Oh, I'm gonna go. Today we're on your host of cookies who's going to shut down today? But I'm in the Lower East Side of New York City we got Anastasia hammer Lopez and Stanford. How're you doing?

Okay

we got John back in in you're chillin over there in Murray Hill now right or is it Murray Hill? What you call that place?

Yeah, yeah, that's that's the neighborhood I'm Yeah,

we got we got Jackie molecules, you won't be able to hear him. Because with the setup that we're working today, he has to, he can't both run the setup and talk on the setup. So Jackie molecules is here in spirit. And in fact, he's back on the board today, which is, you know, it's nice. It's always nice to have Jackie molecules on the boards. And we have we were supposed to have olive oil, Nick on I don't know his last name. So I call them olive oil MC. But

because of what Coleman Nick Coleman,

Coleman, because because the olive oil tasting kind of has to be live. And we can't go live because of various quarantining issues with the with the current state of the Omicron. We're going to have him early in the new year. Right, John, if we already rescheduled that are now

working on recycling probably right.

So today instead, we have as we usually as we try to every year we have filled Bravo here to do his voiceover skills and his Grinch thing. By the way, Phil,

yes. What's up, Dave?

You still, you still are wasting your magic voice you. You feel you're a punk. Like, God has given you a gift that you waste on a consistent basis. So Phil's has

the children Dave, I teach the children.

I want you guys to listen.

You don't have a job right now, Phil?

Oh, no magical.

It's great. And unfortunately because we're on Zen caster and apparently Phil sounds like he's talking to a microphone that's across the street from where his body is. You can't get the full effect of the kind of like, you know, the deep gravel in in the field Bravo voice but he's given this gift. It's not like he doesn't deal in kind of music or, or recordings or things like this, but he has decided instead of taking his voice which God gave him. Instead of doing that, he has decided to make his life's work, teaching people how to make the most irritating noise on Earth, the recorder, so he teaches small children how to take the most irritating musical instrument on Earth back to their houses so that their parents have to listen to the horrible OneNote whine that a recorder makes. If they blessedly don't overblow that damn thing is there anything worse Phil than an overblown recorder

I think it's awesome, man. It's overtones Come on, you just gotta it's all about. It's all about perspective.

So there's a perspective in which an overblown recorder by the way, when I say overblown, I mean you blow on it too hard and it makes that horrible. Dying donkey cow noise thing? You know, I'm talking about anyway, it's a horror show. And you You're an embarrassment. I love you. But you're an embarrassment for wasting your voice. You know, I'm saying

Merry Christmas.

Voice and also, first time, first time on the show. We have. Joe I'm gonna I'm gonna work on your last name. Joe. Joe Ghouta. Shah, say I get it right. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. Serbian name, which I just found out today. Serbian name. By the way. Joe is a poet. So maybe we'll get some poetry at some point in this. I don't know whether everyone knows this. The Stasi Lopez poetry major. A Joe friend of Anastasia, Anastasia, Anastasia poetry major back in the college. I don't know if that's actually. It's a first Well,

first thing I ever learned about Anastasia was that she was a poetry major.

Let me ask you this. Did she say that to you before after you said that you were a poet because I'm be weird that like for someone to stasis as you show up and be like, Hi, my name is Anastasia, I was posing major in college.

It was like that.

She literally said it was the first fact though I did about

I'm not sure who started. Was it me or you? I don't know. I'd have to look at the footage at the store.

Store at the store in line at the Duane Reade. No, no, anyone? Anyone, anyone. I was a poetry major. I was a poetry major Joe's like, Oh, I'm a poet. I'm a poet. And then that's how that's how that happened. Is that right? Is that pretty much my close

grain read? Yeah, plain read.

I would say like, for those of you that aren't from New York, how do you describe the Duane Reade? Oh,

I don't know. Phil, John.

I mean, depends on where you're from. Like, if you're from Ohio, I would say it's like a it's like a truck stop. But without the showers. It has It has everything you need. But you really don't want to be there.

Right? It's like a CVS. It's not the same. If you go to suburban drugs. Now, if you go to a suburban drugstore, right? You're going to a suburban drugstore, you walk into the drugstore, you do your stuff and you leave your there's not like this. There's not like this like, seething, like this seething thing between you and the people who run the store. It's not like a it's just not a thing. It's a different vibe. A suburban drugstore doesn't have the same vibe as Duane Reade. Yeah, Duane

Reade is upset. You're there. Yeah.

