I'm Lisa Hald, 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're spotlighting the people who prepare our meat before it reaches our plates.
We hear from whole animal butchers, the brains behind a meat vending machine, California cattle ranchers, and a master of charcuterie who isn't using meat at all. It's like a smoked and grilled uh center stock of the broccoli, and then it gets uh finished with some mustard barbecue sauce and sauerkraut. Ranching and farming being as difficult as it is. You know, it's just one thing after another. And at some point you just give up.
I had a wild idea that if I learned butchery, maybe I could start to be kind of a link in the supply chain. Listen to Meet and Three, HRN's weekly food news roundup wherever you get your podcasts. How are you doing, Stas? Good. Yeah.
We got uh John, uh customer service uh extraordinaire for Booker Index, uh coming to you from the Murray Hill there. How you doing? Not too bad, thanks. Got Matt in his Rhode Island booth. All good?
There we go. Yeah, yeah. And uh joined by joined by today's special guest, which uh with no further ado, we'll I'll talk about why we're late in a second. But uh like there is no good excuse, but I'll tell you what happened anyway. Uh we have uh from Kitchen Arts and Letters uh coming back on the show for his second appearance.
Matt Sartwell, how are you doing? I'm well, thank you. Appreciate having you back. Yeah, well, it's great to have you back. You know, I like we had to have you back though for a specific reason.
Uh I'm gonna just tell you, folks who I don't know, if this is your first time tuning in or whatever, Kitchen Arts and Letters is the like, well, I'm gonna put it this way, it's the best cookbook store I've ever been in. I will say without any hesitation, it is at least the premier cookbook store in the United States, right? Uh I have been to a decent, a good cookbook store in Edinburgh, really good. I will say Kitchen Arts and Letters is a better cookbook store. Now, I have not been everywhere on Earth.
So I can't say that it is the greatest cookbook store on Earth, just because I haven't been everywhere on Earth. But you get my point. Kits and Arts and Letters is the store for cooks, people who like food, even if you're tangentially interested in food. And the reason to go to Kitchen Arts and Letters and not somewhere else, is because not only is it a store full of books, it is a store full of people who know about the books. And I know a lot of people know about books, but the way Kitchen Arts and Letters knows about cookbooks the way you know about your best friends, the way you know about like the family stories of your best friends.
And that is the reason because a cookbook is so much more enjoyable when you can hear the history behind it, when you when you know about it. You're not just getting random opinions from people on the internet. It's uh it's just it's like uh a treasure that needs to be preserved. And it's it's in the it's a it's uh on Lex in the in the 90s, what is it between 90, what is it, between 90. Between 93 and 94.
93 and 94, right. So it's like if you're walking in between the two subway stations, you gotta choose whether you're gonna get out at 86 or at 96, and then you gotta figure out whether you're gonna walk, because it's on that weird hilly area in Manhattan, right? It's on that weird, you're in that weird hilly zone. It's like the only hilly place in Manhattan. If you if you hate hills, get off at 86th Street.
All right. Hear that, folks? If you hate hills, I don't hate hills. If you hate hills, get off uh on 86th Street. Whoever's typing, stop typing or go on mute.
So uh Is that you, Dave? No. I don't even have a computer, Stas. The reason I'm late is because I was plugging in my Yeti blue microphone, which in order to make it look professional, it's like the size of a small truck. And then I was spinning it around because you can't plu you have to spin it around to plug in the USB, and I spun it around and it smacked my my brand new cup of espresso and shot my espresso against my like my my wife's white painted wall.
Remember, she's the architect, and then it splashed into my what I thought was a good idea, open frame computer, and zoop, zerched it. Like, like my computer smells great, like espresso, but it no longer is a computer. So after the radio show, I have to go like you know, hopefully it dries out. Nastasy was like, Well, you don't use milk or sugar. Milk is the real the real killer.
But you should you can't turn it upside down, right? Whatever you're talking about. No, no. I'm gonna let it dry out. I mean, like, I I honestly, it didn't fry the power, so whatever it did shorted something in the actual computer.
So I'm gonna let it dry for an hour or two, and then I'm gonna turn it on and pray. You know what I'm saying? Like that's basically all I can do. But like I had all of my questions for today, like all of my notes, everything. And it was like literally like, okay, now it's time to plug in the microphone and get on to get on to Zoom, and boom, gone.
Anyway. Uh so there's a coffee question that just came in in the chat. I can append it, I can sort of amend it. What type of coffee, how he made it and all that crap? No, no, no, it wasn't about that.
No. Well, was it? What was it? Is it short? Yeah, so what is your take on RO versus water softeners for coffee?
But I'm wondering, would either of them help you in your current situation? Look, if you're gonna use look, the point with coffee is is that you don't want your water like hyper hyper pure for coffee, right? So uh I mean it probably depends on exactly what kind of coffee you're gonna make, but just go get the books by Rao. By the way, uh Matt, and I said I have you on. What are your thoughts on the on the Rao coffee books?
Are those still the best? I have to say I have uh struggled to get them, so I'm not sure what availability is like. Oh, because he he why is he private publishing those? Uh I believe so. I have to go back and look.
It's been a while since I made that effort. Um you know, I uh I rely a lot on notes that I I bury and then have to go dig out for myself on all on sourcing all these things. Right. But I mean, not by the by the way, for best, what I mean is like technical stuff for people who are brewing and making espresso. Is he still, but is is he's is that still considered like the target that everyone shoots for if his work or no?
Is there a new target that people are shooting? I I don't think there's a newer better target. No. No. Okay.
Yeah. I mean, look, like like uh like back in the in the late 90s, early 2000s, I would say David Schulmer is the book to go to if you're interested in espresso or you know, uh Ely's uh The Chemistry of Quality, which has a lot on water in in it as well. Um, but um, yeah, I think you know, what we're talking about is probably better, but you you want the the right number of uh dissolved solids in your coffee. In fact, uh I forget which one of the which one of the Ely family I was dealing with. The scientist, the younger one, he's rich, so he dresses very fancy.
