Hello, and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from Rockefeller Center at the New Stance Studios for our very first recording at Nastasia's favorite place on the planet Earth, Rockefeller Center. So she wants me just for this one. We don't know where we're gonna continue doing. I'm gonna say who's on the show in Rockefeller Center voice.
No, we have an SNL voice. Oh, SNL, but that's that's all I watch from Rockefeller's. I mean, whatever. Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas?
Good. We have John who How are you doing, John? Doing great. I'm gonna pronounce it the way my phone pronounces it. Gene Howl!
You like that? Great. Love it. And uh for his inaugural uh trip here with us. We're not sure, by the way.
We're testing everything out. So just so you know, if you're hearing this, we're testing everything out. We have for our engineer today, Joe Hazen. How you doing? Hey, I'm doing great.
How are you? All right. All right. But you get, but you know what? Whoever that announcer was, you told me his name.
He he doesn't ever pull back at the end. He wouldn't, he wouldn't cut that the N off of Hayes. It would be like, Joe Hazen. Right? You see the difference?
No pull back at the end. You don't pull back. You go the full hazing. Joe Hazen. Well, he doesn't do that.
That's not happy about it. He's never happy. No, he's Hazen. Anyway. How you doing, Stas?
How you feel? We're in Rockefeller Center for the first time ever. It's cool, right? Yeah, it's pretty neat. This is the first time we've recorded in a studio since uh the pandemic happened.
And we're all vaccinated, so that's great. Uh, you know, we uh I think you know, at this point, there's so many of us vaccinated that we're no longer vax holes by saying that, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. So for those of you that uh, as yet don't know, uh, we are now recording at uh Rockefeller Center. By the way, a couple of things. We're not allowed, there's certain things we are not allowed to say in conjunction with uh Rockefeller Center, right, Nastasia? But yeah.
Like we can't make a a pickle crock and sell it as like 30 rock pickle croc, right? Right. Although, wouldn't that be amazing? Yeah. You know how many 30 rock pickle crocs we could sell?
I guess. You don't like fermentation though, right? No, that's John's uh John, would you have would you use a 30 rock pickle crock if we could do that? If it was reasonably priced, sure. I feel like that kind of name would carry a premium.
How much extra would you wait? How much of a premium would you pay for a cooking issues 30 rock pickle crock? And cooking issues branded. Uh I mean I don't know. Why would we do it without extra 30, maybe?
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa, whoa. An extra 30? How much are you willing to pay for a pickle crock?
Let's see. I've paid I think like 50 or 60 for my previous crocs. Well, how big a pickle crock is this? The one that you'd be branding? No, the one that you paid 50 to 60 dollars for.
Uh two quarts. Two quarts? Yeah. How how big is the it it I'm assuming it's stoneware? Yes.
Ceramic. Oh, geez. That's where we'll be selling. Etsy. Yeah.
Yeah. Every uh, so okay. Again, we don't know when this is going to go, uh, when you're going to be hearing this, but right now, uh Nastasia, John, and I are in the midst of fighting with every single selling platform on earth. We've already, you know, put out the had the problem with Amazon, which you guys are all familiar with. This is the first time you're listening.
They've totally hosed our business. And then uh eBay, Nastasia spends, how long do you spend setting that up? I don't know. Two days. No, no, no.
I mean, like the getting make getting the fulfillment ready, getting all this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like months. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we get this fulfillment ready.
We're like, because Amazon is still causing problems. We're gonna we're gonna sell on eBay. It's gonna be fine. Everything's gonna be fine. We set up this big, you know, thing with this company, this fulfillment company that is, you know, very good.
Uh, and then we go live, and eBay's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're selling too much stuff. We're turning you off. And they just flipped the switch and they turned us off. Right, Sas?
Yeah. So then I was on the phone because she wanted like a second set of ears because it was so crazy. They turned us back on again, and then we started selling again, and then they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Now we're turning you off permanently. Forever.
Forever. The good news is you can't talk to a person. We've erased your account name, so you we can't even open a ticket to talk to you about it. And also, uh, there's no, there's there's, you know, sorry, there's nothing. Nothing you can do.
There's nothing you can do. I didn't even know you couldn't open a ticket. That's crazy. They erased all our messages from Wow. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. The the fun part for any of you, uh, and people have responded to me on Twitter about this. The real fun part is they then sent an email to everyone who had bought something saying that from us, saying that we were scammers. Yep.
And they did this all for the safety, the safety of their community, apparently. Yeah. Yeah. Safety of their right now we're selling on Shopify, which is real. I mean, we're selling on Searsall.com through Through Shopify.
By the way, if any of you guys are investigative journalists out there, I think this is an interesting story because the the head of our fulfillment company, the CEO of our fulfillment company said that they've seen this like three or four times on eBay in the past couple of months. And we think also like our initial troubles in November with Amazon were based on some sort of uh attack, basically. So there's all these scammers out there, like uh quote unquote business people. And remember, anyone that sells a Searsol, it's not us, is is stealing our stealing RIP, stealing our patents, basically. Uh, and you know, taking food out of my kid's mouth and preventing Nastasia from getting these geese out of her TP, right?
And potentially even putting the user in danger, as two Amazon reviews said. Two people into the yard. Yeah, and you're the reason that, you know, John's healthcare sucks, okay? All right? It's you.
You're the reason. So uh so these people, these terrible, vicious people, uh they they complain, they know the algorithms that these big, you know, online merchants use, and they knock out their competition by complaining in a way that trips the algorithm functions for people like Amazon and eBay. And for a small player like us, they can knock them out and they can't be unknocked out because we don't have the resources, we don't have in Amazon. If you make more than do you remember what the number was, Stas, how many millions you need to sell a year? 20.
I don't even remember. It's above a certain um revenue amount, you then get an actual human being at Amazon that you can speak to that only gets fired once every two weeks instead of once every two hours, right? Because it's been as I said before, it's like when you call customer service at Amazon, if you accidentally get disconnected, that person's already been fired or quit. And so you need another i in another whole contact there. But like once you make enough money, you have a real contact.
And the same at eBay. If you sell long enough and you have an uh enough sales, you get a real human that you can talk to, and presumably then you can get around the algorithms. But for small players like us, boom, you're toast. So they can't toast us on Shopify, as far as I know. Let's not speak so loud.
No, is there any sort of actual wood product here? Knock on it. Uh so anyway, so that's what's going on uh with us. So we're gonna answer some questions and uh we're gonna answer some questions. We're gonna just treat this as though it's a normal show, even though we're currently talking with at Heritage Radio Network, because we're trying to figure out how our uh ongoing stuff is gonna work, which is why this is not live right now, right, Nastasia?
But for those of you that are listening, uh, we are gonna set up a Patreon. How's that gonna work, Sus? Do we know exactly 100%? It's set up already. It's set up, yeah.
We just don't know exactly. We what we think is gonna happen is this. We think that um, because it takes some time to edit and put the stuff down, we're going to uh if you sign up for the Patreon, you listen live and you get the the code so you can call into us direct, right? And then we're gonna put it up, uh, edited a couple of days later. We'll still take questions via email.
Um, and a Patreon is probably where the chat room is gonna live, right? Yes. Yeah, Patreon's where the chat room's gonna live. Yeah. And then we're also gonna maybe post video to the Patreon of the episode, and you know, maybe some extra unexpirated Nastasia.
Well, Nastasia's been dying for us to do some non-family shows since since forever. She believes that all of you out there want to hear us curse like the sailors that we are in the real life. Yeah. You know, John grew up in Connecticut, so he's a real life, like, you know, swamp Yankee sailor. He he can curse like a like an old school sailor.
I also spent 10 years of working in kitchens in New York City. That added a lot too. Oh, speaking of kitchens in New York City, what are you guys' reactions to the? So the news of the week is that uh Daniel Hum at 11 Madison Park decided to go all vegetarian vegan at vegan at 11 Madison Park. What it what what are what are your guys' thoughts on this?