Duane Reade Duane Reade is weird because they're selling you drugs, presumably to keep you alive yet they wish you were dead. You know what I mean? It's a weird thing. I can't explain it. If you're not like, I can't explain it. Imagine like, I don't know. I don't know. It's just like something that all New Yorkers, because it doesn't even matter whether it's actually a Duane Reade, right? It could be a CVS could be a Rite Aid. They're all Dwayne reads to me here in New York. You know what I mean? Anyway. So Joe, I found out today, because I asked him about his last name is of Serbian descent but has never been to Serbia.

Yeah, what a shame is

right. Which, which, and the reason it's a shame is because I need a connection for the world's most expensive cheese, which is from Serbia.

Is it really the world's most expensive?

It is the world's most expensive cheese. I'm a little bit upset with it, though. They're right outside. You know, right, right. In Serbia, there's a nature preserve, right. And on that nature preserve, they have a herd of BULKEN donkeys I'm not making this up. This is all true story. True Facts. They have a Balkan donkeys. And they're like, you know, as you do you have these donkeys you're like, how am I gonna do with these donkeys? Right, so they have these donkeys? And they're like, Hmm, let's milk the donkeys and so they milk the donkeys but it turns out donkey milk doesn't easily first of all, you don't get that much milk out of a donkey. I don't know. Like, that's not like a phrase anyone uses but you don't get that much milk out of a donkey. And donkey milk doesn't make cheese very easily. In fact, there's an Italian group that's been working on because they also have some domesticated donkeys. They get milked in Italy, in Italy. And and I think also in No, that's camel milk. Anyway, so like donkeys don't produce that much milk and it's hard to make good cheese out of it. So these folks in Serbia, mix the donkey milk with like 40% goat milk, right because of goat milk. You know, we all know goat milk makes a decent a delicious cheese right and everyone likes a mixed milk cheese. So they basically they make a soft, almost gaudy Shiv thing that is 60 60% Donkey and 40% goat and it's called I don't know how you would pronounce it, but it's pu le I'm gonna call it Peul. So this cheese is the most expensive cheese in the world. They don't ship it you have to go to the donkey preserve in Serbia to pick it up. Right and last I checked which was a while ago, it runs about $600 A kilo $600 a kilo. So that's that's it's an expensive cheese. But you know you're not buying a kilo you're buying like you know like like a little like John, what's your favorite tiny size French chef? Like for him? What what what do you like, like, you know, I mean, anyway, I know. So to choose your favorite size like that, and it's like that and so that tiny thing only runs you back like you know, 6070 bucks or something like this. So you can you know, or you and your buddies can get a taste of the world's most expensive cheese, you know without breaking the bank, but I'm a little disappointed that you've never been over there and I feel if you did go there that you would taste the cheese for me. I don't need to taste it. I need someone I need to talk to someone who tastes

okay. Yeah, I would gladly do that for you. I don't have any plans to go anytime soon. I'd love to but cards right now but maybe it's a secret card. So

the secret the secret donkey cheese card Yeah, all right. All right, John, you got anything you got anything for? For the because this is the last show of the year right? This is it? This is the last show of the year.

This is this is it. This is the last show of the year. First I don't know if anyone's listening live but I can't be in the discord right now and messes with the audio. So sorry for that. Okay, but other things? Remember,

I couldn't be in it. I knew it.

Okay guys, we have 878 days left on the series All Pro Indiegogo we are so freakin close to crossing that finish line. So if you haven't bought it yet help us get there it would be awesome to you know meet this meet this goal and actually be able to come up with this product

or alternatively if you don't want to do that Photoshop an image of Mr. Macias head, my head and John's head flushing down a toilet and send that to us so that we can enjoy that. That image right guys?

They all they have to use is our Rockefeller Center Christmas card.

Yeah, you're like Yeah, yeah. Like that flushing down the toilet. And that's that's the alternative. Right? So yeah. Yeah, yeah. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

See what a waste? What a waste.

I know. I like Joe Joe's introduction is he's a poet. And let me tell you about his Serbian ancestry. It's minus Phil, you're on offense to God.

I mean, it's true, though. I mean, that's true. What if I'm gonna ask you a question. Let me ask you a question. What if like, what if it turns out that you could, like pull jump? Like, you know, pole vault? What if? What if you could pull vault, like, twice as high as anyone else on Earth, but you're like, neck?

Listen, I'm, I'm 42. Where do you think all of those Olympic pole vaulters are doing when they're 42? They're not pole vaulting around Brooklyn.

