Hello and welcome to cookie issues. This is Dave Earle your host of cooking just coming to you live from newsstands studios, fellas Center, here as usual with Mr. Garcia via hammer Lopez, how're you doing? Good. Doing well, yeah, yeah. Got in the booth. And Joe Hasan, how you doing, Joe? I'm doing great. How are you doing? Well, hey, I hear you do a decent me impression. Really? Yeah. I mean, I hear what I hear. Can you like, that's like a mix of me. I'm like, like, Grover Cookie Monster something that's good. stretching my throat reciate. That. And we have for the last time in a while, actually. And we'll talk about that later. He's not going anywhere permanently. People. We got John here. You're your favorite customer service representative. How you doing? John?

Doing great. Thanks. Good to be back in the studio. Yeah.

Nice. Yeah, I'm back in New York. And for longtime listeners of cooking issues. We have special guests in the studio today. And they'll come over and wave into the video feed at some point. Because we right now we're at baby steps, right? That's right now we can just have the picture of you and I up. But eventually we'll be able to do this. Anyway. We have Jackie molecules, how're you doing?

I'm great. I showed up late today just to pay you back for all the years of you being late.

I know. It's rough. People, people, people. For those of you that are on the Patreon, we appreciate it. If you're listening live. You're on the Patreon. I was sitting here Joe back me up. I was sitting here in my seat. Mike pointed at my at my face at noon on the dot Correct. You were here? I was here. You're here. Was anyone else here? Just mean you?

Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

How times have changed.

Hey, listen. I've always felt whatever. I'm not gonna listen. If you're interested in listening to this live, then go and even if not, you need to like join our new RSS feed. Go to go to patreon.com I'm told that the kids no longer know what a backslash versus a forward slashes you just say slash slash

there's only one. There's only one slash with the hat. And the roses.

Yeah. Who by the way? Apparently. slashes friends with Buckethead. Huh?

No beef there, huh?

I don't think there's any Buckethead slash beef Masquerade. For those of you that don't know who Buckethead is. What's wrong with you? How do you not know who Buckethead is? Good question, right? I mean, like, how do you how do you for the last? Like, what is it? 20 years now walk around with it with a with a KFC bucket on your head? And like that, like whatever else he's wearing? And not, you know, make an impression, right? I have to say, I don't really like any of bucket heads albums. But I appreciate Bucket Head. What about you?

Who listens to? I don't know. I mean, I know of Buckethead. And you know what? I'll say this Anytime somebody's played me something from Buckethead. I'm like, You know what? That's pretty good. I mean, but I don't know who seeks out Buckethead albums.

I mean, I think everyone can agree. Buckethead good musician, great musician. But I mean, not this stuff. When you're like, oh, I need to get some work done. Let's listen to Buckethead mean name one song. I can't exactly but like, Joe, what about you? What are your feelings? It's,

I can't Amazon either.

But what do you get the same general feelings we have about the Bucket Head?

I have no interest in Bucket Head.

Wow. What about do you like? Fried chicken? Yes, I love all right. Okay. Okay. See, for me, I have different categories of music that I like to listen to like, I'm like, I have the 3am I'm about to pass out and I still need to do a lot of welding music that's like ministry, or sometimes like James Brown. You know what I mean? I have the I'm driving and I don't want to get into a car accident music that's like, I don't know, like James Taylor. I don't know. I mean, like a different different getting

into a car accident while listening to James Taylor.

Oh, my God, who knows? Oh, my God, that would be terrible. Right. Really melancholic you, I'm sure Anastasia thinks about this all the time. Do you think about it? I guarantee you think about this. And we've never discussed this. Ready? Yeah. All right. I have a feeling that you and I are exactly the same like this. Every once in a while I'm listening to a song and I think about what if something horrible happened to me right now? And this song would be ruined forever?

Yeah, yeah. Think about that.

By the way, for those of you that are on our Patreon, the call in number is 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507 we did that's a good way to put it. One. Oh 1507 Not 1507 What can I add? It says 1507 Sounds like they're like a like a like your first apartment. When you when you got your first apartment? Yeah. How do people find roommates? By the way, nowadays? How does that how does how does that work? Like let's say if my son needed to find a roommate. How does that work? I don't know. All right.

