This episode is brought to you by Bend to Table, a monthly food subscription service for avid home cooks focused on delicious and sustainable pantry items. Learn more at BenttoTable.com. That's B-E-N-T-O-T-A-B-L-E.com. And when you use code H R N for a new subscription, you get $20 off, and H R N gets $10. This week on Meet and Three, we're turning our attention to how the global pandemic is impacting our mental health and how food brings us comfort during these times.
I've never understood why people have said I'm brave for solo dining. Food can kind of be a source of soul as or it can be uh a source of excitement or like an activity to keep you busy. When there's a crisis, typically the restaurant industry is one of the industries that springs into action in terms of being like, well, come in, we'll take care of you. Tune in to Meet and Three to learn more about the psychological effects of COVID 19. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.
Right on the Long Island Sound. How you doing, Nastasia? Good. We got John from Booker and Dax chilling in the uh what do you call that? Murray Hill?
What is it? Upper what is it? Yep. Murray Hill. Who's this Murray guy?
I have that's actually a great question. I've never thought of looking that up in the three years I've been here. Yeah, nice. Well, at least you're curious about things. Matt, in the book, and you're in your Brooklyn booth.
I'm in my Brooklyn booth. Nice. And we have semi live. I mean, like, I guess, as live as he ever is. My man Aaron Polski, the poll cat from Los Angeles.
How are you doing? What up? Well, uh, what do you mean, as alive as I ever am? Well scene. I mean, you know, apparently I've been told that okay.
So Aaron was supposed to be on the show today because he was going to make a he was going to go to his uh uh flavor house of choice Givodin. Uh pronounce that for me, John. Say it. Givodin. Givodin.
Givodin? Yeah. Anyway, yeah. But like uh, or how would you pronounce it in like New York? I can't even wrap my mind around how you'd pronounce it as just like a straight up old school New Yorker.
Do it, Aaron for it. What would you get? I mean, I say Givadon, but I can I can be like, uh, Gividon. I think it's just adding the A to the beginning. Hey, Givadan, like that, like like that, like how would you do it?
Yeah, I mean, I would I guess I gotta be like Andrew Cuomo. Uh okay, Miss. Go buy some sausage and peppers and then go to Givedon. Tell me how to tell give it to me. I uh well, it's gotta be in the context of the sentence.
So I go to the bodega and I buy a vial of Givodon. There you go. All right, all right, all right, all right, I'll take it. Now listen, Aaron Polski, the poll cat, was supposed to have g sent us, and Nastasia assures me that this is okay to talk about, but he was supposed to have sent us a uh sample of uh the gin and juice mix uh that you know he's been working on, but I've been told that instead the majority of his time has been spent one going to protest, which we all support, right? We all support this going to protest.
And second, trying to work around the new C D CDC guidelines. Now, Nastasia, which C D CDC guidelines are we talking about? The uh well, Aaron and I talked a bunch over text, and um we received uh a bunch of people have sent me the new sex appropriate CDC guidelines, and Aaron also got them. We need a euphemism for the family show, so we're gonna call this intimate contact, intimate contact, intimate contact. Oh, that's much better.
That's much better for me too. No, it's a family show and has been for years. No changing now. Intimate contact. Come on, please.
Okay, hey kids, you know how you were born. Oh my god, it's not appropriate. All right. For any children, for any children out there, you can you can you parents just stop this recording and go to like this is not like old school where like you know, whatever his name is, Vince Vaughn gets to say earmuffs and pretend that nobody hears. Why not?
Like it's just not what we do. This is not what we do. My dad listened to Howard Stern every morning, and if I were in the room, it was like that's on me. So I don't care what you and your dad did. This is the excuse that Booker gives all the time.
Well, my friend's parents let him jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. I don't give a rat's ass what his parents do. Go live with your friend's parents, right? It's like, listen, don't compare yourself to other people. Do what you do, right?
What we do is family show. Now we can go innuendo real deep. As we know. Anyway, Nastasia and and Aaron, instead of making gin and juice, have been worried about how to minimize. Apparently, Nastasia read it to me this morning.
There's a hilarious CDC document about uh that goes into it's like weird, it's crazy. It's crazy. Did you know that your best partner is yourself, Nastasia, according to the CDC? I I do know that, yeah. I've known it for uh quite a while now.
I I feel uncomfortable because I never saw the pre-pandemic CDC guidelines for my private life. And so I don't know what I've been doing wrong this whole time. Well that's probably everything. Yeah. These guidelines are specific to COVID and and uh you know, you have a wave, so it doesn't they don't apply to you.
So that's great. Yeah, this is why we're not involved with this stuff, thankfully for us. But uh, you know, poll cat and Nastasia, not with each other, I don't want to hear anything about it, like have been like figuring out these rules, and they're quite they're they're quite ex a explicit and b kind of weird, right, Stuzz? Yeah, I read them to Dave this morning and uh I thought she was trolling me. I thought she was trolling me because they're so crazy.
That's what I said earlier to Aaron. I said somebody told me about these and I thought they were trolling me. Yeah, because I mean it wouldn't be the first time our government has said some crazy some crazy stuff, but my favorite is listen, if you first of all, the words they use are so funny. If you need to have this kind of contact with three or more people, maybe wait, maybe wait. Just maybe wait.
Maybe wait, right? I mean, I like their choice of wording. There are a couple things. First of all, they they definitely use it to speak about consent, which is which is you know, a good thing to just get out there to the general public is health guidelines have sex only with consenting partners. Just they just put that in there.
That's I wouldn't I don't think that's COVID related but there's uh pick larger more open and well ventilated spaces which I mean definitely open to interpretation there yeah that's so these are they're they're outside fetishists I mean what spaces are we talking about but then Nastasia told me that on the exact opposite side like they were very like they're like people from the Deuce from that show the Deuce they want you to like be sealed in a closet in a separate room from the other person well a wall between you yeah yeah yeah yeah and Aaron wait true or false nostasi and we'll leave it at this the literally the center the Center for Disease Control said why not get a little bit kinky yeah right Aaron uh I do I think that was the New York City Health Department Oh what are you doing in New York City Health you don't have any New York City problems you're LA you gotta read the LA COVID totally different virus just I have the LA COVID in front of me so let's they don't say get a little kinky New York says get a little kinky sausage and pep yep there's one I there's one where they define feces as poop. I think that's a DC which is also great. Wait they had to define feces as poop yeah where was it it said uh I'm like, oh my god, oh my god, this is gonna go real far south real fast. All right, go ahead. Uh I'm finding it.
I gotta do like command F and find poop. Oh no, that was New York City for all you smart smart ones out there. Uh the virus has been found in the seam, in the semen and feces, parentheses poop of people with COVID-19. Oh god. Oh my god.
It's not being single right now. Yes. Yeah. Well, uh Nastasia, may I talk about the other trolling that you've been getting? No, I probably shouldn't.
I don't know what you're talking about. The temporary, the temporary single troll. No. No, no, no, no, no. No.
Anyway, like now's a really like listen, I'm gonna go ahead and say this. This is gonna sound like it's not coming from me, but it really is. People need to stop trolling Nastasia right now. Like, seriously. Like you like Nastasia can't grow anything because she lives on a salt flat, basically.
She lives on the edge of a body of salt water. When I say on the edge, she could throw a matchstick from her window into the water. So she's right on the saltwater edge. It's windy and salty, which is pretty because she's got a view of New York City and all that stuff, but you can't grow scoot doodly over there in normal stuff. So don't talk to her.