Give a you never did it and your voice is gonna last for at least another week and a half. You don't want to say it. It's like your Your voice may not last forever feel. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, you, you know, listen to this listen to, you know, listen to some old singers, although they're using their voice all the time. Is that why singers voices kind of go because they use them all the time? Or is it just happen as you get older?

No, they theoretically they don't go male male singers like opera singers. Your voice doesn't really mature until you're 40. So I was just waiting to mature Dave like a fine donkey cheese.

Remember, the donkey cheese is fresh

food. Fair enough? I am not.

Well, that's for sure.

But real quick, just to add one more thing about this, here's all Pro. So that means there's eight days left to claim the cooking issues secret perk, if you go to Booker index.com And there's a pop up for it. But you get $5 off this, it was all Pro and Dave is going to make a pie and marches on video, kind of thing. Five to 10 minute video of him going through the prep work and making the pie and you'll get an annotated recipe as well. So you can finally hear what Anastasia and I have been dealing with for the past couple months and with

all so, so fair, fair notice I'm not going to get into I'm not going to get into pi marches on I'm not going to get into I'm not gonna get into Monroe, Boston Strauss. And you know, nobody in the business wants to hear about it. Nobody in my family wants to hear about it like no, like literally nobody. I went okay. No, Dave, I'll say this. John. John wants set a timer. I started talking about pie. And one of our daily phone calls, set a timer. 42 minutes later, still talking about pies. I had not stopped talking about pies at time marches on. Judges like you data.

And then he hung up the phone that we do last week when we went to the kitchen Arts and Letters day.

Yeah, I went to kitchen arts and lenders. I was talking to Matt. Yeah, I was talking to Matt sartwell kitchen Arts and Letters who you should but you know, you should buy all of your Christmas cookbooks and whatnot or holiday whatever you should buy from them. So I went there, of course to talk about what John was talking about. Pies, pies, and you didn't clock that one but it was forever. I I bought the pants off of a guy who only thinks about cookbooks 24/7 I was able to make him bored about pies that that is, you know, where, you know, that's that's my level of interest in this particular in Monroe Boston Strauss and his his pie making alright, but that's all I'm gonna say about I'm not gonna actually talk about it, not gonna talk about it. So who do we have coming on next year for guests? Who do we have already in the pipeline there, John?

Boy oh, boy, do we have a lot of people we're going to kick off the new year with Sandor Katz we're finally gonna have him on after not being able to have him in studio. Then we're going to have masa rushydro on from Katana kitten. Then we're going to have

his new book because he has a new book. We're also we're going to have Michael and standing guard and winning the co authors of the book on Japanese cocktails. It should be good.

Yep, it's gonna be great. And then at some point, we're going to have the Mofaz curatorial team on as well as Dr. Jessica Harris to separately but they're going to discuss the upcoming moped exhibition, which is gonna open is going to be great than we've gotten.

We had an opening date. I know we announced it on air it's been pushed a little bit because this freakin Omicron. But hopefully still opening in in February, but you know, stay tuned, we'll push that out the Mofaz opening the new date on our socials as soon as we have them.

Yep. And then we're going to have Adam DiMartino joining us as well.

And talking about mushrooms. Yep. Mushrooms Francis contain something about mushrooms. I say something about mushrooms. I was at the I was at the New York Botanical Garden, the one of the Bronx, not the one in Brooklyn. And by the way, I got to give Brooklyn their props. They do a better job than New York in dealing with kind of food based plants like on a consistent level. They do a lot of talking about it, which I appreciate. If you ever go to the New York Botanical Garden right now they have the train show on or what's going bonkers everyone every year one goes bonkers for the train show. But it would you go into this giant conservatory and to get from one wing to the other. They have this underground tunnel that like looks like you're inside of a corrugated metal tube almost like a mini Quonset hut tunnel that you're going through? Almost like you're going into an underground bunker from like area. 51 But you have to walk through it. No windows. They should do mushrooms there. Don't you think they should have a mushroom thing at the New York Botanical Garden? I think that will be nice. I think it's a good idea.

I'm gonna go ahead and guess that a lot of people are doing mushrooms at the New York Botanical Garden.

Okay, okay. That's, that's fair. That's fair. I mean, I mean, I don't know. Like, am I the only guy that goes there for the plants? Is it just me my the only one. I like plants.

Like trees.

I like trees. I'm getting to like plants more. I am a tree guy. But I'm I'm beginning to think about plants more kind of generally. Where's you hate trees love flowers?

Yeah.

But you don't you only started hating trees because I liked them so much. Is that true? That is true. You and Booker. hate the fact that I like trees. Whatever. Yes. All right. Whatever. Alright, so who else we have you?

