Hello, everybody, and welcome to a brand new series on heritage radio network called the culinary call sheet where we give a peek into the back kitchen of culinary media. I'm your host, April Jones,

and I'm your co host, Darren bresnitz. Part of why we started the show was to offer an unofficial mentorship for anyone who's interested in learning about all aspects of food and video, whether that's TV, social media online, or just something you want to do for fun.

Absolutely what was once niche or a little silly, as I'm sure you remember, Darren, when we started out, this man has now become such a massive playing field for so many creatives using food as the medium.

It's something that has driven us professionally and personally, for so many years. What excites me the most about this show is that we're going to sit down with some of the industry leaders to hear how they made it and what drew them into this industry.

With 20 years in the culinary production game ourselves. We're hoping we can give through these conversations an insider's view into personal stories from the field, as well as an in depth behind the scenes look into some of the most popular food programming. In today's evolving culinary media landscape.

We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

Yeah, it's a little bit of conversation, how to and how do you do the things that you do in color media, which I'm so excited about? I love so many of the guests that are coming on this season. We have talent from Food Network from Vice media eater refinery 29,

we've met some of the best people in the world both in front of and behind the camera. And we're bringing them all together to share their stories, their delicious adventure and their unique journey into this crazy world.

So to be the first to hear our episodes when they launched this fall, go to wherever podcasts are streaming and hit subscribe and make sure to give us a follow at the Culinary call sheet on Instagram.

Today's program is brought to you by regional access regional access is a regional distributor committed to creating sustainable economies throughout the Northeast. For more information visit regional access dotnet. On behalf of our family of hosts, staff and the millions of listeners who have tuned in since 2009, we want to wish you happy holidays and ask for your support as we launch our daily in House news coverage. Please consider making us a part of your end of year giving in 2013. Your membership donation is tax deductible and the best way to show you believe in our work and the importance of a free food focused Media Resource. consider donating today at Heritage radio network.org by clicking the donate button. Thanks for your support and enjoy the show.

Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave earlier host of cooking issues coming to you live numbers these are in the back of the bank robbery in Bushwick Brooklyn on a very snowy snowy day here in New York joined with Joe in the booth. I'm doing okay, how's it going? Dave? Stasha the hammer Lopes not here yet because, well, Joe, is there a polite way of saying what the the name of that website is where you can check on the L train?

Is the L train ft.com

Oh, there we go is the L train f.com If you go to that website, you will find that yes, in fact it is which is the train she takes for those of you that have never been to New York area and taken our lovely subways. The F train travels between kind of the hipster portions of Brooklyn and 14th Street in Manhattan and that's what it's often ft. Right, Joe?

It is pretty often asked it's highly trafficked, but there's only one line so it gets pretty effed

yeah gets effed up in the in the snow. Although why would it get messed up in the snow? It's all underground. What

the hell? Yeah, it's underground until you get to like East New York. So oh, that's

where it got messed up.

i I can only assume

hey, look, I took an above ground train to get here and a no problems on the J line.

The J is the most reliable trade New York apparently. Wow. You're just to find the knowledge. MTA knowledge they if they want to start put me on the payroll, you know,

you should get together with my son Booker. You know, he's a similar font of knowledge on intello Very opinion, man, his kid he hates that's crazy. He hates it. I don't know why he today it takes particular dislikes a certain trains based on the actual motors, the actual manufacturer of the motors used to propel them. He can tell by the sound of a subway cars like that's Austin propulsion in that and he's like, I don't like that one so much. He's like, That's it, you know? It's like a sign of the cross and it's over. It's done. So while we're waiting for Anastasia to show up and see how her day has been going, we got some folks here we're doing a A A Well, why don't you Why don't you go go go around the room here. We'll ever introduce yourselves. Tell them what we're doing today.

Hi, everybody. I'm Lara and I have an app called days, which allows you to share a day's worth of photos and gifts at a time. It's a visual diary, not dazed,

like dazed and confused, like days, like days of our lives, like days

of the week, days of our lives. Yes. So this is a project called days in the life in which I follow around and photograph a creative visionary like yourself, stay in for a day of their life, just a normal Tuesday, and then we share that out with everyone. You'll be able to see a day in Dave's life.