Why why? But why? For environmental concerns that it's just like what the future of eating should be. Uh look, I'm I would love to go and taste it. I'm sure it's going to be delicious.
Is it already out? Happening? Uh it's been announced. I don't know if the menu's up. It hasn't reopened yet, right, John?
Or has it? I don't think so. It's gonna be three thirty-five including tip. 335. For vegetables.
Well, I've been cooking a lot of uh asparagus that costs more than most steak that I buy. So I've been buying that fancy belt uh Dutch uh white asparagus. Uh, you know, I was gonna put a see, so my book that I'm shooting, I'm doing in it has to be done by October. So anytime a season rolls around, I have to get all the stuff in the season because I don't have another crack at it. So someone was like, Are you gonna do ramps?
I'm like, nah. But when you but you're is what about like so you're just doing northeast season? Well, that's the one that I can get. Um no, I mean I'll ship other stuff, but like certain things like only have one season in the world because like for instance, like white asparagus, the real stuff, I don't think that they do a flip version of it in the southern hemisphere the same way that they do it in Europe. And so it's like if you don't get it then, you don't get it then.
Same like rhubarb. Certain things you can shoot out of season, especially because I don't know if you know this, you can't taste what they cook in a cookbook. You can't you can't taste it. So as long as it looks okay, it looks okay. That's that's an old trick I learned when I used to have to do food styling for people.
It's like, you know, you know how many of those turkeys that you look at in the food styling shots are cooked all the way through? Zero. Because you know what the you know what the photographer doesn't want to do? Wait around for that turkey to be done. You know what I'm saying?
So it's like you just make the thing bronze, you pull it out of the oven. You know, uh I mean, I've done it. Uh, but then the one time I had to I had to go outside of Atlanta and do a Thanksgiving shoot, an off-season Thanksgiving shoot. The turkey, we did it for food styling, but the the person whose house it was wanted to feed it to her kid. I'm like, lady, you can't feed that turkey to the kid.
That turkey is poison, it's poisonous turkey. She's like, but it looks good. I'm like, that's the idea. It's poisonous. So yeah, so for that stuff, Nastasia, I can definitely just I can go out of uh out of season.
Yeah. What kind of grill setup you have at the uh at your uh at your place? Just uh uh a trough grill, actually. Trough? How how large a trough?
Like, can a donkey no, no, like three feet by one foot. Three feet, three feet by one foot by how deep? Like eight inches. Oh, so it's like a small trough, a smallish trough. It's like a gutter.
Did I ever tell you uh about the in the hibachi style thing that was like a even smaller version, like a one, like one and a half by one and a half by eight inches that I did in my house that time for Jen's birthday to ruin her birthday? Did you know that if you buy an off grant a brand, one of those grills, that you can actually get it hot enough to light the paint on it on fire? No, yeah, you can. It sucks. Especially when your wife has had exactly one request.
You know what that request was? No fire, no smoke, don't ruin my birthday. Ruin the birthday, don't ruin my birthday. Can we can you tell the story of what happened last year? I mean, last week after 13 years.
So it's no, it's no surprise if you've seen pictures of me that I don't care what my hair looks like, right? And me too. Yeah, yeah. But what we do like is we do like a good head and neck massage, correct? So if you like head cheap for, oh, because are there any two cheap?
John, back us up. Who's cheaper than Nastasi and myself? I can't think of anyone cheaper than you. Yeah, there we go. All right.
So like we're the cheapest people on earth. But if you like cheap and you like a head and neck massage and don't care too much what your hair looks like, go to Chinatown. No, don't tell them where. I'm not saying where, but like, like the the hair salons, they're amazing. Like they're amazing.
So it's like uh how much? How much Nastasi? I think it's like $10 or something. For what I get, which is hair wash, blow dry. And it's a secret place.
We've been going. Well, I went to one place for like for like 20 years, and then they moved locations. And when they moved locations, I was like, Nastasi's like, you gotta try my place. So I go to her place. She used to go to my place back before she found her new place, right?
But I don't know if you know this from listening to the show. Nastasi and I, mmm, like when we're doing our own things, we really don't want to see or talk to each other. And also, like my favorite thing about the hair salons that I go to is that it's a zero communication situation. I do not speak the language of anyone else who's in the building with me at the time. And I love it.
It's the best. I hate talking to the barber. I hate talking to basically anyone. It's like the the the the worst thing about going abroad is not being able to make yourself known. And the best thing about going abroad is not having to make yourself known.
You know what I mean? So it's like, I show up, I have very they're like, water okay, yes. Shampoo. They change the station for me when I when I come in. What do you mean, change the station?
They put it on, like, I think they put it on some type of California radio. Okay, you say that? No, I fair. Okay, here's John. Not a spoiler.
Here's a spoiler. Here's a spoiler for you. Nastasia Lopez and I don't want to see each other during our hair salon things because I don't want to hear the English language and I don't want to see Nastasia. She does not want to see me. She calls me and says, I'm going to this hair salon on Friday.
Don't go on Friday. This is the level. We tell each other when we're going. I might be going on Friday. Don't go on Friday.
Says to me specifically, don't go on Friday. Now. We've been doing this for years, too. We tell each other when we're going to be. One time there was a family emergency, and we sent someone, she sent someone to the barber shop to deal with me.
I was like, what are you doing talking to me? They're in the barbershop. Anyway, so like she tells me, like, makes me swear on a stack of freaking Bibles, I'm not gonna go to the salon on the Friday. I have a photo shoot, as it turns out on the Friday. So I'm like, I'll go Thursday because I've got this like COVID wacky, like, you know, scientist hair going on.
And I go on Thursday. I'm sitting in the chair. She's sitting in the chair. She says they changed the station. I have to say, it's the same station they always play.
Okay. It's the same station. It's the same three freaking terrible fake Miley Cyrus songs they always play. And I tell my barber, that man, no, that man, no, that man, no. The barber says in Cantonese or Mandarin to the receptionist, God knows what he says.
And that they're speaking Mandarin. Yeah. Yes. But like, but like the but my they try to get Dave out. She basically no, they don't try look.
She basically tells them I'm some sort of molester. I'm some sort of like they should maybe call the cops on me or something. Meanwhile, I've been going there bringing you saving me from then she calls me from the chair. From the chair. And by the way, I don't use my phone when I'm there at all.
Because why? I don't want to deal with any other people who can communicate with me. So like she calls me, and she's about to be done. So she's like, I'm here. I'm like, what this is entirely your fault.
Which you said, yes, it was. Then she's like, maybe we could talk about the radio afterwards. I'm like, no, maybe you can get the hell out afterwards. You said no, thank you. But it wasn't, it wasn't no thank you.
It was no thanks. No, thank you. Yes. And then I had to tip them. So I had to go over to your lady while you were getting washed.
And I said, bye, Dave. And you just gave me this evil. Well, and that's before I knew that you had called me a uh, you know, a molester. You know, before I was like some stalker who was stalking you at the at the place. Jeez, Louise.
And then I tipped them extra to let them know that I was still top, top dog. Whatever, man. Whatever. If you want to get if you want to give your uh blow dryest, what is the term for a blow dryest? Is that a stylist?
Stylist, I guess. If you want to give them extra cash, that's that's on you. I'm happy that they, I'm happy that they got it. Uh Dave's too cheap. Yeah.
I I I texted him to let him know how much I tipped before he left, so that he could do the same, so that they knew where we were. Hell no. Yeah. Yeah. Friends.
Friends and quotations. Yeah. Frenemies. Co-workers. Okay.
So should we do some cooking related questions? Cook? Mm-hmm. Oh, by the way, you know what Nastasia is hoping for? So yeah.
Yeah. So look today. So Tuesdays, for those of you that don't know, Tuesdays are the Saturday Lives day where they do like a what you're right. All night long. All day, all night.
But the host shows up on the Tuesday and meets with the staff. Yeah. So you the person who's the host is Nastasia's uh like your favorite person. He's one of my favorite people. In terms of like what he's what he Elon Musk.
