Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New York City, Newstand Studios, joined as usual with not with John, because John's got uh he's uh rocking the COVID, so he's uh in quarantine in uh in Connecticut. Uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez is flying over the country as we speak from coast to coast on a delayed flight, so she will not be here. I believe Quinn is still under the weather. Uh we got Joe Hazen.
How you doing, Joe? Uh last resort. Hi, doing it. Good to see you on a Friday. Great to see you on a Friday.
The last last resort is my man Jackie Molecules, Jack Insley. Yeah. Yeah. So uh where where are you right now, Jack? I'm in LA.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, back in LA. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited to see you guys when you're here.
Oh, that's true. Well, let me let me introduce our our special guest, who's actually a special guest that I've known longer than most people that I know. Like pretty much like my parents and like my college roommates. Like, and that's it. And I guess my brother, but he was a baby.
Anyway, uh, Miley Carpenter is here. How are you doing, Miley? Hey, Dave. Hey. Um, so uh before so the way this works, Miley, because I'm expecting that you've never had to deal with this before.
I can't believe it's been like 12 years of doing this. Well, I mean, like, no, me, yes, but I mean like this actual format. But like we've been doing this for 12 years, and you've never been on, which is kind of ridiculous. So, what we're what we are gonna do is we're just gonna, usually it's a larger crew because not everyone is either sick or like being tossed over the over the continent. But um, we're gonna just shoot the breeze over, you know, what happens.
So, but just to give it an idea of kind of where so your current title is uh overlord of Hearst Lifestyle Magazines, right? No, no, no. Right? No? I thought it was like, no?
It's like you run Food Network magazine, which you launched. Yes. Yeah. And you start your founding editor in chief, I believe is the title. Yeah, yeah.
And then you're also creative director for No, no, no, not great. Oh, well, what editorial directorial director. What's the difference between I don't know how these stuff is? Well, your other sister in law is a creative director. She's a creative director for HG TV magazine.
Yeah. So how's that? How's that being your your sister's boss? Yeah, I'm not we worked it out. Really?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Uh we're gonna get into all that later. But that's kind of uh, you know, but you've also been a food editor and a reporter, and you know, you went to culinary school.
We'll get we'll get into all that later. So uh anyone have any interesting food crap from the past week? Oh, and if you're listening live, which is unlikely because it's not our normal time, you can call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-4101507. Oh, and the reason Amila and I know each other uh so long is that she's my sister-in-law, just putting that out there.
Uh yeah. So, you know, we've known each other since college days. Um, what about you, Jack? You got anything for me? So I've been eating nothing but saltines and bananas and toast, as you can probably guess why.
Um stomach issues. Wait, gastro. Oh, but wait, that that that solves stomach issues? Yeah. Well, I mean, that's what they tell you to do, you know.
The what do they call it? The brat diet. Um, just to sort of like wait, who's a brat? Like, to me, a brat diet is all sausages. Bananas, rice, applesauce, toast is what it stands for.
It's terrible. Um Who came up with who came up with this? Uh uh a miserable person. Um but like in other words, like, did a doctor tell you to do this, or is this like some internet thing? No, no, no, doctor.
A doctor told you to. Yeah. No. I don't know your doctor. Okay.
So I can say whatever I like about them. Please, please. Yeah. Most doctors don't know squat about nutrition or diets. You know, just because you go to medical school doesn't mean you know about, you know what I mean?
I went to art school. I would not take my suggestion on how to properly paint uh, you know, a faux Rembrandt. I wouldn't. You know why? Not a good painter.
You know what I mean? Uh I wouldn't take my suggestions on uh how to draw the human figure. I would ask my wife, because she's great at it. Me, I suck. Although I am an MFA.
And I think doctors are the same thing. They tell you things, they don't necessarily know what they're talking about just because they're a doctor. You know what I mean? I'm not saying that your person isn't super good at this particular niche thing that is actually a whole field of study unto itself for a whole lifetime. But uh, you know, maybe they're not.
I mean, it's clearly making you miserable. Like, I how much faster are you gonna get better if you're not miserable? Does it make you feel better eating all of these bananas? I mean, I'm sure it doesn't make your toilet feel better. No, I'm on your side here.
I'm I'm yeah, it's it's it's bad. Yeah, yeah. Damn, I'm sure the saltines are ripping your mouth up, huh? Terrible. I love like a couple saltines.
Miley, you like a saltine, right? I love a saltine. Yeah. Because like a couple of chews of that like and like all gum in your mouth and your your mouth cut up and the salt. I mean, uh, please tell me you're getting the ones with the salt on top.
Please tell me you're getting the ones with the salt on top. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Do you know uh the local supermarket, which is called the Fine Fair, which is misnamed, right? Uh, they uh it's fine, actually, whatever. Uh they once had them on sale, but they had the entire like aisle was the unsalted ones.
Who wants those? No. Who wants them? Unless you actually have a problem, you want the salt. That's just my feeling.
Anyway, uh you eat like maybe like you're watching something, I can take a half a sleeve of saltines down. If I have cheese, I could take down infinity saltines. That's the old McSorle's. Mile, you ever go to mix Orleans? Yeah.
You have it this been a while. You have the cheese plate? No. It's a sleeve of saltines, like like uh craft style, like block, white, sharp cheddar, onions and propass, like sliced onions, which Jennifer, my wife hates. You don't mind raw on you, though, right?
No. Yeah. And uh, we each have our kryptonite, we just have our food kryptonite. What's yours? Uh melanite.
Yeah. You know, your mint and uh Jen's raw onions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh anyway, so uh yeah, I could take down half sleeve easy, but then if it's all you're freaking eating for starch, my man, I mean, no, wrong. You're like, I'm gonna put a banana on it, and then it's okay. No, it's not. No, it's not. How long do you have to do this crap?
And who poisoned you if this happened? Who poisoned you? Sort of like a it's like a control experiment. It's kind of like what, you know, right? I'm I'm pretty much at the end of my rope, though, to be honest with you.
You know, and they're not exactly accurate, but you know you can just go get like a blood test, right? And they'll test you to see what you're actually freaking. Uh what's it called too? Um, that's what I'm looking for. Sensitive.
No, it doesn't always show right. But they can do blood tests for a lot of allergies. And they can do arm tests for allergens. They can do all these tests for things that you're allergic to. Whatever, man.
Good luck with it. How long do you gotta be on this? I'm giving up soon. Sweet. How do you have since you're in LA?
Well, I guess they don't grow bananas there. Have you had any interesting bananas or is it all Cavendish? You're like, not only not only am I going to only eat bananas, it's gonna be strictly monoculture bananas. Is that part of the diet? It has to be monoculture.
It has to be monoculture, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Western medicine for you, huh?
Joy. So wait, so let me get this one more time. I apologize. It's bananas, saltines. I always get the letters wrong.
I think it's like bread and avocado. I can't remember what that is. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, I like bee bread. If you put bread and avocado in it, you're getting close as long as you can salt and pepper that.
It smells brat. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Miley's got a better one for you. Yeah.
What should R be? Price is what they say. It's like blend, right, right? You need uh something in there that uh you need something that's crunchy but not dry. Like some sort of like a lettuce or a vegetable in there.
