I'm Lisa Held, a food journalist and podcast host, presenting Behind the Label with American Humane. Produced by Heritage Radio Network for Springer Mountain Farms. This podcast series dives into what the American Humane Certified Label really means. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. This week on Meet and Three, we look at how delivery went from convenience to crucial.
In a pre-COVID universe, the commissions from these third-party delivery service providers were really high. And you were seeing oftentimes they were as high as 30%, right? I mean, all food is about basically the history of money and the history of technological change. But take out in particular. I'll go ring a doorbell and watch somebody come outside and wipe down their door in their doorbell after I leave.
But that's the state of uh where we are now. Tune in to Meet and Three, HRN's weekly food news roundup wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the lower east side of Manhattan. We got uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, who's currently in the STEM of Ford uh on the sound, Stanford on the sound.
Uh how you doing, Stas. Yeah, I'm good. Yeah. Uh yeah, every you got power again, you have internet again. Yep.
Let me get this straight. The poll that got knocked over, they just put the poll directly on top of your old internet. That's what happened and just cut it right off. Yes. And then you went out there and spliced the whole splice the whole McGillah together.
Yeah, yeah. It sounds uh that checks out. Yeah. That checks out. Now get this straight.
Let me get this straight. Your dad is a telecoms professional right and yet because he was working in California on other people's telecoms he would not get on the horn to help you walk through your telecoms issues he doesn't have FaceTime on his phone because he uses his own company ATT for his so Nastasia Lopez your dad has worked for ATT for a million years. A million years and yet ATT throttles your cell account is that true yeah I need to switch I'm going to switch uh did you ever talk to him about and we can put this out to the uh to the listeners as well because I'm super curious about have you spoken to him about the uh telephone pioneers of America? Yeah he said my mom was part of it but she did not renew or something and he has no interest in being part of it and I said okay. But did they have any of the cookbooks they know about the cookbook he said yeah yeah I know there's some cookbooks we don't have any all right so for those of you that I'm curious whether anyone knows about this because there's so many of them I don't know what to get but way back in the day like when Alexander Graham Bell was still alive after the after you know the Bell Company had been around for I don't know like 20 30 years the at that time the old timers were like we want to start like a fraternal organization like the Masons or something but just for telephone people.
So they had the telephone pioneers of America and at the time you needed to have been working in telecom which at that time was just Bell right for like 20 something years to be uh a member, and so it was kind of like this fraternal organization for telephone company people. And you know, it's morphed, but it's still you have to work in telecom to be to be in it. But in the I guess 70s and 80s, maybe even starting earlier and maybe even going a little bit later, like all of these telephone pioneers of America had cookbooks for all their different chapters, like you know, Kansas City and whatnot, and they're all some of them are somewhat collectible, but I have no idea whether they're any good. So if any readers have any knowledge on the telephone pioneers uh or the pioneers of America cookbook series, let us know because I'm curious. I don't want to go on an internet buying spree.
Uh, but I'm a freaking sucker for a series of books. Are you guys familiar with the Rivers of America book series? No. So again, sometime like after I think the war, they hired a bunch of like famous off authors to just write books about particular rivers, and because they're all done by different kind of well-known authors, they all have a different kind of spirit and flavor to them. So I ordered a couple.
I think I ordered the Connecticut and one other. But there's so many that I wasn't gonna get into it. And also when I was reading it, I was like, nah, it's not what I'm it's not, you know. I don't have time to read stuff that's not at either a technical manual about food or a technical manual about food. Like, that's basically all I have time to read, you know.
Nastasia, on the other hand, your favorite thing to read is uh memoirs from rock stars, right? Yes, it they are my favorite. Wait, which is what's the best memoir from a rock star? Uh Anthony Ketis is really good. Oh, yeah.
Really, really good. Yeah. And you said that Anthony Keatis admits that he's not a good ballad singer. Right. Yes.
You know what? I like someone with some self-awareness. Yes. But yet, how many millions of dollars has he made singing ballads? So many.
Define define good. Because he seems to be doing alright. Well, what I'm saying is he doesn't respect himself as a ballad singer. Yeah. I mean, wouldn't you?
I mean, I totally would, you know. I mean, I don't know. It all started going south with that. I'm not gonna get into it again. Um, remember, like, I was they were one of my top three favorite bands, right?
Uh at one point in my life. Uh, but I have not purchased an album that came out after Blood Sugar Sex Magic. If it gives you an idea of what era I was listening to. Yeah. I was more of a uh, am I allowed to say socks on cocks?
Because that was their thing back in the day. No, all of our little children know they can't know that. They the Chili Peppers used to be famous for playing naked, except for they would have uh gym socks pulled over their junk, like a full junk hold, so it was like nothing else. Like I don't know whether they secretly used tape to make sure they didn't come off or whatnot, but they were that was their their thing. But they stopped doing that um right around Mother's Milk, um, which is when I started seeing them live in concert, was on the Mother's Milk Tour, and uh when I saw them, they were wearing pants.
Like both times I saw them live, they were wearing pants. And Nastasia, did they ever go back to that after that era? And I just missed it. They did, yeah, when they did Woodstock uh 98. I can't remember what year they did WoodSuck.
Yeah, well, I hope they were in shape. Um it takes a certain kind of being, I mean, like they were like completely like thin, high on drugs freak shows when they did it earlier. I wonder what they were like in the mid-90s. They're probably still pretty ripped, right? Still kind of the same.
All right. All of that still. All of that still? Yeah. So uh for those of you that have ever lived in or spent time in New York or Lower Manhattan, we have a uh we have a fairly large Jehovah's Witness kind of community around here, right?
Because you have the watchtower stuff like over in the over in Brooklyn, right over the bridge where from where I live. You guys know what I'm talking about? Nope. No? You guys live here?
You familiar with Jehovah's Witness? Yes. Okay. So they hand out these pamphlets, right? I'm not gonna get into religion because obviously we don't do we don't know, but like they hand out these pamphlets, and they have for many years, right?
And so, you know, one of one of the ones that, you know, kind of I I always would see is called uh like God's Peaceful New World, right? And you can Google this so you can see the pictures I'm talking about. Like God's peaceful new world, you can live there. And there's various over the years they've had different ones, but the one that I remember is like a picture, and there's like like a like a little white girl, a little black boy, like some adults, everyone's holding hands and drawing and hanging out in nature, and then sounds okay so far, right? There's a dog, right?
And then there's a lamb, and here's where it gets weird. There's like a polar bear, and there's like a cheetah, and like, and there's like a goat and a lion, and like, you know, one of the little boys is petting a lion, and and there's a bull and a toucan, and they're all hanging out in like what looks to be a New England kind of fall landscape, right? So it's like this is like the ultimate idea of of paradise that they have, and it's always struck me this kind of weird image of these animals that would never live together just on a geographic basis, much less the fact that they would rip each other to shreds. But here they are living, you know, all together, you know, everything. Like it fantastic picture to look at and just be like, hmm, okay.
And they would hand these out on the streets down here where I live. Anyway, you guys ever seen this picture? All right. So I saw the New York real life equivalent of this yesterday when I was uh walking home. It was amazing.
So there was a there was a knockdown uh building, right? And I looked into the rubble of where the knockdown building used to be, and all of a sudden I see it's full of animals. So usually when you see that it's like sparrows and pigeons, right? Because that's what it's like here. But this one was like, it was like God's peaceful moo world.
It was rats with the pigeons, with the sparrows, like a feral cat, all just kind of hanging out together, like no one was fighting. It was amazing. It was real New York, peaceful world, amazing. I have never seen that many rats in the daytime in the open. Like there must have been something so incredibly delicious there that the rats were like, to hell with it.
Or maybe the rats are smart enough to know that there's a fence and I can't like run over that we're not gonna get uh Nastasia's boy um oh my god, his name's our our friend, his name's went out of my head, rat kicker. Oh, Robert Bohr. Yeah. If Robert Bohr had been there, it would have been like a video game like like uh like duck hunt, like Robert Bohr's duck hunt for rats. If he was wearing his good rat kicking shoes.