And that's her favorite thing to do. And she doesn't have her New York City plaque, she's not in New York. And she can't like meet up with anyone. So just stop trolling her. She has enough problems right now.
Am I right or wrong? Yes. I mean, I'm not saying this like it's not a pity party. I'm just saying like I love anyone that trolls Nastasia during normal times, but maybe right now is not the time to troll her about these things. No.
Thanks. Thanks. But trolling Nastasia gives people a sense of normalcy, Dave. But you would be surprised who's trolling me. So Yeah, you'd be you'd be shocked.
We're trolling with what? No, we're not getting into it. I can't get into it. Let me just say that it is a deep, strong troll. It's like it's like I'll text you after the farmer's market.
This troll, this troll's got like carbide lamps. They're set up for days. They can stay under. Anyway, so the um, uh wait, I have to say to Matt, uh, Mike, you know, uh Rebecca's fiance says the volume is super low on cooking issues. He has his volume all the way up and can barely hear a part of it right now?
Uh uh, yeah, I sorted that out. Oh, you did? Okay. Uh Rebecca and Mike, text me if it sounds better, please. Rebecca is the boondoggler, by the way.
For those of you that don't remember, Rebecca is the boondoggler. Uh, ruler of the sub party, and uh queen of of Booker and Dax PR situations. Is that true or false? You're not supposed to talk about sub parties, Dave. I mean I'm not supposed to talk about sub parties.
Especially in LA, so that we can continue throwing parties in LA. Hey, listen, Nastasia, part of being good now is admitting when you used to suck. Okay. Right? The last party we threw was not a sub party.
Last party we threw was awesome. Yeah. Yeah, Danny Triho's donuts there, your boy Machete. Yeah. Aaron, you had fun, right?
You were there for like 10 minutes. Oh, uh yeah, the one in the hills. Or the one that like Harry Houdini's house. Yeah. Yeah, it was great.
Houdinied out of there. Yeah, yeah. Which also they don't talk about the Houdini in the New York City sex guidelines. Wait, what do you mean? Is that like an actual term that people use?
My god. It'd be easier if I showed you. No, tell us. No, no, please. Oh my god.
And children were ours. Oh, listen, let's we're pulling back, we're pulling out, we're in the nose dive. Oh, let's pull out. Tell that story when we got back from London. Good man, I guess got that.
Yeah, what? When we got back from London, we got to the New York airport and the baggage flame handler, the difference between what London people say to you about your bags and then what New York City people say when your bags are coming down. Is this the time I had to climb on the thing to undo it? I don't even remember. All I know is is that like, you know, when you're for any of you that have had the I love New York, but like for any of you who had the displeasure of flying into John F.
Kennedy International Airport, right? Or you know, LaGuardia, and you show up, you've been through hell, right? Because you've just been in an airport, you've gone through security 8,000 times, you're going through MLC for the inside. Right. You've gone through your passport check, which they've made better now, especially if you're global entry, but back in the day, you're like your good solid hour and change just standing in that dang line.
Am I wrong about this, people? To get back into the country at JFK after you've walked. I don't know, I didn't even know that the airport was that big. I think that they it's literally sometimes a 20-minute walk from your airplane to where your passport thing, 20-minute walk, right? After you've been on a flight for God knows how long.
When you show up, then your bags are there, and the the carousels are so old that regularly bags get stuck up at the top of the carousel and won't go down. And there's signs everywhere saying you can't fix anything, right? And then there's people who are theoretically working, but they're not doing anything. They're just sitting there, right? So Nastasia and I are like, you know, in in you know, in England, they're like, Oh, the pip to bag, oh no, nice, nice, right, nice, keep it floating.
And then you're like, we show up at JFK, and my bag, and I just want to get home. My bag is stuck. I can see my bag stuck, and a bunch of other bags are stuck, and it's mounding up. People, what are they doing? Eating sandwiches?
Nothing, right? They're doing nothing. So I jump up on the carousel, I run up the carousel and undo the bag. As soon as my feet touch that carousel, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. You know what I mean?
Like New York fashion. I'm like, oh what? Why didn't you fix my dang bag? What the hell's wrong with you? Is it gonna sit here forever?
For freaking ever? Oh. You know what I'm saying? It's like that's so New York. For those of you that have never been to New York, look, oh, oh, that's New York.
That is New York. You could like everyone. We should have them say Givadan. You just go to JFK and ask them how they say it. They say it like this.
Say Givadan, oh, oh. Come on. You know what I mean? Like that's New York. In a nutshell, if you ever need to have an interaction with someone on the street, oh, like that.
That's all you need. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Uh and it works for basically everybody. I mean, it's come on.
I think it's, you know, I think it's uh it's a universal, universal kind of New York exclamation. It's like for if you speak German, it's the New York equivalent of doch. What does that mean? Oh. Anyway.
Um, all right. Shout out uh to this is via Instagram, so Nastasia, don't get mad, but it's a shout out for Father's Day, so I have to do it early, so lest I forget. But uh happy Father's Day to uh Wes McAdams from his kids. Callie, Douglas, and Jane. Happy Father's Day.
You know what I'm gonna do for Father's Day? Nothing. You know what's even more important to me than Father's Day? Do you know what tomorrow is, people? Uh Wednesday.
No. Yeah. Any any guesses, Nastasia? Guess any guesses? Uh no.
And you're an uh no, that's not your anniversary. I don't know. It is. It is my 25th wedding anniversary tomorrow. Oh wow, nailed it.
Yeah, 25th wedding anniversary. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And uh I don't know what I'm gonna do about it.
I'm gonna be. Unbelievably long amount of time for someone to have been married to you. Uh so true. That's so true. I think I'm gonna go to Japan Premium Beef after the show, which is open again in Manhattan, and get me some A5, uh, because uh Jen wanted some steak.
I haven't done a lot of cooking with uh with uh A5 uh beef, Wagyu beef. So I gotta go check it out and see, see what I'm gonna get. But I'll do that. I got some bread baking. I know Nastasia doesn't want to talk about the bread until later at the very end, blah, blah, blah.
But whatever. I'm baking some bread. We can talk about it. By the way, I have some questions about it later, so I'll talk about it. Uh so you guys got anything for the week before we hit these questions or no?
No, we'll get to the questions. Okay. Uh so Devin wrote back, Devin is the uh pasta troll. This is a different troll, trolling Nastasia on the flavor of pasta. Everyone knows Nastasia.
Two things. You need she loves pasta, does not like fresh pasta. What are the what are the you look you like ravioli and you like gnocchi, and is that it? Yeah. Cavitelli, you don't like?
Uh no. But some pattaccini, like fresh fettuccine with like wild boar. Like you had that that has to be Oh, it has to come with wild boar. I mean, why would it not? Are you are you joking with me, Aaron?
I just you know it's quite a condition. I told you not to troll nostasia right now. A chingali. Uh is that is that the term that you guys use for the wild boar sauce? Yeah.
Yeah. Uh so you like fresh fettuccine, so you're moderating your opinion, which I appreciate. I just wasn't expecting it. Yeah, me neither. Yeah.
So in your fresh fettuccine, you like it with uh you like an egg, you like it a little yellow or no? Yeah. Okay. Well, why don't you like fresh pasta? It just it I think that most pasta is great dried.
Um, and I don't like the way that fresh pasta sits in your stomach. It's like a ball of just dough, you know, it's just like dough on dough on dough. I just really don't like it. What are the other doughs that are in your stomach? Um, oh, I don't know.