It's got to be an app for Yeah. Oh god. Yeah. That asked

for everything now. No God. Before we get into it, just so just so you know, we're recording this on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa massacre, which unbelievably, John, I first learned about, I don't know how much you knew about it beforehand. But it was my first time to was that it was only three years ago, right? Yeah. There's only three, two years ago, two years ago, two or three years ago, we got a tour by John Franklin, who's the the grandson of a survivor of the of the, of the massacre. And his father is a famous historian at the NIMAC Museum in, in DC, and I couldn't believe that the my entire life, all of the classes I've ever taken on American history, and there have been plenty, right? I'd never known about I'm assuming that kids are taught this now. Right? dutifully. What about you guys? What about the what about the three of you guys? And you guys heard about this growing up? You

know, he believed that American believe it, unfortunately. But

can you believe an entire neighborhood was firebombed and no. Oh, that I can't believe no, no. No record anyway. So I didn't want to just gloss over it. We're recording that today. On that day anyways. So the other news is that, like I said, John is not going to be here for about a month. Right, John? Yeah, like for three and a half weeks now. So why don't you want to tell people what you're doing?

Yeah. On Monday, I am leaving for Italy. I'm gonna go to Rome for a couple of days, spend a day or two in Naples and adhere to in Pompeii, and then two weeks in Sicily. So if anybody has food recommendations or drink recommendations, or things like that, please send them to me.

But you're staying how long in Pompeii? One or two days, isn't it? Yeah, Pompeii is like a one and done, isn't it?

I think so. Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot of good food around there. But I mean, a lot of a lot of good places around Pompeo. But I mean, I mean, you can go see where the people got incinerated and then, you know, yeah,

I don't know. I mean, it's gonna be pretty cool to look at all that, you know, archeological digs and see what uh, what's there?

Yeah, sounds you ever done the Vesuvius? What do you think about it? Oh, that was fun. Was Pompeo one and done? Yeah. All right, you know, like, I'm not gonna get into it anyway. So for those of you that don't know, John, personally, here's a good reason to be nice to John and get to know John, personally, ain't nobody research food for trips, like John does. When I told John No, right before the pandemic, I was like, Hey, John, I'm going to I'm going to Belgium, you got him you go places. He sent me a 24 page, typed manuscript, city by city category by category, name of place links, what to get there. And with a very heavy, very heavy, what's it called? Well, not very heavy, like, like layer towards food. But also, like, you know, John's not opposed to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, right.

Yeah. Big fan. You know, I set up the tables, you know, the leftmost column it's like the day that I'm there than the next column. It's like the sites I want to see and then the next column break it down by all the restaurants that are around that sites like that if I'm around that setting, I get a little hungry there's a couple places right nearby then the column next to that I put what to eat

there. Yeah, but it's like it's like snack snack lunch snack snack dinner. Yep, you know he says like go here he's like you need to go so you know if you're doing a Brussels he's like you need to go here for the spec a loosening here for a waffle and then you go here like Bubble Bubble bubble up here for the tiny shrimp. You know about the tiny shrimp Right? Talk about we have we talked about this on here John about that about your you having to rake up the tiny shrimp goes give me some tiny shrimp

Yeah, so they're called covet greys and speaking of UNESCO recognized things fishing for them is a UNESCO like recognize intangible cultural heritage practice so in on the Belgian seaside and Eurostar and and the Han just you know, right across from from the UK. You can see it from from one side to the other. But they take these big I think they're Clydesdale horses and they essentially like rake through the shallow waters for these little tiny gray shrimp that are in there. And so as a kid, when I'd go visit my grandmother, we would you know, my brother or sister and I, we would go out there with our little nets and kind of go through it by hand and bring them back to our grandmother. She would peel them for what seemed like forever. I mean, these things were tiny, maybe the you know, a little bit longer than a fingernail. So yeah, my grandma was showing away and then we'd cook them toss them in Mayo and then put them in a hollowed out tomato essentially.

Yeah, they the problem area, there is the tomato, right? I mean, I had it shrimp was great. All that we tomato was complete garbage. You know what I mean? Because they're putting it into tomato in like one was either February or something like that. And you know, just saying that, but that's the thing I told you guys about Booker tonight. That's it that's about Booker and tomatoes. No. So my son Booker eats so much tuna that he's going to go full like Jeremy Pavan, like, you know, mercury poisoning. Yeah. For those of you that don't know Jeremy Piven who I think is you know, good actor and Joanne but like a well known kind of a Butthead, right, and like went total like Loon balloons on somebody and blamed it on the excessive amount of bluefin tuna sushi that he was eating and that he got mercury poisoning. Now, if there's ever a way to say that you're in a hole, it's that you eat so much Bluefin that you got mercury poisoning right there. You're like, hey, well, I mean, I'm saying I'm an aihole. You don't I mean, doubling down

on it. Oh, yeah.