He likes to kick rats with wingtips, right? Yes. Claire, mute yourself if you're not talking because we hear feedback. Claire. Claire's on Secret Claire?
Uh there's a secret Claire in the room. What's up, Secret Claire? Secret Claire giving herself away with her background noise. Yeah, if she had just muted herself immediately, I wouldn't have noticed. Friend of friend of the show, Claire, how are you doing?
Bad matters. Where are you? Oh my gosh, I'm good. How's it going with you guys? Oh, fantastic.
I closed my bar permanently last week, so there's that. It's awesome. Happy times, function. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah.
It sucks. So uh what's what's going on with you? Where are you? Uh well now I'm back in Mexico City. I did go back to Tulume to work on the honey bee business.
Oh, did you find anything good? Did you like the honey? I love the honey. It's I'm letting it, I'm I'm letting it percolate and putting some feelers out, some bee feelers out. Yeah, for those of you that don't know, Claire was on.
I realized she was uh in Tulum, and I told her that this is the world cap the only place really where you can get this Melipona honey, which is a slightly lower bricks honey made by a relatively endangered stingless honey bee from this area of Mexico. All right, so go ahead. So tell us yours, tell us your story. Well, so I actually have a question. Okay.
Well, I'm gonna it's a as always, it's a story with a question. So Stas, are you there? I'm here. So it was my birthday two weeks ago, as some of you may know. I had a goddess themed birthday party.
It was super magical. Oh my god. Goddess, did you did you uh did you are you f I think we're all invited? Are you familiar with the uh 1980s band Soho, whose uh best album was Goddess and whose hit single was Hippie Chick? No, maybe I should look into that.
You should listen. You your theme song should have been Got to Be a Goddess. Got to be a goddess, got to be a goddess. I don't know if that was the vibe, but I'll look into it. You weren't happy about being a goddess.
It's like, no, gotta be a goddess. So many people asking for favors. Oh so many people to turn into spiders. Is that what more of the vibe? No, it was more just like relaxed.
Uh yeah, you don't get to be, I guess. I mean, people think it's probably relaxing being a goddess. Never ask her question. No, it's a story, Stas. It's a story with a question.
Okay, so anyway, Stas and I, you know, have been friends for like over a decade. So where'd this start? Were you guys the Switzerland peoples? Yeah, we met in Switzerland teaching and then we cooked for a bunch of kids in camp. Oh, Pat Posey's here.
Oh my gosh, this is so fun. Hey Pat. You can stay on mute because I'm doing my story. Whoa. I like how Claire comes on our show and tells someone else to go on mute.
Strong. Well, it's goddess level control. Goddess level control. All right, go ahead. Zoom asked me.
They were like, do you want to put a password on this meeting? I was like, nah. If you guys want to come on and flash your chonies, remember there's no video here, so it doesn't work. Okay, anyway, so Stas and I have been friends for a really long time, and we usually used to be to get well in Switzerland. I always celebrated my birthday with Stas.
And now, you know, since I live in Mexico, we haven't been together for the last couple of years. And so, you know, I'm having my goddess themed birthday, and I'm like so happy, and like all my friends are here, and it's like this whole thing. And then my friend is like, Claire, there's something for you outside. And I knew that my friends were gonna get me a mariachi band. And so I was like, oh my god, it's the mariachi band.
But no, it was another friend holding a cake, and they're like, Nastasia sent this to you. And I was like, oh my god, because some of you may remember three birthdays ago, Stoss flew from New York to Barcelona and surprised me with my favorite milk bar birthday cake and a frozen turkey sandwich with a side of Russian dressing and a bag of salt and vinegar chips, which is my favorite New York City meal. What's a frozen turkey sandwich? Just a chili sandwich. I love the bodega sandwich.
I get turkey. Stoss is rolling her eyes right now. I get turkey, cheddar cheese, lettuce, mustard, mayonnaise, uh side of Russian dressing, salt and vinegar chips on a roll, and it's like literally my favorite meal in the world. Only rivaled byonnaise? Yeah, did I not say mayonnaise?
I don't remember, but I was making sure because there would have been some real problems. No, of course, duh now frozen just because you Nastasi was preserving it for shipment. If you don't typically eat it frozen, this is honestly, I I think I took a bike, but I felt a little bit weird because I was like, is it normal to eat frozen processed meat? No, didn't we? It's just traveled cross continents?
Oh, it's all good. Did Nastasia send a cake Mama Lopez style wrapped in wet newspaper? No, I delivered it. I hand delivered it to Spain. No, but no, the one literally brought it up.
The cake this time. The cake this time was from Mexico City. It was from a shop in Mexico City. It was from Nito in Mexico City, which we love. It's so good.
Anyway, so I made the rash decision to go. I was like, I need to go back to Tulum because of the bee business and some other business affairs I had to take care of. Wait, wait, wait. Like right then, you see the cake, you're like, F this party, I'm out. We drove to Tulum right away.
Like I'm trying to understand that time. Uh, the next morning. And so I'm like, I gotta go back to Tulum. And so I leave my cake, and I'm like so bummed because I was like, oh my god, it was so good. And my roommate was kind enough to save it for me.
And so I ended up only staying in Tulum for like seven days. And so I come back and there's my cake, and she had like sliced it in Tupperware, and so it's like sliced. There was like half of it left. Yeah, real good roommate ate half your cake. Nice.
I don't know where the other half went, but I'm not worried. So my question is, well, it's actually too late because I already did it, but I ate the rest of my cake this weekend. Is that gross? Well, I mean, it's it's it's gross in the fact that I can guarantee you, I can guarantee you from a distance of however many thousand miles we are from each other that it was stale, stale, stale. No, no, because Dave, it was it was better, it was so moist, and that that's what I love about the milk bar cakes, is they're so moist.
I thought you said this was from Mexico City. It was, but I'm just saying milk bar birthday cake is my favorite cake in the world. It's like my barometer of moistness. The higher fat a cake is, uh the better it will resist staling. Also, uh, depending on what flour makes they use, it will resist never gonna kill you.
You could dig up a cake from the pyramids and eat it, you know what I mean? As long as it doesn't have m mold on it. But what about it? Oh, it's cooked. You do not need to sweat it.
Like it is like from a from a safety standpoint, cake is a you know, zero, roughly zero percent, not roughly, it's like low water activity, ain't nothing bad gonna happen. Like certain cakes can develop molds if they're like very moist. Um, but you know, aside from that, it's like you know, if you keep um if you keep like bread in a like sliced bread in in Ziplocks, they'll like stay kind of soft because the liquid doesn't leave, but they'll but they'll mold. Uh whereas if you leave them out, like the liquid can get away and they and they won't mold and and they just turn into breadcrumbs. So if it was still moist because it was sealed in Tupperware, I mean it was probably still technically staling, right?
Because like the the staleness mimics drying out in some ways, but a lot of it's just about what's happening to um what's happening to the starch in terms of recrystallizing. So some of that is sucking water back in, but also it's just a structural change to the starch. And so typically, you know, cake when you leave it out, and this is why what the best thing to do is to freeze it. Oh, like a wedding cake. Yeah, but you freeze it at like uh if like what we do is we'll when we freeze things here, because I remember, you know, the the classic mistake someone makes when they're freezing something.
Like, let's say you make a pastel of banana bread, right? And which I do here uh on occasion, and then you want to freeze it, like you you want to slice it, but put a single sheet of freezer paper in between each slice, then put the whole thing into a zippy and like get rid of most of the air so you don't get a lot of like recrystallization on the outside. Don't like suck a huge thing on it because you don't want to like squish the bread too much, and then you freeze it like that, because um otherwise the moist edges of the things will freeze each other together, and this is especially true with cake. So, with some cakes are soft enough, right? So it depends on the cake.
Some cakes are soft enough to slice frozen. So as long as you cut it like in half, you can just slice pieces off with like a real hard push of a chef's knife down, and you'll get some smearing on the edge where you crush it when it's frozen, but it you know, it's good. And I actually like to eat, I eat frozen cake, I like frozen cookies. Uh, there's a story that uh Jen was when you know, Miley, my sister-in-law Miley, is the uh chief editor of the Food Network magazine, editor-in-chief, she launched it. And before that was with uh at Rachel Ray, before that was you know, time out and a bunch of other stuff, anyway.