Well, doesn't it feel like a ball of dough once you eat fresh pasta? Um I mean, not if you form it. Are you just eating the dough? Is that the issue? She's like, it's basically a dumpling in flat form.
Yeah. I don't know. It's not look. I will say this. I understand where Nastasia is coming from from this perspective.
I think when you want that kind of specific texture of fresh pasta, I like the thing is is that real like pasta pasta is gonna like has more tooth to it than any homemade pasta could hope to have because they make it under tremendous pressure with Durham wheats that are low in gluten, right? They use they use uh they use a specific grind style, like you know, the semolinas, which you know hydrate the way you want to for pasta. They have a mixing technique and pushing it through a dye to get the pressure to get the dough to cohere. They're using a very high protein flour with a low gluten content, the Durham wheat. So they have all of these things going for them that you can't really mimic the pressure.
I've wanted to get one of those biggely presses for a long time to see whether I can make real stuff, but I I don't have one and I don't have an arco balano or any of these things. But um, so like you can't make easily the raw product, even whether it's fresh or dried, you can't make that same dough using the stuff that you have at home, right? Whether or not that stuff needs to be completely dried to get the eventual texture that Nastasia likes, that I don't know. I've never run the test. Maybe Nastasia has, I don't know.
But uh, I mean, I'm sure that's probably part of it, right, Stas? Yeah. And also how much of it is you just don't like people making things and talking to you about it. No, that's not it. I just I really like the toothsomeness of a dry pasta.
You don't get that with fresh pasta. Um I have a bunch of Durham here. I might try to make some semolina. I'll sit, I'll try to like do stuff that only passes through a 50 and throw away the stuff through a 60 and see if I can. I'll reject the 40s, take the 50 to 60s, see whether I can get a decent.
But why? The Nastasia's just gonna sit there and like she's gonna like Nastasia's hate face can make it all the way from Stanford to the lower east side. Like I can, I will be feeling it on my back all the way over here. And she'll she'll call me and then just not say anything. And then she'll call me like an hour later and yell at me about an unrelated thing, but it'll be about the pasta.
So I'm probably not gonna do that. Our morning started with yelling. For no reason, by the way. Not getting no getting into it. You brought it up anyway.
But I'll tell you another thing that's good to have high protein, low gluten that I am going to be working on. Uh is uh flour tortillas. I did my first flour tortilla with a very soft wheat, didn't have enough protein, and the taste was amazing. I used Frederick wheat. Um the taste was amazing, but it didn't have quite enough structure.
So I'm waiting for my Sonorin White wheat, which is a high protein but low gluten flour that was the original wheat that uh hundreds of years ago that the flour tortilla in the Snorin Desert was based around, and Hayden Flour Mills sells it. Uh and I'm getting some shipped to me. I was supposed to I was already supposed to have tested it and told you guys about it, but uh there was a problem in the shipping. They ship me this regular chump soft white wheat. I got 50 pounds of soft white wheat in my pantry.
I can't use any more soft white wheat. Nastasi doesn't want to talk about it. But anyway, so this is a long way to get to Devin's question. Remember, he was the pasta troll uh talking to Nastasia about how pasta doesn't have flavor. And he said, Thanks for answering my previous pasta question.
It was a ridiculous question. I was thinking about how to highlight the flavor of pasta in addition, couldn't really come up with anything myself. But I guess it's true if you eat pasta alone or uh add just flavor enhancers like salt, butter, and parmesan, the pasta flavor would be the highlight. Please accept my hum humblest, please accept my humblest apologies from this beta. Apology accepted, Nastasia, or no?
Yeah? Accepted. Okay. You sound you have trepidation about accepting this apology. Fine, just go on.
All right. Can we just can we dissect this question for a second? Okay. Not even at the same time. He said when you eat pasta alone, is does he mean like you are your safest pasta eating partner?
Oh, Aaron, you know, it's always nice having Aaron around. I have to say. I'll take that. I'll take that at face value. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Nastasi, what are your favorite pasta shapes? I love bucettini. That's probably my favorite one. Yeah.
Yeah. I like to select. I like rigattoni. I like mezzarigatoni. Yeah.
You don't like the pre-stranglers? I love the pre-strangler. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh yeah. So in my family, if you're an idiot in the in the in my stepfather's family, in the Italian Boston section, if you are an idiot, you are a macaroni with no hole. This is the insult. Because first of all, in Boston, all pasta is macaroni. It's all called macaroni.
And the sauce is called gravy. All pasta sauce is called gravy. Yeah. Of course, you know, you can make the gravy. They make a lobster gravy.
They make the meat gravy with the, and yes, this is the way they say it, brushol in the meat gravy and the sausage and the pork chops and the meatballs in the gravy with the macaroni. That's the that's the parlance you use in Boston. Anyway. So uh yeah, if you were a complete Ninkam poop, you were a macaroni with no hole. That guy's a macaroni with no hole.
I like that. Yeah, yeah. You gotta use that. So you like bucottini? You like macaroni with a hole?
Yep. Yeah. Uh okay. Here's a question from Devin, the pasta troll. Uh I'm trying to get a clean solution for making cream out of milk.
Now, before I even read your question, Devin, I don't really understand what you want, but I'm gonna go through it anyway. Cream to be whipped like cool whip. Cool whip. Aaron, what are your thoughts on cool whip? I don't think ready for this?
Yeah. I don't think I've ever had it. What? I don't think I've ever had it. Why?
You mean you've never had it frozen, you've always kept it in your fridge and never bothered trying to eat frozen cool whip out of the tub. That's what you're saying. I don't I don't think Jews eat cool whip. What? Why wouldn't they?
It's a non-dairy whip topping. It's like made for Jews. That's that's valid. I don't I don't know. I I've never had I've also never had marshmallow fluff.
That I can understand. Why? Because you can't guarantee where the gelatin comes from. It's not a kosher thing. I think it's a cultural thing.
First of all, your kosher? No. Oh. No. Aaron Polski doesn't mix dairy and meat.
That's what everybody's gonna say now. Aaron Polski never eats Oreos, only hydrox. Keeps kosher. Are there kosher Oreos? Hydrox.
It used to be Oreos were never kosher. So they invented the Hydrox cookie, which was kosher. Same company. It was in the biscuit. No, no, no, no, different people.
And then Abisco was finally like, why are we why are we doing this? Why are we so stupid? Why are we losing the market of 2% of the world's population? I mean, but like why, like okay, whatever. I'm just saying, they they hated seeing the hydrox flourish.
That's what it was. They just hated seeing the hydrox flourish. Yeah, that's a common theme through history. Oh my. Okay, so uh there are two ways to consume cool whip, Aaron.
You can either use it out of the tub in your fridge, or some people, if you you know, grew up, I guess, hard wasp like me, you also sometimes kept a tub in the freezer. Anyone else here with me? Whip. Yes. Stas, thank you.
Finally. What's it like out of the freezer? It's like firmer. It's like But it's not firm. It's firm.
It's firm. And it's cool on your mouth. So when it's hot out, cool whip from the freezer is nice. I happen to like cool whip. I also happen to like Miracle Whip.
I do not believe Miracle Whip is mayonnaise. I believe Miracle Whip tastes good. I enjoy it. I don't use it when I'm cooking, but if someone said I'm putting Miracle Whip on your sandwich, I would not punch them. What's it made?