Nice. Yeah. Becky, wanna introduce yourself?

I'm Rebecca. I work with Dave, Anastasia over at Momofuku and Booker and ducks. So just hanging out for the day.

Nice. You can't come in. It's the US. L train messed up, huh? No AC II mess. Really? Yeah. That's weird. All right. So Natasha is here. And we're ready to begin in earnest colon your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 for all your cooking and non related cooking questions. And we're next Tuesday is what we're starting to climb over me. Are we in town? Are you

in all fairness, I told her to do it. So the question is, Is this our last show before Christmas? Yeah, so we're not going to do the Christmas Eve shows you didn't do it by yourself. Wow.

I don't think you can, Dave. Oh, we're shut down. We're shut down.

Alright, pulling the plug show. The Christmas Eve show.

This is the Christmas Christmas show. All right. So any Christmas Merry Christmas. And that means this is our last opportunity on the Cooking issue show to to plug the Sears all Sears all go to kickstarter.com Search Sears all and for $65. You too can be one of the first people to own this magnificent handheld boiler that we're making. Right? So how's it going? Good. We're gonna sending out the holiday cards right? And what's it gonna say?

Citizens greeting

that's a Piper isn't for those of you that are tuned in before you know that Piper, Christiansen king of puns has done the Holiday Card verbiage, not the not the art. But the verbiage and its citizens. Citizens greetings. And we're mailing those out when today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow morning. Yeah, next week. So to some questions from Brad spawn. We got an on the Twitter recommendations for a first low temperature book books that have some veggie recipes especially are appreciated for ours is a mixed household. It's tough. I mean, there's really only pulp in published book land that's dedicated. There's a, the only one I can really think of is the underpressure. They the one that was put out by Keller and Ruhlman. And there's some good veg recipes in there. But you know, Modernist Cuisine. I'm sure they're at home one has some but that's kind of a more of a hefty tome. Look, the recipes are going to be fine in the in the underpressure thing. I disagree with some of their points specifically with some of their safety standpoints. But there's a lot of stuff online as well. And it's just ever increasing the amount of amount of stuff you guys seen any newer, low temperature, by the way. The reason I everyone Rebecca was like, introduce myself with everyone who's in the studio, boom, like you're here, I'm gonna call you out. So you guys, you guys know any like, good. We haven't done like this lucky peach or anything on that. It's just as it comes, right? Most of the stuff that, you know, I work with, it's kind of as it comes not specifically, you know, low temp or not, I'm trying to think of another one. There's, I mean, first books, I'm assuming you don't want to spend like $158 Like, you know, the one Roca, one was still a classic, which came out of the Bruna was so that kind of grandfather of low tech, one of the grandfather's will attempt cooking to test that because he says the temperatures are too low. In fact, he says that it's a book that attempts to poison people. It's a great chefs book, but I would get the under pressure. You know, I have to do the ideas of book have a lot of low temp in it. I don't know, I don't know, you know what, and go to chefsteps.com where they can put a lot of content online. It's not in the form of a cookbook, but they have a lot of content online for you to check out that's put out by our good friends like Michael Mackin Chris Young and who else is on that one? Grant right anyway. And obviously chefs who use a lot of low temperature work like Grant and stuff, I'm sure have a lot of stuff in their books on it. Anyway. Sorry, I could not be of more help. Is that not fair? I feel like it wasn't very helpful. Yeah, it sounds like I don't care. I don't give a rat's ass. Okay. Also, we got in, do remember those. Remember those? Those cocktail University things we did those videos we did. So delete, delete brow leapers 500 Ronin and says, The saxophone during the cocktail University segment. Sounds like Michelle Pfeiffer and Sean Connery stopped off for a drink in the Russia house. Be like, I mean, like, that's good, I guess right? I mean, like, I wouldn't mind if Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer came and stopped by would make them a drink. That's great.

I want to be there. Yeah,

I like those guys. I mean, I don't really I don't know them. I like the theory of that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've never met me like Sean Connery kind of like,

we find that can you find that Joe? The saxophone and the whatever one?

Yeah, I'll do a little searching around. Joe speaking of I didn't bring it up before because he was waiting for stuff. So it's a little pre, you know, preoccupied, but what's up with Jack and the porn music you're trying to get people to donate money for the holiday seasons to the heritage radio network using fundamentally porn music.