It's something that is crunchy but not dry. That one of the things that's missing. It also seems like there's no acid. Like Jean-Georges could not make a diet out of this. Like Jean-George, you know, always always like some acid in his cuisine.
You know what I mean? Uh like uh, yeah. What would you put in this crunchy, Miley? That you think would be not what'd you say, wet and crunchy? But not dr not saltine crunchy.
Something that's not gonna dry you out, but has crunched. Uh yeah, but like radish is a lot. If uh if the only thing you're eating that's crunchy and moist is a radish, that's a lot. Oh god. Oh my god.
They're like, ooh, are you a fan of the raw starch? You know what I like? A lot of raw starch. You know what I mean? That's why I don't like uh pea shoots.
Because to me, they taste too starchy unless they're cooked. You know what I mean? I don't like raw starch. My mom used to eat raw potatoes when she was prepping in the kitchen. Like, not like a a boat ton of them, but like she'd be like, and I was like, Ma.
She's like, try it. I'm like, Ma, that sucks. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like an under-ripe apple.
You know how when you bite into an underripe apple is too starchy? This is why, by the way, when you buy early season apples at the farmer's market, the early season apples, like they get soft almost instantly when they come off the tree if they're ripe. So they pick them viciously underripe. So they're never hyper exciting, early season apples, but like they don't even have a chance to be exciting when they're being picked as just like starch orbs. You know?
I guess you can cook them and dump acid on them. In fact, that's why a lot of those early apples like were preserved, so you could have early pie. You know what I mean? Early pie. Remember that time I made a pie with mint in it, and you came over and you called it toothpaste pie, and then nobody wanted to try it because you called it toothpaste pie.
I mean, it was. Well, only because you hate mint. All right. Uh well, Milo, you got any interesting food crap from this week? Um, let's see.
I hate at the US Open last night. So crown shy chicken tenders. How were they? What are your thoughts on the tender? Well, when they make it, it's great.
But it's in like in general, the tender as an item. The chicken tender as an item. I mean, for kids, it's great. Yeah. I like a dark meat, but yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh so like for some reason, we did it for a while at existing conditions, and it's happened at a bunch of other places. I've seen like family meal, because I guess you can buy just sacks and sacks of chicken tenders, right? So, pre-breaded chicken tenders. So, um, you know, it like if you have it more than twice a week for staff meal, people revolt. They're like, no more tendies.
No more tendies. You know what I mean? People freak out. Like for a game? No, no, I mean like pre- yeah, pre-ship.
Oh, for game, yeah. Uh, tater tots are. Well, okay. Where are you with tater tots? Because we've done this on the show before.
So in the Pantheon of cooked potatoes. Latkas or tots? Tots. Okay. Uh, okay.
How bad is an undersalted tot? It's the worst, right? Inedible. Inedible. Right.
So you're saying like properly salted. We're talking properly salted. Okay. Properly crunchy on the outside. Okay.
So tot versus chip. American chip. Tot. I mean, tots, I don't know what it is. Tots over fries.
Tots over fries? Yeah. Tots over mashed potatoes all the time? Yes. Oh, okay.
Tots over hash browns. Yes. Tots over home fries. Yes. Tots over baked potato.
Yes. Stuffed potato skins. Yes, yes. So tots are the pinnacle for you of cooked potato technology. Yes.
All right. What about like massive quantities of sauce and whatnot, like poutine tots and like just a just a tot. Just a tot. And what is your sauce of choice? Are you a ruiner?
We call in our family we call ketchup ruiner, even though it's a big thing. I like a ruiner or the Marie's calendar Chipotle Ranch. Wow, that's a brand call. I've never had it. That's my favorite dip.
You're talking about the pie lady, Marie calendar. Or no, no, not Marie calendars. It's just Marie's. That's called Marie's. Oh.
I gave it. Okay, but I'm like, Pile brands are calendars. No, no, no, it's just called Marie's. It's in the refrigerator section. So uh so uh no one cares about this, but I'm gonna tell you anything.
So, you know, Marie Calendar started in California as a I believe in California, I think it was California, as a pie making business, right? And basically put out of business. My favorite pie person, Monroe Boston Strauss, was hired by uh uh Ray Croc or Roy Kroc. What is it? What which was the McDonald's croc.
Anyway, McDonald's croc divorced his original wife, was a raging alcoholic, married uh another person whose name was something who wanted to start a pie company. They started a pie company under the aegis of McDonald's. They had McDonald's behind them at the time in the I want to say late 60s, mid to late 60s. And my man, Monroe Boston Strauss was their pie guy. But I can't find anyone that's eaten it there.
And they were put out by people like Marie Calendars, who just had a better business structure. Wow. But I don't think she has brick and mortar anymore, right? She I don't know. I know I've never had a few.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, she's dropped a calendar because no one understands. Oh, I'm not gonna have a ranch dressing from a pie lady. You know? The hell.
Um, yeah, okay. So let's talk a little bit about this uh let's talk a little bit about this uh I've never been to a tennis game. Yeah, it was my first time. Really? But it was a really good one.
And while we were eating the tenders and the tots, a guy super glued his feet to the floor, like his bare feet in protest. Uh of what? Floors? Was he protesting floors? Yeah, I mean, what could he be protesting?
Tennis? No, uh, he was there. I d he was protesting fossil fuels. Now I'm all for protest of any kind. Not really, but I mean, like, I'm for protests sometimes, right?
Why is this a protest for that? Is it just because they're gonna ask him why are you glued to the floor? Well, he successfully paused the match for like 50 minutes. So now everyone's talking about what happened. Right.
So they were talking about what you know, what his cause was, I suppose. I guess. I guess that's his idea, right? Right. It's a lot of people.
But it's not like a direct thing like chaining yourself to a tree or like not that I can tell. Or like, you know, yeah. You know, it's not directly. It's just the venue, you know, good venue. Where a lot of people make it.
Make some noise. Literally make some noise. They wanted everyone to be quiet for the match, because they're like, shut up, everybody. And they kept screaming. Oh, and then they were like, move, and he's like, I can't.
Yeah, three. So there were three, like two of them got sort of walked out, and he remained because his feet floor. But my question is no one's writing about how they got his feet off the floor. Like how like what did they do to remove his feet from the super glue, I imagine. Well, so if it's super glue, super glue is a sinoacrolet.
Okay. And it binds So assuming it was barefoot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Sino cynoacolate bonds skin extremely well.
So for you know, anyone that's ever like I used to do a lot of model building, and you know, you use it because you know, yeah, instead of stitches. Yeah, so like they yeah, they use that now, right? I mean, they don't use the same grade on the on models, but like, you know, they make this what's cool. Well, what's interesting about you use super glue, right, Miley? Yeah, you can't, yeah.
You know, zip kicker? Zip kicker, no. Yeah, okay. So, like what they do is they have these gel-based, uh, so the old, old school, like when I was a kid, super glues, sinoacryl glues, they had to be in very, very small dots because if it had any thickness to it at all, the joints would rupture because they were very brittle. The newer ones that are kind of jelly, more of a gel with a thicker consistency, can bridge larger gaps and they're stronger.
