist. Shkut and gorp.
You know what I mean? Uh as my stepfather Gerard says. That's another one of the great Girardisms. Like if if I it's you use the S word, but if crapped himself. You're like, you're like, if this, if that, if this, if this, if crapped himself.
But he said, you know, if pooped his pants, basically. And then once I've said this on air before, right? So then, and he says it also with should. I was like, you should have done this, you should have done that. Oh yeah!
Should craft himself, but he says, you know, you know, the S word. And so, and then one day I was like, well, it's because, you know, he he keeps on saying should have, should have, should have, and he never makes it to the bathroom, and he poops in his pants. And he goes, You're too literal, Dave. That's not what it means. I'm like, that's exactly what the hell else can it mean?
He's like, it's a figure of speech. I'm like, what the hell else can it mean? He's like, it means if himself. You know what I mean? I'm like, It's illiterate, Dave.
Really. Another one is Schkut and Gorb. You gave it to him. You have to. If you're gonna give someone the schkuttengorp people, what you have to do is you have to put your we don't know if it's gonna work.
You have to put your your elbow, like, you have to lift your arm up to kind of a level position at chest height with your uh your your dominant hand, with your palm flat to the ground and your fingers spread. Then what you do is you go, you bring your elbow down into a gouging kind of uppercut motion, and then you make the fist. You make the fist as soon as the hand gets flipped under, as you go down into the, you flip your hand over and you make the fist. Snap your fist, and then up into the shkut and gorp. We don't even know if it's Dave just demonstrated really quality French horn stomp technique.
That was he he started with a lovely web and then moved directly into Stopped horn. It was beautiful. Yeah, nice perfect for some more. That's how they do that? Yep.
Oh, nice. All right, see. Learn something new every day. So hopefully our plan works. Also, the cocktail cube, which we've never, I'm do we're dealing we did an infomercial on the cocktail cube.
We've never pushed it. We're dropping the price to 999 and uh Searsol, we're gonna take down to 5999, but please buy Amazon. Yeah. And we have Sears all shirts, but we do? Yeah, but they're in my house.
All right. So Brandy wrote in last week about what? He didn't wear a Searsol shirt. I had it on shape. He's wearing a Searzal shirt.
He's wearing three Searz All shirts. It's like freaking uh Mascarado the Plata. If I El Santo, if I pull off one Searz All shirt, there's another underneath, and another underneath, and another underneath. He can never be unsears all shirted. Oh, thank you for those of you that ordered uh Lipet a sprayed Lipet Asbestus shirts.
Those are shipping and they'll be there by uh December 3rd. This episode is brought to you by 100 Bogart, a new building in Bushwick, Brooklyn, that provides offices, co-working, event spaces, and a brand new podcast recording room. Have you been dreaming of starting your very own podcast in Brooklyn? You can now rent space in 100 Bogart's custom built podcast room to record interviews, voiceover, and commentary. The room is fitted out with two microphones, mixing board, and a MacBook Pro running Pro Tools.
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Learn more at 100bogart.com or call their team at 718-362-3539. I have a qu this is Brandy. I have a question that I can't seem to find any actual information about, and I'm hoping you can help. Occasionally I make yogurt or farmer's cheese. Uh and as you can imagine, I end up with quite a bit of whey.
Uh I've read that you can use whey as a substitute for water and baking, but I can't seem to find any insight into how or why. That's also true. Like people are like, you could use it. You're like, but why would I use it? I think it has a tenderizing effect, not as much as milk, but more than water.
So like it's also not adding a bunch of other stuff. So you could probably use in place of water in your in your quickie breads, and it'll probably give uh I mean it'll probably give it like uh some tenderization effect, although I don't really I can't vouch for that 100%. If you're using an acid-based whey or one that's been kind of lactofermented, then it'll probably kick start any fermentation into the dough, and it's going to acidify it so slightly. So the more acid the dough is, the slacker the gluten's gonna be. So you just gotta be careful of that.
But if you're doing something like a quick bread, it'll make it more tender because the acidity will weaken the gluten structure in the same way that like perhaps a buttermilk would. Uh, it'll also make it so that you would have to use less acid if you were gonna add uh uh a basic, this is the acid way, a basic thing like uh baking soda to it. Okay. Uh I can't seem to find any insight how. Also, I'm wondering about the implication of sweet whey.
Well, s you said from yogurt or acidic whey from cheese. Well, I think maybe those are kind of reversed, right? So sweet whey would be from rennet if you're rennetting cheese, right? So, like there's a you know, there's many different ways you can make cheese. If you're using rennet, then there hasn't been a lot of kind of bacterial action or acidic action, but with lemon juice or whatever, on the product, so you've curdled it with an enzyme, that would make a completely sweet whey, i.e., non-acidic.