I met him and he had his nice Italian suit on at the Mandarin uh Oriental in New York. This was maybe a l 12, 13, 14 years ago. And I was like, I'm having trouble with my espresso. And he's like, the water here is not right for the perfect espresso. And that's because uh espresso, because uh New York water is famously soft.
So he was poo-pooing the entire concept of making espresso with the water that I have at my disposal. And here in New York we have some of the finest water you could get anywhere. Anyway, so like my point is is that I think RO, if your water is garbage, then go RO and then put stuff back into it. Right? What do you think?
Is that was that a decent answer or no? That sounds good. And he worked in the cookbook too, so there you go. There you go. There you go.
Yeah, but some of those books are hard to get, especially ones that like geeks go for and uh that are kind of self-published and or not distributed through normal channels can be a pain, right, Matt? Yeah, I mean, the one of the problems is that when people self-publish, they don't really think about anything other than what they're writing, and then the whole distribution channel thing is an afterthought until suddenly they have a thousand books in their garage and they wonder why uh they haven't sold them all yet. So uh yeah, I love to talk to people in advance. If you're thinking of self-publishing something, reach out to me, reach out to any local bookstore and and have that little talk about the best way to make that work because sometimes it's really way too arcane uh and uh to obtain self-published books. And I mean we carry like a thousand of them here.
It's not that we have a prejudice against them, but you've got to think about that kind of thing from the from the early days in order to make it work. All right, so here's a here's a question in specifically, well, before we get into the questions, uh why don't we talk a little bit? You have a you have a GoFundMe going now. Let's talk about the state of uh selling cookbooks in the COVID 2020 internet times. Well, I mean, the uh I I think the precise technical definition is that it that it sucked for uh uh for most of this year.
Um, you know, the the lockdown came in March, but people had been pulling their uh their horns in uh earlier than that in terms of visiting the store and so forth. So the year was off to a bad start, and then suddenly we couldn't be open anymore, and you know, for three months we had no no foot traffic. And we did, I mean, I I have to give this credit to the people who had been our longtime customers. We had a lot of great support through our website, but our website right now represents maybe 15% of what's in the bookstore. Uh so there was no way that its sales could keep up with uh uh with what we needed to do to cover rent and so forth.
I mean, it's a story that's familiar to to anybody whose business was affected by the lockdown, and I'm sure I don't have to tell you about that. Yeah. But for us, it just meant we were burning through through uh the cash we had on hand, and you know, I'm dancing around and negotiating with vendors and with landlords. Um I I managed to keep paying my people um because it was important to me to have them to rely on, and you know, once we were running, they were a terrific resource to have here in the store. But they just just there was no cash.
And um usually the fall is a huge season for us. We have all these big offsite events. We do the uh New York City Wine and Food Festival, we do the Star Chef Chefs Congress, we did the New York Times Food Festival, and then none of those things are happening this year. So there was no chance to get ourselves out of a hole, and our leases due for renewal. What are you at now and how much money you have?
Sort of you know hammered us at the same time. I mean, clearly we're not the only ones in the country facing that. But you know, I I was standing here looking around thinking, you know, could we you know shut this down and try to start over in a year? And there was no way that we could reassemble what we had here. There was no way that we could sort of um replace the the kind of nexus we'd become if we if we stopped.
Um and so I said help, you know, I I put the word out and um I'm blown away, I'm humbled by the way uh that uh that people have stopped up stepped up and backed us. It's been um incredibly gratifying and heartwarming. Um and now I feel like uh I I can't die because I have to do this forever for the people who are who are backed us. You do. In fact you do.
Now why don't you tell people how to get to your GoFundMe uh and we'll do it again at the end. Uh it's uh GoFundMe.com. Um you can just type in Kitchen Arts and Letters on the search bar or it's GoFundMe.com uh slash save kitchen arts and letters. Now um I uh we are as of about an hour ago, we were at uh about eighty-nine thousand dollars. Uh we uh initially set a goal of seventy-five and we hit it in two and a half days, um, which meant I was crying.
Um I raised it because um if we can put some extra stability under the store, uh if we can uh have a little more room to maneuver because God knows what you know next year and the year after that are gonna look like, then it's all for the better. I mean, one thing I know I'm gonna do is pour money into uh improving and vastly upgrading the website, which was already the plan for this year, and then you know, boom, that became impossible. So um we are out of the deepest pit and we're now sort of scrambling at the sides of it. Yeah. Now how like w g I'm sure you think about this a lot.
I mean, but i obviously you don't actually know what it's like to go to your store as a customer. I mean, some of the people who work for you do, I'm you know, that I know. But I mean, like to go as a customer, right? I mean how can how can how can you somehow give some of that experience of what it's like to be able to go ask questions in the store to people who can't visit the store like that's kind of this post-COVID or you know do you see this as is it possible this becomes an opportunity because what you guys have is so much more than a place where someone hands you money and you hand them a book you know well I mean that's I mean that's a really fair question. I mean it's one of the things that I'm trying to figure out for for the website because you know you come in here and ask us a question uh and sometimes you know it'll be a really easy question there's one obvious answer for it but at other times there isn't like a a dead on approach to the to the subject but there are all these tangential books that that together can help you get there.