Francisco Magua have modernist pizza and modernist bread fame and then Nick from Grove advice is gonna come on as well.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the the modern is get get all of your get all of your pizza questions ready for John?

may do Nick on Is there a valid What day is Valentine's day he will go on about using his oil as like aphrodisiac and massage and all that stuff. Oh

no, that's the day but no, Valentine's Day is on a Monday on the 15th is one now for instance. Am I going is coming on.

Oh, and then Wednesday Come on.

Hopefully the following week on the 22nd

but if people are gonna get nasty with his olive oil, we need to do it the week before. Yeah. That's just gross. Anyway. You know what I mean? It unless he wants to go back to the like a Olympic era. You remember like you ever remember reading about the old school Greeks they would put in the Olympics they would they would put olive oil all over their bodies and then they had these like weird scrapers and they would scrape the filth and the oil off with the scraper like similar to the thing that you use on a tablecloth to scrape the to scrape the crumbs off the tablecloth.

My favorite thing about that story is Do you remember when we all used to read about the you know the Grecian athletes and their oil Bad's?

You're saying you never read about that, Phil? I've never read about that. What the hell did you Oh went to school in Florida. Sorry. Okay, that's true.

We have good plants though.

Yeah, you did have good plants. Do you have good plans? What? Nastasi you never you don't remember this? No. John, anyone?

I think I think I remember something.

I remembered something like this.

What did you guys learn about? The Greeks? Like what like Archimedes, what were you learning? You weren't learning about athletes and oil and scrapers that hell? I'm not even a sports guy. I don't know anything about sports. And I know how the ancient Greeks used to scrape the oil off their bodies.

Why do you still remember this?

I remember every dumb thing. I forget everybody's name. I forget everybody's face. And yet, I can remember random stories about people. And random facts from when I was a child. It's, it's, it's a curse, actually. It's a curse. I'd be better off if I remembered people. And like, appointments, you know, anyway. From Jason, are you have anything else? Wish I answered somebody's questions? Answer the questions. All right. From Jason, I have a gear question. Finally, after 11 years of low temperature cooking. Jason, I know you've waited a long time for this answer. So here we go. And I'm just going to make it up. I apologize in advance Jason making this up off top my head. Because I gotta admit, I didn't give it serious thought beforehand. Every week. I'm like, I'm going to answer it next week. Because we have a guest this week, I don't have a guest. And I still haven't thought about it. But I'm gonna give you some answers. Anyway. Finally, after 11 years of low temp cooking, I ordered a chamber vacuum machine, the VacMaster VP 215, which a lot of people seem to like I've never used it, right. The VP 215 is vac masters, I'm pretty sure that's their oil pump unit. Aside from bagging stuff to cook, what are your favorite tricks or uses for it right now? The VP 215. If it's the one I'm thinking of with a small small blessing, small oil pump in it, I don't know how many how much moisture right, it can actually remove. So you know when the problem with removing moisture from something with an oil pump is that you swap the oil and then you have to clean it. But the most recent fun trick is the force cooling and like reinforcing the crust on breads, I will say. So you take a hot bread, hot bread, and then you put it in the back and you close it. If you put it in and you just run the vac you're going to blow the you're going to explode a soft chromed bread because when bread comes right out of the oven, the starch hasn't really fully set up yet it's too hot. And so it's actually even though the crust is firm, the inside is quite fragile. So if you run a hard vac on it, it'll blow off. So like what I've been doing recently is putting like, you know, like a like a cheese cloth around the bread so that this stuff doesn't get sucked into your pump. And then just like doing it for like a couple of seconds, and then pausing wiping down the inside of the machine and doing it until it cools down enough that you can suck a harder vacuum on it. You can make a bread 100% sliceable in under 15 minutes from coming out of the oven, which is pretty crazy, right? You just have to do it in like short bursts. And afterwards you have to make sure you clean out the oil sufficiently. The other tricks I really like are obviously you know if you've if you've never had a vacuum machine or real vacuum machine before. Wow, I don't even know who that was. But you know, I hope you had a Kleenex nearby. The if you've never had a real vacuum machine before you got to do the old school trick where you put like fruit or vegetables like so friends cucumbers weren't great. Melons even though I don't like the taste of them, they weren't great. Apples and things that are harder. They don't go as translucent, but pears work quite well. So you slice things into chunks or pieces and you put like a flavorful liquid into the bag, you suck a heart vacuum on it. And then you force injected in and all this stuff looks amazing. Like like all of a sudden fruits look like amazing pieces of jewelry. And they're infused with flavor or if you don't put a liquid in, they just get compressed down. And they they're like denser. So that's like you know the original watermelon trick was you didn't actually infuse anything into the watermelon. You just boom smash the watermelon flat so it was a denser, prettier watermelon on that same idea flash pickling in a vacuum machine works great for things like very thinly sliced onions which I love read go red, please come on red red pickled onions are the pickled onions to beat Am I wrong about this?

