Whether you're a homeowner creating your dream space or a pro managing multiple projects, discover a new way to shop at Ferguson Home, where great ideas become stunning spaces. Visit FergusonHome.com to explore the best selection of bath, kitchen, and lighting products. Or book an appointment at one of our showrooms where you can experience products firsthand and get personalized expert support every step of the way. Bring your vision to Ferguson Home, where it all comes together. Shop top brands like La Cornew or find your local showroom at Fergusonhome.com.
This episode is brought to you by Organic Growers School, offering a holistic crop management series for farmers starting on March 23rd. Learn more at organic growerschool.org. How are you doing, John? Doing well, thank you. Yeah.
Yep. Uh we have a uh uh Matt, where where are you now? Right on. It'll always be real. Right.
What the hell were you doing in Robert's then? Just like I had like a whole slate of errands to do that one day, but yeah. Yeah. Then when you went to Robert's, did you have to blow all kinds of cobwebs off of the uh Yeah, basically. I had to kick out the squatter and dust away the cobwebs and yeah.
Was the squatter a human or some sort of like evolved roach that lives off of all of the weird like industrial stuff that's just underground in in Brooklyn? No, yeah, it was a family family of uh Danish COVID minks. It was really gnarly in there. Oh, sweet, sweet. And uh for her, I think final California cooking issues appearance of this pandemic, we have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez uh in her undisclosed Heidi Hole list location, but joined with a Jackie Molecules and Aaron Polcat Polski.
Uh they're trying to they thought they were gonna have a nice pleasant California outdoor uh you know socially distanced cooking issues and rub it in our East Coast faces what with all our snow and our inability to go outside, and uh instead uh they're hanging out with a dude who's ripping a chainsaw, uh ripping a stump out of the ground with a chainsaw, am I correct? I mean, not currently, but that's been going on for the past few minutes, sort of, yeah. What's up, Dave? Yeah, doing alright. How are you doing, Senor Molecules?
Pretty good. It's his birthday. Oh, happy birthday. Actually, it wasn't your birthday. My phone told me that it was your birthday yesterday, and I forgot to text you and say happy birthday.
Was it yesterday or today? It was actually Sunday, but we can stretch it all the way to Tuesday. I feel fine with that. Wait, so your birthday was Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. I love Sunday.
I love the Sunday scream. I wish that like I'd I did you ever go to those monster truck rallies when you were a kid? I did. I grew up in Long Island, so yeah, monster truck, demolition derbies. So I didn't go to a monster truck rally until I was already like a late, a late teenager, like, you know, like uh 19 or something like this.
And I accidentally went to the pole, not to the not to the one where they drive trucks over other things, and I was like, the hell is this? I wanted to see like a truck drive over a bunch of cars. That's why you show up. The poll is not as interesting. No, not at all.
I mean, no offense to tractor pull. Although, you ever been to an actual like tractor pull, like where like farm tractors are pulling things? No. That's fun. That's fun.
Because people get like old tractors and they hook them up to these giant weights, and then what happens is they they hit the they hit the the you know the throttle and like the the front of the whole front of the tractor basically just lifts itself off of the ground. Like the whole thing just torques itself up and like these tractors are pulling these like super dupe wheelies. It's pretty sweet. Sounds sick. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I like uh you know farm tractors are cool. Who doesn't like a farm tractor? You have to have something broken inside of you if you don't like a farm tractor, like an old school farm tractor? Like gears? Like what mean a gears broken inside of you there?
Is that what you're saying? No, but like you know, there's something so there's something kind of cool about it. You know what I'm saying? You don't think so? Am I the only one who thinks that like old school, like all painted nice, like like 40s, 50s farm tractors, like 30s, 40s, 50s farm tractors?
There's not something kind of nifty about them, those messed up giant wheels? You know, I had a uh a neighbor who well, I had this old couple who who were our neighbors uh growing up, and they had like the a farm basically across the street from us, and they were like the whole side of the street. Uh their son was like 40 and living with them. Uh and he was really into restoring like tractors and old washing machines. Washing machines?
Who the hell wants one of those? No, like like really old ones, you know, like like the the whirlpools from like the 30s that are like hand cranked and and really pretty and stuff, and he would like repaint them and stuff. Anyway, he got busted by the feds for like uh blowing up mailboxes across state lines. Wait, wait, wait. Just so you know, people, don't go across state lines to blow up a mailbox.
Let me ask you this. How close were you to the state line? In other words, was he just blowing up a neighbor's house, but it happened to be on a state line? Like were you like he was going to antique washing machine conventions in like Massachusetts. I grew up in Jersey and was blowing up mailboxes at these conventions, which is how they tracked him.
They noticed the pattern. So why did he hate? So he went to, let's say, Brimfield, right? Which is like in Massachusetts where all the antique people used to go, like back in the day, back before eBay, right? And he would find a dealer there that he hated so much that he just had to blow up their mailbox.
I think it was unrelated to the washing machines, other than proximity to the convention. Oh, okay, okay. So like the guy needed to go for the his business of washing machines. It was like if you went to Tails and then went to a random house while you were at Tails and blew up their mailbox. Because he just can't go like X number of days without blowing up a mailbox.
I mean, let's not king shame. Have you uh have you ever had your mailbox blown up, Aaron? No, so he didn't uh what's it called? Poop where he eats or whatever, however you're supposed to say that, he didn't blow up your mailbox. He actually did uh I think he spray painted some swastikas on the playgrounds in our town.
Oh, so in general, an all-around good guy. So this maybe explains why you don't have warm and fuzzy feelings about old tractors. The mailbox blowing up swastika painting, 40 year old. I mean, I feel like I can actually separate the art from the artists here at the washing machines are pretty nice. All right.
I did have my mailbox blown up when I was a kid. Like uh old school, like suburban pipe bomb style. Back when, you know, back, you know, pre 9 11 when someone set off a pipe bomb and you're just like, lousy kids! You know what I mean? Does no one remember that era?
I remember pipe pipe bombs from Duke Newcomb. Remember that, James? No, no, that no, that's that's that's that's the thing. Like we we we miss each other's eras of these kinds of references. But all I can tell you is do you guys know where the high line is in uh New York City?
Yeah. Yeah. So the High Line is an old railroad, industrial railroad, uh, elevated railroad that that goes down the west side of Manhattan, which we'll get to later. And uh back, you know, before they turned it into a fancy park, before Ed Norton and all those people, you know, uh, you know, got it turned into a uh a super fancy, you know, Soigney place. It was uh a place where if you needed to be completely hidden from outsiders to, I don't know, whatever, like live, pitch a tent, do heroin, like you hung out on the Highline.
It was not like a savory place, and it was the only place in Manhattan where when I was still doing art, I could go blow things up. And so I would go up on the high line, you'd get into it by the Javit Center. There's a there's a railroad, uh, well, it's all changed now, but there was a big railroad depot there, and there wasn't the big Hudson Yards stuff that there is now. And you would just walk, you would walk past the guards who were also high or asleep or drunk, and you just like take whatever you needed, walk up on the old railroad tracks, which was all grass and like, you know, with all sorts of cool, there's a whole history by the way, of plants that grow on railroad tracks because uh they're carried by the trains and seeds fall off, so like cool hemps and all sorts of stuff. Anyways, uh there's a Smithsonian article circa nineteen seventy nine or eighty on the subject, you can go look it up.