And they also take longer to set, right? Because they're in bigger things. But they make this stuff, which was like, you know, in the 90s was like a dream when I was building stuff like in sculpture, is you just put you just goop super glue all over it. It doesn't matter, you can go overboard, right? And you put the two things together, and then you go shh with a spray bottle, and it sets like that.
Like that. And so like, you know. What's in the spray bottle? I don't remember what's in the spray bottle, to be honest. But it's like, and so more than 20 times, you've gone and your finger had glue on it and it's glued to whatever it is you're holding, and you're like, okay, so how'd you get it off?
There are two ways to there are several ways to do it. One, if you have a lot of time, is you just stick your hand in hot water, it'll soften up, your skin will soften up, it'll soften up a little bit and it'll come off, right? I'm assuming they didn't do that because how the heck can you do that? They could have gone and gotten like an acetone, like acetone and some other solvents will eventually kind of melt it off. Or your skin on your toes, on your feet is pretty thick.
They could have just like taken a paint scraper and just been like shunka shunka shunka shunka shunk. Like does the NYPD keep the solvent around? You know, why would they why would they have that? I mean, uh I mean, like, I don't know. I I have it in my house, but I I don't know what they have in uh, you know, where do they play that?
Out by Sha, whatever they call Shayne now in Queens, whatever, wherever the opening Arthur Ash Stadium. Yeah, yeah. I saw him speak once in my high school. Yeah, yeah, back when he was alive. Yeah, yeah.
Uh good speaker, interesting guy. Yeah, yeah, back when he was alive, obviously. Anyway, um, so uh I don't trust security and or NYPD to be friendly in the way they removed this man's feet from the ground. So I'm assuming they didn't take the most gentle tack. I don't know.
I mean, I want the story. I mean why is no one covering this? I mean, I don't know, but like, I mean, like, you know what they have right there is they obviously have like paint scrapers and like I bet you they got like a razor blade scraper. Like you would use for a window. Oh my god.
Because you know that they have to scrape horrible things off of those seats. You know what I mean? And off of every surface in that place. So you know that the maintenance people have those scraper blades that are like foot wide, not you know, human foot wide, you know, not long. I'm sure they went the, you know, heel first.
If you get the heel up, I mean, if this gentleman was hopefully this gentleman has decent arches, in which case, you know, you're only stuck at like really a couple points. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But if this was a flat footed gentleman, toast! That's also there's not much protection on the that's why that part of your foot is so ticklish because you're like, why is there no protection there? Because it's not really supposed to be hitting the ground.
You know what I mean? Unless unless this person spent weeks toughening themselves up by running on gravel without shoes. You know, but who does that? Who does that these days? I I didn't know it was a thing.
What running on gravel? No, super gluing your feet to the floor. Oh, oh, uh oh, yeah. Well, look, look, the person didn't wake up in the morning and be like, eh, I'm gonna super glue my feet to the floor. I'm sure they knew they were gonna do it in advance, you know?
Yeah. Anyway. And make for a good match. If only we knew someone in the media industry who had a bunch of people who reported uh for them and to them who could ask someone to report this story. Do we know anyone like that, Miley?
You know. I mean, you were eating tenders. The pioneer woman's not gonna cover it. Um, HG, not so much. Food network.
Yeah, no. Not even on the not even on the like. What about like the letter to the editor? We don't even run those anymore. Really?
No. Why? Letters to the editor, because by the time they run their own. I didn't mean that. I meant letter from the editor.
Oh, like I need to find out. Okay, I'll get right on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right, all right.
Uh okay, did I have anything interesting food wise last week? No. That's actually not true. I did a lot. But none of it's very interesting.
I rebuilt my sifter. By the way, Wiley. So another thing, Wiley Dufrain was on the show a while ago. Uh, you know, uh, WD50, Alder, Dews Donuts, um, uh Stretch Pizza. Anyway, uh, they're also married.
So this is like a lot of food people in the family. So he calls me, right? By the way, Miley Carpenter has in her possession how many pizza ovens? Oh, I mean, I think six at this point. Six, yeah.
Yeah. So for her birthday, we all went to Pennsylvania. I I didn't mention this part of it. We all went to Pennsylvania. I talked about it last week.
Beautiful house, right? Yeah, it was. Dingman's Ferry. Yeah. She's like, we weren't sure whether the grill was gonna work out or not.
So she's like, I got a couple pizza ovens in my car. You want you want to use one? I'm like, you have pizza ovens in your car? She's like, where am I gonna put them? I like every inch of my house is pizza ovens.
That's true. It was the new Uni Electric. Yeah, he likes it. All right. Uh well, okay, you might as well get this out of the way now.
So now you know what? We'll get to it later. Like I think what was it? No, no, I was gonna say, like, so uh, like someone in our in our family like asked you to autograph a pizza book, and we're like, what pizza book? And it turns out that you're out on national TV hawking Food Network's pizza book, which has nothing to do for the past since the pandemic, Miley's house has been like pizza Armageddon, like pizza ovens, pizza books, all the pizza, every pizza.
And then out of the blue, Miley's hawking a pizza book. It's not Miley's. I'm like, Good morning, America. Yeah. Talking about pizza.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They called me Chef. Miley's like, his head's exploding. Yeah, uh read the book, and uh, it is not like it's not like Wiley's. No, it's not a technical book.
Although, like, okay, listen, so like you're like so. Miley has a couple of major skills. We're gonna get to them uh, you know, in in uh in depth. But uh one of them is that okay, so well, I guess we'll start before we get into pizza. I'll read your little your little thing.
This is like why I'm assuming you wrote this. This sounds like this sounds like something you would actually write, right? Did you actually write right? So uh uh basically, like Miley is the best at figuring out how to get the most people, and especially whatever her audience is, doesn't matter what her audience is. You tell her what the audience is, and she will like you could, but like I always wanted to be the guy that they woke up in the middle of the night to ask for like you know, a New York Post title.
You could shake Miley awake and be like, we have 13 minutes, we need who's the audience? You know what I mean? Boom. So it's like, you know, yeah. So she writes this uh thing, and then she also is a genius at knowing that you're gonna be pissed, that someone's gonna be pissed.
So she goes here. We know many of you have strong pizza POV, and we're here for you. In other words, like, hey, I get it. You know what I mean? Like, you're gonna disagree with half the stuff we say no matter what we say.
And so, F on you. And she cuts it off. You know what I mean? And so she's always been amazing at that. In fact, when the Museum of Food and Drink was starting, uh, I wrote up a bunch of stuff for you know, some uh ideas for exhibits, some of which we've done.
And uh I handed it to Miley. My Miley was like, boring. And then she like punched it all up, and like, you know, I mean, it took a while, but I mean you punch it up incredible. So if you ever need something, well, you can't use her because you know, she's above whoever, whatever you are, she probably above your pay grade. But if you if you if you ever need something like seriously punched up, she's the one uh she's the one to punch up.
But I will take issue with a couple of things. The fourth, literally fourth recipe in this book is a Hawaiian pizza. So, what is your thoughts on Hawaiian pizza? Well, I we were just talking about this because Wiley's talking about putting pineapple on a pizza for an upcoming event. It's just too much.