Well, sometimes you have to appeal to not people's, like hearts and minds, but to you know, their senses and in other ways if you really want them to give you what they want, right?

Yeah, but I mean, like, it's marketing. I mean, like eight. Okay, so like, it's a known things like we're going to like use, we're going to use 70 style poor music. No,

I think it's just that's, that's Jack's personal taste. It there was really no marketing scheme here. But I will pass the review along to Jack.

I'm not saying in a negative way, by the way. Oh, no. Can we play it again? Real quick, because stars didn't get here. Can we play that? Okay, yeah, let me put that up. It'll just come on in a minute here.

Well, he's gonna,

on behalf of our family of hosts, staff, and the millions of listeners who have tuned in since 2009, we want to wait a little bit more of a hip hop. Support point, as we launch our daily in House news coverage, please consider making us a part of your ending.

Sounds like the intro to a very White's not like an actual very white song, but like the intro to a very white song. Yeah, it's gonna go into slow your roll after that or something like that. We should play that.

Yeah, Jack should have recorded that with all of his vocals pitch down. So it sounds like Barry White.

Oh my god. Oh, holy crap, can we do that?

Then we would have had the money rolling.

Oh my god, we will it Phil Bravo. If he would ever come in here and do it. Like he could do the very wide voice a little goofy, or the very white. Very white recipes with your magnificent voice. Okay. So, you know, did a presentation at the Food and Wine thing for all of our next publishing that we'll talk about a little bit, right, because it's kind of interesting. So, it for those of you that you know, I don't know, I don't know, I've heard me speak about this before. I spend a lot of time thinking about cocktails that other people don't spend a lot of time necessarily thinking about her didn't gin and tonic. Apparently, everyone's thinking about Gin Tonics quite a lot. Now, like it's a huge, huge thing we think, but I've been working fairly consistently on the gin and tonic for you know, almost a decade now. And actually figures into like, the last chapter of the cocktail book is all just gin and tonic and kind of, you know, like full riff on the gin and tonic. And what's that? That's actual people. That's actual children laughing I thought that was like some sort of special effect that that they're playing. So the concept is what do you do after you do the normal gin and tonic and the my new idea and this is what we're presenting a food and wine is to make a gin and tonic that doesn't have a tonic in it. Right? It just hits the same flavor notes as a gin and tonic. So and in fact, we made one that doesn't even have gin in it but it tastes kind of like a gin and tonic with a little bit of a more of a holiday note little peppery notes das hates because she hates tuna berry flavors and then this has definitely Juniper flavor in it. So So what are the notes we have to hit you have to get the revenue pine from the Juniper and the gin plus you know some other botanicals that are in it you need acidity, you need bitterness, right I add a little salt and so any new sugar right photonic so we have almost all that we in one ingredient Schisandra which is the five flavor berry Oh, they also make omega t out of it in Korea. So it's Korean, Chinese and also to certain extent, Russia Russian where they call it we Monique Monique or something like that say with crazy accent Come on. You never know you never hooked me up with the accent because I can't do what do you mean? I've heard you do it a million. No, I've never.

I have never thought

Oh yeah. How does your mom How does your MO I'm not

gonna say anything.

All right, so So you're lying

Oh, yeah. Hey, I'm Dave Arnold Booker.

You are Dave Arnold, aren't you? Hi,

I'm Dave Warner from Booker index. All right. But like I feel like if I had known they're gonna play that I wouldn't have gone to such like a high pitched squeal going on I would have I would have started you know, you know started a little lower. Like Hi, I'm Dave Arnold. Okay, so so we use this Cassandra berry which you have to order it I've ordered it online we got it on Amazon and it's kind of fresher if you like the local spice shop sell it it's really desiccated hard to get good flavor out of it. But it has all of those notes it is itself sour and they call it five flavor berry because it has you know it's it's a little bit salty, it's pungent it's It's aromatic mean they it's got it's got all of those flavors in it. So what we do is we it's easiest thing in the world to make we blended small amounts because Andrew berry with vodka because it brings its own gin flavors to it. Then to augment the acidity and tone down the kind of juniper notes on it we also made some straight in water and then combine those two to produce this because Andhra so we didn't add any acid. We didn't add any gin. We didn't add any quinine for bitterness. It was all right there in that one thing we did have to add a little sugar And then we carbonated it's also a cool kind of pink color. You like the color anyway, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's a good color. I mean, if you liked gin, you think you would have liked it? Yeah. Yeah, it's like gin. The only thing it's not in a normal gin and tonic that is here is it's a little more Christmassy. It's got a little more of a pine note to it, even though it's not a pine tree. It's not a conifer at all. So Cassandra, it's a it's a, although it is very early. It's from a basal angiosperm line. So it's closer to whatever anyway, but it Yeah, it's pretty good. So anyway, it's Cassandra. That's what we were doing this week. Right. So pretty much all we did was interesting other than work on the sizzle, sizzle sizzle. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. All right. Well, I