Nastasia is a is a musk melon freak. Loves Elon Musk. A lot of people hate him though. Like hate. Or especially right now.
I don't know why. Do you know why don't I'm sure no, but they do. Yeah. Why not? I think because he has a st on Mars.
And do you know why, Joe? No, I don't. What are your feelings on the on uh the Elon Joe? He makes a great car battery. Yeah.
Yeah. Dave bought the truck. So funny thing about the the car battery is is that lithium-ion batteries, I know a lot about lithium ion batteries where you know anyway, uh I can't talk talk about it. But like uh lithium-ion batteries, everyone worries about them being dangerous. And here's what's true.
Once those suckers get to burning, they get to burning. You know what I mean? These like uh if you anyway, I'm not gonna not gonna talk about the uh I think a lot of people are pissing him now in China because there was a a huge kerfuffle about the way he treated uh one of the customers who wasn't happy about the brakes, uh the break specs, and he was as dismissive of them as he is of everyone over here, only that doesn't play in China. And so he had to apologize, I think to the Chinese government because a huge segment of their market is in China right now, uh Tesla's market. And then right after that was the crash in Houston, where the true uh the uh car immolated after hitting a tree, and the claim was that there wasn't anyone at the driver's wheel, but it's contested.
In other words, no one knows what the hell is happening with it. Uh so maybe that's why. But Nastasia is is basically just constantly searching out the window for Elon Musk to be walking through the door. This would not be the building he would be. You never know.
Maybe they they you know, they take them, they take him through a separate building so that you know he doesn't uh, you know. Yeah. Maybe they need some wine. Right before, right before we we started recording, I was like, it's Elon Musk, and Nastasi was like, turned around. Yeah, I got you.
Ooh, boom, boom. Uh all right. Questions. Questions. Let me see.
All right. So from uh Alex via email. Hey, question for Dave. I'm interested in hearing more about uh the computer programming work I do with Arduinos and et cetera, uh, etc. What do I use uh custom code to do in the kitchen?
Uh, well, look, when I'm developing products, like for instance, when I developed the spinzall, the centrifuge, like I had to write some code to try to make it work so that I could show the factory in China how I wanted it to operate. I do the same thing uh with the current project that I'm working on that I we can't talk about. Um also uh you know, I've I've had uh I do whatever. I do a lot of random stuff, right, Nastasia? Mm-hmm.
Do a lot of random stuff. Uh most of the stuff that I do for kitchen, I use off-the-shelf controllers for. So not like Arduino's. Like most of the stuff I'll use, like uh, like the most complicated thing that I used on a re on the regular and in my kitchen was the the four controller oven where I controlled the deck and all that stuff separately. But I don't do a lot of actual Arduino work for the kitchen.
I once built for Wiley, my one of the first things I ever built for Wiley was uh a co-extruder where it it put one color and flavor of of goop inside of another color and flavor of goop and then set them into spheres. So that took a lot of programming and a lot of work, but he never liked it. You know why, Stas? Right. Because you remember, you remember the old when back when spherification was a big thing?
Yeah. So it made paisleys. Like they looked like little tadpoles. And he was like, Dave, can't you make them into perfect spheres? I'm like, Wiley, no.
It's like, you know, uh, I'm I'm building with with stuff that I'm finding on the street, and like, you know, no. He's like, I don't like the tadpole shape. I'm like, Wiley, it's a freaking feature. It's a tadpole. No one else has tadpoles.
You'll be the only person with tadpoles. He's like, nope. And then Farran, Adria, got uh a co-extrusion machine that was built for like the pharmaceutical industry that costs like, you know, you know, a hundred grand or whatever it was, and they gave it to him for free because that's how Europe rolls. And then Wiley was like, uh, not interesting anymore. What was the grimace?
Well, I can understand why they wouldn't want tadpoles, because that looks a lot like sperm. I don't know. That's what I think. But it's like, I don't know, the plating technique where you put the goop and then you spin the plate and get the tail. We used to call that little spermies.
You could that that was the technical kitchen term for them? Little little spermies. Yep. Is it actually little with the T T L E or Little? Little with with an apostrophe.
Probably with the apostrophe. Little little spermies. All right. Oh, wow. Okay then.
Uh, I think if you don't want to go to sperm route, if you just put in someone's mind paisleys. You know what I mean? Is Paisley that shape or is Paisley the whole pattern? I think it's the whole pattern. The whole pattern?
Oh, really? Huh. So the individual unit of a paisley is a sperm. There we go. Could be, or mitochondria, or I don't know.
No, no, no. Oh, you know what? All the mitochondria come from the uh mom. So there might be that I'm sure there's mitochondria in the sperm cell, but none of those things get transferred to uh the egg. A hundred percent, thank god, of my mitochondria, my mom's.
No, I'm sure my dad's mitochondria are fine. He's healthy guy. You know what I mean? But like, yeah. That's why they can trace, like, that's why they can trace through the mom's lineage with the mitochondrial DNA.
Really? Yeah, fun fact. And uh, yeah, the pais kind of look like the contractile vacuoles. Except for if I could get the actual vacuoles, I could have made them more spherical while he would have been pleased with me instead of you know kicking me out of his restaurant. Uh all right.
So I think I answered that question. Is that is that an answer, John? Satisfied, deleted. So uh Joe, for the since this is your first time with this, what happens is is that John gives me the questions, and then if he's not satisfied with my response, I see the question again the next week. And I'm like, didn't I answer that freaking question?
He's like, not to my satisfaction. And then if I answer it too much to his satisfaction, Nastasia gives me crap. Yeah, hey, now that we're now that we're here, hey, you know what, Stas? Now that we're like live, you can have an actual like one of those like no buttons. No, where you can just like like, you know, yeah, turn me off.
Yeah, I know, I know. Yeah, I know. Last week she tried to Joe, check this out. So here's the rule. See what you think of this rule.
So the rule is is that I give two minutes to all the questions people ask. Two. So then sometimes though, I'll go off on sometimes, every single time, I'll go off on a tangent. So then the question is if I say something that's unrelated during the tangent, does that count against the person's two or not? I would say no, but that's like an additional segment clock.
So we need like a tangent clock? How many stopwatches is Nastasi gonna have? Yeah, that's crazy. That's busy. Like we're like, we have like inception level tangents here.
Where it's like tangent inside of a tangent inside of a tangent. Yeah. Somehow we almost always make it back to the original question before they turn the microphones off. Yeah. Okay, next.
All right. Uh Michael Turkell wrote in. Uh, let me say, I've been a uh a fan of the show. Nastasi, you're gonna need some muffs. This is the guy that did the vegetarian book?
No. No, I don't think it's Michael Harlan Turkoff. No, it's a different interesting though. Interesting that they're yeah. Uh say, well, your greatest video, which is the office nacho video.
Do you ever were you w I was working with you? I don't know why I was. Yeah, because Rebecca said that, because you probably just didn't want to be around me. Probably. That was the most that no, weren't you there?
Only Rebecca. I have never gotten the dirty looks that I got ever since that shoot. We went to uh Complex, which is so complex, you know, the hip hop sneaker website has a food website called First We Feast. So I go to do a shoot there, and they have me make nachos from scratch from zero, in someone's lunch in their at their desk without telling the two coworkers on either side that that's what I'm doing. So I start, I start heating a an EC whipper, an ISI, like a with a blowtorch up to very, very dangerous pressure levels with a blowtorch next to this guy's desk, giving warnings like, oh hey, this is completely not cool, and this might blow up FYI.
And then so I start getting the dirty looks with that. Then when I pull out the liquid nitrogen and the liquid nitrogen's pouring all over the guy's desk because they have me make some sort of dessert. I thought this guy was gonna punch me in the face. Yep. I don't think that's my fault, though.
That sounds like a Rebecca thing. I'm not gonna blame. Oh, by the way, by the way, sad program note. She's not dead. She's not dead.