Anyway, uh so I would go up there and we would blow stuff up you know for art and nobody cared like literally nobody cared. Clearly the heroin addicts who were passed out like that I had to pass on the way they didn't care. Cops certainly didn't care what got blown up on the high line. So it was a different it was a different era all pre uh pre-9-11. You know what I mean?
Is this is this where that photo of you that's in Samba or that was in the book or is that where that came from? No uh that was before that was before that. That was that picture was taken in I think like ninety six or ninety seven and that was uh all you know around the same era that was on the roof of my studio building where again there were there were no rules. The only time I ever got in trouble so my old studio building was it's Columbia University owned it owns it still it started out life as a seal test dairy and there is a an underground stream so like Manhattanville which is right by 125th Street like is actually a valley so like you know when you're taking the subway through there it looks like the subway's going up high and it it's actually going straight or slightly downhill and the ground is dropping away from it. And so there's water pretty close to the to the surface down there.
And so they built this dairy there because there was an underground stream that they could use to cool things. And uh when Columbia took it over it became where they did a lot of their nuclear reactor research not for the radioactive stuff but for like steam piping and testing so they had a lot of cool stuff there. And the art department took over the top, you know, uh floor, uh top two floors when I when I was there as an art student, and they didn't give a rat's ass what we did up there as long as it didn't as long as it didn't spread. So occasionally, like one time, we threw a pig roast, so we cut, we cut a bunch of 55 gallon drums in half, two of them, burnt them out, welded like legs on them, stole a bunch of motors from the engineering department from the nuclear engineering department, and like built rotisserie spits, and like uh, you know, I stole a bunch of uh expanded metal, burnt all the galvanizing off of that, and we we were roasting these pigs with these like you know, expensive bowdine gear motors uh as improvised spits, and we were roasting them all day. A friend of mine who now actually works for Thanksgiving Farm where Cesare is, uh Mark McNamara, he's like uh, you know, he was one of those people who believes in putting the meat way, way far away from the from the flame, and he was like saying, and you know, all this stuff, I was like, listen, Mark, put the freaking pig in in jersey.
We just need this thing to freaking cook. It needs to cook anyway. So like we cooked this these pigs, and then I'd had maybe one too many, and I I got sick of going all the way downstairs to let people into this rooftop party, and so I just I just threw my ID on a string over the edge to let people like like like go in, but then someone threw it over the edge and didn't pull it back up. So that's the only time I got in trouble for stuff that I did on top of the roof uh at the studio building was when I left my ID hanging right by the door on a string. And so on that same roof is where I lit myself on fire uh for the St.
George and the Dragon piece. We just we did a bunch of stuff up there. Anyway, so you didn't cross state lines. Did not cross state lines, and uh I didn't damage any mailboxes or any anything. I I don't I don't like damaging other people's stuff.
It's not it's not I don't I don't you know I don't think it's pleasurable to damage somebody else's stuff because then they just have to go fix it. Why is that fun? Why is it fun to do something that causes someone else to have to do unnecessary work? You know? Fair blow your own stuff up.
Blow your own stuff up. Uh all right. So Strange Birdie wrote in last week and asked us whether this trick about uh throwing uh bananas into uh what how'd they do it, John? What was their thing? They was it.
Throwing bananas into a 300 degree oven. Right. Yeah, so i what happened what you said happened is pretty much what I thought would happen. Why don't you say what happened? I mean it just it just they got soft and looked cooked because you know they got all brown and dark on the outside, but they were still, you know, they were a little mushy texture wise, but they were still super starchy, and none of the starch had been converted to sugars.
So that's a loss. Yes. That's a loss. Alright. Uh and uh we have an update for the oyster crab person, which we'll get to uh later.
But uh then here's another one. Someone sent us in, and Nastasia, have you tested this this TikTok video yet? Or are you not gonna do it? It's either way, it's fine, it's okay. Yeah, I can test it.
All right. So you've seen the TikTok video? No. Alright, so I'll explain the TikTok video. Someone said, Dave and Co.
This video has been floating around TikTok. Uh and so what it is is it's a picture, I think of a British person, so already, you know, and they have a clove of birdie wheels. What do you mean? He hates British. I don't hate British people.
I love British people. So like, so you take the you take the garlic clove without its skin, and you rub your fingers on the outside of the garlic clove. Then you reach your hand in and you can pick the egg yolk up out of the out of the egg. So you crack the egg into a bowl, you can reach in, pick up the egg yolk, and the egg yolk's not gonna pop. That's the theory from the from the TikTok video.
Now John has I'm rubbing my hand on the garlic clove. Have you already cracked the egg yolk? No. Sizes. I would crack the egg into a bowl first.
Okay. If you want to follow exactly what the TikTok fellow does. Right. Now you're gonna now you're gonna want to rub your hand on the on the naked garlic clove. Okay, crack the someone crack the egg.
All right. Okay, pull some. I'll have you know John was able to do this by himself in very short order. So well, you know, we're we're a team. Okay, I'm rubbing my hands all over this garlic.
Three heads not better than one in this is confirm. All right. All right. Oh, I like this. I like this.
I like Aaron confirming that he's following the instructions. I appreciate this. I know Jack's following the instructions. I'm confirming that he is. All right.
Correct. I think my hand is properly garlic. All right, now you're supposed to use your uh your your your index and your uh and your pointer and then your thumb. Reach in and just pick that egg yolk up. And then put it in the cup.
No, he cheated. Nope, it's not working. No, it it works. No, you're supposed to be. Exactly, like a mama cat.
Thank you, man. You just killed your kid. Your kittens insides are coming up. All right on the photo? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Send that to the send that to the internet, Nastasia. And John had the same thing, and I had the same thing. Now, so first of all, guys, let's say this worked. Right. I'm sorry, did this not work for either of you either?
That's correct. Okay, good. I felt really dumb for a second. So let's let's say, so the people, people who don't know what we're talking about, in this TikTok video, like it's supposed to be some sort of mirror, it's two and two and a half million likes or something like this. This is two and a half million people who don't have eggs to test out on their own, right?
Uh now, I feel a little bit bad that I wasted three eggs, but listen, as a way to separate uh egg yolks, it's very easy to separate egg yolks by hand if you crack them and then just scoop underneath and then let that let the egg uh you know sift out, right? Now, the um the problem with this also is is that if you rub your hands with garlic, my fingers still smell like garlic. And if you rub your hand with garlic and then try to separate an egg, you better you best hope that whatever recipe you're separating eggs for tastes good with garlic in it, right? Because the garlic is definitely going to transfer to the egg, like there's very few flavors that transfer quite as readily to things like eggs or apples uh than garlic and onion uh does. Okay.