mean, you're Santa

Jesus. So stars and Piper have a side business going on with vomiting wine zombies, right, so I brought to you by wine zombie.com Yet,

it's a again, it's actual wine company

called wine zombie. Did you buy puking santa.com So the wine zombie sits there and vomits and for two years as all stars and favorite literally like you think they're sitting around thinking about cooking problems? No, it's like every day it's zombie zombie zombie. It's like I know that like you know how like, like, like in some people's head like there's like, like one when I went to one of the first cars the first car I ever bought was was a 76 Pontiac Bonneville right? And uh, James Brown tape got stuck in the tape deck because it's back in the tape deck days, you know, in the 90s. And it was just James Brown all the time. So whenever I was driving all that would listen to his James Brown constantly. And I feel that you and Piper your mind is like that, but instead of James Brown, it's wine zombie. You're likewise the people are you and Piper. I want one too. Thank you. Oh, geez. Oh my god. So the wind zombie is a zombie mask with a pump in it that pukes wine on a you know, continually continuously pukes wine like a fountain and she's sitting there like puking and so then this year for they're like, You know what the problem is the wine zombies really only it's a Halloween thing. How do we stretch this? How do we stretch the wine zombie? How do we do it? How do we make some more money off this off is the best idea we ever had the wine zombie and here's how you buy a five foot by the way five foot span is a creepy lens tell you some five foot san is creepy. You buy a five foot Santa? What is it puppet? What is it? What is that thing? It's like a

animatronics

oh so say animatronic oh so strong. Oh my god, did you make it to say that in the bottom? Oh my gosh, such strength, such strength of punting. So you buy this thing. And then you stick the same pump that you have in the wine zombie into the Santa and you have Santa puking. And then you get your friend Phil Bravo. It'd be like home with a little with a little voice box. It's in Santa. Right. The problem is, is that they're not really willing to take it far enough. So Santa is standing upright and the pump, He dribbles like wine all over his beard, which is freaking Gross. No one wants to. And so instead of and I want your to feedback on this, instead of doing like the right thing, the honorable thing and make Santa's bend over while he's puking so that the poor guy can not spill this stuff all over his beard. And by the way, Pucon beard is nasty. I don't want to no one wants to drink that stuff. They're having to come out of his pipe. And it's like when it comes out of his pipe. First of all, I don't really know that it's ethical to have a smoking Santa anymore. Like at all like if I like Secondly, like, you know, if you're if it's coming out of his pipe, it's not puke. Nobody pukes out of their pipe. Nobody pukes out of their smile and they're like, and they're like, What? Like, what about Popeye? I'm like, when's the last time you saw Popeye puke at all.

I already gave the party that we're giving it to the circumference of Santa so he can't

know you bend his legs back leak and pop is

no like that.

No one's gonna understand the puking argument. Oh, Santa is for Santa fountain.

It's not like a projectile situation. No, no, no, no, no,

no, no, but my point is my point is is it not look like if you just had to Santa with the pipe wall? Yeah, you're a liar. Liar. It is water.

Yeah, they have their own. Whatever me water

based. You mean non alcoholic, or water? Or water?

Can you drink the fake vomit?

Yeah, it's all food grade.

So you could just put like a bunch of glasses near there.