Uh uh Rebecca, the the boondoggler has moved on to to doggle other pastures. She's uh she's took a full-time job doggling somebody else's boons. She said she would still do events in LA with us, which I thought that was like her least favorite thing. Yeah. Once this pandemic's fully over, Nastasia's gonna force us to do a bunch of sub parties out in LA.
They're gonna be awesome. We're we're have you already copyrighted sub party? No, remember we tried, it was well, we tried to get the website, but it was $500 and he said that was too much. Yeah, we're not worth it. We don't deserve it.
We throw the best parties in LA. I don't know why, but we do. It's just a subjectively false. Uh we thought what did the last person say when they went to the Houdini? I don't know what that was.
I don't, I don't know. Because it made no sense. We had Harold McGee dressed as a uh fortune telling robot. Silter. Yeah.
We had it was just, it was, it was uh, it was it was it was crazy. All right. Uh so Michael wants to know I am designing a system, a carbonation system, all right, a seltzer system, all right, Nastasia, are you okay with it? Yeah, just go. Start your clock.
Uh I'm designing a system and have a mechanism by the way, does the clock start after I'm done reading the question? Yes, yes. All right. Uh I have a McCann carbonator. That's the one that everyone uses.
I'm in a house, uh, and I'm going to put most of this stuff in an unfinished basement under my sink instead of actually under the sink. But I don't want to use a cold plate and an ice machine. I would rather use a flash chiller. Do you see any uh issues with it issues with this approach? Uh can I use an undersink water chiller?
Would that work? I feel like everyone I reach out to has different answers, i.e., the kegman, which sounds like a Simpsons character, kegman, uh tries to sell a two uh a $2,000 setup. I just want the right answer. Appreciate your thoughts. All right.
Listen, I looked at the kegman's uh website. What they're doing, look, the standard house pressure is roughly between 40 and 60 pounds per square inch. You're and the fittings for those units are meant to operate at those pressures. When you're running a carbonator properly, that's carbonating water, you're running it up closer to 100, which is why there's all of these warnings on the thing about hoses flying off of these damn things when you're using them. And if you've never been uh in a situation where a carbonated water hose flies off under pressure, it is, as we say in French, a treat.
How do you say it's a treat in French, John? Ooh. I don't know. Just say like c'est marveilleux or something like that. C'est merveilleux.
C'est une surprise merveilleuse. Yeah, you go. There you go. Uh, it's like freaking Versailles. It's like water everywhere.
It's like, and all your CO2 is getting leaked, and everything in your house is getting ruined. So I would make sure that the unit itself can put up with the pressure. Make sure that everything inside the unit is uh stainless steel and make sure even though the keg man says not to worry about it, flared fittings. Flared fittings, buddy, are gonna be your friend. Uh lastly, the last thing I'll say about it is that the one way you could do it if you don't want to use an ice machine and uh and all of that is just by what's called a cold bank.
Look up cold bank, where it's basically a cold plate with a compressor unit that keeps the stuff cold. That's the way a soda machine runs in a restaurant, right? The one that you walk up to and go, am I being clear on what I'm talking about, Sas? You know that I know so you can hook one of those up without using their awful, without using that awful like uh dispenser that they use. You can use a cold bank.
So look for cold banks. That how was I 13 seconds left? Woo! All right. Uh Isabella De Giulio wrote in.
Uh uh, thanks for last uh oh, thank you for last week. It was great to finally get a question in. What question did she ask? I don't remember. I can look.
All right. I wanted to ask what Dave's favorite recipes uh are for fresh tofu skin. Uh I've seen it can be uh braised in things, uh used as noodles, et cetera. And also dressed as you would noodles for a cold salad. Cold salad.
I like that. I like that. See, I know what you mean. Yeah, if if you don't say if you just say salad, what is it? Green.
If cold, yeah. It's a cold salad. Do you know what I like? Do you like a German composed salad? I don't know what that is.
It's like the plate with like little little freaking things all over, and then you can mix it up yourself and you can eat. Yeah, it's nice. It's nice. But anyway, a salad without any modification is a cold salad. Mm-hmm.
Right? It's like a sandwich is not open-faced unless you say open-faced sandwich. You don't have to say a closed-faced face sandwich. I think the same's whole true for a salad. John, Joe, where are you with me?
Agreed. Agreed? Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Uh so I'll answer the question now. Uh Greg, because I uh yeah. Okay. When you make your own uh when I'm assuming fresh, I'm assuming you're gonna make your own. I highly recommend that unless you do the it's a pain in the butt to do it, but it's awesome, right?
Uh what I recommend you do is you just eat them. Just get some dipping sauce, keep them warm, eat them warm. Don't try to do anything that's gonna gild a lily, because you're going through all the work of making the fresh tofu skins. So just make some nice dipping sauce and try to appreciate the difference. Cause as you we we you have the the the soy milk, right?
Which is a rich soy milk for tofu skins. You have it in a a relatively large flat thing and you're pulling the skins off. As you're pulling the skins off, you're depleting the protein and the different things that are in the soy milk. And so they change. They change in color, like they go reddish as you as you pull them out, they change in flavor, they change in texture, they change in thickness.
So until you start doing this a lot, the only recipe I would do is to like, you know, salt them and eat them with a nice with a nice uh dip fresh, uh so you can get a uh a feel for it. And you know, frankly, that's that's all I ever do with them because it's such a pain to make. The same way that when I make fresh tofu, all I do with it is eat it with some light sauces and some like, you know, accompanying crudite or some crunchy stuff, uh, because I want to highlight the like kind of the kind of fleeting fresh flavors that you make with a tofu. Now, if you own an infinite amount of them, then you know, I like layer after layer of fresh uh tofu skin with crunchy stuff like uh sauteed mushrooms and uh scallions and whatnot and flavors wrapped up into a tube with some sauce over it and you eat it. That's delicious.
That's how that's how I do it. But um anyway, was that a yes? Am I okay? Yep. I told her to look at uh Brooks's cookbook too.
Yeah. Because he does so much with it, yeah. With fresh? Or is he? I think isn't most of his stuff uh rehydrated?
I don't know. I think he's mainly using like rehydrated Yuba, like that you normally buy. Like the fresh one that's never been dehydrated, I think is kind of a I think of it as kind of a different kind of an animal. Uh Marty Bodycoat wrote in, uh, hey Dave, I have a question I think that you might have the answer. Uh I constantly hear bartenders talking about scaling up cocktails and the danger of scaling up bitters.
The idea uh is that if I made one Manhattan with three dashes of Angostura, I wouldn't make two Manhattans with six dashes. It would have to come down to uh four or five dashes. I'll come down to four fifths of the number. Have you experienced this phenomenon and is there a reason behind it? Or is it pseudo-batching?
Uh okay. Listen, I think the problem is is that it is cocktail recipes that are done in a single dash is then when people try to scale up to like a lot of dashes, uh the the effects tend to add. So miss uh what am I misscaling or misrepresenting how big a dash is tends to be uh a problem. So, like, you know, if two dashes is too much, or how many did you put in? That's a lot of dashes, my friend.
How many dashes? Three dashes? See, I think that's your main problem right there. I would have started with two dashes. You do two dashes, see you're you'ready overdashing your your Manhattan.
That's your issue there, right? So the third dash is like once you start going even higher, and also think about this. If you're doing dashes, is your last dash really the same as your first dash? Your first dash is probably an abbreviated dash. Why?
Because you're worried about spilling stuff everywhere. So you're a little tentative with that first dash. You're like, oh yeah, and then your second dash is really good, and your third, you're pulling back a little bit. So you probably only have two real dashes. But if you're dashing six dashes, you have your tentative dash, and then you have one, two, three, four solid dashes, and then your last tentative dash.
So you've actually overdashed by a lot. What I do is when we're batching is we're batching in the Angostora by the ounce. And I have not noticed that there's any difference between the amount that you need when you're doing uh, you know, three bottles of written house, one bottle of Carpano, and I believe I can't remember whether it's three quarters of an ounce or an ounce of angle at that point, but it's no difference. And if you do the math based on, so if you sit there with a dasher and go bit bit bip bip bip bip bip bip bip bip bip bip for 50 dashes and count how much that weighs and do the division, and you do that three or four times to get the average dash. The it doesn't that number is correct no matter how you scale it.