And so you know you can come in and and suddenly one of us is running all over the store pulling books through five or different five or six different sections and saying oh but look at this chapter and check out this you know and maybe we don't always even know exactly where to look for it first but we know where to start the searching um and finding a way to do that on the web is is is the great challenge. Yeah great I uh yeah yeah yeah I've got one on one thirty yeah well let me let me give you let me give you guys a let me give the listeners who had never maybe been to the store an example like uh this is the so Kitchen Arts and Letters maybe this is a more succinct way of putting it, they are like research librarians of cooking, right? So, you know, in the way that you could go to in the way that you could go to the Schleshinger library at Radcliffe and you know, kind of go to their librarian who knows a lot, like Kitchen Arts and Letters is like a reference, like reference librarians for cookbooks that where you can actually then buy the book and take it out and own it, right? And I remember uh when I was writing for food arts, this is probably like 05 or something, 06, uh Jose Andres, somewhere around there, 07. Jose Andres had recently opened Cafe Atlantico at length in DC, and and uh Daniel Balud was opening a restaurant in Vegas, and planches were the hot new thing.
And Michael Batterbury, you know, my mentor who uh is the founder, one of the founders of food arts, uh, was like, you're gonna write about planches. There was no information on planches, right? There was not a lot on websites about planches. So you go up to Kitchen Arts and Letters and you're like, who's done Spain right? Who talks about planches?
And then they run around the store, as Matt said, looking for like all possible references to that. Or when I was tasked to write about charcuterie and there wasn't a lot, it's like picking and playing, and in fact, Matt was gonna do as a classics in the field today, because we'll get to that in a minute, cooking by hand, which until like the technical stuff came out, along with Jane Grigson's book, was like the place where you could like read at least a chapter by a great author on charcuterie. So whenever I had something to research, when I was writing an article, I would go to them first. And it's a lot better than you know, Wikipedia, you know, in terms of like get getting information, because as I say, you know, at Kitchen Arts and Letters, they often, they can't on everything, but they often have the backstory on how a particular book got written or why a particular book got written, or you know, where the where the author was at that time, which is helpful for a researcher or an author, or even just someone who's interested, you know. I mean, that's a that's a big part of the the pleasure for us is is sharing that background.
Um, you know, we we don't know everything about every book, obviously, but uh there are books here that we've you know we've known since they were uh an idea in somebody's head, and we've seen them get written and published and you know and win awards and prizes. Uh and we love talking to people about that. Yeah. So anyway, why don't we like uh John? Should we do a uh should we do a question or should we get oh I have a question for you actually that came in on Twitter, Matt.
Uh let me see. Uh you probably you can tell me whether you hate this kind of question or don't. Uh this is from uh Pavlo Pavlovsky wrote in what is the best cooking book of 2020 so far? Uh I hate questions like that. All right.
Um I hate almost any question that involves the word best. Um because what's best for me may not be best for you, Dave, or for somebody else. So our conversations are only that experience is who we're answering the question for. Um so uh it's just well let me ask you this. What is an overlooked what is an overlooked cookbook in 2020 that people need to go go search out?
Uh oh, now I'm on the spot. Uh some really fun and offbeat books that uh I was excited to see. Uh there's a little book, um and I'm gonna get the title wrong because I don't have it right in front of me, and it's uh uh it's long, but it's the proceedings uh of the first annual gathering of tomological explorers, people who find wild uh apple varieties uh along roadsides and in the the back of parking lots. Uh, because when apples uh germinate from seed, each apple is genetically distinct. And so the trees that come up are nothing like their parents.
Uh and so these varieties that are found in the wild can be something amazingly new and different from anything that they might be related to. And there are people who find them and and share them and start cultivating them and bringing them to market. And they gathered together up in Massachusetts last year, and and this little collection showcases about 66, I think, out of the 120 or so that were on display. Um so that would be high up on my list of interesting things. Um God, I can't even remember what year is what year.
Uh for rolling up your sleeves and and working. There was a book that came out early in the year called Carpatia on the food of Romania. This is a part of the world that gets like no respect from big mainstream publishing houses. Um this one came along and um I think gives an interesting tour. And then finally, um a newly published book called Parwana on Afghan food.
Um and again, I don't have the book in front of me, so I don't have the author's name to hand. Um her last name is Ayubi, A Y U B I. Uh she's an Australian whose family fled uh Afghanistan in the early 80s. And it is a gorgeously historical book. I mean, it's also beautifully photographed.
But the Afghan culture in that book is is a revelation uh for I think for anybody who didn't grow up in Afghanistan. All right, what was the name of that one? Carwana, P-A-R-W-A-N-A. And I'm also gonna check out that Romanian book because my wife's business partner is like Romanian Romanian, like from Romania, Chichescu era, like hardcore. Tough tough times there for a long time, but but uh the food is really interesting, and it's this crossroads location with lots of different influences out there.
Cool. All right, awesome. Uh now, you do do we wanna do a normal question or do we want to go straight to classics in the field, guys? What do you want? Classics in the field because you haven't done it in a long time.
All right, right. All right, right. Now, uh before we get into it, I have a question about a cookbook. See, this now this is what this is what I'm saying. Now, people, I have not predetermined this at all.
While I was doing research, before I fried my computer this morning, uh, a cookbook came through my my internet browser, and I have a question about it, and we have not figured I have not asked Matt whether he knows anything about it. So this is a dis not a test because but I'm just gonna see. Are you familiar with the Haka cookbook that came out like seven, eight years ago? Uh yeah, University of California Press, I think. Ding, see, see what I'm talking about, people?
Now here's why I'm interested. So the people that make the Sears all, which is our little uh handheld, you know, uh the bro the thing that turns a torch. Oh my god, Dave, can we talk about Amazon at some point? In a minute, in a minute, a minute. Like the Searsol is manufactured by a Hakka family.
That the people who run the factory are Hakka, which is uh like a very specific kind of group inside a uh of China, right? It's its own thing and they have their own cuisine. And whenever we go to uh China or often want to go to China, we'll go to a Hakka, we'll go to a Hakka restaurant, we'll have Hakka food. So um, so I was interested. Is the cookbook any good?
Like, is that is that a uh a should read? A you know, what do you what do you think there? I heard it doesn't have a lot of illustrations, but I don't need no, I don't think it has any illustrations. If there are, there's some line drawings. I I mean I haven't opened one in maybe a year or so.