And the coolest application for that is to make traditional ricotta cheese. Now the problem, see everyone who makes ricotta cheese now makes it with whole milk. And that's like the standard ricotta cheese that we kind of get is whole milk ricotta that we make is whole whole milk ricotta. But you can take just whey as long as it hasn't already been acidified. People still typically add a little bit of milk back to it to kind of increase the creaminess and probably the yield.
And then you heat it up to almost boiling to like 195 Fahrenheit, and then as it's cooling, you add acid and you get the ricotta, you skim it off. But you're only gonna get like like two cups out of a gallon of of whey. And I don't know if you can freeze the whey in batches and then thaw I don't know if you can freeze the whey in batches and then thaw it and make the ricotta. But if you could, that would be kind of a you save it for a while in zippies and then you make a batch of it uh when it's done. But it won't, I don't think, work on on uh whey that's already been acidified either through kind of lacto cultures or through um the straight use of lemon juice or other acids in the curdling process.
Uh another thing, a lot of people seem to use it as a Kickstarter for lacto fermentation, but again, I have no experience. Uh as usual, I have no experience. Um all right, Carlos wrote in, we don't have anything. Oh, you know, we didn't talk about before about China. So the so Nastasia, we get it, we're we're on the plane.
And so Nastasia shows up at the airport and she's like, eh, Ted went on last night, I don't feel good. I'm like, fine, that's fine. Right? You said I'm hungover. So like we're in the airport, and Nastasia is, even though we're about to get on a plane with the food was terrible, but even though we're getting getting on a plane, Nastasia is hoovering in a French onion soup.
Like at an airport. Okay, what could be more horrific? Anyway, so she's hoovering in this thing, and I'm like, what the hell are you doing? About to get she's like, eh, eh, I'm hungover. I'm fine.
So we get on the airplane, and then we're on the airplane, and she's sitting behind me, which is a ruddy nightmare. Never sit in front of Nastasia, because she's like, she's like pushing on the back of the chair. It's a touch screen, not a punch screen, Nastasia. So she's pushing it in at the thing of the whole flight. And then, like, halfway through this 15 hour, 15 and a half hour flight, she starts tapping my head, and I'm I'm I'm about to turn around, I'm about to call the the flight attendant on her and be like, there's a woman behind me who's lost her mind.
She's like, I'm sick, I'm sick. I was like, oh Jesus, Nastasia. And I know my body, and I and I was sick. I don't get the flu, but I got the flu. So she's like, I'm sick.
So I'm like, oh my god, because I just have these images because we're we're not only going to Hong Kong, we're going directly to China that night. And for those of you that ever flown or traveled into Hong Kong or China, you have to go by these people with head detectors where they're taking thermal images of everyone as they go through. And if you soon as you get off the plane. And if you have a fever, well, I don't know what happens, but you don't pass through and you don't have a ticket to go back. So, like, I don't know.
They just put you as uh, as Booker used to say, they just crumple you up and throw you the garbage, pretty much. So I told Dave this on the plane, and his reaction was, are you effing kidding me? And then you got up, went into your backpack, yeah, yeah, and threw some Tylenol at me. I was like, take all of these Tylenol and get your fever down so that we can get into the dang country. So then the entire time Nastasi was not her usual chipper self, but she was still game to uh go out, but she she stayed sick almost the entire trip.
Yeah. So like from culinary stand highlights, so we spent most of our time in Shenzhen. And Shenzhen, for those of you that don't know, is a town that 40 years ago was a tiny fishing village. And then as soon as Hong Kong, as soon as the the UK Hong Kong handoff happened, uh China built up Shenzhen into this mega like like trading city and manufacturing hub. So it's all only 40 years old.
So there are very few locals. What that means is that because everyone's come in, they have actually, even though it's not really like it's not an authentic city in the fact that it it didn't grow like a city does, uh, it has some good food in it because people from all over China have like live there. So, you know, because Nastasia was sick, I was walking around doing a lot of you know street food kind of a situation, and the hotel we stayed in was pretty close to the street. Lies. So anyway, so like so we'll get to it.
So uh I you know, you've had uh uh Phil, you had uh Jiang Bing before, uh the Chinese crepe. No, I had maybe the best one that I've had on the streets of Shenzhen, because it's typically a street food, and uh, so for those of you that don't know, you take uh don't make crinkling noises, please. I just heard you over my earphones making a crinkling noise. Why would you this is like she's like a you're like the shaggy children, you children, my children, and Shaggy. I didn't do that.
It's like I'm watching you, I'm hearing you and watching you. Anyway, uh so this lady was using a crepe maker, which looked a lot like the French crepe makers, and a raplette, which is the French kind of crepe maker doodad. So she takes this mixture of mung bean and regular flour. I think mung bean's a good word. What do you think, Phil?
Can you see it? Mung bean. Oh, that's nice, nice, nice. Nastasy was like, before I didn't want mung beans, but now I do. Now I do.