So uh when she first moved to New York in the 90s, she stayed with us for you know a couple of weeks before she found her apartment. And my wife Jen was worried because you know, I don't know, I guess I was packing on some pounds or whatever, and Miley kept baking chocolate chip cookies. So, like kept just every day, chocolate chip cookies. Miley's special skill in life is that she can make muffins out of anything. So, like, if there's nothing in the house, she'll like go upside and outside and scoop some gravel out of the driveway and somehow make a delicious muffin out of it.
It's like her, she can MacGyver any muffin, anyway. Anyway, so my wife told Miley, yo, throw throw those chocolate, show those cookies in the freezer so Dave doesn't just pound them all when he gets home at like 3 a.m. from the from the uh studio because I was in grad school at the time for fine arts. And so Miley does that, and then in the morning, like they caught me. I came in, I'm eating them frozen out of the freezer, and I go, them's good frozen.
And so in my family now, them's good frozen is a phrase we use like a hundred percent of the time. Because I just pull them out of the freezer and eat them. Anyway, so you can eat cake frozen and do it that way. So if it stayed moist because it was in the Tupperware, God bless from from a textural standpoint, from an organ organoleptic and textual standpoint. If you're not gonna eat cake within a day or two, I would freeze it, but not from a uh safety standpoint.
Amazing. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your insight. When are you gonna get when are you gonna taste this freaking honey? Have you already tasted it?
You just haven't researched it enough, or have you not tasted it yet? I'm trying to find a vendor. I'm trying to find uh there's a honey store. I don't know if the No, we want to we want to go to the source and make our own. Dave and Claire's exquisite honey.
Listen, I mean, I'm happy to have Claire, but like you understand, like these people who make it, like, that is like one of their that's like that's that that's their life culture thing. Yeah. No, we're gonna partner with a family. Okay. I know you can short a publicly traded company, but how do I reverse invest in other people?
Well, that's an interesting question. Why would you say that? That's an interesting question. And I just learned it from an episode of Billions that I saw uh recently. You have to find the main competitor, right, of whoever it is you're trying to short that's not public, invest in them, and then tank the non-publicly uh uh traded place so that the one that you can invest in goes up.
Something tells me that none of these are public. No, these are like families who these are raised in like in like hollow logs, and like, you know, the community is raised in a hollow log, which by the way, all you guys familiar with Richard Scary's I'm a bunny and I live in a hollow tree. No. I don't even know what's the such a cute freaking kids book. I'm a bunny and I live in a hollow tree.
Look it up. Richard Scary. So Richard Scary, you think of Richard Scary as like, you know, the guy that like like books with like helicopters and planes and boats and like cats with captain hats on. You know what I'm talking about? But I am a bunny, extremely sweet book.
All right, thank you, Claire. Okay. Love you guys. Talk to you soon. Have an in-book.
I won't go that far. Tuesday. Oh, yeah, it's gonna be fantastic. And I hear we also have It is gonna be fantastic. That's up to you.
Oh, it is? I get to choose whether the day is fantastic or not. Oh Lord. Okay, bye. Produced by Heritage Radio Network for Springer Mountain Farms.
This podcast series dives into what the American Humane Certified Label really means. We're looking inside the farm certification process, beginning with the moment a farmer expresses interest in becoming American Humane Certified, all the way to a consumer seeing the seal on store shelves. And American Humane is our country's first national humane organization, founded way back in 1877. Now we certify nearly one billion farm animals each and every year. Despite that growth, uh, roughly 90% of U.S.
farm animals are still raised without the benefit of independently verified science-based standards. Subscribe to Behind the Label with American Humane wherever you listen to podcasts. Fundamentally different technology though? Uh no, it's it's really the same technology. It's the the major difference is the read situation.
A saxophone has a uh uh a mouthpiece that has one piece of wood, one small shaved piece of wood attached to it, and that piece of wood you blow through that mouthpiece and that piece of wood and that vibrates, and uh that's called a single read, uh, which is also what a clarinet has. And then an oboe is called a double read. So instead of a mouthpiece, it actually just has two little thin pieces of wood that are strapped together, and you blow through that and that buzzes, and that's what creates the noise. Now, is it is it an oboist or an obist? Uh I would say oboist generally, but I would say obust for comedic purposes.
There you go. Now you also play the ocarina? I do play the ocarina. Yeah. What was your professional opinion of the smash mouth uh all-star uh melon ocarina situation?
Uh I have not heard it. What? I you know just do that. I'm sorry, that that was not included in my prep dossier for this phone call. Yeah.
Uh Nastasia could be. I do play clarinet, yeah. I started on clarinet. Let me ask you a question. I have known saxophonists who like jazz-style saxophonists who detest jazz clarinet.
How do you feel about is that a thing, or is it just a people I have known? And do you uh do you have any insight into um, you know, I would say that uh in the early days of jazz in the mid uh early mid-20th century, a lot of players who were playing played all kinds of wind instruments, and a lot of times in big bands and things, you're asked as a saxophonist to play uh clarinet and flute as well. Um and we have people like Benny Goodman, uh who was uh, you know, in the forefront of of jazz of his time and was uh predominantly a clarinet player. Um I don't I I actually I prefer playing clarinet in jazz idiom because uh you have a lot more latitude to squeak and play out of tune, which are you know, signature styles, signatures of my style of clarinet playing. Wow, wow.
Now and what are your theories when you have a saxophone on like you know, the people like they they freak out because that one little dent in the saxophone is what gives that particular instrument the sweet, sweet tone. If you found that to be the case for what you do? Uh, you know, I try not to get too wrapped up in equipment because it's uh it's a dangerous wormhole to go down. Um, you know, I have a mouthpiece that I've been playing on for 20 years at this point, and I don't feel like I want to change it until it breaks and you need it. And uh, you know, dents in the saxophone, it's saxophones are kind of in in some ways they're like they're like tanks.
You can you can beat the shit uh the stuff out of them. And uh uh and they'll still go. It's you know, but it's really it's the mechanical details of it because if you look at a saxophone up close, there's all kinds of little rods and uh you know holes that have to be covered by pads and things like that and springs, and so the mechanism has to be in good shape, and the body has to be uh has to be in in such a shape that all of those things can happen as they are supposed to, and as long as that's happening, it's gonna be fine. All right, now I hear that's that's not why Pat is here. I hear you've come on to talk about cooking alone, Nastasia.
Uh yeah, but first I'm I'm still a little riled from finding out that Claire got a cake because I've never gotten a cake. Well, you don't deserve one, Pat. Your birthday's in 12 days, right? You'll get a cake. It is now he's gonna get the cake.
Now, also, wait a second. Are you familiar with yes and Chris Squire, the bassist who played theoretically, I've been told, with a quarter? Uh, I know of yes. I don't know particularly about the bassist. Yeah, he was known for playing with a quarter.
When I was playing bass, I was you know, when you're a kid, you're like, I'm gonna do anything to sound like cool, and I tried to play with a quarter, you know what it sounds like? Garbage. You first of all, I don't like playing bass with a pick at all. But like playing with a quarter was even worse than playing with a pick. Maybe he didn't play with a quarter because he's probably playing with some sort of British money or something because the milling on the edge of the quarter makes like a real terrible catch, catch, catch, catch, catch, catch on the it wasn't like a good sharp attack.
I think it would have been better with a nickel because of the smooth edge. It's the milling on the quarter that makes it so crappy to play with, I think. Right. Well, is it also the heaviness? I mean, first of all, I've never heard of a bassist playing with a pick.
Uh that seems like blasphemy, but you know, that's not really my realm. Um, and secondly, I wonder about the the density, the mass of the metal, uh, and how that might affect it, because it seems to me that something lighter might be a little better. But uh, I agree with you on that. You want to go cashless here. You want to go a credit card, it's a much better pick.