So it has to be something with how you're operating the actual dasher. Good. How was I? How was I? Five seconds.
Woo, man, I'm on fire. Damn. What do you think, John? Great. Hopefully it lasts more than today.
Oh, geez, man. You know what? You know what? Fair. No, I mean, it just helps cut down on the five pages of questions we have.
Oh my God. Wow. So harsh. Uh also we're not sure in the in the in the future life how this is gonna work, whether we're gonna do like an extended version with the with the un unexpurgated and unedited for the Patreon. That might have more questions.
What are you gonna say to people when they're like, I don't want to pay for Patreon? What the hell? I don't know. What am I gonna say? I don't know.
I'm asking you. I'm asking you. Okay, John, what are you gonna say? Your customer service. I'm just gonna say that's the way it is, but it's also unreasonable of them to expect.
Like the amount of people that ask you questions, you know, it's a very generous free service that you've been providing for 10 years. And I think it's yeah. It's five dollars a month. Who sings that song? Some things will never change.
That's just the way it is. Don Henley? Don Henley at Daytleen, Diddleen, Diddle. Some things will never change. Bleedle ding, diddled.
But this is changing, people. So Henley was. We've done it for a pizza for 10 years, and now we're like, you know what? We worked for pizza, not even pizza for the last year. No pizza for us.
Yeah. We don't deserve it, Stas. Or we thought we didn't deserve it. But we do. Here's what you get for your jump rope.
No one wants a jump rope. Joe, let me ask you a question. Yeah. Would you pay extra to not receive a jump rope in the mail? Absolutely.
Yeah, me too. Yeah. I paid even more extra to not get glitter in the mail. Oh. Do you know what?
It's an interesting question. You're talking about the glitter bomb? You're talking about this MIT guy? I got hit by a glitter bomb some years ago, yeah. But we have a friend who's notorious for putting glitter in her like her greetings cards.
Oh, jeez. But you but you didn't get hit by a glitter bomb because you're a porch pirate. No, no, no, no, no. No. It was just a weird kind of promo thing I got in the mail.
My wife opened it up in like the kitchen, the dog. Everyone was covered in glitter. Oh. Oh, yeah. Well, so a couple of weeks ago, you have no way of knowing this, but a couple of weeks ago, we were asking, does have you guys heard glitters canceled?
Do you know glitters canceled? No, I don't. Apparently, you know, fish, you know, regardless of what you might see on uh, you know, what was that Will Smith movie where he was a fish? Regardless of that movie, there's no disco fish out there. You know what I mean?
Like, they don't like all the glitter in the in the ocean, apparently. Um, get this, speaking of Porch Pirate. So there's a park near my house, right? It's on fourth between Forsythe and Christie. It's like uh there's something, something Roosevelt, it's like uh, I forget her name, some someone Roosevelt Park.
And it was built because uh at some point in the early you know 20th century, they knocked down all the tenement houses that were there. Some very famous bars were in that in that line. The triple deuce was in that line. A whole bunch of really famous bars were in that line. Anyways, so uh there's a park there, and it's become over the past pandemic year, now that people are playing outside again, it's bag, it's bag stealing central.
Like my son Dax uh got his bag stolen there, but the thief, thank God, is so old that he doesn't understand modern technology. So Dax goes, yo, to his friend, yo, give me your uh give me your phone. Gives a phone, traces his iPhone, walks the two blocks over to where the guy is sitting on the porch going through Dax's bag. Oh my god. And Dax is like, what the hell, man?
He's like, what? He's like, that's my bag. He goes, Oh, that's yours. Oh my god. And Dax is like, well, it's certainly not yours.
Yeah, so like, yeah. So he got his bag. And then, and then his friend, two days later, got his bag stolen from that same park. Same guy? Different guy.
Funny story, which for some reason Dax won't let me tell you. Hilarious story, but Dax won't let me tell you. Really? Yeah, I don't know why. He won't let me tell it to you, but it's hilarious.
Uh so like, but the the point is is like who knew that this was become this area was gonna become like the bag, because bag thievery. When I was growing up in in New York, you didn't put your bag down. Like, well, how do you play basketball if you don't put your bag down? We just didn't do that. You didn't, you didn't put your bag down anywhere, ever, right?
The assumption was if you blinked, it was gonna get stolen. It's gone. Joe, right? You're in New York. No, of course.
Yeah. You don't you just don't bring a bag. You don't bring a bag. Why would you bring a bag? Why do you think we have pockets?
So you put stuff in your pocket, you don't bring a bag. Now everyone thinks, oh, New York's safe. Ah, I can bring a bag. I can put it down. We're like halfway to the Netherlands where we leave bikes without locks.
No. No. When I was a kid, the if you didn't like double lock your bike, that sucker was gone. People used to walk around with like with like uh freezy sprays to break people's lock bike locks off and take them away. Remember this?
Anyway. Uh how did we get on that? We weren't even talking about that. Tangent. Tangent.
Segment clock. Segment clock. All right. Whoa, no. All right.
So David wants to know. He's writing in, uh, okay. I got turned on to the fried onion smash burger by George Motts recently. Uh okay. The question is, what makes this burger work?
One, it seems like it shouldn't. So, first of all, John, you're familiar with this internet phenomenon. Why don't you explain it? Joe, do you know this thing? No, I don't.
All right, here we go. I know Nastasti doesn't care, so I'm not gonna ask her. He's an unofficial burger historian. Uh he's got a lot of how do you get to be an un what would the official burger historian? What would that mean?
Like hired by McDonald's? Hired by Burger King? I can't I don't know, yeah. Who would be official? The McDonald's or the Burger King person.
Well, Burger King. Oh no, no, McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's. Yeah, yeah. I actually don't like Burger King at all. Whoa.
Well, there goes that sponsorship I've been working on for years. Sorry, Dave. No, no more frame flame broiling for us. We were gonna get them to buy the Sears Hall. Everything was gonna be great.
Now it's over. One slip of the tongue. Um didn't people used to say that Burger King had the good rings, though? Or they they have rings, but McDonald's doesn't have rings, right? Yeah.
Right. I will also say the what so dating a vegetarian, they do have the impossible burger at Burger King, which is good for for Anna. You mean like putting oh dating like like going out with, not like like carbon dating a vegetarian. No. Yeah, not that.
All right. So all right, so explain this uh onion smash burger thing. All right, so it's 8020 uh beef. I will also say this is uh throwing out the lingo there, John. Based on uh really famous burger uh from Oklahoma from Sid Steiner in El Reno, Oklahoma.
Okay. George attributes it every uh attributes it properly to that, but yeah, just want everyone to know. Um burger historian. Yes. We don't need unofficial anymore.
Yeah, he's officially now a burger historian. All right. Okay. Okay. Um so 8020 uh beef blend.
So for those of you that don't know what John's saying, 80% lean, 20% fat. When you go to the store, please don't buy the stuff that's like 90-10. Please definitely don't buy that 93-7 garbage or anything. Try to go for 80. It in a pinch, 85 works fine.
Please, please, please, people, please, please. If you don't want the fat in your burger, please eat something else. Please eat something else. Yep. Um, so that's the burger meat.
Then he uh takes uh Vidali onions, slices them super, super, super, super thin on the deli slicer. Yep. Um, then puts the little ball of meat. I don't know how many ounces, but throws it right on the griddle, uh, throws the onions on top of it, and then smashes the ever living crap out of it right into the griddle. Uh cooks it really hard.
So I don't know. Wait, so give me the steps again. I need this picture it again. Okay. So ball of meat on the griddle.
Well, you had me lost because I was thinking, does any other sweet onion work? Or does it have to be Vidalia? Only Vidalia? The ones from Florida don't work. Only the Georgian ones work.