It's too much people, it's too angering. It just angers too many people. Well, I mean, that's Wiley doesn't mind that. Yeah. Obviously.
Um, why? You hate it? I don't care. I'm fine. I don't care.
To me, a flavor is a flavor. But like this is like a vehicle for whatever you like to put on top. But Wiley and Dave Chang almost punched me once because I said I liked wasabi mashed potatoes, even though they were passe. I thought they think they tasted good and they almost decked me. You know what I mean?
It's like I mean And people just like to argue about it. There's nothing wrong with it. Ah, all right. Plus, you know, Hawaii, we should be kind. You actually have to talk nicely about the pineapple.
The book was before that, though. Don't try to horn in. The book was written before that. No one publishes that fast either. You can't trash uh pineapple pizza anymore.
Oh, that's a good point. I hadn't even thought of it. All right, all right. Well, uh, so given the fact that you're now a bad person, Jack, if you uh say something negative about the pineapple pizza, what are your thoughts? Rate it on a scale of one to barefoot merlot.
I don't like that. Uh four or three and a half. Okay, so I you have okay, you come to a party, there are slices of pineapple pizza, and there are glasses of barefoot Merlot, and you have to take one. Oh, I mean, I'll have one of each. I just won't be happy about it.
Smoking like a true party goer. Uh, what about you, Joe? What are your pineapple pizza thoughts? No go for me. No.
There are two recipes for pineapple pizza in this book. Sorry. One of which uses deli ham. The other which specifies Canadian bacons and is more of a sheet pizza. Yeah.
So what are your thoughts on Canadian bacon versus uh versus uh what's it called? Deli ham for a for this. No spam. You didn't want to go full spam? Too salty.
Spam too salty. I like spam. The whole point of the book is to put whatever you want on your pizza. Yes, that is the point of the list. So uh that leaves me to another question.
So this is a food network magazine book. Yeah. Right. Uh so I think a lot of people don't have any kind of understanding about the food network versus the food network magazine and the food network stars and how this weird constellation of stuff kind of comes together. So, like for instance, this one, like this is basically built on recipes from your in-house experts, not from the stars, right?
Right. Well, so Food Network has an amazing kitchen. Like you can see it. You can walk by it now. You know, their headquarters are on 19th and um park, and you can walk by and watch them work.
It's very cool. Um, and that's the kitchen for the whole network. So they produced food for the shows there, they shoot some things there, and our team is there, so they're producing all the food for the magazine. So the magazine's just, you know, a print manifestation of the brand. That's that's the simplified version of it.
So the stars, you know, we run recipes from the talent, but there's a also a test kitchen with chefs in it who you don't know. Well, you know, you know them, but people don't know them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, who produce the recipes for this? But that's the great irony of me hawking this book is that I didn't develop any of these pizza recipes at all.
Um, we just put the book together, you know. So I'm out there acting like a pizza expert. But um, but they are for sure the the, you know, the kitchen, they're they're pizza experts. Right. And obviously they're shooting at like a different group of people than the people who buy the modernist pizza.
Well, yeah, exactly. We were looking at what's in the market. A lot of them are kind of geeky, and that's great. There's a market for that. But if you just love making pizza and you don't want to, if you don't want to study dough hydration and you just kind of want to be handed the recipes, you know.
Yeah, yeah. So uh, okay, so it's what's interesting, also is like the there are similar recipes with different takes. So that's why I can you could tell they're obviously different people. And some of them, I did a little research, go back to way earlier food network recipes, like you know, food network testing recipes back from like 2014, 2012. So you have a thin crust pizza that is double baked in there.
And I think that stretches back to an old food network style of recipe from like 2014 or 2013 or something like that. Yeah. So you're pouring on a yeah. So now, as the person who's, you know, imprimatur is on it, like, has anyone ever handed you a recipe for something like this? Because this is not your first book rodeo at all, like where you're like, no, my recipe's better.
I notice when they shot the carrots, they did your carrots and not the carrots that were in the recipe. I notice the carrot recipes. You mean my personal recipe? It looks the carrots on the carrot pizza look like Miley Carpenter carrots and not like the carrots in the recipe. Did you look at it and be like, no, make the carrots this way?
Because I don't know if people know this, but Miley Carpenter's roasted carrot recipe is the recipe to beat. I'd have to find it. I didn't know you thought that way about my carrots. Everyone loves your carrots. No, no.
Don't you have to ask if people like when you want to tell them how you make your carrot? I know you're like, it's simple, whatever. How do you make your carrots? What do you think? The same way you roast it.
I mean, yeah, why are your carrots so good? Is it you buy good carrots? Good olive oil. I don't know. I don't know.
I didn't know you loved them. I love Miley's carrots. You know, so Miley is the Miley is the like uh brings out the roasted uh carrots with the tiny little nubbin on the end. So you can you could theory because she brings it out with the appetizer plate sometimes. Yeah, it's true.
I like that. I like the I like the roasted carrot with the appetizer plate. Where's the carrot pizza? Yeah, look, that is clearly a Miley Carpenter styled carrot and not what see, like that's on a puff pastry. See, there are pizza people who would have take issue with all kinds of things in there.
Yeah, but that's why at the very beginning you tell them to shut up in a very nice way. You're like, you need to kind of shut up. You know what I mean? A little bit. You need to shut up a little bit.
Uh let's talk about the binder. I love this. Uh I love the spiral. Lay flat binding, spiral bound. Yeah, just put in a kitchen.
You should do it. Uh yeah, I don't think liquid intelligence would work as a spiral bound. And I don't I think my editor's already ready to kill me. Like, like you don't want to introduce that. I don't want to.
So yeah, I know I'm real late, but uh how about uh spiral? How about spiral? All right. So uh a little bit about you. You started out, right?
When I knew you in college, you were like straight journalism. And you worked, I think while you were in college for uh the Washington Post at Berlin or was that right after? Yeah. Uh Washington Post, you've worked for the Arizona Republic. After college, you worked for the Wilmington Star and the and the Raleigh News News and Observer.
Like, you know, newsroomy stuff. Yeah, newsroom, yeah. Newsroomy. And so uh, and you always had a very, very clear, like uh, well, you want to explain like church and state in in like news talk and I could yeah, there's I have a fruit cake story about that. Yeah, oh my god, yeah, go for it.
Cla Claxton, right? How did you remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the terrifying part of knowing Dave. You remember everything.
Uh yeah, my first newspaper job, I was uh we were doing like a mock or we were making a mockery of um fruit cake and just relentless, just going to town on it. And the image we shot was like a woman dressed up like a grandma with a chainsaw going into a fruit cake. And I bought a Claxton fruit cake for that image, and I got the nastiest note from the Claxton people saying, How dare you? You, you know, we sent you that fruitcake. I had actually gone, they did send us stuff, but I went and bought the fruitcake that we used in that image so that I could say to them, I didn't touch your free fruit cake.
We bought the fruitcake to make fun of it. So like uh I've like it's it's always been the the case, you've always done everything um very old school, unimpeachably, which is kind of like an interesting take. Yeah, but it's like a new world now, you know? Yeah, it's so different now. Like we're you have to partner with advertisers, people consumers are used to it, they're used to watching reality TV and having people hold up products and say, you know, it's not like it used to be.