People, you you can play with uh you've you've used a credit card as a pick? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder whether I wonder whether bassists who play with picks are more likely to be that bassist who is actually a guitarist who just took the job as bassist because guitarist was picked Yeah. 100%. I hate that kind of bass playing.
People who don't come from bass, but like come from guitar land or like there's already two good guitarists. I guess I'll take bass. You know what I mean? So like I can do it. I know I I can hum a tune and I don't want to do chords anymore.
It's fine, I'll do this. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I don't know. Whatever, whatever. Alright, so talk to us.
And the reason why yes came up is because we were talking about uh owner of a lonely heart much better than owner of a broken heart, and Nastasia disagrees and wants to reverse the song and says that the owner of a broken heart much better than the owner of a lonely heart. What do you think? I'm sorry, was that addressed to me? Yes. Uh, you know, broken heart, lonely in the heart, it's all it's all the same thing.
I think when you get to uh such an advanced age, uh uh, you know, you've you've lived a life, you've experienced it all, and all of that comes through in everything you do. Now, Pat, talk about talk about how excited you were at the beginning of quarantine when you were making bread, and then how that sort of just went down as the months went. First of all, what's your pod? Before you start, I want uh when we're talking quarantine stuff. We need to know your pod, like like your level of aloneness, like all this stuff.
Just give us the deets and then go into the into the arc. Yeah, well, I mean, it's changed a lot. For the first uh month or so of quarantine, I had taken a lover, and uh and that doesn't that like I know that sounds very British, but here that means they've been kidnapped. Yeah. Uh you know, it might be described that way.
I'm not sure. I'm not sure how he's talking about it outside of this, but um, you know, we uh uh he came and he basically lived here for a month and uh it was great for a couple of weeks, and then it was like okay for a week, and then it was just terrible for two weeks. And uh during that time we were cooking a lot, uh, making extravagant meals. He got obsessed with the uh uh uh the art of French cooking and um was cooking these huge meals out of that, and then uh as I was losing weight, he was gaining weight from all of the butter. And uh, but the the situation was really good.
And during that time, of course, you didn't know what was happening, and so that's when the the food hoarding started. You know, you couldn't get things. I paid at some point 25 uh uh $60 for a 25 bag of flour online because it was the only flour I could get anywhere. I bought yeast from a guy on a bike in a parking lot down in Silver Lake. That's creepy.
Uh it was shady, but you know, you did what you had to do. Was it SAF red, the one pound bag? Uh it was not. No, it was like a little tiny, it was a tiny, I think it was uh uh just about a four-ounce thing of yeast. So, how much is a dime bag of yeast going for uh during full corona?
Uh it was like ten dollars. It was pretty reasonable. Oh no, that's not that's not reasonable. All right, go ahead. Uh maybe for California prices.
So uh, you know, on the on the other side, gas got really cheap around that time. So it all balanced out. Um yeah, so I started cooking. I got a I got a starter, I got a sourdough starter from a neighbor and uh and started cooking. And then uh when my lover left, suddenly I was left with all of this food and all of the food that I had was uh was in quantity and designed for these big lavish meals, you know, and suddenly I was alone.
And uh I had a few friends, but I had I had sort of not been hanging out with anybody, you know, you sort of hoarded down uh in that in that first initial phase. So you weren't potted with them, but would they would they hang with you or were you doing distance hangs? They would, but you know, in in that first in that first uh in the first month of me being alone, uh it was it was it was sort of rolling that out. And I and I had like I didn't know what the etiquette was. You know, at that point, everybody else had started uh hanging out with other people during that first month a little bit.
Uh, and I had not really done that because I had been holed up at home with uh with the lover. So um anyway, I had all this food. And then uh so that first month of me being alone was kind of hell because I was, you know, having to go through these lavish three hour meal preparations and then enjoy them myself for the next four days. Uh and uh and then things started to even out a bit. Then I started, you know, going through different cycles of how to uh prepare food for myself as a single person.
And uh and now I've arrived at a very good place. I'm I'm I'm in a good place with it now. You were at a really bad place with it though where like even looking at the things in your fridge made you angry. Yeah thank you for reminding me about that's why Nastasia I'm sure had you call in because she wants some of the anger and the visceral visceral hatred. I just had this text from him uh July nineteenth I just googled Mexican green beans because I have to eat these green beans but I also want to have tacos later.
Yeah I green bean taco would be I'm trying to think about a green bean taco. Well july July was rough I'm not gonna lie July was rough um you know we still had it was weird zoo June June gloom lasted well into July here in Los Angeles. So it was a June gloom June gloom is a thing that happens in coastal California in the Sun in Southern California in the summer uh where it's like dark and gloomy for most of June. Oh that's when I should go there. Oh my God I didn't know there was a season where I would like the weather in Los Angeles.
But um it's gloomy out? It's gloom it's actually gloomy out right now. Yeah it's lovely. Oh man oh sweet. Yeah I just started wearing pants again this week for the first time in a month.
You don't wear you you wear shorts? I wear shorts through all of August. I am not into uh into like uh I know that it's not cool, but I just don't wear shorts ever. Never. No one's ever seen my legs in public.
I went swimming this weekend for the first time in I don't know, years because I was I was forced to, and I had to I I wore a shirt in, don't worry. I wasn't like close to being naked out there, but uh I yeah, I had to wear like my bathing suit out there, and I was like, the legs don't like it. Well, so the green bean tacos were excellent. Um did you actually make green bean tacos? No, the tacos, no, I did not make green bean tacos.
I I had green beans and I needed to use them. And you know, the thing is is that I uh I got into a cycle in July where most of what I was making was was protein. I would say like before in early July and late June, the cycle that I was in was frozen stuff from Trader Joe's. Um and then I got a grill, and then it turned into grilling protein every night, uh, which was great, but it meant that then I just like I got in a few weeks in, I started to uh my body started to tell me that I needed to eat more bed vegetables. And well, there's whole there's whole theories of thought on uh, you know, whole cult diets based on eating only meat.
But you did you found it wasn't pleasant for your body? Uh no. You're not a member of that cult. It was it it was for a while and then uh and then it became not. Yeah.
So uh what is a Mexican green bean as opposed to the green beans that we get? Uh I'm not I'm not really sure. I just did that because I was wondering if uh, you know, I I had these green beans, I wanted to make tacos, so I wanted to prepare the green beans in a way that would like go along well with the tacos. I understand. It's not a variety of green bean that I should be aware of.
He wanted green beans done as though it was going to provide him with like Southern California Mexican flavors. That's what we're talking about. Yeah, I kind of just wanted to see what people do. And and usually as I've uh as Nastasia knows, when I lived in New York, I never cooked and started cooking when I got out to California. And um, so usually when I cook, I I'll go on, you know, I'll Google my idea and then look at 10 recipes and then just go into the kitchen and see what I can find and start throwing it all together.
So it was, you know, it was basically like cumin and Mexican oregano. I'm sure it tastes fine. Yeah, it's good. And you know, my poop was a lot better after that. So wow.
All right. Nice. Well I'm glad to hear it. Do you know uh people I know people that used to keep poop diaries? I've heard of that.
Yeah. Nastasia and I keep an informal poop diary going. Well, she did live in Italy for a while, and you can't live in Italy without being obsessed with poop. True or false, Nastasia. Yeah.
So let me ask you uh a question. Uh you're familiar with wax beans? I've heard of them. Heard of them. Oh my god.
Well, you know, yellow the the things that look like green beans, but they're yellow. Oh yeah. Yeah. Uh I think that they are the superior bean. Huh.
I love wax beans. Love them. Why is that? Um I think that when you cook them, they maintain their squeak a little bit better. And I live, I love like a fast sauteed, like like like butter, like butter bacon, little little bit of sugar salt, like fast sauteed, squeaky bean.
Love a squeaky bean. John, what are your thoughts on the on the wax versus the green? Um, I don't know if I've given it too much thought. I think I'm probably more green than wax. I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know if I like the squeak as much. Doesn't bother me, but yeah. Well, here's I mean, like, I think that like it's like it's like cheese curds. It's like if you if you're not thinking about the squeak, the squeak is just there, and it's like me or mur or me a mop.