So she takes a this kind of thin crepe batter, raplets it out real thin. And at first I was like, yo, your crepe game is weak because it didn't spread as well as like a traditional French crepe. Because a French crepe, when it goes out onto the crepe maker, is a thing of beauty. Like the the s the swirl, you've seen it, right, Stasen? When they swirl that crepe make that crepe on, a good crepe maker, there's no tears, there's no holes, there's no double swipe.
They're just like they ladle it in and whoop and around it goes, and there you go, crepe. What is it that they do, Dave? Okay. Yeah. Anyway, so it's like, you know, there it is.
So uh this lady though, I completely misjudged her skills. Her skills were soup dupe on point. So she does the it takes her like two swipe arounds to get the the the mung bean uh crepe all the way out. Then instead, and here's the fun part for those of you that never had one. Here's the fun part of the whole kind of McGillakuddy is, but I've only seen people do it with kind of pre-beaten egg mixtures.
She takes the egg out and goes, crack, cracks the whole egg onto the top of the crepe onto the onto the uh raw side of the crepe, right after it sets a little bit. Then she wipes just the white around the entire crepe, leaving the yolk intact, takes the riplette, breaks the yolk, wipes the yolk as a separate layer over the top of the entire thing, then goes chakity chakity chakity with uh sesame seeds over it, flips the crepe, then puts on the sauce and the crumpled up uh crunchy cracker and the crunch-up crunch crunchy cracker, cilantro, lettuce, and some sort of mayonnaise sour cream, whatever mayonnaise thing on top of that, and folds it all in. But it's the combination of the crunchy on the inside of the soft that makes it the big money move. It's the big money move. She's like, Do you want fillings?
I was like, No, I want it just like that. Later I'll get the fillings. But there was no later. But anyway, but uh there was there was no later. Then we had it again at the hotel, and the hotel guy was trying to be all game about it.
But I was like, You're gonna be better when you become a 70-year-old woman. And you're doing this on the street every day, right? Yes, it's fine. But uh, so that's the one that really has me thinking the most about stuff that I could do because I own a crepe maker. I now have three sacks of mung bean flour in my house.
But uh I'll let you I'll let you know if I uh guys, if I if I do anything with it. But then when Nastasi and I get back to Hong Kong, and by the way, hellish ride. Oh, yeah, it's terrible. It was terrible. They like China just shut the border down.
They're like, only Shenzhen people can get through now. Because we were in Donguan that day, which is outside of Shenzhen. They're like, crap on Dongguan people. And so the guy's like, okay, crap on me, turns off the car, and we just sit there like we're dead for an hour and a half. On the side of the road, on the side of the road, like jerks, until they're like, okay, non-Shenzen people can go again.
And then we went through the border and we made it in real late. We went to a hotel. Hong Kong people, because of the the with the protests, is dead. Like we were at a bunch of bars, and like they the F and B is down like 50%. Hotels are like at like very low occupancy.
Like, you know, they're at least 50% below where they normally are. But the thing is, I I feel uh bad about it because as a tourist, you know, even a business tourist like us, did you feel unsafe at all? No. I didn't feel unsafe at all. I mean, the the only thing is that um, you know, you might not be able to go to a particular neighborhood, and like once or twice there have been protests at the airport, so some flights were canceled, but I was not ever in any danger.
So, like, you know, I feel like in the well, I don't know, I'm not gonna get into it, but I feel like in the media, like this kind of like the violence has been overblown, and so people are afraid to go. So someone wrote an article where they're like, this is so ridiculous because you know, there's this whole it's it's a big thing over there, but they're like, I went to Hong Kong Disneyland, and there was no one at the rides. Like, that's what you got out of it. Like, this island's in turmoil, and what you get out of it is I get to go to Space Mountain without a wait. I was like, you know, they had way to wait a way to feel for people, brother.
You know what I mean? Like, but uh, I I you know I will say that don't be worried about traveling to Hong Kong and go if you're there, go to restaurants and go to hotels. So Nastasi, we're about to go to the night market because uh, but the night market was gonna close in what? 25 minutes. No, like an hour, but we were a half hour away.
And Nastassi's like, I don't feel well, I don't want to go. So I was like, Well, there's a three Michelin star restaurant in the lobby of our of our hotel. It's the only three Michelin star Cantonese restaurant. So Nastasia's like, Let's do it. I'm wearing well, you're like, I'm wearing a hoodie.
I'm like, eh, who cares? So like we show up, and because uh of the fact that everything's down, there was only like two two people in the entire restaurant. So we we did the we did the whole tasting, and I'm here to say that even when it's three Michelin stars, the people who do the full-on Cantonese food don't like salt. It was the least salt, and like it takes me, people, I've said this before on the air, it takes me at least a week to get used to the low salt level if I'm eating like mainly Cantonese stuff. You know what I mean?
Stuff that if you serve me in the United States, I would just drench in soy so that I could get some salt into it. But like, what do you think about the salt double stuff? No, it was not that it was yeah, it was it was good, but it was low, low salt. You wish there was more salt, right? Yes, because you're a salty individual.