Oh, back in the when we started the magazine, we would we'd say, Oh my gosh, you can't put a waffle recipe next to a an ego ad. Like we would never do that. Now we're like, we would help Ego and make a recipe using the egos. Right, right. And so that gets that's what I'm kind of curious about.
So another little quick aside. So Miley decided to go into, well, first of all, just uh a another aside aside is that if you really want something to be successful, you should get Miley involved. I'll give you like, she's always been able to do like pull off crazy stuff. I'll give you a quick example. She shows up in New York.
She decides to move to magazines. She gets a job. A crazy job. You want to describe FYI? Like this job doesn't exist.
By the way, by the way, people, this is what magazines used to be like. So for those of you that are like younger in the industry and want to know profligate spending, like here's what it used to be like. Unbelievable. I was just telling my kids about this last night. You could never do this now.
But yeah, we worked in the Time Inc. building. I had a corner office with a couch in it, unlimited soda, unlimited snack. And you were like 23 or 24. I was 25, maybe?
What was it? Yeah, yeah, 25. Yeah. Yeah, just not. And all the magazines would have like if you stayed, if you stayed till seven, you'd get a car service home.
There were just like cars lined up outside, and you could just walk out the building and get in a car to take you home. So of course you work till seven. Umiley had this job, which doesn't exist anymore. So Time Inc. had that whole time life building.
They had 8 billion magazines. Yeah, it was just the heyday. It was so great. Yeah, like Modern Farmer, all these things. And Modern Farmer.
That's the one you remember. Come on. Also Sports Illustrated. Okay. Sports Illustrated Time.
And Modern Farmer. Yeah. Fortune. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fortune.
Anyway, so like, but what they had was this, they they had this program which was crazy. They had their own in-house magazine. Yeah, it's called FYI. Yeah. And it only went to Time Inc.
people. It was printed though. Yeah. Yeah. And it only went to Time Inc.
people, but that was like a zillion people back then. Like your circulation was bigger than some like normal magazines. Yeah. And what was it, monthly? No, it's bi-weekly.
Miley, yeah, that means every two weeks, right? I hate that word. And anyway, so like, but what they did is it was a very small staff, but this was like the feeder. Like if you Miley became the editor of this, you know, editor in chief of this like in-house magazine, but you had access to like everybody. And we made fun of everyone.
Oh my gosh, we got called in all the time for stuff we were doing. We your our job was to make it funny. Yeah. So we just, I mean, which you did. They were hilarious.
Um but people get banned from the city. We thought they were. I'll never forget. For April Fools once, we uh we dressed up my sister as a monkey and told everyone when they were coming to the cafeteria that there was a new time ink monkey. He was the new mascot.
And what did they think of it? And we had all these high-level executives giving us quotes saying, I don't know if a monkey sends the right message. So anyway, so this is what the job, like this used to be a job you could, well, one person could get. You got it. You know what I mean?
Um, so anyway, so she moves to New York to have this job, right? And she shows up at a she decides she's gonna stay in our apartment. Like we have a crappy one bedroom with you know an extra futon and no light. So she's gonna stay with us for a week or two while she gets her her footing. By the way, I'm in grad school, my wife's in grad school.
Miley is like an early riser, right? So my wife's schedule is like 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. in architecture school. My schedule is like noon to 6 a.m.
And so like I'm going to bed right when Miley's getting up. Miley is out for the day by the time Jen is up and around. So we basically didn't see each other. However, somehow every day there were fresh cookies baked. Every day I would wake up and there would be fresh cookies.
And so my wife is uh, you know, starts hiding the cookies from me because I'm just eating unconscionable amounts of cookies. Like, you know, I'm getting home at 6 a.m. and you know, eating cookies, waking up getting cookies. So she starts my she starts, she so throws them in the freezer. And so one day, I think it's on a Friday, whatever, when we're all actually together, they both see me, open the freezer, pull out the cookie and just start eating it directly from the freezer.
And Jen's like, what the hell? And what do I say? Them's good frozen. Yeah, and we still use it. We still use them.
Them's our good frozen. Them's are good frozen. I like a frozen cookie. But anyway, that's not even the point of the story. So for any of you who have ever been in a bad housing market before, right?
Like New York, San Francisco, whatever. Miley looks for an apartment for two days. Two days, and finds a giant three-bedroom with like a lot of light, right on a block with a subway for less money than I'm paying for my school subsidized one-bedroom hellhole with half of a window on the second floor. What the hell? Like, and you've always been able to like paid nothing for that thing.
I don't know. You've always been able to do this kind of stuff. Yeah. Anyway, so you're at FYI and you decide uh actually that you're interested in food writing, you go to FCI. Yeah.
Yeah. You know what I remember from FCI? Uh $25 dinners. Oh, that was very good. Yeah.
No, uh, I remember you taught me that when I am cleaning squid to turn them inside out. Oh, yeah, because they curl in on themselves and hold the stuffing in. Yeah. That's you know, I didn't even have to pay all the money. That's a good pro tip.
Yeah, yeah. No, you just want to work there instead. Yeah. And then you know what? I don't think I ever once did stuffed squid there.
So I never was able to Have you ever used that trick? Yeah. It's a good trick. Yeah. But you know, Booker likes his squid in ring format.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Can't help you there. So for any of you, any of you folk out there want your squid to be nice. Pop those suckers inside out before you stuff them.
Joe, you like a stuffed squid? Never had a stuffed squid. Oh, it's good. Sorry for this. What what kind of what kind of uh force did you put into that?
I don't even remember. Must have been, I don't know. Probably a single knowing of French culinary people is probably like a seafood mousseline or something like this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. No one's eating that anymore, let's be honest. Yeah. Anyway. So then you go out to San Francisco, and then you still had your you still had your hard reporter's hat on because you so she's in the food world in San Francisco, right?
And she's like, uh, this is some bull crap because a lot of people didn't take food journalism seriously and didn't take really journalism seriously. So you wrote this excoriating article on the food critic out there. It's true. And wanted James Beard for it. It's true.
You want a James Beard award for it? Well, it was good. I left. You were happy to get run out of time. Came there, did the story, and then left, came back to New York.
Yeah, yeah. And you're happy to be back, and you never, you know, that's it. Yeah, yeah, that was it. That's it. All right.
Uh, and then, you know, from there, launched uh, you know, Rachel Ray, which was at the time the most successful magazine launch until you launched Food Network magazine, which was like the most successful, I don't know whether magazine or food magazine, but the most successful launch like ever. And this was when magazines were already on theirone was like, magazines are dead. And you're like, how about I launch the biggest magazine of all time? Well, we launched what the day I think Lehman Brothers went down. It was like everyone's like, oh, bad timing.
Yeah, but turned out to be good timing. Everyone was staying home and cooking. There you go. Yeah. But anyway, so like, yeah, so what's that like to have the most successful launch.
When everyone tells you your business sucks? When everyone tells you your business sucks, and then you have the best. I knew I knew it was gonna be okay. I just knew it. I knew Food Network was a big enough brand.