Uh I think it's really strong. I mean, it's a really culturally interesting story uh about how this group of people has basically sort of been uh forced to migrate repeatedly within China. Uh they've managed to maintain a distinct uh culinary and cultural identity. The food is uh it was a tremendous linking for us, and it's related, but it doesn't seem like exactly like any other kind of Chinese cuisine. Uh I haven't cooked from it.
That's true of most of the books in the store, but we have really good uh strong feedback from our customers, and so I have a lot of faith in it. Yeah, yeah. See? See what I mean, people? Like that is the kind of information.
How are you gonna get that on the internet? You're gonna listen to like uh you're gonna listen to like uh like uh Joey Know Nothing on their on their Amazon review. We we'll get to that, we'll get to that later. Uh by the way. Talk about it first because that's our business.
Just no, no, no, no. I was gonna talk about Amazon reviews for books. What do you what do you want me to say about Amazon, the corporation? Uh what happened on Friday, because uh every? Because I've gotten emails from people asking how that's going.
How our relationship with Amazon is going. Because a lot of people follow us talking about it on the show. Our relationship with Amazon is that look, I've said this before, I'll say it again. Amazon, Amazon is good at if you need to return something to Amazon, like they're they're great for that, right? Like as a customer, like they're good.
As a vendor, it is a freaking nightmare. It is a freaking nightmare. So here's what happens. Amazon, right? Amazon is one of the larger importers of things because they do a lot of direct importing.
They import it. So this that's how the Sears all works, people. So we have it manufactured in China, right? And then it gets picked up in China by Amazon and then shipped on an Amazon contracted boat to the United States and then distributed to an Amazon warehouse. Amazon owns it.
As soon as it leaves, as in China, the possession goes from Booker and Axe to Amazon, right? Okay. Seems pretty clear, right? Now listen, question. When does Amazon check to make sure that we've given them the Sears?
Any guesses? Any guesses? Mat or Matt guess. How about in America? Ooh.
Ooh, that's interesting. Where in America? Like, I'm ordered at the port, but are you telling me it's like at some sort of like receiving place past the port? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Now, we hand Amazon pallets.
I hate to get too into the phone. Here's how this works, right? It's every Searsol in a box, every Sears all box with a label. This is even funnier. Over top of that label is another label with a different barcode because Amazon will have it no other way.
You need to have two barcodes, one with the item number that's the manufacturer barcode, and then you must have that, and then you must put another label over it with a second barcode that completely obscures the first. And if you can't do that, then they won't do business. And it takes too long to explain to you why, but that's just the truth. So every one of those individual steers all boxes is in a box that contains nine by nine by uh contains twenty-seven. Sorry, contains three by three by three Sears alls.
It's 27 to a box, right? Right? Okay. So you got 27 Sears alls in a box. That box has on it several barcodes and labels.
There are how many, uh, how many of those in on a palette, Stas? It's I actually got the real number. Three by three by five. It's it's eighteen, right? Isn't it 18?
But that we can talk about that later. Anyway, it doesn't matter. So it's we'll say it's 18 of those on a pallet and it's wrapped. And then that's what gets handed off. Now, there is no possible way, because of the cube shapes that everything is in, for us to like send three less than we said.
It just can't work. You know what I mean? It just there's no way the factory wouldn't know how to send three or four less, right? Anyway, so we say to Amazon, hey, okay, listen, why don't you check when we hand you the stuff to make sure we've handed you all the stuff so you can agree in China? In China.
Before it gets on your boat. Because what's happening is is that someone, not even at the port, but like at their warehouse, is scanning the stuff in unit by unit and saying that we're shorting them random numbers of units. It's usually a whole box of 27, but like random, right? And so we're like, we hand them the bill of lading, and they're like, which isn't work for us. And they're like, well, we we don't look at the bill of lading.
That's not we look at how many we have in the warehouse. I'm like, but but but but but but but you own them from the minute you took them in China, you put them on a boat for a month. And they're saying something's happening in the warehouse, and we're like, okay, but that's your warehouse. Your warehouse. I'm like, and Nastasi and I were like basic.
We got on that call with our representative from them. And then Dave before the call says, are we both going peshy? Or is one of us? Yeah, yeah. So we both went pesci on them.
I like, I was like, listen. Oh my God. And then Dave say what Dave said he's gonna put cigarettes out in his kid's eye. I was like, no, listen, listen, here's what happened. Like, the guy that we're dealing with is like, listen, this isn't my rules.
I'm like, I'm like, Amazon. I was like, first of all, I was like, in any basic drug deal, right? You test the drugs, and if if the person says open the suitcase, you open the suitcase, and the person says, count it. And then if you don't count it, it's on you. It's on you.
You count it when the deal happens, right? It's like it's Amazon is doing this. They're going to a grocery store, they're buying a whole bunch of groceries, they're putting it into their into their outback, and they're leaving the hatch open. And then they're driving over a dirt road for 55 miles, and then when they get there, they're like, half my groceries fell out. I'm not paying you.
Who the hell does this? You check when you do the deal. Yeah. Unbelievable. So then so Amazon, I'm can't I guarantee you that Amazon is making money hand over fist by doing this to people.
And they're just like, well, it's the price of doing business. Like they're gonna lose 26 boxes, and we can't force Amazon because they're the richest company in the world. We can't force them to count the stuff when they take it from us. So we'll just have to pretend that we lost it. We'll have to pretend it's us.
We'll have to get gaslit by Amazon because what else are we gonna do about it, right? And so uh I was I said to our guy, I shouldn't have said this. I was like, listen, I was like, the kind what you're doing is literally making a difference of whether or not I get to send my kid to a school or not. Like, this is like I was like, this is Nastasi and I, this is our whole business. I was like, this isn't like he's like, but we only shorted you 13 grand on this one order.