And whatever. Okay, so it's Vidalia onions. Yep. Now I saw I saw a picture of it. Sliced deli thin, meaning w waffle thin, paper thin.
Like see through so thin people, if you're if you haven't gone on the internet to look this up, they look like they've been sweated already. They look like they've been parsweated in in the bottom of a pan, but they haven't. All right. All right. Okay.
So first thing is the ball. Yep. Salted and peppered, you said. Yes. Okay.
Then the burger. Then the onions, sorry. So wait, ball. But on your first prior to smash. Yes.
Okay. Then smash it down. So onions kind of get everywhere. They get a little bit in the meat. They also kind of create this little skirt on the outside that burn a little bit.
Umion skirt. Yep. Delicious. Good band name. What kind of music?
Onion skirt? Let me think about it. What is that? And like chains, uh, like um, what's a oh god now. The Scottish people.
Uh cheese marry chain. They're like the juicy marry chain. All right, go ahead. Go ahead. Okay.
Then smashes the burger once, you know, I guess whatever his determination of judgment is that it's done. He flips it over. Onions get a little more cooked underneath. He puts uh slice of American cheese on top, puts white or yellow. Yellow.
You know what? Booker likes the white ones. Why? What's the point? If you're gonna do American cheese, just put the coloring in.
Yeah. Agreed? All right. Oh, it's more natural without the color. No, it's not.
Then he puts the potato bun top right on top of the cheese, puts the bottom bun, bottom part of the bun on top of the top bun. And then I guess once the cheese melt is melted, he you know. Let's have this discussion right now. Wait, he doesn't whoa whoa whoa whoa. The potato bun doesn't put it in the grease next to it to get a little color before you do it?
Nope. Does not look like it. The nice thing about a potato like what where do you guys sit on the potato bun? Love it. Like it.
I love it. You know who hates a potato bun? Your son Booker. No, he likes potato. Yeah, he likes Martin's.
No, you frequent, former frequent guests, maybe we'll get him again. Your boy Jim Leahy says that they're trash can buns for trash can people. Hates them. What are your feelings on the large uh potato buns? Martin's, the big ones with the sesame.
I'm pro. Yeah. Yep. I think they're good. Tastes English muffin.
Burger size. All right. Listen, Joe, I think this is a good call. I also like the English muffin burger. And back when I was at the French culinary for demos, whenever we would do burger demos, we would make fresh English muffins.
Joe, have you ever had a fresh English muffin? No, I never have. You know what they are? Good, real good. Uh the problem with uh the Martin's potato rolls is they do toast very quickly if you're gonna do the bagel toast in in the uh toaster, which uh for those of you that don't know, I you should not toast both sides of a hamburger bun.
That's for jokers and buttheads. It's like only toast to one side if you're gonna toast it, right? If you're gonna toast it. But the nice thing about the Martin's potatoes is that if you put them on the griddle for any time at all with some fat, they'll brown up real quick, right? So they're good for things like smash burgers.
Don't you agree with this, John? Yeah, definitely. But he doesn't do that. No, not that I know of. Okay, he doesn't have to.
You don't have to. Uh he just likes the fully squishy burger. All right, so then what was the question? What was the issue with this? What makes this burger work?
It seems like it shouldn't smashing the onions into the patty, makes the onions mostly steam while only bits and pieces caramelize, and it blocks the side of the patty from getting a good sear. No doubt the patty gets some onion juice on the surface, but that seems like a porn fusion technique. Porn fusion? Poor infusion. Wow.
That's different. Yeah, Jesus. That's a whole different thing. Like when I was talking about Kant on the first episode. Oh Emmanuel.
Emmanuel Kant, guys. The philosopher. Kod. That's still that's that's the only nuclear word. No, there's two nuclear words.
Who I studied for two years. A lot of work. A lot of reading. You know what? We talked about this.
I oh God. Wading through the critique of judgment, you know. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot.
You know, the Emmanuel Kant's critique of judgment is uh, I mean, you can read stuff that's more of a pain in the butt. You could read Hegel, you could read, you know, some of Heidegger's stuff, although, you know, did people stop reading him because he was a hardcore Nazi or not? I still had to read him in grad school as of 2013. Yeah. All right.
Uh anyway, back to this question, uh, David. So the Anastasia's timing it up. Um listen, I think people make a lot of how much sear you're actually getting on your Smash Burger. And in reality, most of the time, you're actually not getting that much sear, you're getting some. And those onions are sliced so thin that the amount of water they're adding is probably not that much more than the water that's going to be in the burger.
And since people seem to like it, I'm sure it tastes good, right? So like I think a lot of people just they make up a reason in their head why they think a smash burger is good, and then they're focus only on like the Myard or the or the crispiness of of the reaction, the sear, and less on all the other things about a smash burger that make it okay. And so if people like it, I'm gonna say it's probably good. You know what the good news about this is, is it's pretty easy to try. It's pretty easy for you to try it.
Yeah. Okay. Let us know. Done. Well, that wasn't two, was it two minutes?
No, you didn't go on, yeah. Oh, by the way, uh, here's another thing. Uh Joe. Nastasia, what Nastasia wants is for everyone just to do it on their own, but then we're out of a job. No, they I like people could Google the answer to these questions.
Not that. Who are they gonna go? They want to know our opinion. Yeah. But then we wouldn't have a show.
So then we wouldn't have a show. Well, he wants to know how to improve the approach and achieve similar but perhaps better net flavor. You know what's delicious? French onion soup. You guys like French onion soup?
Wait, you didn't, you're gonna get this question again, do you? No, no, I'm saying it's that's not I'm going, I'm finishing it now. Finishing it now. French, you like French onion soup? Yes.
So, like, if you wanted to, you could make a French onion soup mayonnaise, right? So you caramelize the heck out of the mayonnaise out of the onions, a little beef stock instead of water, make yourself a mayonnaise uh that way, or you know, better yet, even like use butter. You know, but do you guys does everyone realize that hollandaise is basically just mayonnaise, but warm with butter, right? I mean, that's that's why like people freaked out about like, oh, you can make a hollandaise just by like using egg yolks and hot butter. Well, and you can make it like a mayonnaise.
It is mayonnaise with with you know extra lemon. Am I wrong about this, John? No, you're right. Yeah. So instead of the extra water that you would add, why don't you do that with some beef stock and blend some onions in after saute them for a long time?
If you haven't, this is one of the great things about having an induction burner in your house is you can set it to 250 Fahrenheit. I can't automatically Celsius that. I'm sorry. And you can just throw a bunch of onions in them and they're never gonna burn. It is an onion making machine, an induction uh burner because you're never gonna scorch those suckers, right?
So, like all the old time uh French chefs who like, if you don't saute for exactly yeah, forget it. Just throw them in the induction, walk away, and you're good. Uh so I would blend that in, and then you could uh that's gonna up that profile. And then you could make it the way he does to get the texture that apparently everyone likes, but you're popping all those flavors you want from the cooked beef stock and from the the onion mayonnaise. What do you think about the onion mayonnaise idea, John?
That sounds really good. There you go. All right. French onion mayonnaise, French onion soup mayonnaise. And now I really want French onion soup before it gets too hot up in this piece.
Yeah, because we're gonna go from this to 100% humidity in like a week. Yeah, yeah. What do you guys like what what's unsatisfying about the French onion soup? Mm, the cheese, something about the cheese. That's unsatisfying?
Yeah, well, you know what it for me it is, is that like um when you break through the cheese crust on top, the the bread never self-mutilates in a way that's happy for me. It's like it's getting ripped around, and then of course I burn the hell out of my mouth. Yep. Burn the beejesus out of my mouth. And I always eat it first, so uh the whole rest of the meal is ruined.
But like I wonder, does anyone like score the bread before they put it in so that it breaks up nicely? They use a crusty first of all, they leave the crust on the bread so it can't tear, right? If you cut the outside crust off, had a disc and pre-scored it so that when you put your spoon in, it came apart in spoon-sized pieces, so that all of the pieces had a little bit of bread, a little bit of cheese, and some of the onion with the beef stock. I think that would be Maybe that's it I'll make for dinner. It's good, right?