So there's first of all, there's that. Second of all, just does not work. So I think and that and John said that the in the internet says you can wipe your hand on bread and also have that work. All right. Brown bread.
Oh, brown bread. So I say brown bread. That makes sense. Um, do you know that you can also uh I've heard it works if you wipe your hand on uh unicorn horn, like if you just wipe your finger on unicorn horn repeatedly, you can you can separate eggs that way without even cracking the shell if you get the really good unicorn. So they the this does not work.
Now, it's possible that you're modifying that the garlic. Garlic does make your hands sticky, so it's modifying whatever's there, and also like brown bread or any sort of bread might wipe off some sort of oils and make it easier for you to pick it up, maybe. But yolks have a skin on them, and once you pop it a skin, sucker's gonna pop. Now, the the way that the guy is handling it in the TikTok video, he is seriously manhandling that yolk. And what it looks like to me is that he has par frozen his egg yolks.
So if you really want to manipulate an egg yolk like this, all you have to do is lightly freeze your egg and let it thaw, and the egg yolk will be consider the skin around the egg yolk will be considerably thicker, and you can shoot your own TikTok videos of you wiping your butt with your hand and then picking up the egg yolk and having it look exactly like that gentleman's egg looked. You can do anything you want. You can wipe your hand on a lollipop, you can stick your finger up your nose, you can do whatever you want, and you're gonna be able to pick up the egg yolk. All you gotta do is do a if you if you freeze the egg too hard, the egg yolk will look solid and it won't look as though you have uh like a normal unmessed with egg. But if you just freeze it a little bit, you should be able to uh you know make mystery two and a half million like TikTok videos, uh, you know, wiping your hands on whatever you want.
And it's worth noting though, we don't see him crack the egg. Yeah, but no, but it's something like you can freeze it thaw it, and it will stay, even once it's thawed, the yolk will stay hard like that. Not hard, but like soft, so that you you could pick it up. So it really is a good magic. Like it's it's the equivalent of like uh this is actually not a good magic trick.
Have any of you guys ever done the uh the thread banana, the banana thread? No. No. You've never done the banana thread? No, John?
No. Is this a magic trick show now? It is okay. So this is a good food grade food food-based magic trick. The problem is is that it only works on people who are not very observant so you get uh thread uh needle and thread and you take a banana and a banana if you look at a banana it's not round it's faceted okay so you go in on the edge uh of the banana you you put the thread through it all the way through it so that it's basically going in between one of the facets of the peel and the banana itself take it all the way out of the banana then feed that needle back into the same hole it just came out with but go along the next facet and then come out the same hole that you came from and then pull the thread and it will cut the banana at that point inside of the peel and then you make like five slices going up the banana you hand it to some unobservant person they peel it and it opens up into a sliced banana this is a very old well-known trick the problem is the reason they have to be somewhat non-observant unless you use a a naturally dark skinned banana which you can get now when I was a kid you kidding is that on a Cavendish banana it leaves very uh telltale brown marks unless you like serve it right away there's oxidation on the needle hole areas now I've never tried it as an adult I don't know if I can wipe ascorbic acid or sodium metabisulfite into the holes to stop them from browning out but it makes very obvious little marks where the needle went in if you have a relatively unblemished uh banana but I can't believe none of you guys have ever seen the the sliced and peel banana trick.
Dave all I'm getting from this is that you should have a TikTok account and you might really slay on that platform. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. There you sound thrilled. We can't keep up with Instagram.
Yeah. Although people enjoyed the the the the bread alma smash burger I put on the Instagram. Yeah. Oh yeah. I watched that several times.
I showed that to people I knew. I was excited about that. Yeah. I've had some people very gratifying people. Some people have made it.
Some people have made it and they enjoyed it. That's true. The song was incredible because I I first watched it with no volume. So I was already impressed, not knowing that there was a song. And then I went to show it to Kate and turn the volume up, and I was like, what the hell?
Red omelet. Yeah, you gotta like, you know. Yeah. So the way that you do that, like the the way that you can in like 30 seconds, like make like a bonehead simple uh song using only Adobe Premiere because I didn't have any editing software, is you just watch the video and you sing along the lower part, and then you like round robin that one so that it sounds like there's eight of you singing it once, but you only have to sing it once, you know what I'm saying? So like you put in and then you shift it by a measure and then shift it by a measure and shift shift it by a measure, so it sounds like there's four of you, you know what I mean?
And then uh you just sing bread omelet once and then just uh take it down two semitones each time you want to do it, and then you know, at the you know, whenever at the very appropriate time, you think cheese, and that's it. You're good, you're done. You know, it's man, and now so we've had like magician issues today, we've had an episode of Song Exploder. We're going all over the place. Yeah, yeah, dude.
So uh, I mean, I know that you uh engineers and musicians would not appreciate this kind of boneheaded technique of like just slam damning a song together, but you know, for those of us that's a tongue, man. Yeah, those of us that don't have the skills or the or the time, it's the way to go. Uh the only problem with it is is like uh when you're editing real songs, like how much like time shifting. It's hard because I can only shift by a frame forward or back. Like, like how like what are they in songs?
Like, like, can you just infinitely shift when you're using real editing software? Well, yeah, you have to. Yeah. Nudge it a millisecond if you need to. Yeah, yeah.
A frame is not a good unit of uh of sound nudge. A good sound unit. Yeah, no, frame is not not a not a natural sound unit. So anyway, so the bread omelet is this. So the bread omelet was something that John brought to my attention, a viral video of a year and change ago, where which is based on Indian street food, where you what you do is you have to get an enclosed pan.
I tried it uh originally on my crepe maker, and the egg just flew off the edge of the crepe maker all over my uh all over my counter, which sucked. Because I thought like the egg would be like almost like it would set up fast enough that I could almost even just use my replet to make a round thing, but it just blew off my my anyway, it sucked. So anyway, so the bread omelet itself is you get a pan, it has to be non stick-ish, so cast iron, blue steel, you know, whatever, and you you put the the egg in, and then after the eggs start, you know, you right after you put it in, you put bread, flip, another piece of bread, flip so that it's like an open face sandwich, right? Then you gotta let it set. Here that's the trick.
You gotta let it set up. If you flip it when it's too wet, not only will it break, but then the flaps, which you're supposed to fold over. So then after you flip it, you don't fold, fold, and then you fold the bread together into a bread on into a uh a bread omelet uh sandwich, right? If you let it, if it's not set enough before you flip it, the flaps will glue the will glue themselves down, and you won't be able to flip them well because they'll stick to the edges of the bread. Just a little tip.
So that what I did was I made a smash burger, and then flip when you flip the smash burger, you flip the smash burger so it's close to you, pour the omelet over the top of the burger, and then proceed as before. So it's like it's like a burgoloid in the way that a patty melts a burgaloid, but a smash a bread omelet smash burger burgoloid with a slice of American cheese in, of course. I've done it with bacon, it's good with bacon. Somebody I think did it with onions. Somebody threw green onions into the omelet mix and it seemed to work.