Triple even that's like so hardcore. Right. So anyway, so like, that was the argument. So I get worried because Booker, you know, who's like, he's six foot like, two now. He literally weighs 100. And like 28 pounds. He's like a stick figure. You know what I'm saying? He's like, he's like, like, that character from Nightmare Before Christmas. He's like a head. Long body. You know what I mean? He needs the sewing skills. So he needs the sewing skills. doesn't just go and check out good. Oh, you hire some? Oh,

that's that's Sally. Sally. What does he do? sings and dances. I don't know. That's

a good skill. It is. It's a good skill. Anyway, so he was eating like, two three cans of tuna a day. And I was like, Booker, first of all, you don't have enough body mass to be eating like top chain predator bio accumulators. And that was all he was eating was like mercury and mercury and mercury. So so much so that I have to buy him. How is

he of affording all of this?

What? Okay, Anastasia? You're amazing parenting skills on record. So I should starve my child. No, no.

Boys poisoning like how is he getting

all of this? I don't know if you know this tuna fish. isn't that expensive. And we have these things in New York City called supermarket

he buys it. Okay.

Anyways, so it's like he's eating like two, three cans, I find them in the trash, because he's terrible at hiding things. So I had to like to try to not have too much poisoning. I had to go get him. The mercury, like the low Mercury tuna, which they test each can of mercury for mercury. But you know how they get low Mercury tuna? Don't you know, they kill young tuna? Right. So it's actually like not a good idea. Like the low Mercury is like kind of damaging the earth to save my son's brain. Right, which I guess is a win, I guess.

If you have to pick one.

So sets separate, separate story, separate story. So he basically he says I'm a grizzly bear and He only eats fish products. Right. So I was for the book. I was doing some salmon. I was shooting some salmon for the book. Right. And so in the house, I had a piece of salmon that I was cooking, and I had a fully cured side of salmon. Right fully cured side of salmon. And then another side of salmon I was carrying. And when I went away for the weekend, he didn't come with us. Gone. Gone. Gone. He ate an entire side of salmon in one day. And that's in addition to the tuna and stuff he's about to get out of that. Oh, so he was buying tuna fish sandwiches from Subway by the way and we have discussed this Booker knows every menu at every Subway restaurant on earth because what he does one of his hobbies is he looks on the website and tries to find the most expensive online Subway sandwiches he can get anywhere and also the cheapest. So he found once in some place in Brooklyn, some like set of things you could like click that has a glitch whereby the sandwich was free. He wants found a glitch where he could buy a Metro North ticket for $8,000 Metro North is our local commuter rail, the most you could spend is probably 30 $40. He found an $8,000 Glitch, he finds all the glitches, so he'll find the most expensive Subway sandwich, which I think was somewhere in Europe. He found an incredibly expensive Subway sandwich and you'll find the cheapest Subway sandwiches. He says he might want to work there from his experience working with you and Stasi he wants to talk to you. Yeah, the cleaning anyways. So like he he won't put mayonnaise or anything on a sandwich. So this is why sandwiches are terrible for him because they're they're dry so he decided he likes to to fish salad. Won't eat chick will eat chicken won't eat chicken salad will eat tuna fish salad. Why? Only God knows but he wouldn't put the vegetables on the tuna fish salad on sandwiches. So I finally convinced him this is where the story was coming from. I finally convinced him to get like lettuce and tomato on the on the on this subway sandwich. He was like, Oh, it's good. Actually, it's good. It adds crunch. And I was like, Oh, good. Great. So then, when he was making sandwiches at home, I bought him decent tomatoes, right? So I slice it and he's like that these aren't. These tomatoes are not good for sandwiches. They're, they're wet. I'm like, What do you mean? He's like, I want the subways. tile tomatoes like they have to be kind of crunchy and dry. They should look good tomato should be dry. Like why is this one so bright red and wet? I was like, huh

let's saves you money.