Yeah, no, they're great. Love them.

But you don't be you like them once they're pickled. But so picking ones don't give you nightmares.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Raul give me name is

pickling is enough.

Pickling is great. Yes, that's enough. Okay.

Good to know. And the other fun thing is things that have issues with them cooking issues. So things that are like that are like grease sponges I'm looking at use zucchini and I'm looking at you eggplant so like when you're going to do an eggplant, an eggplant fried eggplant flake for for parmesan or so like I tend to squeeze the EverLiving snot out of eggplant before I sold it and then I squeezed the piss out of it before I, before I bread it and fry it. Some people will pre nuke their egg plant and they knew get to kind of collapse the structure down so that the structure fills with water and won't absorb oil. Well. All

right, so Phil go off. And I know what he's gonna say. What? Something about squeezing the eggplant?

Oh, God. I absolutely was not.

Oh no, God,

I had a legitimate food question. But

that's okay. Remember, fail first you have to slice the eggplant. And then after you slice the eggplant, only then can you squeeze it. So it's a little you know, it's a little bit like closing the barn door after the barn burns now anyway, I know I'm mixing metaphors there. So you slice the eggplant is salted. You put it in the bag, and you smash it. And it goes flat instantly. And then you can you know, they're real thin and they fry up beautifully. We're like zero internal grease. Now you want some grease in the breading? Because Come on, you know I'm saying but like you get very little grease in the eggplant when you when you do it that way. Is that a good list of tricks to do with the vaccine?

Yeah.

pat me on the back. Phil, what was your food question?

Well, it was actually just like the, you know, being the dummy, right? Like so. What's the actual benefit from suit? Like, those were all the things that weren't necessarily su V slope. Okay, so what's the actual benefit of vacuum sealing versus just my kind of like, old school, you know, use the ziplock bag and, you know, is there an actual Is there a whole lot of let's finish on a vacuum sealer.

It's funny that you call it old school because actually the vacuum machine came first in a ziplock was meant to imitate the vacuum machine once we weren't allowed to use vacuum machines in restaurants anymore. So like the ziplock technique was developed in direct it directly because of the New York City's ban on SUV eat in restaurants directly, like no one was doing that prior to that. So like, you know, everyone's running around trying to figure out how to not use a vacuum machine and only that caused the ziplocs Ditto with rolling things in plastic wrap and all of that stuff everyone already had the vacuum. She's so weird, right? So the vacuum machine for certain things. The The answer is no 90% of the stuff that you want to do low temperature you can do with a Ziploc, however, the vacuum machine is just more convenient for for certain things, especially if you don't want to have a lot of oil you need a lot of liquid in the bag like oil or otherwise to get the ziplock trick to really work well. And certain things do certain things taste I think worse and under a high vacuum for instance, chicken breast I think under high vacuum the texture kind of suffers, but it's better for injecting flavors into things so like I don't particularly like low temperature shrimp, but if your need to marinate shrimp, putting it in a vacuum bag injects the marinade into the shrimp but for cooking itself from on glaze, if you cook cram on glaze in a Ziploc bag, it tends to still take on kind of the soul free ag notes whereas if it's vacuum packed, it doesn't. That's the one place where I'm really gonna say the vacuum is like 100% necessary. Other than that certain flavors like I say have better penetration in a vacuum than they wouldn't have Ziploc but no, there's you're fine. Your five star

said did you want to make a joke about the penetration with the vacuum?