Yeah, that's the way that they did it with the wine zombie. Yeah, that's the way to deal with the wine zombie is like imagine a chocolate fountain but instead of puking zombie, or in this case, Santa, but I'm saying is bend his butt back, tilting forward. So he pukes down into the bowl. So there's no beard hit. Because if you if you see a pipe if you see liquid coming out of your pipe your first thought is cute. But then you have fill Bravo's voice making pukey noises and anybody that's ever puked knows that the pipe is popping out of the mouth. No, not even Popeye is keeping the pipe in his mouth. As he's puking. How do you clench your teeth around a pipe and keep the pipe in your mouth while you're blowing chunks out?

I think you should have done some research during Santa con. You can really like

oh hell yeah. Yeah, you know what? This is a thing. I mean, no offense, this anti con people but you know, I have two kids and like one of them is still a believer. You know what I mean? And it's not cool to have Santa puking on the ground,

have papers and have it Yo, what it looks like it's not even a pipe. It's not even a what is it? I'll send the video. We'll watch it at lunch.

All right. All right. So anyway, you can call in or tweet in with your thoughts on puking Santa. But Phil's Brava. filbur, I was voice is quite good. It's quite good. Maybe can you Excuse me? Can you call into the voice? Yeah, let's see if that's okay. Call of Duty. Alright, cool. Now we have an actual normal question. From em. Dear cooking issues. I am a lover of most all foods. I am a size 12 Plus model. So eating is really a part of my job because of health reasons. I've really had to cut out a ton of foods. I get really bad heartburn, which has been tearing up the lining of my esophagus. I need to basically cut out all spicy citric high fat and carbonated food and beverages out of my diet rough. That's rough. Right? That's that. So she says the worst things are any kind of pepper, which I recently just grown to love using chocolate. That's sucks to give that up. citric fruits are basically any fruits other than apples or the one on Apples apples are can be highly acidic. Well we'll get into this in a minute. Acidic vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, etc. High fat meats. I've been eating a lot of wild salmon or the wild salmon very high in fat. It's interesting. I've done some research and chicken breasts. I mean, what's why whilst that's why Sanders when people like salmon salmon, in general is a high fat fish, you can get leaner cuts of salmon. But usually the more money you spend on salmon, the higher the fat content is. That's why people like that, like a lot of the cold water salmons that are caught in the you know, in the rivers up there and Alaska and Canada and all that because they're fairly high fat. And in fact, like you can literally just look at the price range of salmons wild caught salmon and they correlate with either with marketing like copper or whatever but but a lot of times will correlate with fat content anyways. And if look at smoked salmon, that's some fatty stuff and I'm saying this in a great way. It's a good way fat, you know, good product. I like that a lot anyway. spices like curry or anything that is intense in flavor. I now eat a lot of easy to process grains like couscous and quinoa and brown rice. Quinoa. Like, I still can't wrap my head around the word quinoa. Did anyone else have a problem?

It's impossible to spell. Yeah, right. virtually impossible. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, right. It's not just me.

You go on YouTube. They do these pronunciation videos and they do one for keen one I call it can Okinawa which is

in Okinawa. That's a if you call it konoka Noah like that's like that sounds like some sort of like awesome Samoan thing. Can Okinawa Okinawa or like or like Mauna Loa, macadamia nuts Manila and macadamia nut. I love that. I don't really know what the accent is over there. But like Mahna Mahna like it's like an awesome word. So Cooking Cooking. I say it again. Okay, now it's so much better than Kokomo. Remember that crappy Beach Boys song? Stars a

lot harder to pronounce if it was canola within cocoa.

Yeah. Good. Nope. Good. No. Right. Stars once hung out with the Beach Boys lawyers at if yes she was at. She was at and Nathan Myhrvold lab for the monitors because one of the monitors cuisine dinners with Mark Ladner and they were sitting next to the lawyer for the Beach Boys. Apparently, like they aren't like happy go lucky fellows.

We were also sitting next to the more interesting a Google founder. She did on his wife with a small Asian woman who worked with him.

I feel that this is not maybe safe for was no girl. Opinions of nostalgia artists ashes alone did not represent cooking issues or the heritage radio network. The soul but you said he was also wearing the glasses for the first time. Yeah, it was early. It was like couple years ago before anyone else had the glasses. It was a prototype and what was your thoughts on the glasses? Stupid? That's why we call it a hammer and just know that's why we call it a hammer. It says oh well. Better or worse and a segway?