I guess I'm not gonna I'm not going to buy those Styrofoam tomatoes and have him in my house does

he have money on the mind today? My

house he affording that tuna fish by the way also to go back to where this came from to finish John's story about tiny shrimp. John now has to store their song tiny shrimp superstar going on in my head to the tune of Jesus Christ Superstar. And I'm just going to leave you there. You can sing it in your own head. Okay, so, John, yep. Aside from the tiny shrimp, what have you racked up? So if I know you haven't fully finished your research yet? You said you've done some of the stuff for some of the places you guys want to hook us up? Yeah, so

in Rome is where I've done most of my research so far, because that's how I'm gonna leave on Monday nights and then get there Tuesday morning and don't want to miss a second of everything I can eat. So the one thing that I'm really looking forward to eating is the fried artichokes. How do you say Deva?

Cultural theology? I love judo. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's the season right? So you're hitting it right at the right time. Yep. You ever had that in season? SAS? Yeah, I

thought it was late April though. Doesn't it? Extend? It's like a it's like a it's like weeks? No.

Did you like it? Yeah. Crunchy and smash. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Well, they have a bunch of different carciofi things. So that's just a famous one. It's over here, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, what else you got? What else you're gonna eat over there? Are you going to do the coffee stuff? You're going to do all the famous Roman coffee stuff?

I wasn't planning on I was going to try and do a bunch of gelato though. Because I feel like that will also be the season and you know,

the secret of Italian gelato right? stabilizer, whatever, desk, I'm for it against it. Yeah, I like some dents, stabilized stuff. That's my whole life is dense and stabilized. Well kind of stabilized. kind of not? Well, you're not gonna do any of that. You're not gonna go see the famous like, what's the famous one against us Cafe Sun stack? You know, I don't know. There's a famous, I think it's Cafe sounds Docu where they do some little, they do some little, like weird secret McGillicutty in the, on the thing so when you go to order it, they have like a blind you can't see the actual Risa and it's, it's there's two famous ones I forget, which is the one that does this. And they they do something funky with the milk or something like this and you don't get like a straight even they're straight like espresso. They do a little something something to it as a key skinny normal espresso and let me watch you make it they're like No, I'm like, okay, whatever, when you're here and there I think that's also the place I could be wrong. So I haven't researched it and advanced today like I should have. They're the ones that would fire their roasters and they had that weird like yellow container anyway so you should check that stuff out. You're going to

want to go check out the markets the markets will follow hopefully I'm pronouncing that properly and then WEBO Mercado de Stasio they both sound like really cool kind of open air markets and see all kinds of produce and meats and fish are being sold and then obviously as much pasta as my body can

handle now yeah, how much how much plastic in your body handle?

Pretty solid amount so I'm gonna you know I'll let you know when I come back. I'm not sure what the limit is. Yeah, how many plates a day

right? Okay. Wait, you're you're not going north. Oh, you're going from Rome and going south? Yep. Yep, exactly. If I if I was going right now. I would before most of the tourists get I think like like they're open for business but I think like they haven't it's not fully full yet

right? Just open like two weeks ago even Yeah.

Oh my god, if I could go there right now, I would immediately go to the gardens. I would check out the villa death day and the Villa Lante and Bomarito which is like crazy in the forest like messed up sculptures out of rocks of like soldiers getting crushed by freaking elephants and giant mouths ready to eat you. It's a crazy place. Ain't nobody going to go march so a lot of people go to Tivoli to see the the villa desta because it's amazing. And a lot of people go to Vanya to see the the Villa Lante I like gardens anyway so like but Bomarito which is this demented garden in the in the forest nobody goes to it and it's washed over so this crazy violent like not really well in 95 which is the last time I was there it wasn't really well maintained like lot was cracked open it was kind of like really rustic it hadn't been like fully tourist defined yet was it when you visited was a fully testified or was it still running it's

still kind of yes but the town where

it is Walmart so is like built on like this like piece of rock coming out of the ground it's like and then and then on the on the top of it is this like kind of village made of rock were the Orsini which were the kind of enforcers you know what I mean? Like the Cardinals enforcer family was like living on the top of this rock. So it's just like one

big yeah I got I mean, it's good and super cool. Yeah.

Yeah. And then he's going down to like Joe, aren't you? Aren't you part Sicilian? Yes. Sicilian. He said he's ending his trip in Sicily, but he hasn't done the research yet. Do you have anything for him down there?