You guys gotta get you guys gotta get your head out of the freaking governor's Jeez Louise says you know the holiday show people holidays. Merry Christmas. Yeah, he's from misplaced enthusiasm. Does Dave have a good way of removing static from machinery? For context? I have a flat burr coffee grinder that is a static monster ever since I removed the Clump Crusher, the Clump Crusher in order to get a more consistent particle size and fewer fines. I've thought about possible solutions like having some stainless wire in the place of the Clump Crusher. I like that word. I like that word Clump Crusher. It's okay. Yeah. Clump Crusher. We love the word. See, see the poet knows. The poet knows someone is sighs You don't even appreciate someone was sitting around one day and was like, we can call this thing. Like this thing that like, you know stops. So what is a Clump Crusher? First of all right I'm sure some of you are asking what the hell is a Clump Crusher? And we finish the question first. Oh, and the grinder is mainly aluminum with some titanium coated burrs if that helps at all. Oh, and I'm already doing a spritz of water on the coffee beans to tame it. But God helped me when I forget to do that. Alright, so a clump it let's say you, by the way back. I haven't spent money on my espresso rig in a long, long time. Right. So like when I was buying stuff, they didn't have any crushers. Right. But nowadays in the era of kind of zero retention, grinders, a lot of people have grinders that grind directly from the burrs in it through a chute into a porta filter. Right. So the Porta filters the thing that you you know that that holds the coffee grounds when you're making espresso, it's the you know, the thing that with the handle. So a Clump Crusher is after the birds. So like after the birds, if you don't have something right there, when things are grinding, they fly out of the birds. And as they fly out, right, they tend to kind of fly everywhere. And there's a lot of static electricity just because coffee tends to build up static electricity. So even if the machinery is all metal, if the coffee doesn't touch any of that metal on as it sprang out of the birds, it can have some static on it. So it can clump up where the static you know, where the coffee particles clump together, they clump up, etc. And they can spray everywhere we've been having, by the way, static nightmares. Here I've been having stack nightmares with my with my flour with my flour mill. And we had this issue, get this size, you're gonna like this. I won't say what I was making. But I had a graham cracker crust and I want to trigger you, Anastasia. Hi. Yes. All right. So I was because I was doing working with the book. I don't normally measure pie stuff or anything like this. But like, because I'm working on the book. I'm trying to measure what's going on. So I had one of those Silpat That's right. And the Silpat you know, there's still paths that have like the outlines with the with the diameters on them so that you can figure out how big your dough is, you know, I'm talking about yes. Yeah. So sill pads are non conductive, right, because silicones non conductive. So anytime you're doing something that has like a lot of static or can develop a lot of statics, so I have I have dough with which has some like liquid in it and I have Silpat and then I have a rolling pin which is wood. So I'm not touching the dough. I'm just rolling it out. And so we were doing I was doing graham cracker the rolling graham cracker crust. So at least finally particle alized graham crackers, and I rolled it in. And then Jen, my wife is it was helping me out, picks up the Silpat and starts walking over because I was doing it on my on my table not in the kitchen. I was doing it on the table so that I could like really gauge you know, big. So she picks up she starts walking over and all of a sudden the graham crackers come alive and start flying up so much so that it was getting in her eyes. She's like, what she didn't know what the hell was going on. I turn around I see the graham crackers flying into her eyes and the grand crackers like going everywhere. It was the craziest. It was the craziest static experience I've ever seen in a kitchen is these graham crackers attacking my wife. It was nuts. It was nuts. Anyway, crazy. Some Stasio was like I just wish it was you Dave I wish it had been you. I just wish it had been you. Yeah, she she got it in the eyes. All I got was you know is that then later? You know the feeling? Do you know I hate sand. Right? You know I hate sand. Yes. Yeah. Does anyone else hates sand besides me on this on this? Yeah,

I don't mind sand. Yeah, well, great. Yeah.

I think that I think the world cleanly divides I don't think there's people who are like yes, and that could take it could take it or leave it. You know what I mean? It's like sand is the worst. What do you think?

Well, I'm actually I can kind of take it or leave it depends. I liked sand on the beach. I don't like sand once I get home you know,

varying always contrary in Graham graham crackers on the ground graham cracker particles on the ground is the same as stepping on sand. And so like the stuff, it's hard to get it all up. You know what I mean? And then every time I step on a little particle of gram cracker on that, oh, it's not as bad as having a sticky floor. The Stasi hates movie theaters for a different reason. The thing I don't like about movie theaters is the sticky Coca Cola floor, the sticky floor. Is there anything worse than lifting your shoe and having it stick to the floor at all?

I also love that you're going through a list of all the things you hate and you're like you're such a contrarian.