And then we went to a bar or a singing bar. Oh my god. And we paid for drinks for the band because our credit cards started working again. Yeah, so we were in we were in China and we don't have control over our own credit card. Don't get into it, dude.
So they shut down our credit card. So like I had some like old Rem and B's, so we're like going off of like whatever I had in my wallet, like trying to like scrape around and you know, make do. And they turned our credit card on on the last night. So we we yeah, we go to this bar and there's they, by the way, like they turned our credit card on. The bank.
Just the bank. Well, yes, we won't get into it. So yeah, we bought a round for the uh for the band, which feels terrific. If you're if you're in a bar, right, and there is a band playing, right? Like a small bar.
Yeah, you know, and it's not like, you know, I mean it wasn't fifteen dollar cocktails or thirty dollar, it was like, you know, we bought them, we're like around for the bar. They're appreciative. Much more appreciative than those other jackweeds that were sitting two tables over that just kept screaming requests that they didn't know. You know what I mean? No.
It's a class move. Yeah, right. As a musician, you can appreciate this. You want some drinks? It's a long night.
Yeah, it's a long night. Makes you feel appreciated. Yeah. And the other thing is that like if you're the kind of musician who won't have anything to drink during your set, you can always postpone it until the set's over. You know what I mean?
You could tell the bartender, I'll have mine after the set. Not one of those guys waited. Yeah. No, they did. Not one of those people.
Not even the drummer. Yeah, no, no, no. Every drummer thinks they can drum when they're drunk. They can't. Very few people.
John Bonham. I mean, okay. Very few people are John Bonham. In fact, John Bonham's not John Bonham anymore. That's correct.
It's getting dark. Because he's dead. Carlos writes in. I'm looking to extend the shelf life of cookies and brownies for up to 90 days. So far, uh, I found that the uh water activity, or l big A little W, for those of you that are into searching for symbols in the internet, uh, is a significant factor.
That's true. Uh I've heard claims that invert sugars help with this. How does this work? So it's remember, Phil, the things, because there's a whole litany of things that I have to kind of go back and address, right? Uh takes me off.
What? She's taking a break. I'm focusing now, Dave. Yeah. She's now she's taking a break.
Yeah. What kind of terrible thing are you drinking? Oh, it's from anger class. Nastasia goes to a class about anger. I feel that she doesn't need this.
It's like screamy yoga. Right? Yeah. Yeah, but lots of but you don't have to bend yourself into pretzel sheets, right? So uh someone commented on our uh Black Friday video, which by the way, go on the Instagram or Twitter or YouTube's and uh look for the Black Friday video and see it.
Nastasia, as per normal, doesn't say anything, but she is paying attention. Yeah, and then Rebecca was gonna get hit in the head. Everyone's like, first of all, I throw a spinzole, and everyone's like, What happened to the spinzole? I was like, I embedded it in Rebecca's head. So it's fine.
I really wanted to see the like off-camera video of just Rebecca catching stuff. So I have it, I have it. The issue was this. Like, we shot it in what used to be my apartment, it's now my my sister-in-law and brother-in-law's apartment. But Rebecca didn't step far enough onto camera to be, so she's obscure, like she had also had this complicated headgear on, this reindeer headgear, and like, and like a very highly patterned dress.
So it was so rotoscoping is the technique of going in frame by frame and like making a mat so that I can drop the mat out if you can't key someone out with a color key. And it was impossible, it was very hard to rotoscope her out. So if any of you guys are like rotoscope experts, we can get Rebecca back into this commercial. Or we can just show them the original video. But it doesn't work because it's too busy, there's too much other stuff going on, and only Nastasia who cares more about the inside joke than selling anything.
It is funnier with Rebecca in it. You don't like the magnets on the fridge in the back. It's not magnificent. There's like a Batman logo. There's like it's a bunch of things, a sink.
It's like there's no place to write over because it's like super busy, and there's no there's no way to make her, and she only just half of her like face creeps in on the edge in and out. But it's so awesome. Okay, well, you know, maybe we'll do a uh a B roll where you can put it on your stories of what it looks like or throwing the things, but you know, the unedited version. Uh crazy person. So we've got brownie shelf life.
Oh, wait, wait, how'd we get into this? Oh, she was paying attention. Well, how do we get into that? How do I get back on the on the video? Paying attention.
Correct. Okay. Uh pH is another important factor, though with bait goods, I'm not sure how I would uh uh adjust the pH and still make the product taste good because you'd have to make it acidic. Uh also as far as additives go, most seem to be are reported to have carcinogenic properties, mostly recorded by A-holes, though. So, like, you know, I I mean, you have to say which preservatives you mean exactly.
Um things are real problems and some things are overblown. Uh I just listened to the UR episode where you spoke about potassium. Say potassium. Potassium. Yeah.
Potassium sorb. Oh, sorbate's a good word to say it. Sorbate. Oh my god. Phil needs to Phil needs to move back to New York and just like say sorbate over and over again.