I was over in the Atlanta area never been to Palermo. It was in the South. east corner. I went to go see my mother's home and Pozzallo. And I love to see the Qusay. Phenomenal. Oh, yeah. Yes. It never been. It's an underground spring fed city. And you can go out to the spring that's in the ocean. It's

sick. I want that. It's beautiful. I want that. I've never been south of Rome and the oranges are phenomenal. Yeah, I've never visited my stepfather's ancestral area, which is kind of pathetic. I wanted to go back with him. He's never he's never he's my again. My stepfather loves COVID This is like he there's nothing he enjoys more than not having to see anybody ever. It's just unfortunate for my mom. So like he's holed up right now on Cape Cod. All he's doing drinking wine and fishing for stripers. You got to mow Well, three. He sleeps. fishes for stripers. drinks wine. Those are the three things sounds great. Yeah. Yeah, he gave up cigars for the COVID because of all the potential lung problems people are having with it. So that was the that was he used that for things. Now he has three things.

When you say stripers like white bass, right, the striped bass. Yeah, yeah, big one. So

he's, he's a surf caster. He doesn't like he doesn't like going on boats. So I wanted to shoot one for the books. And now he's like, he's gonna get me some we'll do some full we'll do some full stripers I forget. I don't know what the limit is. This year, it changes year to year what length of striper you need for the surfcasting to keep him he has gotten that many blues. It used to be that like he prefers like stripers I think just because when you fish for blue fish, like they bite through the leader so much that you have to run steel leaders on him. And I just don't think he likes having that kind of kid around. And he focuses mainly on he focuses mainly on stripers. So like his main enemies on Earth are besides other people, right? Seals, seals, he freakin hates seals. Because this your it used to be I'm not advocating shooting seals. But it used to be that you would get on the cape you will Cape Cod that is you will get a bounty for every seal that you kill. Right? Wow. Yeah, you get a bounty for it. Because the fishermen are like, No, we don't want the seals now because obviously you're not allowed to kill the seals anymore. A seal will go up, take a fish off your line and laugh in your face. And you're not allowed to like you did hit here do anything. You're just there dealing with it. But you know who is allowed to kill seals, sharks, great white sharks. You are correct, Anastasia, Dane for the lady who lives on the water. So the great white shark attacks in the Outer Cape have gone like I mean, going through the roof means like, you know, two years and most did none. But it's like everyone's worried about the great white sharks now because of the because there's so many freakin seals,

someone had to pick up the slack. Well, I

mean, for all I know, seals are the tastiest damn thing. I don't. Oh, it's just not true. I do have SEO recipes.

You should get some questions from our Patreon.

All right. All right. So we have anything else John on the trip. Before we go. We got to talk about the Connecticut product that you brought the railgun and taste.

Oh, yeah. I brought the Connecticut so hot dog relish? Yeah, yeah.

Well, we'll we'll talk about it. We'll talk about Yeah. All right. Okay, so we're, we're to encourage people to join our Patreon Well, it's it is what it what they get when they get to listen live.

Questions for us? Yeah.

Sky priority.

Oh, yeah.

Is that Delta's? Yeah, yeah. What do you get? No, you can't even the stats our saying one person gets their teeth knocked out. Now none of us can drink on a plane anymore. You know, I'm saying when I was a kid, I wrote a song about this. There was a guy I forget his name. He is of course he was a finance guy. No offense, finance people. And he got liquored up to get on the airplane. got on the airplane. This is like, you know, decades ago, got on the airplane requested more liquor. Flight attendant was like, No, you've had enough. Why don't you just go to your seat? First Class obviously finance guy jumps up on the drink cart, drops, trowel and poops. And so we wrote a song about him called Drink cart crapper, which I have a recording of somewhere and the choruses seemed like a good idea at the time. seemed like a good idea at the time. And then what was he thinking he had been drinking FEM drinker crapper drinker crapper. Wow. So anyway, so back then they weren't like oh, one guy takes a crap on a drink cart. You know so now no one could drink on a plane anymore. They said oh God takes a crap on a drink cart guys not allowed to fly anymore which seems to me to be a more reasonable response yeah because some of us I don't know if you know this some of us get afraid on airplanes and we don't necessarily want to take like hardcore like, like like like mind altering stuff we just want to take the edge off of the fact of either that or rip the seats apart with our with our with our fingernails right stars, you and I are bad. Oh my God really both you don't ever fly next to the stars. Listen, I used to take I used to take benzodiazepines to fly. And I did it until when my when my wife was pregnant I once took I took I told this on her I took two flights in one day. And I took it on the way there and I took it on the way back because I didn't understand like the biological half life of these things. So I showed up at the Lamaze class completely drugged out to the extent that like, the teacher was asking my you know, my wife, Hey, are you okay? Do I need to call somebody by Bobby? I was watching the video of the of the birth. Be like this is boring. Like, I'm just I'm tired. You know what I mean? I was it was a nightmare. So anyway, so I tried to we I was able to successfully wean myself off so I can fly without doing anything now. Right? However, it's nice to have a little something to take that edge off, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Okay, questions.