I don't I don't know I've never had it. What's it made of? Miracle Whips and fake mayonnaise. I think it's they it's like a salad dressing. I I forget what they use instead of this.
It's some sort of compounded things. Like cool whip is fake, fake whipped cream. I love whipped cream. I also like cool whip. Back to Why do they need to make fake mayonnaise?
What is in the what's in the real stuff that that is offensive to the people? Let's look up what's in Miracle Whip. The one advantage of doing this show like this is I can just sit here and look up. And first of all, ain't no one use straight Miracle Whip as a salad dressing, which is what they which is what they say it is. Let's look at the Miracle Whip.
Uh uh surprise. Ooh, Heinz makes it. Hi, prize to the first person who uh gets me the ingredient list off of Miracle Whip. And come on, come on, come on, guys. Now you guys are reading.
Oh, I got it. Water, soybean oil, high fructose, corn syrup, vinegar, modified cornstarch, egg, salt, natural flavor, mustard flour, potassium, sorbates, spice, and dried garlic. What's it trying to be? Ranch? Well, yeah, but what the heck?
It's got egg yolks, it's got oil, water. It must be has all the stuff of mayonnaise and then a bunch of extra junk. Yeah, but six flags announced a new partnership with the Miracle Whip brand in 2009. What's happening there? It must just, it must just have.
Is it because they've added sugar to it? That's why it's not mayonnaise? But QP does that and MSG. Like, is it that there's more water in it than you're allowed to have in regular mayonnaise? Oh, it's cheaper.
It was developed as a less expensive alternative to mayonnaise in 1933, back when people were sober. You know what, you know what's killing my food budget, Aaron? It's the mayo. It's how much mayo I go through. That's what's killing me.
Um cream to be whipped like cool whip. My body doesn't do so well with stabilizers, and most store-bought heavy creams are doped. I don't know uh where you live, Devin, but you can find, for instance, Trader Joe's, and I know I've said terrible things about Trader Joe's dairy aisle, mostly that their light sour cream, the package is almost identical to their real sour cream. All sour creams are like that, too. It's ridiculous.
Do you know what? Have you ever accidentally gotten home? A million times? All the all the time. And you're like, but why?
Like, like the people who want crap, garbage, fake sour cream, really want that stuff. So just like paint it with me on colors. Put rainbows on it. Like do anything, right? Anything so that I don't accidentally pick you up.
You know what I mean? Um, there's that. Uh a lot of things are like that. There's another one at Trader Joe's. They have this, they have this thing that they call kind of guilt-free.
They have these things that are guilt-free, but the packaging is almost identical, like minor things. I don't want guilt-free because I am not guilty about the food I eat. There is nothing about the food that I eat that makes me feel guilty. Do you know what I'm saying? Am I the only one?
Did I lose all you guys? No, you're right. Go on to the question. All right. Back to cool whip.
So uh Trader Joe's uh heavy cream, uh, I believe is unstabilized. That's why we use it when we make butter. Um I haven't tried straight gelatin, but if you don't like stabilizers, but you're okay with gelatin, you can do that. You say you want to make whipped cream from milk, but is it really because you want to whip milk? If you want to whip milk, gelatin and condensed milk, because you get like a lot of um milk solids, right?
You're adding to the milk solids. The thing about cream is is the fat is whipping and making like a nice like you have you have protein in the form of milk solids that are adding to the whipping ability, and then you have uh the fat, which is actually forming the foam. So you have both, and it sets up uh nicely. You if you want to do it without the fat, right, then I guess you could use um evaporated milk and gelatin and whip it up uh, you know, and Nestle, the evil Nestle overlords. And they really are the evil.
They have a recipe up there that you could do uh with gelatin. Um but then you say uh any suggestions? I'd rather not throw money randomly to see what works, hence why I'm asking first. I would say if you can have real cream, just go get the real cream from uh without the stabilizer in it, just plain cream, like search it out because it's useful for other things like making butter, butter. Also, at some point in here, I don't remember.
You add, oh, or adding dehydrated butter or dehydrated milk to liquid milk to give it more heft to be whipped. Just buy evaporated milk. Dehydrated butter is a misnomer. I wish I wish that that person would slip on a banana peel and like you know, be laid up for a week for calling it dehydrated butter. Dehydrated butter is still a liquid fat, uh liquid or solid, depending on its temperature.
It's called ghee, right? So, like what butter powder is, which is not dehydrated butter. This is one of those lies. It's like the same way that I'd like to be trapped in a in a small room after I'd eaten very, very, very many beans with whoever came up with calling mono and diglycerides glice in the Ferran Texura's line because it's caused me untold problems. But the same thing with this dehydrated butter.
What butter powder is is ghee, right? So clarified butter, that they then take a whole boat ton of milk solids that without the water, milk solids, and keep adding milk solids to the ghee until it turns into a powder. So it's mostly milk solids, and milk solids are keeping that butter apart. That's what it is. So I don't I mean it, it's not like it's gonna hurt you when it's whipping, but I don't really think it's gonna necessarily help either.
Is that a good answer, Stuzz? Or no? Yep. Hey Aaron. Yo, are you one of these oat milk weasels?
I am I think oat milk. I'm sorry, hold on. Everybody uh can hear me clearing my throat. Um I think oat milk is a scam. What?
Um because so if you're not making your oatmeal, and I know it's not for oatmeal, but hear me out. If you're not making your oatmeal with milk, what are you using? Water, like a chunk. Water? Water.
Right. So like you're making your own oat milk and doing that, but we all know that making it with water doesn't taste as good. Right? So your throat. Okay, hold on.
I'm gonna mute it. This episode is brought to you by Bent to Table, a monthly food subscription service for avid home cooks focused on delicious and sustainable pantry items. I recently received a conservice box. I had squids, razor clams, octopus, um, and sardines, and then it came with this hot sauce. So this sauce is apparently the favorite sauce of Barcelona.
I was there last. I was there two years ago with everyone's favorite life coach, Claire. And when I put the sauce on all of my bread and fish, uh, it reminded me of being in Barcelona with Claire. So thank you, Ben to Table. Go to BenditTable.com to start your own monthly subscription.
Use the discount code H R N to get $20 off a new subscription, and Bend to Table will donate $10 to support cooking issues and all of A.R.N.'s programming. I'm back. I'm all good. So oat milk is like the residue of a less preferable oatmeal. No.
I yeah. No, I mean, I there's no, is there even fat in oats? Uh they specifically remove the fat. Um, and well, they they either remove the fat or they have to um they have to deactivate the um the lipases in it that will uh cause it to go rancid. So they are lipoxygenases, whatever they're called, the enzymes that will do it.
So they either have to heat and activate it or remove the fat. There is some fat in it, yeah. It is great. And now they have oatmeal. Or in oat milk, you're saying that they remove the fat.
In commercial oat milk that you buy, they add fat to it. They add neutral oil to it to get the fat level up to where you want. Yeah, it's a scam. It's not a scam. It is the best non milk milk.
It really is. Have you ever made oatmeal with oat milk? No. I don't even know. I have.
Yeah, well, don't. In 2007, that would have been called oats two ways. Oat on oat on oat on oat. Oat squared. Aaron, Aaron, make coffee with because I drink coffee and I stopped using milk.
If you have the coffee. Nastasia's is Nastasia's like being alone during this COVID time has turned her into a cult leader. No. I'm like drinking, just drinking coffee like a cult leader. I defend Nastas.
No, oat milk is the best alternative milk and coffee. Yes. It's very good. Yeah. What about almond milk?