So you're not thinking about it much, right? But if you're like, if if you go into the whole thing being like, I'm gonna get the squeak out of it, favorite the squeak. Then you like the squeak. I like the squeak. And I know Pat does because he told me he does when he's playing his clarinet, likes to squeak.
Who doesn't love a good squeak? Listen, so I uh I want to ask you about that because I have over the course of the last month when it got, you know, it's just been deathly hot here uh for the last month. It's cool off right now, but later in the week it's gonna get up into the 90s and the hundreds again. Um, and so I uh have been doing all of my cooking outside of my grill. Um what can I do with the beans on the grill?
I mean, what's the best way to prepare those on the grill? Well, I don't know if you know this, but beans don't burn on the grill. Oh, boom! Jefferson's reference and none of you got it. Uh anyway.
Uh how many times have you watched the Jeffersons in your life? Thank you for making me feel young. Yeah. Yeah. The Jeffersons will.
I mean, I haven't watched it, so I don't know how bad it is. I haven't watched it since I was a kid, but you know, the Jeffersons. You guys haven't. That's the kind of comment that makes me want to go okay boomer. I love that.
You know, you know what I've never heard? It's the the hilarious thing about okay boomer is that I've never heard it actually applied to an actual baby boomer. Which is what makes it the funniest. Like the funny thing about it is it's like a double, it's like a double comment. It's a comment on not caring what older generations are than you, and a comment on the person who's older.
You know what I'm saying? Like it's like, I don't even care enough to find out who you are, and at the same time, crap on you, old guy. You know what I mean? That's what's so awesome. It's like it like kind of cuts both ways.
You know what I mean? I I almost used okay boomer um on a comment that my dad made on one of my YouTube videos. Uh he's probably a boomer though. He is a boomer, yeah. That's that's why I was saying it, but I couldn't.
It was just it was a little too brutal for my own father. Ah, I see, I see. Yeah. Anyway, uh crap on all of you millennial turdweeds, because uh the Jefferson's theme song is one of the all-time great theme songs. And I would think as a musician, Pat, that you would appreciate good 70s and 80s theme songs.
I will tell you some more. Samford and Sun cannot be beat as a theme song. Samford and Sun Sun's theme song is like one of the all-time great theme songs. I wholeheartedly agree with you on that and uh and with the Jeffersons. There you go.
All right. Uh so uh beans on the grill. Uh the the you're gonna want a lot of the flavor from grilling is from flare up on fat, right? So what I would do is the and the other thing is that a lot of times when I'm cooking beans on a on in a stove, my typical veg is kind of like modified like French culinary style, you know, cooking. So like not all, I don't have to I don't make the little parchment parachute that you put over the top of it and all that other garbage.
But you know, my typical way to cook veg. Uh I mean, if you really want to be like the best, you like would par cook in like in salted boiling water, pull out and then flash saute to finish everything out, but like the the kind of just let's get it done real fast inside is you would put your your veg and a little bit of sugar, depending on what you do, either oil or butter, and a little bit of uh water, salt. You can add the pepper later if you're a believer that pepper makes things bitter, or uh you can uh you can add at the beginning. I sometimes add a little pepper, both because I like pepper on my veg. Uh, acids I usually add at the end just to kind of freshen it up a little bit and so that things don't turn change color, and then uh like quickly steam it, right?
And then after it's like steams, it reduces the sugars will get more syrupy and the oil will coat it, and then you can get a little bit of a brown on it if you get it just right and pop it out and it's all perfect. Now on the grill, right? You're not gonna have that steaming step. So you can either um if you want it to stay really crunchy, you can you can do like a uh a high initial heat and then wrap in aluminum foil and put to the edge and let them steam themselves out. The only problem is is that things that are green have a tendency, if you're not careful, of going a little bit olive brown.
Um the chlorophyll will will change. Um if that's not a problem for you, then don't worry about it. Another thing you can do is parboil or par steam them and then toss them in oil. I would reduce the sugar a little bit on the grill just because sugar has a tendency to really scorch on the grill with the flame, but you want enough oil on it to get a really rapid, nice heat transfer and to get some of that drip flare up for the um for the the flavor. And I'm assuming that your grill grate is small enough that the beans won't fall through.
If not, they sell at the Home Depot little baskets that um that are meant for this to hold the kind of hold small veg in so that they don't um fall through. Um I actually use those, I use not those kinds of baskets, but I use the clamshell meat baskets when I'm grilling on the thing because I do what I like to I I do like extremely high heat almost tandor style cooking where it's off on, off on, off on. And so those like those baskets make it easy for me to do a high volume of food in rotation because my food's going on like two or three separate times. But if you're not gonna do that, just make sure your beans don't uh fall in. And I want to probably give them some nice color on the grill, otherwise, you you know, you could just steam it on the grill in you know, in a packet of foil with some water and salt and pepper, but then why would you bother grilling?
You won't have all those nice grill flavors. Interesting fact, in the old days, uh like you know, before before, you know, back when everything had to be cooked over a fire, people would spend all of their time and energy trying to make sure that the fire taste wasn't in the food because everything was cooked by fire, and now we're the reverse. You know what I mean? Well, he's grilling outside because it's too hot to grill to heat up the house. Yeah, but grilling is still considered a a desirable, in other words, it's a desirable thing to have now, that grilled flavor.
So you might as well do it if you're going to if you're gonna do it. Whereas, you know, like I say, like, you know, in the in the 1700s, you're like, everything tastes of the fire. You know what I mean? So it's like it's it's it's just interesting culturally. It's not has nothing to do with Pat's problem, but it's just interesting how culturally we've switched.
It's the same way that Pat, you have that other thing that Dave didn't answer when we texted him. Uh Pat texted me? Yeah, and I followed up and then I followed up again and then he ignored it. Pat, the only way to get through to Dave is to tweet him because he cares about his That's not true. Uh also I find the radio.
If there's 50, listen, people, again, okay, boomer on myself. If there's 50 texts, I read the last one. The last way to get in touch with you with it. Yeah, but like when you guys touch with you guys. You guys did look Nastasia Lopez and her friends, and also unfortunately, because Nastasi Lopez is my business partner with the Boondogler, you know, like the you get these text chains where it's like your phone sounds like it's like Vesuvius erupting out of your pocket.
Oh, tell me about it. Listen, living on the West Coast and waking up to one of these things that's been going on for three hours since 5 30 in the morning is is a specific level. I read the I read the last text, maybe one or two before. But if if it's like a 30 text chain long, oh my god, my three. It was three texts, right?
I just want to be clear, Dave, that I'm I'm totally cool with all of this, and uh uh I'm not throwing any shade about this because I don't read text messages or emails either. Um but I would like to detork because uh as Nastasia knows, I used to live in New Mexico, and while I was there I fell in love with Hatch Chili, uh green chili, red chili that goes on uh just about everything in in in New Mexican cuisine. And being in Los Angeles now, um one of the things I love about it is that that's actually recognized here, and you can get hatched chili, which in most of the other places I've lived, you don't really see that. And so right now, uh end of end of summer, early autumn is hatch chili season. Um it's the time when when you can get it.
I'm gonna buy a big bushel of it and roast it out on my uh charcoal grill and uh put it in everything for the next few months, freeze it, et cetera. And I had the idea the other day, I was out some with some friends and they were talking about infusing uh whiskey with something they were doing, and I thought, oh, well, maybe I could put some uh hatched chili. I could infuse some booze with hatch chili and get my uh my hatch fix and fuel my alcoholism at the same time. Uh and also it's then something to do, which is really what being single and unemployed in the pandemic is. It's all about filling the time between uh staring out the window for an hour in the afternoon and watching TV at night.
So um w w uh what how long how long is this time? The stair time, an hour of stair time? Uh yeah, plus or minus. Okay. Yeah, I've actually been doing some of it uh during the radio show while other people are talking.
Nice. I appreciate that. Uh it's good it's good to stay on top. So hatch chili, I actually just cooked hatched chili two nights ago. Um so you're you're roasting them and then you're gonna peel them, right?