It's it's hard now. I mean, because we're grappling with the whole industry is just, you know, all kinds of crazy things are happening. So that's that's the struggle now. Back then I knew it was gonna be it was gonna take off. Yeah.
Uh well, so what I'm interested in is so you started in like actual newspapers back when people would have newspapers that they would read, right? Yep, yeah. And magazines, print and digital, like into currently what's happening now. And you know, still print books and so your entire career people have been pitching to you in one way or another. So at the beginning, it's people pitching their ideas for you to write about, then it's reporters pitching to you for stories for you to do.
And now I'm assuming it's whole magazine teams pitching like magazine concepts to you, and and even people pitching whole like I want to start a new magazine to you. So your whole life you've been pitched to. And one of the things I always thought was funny or like interesting to hear about was kind of since you receive so many pitches, and I'm sure a lot of people who are listening are interested in pitching things to other people. Like what is terrible? And first of all, has it changed at all?
Like what makes a terrible pitch versus not? Like, has pitching changed over the past, you know, 25 years or so? And if not, like what are some things that people might not know really tick you off when you're getting pitched, or what's good? Like what do you like? I mean, you often get pitched uh content that you the person clearly doesn't know your brand or hasn't read your stuff.
So they don't even have the sense of the tone, you know. But I think the dumbest pitch, which would always get pitched all the time, was like, let's do a sidebar playlist, like in print. Like you can't tap anything, nothing plays. Like it's the dumbest, it's the dumbest idea. That and the other thing I hate is like like the A to Z of what you'll see it everywhere.
Magazine packages is like, oh, let's do like a you know, whatever handbook from A to Z. Like, I'm never looking for a tip that starts with an X, you know, like that's not it's like unless you're a xerographer. Yeah, it's a packaging conceit, but it's not actually helpful to anybody. So you also hate false ranges. Like there's stuff that can hate.
You want to explain what a false range is for those that you'll see it now. Now I hope you see it everywhere and it'll drive you crazy too. You gotta stop it. It's from it's what from blank to blank when there's no clear range. So if you said, I mean, obviously, like from top to bottom makes sense, or from whatever, but like from he ate everything from avocados to tomato, like that doesn't make any sense.
What's in between? There's nothing in between. Yeah. But you'll see it all the time. Unless it's like the Simpsons and it's between tomatoes, from tomatoes to tobacco, and then you get tomato in the middle.
You're you're not a Simpsons fan, does it? I've seen some. Yeah, not that one. Anyway, uh, but yeah, but it's not like a yeah. So like if you were pitching anything to my in fact, just get false ranges out.
And you use them in daily, not you, not you mining. But one that uses them in daily speech quite often the false range. All the time. What are some other things you hate like that? Oh god, I I wasn't prepared with my list.
So many. So we have a whole handbook at work of things not to do. Well, so what's a that's funny? So what's a helpful, like like I remember you used to get mad when people, this is when you were reporting. You would get mad when people tried to pitch you what your idea.
You're like, it's my job to come up with the idea, right? Of like what the hook is for the story, and it's your job to put something in front of me that makes the hook apparent. Oh, you mean from press, you mean from PR. Yeah. From from flat from PR people.
Like, so like like for PR people out there, like what are the kind of pitches that were helpful? What do you what do you hate? I mean, you used to hate, you'd be like, I can't believe this person's trying to pitch me on this story. We're getting fishbowled. Um, so like, you know, what are what are your thoughts on that?
Like, how what's a good way to pitch you to make it not seem like they're trying to force a point of view down your throat? Right. We don't need the story handed to us. We've taken the liberty of giving you our headline and our Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
We don't need that. We just need good inside info, you know. Got a hook. Although now in the days when there's just so much content being generated. Oh, so much.
Yeah. Is it like, do you think that that pitch is more like actually works more now because people really just don't have the time to come up with Yes, I do think you're right. Yeah, it depends on how you're how you were. And we most of our stuff's internal now, that's the problem too. Is that you know there are bloggers everywhere for our stuff, it's all staff generated.
Right. So the odds, yeah, at this point in life, the odds that you see some random person's pitch. So, like, how is there like how like if someone let's say you were back, let's say you were a timeout's food editor again, not in current days, but like back then, right? Back then we duke it out every week with New York magazine to see you could get the scoop on the restaurants like that I know you were so good at it. Timeout was like like uh remember there was no uh this was before everyone went on the internet to get this is.
Yeah, you had to buy timeout. If you didn't buy timeout magazine in this was like what 2000, when were you there? 2000. Since like 2002. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So if you didn't buy timeout magazine, you know, unless you could only afford to go to whatever was reviewed on uh in the New York Times weekly food section, right? Uh you didn't know anything. You knew nothing. You know what I mean?
And so, you know, you guys used to actually have a team of people that would go out. Well, you would you were on the circular. Yeah, yeah, it's true. Taking all the free dinners. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I mean, uh, no, I mean, that was an amazing service back in the day. Yeah. It had a real, I mean, I mean, uh, you know, uh, old man crying, but it was nice to have places with points of view like that. And you know, it's harder to find you have to find individuals now with points of view and not like publications. There's nothing like that anymore.
Anyway, um, but at the time people would pitch you all sorts of things about what they wanted to write about. So if you're getting something like that and someone's trying to break in, they don't you don't know them personally. Is there any way to get into it? Like, is there any way to like actually start writing? I know it's not a good way to make money, right?
No, it's so hard. Yeah, but uh is there any advice to like I mean, you just need a scoop, right? Yeah, but then like well, to pitch to a news, like I mean, I'm actually I did that once in the Times years ago. I was like, hey, you want this story? And they're like, okay.
Really? Yeah. Oh, what's what was the story? It was about um mana, you know, like like uh in the Bible. And like there's like so yeah, so Beirus Shafiri Saffron King, uh, he used to bring in these things that were, you know, he claimed they were actually like the mana from the Bible, but of course no one knows what the mana from the Bible is, but they are a similar thing.
So like bugs would chew on these trees in the desert, uh, a couple different varieties of trees. The sap would come out of the trees, dry up, and then like on like really big swing days, sometimes it would actually fall to the ground, like mana. So it was sweet because it was like this condensed, like tree sap. And uh, so he was importing it from Iran. And I was like, hey, you can buy mana, like from the Bible.
And then like that, and and they were like, I forget who was running the thing at the time, Sam or somebody. And he was like, Yeah, okay. And then I almost ran another one on um on Roman chicken, Numidian chicken, and like the the downfall of uh laser, which is like accepted a hang as as a spice. Yeah. But of course, I I had a job in the industry.
I wasn't like zero. You know what I mean? Yeah, and there was a point. Well, there was a point to it. There was timely.
It wasn't a story that you could have written, right? Right. Ten years ago. Right, because he just he had just started bringing this thing in. You know what I mean?
The one story that they don't think they published the chicken wrist. But the one thing that he he so he I also pitched to him when I figured out how to anesthetize lobsters. Do you remember this? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do remember that.
Yeah. And uh he was like, you have to prove whether or not the lobsters feel pain. I was like, I can't get inside the lobster set. Yeah. So I called up, like, you know, I called up uh, you know, researchers at Woods Hole and in Maine, and then, you know, a couple of them like talked to me for a while, but then their bosses put the kibosh on it because it's why they didn't want to be on the record saying they can't feel the pain.