Anyways. Jeffrey Given in the chat would like you to know for your future recordings that you can do that in Premiere. You just have to turn on show audio time units, and then you can scrub much more finely. Oh wow. That's a good tip.
Thank you. But I feel like we must be the only two people left on planet Earth who use Adobe Premiere to actually do any sort of video work, right? We'll see if we can see that. I don't know how many people are I don't know how many people are composing songs there. Yeah, that's true.
Uh although I've always used it, so like uh have you ever seen that video? Uh the sound is really bad in it because I need to get a better I have a beta uh a beta cam SP version of it, but the the one that I have is off of VHS. Uh but I did a video called What I'm Thinking About, which is me as an elf jumping into a wood chipper over and over and over and over and over again. Oh yeah. And uh the music in that was also uh I had someone who made the the musical parts and then it was all glued together in Premiere, and the sound of the wood chipper was uh a four and a half inch angle grinder that was slowed down considerably to make it sound more wood chippery, more more chippery.
Um, yeah. I wish I could learn a different way to edit sound than just premiere. It just takes time. You know what I mean? Like it just takes time.
Anyway. Uh, all right. So, see, so we took care of the bananas problems. Oh, I know, Aaron. Aaron, since this is the last show coming from California, I thought I would have you on the radio program to talk to you about your cocktail company called LiveWire.
I am so glad you asked. You have a pretty impressive lineup of bartenders making canned and bottled cocktails under your label. For listeners that don't know about it, can you tell us about the mission of your brand? I would love to. Um Yeah, basically, you know, in our industry, there's a very real uh wage spieling for a bartender who's kind of like at the top of at the top of their game, right?
Um where you you go and you manage a bar and you get paid some hourly and you work for tips, and there's really like no way to scale what you do in the same way that uh a musician or an actor or a writer um can scale what they do by like putting something out as a package good to the public. So basically, Liveire is a canned cocktail company, and we pay royalties out to our bartenders who make drinks, um make drinks with us so they can scale what they do and earn uh a living income off of it. So for those of you that don't that aren't in the industry, right? So there's another layer to this that Aaron's not telling you, uh not in a bad way, but it's that especially with the pandemic, but even without the pandemic, there's there's been a number of routes that bartenders so there's like the people who get into bartending, they usually get in pretty young, and then like a a chunk of them leave to go do something else. But those of us that want to stay in the industry for a long time and you know make a reasonable wage and grow in the in the business, they have a number of outlets, right?
So you could one of the old ones is you could become a bar owner, right? That was something that people could do. Not that that necessarily is gonna make you great income if you actually care about the products that you're making. In fact, the amount of money that you make is usually inversely proportional to how much you care about the products you're making, right? Uh another way to do it is to go work for a brand.
So a lot of people go work for a brand and then go go do consulting. Uh more recently, the past five years, there's been a number, ten years, there's been a number of big successes of bartenders making brands, right? And so that was seen for a long time as the way way to go. And I think recently, the past five five years or so, everyone knows that ready to drink cocktails is the next big wave, and it's already hit unbelievably like early people who brought into it were like this skinny, the skinny, you know, whatever, like Bethany Frankles, yeah, her stuff. Um but uh but we met her.
Remember Styles? What she said when we met her? No, Dave. I did not meet her. You met her, and you are the only one that knows that story.
Keep it straight. But where were you? I don't know. I don't think I was working with you yet. Um what'd you say?
He can't say it because it's so crazy. It's so crazy. It is crazy. So can can you uh Matt, you can bleep this, right? What am I gonna I'm gonna bleep the entire story that you're about to do?
No, you're just gonna bleep the part. So oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go. I love bleeping. So we were doing the Skull Project, which is uh, you know, where we get various famous people to do a uh a skull, which is you know, you look at someone in the eye, you toast them with a drink, and then you uh, you know, you look at them again.
It's all about the look. It's like a Swedish thing. And so when, you know, uh I was interested in a long time when Nils Norrin came on to the French Culinary Institute as part of the cooking issues blog, we were doing this skull project. Uh, and we got a bunch of cool people like Nastasi and I went to do uh um Merle Haggard. We just got a bunch of cool people.
So there was a big party for the Food Inc. uh food inc uh movie, I think it was, and Michael Pollan was eating in the restaurant downstairs, and Kirsten Dunced, but she wouldn't do a skull because she had just gotten out of some sort of thing that didn't allow her to do like liquor. She had had whatever, I don't remember why. Uh we got Regis Filbin, I'm pretty sure, and then Bethany Frankel was there. She wasn't quite as famous yet.
She was still doing her on that show, whatever the housewife show that she started out on was. And so she came out to do a skull, and I was super excited because I've always, you know, I grew up when I graduated college, like my my day started like doing Bondo work on my Pontiac listening to Regis and Kathy Lee, right? So like that was my I was on the ABC listening to Regis and Kathy Lee, like sanding down the Bondo work on the outside of my 76 Pontiac. So uh anyways, so I was super excited to get Regis, and then I think I mentioned how excited I was to get Regis to Bethany Frankel, and she just goes, Regis Philbin, Regis Philbin. I just saw him in my driveway like that.
And then walks out. Yeah. So I don't believe that. I do not believe that either. I don't I don't believe that Regis did that.
You don't believe she said that oh I believe she said that she said that she and there was a like a bunch of F bombs in that but since I wanted people to get the gist of the main story I removed the F F bombs and just left the one that couldn't be I just left the the the family friendly one that couldn't be removed. It sounds like a bit yeah she was kidding I mean I don't I guess yeah I'm assuming she was it was just a weird thing to say to a person you've never met before you know what I mean anyway yeah just a weird I know people who would say something like that just very weird. So anyway so uh going back to what I was saying before like uh re everyone uh uh regarding Aaron and what he's not saying is that a lot of people are um realize that ready to drink cocktails which is how we got on Bethany Frankl a lot of ready ready to drink cocktails is like uh a huge future market especially in times when nobody knows what the long-term future of the high-end cocktail bar is right the problem is that it's extremely hard to uh make any sort of anything right especially something that needs to be distributed there's a lot of laws there is equipment that has to be uh gotten there's uh you have to find copackers you have to find uh people that can make uh products in you know that are consistent that are uh that have a decent shelf life that aren't gonna go bad so it's a lot more of a rigmarole than people think it is. It's like even more of a you know how like everyone's like, you bake good cakes, you should open a bakery like that. And you're like, whoa, there's a lot more to baking good cakes uh, you know, than being able to to open a bakery.
It's like even more so trying to make a line of like Nastasi and I looked into making a line of sodas once and we're like, nope, nope, nope. Remember that, Nastasia? Yeah, that was terrible. Yeah, just too much work for very little return, especially at the beginning. Now returns are better on ready to ready to drink cocktails.