Because one of the problems with hatched chili is that the um the skin is relatively tough on a hatch chili. Yeah, the skin is bad. You gotta peel it after you roast it. Yeah. For those of you, if you buy the fresh hatch and you're like, what's the big deal ball?
Just realize that like unlike a very thin skinned chili, like a um, you know, like uh Shoshido or a Padron or one of these other things, you should like take the skin off of it after you roast it. Although other than that, they they strangely do make a good kind of well, they're they you can fry them up, or even if you have like uh I I roasted mine actually in the Breville Smart Air. I just tossed a little oil on it to increase heat transfer and brevel smarted it and then peel the skin off. Good. Excellent.
And also you can freeze them with the skin on, and it's easier to peel the skin off after you freeze them if you're freezing them for later. Oh, good tip. Hey, listen, if you have a bushel, you think it's like I can't picture a bushel in my mind, but are you at the point where you want an Amazon one of the rotary, one of the rotary roasters? I'm not at the point. But a lot of the uh the bougie grocery stores like Gelson's and uh uh uh Bristol Farms and things like that around Los Angeles have roasters that come to them on the weekends.
Uh yeah so uh so they have those. And then in New Mexico, of course, those are just on the side of the highway. You drive down the road and there's a dude there spinning that thing all day. Uh I think they're pretty cheap now, those things. If like on eBay, like you get people who are like as a cottage industry will just make them and sell them.
And do you know what an alternative use for those on your grill outdoors is besides hatched chilies? What's that? Coffee roasting. People use them as uh coffee roasters on their grill as well because it's got it's it's a similar problem. You want the heat to get in, you want the smoke to get out, and uh you need to keep it relatively um evenly heated.
I would I would guess that you would turn it faster for coffee because I've never owned one of those things, but just FYI. Okay. This feels like it could it could take up my afternoons for days. There you go. That's what I'm saying.
It might be worth it for you if you're sitting there roasting the coffee. Uh and you know, if anyone wants like beginning home coffee roasting stuff, I'll you know, ask and we'll give it to you offline or whatever. Anyway, uh on to the um text. Onto the onto the liquor problem. Um most of the liquor infusions that I have done have been with uh spicier peppers than um than the hatch.
Uh another interesting thing is the skins might be of use here. I don't know how bitter they are on their own. I just I just don't like them from a texture standpoint. Um so you're not gonna get a lot of heat off of the hatch. You will get uh flavor.
I would probably think it would be better in a white liquor because most of those kind of green-flavored things are better in white liquors. So um, I mean, you could try it. I mean, I would I would just do a test of uh, you know, just like you know, smash one into some bourbon and taste it and see whether you like what's going on. But um a lot of times things that whose primary flavor is green refly rely on the kind of green freshness from the green leaf volatiles that you get out of uh something, and they can be they can change somewhat and become more swampy over time. So that's the one thing I would kind of guard against is just making sure that they're not getting swampy.
So I would, I would I would test it in a small amount uh and just you know, I would taste it after like a week or two, and then I would see um then I would I would hold it, right? So you have it all frozen, so you can do it whenever you want, right? So then after a week or so I would taste it, see if it's got enough flavor, and if it does, I would um I would probably strain it off as soon as the flavor gets where you want, and then I would do a stability test. And usually stability tests um for something that contains fresh fed flavor, like they start changing after like a week or two, you'll start noticing the the flavor in your mind, quote unquote deteriorate, but all is not lost because then you can hold it for like two or three months, sipping a little bit at a time to see whether it changes, and some things come back after six months. Uh I've I've had things come back after like eight months.
If it hasn't started coming back to goodness again within, you know, eight months or a year, it probably won't. The longest I've ever tried to store something to see whether it would come back is five years. It did not come back. Radish. The radish.
I was hoping the fart smell would go away on uh on a radish uh infusion that I had made. It did not. Uh it stayed. So he's just infusing by putting it into the bottle. He's not centrifuging, he's just putting the well the the problem with centrifuging is that it was if you could centrifuge it, but then you're just you're literally just adding pepper juice to it, right?
Or you you could do like a Houstino, right? You're gonna lower the ABV of it rather significantly. The the good thing about doing a Houstino is some of the products from the liquor will be you know, it's it's an interesting process. It's different. I I was thinking you were gonna do a straight a straight infusion, more of a uh like a a traditional straight in infusion.
Now you could also say, are you doing it with roasted or are you doing it with with fresh, right? They're gonna be very different. I would bet the roasted one is probably a more stable flavor than the fresh. But if fresh is what you're looking for, um, you know, it depends. Like, you know, I I think a lot of the characteristic like stuff of a of a hatch comes out of the roasting.
Um I've never really sat around eating them fresh. I mean, what do you think, Pat? Uh I wouldn't I I don't think I have either. So, you know, the roasting is definitely uh you get that smokiness, you know, you get that nice that nice fiery grill taste to it that you want in everything you grill. There you go.
Nowadays. Um yeah, so I would just I would just try to do a traditional infusion, and then if you like it, I mean obviously, you know, if you mail uh, you know, us some, we can spin some down in a spinz all and then like you know, send you back the frozen, the frozen cubes wrapped in wet newspaper uh, you know, and dirt. Fresh from this, I'll send you a package full of dirt and yeah, yeah, yeah that yeah mama mama Lopez will wrap anything in wet newspaper and dirt uh what was the thing if I had once if I had my if I had my own spinzall would I I would I could do that myself yeah yeah and so I would I would want to spin the roasted peppers to there's two ways to do it. You can make the juice but I would actually recommend doing what's called a gustino where you blend the liquor and the pepper together and then spin them out. I've had bad luck with fresh red bell peppers that bad maybe I should say bad luck.
I've had okay luck. It's never where I kind of wanted it to be um whereas I've had terrific luck with you know hot pepper. So and it's got a lot to depend on the booze but you would just blend them together and then spin them out and throw away the the puck. But the again the problem with that is that you are lowering the um the alcohol level so you're gonna want to start with a booze that's fairly high in uh in alcohol. Like Everclear.
And then uh well that's it but that tastes disgusting but let's say you did Everclear. If you did everclear you could do almost one-to-one chili and everclear and spin it out and have something that is you know on the order of 40% alcohol right and so that should be like as hatch and as stable as you could possibly be. Now if you did ever clear and hatch, right, um it depends on how much of thatch flavor is coming through, maybe if you use it in small enough quantities, then that could be like an adjunct that you add to other things, right? So then you'd have like you know, your your main gin, and then you'd put a little bit of your your hatch tincture into the uh into the resulting uh thing to make it a hatch martini, right? Something like that could be that sounds like a great way to spend the next couple weeks.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, an hour a day, and this should take a couple of weeks of experimenting. And since you're experimenting with liquor, it'll blur that out, and then you'll have to re-watch whatever the first couple of shows that you watch after you start uh into television. That's great. And then the next thing I know, it'll be October, and I'm 42 and unemployed, and uh life is beautiful.
What do you mean? I thought I thought that you were I thought oh, they're not no one's performing. No one's no one's working, yeah. No, everything was uh everything was going great until March. And then uh, you know, I I work mostly with orchestras and uh orchestras have a hundred people on stage and a couple thousand people in the audience.
And that doesn't really work right now. And so there's no way to session that, right? There's no way to just like show up at a studio and session an orchestra. I mean, people are doing it, but it's uh, you know, that's really cost prohibitive. And right now nobody has money coming in because they're not selling tickets and online content is not uh is not, you know, people haven't figured out a good way to monetize that.
Um and plus I'm not as a saxophonist, there's no saxophone, full-time saxophonists and orchestras. Every, you know, it's not like being a clarinet player where that's your job and you you get a salary for that. Um I just go in when they're needed and I play with different orchestras up and down the coast. Uh and so uh right now there's uh there's nothing. And so I'm just uh at home doing my own thing, which has actually been really uh really enlightening and and really a lot of fun.