They or they didn't want to be on the record saying they could feel pain. You know, yeah. It's something that could damage the lobster industry. Because like, you know, this guy had these uh electrodes that he was listening to uh lobster, like b-boom, bum bum, bum bum, whatever lobster heart goes, I don't remember. And so uh I had him throw them in water and like the heart kept beating for like a minute and and and the heart rate goes way up.
And so I was like, see, Sam. I was like, this is an indicator, and but then like you know, I it's too much for my own good. I was like, well, it could just be no section, but you don't really know whether it's a mechanistic reaction to the heat or whether or not the lobster well, what does it mean for a lobster to feel pain? And then, like, you know, I had to do all this research. At the time, people were researching on hermit crabs and can hermit crabs feel pain, and I was calling my other, like, yeah, it never came to anything.
I spent many, many hours. What was the takeaway at the end? Lobsters feel it or no? It really boils down to what does pain mean? Boils down going.
Yeah. Anyway, but the truth of the matter is that when you do anesthetize them, they taste different. So there is a different reaction. So if you knock them out, right? Then you might feel better about yourself and your lobster taste better.
Correct. But you get when. Yeah, you get the same effect in terms of so there's a if you taste side by side and nestetize lobsters and not anesthetized lobsters. The ones that have not been anesthetized. Don't know.
I think he has stress stuff. But you can get the same thing by just like you guys used to do at the French culinary, just killing the lobster with a knife. But the problem is then you bleed out the hemoliths so it can be tasteless if you then steam it and let all the juices out. Does that make sense? Uh-huh.
Yeah. Anyway. Enough about uh pitching to the newspaper. But so, like, no advice on how to break into this if you don't have uh already a bunch of bylines, if you're not a known quantity, how to be clean. We just talked about that.
Like pitch a story that could have been five years ago. Yeah, but do you need to have had other bylines? No. All right. Uh all right.
So we got a last minute question from the Discord. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I got some other questions. Yeah, what do you got?
So Dave's got the infamous first date bandicotta story. Um, have you ever had any spectacular food failures? Me? Yeah. Uh I mean, you had a food failure on my first I don't know whether I've told that story.
She said, I like how he asks your food failures and you bring out my food failures. I've had a billion food failures. Describe your first date with Wiley if you frame. For our first date, my first date with Wiley, it was at Dave's house for our family dinner. And Dave made banyacauta.
And like, what the hell? I don't know what somehow Dave brings the hot garlicky oil around and spills it all over me. Don't forget the don't forget the anchovies. I'm the ancho. I smelled like oily garlicky fish.
Yeah. Good first time. And you ruined my whole outfit. Yeah. It was like it was a nice outfit before.
I was like, welcome to the family. Yeah. I like how I like how your worst food failure is actually my failure. That's nice. It's nice.
I appreciate that. Oh no, I've had all kinds of failures. I mean, I I I cut myself on my final exam in school at FCI. That was rough. I don't know if other people know that.
Andre Saltner came and saved me. Oh, really? He's a sweetheart. Just very quietly. He's like, I got you.
Let me fix my sauce. Oh, he's such a sweetheart. Um real chef chef, that guy. Yeah. Uh Miley Carpenter, I don't care who you are, pastry chefs, Miley Carpenter can bake a jelly roll better and faster than you can.
Like, I'm just I'm telling you. Maybe just faster. No, better and faster. Like you could like it's another thing. Like, I'm sure that like you could probably with your eyes closed, just make a jelly roll.
Or a muffin. I just made one last weekend. I make a lot of people. What are your feelings on what are your feelings on people not using it? You put ice cream in it, not jelly.
You but you'll roll anything. Yeah, yeah, that's true. You've made many different rolled items. It's just uh, you know, whatever. Anyway.
Uh all right, let me ask the questions before we run out of time that we have here. Questions from Miley. How do you see the trends in rolls for print versus digital and food uh magazine slash websites? What makes a successful food article or recipe online versus in print? Oh, we talk about this all the time.
This is granular for our industry, but I talk about um playing to the strength of the medium, and that's what I was talking about. The playlist like don't put a playlist in print. That's dumb. So play to the strength of your medium. If your medium is print, make it visual and like you don't need like in our Thanksgiving stories, we don't need to have all these sidebars about times and like go get that online.
So it's like uh information versus inspiration. So when you're in a magazine in print, you're getting inspired. We want to inspire you to do something. If you need information, you're gonna get that online. So it's like it's just a you know that that's the oversimplification of it.
Well, how has information consumption not but like in other words? How has the shift in the major mediums in which we consume information changed the way we consume information in all media? Like how is print changed because people consume a lot of it? That was my point. Like back back in the day, like we were super service, like jam-packing it with sidebars and information, like we you don't need to do that anymore.
Right, right, right. You know, but that's like a change. That's a delta. Yeah, yeah, for sure. What's that noise, Joe?
You uh you uh setting off an alarm in here? Awesome. Uh Vengroff writes in over the course of your career, social media is another social media, social media has become uh behemoth that has caused all sorts of upheaval in traditional media. Can you talk about how this has affected you and the publications you produce? And are we broadly in a better or worse place as a result?
Oh, that's the that's a big question. You mean as a human race? Are we better? Or as a media race, as a media given race? Take it and take it any way you want.
I mean, it's been interesting. We you know, you know, we launched Pioneer Woman um magazine in in print, and then years later, we partnered with Re, you know who Reed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We partnered with her.
She runs Oklahoma, correct? She, yeah, but well, and now kind of the world. Yeah. But I mean, like, how big's her ranch? Oh, I don't know, acreage-wise, but it's it's amazing.
I just got back from there. It's amazing. She has a her husband has a cattle ranch, but she has this massive business and um, and you launched that magazine too. Yeah. Yeah.
The print, but print first, and then we partnered with her on the site. And it's been interesting to watch kind of what happens when when that all these worlds come together. So in a perfect world, all these things are doing their job and we're and feeding off each other. Um, you know, but what was the question? Like, are we better off?
Are we better off? Oh gosh. I mean, I long for the long for the good old days, but yeah, but I mean, I don't know, but we are better off. I mean, in terms of I mean, I don't know. Like, there's there's no in my mind, there are no hundred percent losses and no hundred percent wins, right?
So some things are lost and some things are gained, right? I mean, more things are gained. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, you know, yeah, for everything that you say is lost, you've gained something else. But we just it it's like you have to become an expert in everything now.
You know, everybody has to be an expert in photography and video and marketing, and like the we used to have like kind of one track, and now you're it's anyone in media kind of has to know how to do all this. Yeah. Uh somebody somebody wants to know whether you think I should uh take uh shrooms or not, but that seems more like a question for Wiley. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
I apologize, Miley. There's a fire alarm going here, but it's not a real fire alarm. They're trying to turn it off at the panel. So I can see it from my section of the uh fishbowl. All right.
Uh by the way, someone this is something you might find interesting. I didn't make this for you because of my you you have uh what's it called? Uh well, I no, it's just because you didn't come to family dinner. I was gonna say it's because you scarred me for life by calling my mint pie a toothpaste pie. So I tried some of my terrible ideas on you.