Yeah. There's a Duques restaurant a couple blocks away that does onion soup. I like that restaurant a lot. Yeah. Such a weird guy, Ducas gets in a plane crash, hanging from a tree, decides he's gonna become like one of the greatest chefs in the world because he's hanging in a tree.
Weird, right? Yeah. I don't know what that's. I always wanted to get Tracy Morgan to do something with us. Unrelated, but true.
No, no, the car crash. Oh, car crash. But he didn't really change his comedy style as a result of the car crash. Uh, yeah, I guess not. His latest commercials, I think, are hilarious.
What is he in? I have no idea what the advertisement's for. It's some sort of insurance, I think, or something like this. But it's the it's the notion of certainty versus pretty sure. You've seen a set, right?
No. He's like, I'm pretty sure those mushrooms aren't poisonous. And then, like, you know, that everyone ends up dying. You know what I mean? Like, it's about it's.
Mo Bad wouldn't let me ask him to be a host. That is untrue. He co-wrote a cookbook with uh Nicole Taylor. Yeah. Really?
Yep. Let's get them both on. That's the end of a lifetime dream. You know, you're in Rock Center now. We can quit.
We can quit. Well, no, not until I make Jane and Juice for Snoop Dogg. And then I can quit. I literally said I would quit the business if someone would let that happen, and no one has let it happen, so I can't ever quit. Which sucks.
Will Feedham wrote in. Uh hey, Dave, uh, Nastasia, and distinguished guests. So, Joe, it's your since this is your first time. You're not really a guest. You're engineering this, but you're distinguished.
Sure. Thanks. Yeah. Now wait, we should talk. I know you don't want to be too much, but you're you're also like you you've done music stuff for a long time, too, right?
This is like sure have. Yeah. Anything, uh, anything you want to talk about? Anything fun? Anything fun.
I mean, I know for a fact. Give a fact to a lot of things. Okay. You ran a studio. You ran a studio that I used to walk past every single day.
I did. In East Village. Yeah. East Village Radio. Yeah.
Loved it. Yeah. Is that still there? No, it's gone. Dude, for any of you that like the East Village, even after it had totally gentrified, still had some cool stuff.
And one of those cool stuffs was you'd be walking down. Was it first or second? I don't remember. Uh, first and first. Yeah, but you walk, oh, right in your boilermaker.
You're walking up First Avenue and there would be a glass wall and like people doing radio. It was amazing. It was cool. Crazy guests in there. Like who?
I mean, just the top. I mean, Duran Duran. Oh. It's pretty big. Yeah.
So Duran Duran, during their that comeback album didn't do a lot of business, though, right? I mean, I love Duran Duran. No, I'm still a fan of the earlier work. Yeah, yeah. Come on.
What's what so what's your favorite Duran Durant? Are you more like view to a kill or more Rio or more hungry like a wolf? View to a kill is great. I love that track, especially because it was a James Bond film. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Reflex XXXX. It's a lonely child. Yeah. Yeah. Anastasia, you you've never talked to me about Duran Duran.
I've hung out with them in uh Costa Rica. Come on, really? How were they? Fine. Fine.
Fine. What are they drinking? Nobody was drinking at that time. It was during the It was during lunchtime. Uh well, so that's an interesting fact for you people.
Duran Duran, not day drinkers. No. Not day drinkers. What do people drink in Costa Rica? This was uh very long ago, 15 years ago.
Uh, I don't remember. Okay. We drank wine at night. I was at a at a festival with a band at someone I was dating. What's that drink in Costa Rica that drink that has nitroglycerin in it?
What? Is that real? Yeah. Uh John, get in, get your get your Google fingers going. All right.
Uh back to Will's question. Uh thanks for your years of work creating this awesome body of work. Well, I appreciate somebody. Somebody appreciates it. Uh, question Can I create fizzy water slash juice with nitrous oxide for my own use, not for sale.
So the legality of NO2 as a food additive is relevant. And also it's legal. That's what whipped cream charges are. Uh, do you have any advice about this? I do.
Um, nitrous oxide on its own is gross. It's gross. So, like, what I recommend you do is get your whipped cream maker and uh add uh just carbonate, quote unquote carbonate with nitrous. And it's when you swirl it in your mouth, it's sweet. It's weird and almost a chemically sweetness, right?
But what I do like is making mixtures of carbon dioxide and of nitrous. Or if you're doing coffee, because coffee is so bitter, the sweetness is like kind of mitigated a little bit. So you can carbonate with uh like coffee and nitrous. It's gonna get messy, but you can do it, right? Uh it's the same way that if you've ever made whipped cream by accident with carbon dioxide and it like curdles and gets nasty, it's terrible.
So you can do it. I used to have a rig that allowed me to precisely mix the amount of nitrous and carbon dioxide that uh that we would use um in our water. And I liked about 80% uh carbon dioxide and 20% nitrous, and that allowed us to up the gas level. So it's super lively, but not be as aggressive on your nose, because at those kind of carbonation levels, CO2 is extremely aggressive on your nose. Side note on this is that uh at the Starbucks at the Bazaar Mall in uh Mount Kisco, where it used to be called a Bazaar Mall, uh, they would tell the workers at Starbucks that they were using CO2 in their whipped cream machines so that they wouldn't huff the the thing, the whippets.
Dave, you made me do that once at the FCI. That's never true. Never is uh that is a hundred percent a lie because I have never no, it was someone else. Nastasia, I had exactly one rule. Yes, I used to have a lot of it.
I had exactly one rule and they don't huff the nitrous. And I have not work and you were not gonna do that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're thinking of somebody else. No, I'm not. I have not done nitrous since high school.
You didn't do it. I won't do it, and I won't recommend anyone else do it. Nope. I said I had never done it. And you were like, you can try it, and we close the door of our trash room.
Oh no, I didn't tell you to do it. If you ever let it, I would never tell somebody. You never said do it. Do it. Do you think that's a good thing?
I would never tell anyone to do that. And like it was the one rule that I was very serious about because um the problem at the FCI was we had a nitrous tank, and nitrous tanks are extremely dangerous. People die all the time with nitrous tanks because not because they OD, but because they asphyxiate. They don't take in enough oxygen. So uh people put masks on and then they they suffocate.
Or if you leave the tank on in a small room and you pass out because you're so high, then you die. That's that's what ends up ends up happening. Uh so anyway, so they told these Starbucks people that it was uh CO2 because I was like, I'm doing a demo. I need some nitrous, no one's selling it. Can you sell me some of your cartridges?
Oh, these aren't nitrous. I'm like, buddy, they're nitrous. He's like, These things are nitrous. I'm like, yeah. He's like, our manager tells us they're CO2.
I'm like, I do this for a living, buddy. They're not CO2. That's nitrous. He's like, whoa. Yeah, yeah.
So I changed that. I changed that fellow's life. Um, yeah, nitrous. Uh what was the other nitrous thing we had? We had the we weren't allowed to hoof the nitrous.
There was another nitrous, another nitrous. Did you find the Costa Rican Jink, John? So, you know, I don't know if it definitely has nitroglycerin glycerin in it, but there's definitely some results that come up. So cacique or guaroak is affectionately called the gringo killer by the natives. And it looks really kind of like greenish.
I'm sure anything that kills a gringo is is affectionately known everywhere, right? So, like uh so what's in it? Uh let's see. Um the history and some comments. Uh okay.
Liquid distilled from sugarcane juices. It has a slightly sweeter taste and comparable liquors, traditionally, 60 proof or 30% alcohol, although recently 70 proof and 80 proof versions are produced. Uh popular in Costa Rica. On many places, the word guaranteo can refer to almost any liquor. So just vodka.
That's how another way to describe it. Yep. But it looks very green. Looks kind of like nitroglycerine. Yeah.