I'm like, you only shorted me 13 grand. See, by the way, people said that. He said that. There's an order, okay. Not to get too into nuts and bolts.
We have an order, 140,000 they owe us. And they come back and they're like, how about we give you 40? We're like, woo, ooh, what? Like, let's make a deal. It's crazy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This reminds me of the time I was having a horrible surgery, and I won't even I won't get into it. But I was in, let's just say, a compromised position, and unfortunately not knocked out. So it's the most invasive personal space invasion, like horror show, Pierre Passolini movie kind of thing you could possibly imagine. And while they were doing this procedure to me, this is years ago, the doctor talked about nothing else but how the insurance company was basically doing the same thing to him, basically saying they were gonna pay him like 30 cents on the dollar for what he was owed.
And I had all kind of cameras and needles in all kinds of bad places. Every orifice. It was like it was like a horror porn for for it was the worst. Anyway, that's what it's like. Because they're like, how about we give you 40?
And then like the only 13 grand we're shafting you. I was like, oh, dude. So I said to him, I was like, buddy, I was like, may you someday be rich enough, may we all be rich enough that we can, you know, basically put out cigarettes in the eyes of our enemies, uh children and not worry about it, not have any repercussions. And he was like, oh geez. Yeah, silence.
I was like, I was like, because that's what Amazon is doing. Yeah. Amazon's putting out a cigarette in my kid's eye. Yeah, yeah. You know, but it's does.
Is that not what Amazon is doing to us? Yes, yes. They're walking up, oh yeah, Booker, you you need special uh education? Here, cigarette, boom, in the eye. That's what they're doing.
Now you also need eye surgery. Hope you have money. I only shorted you 13 grand. Yeah, anyway. Uh, so that's what we're doing with the Amazon right now.
Enjoy. So uh back to uh classics in the field, Matt. Sorry about that uh slight digression. Yeah. Uh well, yeah.
Um, Amazon horror stories. Yeah, yeah. 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.
So what do you get? What do you got for classics? Let's go to something a little more fun. A little less On a happier note. This is a giant uh almost 800 page reference book that came out in 2001.
And it covers very broadly speaking about 130 different vegetables. Um even more impressive when you consider that she doesn't really talk about things like potatoes and tomatoes, which are uh there are so many varieties of those that if you once you start talking about them, they become entire books on their own. Um, and this is a big sprawling reference book. It is um written from the point of view of somebody who's or for the point of view of somebody who's making a living in some way off these items. Uh it talks about how to find them, what kind of growers to look for, what a good one is like, um how it became cultivated and grown in the United States.
Um it talks about uh everything from the qualities of the flesh and how it's typically cooked to how well it keeps. Um and it covers you know familiar things like broccoli and turnips, but also banana buds and something called horseradish tree, and uh something else that's known as New Zealand spinach or tetragonia. And the woman who wrote it, Elizabeth Schneider, had years before uh co-authored a book called Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables, uh, and this was an outgrowth of that, an even more in-depth approach. Um it is full of uh information. There are recipes that she developed, there are notes on how chefs all over the country prepare these things.
And I think for anybody who's uh who's making a living in food, it's pretty goddamn useful. Tell me ask you a question. Sure. Let's say uh compare this with the uncommon vegetables. For those of you that have for those for those that have one, or like maybe is the other one still are is it worth getting both, or are like are they different enough?
Or they are they are pretty different. I mean, uncommon fruits and vegetables came out um middle eighties. Uh so a lot of the things that are in that book uh had become a lot more common. Um and they aren't so surprising. Um of course it's also got fruits, which are not a really a component of vegetables from Emmer and Suzucini.
Um vegetables from Emer and Suzucchini is also attempting to be more comprehensive. You can find familiar things in there, um, but it's also got those oddball things. Um Elizabeth Schneider uh made her living for a long time consulting with growers about what it was that chefs and restaurants were going to be interested in using in the coming years. Farmers would come to her and say, hey, what should we be planting? What are people talking about that uh they might want to be using more of?
So uh she she was uniquely plugged into um uh a mix uh of users and and providers that almost nobody else at the time could replicate. She's pretty much retired now and not not writing, but um at the time that this came out, it was uh it was really um essential, and I don't think anything has come close to replicating its importance. Well now, and speaking of like at the time, so this book came out in 2001, right? Yes, yeah. So I think a lot of uh like one thing that I hate to see, especially with uh younger readers, right?
Is this uh they can't they can't properly judge a book for when it was written and get the timeless nature of what was written, and also an understanding of what was commonly known when something was written, and therefore they can't get the full enjoyment out of a book that was written 19 years ago just because they can't get the right mindset. Do you see that happening a lot? Or you know, do you have anything to kind of say about that? I I think we do sometimes encounter that. I I also think that at least here in a in a conversation with people, we can usually make the case very strongly about why we might think an older book is still the more recent thing.
I mean, this book established itself as a uh as a pretty irreplaceable reference. And I, you know, the fundamental nature of uh bitter melon or or ramps uh hasn't changed in 20 years. Um there are you know, for some cultivated uh widely cultivated vegetables, there are new varieties on the market, but the basics aren't gonna change. And and a book like this, which represents the work of essentially a lifetime. I mean, there aren't that many people who are gonna blow their lifetime on looking up and uh studying vegetables for you.
You just said she ruined her life. You just said she blew her life. You know, I I uh fair. I I think that authors sometimes do that for themselves. They they pour themselves into a project.
Um I mean, she's brilliant, smart, beautiful woman. But uh yeah, this was this sort of um she finished this and she sort of gasped and sat down and uh and has rested since. Yeah. So let me uh this is why I hate Amazon reviews. So here's a one-star review uh on that book saying, uh my expectation for this book was to provide the basics on each vegetable, especially in relation to cooking with some more expanded or extensive info added.