So what Aaron is trying to do here, and correct me if I'm wrong, is make it so that yeah, you're not going to get all of the benefits that you know that you would get as a bartender if you started a billion dollar brand on your own for sure. But it's like allowing you to make some money off of this without the huge investment in time, money, and risk that you would have to make to try to start from scratch on a ready to drink cocktail. Is that accurate? That's right. And I think that more so than that, like you could it's very possible to make more money by orders of magnitude by working, you know, with me or or in this capacity just via the virtues of scaling than you would even owning a bar, right?
Um the our margins currently are pretty thin just because we're small, but as we scale and our costs come down and we open more markets, um, you know, there's there's definitely a greater upside than pretty much any bar related career in terms of profit, but for the bartender. But I think also more importantly, this is one of the only fields where as soon as you get good at what you do, which is bartending, right? As soon as somebody like gets a bunch of press and gets awards and whatever. They move on to a step in their career which removes them from the very thing that they're good at, right? They go work for a brand.
They open the bar and are basically just like running the bar and not actually bartending. So, or they, you know, they go and become like an FMB director at a hotel, which again removes you from bartending. So this is meant to allow you to remain in bartending, reach more people, and also make it a stable income. And and uh all right, so where where do they buy where do they buy this stuff? Um, yeah, so you can go to livewiredrinks.com.
Um, we ship all over the country. We're also in stores um in New York, New Jersey, and California, and as of last week, Texas. Um we have a store locator on their website, and you can you can find all of those stores, but just a few uh in New York. You can get it at Smith and Vine, you can get it at Bowery and Vine. Going with that theme, you can get a Vines on Pine.
Uh a lot of Vine stores in New York and in California, where it KL or a barkeeper, liquor fountain, um what else? Cash. There's seven and a half um for the canned, and then in the future we're gonna have bottled stirred cocktails, which are going to be closer to 30 and 40. Get people all crunked up. Yeah, totally.
They're gonna be uh 12 ounce bottles. Uh we're actually pretty close to releasing our first, but uh you get somewhere between four and six servings per drink, and it it's meant to live at home, right? It lives in your liquor cabinet, you pour it over ice and you reach out. I mean, that frankly sounds a little bit dangerous. Like go down to a bodega and be like, woo!
Like that's gonna be like the new Edward 40's hands, is like, you know, live wire, live wire 12 hands. People are gonna be like going like, you know, people are gonna be going freaking for loco on this stuff, dude. Uh I wouldn't mind, but also, you know, it's funny. I have a lot of crotchety liquor store owners telling me that they don't want premix, they don't want to carry us because they don't carry anything like buzz balls because they don't want people getting drunk in their parking lot. So um you and they think alike.
I don't look, I'm just thinking, like, I'm just thinking like like when you when you were, did any of you go through a I lived in a place and had no money, so like I had to have a bunch of people over, so I went and got the cheapest thing in the bodega case that had the maximum amount of alcohol in it. Have any of you gone through this? Yes. I would get the two packs of Evan Williams from Warehouse. They'd sell two bottles in a clear plastic bag, and it was like 18 bucks for two 750s.
Wow. Yeah, dude. Do you know that there's like Buffalo Trace now makes a like a a bourbon that is I think it's called like like 83 poison or something like this. It has some sort of name, but it is 12, like 12 dollars a liter at Astra. What the hell?
Have any of you guys tasted this thing? No. No. Is it straight bourbon? I think so.
But isn't that it's crazy? But I mean, at the time of like being at that point of my life, it was definitely probably mixing with you know coke or something, you know, gent like some disgusting mixing. I mean, I still drank Evan Williams. When I was a kid, when I was a kid, yeah, but this makes Evan Williams look like a like a top shelf. Right.
You know what I mean? But like uh when I was a kid, the cheapest bourbon that you could get at the local, you know, store where I was was uh Old Crow was really cheap when I was a kid. And and Jim Beam was really cheap when I was a kid. They they've upped their prices. Old Crow isn't like a rock bottom brand anymore, right?
Uh I think that I mean, that's a beam brand, if I remember correctly. And they they've sort of re-upped all of their packaging. Even Overholt is a little bit nicer now. I just hate that guy. Anything that has that man's face on it, I will not drink.
Wait, why? I just hate him. For who he was or what he looks like? What do you I don't like looking at him? I have no, I know nothing about old Overholt.
I just don't want to see his face. I don't particularly like the rye, frankly, like almost any other rye I would prefer. Like there's there's never in my life, even the even the hunterproof one, I would never be like, you know what I would rather have instead of Rittenhouse? Overholt. Those words have never come out of my mouth.
I like it. Alright. Yeah, me too. And the the man's face, like maybe if they like blanked his face out or put somebody else's face or something on his bottle. Old Dave.
Did this guy like assault you in a dream? Old Arnold. I don't know. I don't know what it is, but you know, Nastasi and I are believers in holding things that people do in dreams against them. That is true, especially with each other.
Oh my God. You know, like, yeah. But whenever I do something in a in a dream to Nastasia, I like to at least do her the pay her the respect of then reinforcing it in the real life so that her anger is more justified. You know? Like when she couldn't simply watch that football field of uh what were you making, Sas?
Flash. Yeah, you couldn't watch a one football field for like 30 seconds while I was going away to check on something. Yeah. Yeah. We got in a real big fight.
Because if the you know that if the dog, you know if the dog licked one piece of that fudge, even though it's a whole football field, Nastasi wouldn't even try it. What the hell? And then I woke up and I was like, Oh man. And I called him and he was like, Well, well, why did you say it was gonna work? Like, why were we even doing it?
If you can even and I was like, Are you kidding me? You're the one who wanted to do this, and then it was as if it happened. Well, I feel like I feel like I owe her that. Like, no one wants to feel angry at someone and have it be not justified. Yeah, man.
I had a football dream too last night, actually, and it was that Bernie Sanders won the Super Bowl. He like beat Tom Brady. It was really awesome and very realistic somehow. Uh everyone was really shocked. Now, let me ask you this.
Was he wearing the mittens? Probably. Was it was it Irishman style? So it was young Bernie face like CGI'd onto old Bernie body, so he's still moving like an old man, but he's got a young man's face on. No, they're not.
Or was it the reverse? Old man face young body. It was old Bernie, but he was it was just like everyone was shocked because they were like, we thought Tom Brady was old, but man, he's really playing today. And then he won, and it was everyone was stoked. If anyone out there, if anyone out there who can hear my voice is uh has one of those deep fake programs that can make like uh deep fakes.
I don't want you to spend a lot of time doing it, but if any of you can put Bernie Sanders into a football game so that uh Jack can see it in the real life, I'd appreciate it. Bernie versus Brady would be. I feel like I heard this kind of request on the air during a presidential debate in 2016. Yeah, well, yeah, and we all know how that worked. Uh you're gonna get your wish.
Yeah, yeah. Russia, if you're out there, let me see you dance. Uh okay, listen. Uh George uh Hatsakas wrote in and said, Good morning. Uh I'm reading the book and I'm trying to find the proper equipment for a solids infusion.