No, you did taste. It's better. Yeah, almonds is delicious. Coffee is delicious. You don't want your coffee to taste like you don't want your coffee to taste like almonds.
You want it to taste like milk. Then use milk. No, because you're not lactose intolerant. No, I thought it I've been vegan. I've been trying to be vegan for uh why?
I don't know. It's a discipline thing. It's a central tenant of her cult. Yeah. That's what I'm saying.
But there's no reason ecological argument to bring out. You look in the mirror, do you make the vegan face? Yeah. Um I was like making myself solo meals. Um that's under I understand a solo meal.
Where did the eating vegan come from? Because having animal protein as the only like contact that I had with a person or a mammal or whatever you want to call it, like was sad. So I was like, you know what? I don't want to have this dead piece of meat in my house. Yeah, but what about what about milk and eggs?
You said meat. I can do without milk. Eggs are. Apparently you can't because you're buying expensive substitutes for it. Well, how do we know you're not making your own?
I'm definitely not making my own because people need to realize that like places that make mass production of great shouldn't stuff should kids go watch Toy Story. Again, um they should just realize that people that mass produce things are doing it the best way. Like, why would I go through that's that's not always you say McDonald's makes the best hamburgers? A fast food hamburger, yes. If you want that same fast food taste, Aaron's not saying fast food, Aaron's saying make it home versus not.
The argument, the argument here is that they are doing a process you can't easily do at home. Therefore you can't mimic it. Unlike McDonald's, where I can very easily make a hamburger at home. Yes. Anyway, uh, point is is that Nastasia gets these weird things in her head, like she won't play music.
She has to hear it from the radio. That is true. And this has become one of those things, and this is gonna become a problem. This is gonna become a problem for me. I guarantee it's gonna become a problem for me.
What is this weird like cult tangent you're going off on? Because there's no reason for you. I had I had meat on Saturday. If I'm with people Hey, did anyone say anything about meat? We're talking about oat milk right now.
Where's this meat conversation coming from? Where is this? Hey, where any of you John? Were you talking about meat? No, we're talking about oat milk.
I believe we're talking about oat milk. She started on meat. Okay, but I'm I grew up with milk and it's kind of gross. Pow milk. You've been having milk forever.
You love cheese. I love cheese, yeah. Cheese is the one problem with veganism. I cannot do without cheese. So that's never gonna, I'm never gonna.
Eggs in everything that's made. Eggs, I told you, Dave, I got real grossed out by the the uh what's that little thing? Kalaza. Yeah, so gross. Wait, what's kalaza?
Is that in the plaza alone in a house? I just I couldn't do it. Yeah, but everything is made with eggs. Yeah, that's fine. As long as there's eggs in it, but to scramble them and to see that little thingy, no one says you have to scramble eggs.
What's a colasa? It's the okay. Listen, Matt, you got an egg, you got your shell, you got that like skin membrane, and then holding the egg yolk in the white is like a ropey doodad with a little white pearly McGilla cutty attached to it called the chalaza. So gross. It's like the umbrella.
This is why in uh and John, you'll back me up on this. Old school French weasels will strain their egg whites uh after they're done to get rid of the halaza because it's gross, and what we do instead is use a vita prep when we're making our creme en glaze. But if you don't use a vita prep, if you're just stirring your creme en glaze, you need to strain it to get rid of the halaza. John Troy. Oh, that is disgusting.
Disgusting, right? Yes, have you ever heard that, Dave? You know what? It almost auto Google almost auto-completed halaza for me. The uh I'm gonna send you the grossest picture.
What looks gross doesn't taste bad is balanced. What? Thank you. The whole quarantine is just lots of things are coming up. I'll I'll buy what's a balloon.
Did you say balut? Yeah, yeah, balut. So that's where you actually let the egg grow until it's about to hatch, and then you open it and you eat the you eat the the almost bird. Yeah, that's too much. Yeah, it's it's good.
It tastes good. I wouldn't like seek it out, but like it's not as gross as people say it is. Everyone's like, so gross. Oh my god. It's not that gross.
It's a little less when I was in Laos I had one and the embryo was a little overdeveloped, so it was a little feathery and and too crunchy. It wasn't wasn't super pleasant. Yeah, well, I was eating it with someone who was walking me through the process, and there's like a st there's a there's a st a stony thing in it that has to be removed that is the waste product of the embryo being grown. So you get rid of that. But like on balance, it tastes rather brothy.
The stony thing that needs to be removed. Is that like the beak? No, no, no. That stuff's all fine. No, it's like literally like a little little stony thing.
Hey, when you eat a pitch, do you uh a peach, do you get all uh all pissed off because of the of the stone? No, you don't eat the pit. It's the same thing with the balloon. Um there are like eyes and stuff. Oh god.
What the heck? I've had it. Who am I dealing with it? I've had it. Stas, what's what's the world's best peach?
Nectarine. Correct. Correct. The nectarine is the best peach. Get on a game show.
What? You have to get on a game show. I know. I know. Well, because we have uh we have our own, we have like you know, 12 years of shtick built up.
We can just do this stuff back and forth. Anyway, Ian writes in this is gonna be about oat milk. Uh this is oh, by the way, Ian's giving you some information on grain milling first. So Nastasia earmuffs. No.
This is not Nastasia's say it's gonna trigger her. She doesn't want you to talk about, by the way, dairy products or meat, but also not about grain. So she only eats celery. Um I have some info to share on last week's show on grain milling and then a question. I justified buying a Vitamix some years ago because of a demonstration that bundled the dry container uh and claimed it could make flour.
I've since been grinding wheat in it to make pizza every week or two for about 10 years, and the whole picky family is happy with the results. The Vitamix does create a lot of heat. It really does. Uh, there's uh some really good articles on the internet. Uh I have to find it for you guys, but at some point in the next year, uh I'll be talking about it.
And there's a there's a website, and I forget the person's name, but they do an extremely good job of measuring the heat generated by different blenders and the power and the friction. Just a fantastic job. I I don't have it on the tip of my tongue, so I can't tell you what website to go to. Anyway, um, but I keep the wheat berries vacuum bagged in the freezer before grinding, so the final temperature is about 110 Fahrenheit. I sift it in a no-number oxo mesh strainer.
You need to up your, you need to up your your strainer, your your sieve game, Ian. I just ordered off of the internet. Well, I'll finish what you said. Uh, and sprinkle the big bits on the peel or parchment like cornmeal. To extend the coffee analogy, I figure it's like using a whirly blade instead of a better bird grinder.
But as my kitchen and basement are already full of gear, I just can't justify a grain mill right now. Well, you can't even buy one, Ian, so don't even bother because they're all out of stock unless you go on eBay and buy some broke one like I did and like rebuild it better, stronger, faster. Uh, since it wasn't mentioned, I figure other listeners who have the same setup could try this. And if they want to dabble in home grinding before going full in on a grain mill. So I would go to get a good uh shaker, but I've been spending the past couple of weeks uh with I I hand built um flour sieves and I made them square.
For God's sakes, if you ever make your own Cs, don't make them square. The squareness is such a nightmare because the stuff gets caught in the corners. And I've also learned that tapping the sieves is a terrible way to get like that's how I do like for those of you that like use the uh the fine strainers, the uh Shinois in a kitchen, you hold it and then you can sit there, and some people use a spoon or like crazier people use that weird cone shaped thing to to get the stuff to go through. But most of us, I think just sit there and pound the handle in with your hand to get the stuff to jangle and go through. Is that how you do it, John?