But for many vegetables, this was not included. All right, one star. That's one star. I thought it was going to be the basics of vegetables, but it wasn't one star. Jerks, why can't these people just why can't the kind of person who writes that review just instead stop sucking wind, stop being a waste of space.
You know what I mean? I uh I I don't think Amazon's the only place where that happens. Yeah, I have I have seen some pretty astonishing reviews on Amazon for books that I think are are extraordinarily fine. Um it tells you a lot about you know as much about the reviewer as it does about the book. Yeah.
The other issue, like I say about kind of what what I was getting at with the kind of newness, wanting new stuff, is like uh let's say someone had written a book on rum 10 years ago, right? They could have spent their entire life on rum, and it still wouldn't really have a section on Clarent, right? You know, from Haiti, like uh the cane stuff from Haiti. So then, like someone who's just getting into it and getting all the information like, well, it can't be good because it doesn't even include Clarent. You know what I mean?
Like that kind of an attitude, I think people need to mentally, mentally kind of erase. Do you know what I mean? Because it's just I think it's unhelpful. And I worry about this when I'm writing too. Like, how can I write I know that some of the information that I'm giving now is going to be dated.
I know that people are gonna do a lot of work and that things will be superseded and and other things, but like a great writer, and I haven't read this uh yet. I remember I I was going to get the copy of this book and I never did. Um but uh like a great writer, you you read them even though you might have some new information. There might be more things available now than were available in 2000, because there clearly is. Do you know what I mean?
But I think your life's going to be much richer if you can if you can kind of because that the spirit of the writer doesn't really age. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? It does. And I think the other thing that people sometimes have gotten out of the habit of doing is is you know, because we're so used to going online and like entering a phrase and getting a quick answer to a question, is is doing the critical reading that sort of says, you know, what is this source, where is it coming from, when did it occur, what are its limits going to be, what is it gonna tell me that people have stopped paying attention to?
Because often that is just as interesting as what is really sort of suddenly coming into the spotlight. Um and so you the well, I I could go on about this for a long time. Perfection is an illusion, it's a lie. And if you search for it and expect it, you will always be disappointed. So what you do is you find something that's great, even if it's not perfect, and you celebrate what's great about it, and you don't get stuck on thinking that one place is all the answers, and you're happy with that ambiguity.
Right. All right. So that book was Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, the essential reference. Anyway, 500 recipes. And you can and you have copies of that available of Kitchen Arts and Letters?
We do, absolutely. It is a big sprawling book, and we love to talk about it. What is that? What is that uh was that guy go for? It is $70.
It is, like I said, the work of a lifetime and uh and the price shows. Also, I'll have you know, I just looked it up, same price on Amazon. So why would you ever buy it there? Why would you do that? Anyway.
That's a fair question. Yeah. Um, all right. Now you wanted to, uh you were gonna do some Patience Gray as well, right? Yeah.
Um, so on a completely different direction. Uh Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray is a book that came out in in 1986. Um, it's a really interesting story. Patience Gray had been a very a successful author of sort of a big mainstream uh cookbook in in Britain, and this is sort of like, you know, the pioneer woman throws up her former life and goes off to live on a mountainside. Um she fell in love with a sculptor, and she spent many years traveling around the Mediterranean with him to places where uh he could find the stone that he wanted to work with.
Um so they were in Tuscany, they were in Catalonia, they were on Naxos, which is one of the Greek islands, and they ended up settling in a puglia. Um and she writes about the food that she learned to cook in all these places, uh, and not you know, from famous restaurants and notable chefs, but but from the neighbors, because most of the time they were um living in unheated huts um in no no, sort of on the edge of a quarry, and the closest people were subsistence farmers. And they learned to cook very seasonally, they learned to cook with sort of a minimum of ingredients that didn't come from within 10 miles. Uh and she says very early on that good cooking is the result of a balance struck between frugality and liberality. So, you know, using your ingredients as carefully as you can, but when they're, you know, when something comes on and then it's in season, you go wild with it and you do all that you can.
It's a book with an astonishing personality. Um she had a sort of sense of mysticism that wouldn't really fit necessarily with uh say the people that modernist cuisine. Um it would be fascinating to see Nathan Mirgold and Patience Gray talking to each other. But um it's it's a book with really powerful senses of places and a um and an amazing versatility with almost nothing to hand. And this is also the 80s.
She's writing this in the 80s. This came out in 86. Yeah, it's still in print after after all these years. Um it's uh it became sort of a legend. People would make pilgrimages to see her.
Uh she spent the like the last 25 years of her life in uh uh in Apulia, literally in a in a in a home without heat. You ever meet her? I did not. She did not leave Apulia, I think uh in the last 25 years of her life, and I I never made it there. I knew people who'd met her, people like um Alan Davidson uh and Ed Baer, who had who had traveled there and met her, but I never did it.
Well, Al Alan Davidson was the one of the reasons she started doing cookbooks, right? Or publishing them anyway. She was writing, but wasn't he? By the way, and speaking of classics in the field, I don't know if we ever did his stuff, but his seafood series, he's an ex was an ex-diplomat, and then also like an amateur, uh, whatever you call a fish person, ichthyologist or whatever it was, and then started writing all of these books on seafood, which are also classics in the field, correct? Exactly.
His first one was a book on the fish and fish dishes of Laos, which he started writing when he was the British ambassador to Laos. And that's an all-time classic, right? It is. And I mean, there's I mean, there's nothing else in English that even comes close to touching that. But he expanded that into a book on the seafood of Southeast Asia.
There was one on uh Mediterranean seafood and one on Seafood of the North Atlantic. And they have all flickered in and out of print, but any of them is is worth picking up if you have any interest at all in them in a really careful, precise seafood book. No photographs. If you have to have pictures, you are SOL, but the written content is astonishing, and the drawings are really helpful. So what was the connection there between Patience Gray and Davidson?