We have 30 minutes.

All right. One more thing. One more thing. Do you know the story about the picture of my wife, probably. So for the, for the people that have for the people that have video. So when I first went to visit my in laws family in, we weren't married yet, in Arizona, they, I was 23, or 22. They had the pictures of the, you know, the kids, my wife is one of three sisters out there. And I took a picture of my wife from junior high, and I kept it in my wallet for years. And when anyone asked to see a picture of my wife, I would be like, here's my wife, and I would show the picture from junior high. And Jen got so mad at me that she took it and threw it away. And then she came across the same photo. And at her parents house, and now that you know, we're 50 She's like, you can show people this photo. So there it is. My wife. Yeah, that's only for those of you that are paying for the video fee. All right. Wow. That's it strong, right. Look at that. That's a serious perm on that, right. She's got that whole like, you know, this is back when we were all listening to Eddie Van Halen. Valerie Burton, Nelly was like, the top of the top, you know, I mean, so yeah, yeah.

That for Patreon access. Yeah, that's become a member now. I don't know what it'll do. You're never

gonna get to see Jen's awesome. Like, pink and blue. Donkey blouse. What is that? Laos whilst you guys don't know about the donkey sandwich? That's when someone that wears the double den. Sandwich? Yeah. My wife anyway. So like, Yeah, little little bonus for the people. Nicholas group is wrote in Hey, folks, glad you're doing the Patreon thing. It's a great idea. Now, we answered some of his questions last week, right? Because the questions were about flour. And but specifically, John thinks I did not answer. Well, he thinks I didn't answer the sourcing. So So Nicolas wants to know about sourcing? How do you source and I have to say, if you want to source products, right? You have to get really crazy about it. You have to get really jazzed about it. You know what I mean? It's like, I remember when I was a kid, I really wanted a sword. And when I was a kid, all you had was the Yellow Pages, right? We there was no Internet, there was no nothing. There was the Yellow Pages. And there was like walking around New York City. So you just had to sit there and think about different categories of people that might sell swords. And just keep calling everyone in the phone book that was in that category. And then asking them whether they knew someone that sold like, you know, sell so much. Do you know who does sell solids? You don't I mean, and that's how you would like and you would eventually find this too? Yeah, but the same thing holds true a little bit for the Internet, right? So like, and it's all about who you get on the phone. You can't be afraid to pick up the phone and call somebody you know what I'm saying? So it's like, here, I know you're in Australia. Don't get Anastasia started, like, hey, but like. So like the I don't know how it works there. But here we're very fortunate that there are a bunch of companies that cater to people at home who want to do stuff that's normally big player stuff. So like they'll go buy 50 pound sacks a week or Take them down to like a couple of pounds to let you try. Or they'll buy like a whole lot of green coffee. Or they'll buy a whole lot of cacao nibs, and then bundle them down for you too. So I'm sure there's somebody in Australia who's doing the same thing. It's just a question of like, literally, it's like, keep noodling around until you find it and like, you guys had to run down a bunch of rabbit holes for me actually, actually remember what I always say? It's not a rabbit hole. It's a rat's nest. But like, the point is, is that for me, half the fun is kind of burrowing down like so for Anastasia, right? What I like what I like to give her that I think gives her joy is trying to get a hold of some random person. Like that's what she's good at. Right? Are they because you enjoy it? Right? For me, like finding some random product. The Stasi doesn't care so much about that. So she leaves that to me, like the time that we had to go find a surgeon spinal cord. Yeah. And we're like, where you're gonna find Sturgis Bibles? Like, where do we got a lot of Russians? You don't I mean, it's so we would like we literally like went to a neighborhood where there were a lot of Russians, and we would go into all the stores and be like, spinal cord. spinal cord. You know what I mean? Yeah, that was our first Yeah, we eventually got some. Yeah, there's eventually so I was like, Yeah, sure. Thanks. balco.

Anyway, I'll also chime in, I think, you know, if you make a list, if there's a good restaurant that you like, that makes the good pasta or something like that, just call them up and ask to speak to the kitchen. You know, like, a lot of chefs cooks don't mind sharing information and some proprietary, they want people to cook good food, so I have no harm in asking.