So what we're talking about is taking something that's porous. Uh, my most well-known one that I did way, way, way back in the day was a cucumber. And then you suck the air out of the cucumber with a vacuum machine, uh, and then you have it inside of a liquid, probably gin with a little bit of Dolan Vermouth and some salt and a little bit of sugar, if you were smart about it. And then when you release the pressure, the air coming in pushes the uh the gin into the cucumber and makes it look real pretty and you know gives it a nice light uh gin taste. It's fun.
Anyway, it's fun. Yeah, it's really fun. Okay. Uh so I'm trying to find proper equipment, and then you wanted uh you sent me a link to an eBay thing that is a vacuum pump. You're in uh Germany, so it's a German link, but it's kind of a standard setup.
So that the what you're sending me a link on is a three uh cubic feet per minute, three CFM single stage oil-based vacuum pump with a uh what amounts to a pot, like I think like a 12-liter pot and a lid with some handles on it. And you want to know if this will work for vacuum fusion. It will, it will work like uh that vacuum pump that you have, three CFM, is not like super strong. Like uh it's a decent price. The I looked at the exact same rig that you're looking at for 130 something euro for 108 euro for 108 dollars here in the US.
For $108 dollars, I think it's a good deal because you can upgrade the vacuum pump later in your life if you want to. And the lid looks like it's nice and the and the pot is nice and big, so it's useful. And if you ever decide to get into casting or anything like that, uh like that, that's what you know most people are using it for. The one thing I'll caution you against again is that if you if you could buy the parts separately for a little bit more money, you could get a two-stage pump, which is going to get to a better vacuum. And you're also going to uh be able to get one with higher CFM, which will do it much quicker.
The gauge that they put on the vacuum gauge that they put on is is useless. Uh because if you if you look at it, um, you know, water, you should you if you're going to be doing vacuum infusion, you're going to be getting down to like you know, levels that will easily boil water at room temperature. So down like 20 millibar. So if at one atmosphere, like regular pressure is about a thousand something, thousand sixty-five millibar. And you're going to want to be getting down to like at least twenty uh to really be doing well.
And so on that gauge, you're not even going to be able to see it. Like, you know, you're going to be able to slam that sucker all the way down to its peg. So the gauge is not going to be that useful for you. But for a hundred, if you could get it for like a hundred bucks, I'd say it's a decent setup. That makes sense.
Is that a good answer? Is it fast enough, Size? This episode is brought to you by Organic Growers School, offering a holistic crop management series for farmers starting on March 23rd. This holistic crop management curriculum and training opportunity is in partnership with certified naturally grown. Growing a viable farm business is sustained by continuous learning of the land and your products.
In this workshop series, growers across Southern Appalachia and beyond will gain tools to manage their crop production for whole farm success. Organic Growers School is offering the holistic crop management training as a six-part webinar series. It will include a mixture of videos, resources, and live virtual meetings between March 23rd and April 27th. Learn more, meet the instructors, and register now at organic growerschool.org. Douglas just wrote in at the chat.
You want to take this one? I grew a ton of lemon ahi peppers in my backyard in Brooklyn this summer. And I'm intending to ferment and make a hot sauce. Any tips on something to m make it keep the end well, what? Okay, to help it hold its bright yellow color.
That's what he's getting at. I mean, I've never done a lot of long-term tests, uh, but that's almost always oxidation. So the problem with adding something like uh ascorbic acid uh vitamin C is that it will get consumed over time. Um, you know, you're gonna want to uh it you obviously if you're doing a lacto uh ferment, you're gonna be excluding oxygen. But I just want to, you know, when it's packaged, if you the more you can exclude oxygen and then uh put an antioxidant in, the longer the yellow color will be uh maintained and not go brown.
Uh but I don't know. I mean, maybe someone else in the chat room has some experience. Somebody did just write in and questi uh said sodium bisulfite. Okay, here's the thing sodium metabisulfite is an antioxidant that's used, for instance, in apples and whatnot. But be aware of this fact.
You have to use it sparingly, and uh some people, I'm not gonna say allergic reaction, some people can taste it at much lower levels than others. So, but until you know whether or not you are a person that really notices uh, for instance, Wiley Dufresne, my brother-in-law, loves sodium metabisulfite and uses it for his ant for antioxidant things instead of ascorbic acid in a lot of things because it does it's not consumed as quickly, lasts longer in these applications, as far as I can tell. But um, just be aware that different people have different sensitivities to it from a flavor standpoint, so just run it by a couple of people, the levels that you're using if you're gonna use it. But it's a it's available. I forget the commercial name of it.
Um, yeah. Uh all right. So, from Keith Fitzgerald. Question for Dave. I'm a culinary arts student in Ireland.
I'm uh I haven't been to Ireland uh in a while. I'd love to go back. Love Ireland. You guys been to Ireland? Yeah.
No, I have. Ireland's awesome. Super pretty. Super pretty. Like it.
Good place. Uh I'm a culinary art student in Ireland. I'm attempting to make a savory creme brulee with local crab meat. The uh the brulee works really well in a ramekin uh cheese brulee on top. What I'm trying to do is make a sphere of the brulee.
Uh, any I I like saying the word sphere because it doesn't really roll off the tongue. You have to sphere. When you say it fast, how do you smash it together? Sphere, sphere. You can't really say it fast, right?
Not really. Saz, is this a word you hate? No, I don't hate it. Okay. Just checking.
I know the word she hates. I don't I don't look, I generally try to give her trigger warnings on things I know she's gonna hate. Long ago, uh, working together, we stopped, I think, although occasionally she'll still do it to me, sending images that are horrifying without warning. Yes. Yes.
Yeah. I don't really think it's cool to do that. Like at one time in my life I was okay with it, but I just don't think it's cool. I don't think people should send hideous photos without warning anymore. It's like blowing up someone's mailbox, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because you don't know what they had to deal with. You could erase someone's mind for a good 35, 45 seconds.
Like, what if they were just starting to like, what if they were just, like, they had just gotten that paragraph together they needed, or they were just honing in on something, and then you send them a picture of someone with their leg blown off, like, you know, in a hospital somewhere, and they're like, you're sending stuff? No. What am I supposed to do with that? You know what I mean? Yeah, it's not good.
This is why the the correct thing you do is I have an image. I think you might like it. Are you ready? And then they say yes, and then you send it. You know what I mean?
Wait, that's the warning. Well, what are you supposed to do? I think you might like it as a little generic or misleading. It depends on the person. It depends.
I'm not saying about a person with their leg blown off. I'm saying, like, for instance, like, for those of the listen to the show, like, there was a time when we were like really talking about the motorcycle guy who froze his foot and then cooked it, right? So you need a warning before you send someone a picture of the foot that the guy had in his uh a freezer that he was making the fajitas from. It's a word of warning. You might be interested in this story, but just as you know, there's like some severed feet in it, right?
Yeah, like you used to send the story around with the guy who cooked his penis. Not with pictures in it. And you used to make me. You used to say, Dave, send the send the send the story with the guy. And there's no pictures in there.
We have time for like two more questions. So, uh, what I'm trying to do is make a sphere of the brulee. Any ideas on how best to do this? Uh, how best to avoid the crab meat sinking all into one mess. So, what Keith is trying to do here is get a ball of creme brulee with crab meat in the center of it, and then set it.