Oh, better. Yeah,

I don't know. I love a good segway. ever been on?

Do you like seeing the tours? The Segway tours. People will hold it like that the head segway goes like this and all the other segway stuff.

I get irritated when I see people wearing Google glasses, but not when I see people on a sidewalk. You ever

seen you ever seen someone double up? No. I feel like that would be the perfect combination. Like they do that

at the Google office.

Yeah, they Google segway up? Yeah, no Google at the Google office. I did a demo at Google. And they have these kind of awesome Google colored bikes. And the idea is that no one's going to steal the Google colored bike. I was like, I want to Google color bike. And like they like you can just bike around all over the campus there. The Google Campus is in. I've never been to the one here in in New York, but the one in California is freaking amazing. Yeah. It's like, it's like, it's like pre bust. Awesome. Like volleyball courts and like food. And

I mentioned the one here Google's investors. Love you Google.

Yeah, yeah. How's that? How's the campus here?

It's good. I think you you should really go there that some like some of the best features, I think are the food programs that they have. They're like they have like revives. What they want any demos. Yeah, I mean, they had like five was it called the like food carts and like trucks inside. They're parked inside of Google Now. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I

have a friend who works there and I'm trying to get invited Hello lunch. So

I've eaten at the Google one in and as spoke to their head chef and they haven't it very interesting program. It's pretty cool. I mean, I mean, they should have interesting stuff. They got more money than God. Okay. Anyway, back to Emma's question. I now read a lot of easy to Okay. Like couscous and quinoa and brown rice. I loved using Near East boxes. For those of you that don't know, Nereus is a brand of like boxed, Middle East Middle East Rain, rain, like couscous, brown rice, little with little flavor, flavor, flavor packets, and I loved using them, but they have a lot of garlic and citric acid and fats now, am I we looked at some of the labels for the for that. And then and we didn't have drove we ought to call her. Let me let me finish at least the question before I go to the answer. Yeah. Is it Phil? I'm not sure find out if it's though. Okay, so I looked at the labels for these and they don't like they didn't seem that high in the ones I looked at didn't aren't high in citric acid, you got to remember also, and we'll get we'll get into pH in a minute. I'm also looking for an alternative cooking fat as opposed to olive oil. We're all like Do you not like olive oil. If you don't like olive oil, if you don't want the flavor, I mean just go with something that has a high smoke point like you know, like rapeseed or or canola or something like that. Although I at home almost I gotta be honest, I exclusively use olive oil I use olive oil and then I have like real honest to god fry fat for my big fat fryer, but I don't stock a lot of different oils except for flavoring oils you can keep a lot different flavor models around you got what do you use to cook with olive oil exclusively? Or better bada bada i i want to buy it can we get the website polyunsaturated aihole I want that anyway. I'm also looking for Okay, a lot of different beans because they're good for my heartburn but I don't want to translate this all into gas which I've never had a problem with before so I'm looking for an alternative for a non meat protein that has a low pH presumably mean low acid so high pH now let me tell you some also if you increase the gas you have I was doing some research on GERD gastroesophageal reflux disease and apparently downstream gas can actually cause a your esophagus to open up a little bit so you definitely don't want to add gas Enos to the problem because it can it might potentially increase your symptoms anyway. My questions are what kind of mild spices are there to flavor rice grains, chicken and fish. I use dill a lot and tumeric and cumin. You know dill is delicious knows Noren. My Swedish Chef friend he loves the deal because he's Swedish and if you don't love dill that they put you on the top of the mountain that you freeze to death wildly different hates the dill. Did you know that? No, that's a little secret. They probably shouldn't tell you wildly different. It's not like dill. You heard it here first. Unless you are wildly also. Okay. Alternative cooking fats. That alternative cooking fats without being profitable. Okay, and good. marinates for meat. And M hates soy sauce. How do you hate on soy sauce? How do you hate us? What about me? So we were having this conversation before if you hate soy sauce does that mean you necessarily hate me so

no, because I don't care for soy sauce particularly as a marinade it works for me but like I don't use it when I eat sushi even. And I like miso