What Oh, like you're not a contrarian. You teach kids recorder. No, I find the middle ground you know, come on. Are they never useful? You teach kids recorder? Because you hate parents admit it. Right back to misplaced enthusiasms question. So the Clump Crusher is there to do a number of things. It's a, it's a cool name Clump Crusher. But really, if you don't have a little gate there, the grounds are going to come flying out, and they're going to spray everywhere. And the ones that haven't hit a piece of metal that's that's grounded to the rest of the unit are going to have their static on it. And they're just going to be like a crazy wild hair flying everywhere, right? There's gonna be everywhere. So my question. So one of the issues that people have with the with the club crushers is that they retain grounds. So remember that the club crusher is coming after the coffee has already been ground. So I don't really understand why you would have a more consistent particle size, or in other words, why the Clump Crusher would affect I mean, I could be wrong, because again, like I'm behind the times when it comes to this kind of technology. But I don't understand why the particle size distribution in your ground coffee, or the fines would be overly affected by the quad Crusher, it seems to me and for most people online that the thing that they get really pissed off about is the retained grounds in it. And really, like in a zero retention situation. Yeah, the club crusher is going to be a problem, because anything that does have access, static is going to stick. So fines will stick to the club Crusher more, right. But then the next time you grind coffee, right? It's already been saturated with fines. And so it like after your first grind. You know, you should be consistent. Now you're gonna get old nasty coffee. That's a different situation. But the answer is there's no good solution to what? Sorry, the answer is there's no good. There's no good solution. You could do like a double. You could do like a double baffles situation, but I don't I don't see a good solution. Maybe someone in the discord or someone can get back to me with it with a good solution for it. Sorry. Sorry about that. Was that an okay answer? Even though I didn't answer it?

Yeah. Good.

From blue knot. I know I answered this a little bit in case it was a direct problem you had to solve before but blue knot wants to know, first of all, are any of you guys decent at tying knots and balloons? Really good

at it? Really? Yeah.

It's just one of those things where you say you're good at are you actually good at? No, I'm

really fast and really good. Whether it's balloons or water balloons or jelly Bo.

Really? People? Pick Anastasia first in the water balloon fight? Yeah, pick her first. What do you think? Do you know not miss Darcy? Are you familiar with this new these Nash shooting when?

We should have thought about it? We should have thought of it.

Are you okay with the cheat? Yeah. Really? Yeah, it's

genius. You don't

see? Well, but the thing is, is that like, you know, on certain things, you're like, No, you have to do it the right way. Or you're a terrible person like you hate in Bananagrams. You hate the two letter word.

No, but the so like, I just think that's a genius invention.

You only I mean, it's not very it's very kind of anti the earth right? Because it's a lot of plastic you throw away to do it. But I mean to me there's like some honor in like actually being able to wrap that sucker around your finger and like roll and pop it real quick without like getting Yeah, I mean, you know, without popping up. So I'm, I'm kind of happy this is a skill after all these years. Here's something I didn't know about you that I learned that by That's true. That's true. All right. So balloon balloon not wants to know. How do you prevent cooked whole crabs from turning black when children stored after cooking? I teased the answer a little bit but so crabs and other Decapod crustaceans in there. You know, it's not blood, they don't have blood. They have like hemolymph, which is kind of like because remember, they have an open circulatory system. They're not like, not like mammals. They have more or less of these things called hemo. Science, right? So remember, Stasi we ever talked on air about horseshoe crabs?

Somewhere? Yeah.

Does anyone know can you eat a horseshoe crab? Is there any meat in a horseshoe crab? We looked into this stave. We did look at what we find. I don't remember. I will look

while you're talking again.

Well, horseshoe crabs are horror shows. Yeah, on that we can agree right Anastasia, they're hard. They're horrifying.

I love them that I hate them. You know, Joe picked up some meeting ones once and held them up in the air and they still clung on to each other.