Yeah, Matt, you gotta monetize this. You gotta like hire Phil to do your uh heritage radio network voiceovers. He could do them from the studio in California. Like, say uh this week on Meet and Three. Um this week on Meet and Three.
What do you think? Hired super hired, yeah, right? It's like uh how many of you have seen uh Daddy's Home with Mark Wahlberg and uh I think you were literally the only person in the theater for the entire run of the show. Uh first of all, everyone has seen that. The movies he's like he likes are uh I took my son Dax, who wanted to go see it, but Mark Wahlberg, uh, you know, I'm not gonna spoil anything, but Mark Wahlberg.
Don't worry, Evernote. Mark Wahlberg comes in. Say hi to your mother for it. And uh, well, that's kind of what it was like. It's like Mark Wahlberg's the ex and comes in and he's just cooler than Will Farrell and better looking, cooler.
Will Farrell works at a radio show, and Mark Wahlberg comes in and out of nowhere gives the most amazing, like uh what's the what's the little jingle thing called for a radio show? Like that little, you know, like weebie 108, like that. Like what's that? Call sign? Okay, yeah, he just gives like the best one ever, like super, and Will Farrell's like, I hate this.
And then all of a sudden, just from playing that, the residuals on that, he made more money than Will Farrell made like for his entire career. Anyway, great stuff. Uh you could be that man, Phil Bravo. We can only hope. Yeah.
Uh okay. Uh the cookies and brownies are for canon. We're still talking about this question. Oh, yeah. Uh the cookies and brownies are for cannabis edibles, uh, and I hope to help people with serious illnesses, and therefore I want to stay as natural as possible while maintaining the best quality I can.
Any little bit of help will be much appreciated. Carlos, now listen. Listen, Carlos, the main thing you have to worry about, and this is what every everyone confuses these things. In fact, I still have I have people confusing this almost weekly. To the extent that people talk to me, they confuse this.
When you talk about shelf life or how long something lasts, there are two separate problems. Two separate problems. One is safety, and the other is quality, right? So a lot of people mistake the difference between kind of those two things. Now, um, and there's also various failure mechanisms that can happen, some of which address quality and some of which address um safety, right?
So here are the four problems that you're gonna have with a cookie and or a brownie. Now a cookie is gonna last a lot longer than a brownie because it is typically lower in moisture, right? But you're gonna have these problems. One, molds and other kind of yeast. And that's what your thing, like your uh sorry, your uh potassium sorbate's gonna be uh for.
And the difference between those two things, sorbic uh potassium sorbate is just a sorbic acid salt, right? So it's kind of purified and it's a salt of that, easier to use, eater, easier to buy. Frankly, uh the same crap, uh, right? So that's what you're gonna use to inhibit things like a mold, but bear in mind you're not gonna get mold on a product if there's not a lot of moisture in it. So if most of the softness of your product is coming from fat, let's say butter, right, and very little of it is coming from uh like water from egg, then you're gonna get very little mold.
In fact, when was the last time you saw like a super dense, fudgy brownie mold? You don't really see it that often. Uh you'd see it on breads, but typically on high moisture breads. That's why you won't see a lower moisture bread uh mold on you. But uh a little bit of sorbate will probably help kill down on the on that mold.
Another problem you're gonna have is rancidity. So a lot of what goes wrong in a cookie or a brownie, especially something that's based on butter, right? The thing about shortbread, which has a lot of butter in it, like is allowed to go, is is a long-term product. It has almost zero moisture, it's just kind of flour held together with butter, and that tends to protect against rancidity, and plus the flavor of a shortbread is okay when the butter is changed a little bit, but a lot of the off flavors you're gonna get in baked goods over a long period of time is gonna be rancidity. So to stop rancidity, if your people are paying a lot of money, which they will for a cannabis edible, is put some oxygen scavenging packaging in, or think of even doing a modified atmosphere packaging where you pump like an inert atmosphere into the package so that um you know, if the water activity is low enough, obviously bacteria aren't gonna grow, uh, such that you're inhibiting uh rancidity.
Another thing is moisture migration. So in a cookie, things go stale uh and things things either go stale or they go too wet one way or the other, depending on kind of uh what what the moisture balance is between the crust and the inside. So for that is choosing something that has a relatively uniform moisture content throughout, it's gonna make it easy to keep the moisture content the same. And packaging it in an airtight fashion, so there's no moisture migration in or out, is gonna make your life easier. The higher the fat content, obviously, the lower the staling will be because there's kind of less structure there going on.
Or if it's a cookie that has very little water in it, there's also gonna be very little starch retrogradation because in fact the starch is hardly ever functionalized at all. And so that's not gonna go stale as long as the moisture doesn't kind of um leak, leak in and out of it. So that's definitely a moisture management problem. Ooh, it's not recognized my so you have your staling, your moisture management, your rancidity, and your mold. Those are your main kind of an issue, and I think they're all fairly easy to deal with with uh packaging requirements and just making sure that you don't have a lot of um kind of residual moisture left in.