And also, this is a great point, John, this is an excellent point. You've given a good service. And I don't have to say this is same kind of service. He gets his customer service representative by Thank you. Yeah, but don't expect fast answering for the next month because he's going to be in Italy getting stories to tell you oh, they're they don't care. I mean, they don't care. They care if they hear responsible

and customer service, but yeah, I'm gonna field I'm gonna feel the customer service questions.

Oh, geez, Listen, you better pray you don't have a problem with your booking. And next month, you better pray. Sir, Patreon. Yeah, yeah, even so even. So come on. So the other thing, you can do a lot of places, like small bakeries and whatnot, they realize that you're not going to take their business away that you just want to try it once or twice. They might even sell you some. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, take a pound of this. Who cares? You know what I mean? They'll they'll, they'll sell it to me Don't abuse that though. Like, so like, if you go to someone and someone's nice to you don't abuse it, like I used to with the scrap yard that I used to go to in New Haven where I would get all my stuff for sculptures. And eventually the guy is like, good. I shouldn't even let you on the yard. What are you doing? Why are you talking to me? Just buy the stuff and get out? I was like, okay, okay. Okay. You don't I mean,

just because you can get the Dirham from them doesn't mean you can ask them to start ordering you like drage steaks and all that other kind of stuff.

Yeah. And it doesn't mean that you can get doram every day. Yep. Anyway, anyway, so back to the important qualities to look for when evaluating a wheat. I think I said a little bit about this before, but it was at the very end. So I'm gonna get a little bit more into depth or, as Anastasia says a little bit more into snews Ville, a lot of the problems with specifications on flour. And if you read Adam Leontief book, which you said you did, there's a lot of really confusing specifications for for flour. And there's also a huge difference between whole wheat flour, fresh whole wheat flour, and white flour. And so the things you have to worry about are this one. The harder the wheat, regardless of its gluten content, regardless of the ability of the proteins in it to form a good gluten network, the harder the wheat, when you mill it, the more damaged starch you will have in it and therefore the more the stiffer a dough will be at a certain water content right. Now, that is super important. And in fact, like that's the damage starch, right is the overlooked thing that most people aren't thinking about in their flowers, right. So as soft wheat has very little damaged starch. So if you're milling a soft wheat, and you're going to try to use it in a recipe, you either have to add a lot less liquid, or you have to hit it with a little Xanthan to absorb up the extra water. And the reason is, is that broken starch absorbs 10 times more water than unbroken starch does. And if you need to see this in action, just take wheat starch which is wet, milled and unbroken. And add the same amount of water to that as you do to a flower where a portion so in a hard flower, maybe it's like 18 19% of the starch is damaged start broken and just see the difference in how much water it absorbs. So there's just a different level of moisture holding between damage starts. So that's hugely important. And the other thing with freshly milled wheat is the enzymes are so much more active. So all of these people who are doing these like dos with their with their with their AP flowers and with their bread flowers, where they're letting it sit for like two and three Days, like the enzymes in whole wheat are so active, which is what the following number was that Adam Lyon he talks about in his book, there's so active that the dough goes slack because the enzymes will just eat all the broken starch and like make the dough Slack. So those are the two things to look for. Alright. So whether you have a specific protein content, get a high protein content if you want to do bread, do yourself a huge favor if you're milling your own wheat and get you some soft wheat, because that's the kind of stuff that is really a game changer. Get the soft wheat, get a little Xanthan for when you if you're doing like cakes with soft wheat, because you're not going to have the water holding capacity of a bleached cake flour. Alright, so I would get some soft, get some hard then get some like specialty weeds that are good for specific tasks like get some Snow White, if you can get us stuff to learn why the flour tortilla was developed because the flour tortilla was developed around a specific product, that specific product because it has a high protein content. So it's got good bite, but low elasticity same way doram does so it doesn't snap back when you're making tortillas. Anyway. So is that sufficiently answered? John? Yep. covered, smothered covered some other good from David Steinberg. Hey, gang, I made a pasta Allah Arabic from a boo jolly on pasta. I don't own this book, David. So but I wasn't able to find the recipe and look at it. So who we're talking about is Giuliano Bucha. Ali, we've done him on classics in the field in the past, of course, that's an old RSS feed. So, you know, oh, by the way, archives, for the for those of you who don't know, before I finish this question. I think I can say Jack said, So Jackie molecules is going to take an ongoing role going forward in cooking issues.

I'm back. Jack is back. Yes, the

molecules is back in. Well, he's not literally back in town. He's back in town today, but he's going to be living in LA. But I do live in LA. Yeah. I mean, he's gonna continue to live in LA, maybe.