That's true love. When I was a small child out like eight or nine. I went to a sleepaway camp probably too early, probably too early, probably shouldn't have gone. Especially me. And we were in Cape Cod. So Cape Cod is a cape, hence the name Cape Cod. And it is in off the coast of Massachusetts and it looks like kind of like an arm anyone who knows what it looks like, it looks like a Rosie the Riveter arm thing, right? And on the elbow near a town called Chatham, there used to be there was like a long like spit that came that came out like along like peninsula that came out. And, and it wasn't connected to the ocean. It wasn't a barrier island, it was actually connected to the cake. The cake, by the way, is just a big piece of rubble that was deposited in the ocean at the end of the last ice age. That's, that's what it actually is. It's actually very recent. It's not an old thing anyway, I mean, oh, compared to us, but not all compared to the rest of the geographic crap we have. So when I was a kid that was still connected. And so there was a thing called pleasant Bay in between the land on Cape Cod, and this spit that was the, you know, the outer outer beach. And when I was a kid, we took a boat across that and we anchored right near the outer each where there was nothing, and there was a horseshoe crab meeting bonanza. And it was just you could not step without stepping on a horseshoe crab. And this was only a couple of years after the horrible or maybe like a year after the horrible experience I had with the multiple brutes cicadas that came out in New Jersey when I was a kid. Like, if you've ever been part of a multiple broods, cicada thing where they sound like screaming triffids and they're, they're falling everywhere and you can't walk without stepping on cicadas. You can't go anywhere without hearing cicadas. Like if you've ever done that, imagine that with horseshoe crabs, I was kind of traumatized. And then only years later that I learned that they use horseshoe crab blood for medical things, and at the time was very expensive. And I was like I know where all the horseshoe crabs are, we could go back with to become millionaires on horseshoe crab blood, because I wanted to kill them all anyway. And then I later found out that it was very rare that you have this like, incredible, like, huge group of meeting horseshoe crabs. Anyway. hemocyanin So that is the stuff in horseshoe crabs that they use, I don't really even know what they use it for. But all crabs have more or less of it. And because it's copper based, right? certain enzymes in that are there when they go bad can make it go like kind of either bluish or black. And so what's happening most likely with your crabs is they're not being cooked enough, right? So like certain crabs that sustained damage or crustaceans, that sustained damage when they're alive. You can get black spots on the shell and I think that's kind of related. But if it dies and isn't cooked, right, it can go black or if it's undercooked, like par cooked undercooked and then chilled, it's going to go black because the enzymes haven't been deactivated. So I would just say if you're going to park Cook and Chill, you have to park Cook, chill and then fully cook quickly or par cook longer and you shouldn't have that problem. Was that a decent answer?

Yeah, and they're not edible. They've only been used as bait and something about the COVID-19 vaccine. Really? Yeah, but I don't understand it. So

they're used as bait for what what eats them? eels? Eels eat them because my experience is is that they like you know how like when a regular crab washes up maybe you see a claw maybe you just see the top part of the campus and something is eaten the rest of it right? Horseshoe crab when he walks up. It looks like a whole horseshoe crab. It's just dead. Nothing's been eaten that thing you know I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. What you're gonna say some made from Philbrick? Hey, Dave in the team, for some reason I moved out of the United States, and many of my cookbooks bought in the United States call for insecure number one and number two, from what I understand number one is 94% table salt and 6% nitrite. Well, number two is nitrite nitrate and 90% salt. In Poland where I am now based there is no readily available products with these ratios. I can buy so called Sol pavlova, which is 99.3% table salt and point 7% sodium nitrate The important thing people is trait versus trait crate versus trait. Undefeated, I realized I can buy pure nitrate and mix it myself with table salt. Now my source for all this information is Wikipedia. The information given there is given in unitless numbers as in 6.25% of nitrite and 93% NaCl blah, blah, blah. This unit less ness is giving me pause. Is it in grams? Is it more Well number or perhaps these are fluid ounces or, or feet. If this is in anything else, then grams. What is a good source of these ratios? A units and weight? I suspect it's a mole number, you know, you guys remember what moles are? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? Okay, you're in chemistry. Sweet, sweet. Appreciate it. So like, so like every, every, every compound, right has a number associated with it, that is the weight of the atoms in it. And if you if you a mole of that weighs that weight in that atomic weight in grams, that was not a clear explanation. But in case you guys are wondering what a mole is, it's 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd. I had a difficult time explaining this to, to DAX, right. So it's like, it doesn't matter what it is a mole of cars is 6.02 times 10, to the 23rd. Automobiles, there's not that many automobiles, but obviously, like a mole of anything is 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd of that thing. And it just so happens that, you know, grams, two atomic units, that's the conversion ratio. So anyway, back to the question. Also, in old books, I see people using potassium nitrate aka saltpeter. Now I wouldn't do that. I don't really want to use that as I imagined night nitrate is preferred substitute. Alright, this is getting really in the weeds is getting really in the weeds people. Alright, so Dobrich don't use just use the, the stuff you were talking about, that's got nitrite and just use the nitrate unless you're curing ham, right. So the only reason to have nitrate in a cure is because it's it needs to provide a cure over a long period of time. So most of the things that people are curing are ground products or things that where the cure can penetrate rather quickly, in which case nitrite is what you want. So most all old recipes, unless you're doing hams or whole muscle cuts, really should be using nitrite instead of nitrate. I'm gonna guess that ain't nobody writing cookbooks based on molar weights. That's just a guess. I haven't done the actual research so I would bet that they're doing it based on gram percentages of sodium nitrate that's, that's my guess. That's my guess. What do you think so? Don't quote me on it. We'll I'll ask Sandor Katz when he comes out. I don't know how much he knows about nitrate or or anyone in the discord can chime in with their thoughts. Was that good enough? sighs was that good? All right.