Uh Kyle Zimmer wants the recipe for the sesame sling. That is A.K. Hada's drink uh from existing conditions. So we'll uh Kyle, we'll get in touch with uh AK, or you can reach out to uh AK Hada on Instagram, I believe. What's her what's her Instagram handle?
I forget. I think it's just that. AK underscore, I think. Anyway, H A D A is her last name. Reach out to her.
Uh in general, I like to have the people who came up with the spec give you the spec because that's just what I like to do. So reach out to her. That's her spec. AK Hada underscore a K H A D A underscore. Yeah, and her uh her the the tagline is half a gun, right?
I think she got rid of that. Oh. Oh, from years ago. Whatever. I don't keep track of things.
Poodle Bears writes in, oh, that's a great name. I want poodle bears at Instagram, but poodle bears already took it with a Z. Yep. So strong. Poodle bears.
By the way, check this out. Do you guys do this? When I'm having a particularly bad day with my work, which is pretty much every day. I think that's why we went to the haircut at the same time. Because that that was a real bad day with eBay.
And I think we both were just It was a terrible day. I'm all and I'm having a lot of problems with this Sears all thing I'm working on. Anyway, not like a real thing, a real problem. Like a problem that I need to solve. Anyway, so what I do is I then take two random words and Google them together.
Do you guys ever do this? So like yesterday, my Google, you know, I'm Googling micro Dog. And if you do micro dog, you get these teacup dogs. You've heard of these things? They're gross.
They're dogs, Nastasia, that weigh two pounds when they're fully grown. Yeah. They're gross. There's this outfit in Korea that sells them for six grand and then airships them to you. Here's what's messed up about it.
Besides everything, here's what's messed up. Not one mention in the entire website of like the temperament of these dogs. I mean, cause because they're a fashion accessory. They have nothing to do with, they have nothing to do with, like, you know, oh, is it a good dog? Is it protected?
Is it locked to protect? It's going to protect a rice grain? It weighs two pounds. But anyway, I don't know. That's kind of crazy.
Micro dog. I thought I could, I don't know what I thought I would get. What do you think you'd get if you Googled micro dog? Like a like a small crappy dog. Oh.
Yeah. I don't know what I thought I was going to get. You know what another one? Like, I I for the past couple of months, I try various mutilations of the word Donkey Kong of the phrase Donkey Kong to see what I get. You never get what you think.
There's not as many Donkey Kong things as you'd think. Okay. Yeah. If you type in Donkey Conejo, you get the Shrek musical from the Conejo players and various people who have played the donkey, some of which pretty close to blackface. Oh, God.
Yeah. Yeah, not good. Uh, no offense to the Conejo players. I have no idea who you are or what's going on. Please.
Uh Jay Carter 197. Wait, did I answer the question? I didn't answer Poodle Blair's question. I didn't even read it. Nope.
Fan of the podcast. Uh, I just heard you guys talking about uh radio being pre-programmed. This is what Nastasia hates. Joe, what are your thoughts on the pre-programming of radio? Yeah, you hate it.
I hate it. You know who hates it? I don't mind doing it, but you don't want to listen to that crap. I don't really want to listen to it. You know what?
You know who just learned that radio is entirely pre-programmed? Who's that? This one right here, Nastasia. I had no idea. It's serious radio killing it for you.
They pre-programmed all that. None of that's live? Yeah, it's a lot of fun. But it was, it was live, wasn't it? At one time, I think everything was live.
And robots come up with the playlist and blah, blah, blah. I don't know if the robots coming up with a playlist. Definitely producer hosts, you know, coming in, punching in stuff like that. When I go to Key Foods, I love hearing the uh the pre-program, the pre-programmed uh radio programs, they're hilarious because the edits are terrible. Like what I mean, like like uh people cutting off words and like you know, and the music comes in way too fast.
Either some type of algorithm that's like is told to like music plays, fades in here, and you're like, you didn't finish what you were just saying. All right, so let me ask you a question. Are you familiar with the old pseudo group Negative Land? Yeah, of course. Yeah.
So you know the Casey Case of Negative Land, like with with uh Poodles, the dog? I don't remember that. So Negative Land did it say his name again? It was uh uh I Ian Zanaka? Uh yeah, I don't I don't remember, but when I was in college, he was on East Flood Radio.
Oh, really? Yeah, he was cool. They so Casey Kasem, who was a very famous DJ and also the voice of Shaggy, I guess, in Scooby Doo. Really? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh he he died actually, what, two years ago or something? Pretty recently. Casey Kazum?
Yeah. No, more than like eight years ago. Really? Yeah, of course it's all two to me. Uh, but the uh, you know, at this age, this AJ, he died like yesterday, right?
Uh so Casey Case him had a very specific radio voice that you know my generation kind of grew up with. And he would do uh the top 10, Casey Case in the top 10, and he'd have this show. And he used to also do a show where he would do shout-outs like dedications to stuff. And uh he had an outtake where he just goes completely ballistic on his engineers. Oh yeah, because the dog that died or something?
Yeah, yeah. So somebody's right. Yeah, I remember the blooper reel. Yeah, so someone snuck the blooper reel out. It's it's it's the unforgettable fire, you two, and he's like, and I gotta do this thing about this dog named Snuggles, and it and this dog dies, and I'm going into this song, and then here's my favorite part about it.
He goes, I'm gonna curse a little bit, because it's a quote, so that's why it's okay. This is what he says about you too. He goes, and these guys are English, and who gives a shit? I'm like, wow, Casey. Everybody gives a shit about you two back then, and Irish.
You know what I mean? Like, I mean, like, can you imagine? Like, like that was, I'm sure the biggest insult if they ever heard it. English. Snuggles.
And then and then Negative Land put it out with like this weird, like, you know, meeny me music in the background. And then you'd hear Casey Caseon going, diddly shit, diddly shit, diddly shit, snuggles, snuggles, diddly shit. Because it feels like a cut up, like yeah, yeah. It was early, you know, it was back when like you know, your sampler only held like you know, five seconds and stuff. So they would just sit there and redo it and then do it like on a four-track.
They would do it over and over and over. And then at the very end of the song, they leave the whole rant in where he's like, God damn, gives me goddamned intro, the goddamn dog dying. And he's going, and it's like it's classic. If you like radio and you haven't heard it yet, check it out. Uh okay.
I heard you guys talking about radio being pre-programmed, and I thought of a local radio station here in Minneapolis. Everything is, as far as I can tell, public access, and the DJs are unpaid. Well, pay those DJs. Pay those DJs. Something.
Pizza, at least. They have weekly shows like uh Balkan Jamboree, Bop Street, and Foobar Omniverse, which sounds cooler, uh like a cooler show than it is. It does. Foobar, uh effed up beyond all recognition, right? Is that World War II or is that Vietnam?
Foobar. I think World War II. World War II. Yeah. Uh Foobar Omniverse that are archived on their iPhone app.
The DJs again are a volunteers and are appreciatively, appreciatively amateur. I mean, you appreciate that they're amateur. Okay. Are there any good like local access networks still in New York? Real ones.
Uh I would say WFMU. Is that the NYU station? No, it's the one out in Hoboken. Hoboken? Great station.
All right. Is that the one that plays oldies in the morning? They play all sorts of really good stuff. Is college radio still a thing? Like KCR, like Columbia?
I think it is. It's live. And is it like, you know, that's people who are young and and aren't getting paid. And presumably you have to be a student as well, part of the Columbia University or wherever. Didn't NYU used to have a good station way back in the day?
I think they did. I'm not 100% sure. Yeah. All right. All right.
So I think that's all we have time for this week, which by the way, uh, we don't know how this is going to work because we haven't negotiated everything, but in association with the Heritage Radio Network, everything's still love dove, lovey lovey, dovey dovey. But uh this has been our first recording from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center, the center of the earth, Nastasia's favorite place on the entire planet, right, Sas? One of, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
On the East Coast, I think. Right? Yeah. Really? Yeah.
All East Coast. Yeah. Huh. Huh. Nice.
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