Like, like remember corn pie? That wasn't very good. But you have a lot of really good things to make it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, you gotta try the bad things to try, you know, in a family dinner, you try things out.
But recently, so um Alexi uh Bulazel, one of our Patreon people asked whether you could make a key lime pie, you know, acid adjust, how I acid adjust it. Yeah, asked whether you could make a key lime pie, and it's fantastic. That's my favorite dessert. Yeah, but you you guys could totally do it's so easy. Anyone could do it.
You know what I mean? What'd you do? You just um you take whatever flavor you like, right? So, like, you know, one of our listeners did pineapple, and like I did passion fruit on Sunday, and you just add acid to it. So, like with passion fruit, if you don't want to do like full on like I did with all the weird acids like succinct and all that, you could probably just use citric acid, which you could get at a grocery store.
You take it up to the same acidity that lime has. And so the idea is that you don't have to alter the key lime pie recipe because you can um only you only need to use a small amount of the juice. So you're still only using half a cup of juice, but it still has all the acidity because you're adding the extra acidity. Right. Yeah, it's a great idea.
That's great. Anyway, so it was uh this person's idea. And uh asking for a friend when frying potato chips and animal fats, and then so you know, from your FCI days, you can say this tallow, uh lard, duck fat. What's the best way to get that animal fat flavor into the chips? Any tips for animal fat frying in general?
What do you think? You're better. You you're the fry guy. Yeah, but you know, I always like I did work at the fry station at McDonald's. Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, why did you get fired from McDonald's? Um, because why? Because I wouldn't wear the outfit. I thought it was because like you Oh, oh, the I did get it in serious trouble for making the ice cream cones too tall. Yeah, because you were trying to see.
It's actually harder than how high I can. It is hard. You have to really know what your balance it and the kids, so they kids started picking me as they're they'd get in line behind my register because I would make the cones so tall. And then I got in trouble. You're like, well, is it gonna fall yet?
Right? Yeah, yeah. Anyway. All right. Let me see.
Oh now, here's another one. Another little known fact about Miley Carpenter is you are I've always been a runner. That's true. Yeah. And so one day.
Oh no. You're you're running down the river, right? Uh East River. East River. Running down the east.
So it's a nice little esplanade there. It's very nice. Right. And remember, I Miley, you do mostly running in the morning. You're an early morning person, right?
Uh so who else is out early in the morning? Uh no one, but well, fishermen. Fishing. Yeah. So it's Miley, Miley and the Fisherman, which sounds like uh like a I don't know, like a song or Mile.
What do you think, Jack? Is that a song or is that an album, Miley and the Fisherman? I don't know. Some sort of song. I think it's a band.
It's a band. It's a band, Miley and the Fisherman. Yeah, okay. Anyway, so, and by the way, she's not, you're not a casual person. Like, you're not running slow.
No, no, no. I run really fast, I go fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I run, yeah, I run. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Miley's like, what's a fun run? I don't go fun. Yeah, there's no sex. It's all busy. I gotta get it over with.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and get it done. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, uh, and right, she didn't come to this running thing, like I say lately, her whole life running. Right.
Oh, you know, always ran track in high school the whole nine. Anyway, so you know, 6 a.m. Hit right in the face, smacked in the face with a fish. Guy yanks a fish out of the water, bam! Right into your face.
And then what do you do? I kept running. Just kept running. Didn't stop. Well, what are you gonna do?
I mean, I feel that 99 out of a hundred people would have been like, oh, I didn't want to talk to him. I don't know. I just wanted to get out of there. You had to make the decision mid-stride to not stop when you were hit in the face with a bass. From the East River.
That's true. Now the bass that come out of the East River, they're not tiny. No. They're big fish. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. I mean, like, you wouldn't you weren't getting hit in the face with a big thing. I mean, to be honest, I was just glad I didn't get hit with a hook. Like I was like, I feel like I came out ahead. Like if it's gonna throw something back, at least it had a fish on it.
I don't know. I feel like I've been around 52 years. I've never been hit in the face with a fish. I mean, I just don't know. You kind of have some bad pedestrian luck, though.
Oh yeah. The dog just bit me out of the blue. Yeah, just jumped up and bit you once out of the blue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, here.
Well, you know what it is? I think it's you have so uh you're so successful with these other things that you need. Every once in a while, you need to get hit in the face with a fish to have it like keeps it real. Yeah, yeah, keep it real. Keep it all, keep it all uh all uh what's it called?
I feel like that's the one story you decided to bring up. I we brought up other stories. I'll bring up so that here's maybe you don't want to talk about this, but like in the world of artificial intelligence, you have people like uh you have like armchair people who think that they're scoping out artificial intelligence. Do you want to talk about some of these uh uh uh not listeners? Oh, yeah, yeah, no.
We had someone write in it, yeah. They'll they'll send us clips and say, this is surely AI. And I'm like, no, this was surely us. No, we wrote that. Yeah, it's so funny.
All right, one other one because uh uh uh so are are you willing to talk about your uh not letter to the editor, but uh what is it, uh editor's note that uh caused a run on a restaurant. Are you willing to talk about this? Oh my god. I said uh this has to be fast, right? Um I wrote in my we were writing about like food memories and the the the foods you grew up eating and um this Philly.
I wrote that this restaurant I loved as a kid that serves hoagies. Um just might I said I don't know I don't know if it's the best uh hoagie place on earth, but I think it is. And some news station said just decided we had called it the best hoagie place on earth, and then like you know, 10 stations ran segments on it. Yeah, but then like they had a line out their door, like they were running out of media. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think they still do. Because they decided Food Network had named it best hoagie on earth. Yeah, and you didn't turn anything into a news story, and you didn't want to be like I said I think it is, but okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's again like you know, again, you are you know unimpeachable, and you know, yet someone else can run with it.
I'm happy for Phil and Jim's hoagies. Right, you're not gonna correct them. And describe for those of you that those of the listeners that have never been to the uh Philly, Pennsylvania area. What is a hoagie as opposed to what makes a hoagie a hoagie as opposed to a whole show on this? There are arguments, but you have 59 seconds.
What is a hoagie as opposed to a regular, like, you know, what people might get as subway or a it's about the roll and the you know and the peppers and the oil. I mean, you've had hoagies. It's it's a yeah, but like you know, the carpenter family is very hoagie oriented. So if you give them an Arizot hoagie, they just take a bite and they're like not a hoagie. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a very it's a it's a specific combination of things, but Phil and Jim's nailed it and now they're the best on earth. You you need the oil, vinegar oregano stuff. Yeah, yes, it's the dried oregano, I feel like that's yeah that's essential. You know, I never used to use dried oregano. Oh no, it's magical.
Yeah, I became a yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um I I became pro. You know why Dax? Dax loves it. So good.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right. So hoagie taste, you won't tell us the you won't tell us the secrets. What's the bread?
Yeah, all right. What's the bread though? Like is it just I don't know. I do you have to go down there and buy it. Yeah, go to Phil and Gyms.
Anyway, Miley, uh it's uh not wait another 12 years or whatever for you to come back on. Uh appreciate it. Thanks, man. This has been cooking issues.
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