Is that how you do it, Aaron? Uh yeah, yeah. Well, according to CDC guidelines, that's how Aaron does it. But the um but uh when you're you're working with uh powdered goods in a large thing like a Tammy, you don't want to hit it, right? These are fundamentally big tamis, it's just not effective.
You want to take your hand or a spatula and push the stuff through, but it's a nightmare. So I've been the biggest hardest part about the working with my own flour has been this the sifting through the different size meshes. But just yesterday, what showed up in time for me to bake my anniversary 25th anniversary bread with Dax, which I'm gonna be doing a hard white weed, I'll let you know next week how I like it. Is I bought uh a vibratory shaking sieve off of eBay, came direct from China in under a week, and that sucker is a miracle. It's the same size as my as my hand sifting boxes that I made, and you just push a button and walk away, and it goes and sis everything.
So I'm loving it. I only have had it for a day, but I'm already loving it anyway. Uh here's the question they uh that Ian wrote in, though. And this is going back to oat milk. And uh Aaron, we're gonna talk a little bit about your hatred of oat milk.
Oat milk is more nuanced, as Nastasia would say, than you're letting it uh on it to be, and also the way they make it at Oatley makes it hard for you to make it home. So I'm gonna give points to Nastasia in this argument. What do you think, Sasha? I like that. Because I'm right.
Uh I don't know. I don't know. It's just uh coming from a bar background, you know, you make your own or shot. You can make your own oat milk. All right, well, we're gonna get into this.
Trader Joe's sells a drink called non-dairy oat beverage that tastes good and it's slightly sweet. I don't know about Trader Joe's, just get the oatly. Everyone likes the oatly. Am I right, Stas? Yeah.
Jabani does one too. That's pretty good. Chabani, they make an oat thing? What the hell is oat yogurt? I don't know.
No, no, no. They they make an oat milk, and it's just as good as oatly. And then they yogurt it, but they yogurt it. What the heck is that taste like? Have any of you guys had that?
No. No. The problem with almond wilt, by the way. All right, well, I'll finish this question. Okay.
It tastes good and it's slightly sweet. I've tried making in quotes oat milk, but it's not the same, being watery and vaguely oaty at best. Not oatly, oat e. And oatnealy slimy at worst. The good stuff only lists water and hydrolyzed oats as ingredients and says on the package that they break the starches down into sugars to produce the sweetening effect.
Are there uh any readily available enzymes or techniques I could use to replicate this at home? I have sous vide equipment. Suz vide. You got to just buy Oatly. Come on.
Okay, okay, hold up. Let me finish this question, Nastasia. You can be indignant in a minute. I have uh sous vide equipment and the Vitamix, but no spinz all for the same reason I don't have a grain mill. I'd rather just buy dry oats and save on the wasteful packaging and shipping of water all over the place, Stas.
Oh, what do I think about that? What do you think about that, Stas? There's lots of things. Does he buy wine? Does he buy beer?
Does he make his own wine and beer? So you're saying that Oatly is of such a high quality. Yes, that it's comparable to fermenting Welch's grape juice versus buying good wine. Yes. You're just being a troll now.
You're just being crazy. I'm looking at the ingredients of Oatley right now. No, it's also again, it's insulting because these people at Oatley found a way to make a delicious product, and then this guy's like, well, can't I just make it at home? Like, no, no, no. Speaking of insulting, John.
We only have like 10 minutes for this argument. So speaking of insulting, John, after this, uh, let's talk mustard for a minute. And Nastasia has not yet ordered our monocles, so I can't go back to Belgium, but I'll talk about our mustard experiments. So John found uh for me again, I've read it before, uh, the patent that Oatley has. And the European patent is W02020 14123466A1, US patent number 9743684.
And uh it's about creating an oat beverage. And it goes into excruciating detail exactly, exactly what they do. Now the reason people like some people want oat milk is because they believe that the um beta glucans in it are gonna reduce their cholesterol, right? And so they think that that that they're gonna live forever if they have beta glucans, right? So uh part of what they have to do is heat treat the oats to because there's an enzymes in it in the oats that will automatically uh break it down, right?
And as the patent says, typically uh oat milk is too low of a fat concentration to s to foam properly, so they'll add uh vegetable oil to it. Now I'm sure there's someone out there who you know reclaims uh the fat from oats because people do remove the fat from oats to make sure that they don't go rancid and then can then add that fat back in later. So it's possible to get an all oat all day uh situation. But here's the main here's the main issue. The reason they had this uh patent invention that Oatley did, and it says room for further improvement uh is the following, in particular in respect to increasing the protein content of the drinks.
Processes for producing oat drinks known in the art do not adequately access the protein in the raw oat material. So the issues are is that um oats are heated prior to being um uh ground up so that you don't have the enzymes that will make the fats go rancid and also that'll destroy the beta glucans. Uh so addition, so a lot of the the protein is not in soluble form, sometimes because it's never insoluble, uh never soluble to begin with, or because it was um or because it was heat treated and therefore becomes insoluble. And the patent's a little bit weird because they say don't use preheated steamed oats, but then when they actually describe how they do it, they do use pre-steamed oats. But the magical trick that they use is an enzyme that has its own patent, EP09 uh 76829B1.
Uh, and it is a what's called a peptid a peptidase, uh no, it's a deamidation enzyme, right? So it deamodates. So what it's doing is it's cleaving off uh uh an amide group, releasing, I think, like an ammonia and making the proteins that were formerly insoluble soluble. So they're treating it with this protein, this protease enzyme, well, protein deaminase enzyme, the amidating enzyme, that is taking a otherwise insoluble or less soluble protein and making it soluble. So by treating it with that enzyme, they can increase the protein content of the oat milk without adding external protein to it.
So what this is telling you is if you want to just do it and you don't have access to that enzyme, one of the answers, if you don't really care, is to just add protein to it that's going to have good whipping ability. So just choose any sort of good whipping ability protein and adding it to it. I don't know whether the company that makes it is uh Amano, amanoenzyme inc is the name of the company that sells the uh that sells the enzyme that they use. They then also use an amylase, both a an alpha and a beta amylase to break the starch down, which is why it's sweet, and also why it's not so thick. So they get it to be closer to the actual viscosity of milk by breaking the starch down, and they increase the protein that's available by using an enzyme that makes the protein water soluble, and it's the protein in the oat milk that allows it to foam so well in foam drinks and why it is quote unquote barista grade.
Things like soy milk have a lot of protein, but the problem with soy milk is that soy milk, the proteins in soy milk will curdle when added to hot coffee, the same way it they'll curdle when you add stuff to them to make tofu. Almonds don't have enough protein in them to uh, I think to whip properly, and so almond milk doesn't work, and other milks don't have the right fat content. So the nice thing about this oatly is they use this these enzymes, and I believe they add fat to it to get the fat and protein content and protein uh styles in it relatively close to what you'd have for dairy milk. So it works well in coffee uh drinks. The and you can read in their patent if you care to the exact dosages and times and temperatures that they use.
Uh, but just go to go to that patent. Does that make sense? That's a decent thing. Yeah, it's just like you know, they do it in a factory. Is this douche gonna do it?
Like it's it's not even it's not comp like it makes me angry the whole thing. So speaking of making you angry, oh by the way, for your survey, uh they are demographically the same as me, same age, geographical background, and lots of other weirdly common out of what'd you say? That makes sense. Yeah, loves the show, feels like he's found kindred spirits in us and is hoping to make it to existing conditions someday when the apocalypse is over. Uh, if the apocalypse is ever over.