right so miso makes an excellent marinate and curing device right miso and some other liquids preferably probably for you not too acidic liquids and, and, and some sugar, maybe that in there to counter the saltiness of it. But miso might be a good thing and we'll get into this in a second. I'm gonna go through your question and I'll answer it after the color. I like to keep natural organic. I know that low fat diet is going to make me lose weight, but I need to retain my curves by eating good amount of mild food. I feel like I just haven't been eating enough because I don't know how to what to do to make it taste good. Or eating and effing up my diet by getting too much fat on the plate because fat can increase it the symptoms of GERD, gastrointestinal gastro esophageal reflux. Help em Alright, so we're gonna get to the answers. And I love that someone's like, I can't eat enough anymore because they can't eat the foods that I want. This is like an interesting question. We never had a question like this before, but right now caller you're on the air. Boom.

Hi, Dave. This is Benzinger from Indianapolis.

How you doing? Doing

okay, how about yourself? All right. I just got back on a from a three month trip to the country of Lebanon. And and I ran into something that I was curious about the sort of stuff in the fridge. You know how like, garlic oil is not good because of botulism. They have a spread called Tomb, which is the Arabic word for garlic. And it's literally raw garlic oil, salt, pepper and lemon juice. Why is that safe? Is it because of solid content or is it because of something else that I'm not sure of because they store it in the fridge for like,

weeks, two weeks?

Is it a puree? It is. Okay so and how much salt and how much lemon juice?

Salt or flavor lemon juice to turn it white? It's a it's a yellowish color. You had a You have a lemon juice and it turns into a nice white color. Right? So both these both the flavor,

but both the acidity and the salt are going to inhibit the botulism. Right. So I mean, the the issue with with garlic oil specifically is and is heated or not heated. It's not eat it, right. So when garlic grows in the ground, so you know, botulism is ubiquitous and meaning it's everywhere, and it gets on the garlic, and you can't kill botulism by normal heating. So you know, the the idea that you that you put garlic into oil, like a whole clove or something, then maybe even heat the oil killing all the other competitive bacteria that are on the garlic, like lactic acid, bacteria, things like this. And but not killing the spores for things like botulism, and then you have it sealed from the air by the oil. But it locally, the garlic has still has a fairly high water activity, because the garlic cloves or entire or the pieces of garlic are entire. And so you can have botulism growth on the actual garlic like that's the issue, right? So if you were to add, if you were to make a puree with acidity and with salt, assuming the levels were high enough, you would be you would be inhibiting the growth of botulism. Secondly, if you're not heating it there probably other bacteria like lactic acid bacteria that are competitors against things like botulism, causing it did it taste. Did you notice any kind of lactic flavor? Was there any fermentation going on in it? I didn't

notice any? No, it's because usually they make it fresh. But if there's any extra leftover, they put it in the fridge,

right. And so botulism is going to grow very slowly in the fridge anyway. And if there are other bacteria present that haven't been killed by a pasteurization step, then they probably provide good competition for the for the botulism. So that doesn't grow plus the salt. And the fact that it and the lemon juice and the fact that it's been pureed so that the acidity and the salt are in close contact with all the water bearing parts of the stuff because they're not going to be in the oil, because they don't like to live with the oil. So all of the lemon juice and all the salt are going to be chilling out with the with the garlic, which is the water face stuff anyway. And so you probably get the maximum preservation from all three of those things, making it you know, not making it not kill you. Right, okay. Now, I don't know what the exact levels are to have it not kill you. But like, all of those things are very helpful. If you're going to make it at home, you could probably put pink salt in if you really want to make sure botulism is not going to grow.

Okay, would that affect the flavor quite a bit, though?

Yeah, no, I mean, the flavor from curing on pink salt is more reaction. I think that the meat, I don't think it's gonna I don't think it'll affect but like you. I mean, it's I'm always a little loath to give out recommendations that are safety recommendations without like, actually researching the documents on it to make sure that I had the levels, right. But you also gotta remember, botulism grows really, really slowly in the in the fridge. And it used, is it like put on bread raw? Or is it or is it used in cooking?

It's put on bread raw. I mean, it's a really good product. I'll mix it into salad dressings and things like that, if I have extra. But usually what they do is they just put it on with like, pickles and tomatoes in short, and have sandwiches with a

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, that's also the reason oil and garlic is so bad. It normally is because typically people won't use it quickly. Because it's not like a spread, you know what I mean? So it will be sitting on the shelf for a long time. Right.