He was just to publish. He was he uh how he had started he had started a publishing company called Prospect Books, which was an offshoot of a magazine that he had founded with Elizabeth David called uh Petit Proculinaire, PPC. Uh, and Prospect Books uh was published or was founded to publish the the completed scholarship that PPC was publishing excerpts of. Um, and they were gathering together interesting people. Um they had a friend in common, uh a man named Irving Davis, who uh was living in Catalonia at that point.
Uh Patience Gray writes a lot about him in Honey from a Weed. He was sort of uh black sheep, libertine uh iconoclastic uh British expat who had I think had to flee Britain and couldn't go back for reasons I was never quite clear on. And uh, but he made a lot of friends in in Catalonia, uh, entertaining people who came through and being passionate about the local Catalonian food. So he met Gray while she was living there, and he connected her today with some. Yeah, cool.
You know, I have a galley of honey from the weed that I got at the Strand in the 90s. Whoa. Yeah. I've never seen one of those. Well, so here's the thing.
I went to go look for it, uh, and I I must have it in storage. I gotta go, I gotta go find it. It's uh it's like a light green, you know how galleys are in that that horrible like oak tag like uh cardstock. Yeah, uh yeah, with like a line drawing on it. If I find it, I'll I'll give it to you so you can see the difference.
If it won't when I find it, I'll I'll in fact, that was one of the ones I know it didn't get pitched in one of my many recent movings because the way this whole classics in the field started, to remind those who have no idea, is I have a lot of books that one might consider to be unusual or random. And when we're going through which ones we're going to de accession because we don't have any space because we live in New York, uh my wife would be like, What about this one? This looks useless. I'm like, that is a classic in the field, and that's how it started. We have a lot of conversations like that here.
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, um classics in the field. See, if I find it, I'll uh I'll I'll just send it to you so you can see what the Yeah, I'd be just even even just a photograph. I'd be fascinated to see how they did that. I didn't even realize Prospect was doing galleys back in the day.
Yeah, and furthermore, I bought it just based on the title. I had no idea who she was, and I don't know if for those of you that never been to the Strand, this was before the Strand had air conditioning, and you would go in the basement, which is a hellhole, and they'd have this section that was called those galleys, and some would be galleys and some would so there's different kinds of like there's there's proofs and galleys, like some are paperbound, some look like the finished book, but aren't. And so like and they were all a dollar no matter what it was. And 99% of what they had down there was stuff that had just come out. So what happens is is that the publishing house sends out a bunch of these things to people so that we can review them, and then they offload them on the strand, strand sells them for a dollar.
Anyway, uh so to find one that was at the time probably 12 years old was quite rare. So I that's one reason I picked it up. And but her writing is just great. You know what I mean? It's it's vivid and and crisp and um she I mean she doesn't give you recipes like you know, like you would find in uh in a standard modern cookbook.
They're they're like one of her neighbors probably explained the whole thing to her. Yeah, yeah, but she's a good she's a very evocative writer, like makes you like makes you want to go on a journey with her in the way that like I think MFK Fisher does. Although do people still like MFK Fisher or no? People still love her or no? I think they do.
I mean, I think it's um it's easy to overdose on MFK Fisher. Uh my suggestion is read a little bit at a time and come back when you're ready. Don't don't binge read or you'll um you'll lose your taste. Yeah, yeah. All right, nice.
Like muscles. Uh Yule Gibbons, Yule Gibbons, uh now John, you'll disagree with me. By the way, the sculptor she was married to is Belgian, John, you might be happy to know. Uh and uh and I know a Belgian never loses his taste or her taste for muscles, but Yule Gibbons, uh, one of my favorite foraging writers ever, uh, says, muscles are great, but if you're living on a coastline and all you got is muscles, you will tire of them very, very quickly. So MFK Fisher is the great, the the muscle like great writer, I guess, is what you're saying, Matt.
Yeah, yeah. You can dip in and out, read a chapter. She's she's meant to be read by chapters. Do it that way. I think the thorns are also like that.
Matt and um the uh the other one. And John. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, John is he's a newsletter writer. Um he writes in those kinds of those kinds of doses.
Um and yeah, I I think there are there are a lot of people who who are really best read that way. And you you know, you pick one, pick a book up and you you read a chapter and and enjoy it, and you come back to it in a couple of weeks or or a month or whatever, and and it feels fresh and appealing again. But if you, you know, it's like I like whipped cream. If I you fed me five bowls of whipped cream, I probably wouldn't like it anymore. No, I'm not with you there.
I could eat a non finite amount of whipped cream. I mean, whipped cream is my favorite foam. I like I love it a lot. So the the thorns, what's that? What's that uh the best known compilation they have?
What's it called? Like pig and a poke or something like that? What's it? Uh well, simple simple cooking. That was the name of uh John's newsletter that he wrote for many years, uh starting, I believe, when he lived in the in the East Village.
Um and there were four other books. They're erratically available at this point. But Simple Cooking is the is the one that sort of represents what made him what brought him to people's attention. What's the one with a pig on the cover? Soft cover kind of serious pig.
Serious. Was that okay? That's like the third book, I believe. Is that the one with main beanhole cooking in it where he describes how to do beanhole cooking? I would have to look on that.
Yeah, been a long time. Been many years, been many, been many years. All right. So then you have one last one that you wanted to do uh with Madeline Kammon, right? I wanted to also ask you about her.
Why don't you talk about that one? So uh this is a book called When French Women Cook. Uh it's a book that first appeared in 1976. And it's a memoir with recipes that also is sort of a sneaky French regional cookbook. Uh she's she was born in Paris uh before the uh Second World War.
Uh because of the war, her family moved around a lot during and after the war. Uh, and she continued to move around um until she left Paris or left France in the I think about 1960. Um each chapter is about a different woman in a different part of France. Um, and she's giving you, I think, an amazing sense about uh the character of of French cooking in in many forms. Some of these are, you know, are essentially domestic servants who were employed by her family.