Um, so speaking of uh people who listen to the show might know that uh, you know, Nastasia doesn't believe that John and I should try to make mustard, instead, we should just, you know, while she's saving the earth by being vegan, we should just light fire to eight billion gallons of uh airplane fuel and fly to Belgium every day to buy our mustard. No, or just be like, that was a really good experience. I can't wait to go back someday. I'm not going to mean while I can't have mustard, yeah. Or just eat American mustard.
Why do I want American mustard? Why don't you just buy French mustard? French mustard's garbage mustard. Or Edmund Fallow, man. Or the best mustard I've ever had is from Ghent.
Work on this the Cube video. Well, listen, here's the thing. Here's what I learned about Gent. John, why are you? Hey, I'm not trying to make the Ghent mustard, but what I learned from Ghent Mustard is this.
It's made only with mustard seeds, vinegar, salt, and water. And so what that means is that if the best mustard I had only has that in it, that I don't need like wine or beer or sugar or honey or any of these other things to get a mustard I like. So I ran my first mustard experiment with the wet grinder and a whole whole grain, whole grain, fine ground mustard in a wet grinder. If you don't know what a wet grinder is, I'm not saying to go buy a wet grinder, but they're pretty awesome, but for specific things. So if you like idlies, if you like dosas, um, if you want to make your own chocolate, uh, which again, it's better to buy Valrona.
It is better, Stas, but it is fun having made your own uh chocolate once or twice. Uh it's great for uh mustard. Uh anyway, wet grinders are a lot of fun. They do take up a lot of space, they're not that expensive anymore. They used to be a lot more, but there's a lot more brands available in the US now.
So uh I soaked my brown mustard seeds. The problem I think is the mustard seeds I got were old. I bought them from Calusteans. I love Calusteans, but like sometimes their spice can be sitting on the shelf for forever. Am I right, John?
Yeah. So I took a pound of mustard seeds, uh, soaked them in about twice that weight of water uh overnight, ground them in the wet grinder, added about two percent of salt, two, two and a half percent of salt, and then here's the trick. So mustard seeds, and I wasn't able to get it as hot as I want, so I need to experiment. But mustard seeds, if you hydrate them or crush them in water, um, they will get hotter, spicier than if you do it in acid. So, what I did is, and it really freaked me out.
I have glacial acetic acid. Have I've already talked about this on air yet. I don't know. Glacial acetic acid is like 99, it's greater than 99% acetic acid, and it is extremely corrosive to skin. It makes me so nervous having it around.
I dripped a little bit on my concrete floor and it ate the surface off of the concrete floor. It was crazy. So I'm adding small amounts of that so that I can get the hydration with pure water and then get the acidity up to the preservation level that I want using this, but just freaks me out too much. So I have some 30% German vinegar coming to me that I can use uh, you know, German vinegar essence that I'm gonna use it the next time I make it. But the mustard is delicious, but it's like it's the I I I can hydrate it more.
The mustard I made is the texture, it's smooth, it's dark brown, it's spicy, but it's the texture of chicken liver, right, John? You saw the picture of it. It's thick. I'll work on it. Um Price Sun, long time listener, wrote in and said, uh, thanks for including my question on the podcast.
He thinks Jordana had the best voice, but Phil gets an honorable mention for heavy raw emotion. Uh what do you think, Self? What do you think of that? Yeah, what do you think? He also wants us to make the steamsol, which is the steamer thing that we're gonna put uh into the oven for baking bread.
We're not gonna make it, but if someone wants to talk about steam generation, I spoke to Adam Leonti, who we might have back on the show, along hopefully with uh Stephen Jones, the guy who runs the bread lab, and we'll do another bread catastrophe as he gets ready to have his own podcast. So we'll save that uh for later about why we're not going to um why we're not gonna build that. Someone else, Nastasia, I forget who it was, wrote in. Oh, here's one. William and Cheryl wrote in.
Uh, hey, Dave, Nastasi and Matt in the booth. What? Also, Aaron needs to promote his product. Give me one second. Uh, first time writing into the show.
I recently drove cross-country with my fiance. Remember, fiance is the least permanent of all things. Jesus. And made her listen to most of the cooking issues backlog. We both love the rock star wine tasting, Nastasia.
We do too, but you don't want to do it because it's not a family show. That's not true. We don't want to do it because you said that the person that we had on doing it already did it as part of his own thing, and so we can't do it anymore. That's what you said. So now you take something that you say we can't do, and then you blame it on me.
This is classic Lopez. We were gonna have the guy from Tool on, remember? Oh, here it is. Did Nastasia really work? Well, he says for corn, or was she just working for corn with a C?
It was neither. It was Tool. No, I worked for corn. You worked for corn? Okay, yeah.
Corn with a K. Okay. Corn with a K and a backwards R. Yep. Why did what's the backwards R for?
I don't know, man. That's just how corn was stylized. Against more corn. What do you think about corn, the German liquor, Aaron? Oh.
I think I I don't know. I've only had a one, so I would have squarely put it into the miracle whip category. I have some artisanal corn that was uh one of those things where the guy shows up at the restaurant where I'm eating Schweinhox and I'm shoving the Schweinhox in my face. It was delicious. We were somewhere in Berlin.
I was taken there by uh Evan Clem, and he's like, my favorite Schweinhoxa place. So we go there, we go to get Schweinhoxa, and this guy walks in, he's like, This is my homemade corn, and he hands me the corn, and we we got toasted on corn. It was pretty good. It was pretty good, I have to say. Uh so uh Will William and Cheryl finish out and and and Nastasia don't need to worry because I'm not gonna answer their question.
I'm gonna answer their question with another thing. We moved from Augusta to my brother's guest house in San Diego during the quarantine, looking to install a carbonation system so that the whole family can enjoy. Apologies if you already explained the correct rig setup and parts to buy in a former episode that I haven't gotten to, but we'd love to have bubbles all summer. Thanks for the great show, William and Cheryl. And so what am I gonna say, John?
You have to force me. I'm working on that video. True or false. No, John, make have him make mustard. I thought you wanted me to do the carbonation video.
Nastasi, I thought you wanted me to do the carbonation video. I don't want you to make mustard or bread. Do not make mustard or bread. I've already I'm making bread literally right now, and I have two liters of mustard in my fridge that I've already made. John, we're gonna have another conversation.
About what? Oh, priorities mean like wine sand. I haven't worked on him in a year. Well, more than a year. I need to eat mustard.
I made mustard. It took me like 20 minutes of of work. What's wrong with you? I don't talk to you about your veganism. Well, I guess I do.
You do in the most public way. I do. All right, Trevor, I saw that you write me wrote me about rice cookers. You got you already have your Zoji Rushi uh neurofuzzy rice uh cooker that you got on Craigslist. And and someone in your house, Trevor, someone in your house is saying that it's not worth the space.
Trevor, the Zoji Rushi neuro neurofuzzy rice cooker is is a joy that you will use forever. Use it to reheat any damn thing. Any damn thing without without scorching. It's the induction one, right? Is it neurofuzzy induction?
Use it to reheat any dang thing. Rice, you can go back, you can make Aaron's oatmeal. He should let us know if it's his wife that doesn't like it. You should also let us know every other object that's in the kitchen because we could tell him which one's less useful. I mean, I have to say, like, I use my even if I'm not cooking rice, I use my right.