Uh thinking of water bathing in a vacuum-packed mold uh instead of on thin toast or something. Um, thinking chicken skin uh crisps are similar. All right, well, also, is it possible to order the Searsol from somewhere in Europe? Hell, it's not even possible to order one here in the US, Keith. We're still working on it.
Uh every day Nastasia gets a different email saying that uh we haven't forgotten, we just don't care, right? From Amazon? Nah. We haven't forgotten you, we just don't care about you. Anyway.
Um so I think the best way to do this, uh look, you can make uh uh there's a lot of creme brulee brulee like things that instead of setting basing on cooking, they set based on a gel technology. So you can use um not just gelatin, but like gelatin and agar mixes a gel and to make creme brulee like things that A will hold their sphere shape when they'll get when they get torched. They'll be more self-supporting. But B, don't need to be cooked after they gel. So then what I would do is I would pour uh the mold uh halfway, put the you know, put the crab on top, let it sit on top, and then pour the rest of it and let it set.
What do you think, John? Do you think that'd be a way to do it? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Uh and you know, for recipes on things like that, you know, the old chymos uh hydrocolaloids blog, or just look up uh any of those, any of those things, and you should be able to get a good uh a good thing.
But you're gonna want some sort of flame proof uh uh probably gel in there anyway, just because creme brulee is pretty fragile on its own, and so I don't know how well it'll hold a sphere shape unless you have it floating in something. You know what I mean? Mark wrote in via email. I finally coped down my uh track down a copy of the Jeffree Steingarden book. It sits on my commode splade and face side down.
I'm sure Jeffrey would be pleased uh that his book is face down on your toilet. Because that puts it within easy reach of my bath and a chapter takes about as much time as I can enjoy a warm silk. Thanks for the recommendation. Um three, I've gone from uh the maniacal second what could have used a warning. What?
Toilet? Not the imagery of the whole thing. Oh my god. You don't even know what the person looks like. How are you imagining them in a bathtub?
I know what our personal is. I'm imagining the worst possible situation here. This person is from Cam loops in Canada, by the way. Anyway, uh so I've gone through, I've gone from the what? What?
I take it back. I totally take it back. Sonny Cam loops. Anyway, I've gone through a second listen through of the back catalog, uh, and trying to also read uh the cooking issues blog backwards and forwards. I'm coming across a problem, John, that we'll be dealing with almost right away.
When I click on the older posts, I get a 404. Don't know where to go. Um yeah. You know? So what are we gonna do about that, John?
Uh that website probably needs a major overhaul. We can we can work on it. Do you think that they we're gonna do it because we're we're gonna use the the cooking issues website soon for fun stuff. But do you think 404 is like it's because it's half of an 808? Wow.
Never thought of that. PC load letter. Yeah, PC little letter. All right. Jonas, uh, let's see.
Uh Jonas wrote in. This is a tough one, Johnny. So you have a pear problem. You're uh you're making a cocktail uh and you want a um you're making a pear-based cordial. Making pear flavor strong is very difficult because especially once it's been cordialized and infused, it's going to be relatively light.
So especially if you don't want it to taste cooked, it's almost it's extremely difficult. So I'm not going to answer your question uh today. I'm gonna try to think about it a little more. Uh but it's very hard without a centrifuge anyway, especially, and without just doing a lot of reduction to try to concentrate the pear flavor, but then it's a cook flavor. It's very hard to get pear flavor into drinks like that.
What about Aaron? You got any good success making a very highly flavored with pears, not with a flavor system of doing that? Uh I use pear Otovy. Like a quarter ounce. That'll do that'll do what you need.
All right. We have uh Scott Sullivan uh was uh he was talking about uh wrote in about corny kegs and carbonation. I still stand where I stand on carbonation and corny kegs, uh, but he's just saying carbon he carbonates at 50 psi, uh rolls back and forth, lets it sit for uh three to seven days, and then uh so to to settle and fully get all of the other gases out of solution, uh, and then uses a counterpressure filter to do it, and he gets decent carbonation. Three and a half grams of added CO2 per 750, which would have to be the calculation, but like, you know, it's not four volumes, which is what I like, which is like a lot. So it's like I think uh what?
Four volumes. Yeah, dude. Eight f freaking grams in a liter, dude. I don't mess the freak around. That's why this stuff's dude.
What what what on the market is carbonated at four volumes? Nothing. No, I mean alcoholic? Nothing. Or non-alcoholic.
A lot. A lot of high end seltzers are carbonated at four volumes. Alright. Anyway. But you you you put in four, but then you lose a lot off the D cap.
But if you put in three and you're if you put in like let's say two and a so like most most stuff, most commercial stuff's gonna be somewhere like a good carbonation from a commercial thing that can be pasteurized is like not grams, volumes, is like two and a half, right? Right, Aaron? Something like that? I mean, we do three and a half. We use a counter pressure filler.
Right. So you're doing in the cans? Yeah. That's cool. See.
Yeah. So you're doing three. But the problem is also is that volumes of CO2 carbonation carbonation should not be something that's talked about separately from the alcohol content. Do you know what I mean? Because like the the way it feels on your tongue is dependent on the amount of CO2 and the amount of alcohol that's in there.
So it's kind of a more complicated discussion. Anyways. But but you also say that, you know, for bottling, you you've had decent luck with corny kegs and counter pressure fillers, right? So you you didn't you disagree with me on this. Well, for I mean, I kind of by necessity have to do quick and dirty when I was managing the bar.
And for for our carbonation, we would basically um we'd fill a keg with almost zero headroom. I would carbonate it at about like 60 PSI for half an hour, and then I would stick it in the fridge overnight. And then we'd keep it counter pressured at like 12 PSI to push it. 12 psi differential. Just like the pushing the the pushing PSI for out of the keg cooler.
Right, right. All right. I mean, I think if you use a benchmark of like how a really good Moscow mule or Gin and Tonic would taste if you made it aluminum with like perfectly chilled, you know, fever tree or whatever. That I think is the benchmark for what somebody expects as a customer. Yeah, yeah.
Uh Lana loves whiskey wrote in via Instagram. Hey howdy and glad tidings. Uh enjoying your family meat science posts, uh, Stas enjoys the oh, my guess my family, not family show. I don't I guess they don't care about the family show part. Anyway, Nastasia wants us to be a full cursing all the time kind of a situation.
Uh question. I'm milk clarifying a rye cocktail uh on camera for a presentation. I've been trying to explain it in under 59 seconds to enthusiasts. I'm comfortable enough with low-level scientifics, but can't find uh piece of info in print required for social and legal responsibility on does the milk washing or milk filtration reduce uh out ABV? Yes, it does.