I'm exploring new grounds uh in terms of making my own music and making videos and playing solo concerts for neighbors. I had a concert last night, I have one tomorrow night and tonight. Uh so uh, you know, I'm finding ways to keep busy, uh, but it's uh it's definitely a lifestyle change. And it's it's a lot harder to do because now I'm drunk all the time. Right, right, right.
Well that's you know classic musician, so you're all right. Yeah, exactly. Been training my whole life for this. Yeah, yeah. Now uh are people doing like uh commercial work?
Is that that like is that like gone up or is it basically stayed where it used to be so all those jobs are already taken by those commercial session music? Uh there is a little bit a limited amount of that going on. It is basically uh mostly taken by those session musicians. Um and the difference is that most of it has now moved to home studios. So people are actually recording, you know, you'll get you'll get a call to um record your own part and at your home and people do it in their living room or their home studios.
Um and then uh the people mixing the sound and mixing the music for the for the project have to take all of those different parts of a hundred different people and mix them together. And you know that's basically what happens in a studio but in the studio everybody's in the same room and all of the environments are controlled but when people do it at their home everybody has a different setup. Everybody has different sound uh different background noises and things like that. So it's it's a lot more complicated. And so um a lot of projects have gone to that a lot of projects uh some projects went to uh completely digital scale uh scores um where they use uh you know they use MIDI and sampled instruments and things uh to create the scores and so it's it's gonna hit the the studio music industry uh as well it is hitting the studio music industry as well how much different like in other words like how much do you think is lost if you're like the the people who are really good at it at not being together and playing.
Um, I would say it's it's a lot more cumbersome. Um, but uh the way that a lot of uh a lot of studio projects are recorded, um, you know, a lot of times they'll they'll they'll stripe it where they uh instead of having like an entire orchestra playing, like if you think of Star Wars and you think of the main theme of Star Wars, and you've got an entire, you got you know all the brass and all the strings and all the woodwinds and the harps and everything playing at the same time, um they'll go through and they'll say, okay, right now we're just gonna do only the low strings, and they have the cellos and basses, and and they'll just record that part. And then they'll go back and they'll do the the violins and the the violas, and then they'll go and they'll do the upper woodwinds. And so, you know, you're you're playing with a few other people usually, but not usually the whole uh experience of the whole orchestra. Um, and as a musician, you have to respond to everything that's going on.
You have to, you know, you have to hear and fit your part into it. And one of the things that studio musicians are so good at is playing uh so perfectly that they're whatever they're playing is gonna fit it can fit in no matter what with everything else that's going on because they're playing exactly in time, exactly in tune, um, and exactly with the right inflections. And so um you lose a little bit of that by doing it on your own with nobody else in the room, but at the same time, the way that that uh industry works, um uh, you know, it's it's people have been prepping for that. That's that that's how that's how they work anyway. Um, I think what's lost from it though uh is that it is so much more labor intensive to uh prepare tracks for people to work with in their home studios and then to take individual tracks from people in their home studios and balance them and clean them up and get them all consistent and then work them together.
So it's it's so much more labor intensive on the part of the mixers and the editors that uh that that then takes more time and more money, and that's what causes the slowdown. So I'm gonna let's say I'm gonna hire Pat Posey to pay play a piece of uh music let's say for my upcoming uh our upcoming product release which isn't until probably this time next year now right stuff. But that's a Broadway type thing. No yeah but let's say we're gonna I'm just say let's say we're gonna hire Pat Posey right and we haven't decided yet. We haven't decided yet we haven't decided whether the music's gonna be digiredo whether it's going to be clarinet whether it's going to be saxophone or oboe.
Do you charge differently depending on like the instrument and whether or not you're like these jokers aren't gonna find another diggeredoist so I'm gonna jack them for the didj redo. Well yes I mean that's that certainly goes into the calculus you know the um we musicians we have a union and the union has for a long time fought for um for uh rights for musicians and one of the things that has been in place forever is uh doubling rates and so if you play one instrument you get paid there's a certain rate that is set uh depending on the work for playing one instrument for a certain amount of time and there are work roles that go along with that if you are asked to play a second instrument then uh you get a doubling fee which is generally uh 20 25% on top of whatever you're getting and so uh and then there's you know you get doubles beyond that if you get three instruments there's another fee on top of that and so it can go on and on so basically every instrument that you play uh you get you you get paid more money and that percentage uh which starts at roughly 25% decreases slightly with every instrument so that's on top of that. So you make more money if I have you play all those instruments. Yeah, that's true. And but so but then it is this trying to incentivize me to hire different musicians because I'm like, well.
No, because if you hire uh if you hire me to play saxophone and then someone else to play clarinet, you're essentially paying 200% because each each of us are getting paid 100%. Uh if you hire me to play saxophone and clarinet, you're paying 125%. So it's cheaper to hire one person, which is why if you look, um, part of why if you look in a pit at a Broadway show, um, you know, you have people down there that are playing in the win section and playing flute clarinet over. I mean West Side Story, the first the lead read book for West Side Story is Soprano Sacks, Alto Sax, uh Piccolo, flute, and clarinet. And that's all one musician just rack and scale up.
That's one musician, yeah. This is how the triangulist makes fat bank because they're doing triangle and all those other weird little things. Well, no, we're not percussionists are a whole different ball game. So percussionists, uh, as I understand it, uh the percussion uh percussion and timpani are two separate instruments, but all of the other percussion gear um are included under the umbrella of percussion, so someone gets paid one fee to play all of that. However, as a percussionist, you also get cardage, which is uh an extra fee on top of your performance fee for schlepping all of that gear.
Which we don't get as doublers. You know, if I have to bring seven horns to a gig, I get paid a lot of money for the gig, but I don't get cartridge. Cardage. All right, we gotta we got it, we gotta go. Pat, thank you.
Yeah, I gotta go. I have something to do too. Yeah, all right, great. Super. Thanks for that.
All right, uh, thanks for calling in. Thanks, guys. Bye bye. So, uh Dave, I'll text you. Alright, cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we got a question in from Jacob Schroeder. Greetings, cooking issues. Jacob Schroeder here writing from Des Moines. I've never been to Iowa.
You guys ever been to Iowa? Yeah, Iowa City. It's nice. Yeah. I am new to the game when it comes to listening to podcasts and we've gotten a great start getting caught up with your extensive bat backlog.
Only on 87 though. Jacob's only on 87. Well, you're in for a long, long, long ride. Uh I've started a digital note to keep track of the myriad questions I have, but wanted to start with a few that are currently on the front burner. Forgive me if these questions have been covered on the shows in one of the 300 episodes I have not yet listened to.
One, I made a corn stock slash tea slash infusion by covering all of the inedible parts, cobs with kernels removed, fresh husks, silk stem, etc. with water, bringing it to a boil, removing from the heat, letting it sit for an hour before straining. The resulting product has a clean, sweet, grassy aroma and flavor. If it's possible, what would I need to turn this stuff into vinegar? And I'm also open to any other solutions of what to do with two cat two gallons of this corn goodness that don't include reduction, super stew, uh using as a cooking medium for grains, um, etc.
I've got a refractometer, so talk to me in terms of bricks. Well, anyway, if you want to make vinegar, the key thing with vinegar is remember vinegar starts with uh alcohol. So you either have to add alcohol to it, or you have to add enough sugar to it to make it ferment into uh alcohol. So, like if you're starting with sugar, uh, you're gonna want to get somewhere um between uh 10 and 18 bricks on it to uh get the sugar level where it will be, pitch it with yeast, it will go through alcoholic fermentation, and then if you're lucky, once oxygen hits it, it'll go through acetic acid fermentation and go through. Um, and obviously the higher the final alcohol level, the higher the uh acidity of the of the vinegar when you're done.
However, uh you don't want to go too much alcohol because anything over about 12% alcohol, and it's gonna start decreasing uh the activity of the acetobacter. And remember acetobacter needs uh um air, uh oxygen. And anything above 15 will pretty much stop it. So those those are the kind of numbers that you're gonna want to work with. Um if you want to get a book on it, uh Heritage Radio's own uh Michael Harlan Turkell in 2017 wrote a book called Acid Trip.