Maybe, you

know, see how long it lasts, but I'm here. Yeah. Yeah, I'm here back in the squad.

What's your favorite? X New Yorker? La song? Is it more Randy Newman more Neil Diamond.

My favorite ex New Yorker la song is what? Um, let's

go to either be the Neil Diamond song. So LA is fine. Sunshines most of the time the feelings laid back. Okay, I see what you're doing here. Right? Yeah. Palm trees grow rents. Hello. But sometimes you can think about finding your way back. That's pretty perfect. Yeah, if that's Neil, right, whereas Randy Newman is just like, I love LA. Right. I love it. You know what I mean? So which which

are you? I'm somewhere in the middle of those two? Yeah,

I think I'm more towards Neil. More, Neil. Yeah. Yeah.

So anyway, yeah, I'm here helping out. You know, overseeing some of the Patreon stuff.

Nice and you're you're handling the chat room. anastasis handing the today nonexisting calls. That's right. Nice.

They got scared off by her last time.

Oh man. She's brutal. I love it. Yeah, they it's kind of good though. It's like people can kind of sense what it's really like like, it's like the Stasi is not like this is not a role in the Stasi. This is just her just heard well, I

mean, I want the radio show to move along. It's not a personal phone call with you. You know, yet I pay a lot for that. I

was very forgiving back in the old days.

Yeah, you did not want a personal phone call with me. But yeah, they do know anyway. Hey gang, I made pasta Allah everyday from Abuja, Ali on pasta, and Bucha Ali said to shell a pound of pee. So first of all, and soak in cold water with a teaspoon of flour. Then drain and cook the peas with other vegetables in a little stock, like a chicken stock or something. Basically making a pasta primavera any idea what's going on with this teaspoon of flour? Best and keep up the excellent work, David. So David. First of all, you should know who jolly was all about reading old recipes and then not changing them at all. And then having a big smile on his face while he called you Satan for messing with recipes. At the end of this recipe is classic. Bucha so Bucha Ali is Bucha Ali is Oh my God, his name is Juan I'm ahead. Primo and second from a big night. Oh, I don't shoot Tony shaloo He is Tony Shalhoub from big night right or was he's dead now but like he was that guy. So like, at the end of the recipe, it says please add no cheese in and I mean, add no cheese to this recipe. Anyway, that's very like Boo jolly of him. But he got this recipe from a like Renaissance Florentine recipe. And if you know anything about like that area and the food like peas, like fresh peas are a big deal, right? Which goes to show that he's not like buy peas. He's like get fresh peas and shell them right now. I wasn't I don't speak Italian. So I couldn't live Get up. I couldn't find any information, any modern information on soaking a fresh, some people have. So some peas are taken. They're dried a little bit or they're allowed to, I would say mature in the pod, right? And so they're a little dry. And even after you show them out of the pod, they need to be soaked a little bit to pick up on the stuff where they're semi dried, like, but, but I'm pretty sure jolly is talking about fresh, like young peas. Like the ones that you make the rice and peas with you like that stuff, son. Yeah, with the ham. That's good, right? Anyway. So I'm pretty sure with a stock and a hammer. I'm pretty sure that's what he's talking about here. So I couldn't think of any reason to soak them because they don't need any extra moisture. Here's the one thing I was thinking of see what you get what you guys think. Maybe, because it's an old old recipe, they're worried about bugs. So like, this is just speculation. There used to be, you know, you'd get things and there be all kinds of weevils and bugs in them. And I know that peas, especially when you're planting seeds, they would try to figure out ways to make sure that you weren't getting one with so maybe it's like some like old tail like the way that you remember when you were a kid when you got clams. You put the cornmeal in the water to get rid of the sand even though it doesn't work. Am I the only one that was taught this was not taught that Moses anyway. So like maybe it's I don't know, some weird like, it's not just my family, but it used to be told that you get the clams, you put them in the in the in the water with cornmeal, and they would spit up the sand. It's a lie doesn't sound right. It's a lie. It doesn't work. I'm just saying, but that's what we were taught. That was the reason. So what I'm guessing here is maybe the flour is there because it's rinsed off, right? So it's, and nothing is there's no there's no thing in the flour that could talk to the pea. So what you know, in the absence of information, what I'm getting is if some Renaissance Florentine person was like, I'm not going to coax the bug out of the pea with the flower. You know what I mean? That's what I'm