So thanks. How long does it typically take for garlic Wales to become dangerous?

I don't know. I don't trust like there's some research out there. And if you talk to the food safety experts there they they lead you to believe that the growth of botulism can be much faster than you think. So if something is inherently unsafe, it's like I just use it fresh or not. You know what I mean? Because who wants to mess around with that? The The good thing about botulism, if there is a good thing about botulism, is that, you know, is that you can destroy it with heat. So if you're using something that is possibly possibly contaminate with botulism, but you heat it thoroughly, the toxin from botulism is is heat labile. So it will break down. Because typically, the way people die, is they'll eat a bunch of home canned mushrooms, which are a low acid food, you know what I mean? You know, they're not getting it from tomatoes, or you know, things like this that have a high acidity. So the acidity and the salt are really helping you out here. Okay. All right. Good luck with the two. All right, thank you. All right. So, back to this so I am left good news for you. Good news for you. On the carbonated beverage front I looked up an article called The effects of carbonated and or caffeinated beverages on acid and non acid reflux and symptomatic perception among different phenotypes of GERD by Jose Rameez croquis and a Myra a as Mr. Jack Ma. From what is this from 2002 Well from gastrin to gastroenterology, volume 142, Issue five, May 2012. So here's a here's an interesting thing. Caffeine does, in fact, increase the amount of time that your esophagus spends at a pH below four. So it does increase the damage that's going to happen to your esophagus based on that. But carbonation, although it does increase your burping and so you think that it's actually going to cause an increase in acid in your esophagus. Their research indicates that in fact, it has no effect. So unless you know that you are specifically have a problem with it. And there's all different kinds of of GERD, but carbonation you might not have to give it up which be I would be very thankful not have to give up carbonation. And we're gonna remember, like yes, it does form an acid co2 is forms carbonic acid, but it's not very, very acidic. Right. Then another thing on another interesting articles, I was looking up the effects of dietary fat and calorie density on esophageal acid exposure and reflux symptoms from 2006. What's interesting is, and you might not know this, but when they're doing the research on it, it shows that increasing the fat content increases the symptoms that you feel right. But they did not the actual damage the actual its actual caloric density that is determining, like how much the actual PH of your of your of your esophagus is going to go down. Whereas your cement your mental symptomatic perception of it is going to increase with fat, which I thought was really interesting. Of course, unfortunately, fat and cotton and calorie density go kind of hand in hand. I also looked up the issue with the cap station was assuming you meant spicy peppers, not black pepper, although I don't know. And yeah, that looks like that's going to be a problem. I was hoping that I could get some data for you that shows that maybe you have a way out that you can eat some of these foods. But other than carbonation, I don't really have any good news there for you. On the show, let's go backwards on your questions. On the marinates for meats, I would try me so it's going to be good. The problem here really fundamentally is is that most marinade, it depends on why you're marinating meat, if you're marinating meat for flavor, then was a good color. If you're marinating feed for flavor, that's one thing but acids and marinates are actually there to break down proteins, things like buttermilk and so that you're not going to get that kind of tenderizing effect. But what I would suggest, if you want to just marinate for flavor, then you could do things like miso is like salts that don't have so much of a tenors Asian effect. But just go get yourself an immersion circulator. So you can do low temperature cooking. If you low temperature cooking on that stuff, you can get the textures that you like, or that you feel are enhanced by marinade without having to actually fundamentally alter the muscle structure of the meats that you're cooking. Alright, and then we'll get back to we'll get back to some alternate stuff in your other questions and we have a caller you're on the air.

Hi, this is Patrick calling from Brooklyn.

Hey Patrick, how you doing?

Good. Good. I have a question a sort of another sort of food safety question that I cook about eight lobsters steep parsing them in September froze everything I've eaten everything including the stock but what I I took out the tamale from the eight lobsters, mixed it whipped it with butter and then frozen and it's but it's a pretty amazing foods have sort of tastes like monkfish liver or sea urchin you know together with a butter right it's been so good that I've been waiting to use it for the right right occasion and I'm starting to be paranoid that you think something like a part cook lobster liver makes with butter in the freezer may not be safe over the long term.