Travels in the world of vinegar with recipes from leading chefs, insights from top producers, and step-by-step instructions on how to make your own. Hairy Rosenblum, also if you're promoting Heritage Network people. That's a good book. Nice. All right, cool.
All right. Uh and also Sandor Katz's books on uh fermentation are good to have uh on vinegar specifically. I don't know whether uh Ariel's or David Zilber's book goes into vinegar in their fermentation. Zilber's does and they even accelerate it with use of an aquarium pump. So oh, to oxygenate it?
Yeah, that's that sounds very that sounds very uh very Noma-y. Um now uh Alex and Aki from uh Ideas and Food uh released a recipe that is not that is based on just adding booze to a liquid. Uh and you know, they when they do their maple syrup uh vinegar, they just started with uh rum and maple syrup. Uh so they did eight, but they used a live vinegar, it's actually primarily a live vinegar. So they started with a live vinegar, 800 grams of live vinegar, 950 grams of maple syrup, 300 grams uh rum, uh 200 grams water, uh, and then they just let that thing uh rock.
So you could do any any kind of one of a number of those things. Just remember that um you need to have enough uh kind of good other micronutrients in there aside from just sugar for them to feed on. For all you know, the corn stalk will provide enough. So you it's possible that just adding the right amount of booze to the corn stuff is enough to get the acetobacter kicked in if you put a good mother in it. But I would read read a book by an expert on vinegar, but it sounds like it should work.
Uh second question is I recently acquired a an OC2100R, aka the Korean machine, uh, which is a it's OCO, the brand name is OCOO. Uh, and if you look at it online, I had never seen one of these before. It's it's basically like a long-term like electric pressure cooker/slash double boiler. So it's like a ceramic thing that maintains like a high heat but under pressure for a long time. Um so I think any one of the long-term pressure cooking things would work in it, like uh uh you but you could do a regular pressure cooker too, like Hamme eggs.
I think people have been experimenting doing like hyper-accelerated black garlic things with them. Um I don't know, but I've never used one. But your question is, um, by the way, uh I I don't know whether the one that you bought is a uh a European model or a um or an American uh sorry or a South Korean model. The difference between South Koreans power is 220 volt 60 Hz and Europe's power is 220 volt 50 Hz. But since there's no motor in it, I'm assuming that this thing can work well on either 50 or 60 hertz.
I was only able to find information on it uh on a website whose language I could not um read. Uh so you say the electrical plug that's attached um does not have a grounded plug. I'm no expert electrician, but operate under the assumption that grounded plugs are better than non-grounded plugs. Should I replace a non-grounded plug with a grounded one? Replacing a grounded plug in a non-grounded piece of equipment is not going to be helpful because there needs to be a path to ground for the actual uh equipment.
If it's in a kitchen and you're cooking in the United States, you're gonna be cooking with a uh GFI. And um if you're using a GFI, um, it shouldn't be a problem. Just remember, I mean, I can't see the converter that you sent, but you're gonna need to step this thing up to 220 volts. All right. Um we probably gotta call it for today.
Oh, we have a call? No, we'll call it. We'll save these four questions for next time. Save them for next time. I got all these questions, and I have I have a huge classics in the field.
All right. Well, all the classics in the field for today was Richard Scary. I am a bunny! I live in a hollow tree. That is a great You know, you know it, Matt.
It's not just me now. You you're you're familiar with it? I'm sorry, I don't actually know it. I failed you. Uh what about torch?
Okay, listen, I'll say this on the way out. Uh anyone out there, we have an interesting marketing uh problem. Is that so? I don't know if you know this, but Nastasi and I made this product called the Searsol, which is like a handheld broiler. Uh that uh it turns your torch into a handheld broiler.
And just the stuff, you gotta give five, we gotta get five minutes on torches. There's uh that, and we make uh a centrifuge called the spinzall, which is currently out of stock, and we're trying to find out when it's gonna come back and stop. Stop pestering John about it. We will let you know. Yes, the factory won't get back to us.
We will let you know when we can convince them to build it again. You Americans don't understand that it's the customer is not always right when you're talking to a factory. We're begging and pleading with them to make another round of this stuff. We'll let you know, but it is at least five months out. At least.
Um so, anyways, uh we have this habit of making products that don't have any other analogs on the market, and then we have to figure out well, how much, you know, how how many of these can we sell? Like, like, what is a price that is reasonable? Because then we have to argue with the factory to get their price down to a level where we can afford to buy it to sell it to you guys. So, anyone out there who knows how to figure out like marketing for products that don't exist, right? Give us a holler.
Maybe, you know, maybe we can talk, right, Stas, or no? Um, lastly, uh Burns-Matic, the people that make the TS8000 torch, which is the torch that we have been recommending uh to everyone for how many years we've been making this thing, Stas? Nine. That long? No, we haven't been making the Sears all for that long.
I don't know, but it hasn't been that long. We've only been working together 13 years, right? I don't know. Eight, eight something. Anyway, so the um we've been recommending this one torch for all of these years.
Millions of dollars in revenue in torches for the burns a matic people. And a couple of weeks ago, I go on their website and they trash talk the Sears All and say that the Sears All is not recommended to use with their torch because John, do you have the quote there anywhere? Can you find it real quick? Yeah, let't see. Find it's gonna be.
But they they tell lies about the Searsol product, right? And then tell you that instead of using the Searsol, you should use their heat shrink torch, which I've tested, it's garbage, doesn't do the same thing at all, right? And so currently I am mad. Okay. You got it?
Yeah. Burn somatic torches are precisely engineered to produce the most efficient flame with the tip provided. Modifications or attachments may impact the torch performance and are not recommended. Um where is it? Please not burn somatic.
Product warranty is void if it's used with this. Uh, if you need heat. Wait, why isn't it saying it? They modified it. Oh, they definitely modified it.
People, people, people, cooking issues listeners. Boom! So they had this, they had this thing up on their website that said that using the Sears all melts their torch from the inside out. And I I s and I sent them a nasty, nasty, nasty email. I said, listen, you can you cannot recommend our product if you like.
It's your company and it's your product, but it's not your right to lie about us. And so and so, and I like included their quote and they changed it. Huh? Look at that, huh? So, anyway, I'm dying to find another person's uh another company that I can, you know, try to sell a lot of their product for them and then get zero respect back from them.
And so uh you know, to that end, we've looked on the Amazon. By the way, Amazon now is no longer selling the TS8000 at the at the old cheap price, so you have to get it at big box like Lowe's or Home Depot. But the one that everyone is selling now is a 9XTL from Blue Flame, which is looks to me like a straight knockoff of the of the TS8000. It's not made by the same people because when you hold them like side by side, they're slightly different, but it is a straight uh knockoff. Now, the people who make this blue flame, I think literally just reverse engineered it and don't really understand uh kind of torch technology as well as I'd like them to because um it's not tuned right out of the box.
So right now I can't recommend to people on Amazon to buy uh the 9XTL, the blue flame, simply because if you pull it out of the box and just try to use it, it doesn't work. There's too way too much gas comes out. Um I had to turn the gas knob adjustment until it was almost off and to get it to work uh with the same proper number of uh of gas uh output in terms of BTUs as the TS8000. But I'm gonna do more measurement, but just know that if you detune also the vortex generator is a little too close to the surface on the on the uh 9XTL, but it will work. But if you get one of these blue flame things, please, and maybe we maybe we can post something uh on um Booker Index.
I'll send a picture of what the flame should not look like for use with a torch or with a Sears all and what it should look like. And then those of you that have one of these blue flames can properly tune your torch to uh have it um work with the with the Sears all right out of the box. And again, more on that because we're taking all kinds of infrared photography and in the next uh of Sears alls and in the next month or two, uh, we should have some product news on stuff that we're uh working on. Uh but anyway, that's that. And the rest of it we'll have to uh save for later.
We're back in stock on Amazon, right, Nastasia? Yes. You have anything else uh for business that for our business that you want to tell people? No, I think uh according to Matt, we have to go. Okay, geez Louise.
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