Is that a okay answer? I had something, I had something else that was gonna field I had something else to I had something else relating to packaging cookies and brownies. Nastasi and I once had to vacuum down a whole boatload of cookies that we had made for the troops. That was a damn nightmare. But the cookies lasted forever because they were vacuum packed.
I mean that's yeah, Dave. Yeah, yeah. I had a way, but I had a good packaging idea. Anyway. Sean Lewis wrote in.
Hi, Nastasia. Uh I submitted a question. Uh I'm coming back into the cocktail world and would love to see if Dave is giving classes. I theoretically am giving classes, but uh in other words, I'm still on the FCI's website, but I am not I am You're not teaching classes. I want to teach classes, and and Greg Bohm wants me to teach classes on the uh who?
Greg Bohm, partner at the time. I thought you were gonna say what you came with. Anyway, um all right, and there's another way question I will get to in one second. Here. I mixed up a batch of milkwash clarified punch and bottle it last week.
It was a very uh variation on Philadelphia Fish House punch with pear, peach, pear, and fall spices. Fal spices. What do you think about false spices? I love false spices. Yeah, is that basically mean pumpkin pie spice?
I think so. It's pumpkin's spice, but it's also the, you know, it's like the what's the thing that you boil in the house and you make it all like what? Huh? Cloves? Yeah, good stuff.
Uh I simmered the cesiup with ginger. Oh, it was very tasty, it went well, but I made one big mistake. I simmered the cizurip with ginger. I noticed that ginger syrup was cloudy as I expected it to be, but I wrongly guessed it would clear up with the milk washing. Nah, man, starch.
It's very hard to trap on to starch. Starch is a pain. You can wait a long time to settle it out, or you can use a very, very sharp knife to cut your ginger and then not stir it or beat it up, and then it won't throw off as much cloud. I mixed the milk punch ingredients, added them to the milk, and let the whole mix sit for two hours, stirring occasionally to let the Casey and Curds mop everything up. That's good practice.
Then I spun it out and it spins all for about two hours, two hours. That's a long time, man. Two hours, long time. Long time. Too long.
Too long. You're gonna evaporate too much of your uh product. Like 10 minutes. Ten minutes. Uh then spun it out and the spins all for about two hours and drew some test glasses to check for particles.
Uh I couldn't see even the teeny speck of pulp, and yet the drink was still cloudy, probably the starch. I probably I ran the centrific centrifuge liquid through a chemex filter and Shiwan ran it uh and it ran through quick and clean as water, but it was still cloudy. Uh next day I made another ginger syrup, let it cool, treat it with pectanex, and let it sit pectanex and won't kill the starch. When I came back, I was just made to see no break at all. Yeah, cloudy, yeah, starch.
Those are all my available clarifying techniques at home. I don't have any wine finding agents. So my question is this wine finding agents won't work on starch. Is there something about ginger syrup that cannot be clarified or just just muck it up? A related milk punch question.
Is milk punch self-stable because the case encouraged the track and bind to the enzymes uh that produce bitter lemon? Uh that's an interesting question. Uh I've made a cordial that was pretty lemonin protected because it was heated. I don't know if milk, I don't think the milk's gonna pull all of it out, but the only way to see is to see whether it goes uh stability is another thing. Clear milk punch will go cloudy after a week or so because the case the uh whey proteins will settle out and you can re spin it.
Here's what you ought to do do your initial spin, put the sucker into bottles, tall bottles, tall, tall things. Let it sit. Uh do you remember Epic, the song Epic from uh from uh oh, what's it, Faith No More? Anytime someone says let it sit, what is it? Let it sit, what is it?
Mike Patton, anyone, Mr. Bungle, anyone? I mean, Mr. Bungle, absolutely, but the famous Mr. Bungle song.
Uh well, no, but it wasn't. That was Faith No More. So Mike Patton was in Mr. Bungle, went in the went into Faith No More. Faith No More was like, people actually like this.
We can make a lot of money. And he's like, no, I'm going back to Mr. Bungle. So he went back to Mr. Bungle and Faith No More kind of fell through the cracks.
Anyway, you let it sit for a long time, the starch will settle out. Uh and it'll settle out a lot harder and stronger than it will if you haven't spun out the majority of the solids first. Then pour that, I'm talking like a week. Don't touch it. Then, like, don't touch it.
Don't move the container, make sure the container is round. Then gently pour all of the clear stuff off in the top. Then you'll have a small amount at the bottom that you can try to respin or just let it go, but you'll get a pretty high yield of very clear stuff. It's just gonna take you a week. Uh that's what I would recommend doing.