So I look, I can't I can't you can't prove exactly what the finished ABV is because also remember there's gonna be some evaporation as you're doing it, but even excluding evaporation, um you you're you're adding milk and then you're removing milk solids with some liquid in it, and you it's impossible for any any of us to know without running actual analytic tests, like how much alcohol is left in those solids. So what I typically do is is I just assume that the overall ABV of everything is pretty much the sum of the original plus the the milk, and then I assume that that the the alcohol loss is equal across. And so I know that's not accurate, so but it's it's is about as close as I can get. And so and I think it's reasonable. Do you think I mean uh Aaron, you deal with these kinds of issues you think that's reasonable from a from a legal responsibility standpoint as long as they're not putting it on a label and selling it um so uh help me understand they're concerned that they cannot accurately define the ABV to their guests yeah or to the person that they're telling this thing to on the on the internet I look at I mean just give a range yeah I would say I that's why I tell I tell him it's like rough but like like the the the it's it's gonna approximately be so if you take a if you if you had like a a bottle and bond that was 50% and you added uh you know for every liter you added 250 liters of milk then I would say it's almost the equivalent of adding 250 milliliters of water to uh to the liquor in terms of that that's the most it will be reduced but I would say it's on that order.
Would you say that's about right Aaron? Yeah I mean I think the the solids and milk are probably in the single digit percentages. So that's sort of the benchmark I would use I would reach out to Amon Rocky via DM on Instagram because he's made so much milk punch in this life that he probably has pretty good empirical evidence on that. There you go. That's a good tip.
That's a good pro tip there pro man hey uh can uh Ken Ingber longtime uh listener so I was talking about mirror oil the uh the uh oil fixing product that I wish they made a a home version of and uh he said that Kenji he thinks Kenji uh has solved this problem with uh gelatin. Again, not exactly the same thing. So, what Kenji did with gelatin was he made uh a gelatin, poured it into uh his used oil, and then it solidified at the bottom, allowed you to pour all the oil off the top, and all the water-based impurities are hidden in the oil, but that's not adding so the the mirror oil does a couple of things. One, it's a flock aid, so it helps to flock, but two, it does like a bentonite-style stripping, which the gelatin will do some of, but it doesn't stay in solution as long. But it does a stripping of all of the polar stuff out of the oil.
Um, and uh additionally, they add uh actual oil-based antioxidants to it. So I'm trying to figure out like a good mix of all of that stuff that can just be stirred in that that's cheap. But it was an interesting post. I'd forgotten about that. So uh interesting.
Um, we're not gonna answer all of these, but so well, so Spencer Roberts wrote in about crabs. The crab, the oyster crabs that we dealt with, not the other kind of crabs, right? But it's long and also included a poem, which we're gonna maybe put into the into the newsletter, right? And so then should we just and then I think Nick Devlin put uh or Devin Patello rather put in a uh uh a poem. Are we just gonna put that in a newsletter, guys?
What are we doing? You guys even hear? What am I doing? What am I doing? What'd you say?
Yeah. Poems in newsletter. Let's and let's save the questions for next week. Uh all right. All right, I'll say this.
Brandon Johnson wrote in via email. We'll end with this one. Um, hey cooking issues. I was wondering if you have any suggestions for me. My kids love homemade waffles with maple syrup, but as soon as the syrup soaks into the waffle, they beg for more syrup.
If there was a way to keep the syrup floating on top longer without penetrating the surface, they would consume less sugary syrup. Any suggestions of a technique or water repellent type food coating that could achieve the desired effect? Brandon Johnson. Like cracking egg on top. That's a water repellent coating that then the maple syrup will flow over the sides of.
I love eggs on waffles. You guys like eggs on waffles? Rub your hands of garlic first. Yeah, yeah. Remember my tip if you're gonna do your own TikTok, don't do the garlic.
Choose something different, like, you know, I don't know, whatever, your hair. No. But uh now, Anastasia, you were there for this one. Do you remember we had to do a goofy trick with waffles for somebody? And this is a huge pain in the ass, Brandon.
So you're only ever gonna want to do this once in your life. But it is possible to do reverse spherification on maple syrup. So you're adding calcium to maple syrup and then dropping it into a light, and I forget how we did it so it wasn't disgusting, but like a light alginate bath and creating maple syrup balls, you then age them a little bit, like in in like syrup so they don't leach out, right? Then you drain them, you put those into the waffle and they will survive the waffle coating and it will be a self-syruping waffle. They were pretty sick, right, Styles?
Remember those? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were a lot better than those weasley little crystal weasels that the that McDonald's tried to do with their with their syrup waffles because these were actual liquid syrup. When you bit into it, they went liquid. I have to say, as much as I hate those little balls, those spheres, it was an on-point technique.
And if I had a machine, if I could just go to the store and buy maple syrup balls to throw into my pancakes when I make pancakes, I would actually use them because they do taste good. I mean, I don't want to spend my I mean, if you want to spend your life doing that, I'll support it. There's gotta be a machine that does that though, right? I once built a machine for uh Wiley to do co-extruded uh like ball in ball things and because that's what he really wanted to do, and then Faron got some like $300,000 machine. This was back in like 04 or 05.
Got some like you know, some sort of industrial one that did it, and while they called me, he's like, nah, crap on it. And then we I stopped worrying about making machines to make little balls. Not me. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Alright. So we're gonna put uh the oyster poem uh on uh the thing. We're gonna put uh I'm gonna answer the the rest of the questions uh later. And for those of you that are in the business, you might not uh go.
Do you guys go to McSweeney's ever? I mean I've been. You all need to read this, uh you all need to go read this a short amagined monologue by Simon Unriks. Okay. It's called This is this is the reading, this is my reading assignment for the week.
It's called I am the designer of this restaurant's outdoor seating space, and this is my artist statement. And I think it's a satire, but I think it's a perfect send-up of a uh incredibly potentious artist statement, which I've had to write, incredibly pretentious like architectural talk, which I've had to read a lot, you know, but you know, because of you know, kind of who I hang out with what I do, and like how crazy it is that we pretend that these things that we have now are actual outdoor dining. It's very short, it's like you know, it's a page long, and uh I enjoy the send-up, so that's my that's my what I would read uh this week. Right. Cool.
Yeah, all right. Well, hey guys, thanks for coming on. And Stash it'll uh even if we're uh distance, it'll be good to have you back on our coast. Well, we never saw each other at all during the summer, so yeah, it'll be good for us. True, we would drive by, you would yell at me and spit at the car.
Remember? No. I'll come by massage and do social. Oh, John, so much nicer than Dave. All right.
And happy birthday, Jack. Oh, thanks. Happy birthday, Josh. Happy birthday, Jack. Cooking issues is powered by Simplecast.
Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network. Food radio supported by you. For our freshest content, subscribe to our newsletter. Enter your email at the bottom of our website, Heritage Radio Network.org. Connect with us on Instagram and Twitter at heritage underscore radio.
You can also find us at Facebook.com slash Heritage Radio Network. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization driving conversations to make the world a better, fairer, more delicious place. And we couldn't do it without support from listeners like you. Want to be a part of the food world's most innovative community? Subscribe to the shows you like, tell your friends, and please join the HRN family by becoming a member.
Just click on the beating heart at the top right of our homepage. Thanks for listening.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.