Do you guys hear another woman? Who is it? Is that with you, Aaron? No, that was unfortunate. My wife is very excited to have finally gotten on unemployment, so she started talking.
Nice. All right. Well, congratulations. It's the big win. It's the best we can hope for out of 2020.
Oh my god, I feel so bad. Like, so uh Dax is uh what is he now? He's 15. He's like, this is the worst year of my life all time. I was like, fair.
Yeah. You know, what am I gonna say? Obviously, yes. It is really weird. Anyway, uh, it's been it's been a bad, bad year.
Uh well, uh anything else? Aaron, push your stuff. This is your chance. Thank you for coming on the show, Aaron Polski. And hopefully in the next week or so, you'll have figured out your uh CDC recommended uh physical contact guidelines.
Uh built your built your uh you know biologically impenetrable membranes complete with touching orify. I think there's a word for those. Yeah, which I will not use. And so now you talk about your product, yeah, in the two seconds we have left. Uh great.
Uh it's a canned cocktail. Uh, I started a company called Livewire. Uh it brings you canned cocktails from some of the world's best bartenders. Um, it connects. Man, asked me some questions about it.
Uh basically, what I'm doing is I am I'm I'm I I didn't prepare for this. Is that supposed to do this? Separate question, separate question. Uh has Inagata Davida ever been used in a television show or a movie without it being a murder scene. You're the worst.
Listen, I launched the Can Cocktail Company. It's called LiveWire. It is the idea is that it works like a record label, and you have all of your favorite bartenders under one label. You go to the store, you buy their drink. If somebody wants your drink, and let's say maybe your gin and juice is on live wire, they can buy it in the store wherever they are.
They don't need to come to you, and you don't need to come to them. Let me poke, let me poke you a little bit. Here we go. So like the theory is, right, that there's bartenders with good ideas, no reach. So you're gonna put a little money in these bartenders who have these drinks in their pocket, let people have a little bit of what that bartender does.
So it's basically just spreading the community of these individual bartenders around to a wider audience and letting everyone make a little bit of money, but also have a little bit of fun at the same time. This is true or false. There are also bartenders with a lot of reach, but that reach is limited because right now you can read about uh a quote unquote famous bartender, and like you can't experience the drink that they're making. It's the equivalent of like the 1850s when you could read about a musician, but you wouldn't know what their music sounded like unless you knew how to play music and could play their music off of sheet music, or unless they came to town. So this is essentially the final record, right?
It's like now it's bringing it into your home so you can have a way to connect with that bartender. No bartender is as famous as Miracle Whip. Where can you buy it, Aaron? That's a good point. You're online.
You can buy it online at LiveWireDrinks.com. Um it is available in fine liquor stores in New York and California. Uh you can also buy it at the shop right in Hoboken as of last week. Shop right in Hoboken. That's a shop right in a hoboken.
Listen, Hoboken, and I sent Booker to Hoboken because they make my my favorite American-style mozzarella comes from Hoboken and Kennel and uh can what is it? Uh Massimose, wherever that is, in Kennelworth, I guess, or whatever it is. So like I love that. And so Hoboken has Hoboken has an amazing history of uh bars. It it had the most bars per square mile of anywhere, I think, right?
Hoboken's a great place to have you know your only Jersey outpost. You know, I'm I'm gonna say that having grown up in Jersey, I'm very much looking forward to some high school reunion, which I thought I would never say in my life, because I'll be like, yo, let's meet up in the shop right parking lot. I got the pre-game. That's the strongest thing you can ever say in a reunion. So strong.
You're gonna beat the hell out of all of them. Like, that's it. Like you won. Like, you know, you know Romy and Michelle coming in in a helicopter, man. You own this thing with your pre-gaming with your own product in there.
When's your tenure or 15 years or whatever? What's coming up for you? Uh, how old am I? I'm 33. So I guess it would have been my my 15 year, but that's not happening.
So I don't know, the 20? The 20 at 38? Yeah, it's pretty good by that. Um, I would also like to point out that a lot of the science applied to Livewire I learned from you. So thank you.
Thank you. Thanks, Sonic. So wait, wait, so you right now you're in California, New York. Will they illegally ship to other states or no? They will legally ship to other states.
You can order it uh to pretty much all 50 states. Maybe like maybe there are a couple you can't, but um the the fulfillers will ship to pretty much every state. And which bartenders have you already teamed with that people can know? Uh so Joey Bernardo's cocktail drops today. Um coming out in the future, we have Aaron Hayes from Westward Whiskey, we have Yale Vengroff, uh, Christine Wiseman, Southern, Masoroshito, um, we haven't released it yet, but we're we're working on one.
What's other do? So the only ones that are completed prototypes are um Yale's. We also have My Kappa Ferry. I'm not I'm not I'm not releasing them until they're out. Jeez, please, dude.
Jesus. I'll tell you what about the ones that are out? Let me tell you about the ones that are out. All right. Joey made the Honeydew Collins.
So Joey Bernardo has been at Harvard and Stone for like eight years. He runs it now. Uh I know how you feel it up. Um he's he's LA's favorite bartender. Uh he's what's the drug of choice to drink with the Melon Collins?
You know the answer to that question. Yeah, is it is it a play on melancholy, by the way? You know what's really funny? You know what's really funny is that his art, I realize. So we basically have tattoo artists or like famous artists, not famous.
We have art. Every bartender can pick their own artist. A lot of the bartenders have chosen tattoo artists who have done work on their own bodies. Um Joey's art, I realized once we had already packaged it, looks a little bit like that Smashing Pumpkins album, Melancholy and the Whatever. I'm you know I'm a child of the late 80s.
Um and uh he's like a smashing pumpkins fan, and he didn't even realize it, and it's honeydew, and that one is melancholy, so yeah, whatever. I mean strong. I like that. All right, and how's it taste? It's great.
It's uh it's gin, honeydew, coconut, lime leaf, and elder flower. Um, so it's got some tropical vibes, and it's also very refreshing. Is it green? It is not, it's clear. Should it be green?
Should I change that in a few? Sounds green, like a Midori green, Dave. It sounds like it should be like a greener fresca. It should look like a greener fresca. Let me look up a greener fresca.
So it should be like in other words, it should have a uh like it should it should have some of that clouding agent added that they add to uh kind of citrus beverages, and it should be like lightly green. Okay. That's my feeling. Hey, did you ever drink the Slimer soda back in the day? Like that.
Wait, named after the Ghostbusters ghost? That's way bright. I'm not saying go neon, dude. That was so awesome. It was like the Ecto Cooler.
That's what it was called. Oh wow. I mean I think that there's something fun about you know, incorporating a color to a can drink because you don't see it until you crack the can and yeah, everybody likes color, especially if you're not using all natural care, and especially because the average person using all natural stuff. Oh, geez, don't womp. We're not getting into it, we don't have time for the womps.
Okay, we gotta go, we gotta go. Listen, listen, listen. All the drinks are Whole Foods compliant. Oh, geez, Louise. Listen, uh I'll say uh part of one of the issues with things that don't have color is people have a tough time latching on to flavor reference in the absence of color unless you tell them straight up what they're doing.
You know what I mean? But it's on the can. Yeah, we can. It says what's in it. Okay.
I'm just saying looks green, it'll taste more green. Looks green, tastes more green. That's just Aaron, good luck. Good luck and Godspeed with your mission this week. Oh my god.
Oh, jeez. Does everybody know? All right. Okie dokie. I think we're we're I think we've done it.
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