So for Thanksgiving, uh, I am going to do my uh thing where I cut the backbone out of the bird, rip the main bones out, leave most of the bones, take a stuffing plug. I'm gonna cook the stuffing plug in the oven so it's nice and hot. Then I'm gonna I'm gonna take and I'm gonna wrap the bird into some sort of like crazy thing. I'm gonna shove the the stumps of the inside of the legs against a hot pan for a while to start the cooking on the inside there, and then I'm gonna maybe air dry the skin. Then I'm gonna drape the the turkey over the hot stuffing plug, put it back into the freaking oven, and then cook it from both sides.
Cooking my bird from both sides. No. And then it's gonna come in and we're gonna we're gonna have my my turkey. That's how I'm doing my turkey. No one called in any any questions, but I do have if you have a question, Dave.
What is it? No. 10 five minutes, 10 minutes. What is it? We gotta go.
I'm gonna be very quick. Okay. What's it the pulquet? Mexico City. We were doing fine.
Right. Felt great the entire time. Right. Washed out and throughout my water. Pulke is a kind of like milky tequila adjacent, but it's like a milky beverage that is from fermented.
I guess it's like the frass that's left over after you like squeeze out the no, no, no, no. It's separate. They have they have a different agave that they tap and then they take the stuff out of it. So was it the this is the question with water content? Was it the polque?
I was doing fine. Yeah. Polke last day. Yeah. It was uh it was a terrible week, Dave.
A terrible week, I think. Well, like mentally or butt-wise. I mean butt-wise. Yeah, well, um, so agave has a lot of inulin in it. And so uh by the way, for those of you that don't know, uh Phil Bravo was the person that Nastasia Lopez uh sun choked in the butt.
Oh, that is also true, yeah. Yeah. Where she gave him a bunch of raw sliced sunchoke and was like, enjoy this delicious salad. And uh I would bet, I don't know, I've never had the pleasure of having a lot of pulke, but I would bet it's the inulin. I would bet that there's some sort of residual inulin in the pulke that is messing with the butt.
Yeah. Because the thing about inulin So the answer is it was the polque. Probably. Like there's I don't know. I've never had pulquet.
I and I didn't know you're gonna ask this. I could have looked up, I could have yeah, I could have looked up residual inulin content in polque if you know if I had known, but the the issue is is that the main sh uh the main carbohydrate in that is used to ferment agave beverages is inulin inulin is a um is a fructose uh polysaccharide a f like a fructose polymer so it's it's broken down to fructose but your body can't break down inulin but you know who can the bacteria in your gut and so he doesn't take uh probiotics it doesn't matter there's no wouldn't wait assuming you have bacteria in your gut your bacteria can turn that inulin into like gas gas gas gas and I think if you eat an enough of it you probably get accustomed to it and like maybe you develop uh like you know gut bacteria that don't produce gas when they're digesting inulin but uh for most of us it makes for a nasty a nasty farty uh pain a painful fart too like we ended this on a high note you're welcome to no no he's still going all right so listen listen but we're we have two we have two things so normally uh I I'm gonna end I end with the classics in the field but today we're we're gonna end with uh so we're not I'm not even gonna talk about it and when classics in the field is done Nastasi and I are allowed exactly once per year Phil Bravo will sing the Grinch song for us and so he's gonna it's like it it's his version of piping us in and out he's gonna do the the Grinch song and now that Thor Ravencroft the original singer people think Boris Karloff sang the original Grinch did not Boris Karloff was the voice of the Grinch but the the singing voice of the Grinch was Thoral Ravencroft, which is there a better name ever, Phil, than Thor Ravencroft? There is not. Right. So thorough Thorough Ravencroft was uh that's bearitone, right?
Is it is there something below Barry Tone? Base bear tone. Base bearitone, yeah. Uh so Phil Bravo does an amazing uh Thorough Ravencroft uh Grinch, which he will pipe us out with uh in a minute. And so I'm gonna do classics in the field, and then we're gonna do Phil's.
So I'm gonna wish you a happy Thanksgiving now. And uh are we back next Tuesday, Sas? Yeah. Are we back next Tuesday? So write us in with your Thanksgiving nightmares, how you burnt your turkey, etc.
etc. Okay, ready? Classics are in the field, yeah! All right, so today's classics in the field is not a cooking book, but there is inf information in it that is uh cooking related. So, for those of you that have hung around me for any length of time, and Nastasia hates talking about this.
I believe that every human being should learn to tie a bunch of knots. I believe that it's just a skill you should have. I think you should have a knife with you almost all the time, because what if you should need to cut something like a box? Uh, and I think you should have a bunch of knots, and knots are the kinds of things you need to kind of practice. Now, if you're gonna get a modern knot book, go get one of Joffrey Budworth or Dead Paw Dead uh uh Pawson's books on um on knots.
They're great. Uh they're very good, but there's only one book of knots that everyone can agree is like the Ur reference, like the the magic maestro reference of knots. It came out in 1944. It's the Ashley Book of Knots, and it's uh it was put out by a guy named Cliff uh Clifford Warren Ashley, who was born in New Bedford, by the way, a whaling town. You been to New Bedford?