One of them is a great aunt who actually had a Michelin-starred restaurant. Um, and she's she's really paying tribute to these women and providing a sense about what French food was. Uh 40s, 50s, 60s, well, 40s and 50s really, I guess, because she left in 1960. Um, and she really does give you a sense about how um how varied the cuisine it is. It's it's one of the losses in current American uh food publishing.
That uh if you want a French regional book, you you have like a ton of choices for Provence, a lot of choices for the Southwest, and pretty much the rest of the country is forgotten. Um I don't know if it has to do with you know where people go on vacation or or whatever it is. But you know, if you want a book on the food of Normandy or the food of Alsace, you're you're gonna have to go out and uh and find something that was written a long time ago. But this book is is is currently available. Um I think it's quite lovely.
Uh Madeline was um, she's still living, but she's not doing anything food related at this point, uh, but highly revered uh as a cooking teacher. She uh she ran several successful restaurants. Uh she has been vilified in certain recent publications for um uh not fully appreciating, shall I say, uh Julia Child, um, and there was definitely uh some conflict there. But you know, over the years I met her numerous times. She was insatiably powerfully curious.
She was restless and never satisfied with anything. Um, and I think that always shows up in her books. I think we talked about her a little bit the last time you were on but what what why did she why did she redo her masterwork towards the end of her active career and like so horribly mangle it. Well I don't know that I would say that she horribly mangled it. I think she got in uh she fell down the rabbit hole uh when she started to do some revisions and updating based on things that she had learned.
What makes you feel that she horribly mangled it she she she bought into what was at the time so what was this 15 16 years ago when it came out I can't remember. Maybe even longer than that. I would say mid nineties so yeah so she bought into like mid-90s like health garbage and so then like redid like debuttered and like redid everything with what was oh coron at the time health knowledge and I would rather just have her actual knowledge you know what I mean like or like her actual like the spirit of what she was doing I don't know I was just I was disappointed by what appeared to me to be like a pasting on of the new onto what was otherwise a masterwork. That's all I I take your point there. That yeah I sort of tend to to um just sort of let my eyes slip past some of that material.
I think it was typical of the time uh how much of that was was her and how much was her publisher. I I can't be sure. I mean, you know, uh it publishing is this incredibly trend-driven business, and you know, you can see it in um in food photography is as well as in subject matter. Um, and you know, it it probably seemed at that very moment that the book was being written, like absolutely essential to the way people understood food. Um it turned out to be wrong.
Like another another one, I think that it's not in the same way, but I mean, feel free to not want to comment on this, but uh you know, to me, one of the all-time classics is uh Peterson's sauce, sauces or whatever it's called. And I say go with the first edition. Go with the first edition, straight up. You know what I mean? Like, like full cream reduction, like that view into what was going on in the 90s when that was written, is like not to be matched.
And like the new one he added, I'm not gonna say he mangled his old work, but I mean, I just feel that the first edition the second edition doesn't top the first. Do you have any thoughts on that? Well, I mean, I think they're uh he's actually on edition four at this point, I believe. But are they there was the one where they added all the modern techniques and stuff and like drastically expanded and took out a lot of the 90s style like double cream reduction sauces. Yeah.
Well, I mean, partly that's gonna be driven by what uh culinary schools may have been demanding, maybe not sort of the higher end schools, but some of the like the uh uh junior colleges and so forth scattered around the country, which can actually turn out to be a big market for books like that. Uh I don't know, I'd have to talk to to Jim about that in particular. Uh it's still a good book, don't get me wrong, but it's just like that the first one that I had the black cover, that one is like was a revel. When I read it, I was like, oh my God, I love this book. You know what I mean?
Well, I think that goes back also to um to what you were saying about being aware of when a book comes along. Uh and you know, it may definitely represent sauces that are not commonly used anymore, but as a as a piece of reference, as an access to technique into a world in which people did things a certain way, it's unparalleled. Um and and having the knowledge of that allows you to go off and do other things that may not have been happening when the book was first published, but you've got the tools to uh to build new things. So that's why I would say don't you know don't dismiss a book just because it's old. All right.
So listen, we we're out of time, right, Stas? Oh yeah. Yeah. So uh how about this? We'll answer any questions that we didn't do this week, we'll do we'll do next week.
If any of you have any pressing questions, then you know, maybe I'll try to answer them over Twitter to send them in or whatnot. Uh otherwise, when is the when is the GoFundMe over? You want to give Kitchen Arts and Letters, by the way, is the store we're talking about. We've had Matt Sartwell on doing uh his classics in the field, giving you know some of his rich knowledge. And you could do this all day, and literally if we could still have call-ins, you guys could call in and pepper him with questions left, right, and you know, pretty much he'd knock him out of the park every time.
So please go to the GoFundMe. Um and you know, add more, even if they've made their goal. Like help them, help them not. So earlier in the show, Matt said that they had dug out of the deepest pit and now they're just in some sort of basement. So they just need to be able to do chin-ups out of the basement.
But let's get them like up on the ground floor, and then maybe even like a little bit of a porch or a deck to stand on. All right. So why I'd love a deck. Yeah, yeah, deck. We're not asking for we're not asking for skyscrapers, people.
A deck. A deck. So uh yeah. A deck and a little sunshine. There you go.
Uh so um, you know, also like, you know, let's have you back on maybe after the GoFundMe is over, or you know, some more classics, and then, you know, if we ever get back to normal again, such that people can call in and ask you questions. Cause really, like, that's the that's how people are going to experience what it's like. Well, I remember I tossed you the random Haka question earlier. Like, that's what it's like dealing with them. So let's preserve Kitchen Arts and Letters for a long, long time.
Um, thanks for coming on, Matt. Uh as usual. Well, thank you for having me back. I really appreciate it. All right.
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