I have not. You have not? I've not been to New Bedford. So that means you haven't gone to the Whaling Museum? I have not gone to the Whaling Museum yet.
Nastasia, have you been to the Whaling Museum? Yep. Did you love it? Yep. It's also like the Herman Melville town.
She hasn't actually been. She's just saying that to get me off her back. Have you actually been? I've been to a whaling museum in Zack Harbor, but not the one in New Bedford. You gotta go to the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
The amazing thing about the New Bedford Whaling Museum is that in the 70s when I went, it was pro still pro-whaling. And now it's very anti-whaling, but it's still kind of amazing. And there's uh there's like little dribblings of Herman Melville all around the town. Great place. So anyway, uh Clifford Ashley was uh there.
He was an artist, but he went around collecting knots, and he wrote the most amazing knot book uh that you're ever gonna see called Ashley Book of Knots. It's I uh don't think it's available on the web because it's still in print all of these years later. Um he wrote it, if published it in 1944 and had a stroke in 1945. So it was his last work. He didn't even get a chance to uh change to change it, but he kind of pioneered the art of drawing knots and how to make them.
But the cool thing about it is for the better part of 40 years, he traveled the the earth looking for knots in all places. So he has a section, and a lot of it is nautical. Uh, as he as he says, although the sailor may be responsible for nine-tenths of all recorded knots, he can hardly claim to it's early time, so it's they use he, you know, it's 1944. Uh claimed to be the originator of the first knot. For primitive people learned to hunt and fish before they ever took to water.
I I de I the last part is still gendered. I degenerated it because I can't stand to read it in fully gendered form. Uh, but he has this section on occupational knots, and it's amazing because he just goes through a bunch of uh occupations. For instance, knots for the archer, the artillery man, the artist, the angler, the automobilist, which I guess there was still a word in the 40s for the automobilist. The baker, the pretzel knot is too widely known to require much description, but there are several varieties, and often nowadays the pretzels are stamped out by machinery instead of being tied, which is a shame.
Even in the 40s, my God, the stent pretzel is an abomination. Pretzels are twisted. People, pretzels are twisted. A stant pretzel is a sad pretzel. It's not a pretzel at all.
It's a garbage. It's a cookie. It's garbage. It's a biscuit. The giant pretzel knot is from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
It is about 10 inches long. It goes on and on for this. The basket maker, the bell ringer, the bootmaker, the burglar. I would do nothing to encourage the activities of this arch enemy of society, but I will urge them to consider the awful sequence of the following knots with all its direful implications. So he talks about what knots burglars can use.
But then we go to the butcher. The butcher's knots are required in tying up boned and rolled roasts and in preparing corned beef and salt pork for pickling. After passing the end of twine around the meat with a uh simple noose of some sort is made, etc. etc. But then goes through listing that he has gone to every butcher shop that he can find in the Washington, DC area where he's living at the time, and rates every single butcher's knot that you can find.
And he's like, he'll say things like, uh, I don't know if it's like there's a there's a lot, so I don't know if I can make it make it through it. But then he goes through making fun of uh people who use granny knots. He's like, he's like, that knot, maybe that knot would work for a fresh roast, but it's not gonna work for a corned beef knot. You can't re-pull up the string in this one. So if you want a very long-winded, like three-page small type exegesis into different kinds of knots, and what he very, very kindly puts an a star, an Ashley star, next to the butcher knot of choice that he chooses, which I can maybe put on my uh Instagram later.
He goes through and tells you which knot he believes you should use. But no one has gone through every occupation looking for the knots the way that Ashley has. And if you're ever serious about being a human being, I recommend getting the Ashley Book of Knots and at least looking up the knots that fit your application your occupation, if nothing else. Learn to tie at least 15 good knots. Get yourself a good get yourself a good hitch.
Get yourself a good uh, you know, get yourself a good bend, which is how you tie two things together. Uh get yourself a good stopper knot at the very minimum! Get yourself a good loop knot, people! Alpine butterfly, good one. Anyway, fast to tie.
Uh just read it, enjoy it, and if you can't afford to buy it because it's still expensive, get something from Des Pawson or uh or Joffrey Budworth. Anyway, that has been Classics in the field. Happy Thanksgiving, and now we have Phil Bravo doing the Grinch. Do I have any backup or no? No.
What do you mean? It's not no. I need an intro. How does it how does the intro go? I don't know.
It's a big big band. Like potato, potato. Uh didle d-diddy. You're a mean one. Mr.
Grinch. You really are a heel. You're as cuddly as a cactus. You're as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch.
I think you did your uh what is it? Schutengorp. Schutengorp. But it wasn't an angry one. I I didn't make the fist.
I just did the I did this. Okay. It's true. But we can close on. You're a bad banana with a greasy black peel.
Strong. Strong. The Grinch. The Grinch. Happy Thanksgiving.
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