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.

This episode is brought to you by Ben to table a monthly food subscription service for avid home cooks focused on delicious and sustainable pantry items. Learn more at Ben to table.com that's bntotable.com and when you use code Hrn for new subscription, you get $20 off and Hrn gets $10

so sorry, you got cut off you're using that notifications

Dave or an old drop from the call.

Why can just no one make a program that just does this? Ah, this was the

good one

Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is your host of cooking issues coming to you. pre recorded from my house in the lower Eastside. We got Anastasia Lopez in Stamford, Connecticut. We got Matt and not in the booth. He's in some booth. He's hopefully not as chonies he promises he's not somewhere in the great state of Rhode Island. And promise, promise no chonies remember it's a no Tony show. No Tony zone, John spelled gene. So gene John from Booker and DAX is on he can hear what we're saying now, but cannot talk because he's, we can't the only live

listener. The one the one live listener,

so no one cares, because they're not listening live anyway. But we, we have now spent 15 minutes trying to get for people, whatever, whatever. Talk about it later. The mechanism, the mechanism of recording you think in this day and age we could do it. But no, but we use improvement good use improves

on if you have any questions for us, though. Hit me up in the chat.

Remember, for next time, you can chat us stuff live but you can't talk to us until we figured that out if and when we ever do. Today's special guests though, and I I pray that we have not lost him. Then you there. Oh my god.

Yes, yeah. Yeah. All right. Hi. Yes, I'm here. All right. I had preempted myself due to child noise. Well, yeah. All right.

I was about to flip. Oh, oh, my God a window. Yeah, it was about to be you know, the funny thing is, is I could throw my computer out the window now and the time of COVID. And people just give it a six foot wide berth around it. Walk around it and still be there. Yeah. And still be there. No, it's that's the thing. It's like anyway, so we have as our special guests on the podcast today. Ben from Ben to table.com. Why don't you Why don't you introduce in case in case they don't know they haven't listened? To the past couple of promos we've done you're sponsoring the cooking issues right now and you have kind of an online subscription service where what's the word you like to use you curate kind of high end pantry related items or like could eat right now like a lot of the canned fish kind of stuff. Or like kind of cool pantry stuff, very high quality stuff, send it out to people so that they can kind of take advantage of these maybe harder to get interesting products. Would you say it's accurate?

That is very accurate, said by a man who has been reading promo copy we've sent over?

Actually, I have to say this. I never read any promo copy before. Well, you read it like perfect. Here's so like, like if you if you're ever in the studio with us. What happens is Anastasia starts yelling at me. She preemptively gets angry with me, like about 10 minutes before the end of the radio show. And then starts yelling at me about how I have to do this thing that I had no idea I had to do then hands me the copy then gets mad at me because we will have 10 minutes of argument over the wording of the copy that I've never read before then I read it and then it's over a week and then Is it is it. Matt back me up on this is how it works.

Ah, yeah, cat Johnson's also often involved. But yeah, that's the basic lay of the land.

Yeah, she she's not on right. We can't We can't. No, no, no,

no, she's not our secret listener right now.

All right. So that's a that's a great, great description. We are exactly what's a monthly subscription for amazing shelf stable pantry ingredients. from things like Staples and you know, the sort of Rancho Gordo and Geechie boy mill type staples to interesting spreads and spices from places around the world and local. And I'm coming to you from New Haven, Connecticut. Yeah. And I believe you know, well,

I do in New Haven is the Town New Haven is the town that once everyone leaves it, they're like, not so bad. Like if like the stasis says that I'm the new haven of bosses when people have worked for me. They hate it. And then as soon as they leave, they're like, oh, they wasn't so bad.

So Nastasia is just waiting to leave so that she can feel that way. Okay, yeah, because I work with them every friggin day.

Like I it's also the same with partners. It's like, you know, you have partners partners are terrible, but then you get different partners. And you're like, oh, you know what? That was so bad. That has actually happened to you. Yeah, I was like, you know, yeah, so I'm proud to be the new haven of partners slash, you know, bosses slash friends. Yeah, yeah. Dave, he wasn't so bad. The nice thing about New Haven really is kind of New Haven used to be so for those of you that don't know, New Haven is kind of midway up the Connecticut shoreline. So you kind of think that the East Coast of the United States is kind of a north south situation. But in the Connecticut area, it's really kind of it's an East West situation, even though you're driving on i 95. North you're really just traveling east west anastasius hidey hole and Connecticut is all the way kind of to the west on the New York side. And New Haven is pretty much spot in the in the middle. And it used to be one of the most beautiful towns you know, it was known as the as the Elm city. There were ELMS everywhere lining the streets, beautiful elm trees and for those you that don't know what an elm looks like, because there's not that many around anymore. They have this beautiful American arms anyway, this beautiful kind of vase shape and in New Haven, we had a beer called elm city beer, everything is elm city in New Haven because of Elm. They have a lot of beautiful old houses. Then what happened is is Dutch elm disease came in wiped out all the ELMS. There was a lot of kind of social blight. There was a when I 95. And the connectors got put through New Haven, they cut off Whole neighborhoods and shafted Whole neighborhoods, dropping them into poverty. It's a whole thing. But New Haven is one of these cities that is always rising. It's always rising somehow. I don't understand how does. But for the past at least 30 years, it's been rising somehow. And yet here it is my write about this man and my god, New Haven pretty much right.

That sounds pretty accurate. It certainly has risen somewhat. We were here. My wife and I were here 15 years ago and then having moved back recently, it is definitely on the seams on the upswing. Yeah, I mean, just just in that time on

the scale of New Haven is nice, right? So like you can walk into the middle of the town or you can live in a house and walk into the middle of the town area. So it's kind of it's a nice scale. Well, it's a good it's a good place. It's right on a train line. The food and bar scene I was there right before the quarantine happened. My partner at the bar Don and I were doing a class at Yale. And and yeah, it seems like it seems like it's happening. It seems like it's cool

because it punches above its weight. This is how I like to describe it.

Yeah, you know, when in the 90s when I was there playing in bands in New Haven, we were one of the few kind of New Haven bands we sorry, Yale bands that also played with New Haven bands. There was a couple a couple of bands like that and we were there and everyone was like getting new haven it's going to it's going to happen like you know, the whole southern Connecticut like the whole music scene is going to now never happen. southern Connecticut music scene never. We were never you know, we're going to be the new Athens Georgia now. Now. That's not what happened. Anyway. Now what happened? Yeah. Anyways, alright, so what do you want to talk about then? What do you hear? Do you have anything say you want to answer some questions want me to read some questions you can answer them

if you want I you know, don't go quiet into the haven't gotten into natural modeling just yet. But do you have to chime in

nitrogen? That's something you can't send to people's houses liquid nitrogen

no does not know I tend to go a bit more I guess classic on the cocktails but what I would love to get into ex con and try some of the some of these out when they're when you're back up? And

yeah, I would love for I would love to be back open

we're back with with with Ben Simon from bend to table. Now you go by you go by Ben just professionally? Or do you go by Benjamin in the real life? Or what do you do?

I go by Ben professionally and in the real life.

Nice. You have some people when they have like a when they have like a name that's part of their company, though, use a slightly different version in the real life to try to keep their stuff separate. And I've never understood that that seems like a garbage separation to me.

Yeah, I agree. It's also like, a big part of this is you kind of got to buy into me at like my tastes. And if you don't, you know, if, if you don't see me as a as a real person who cooks and who you respect, you know, not really going to be the value proposition for you. So try to go as real as possible.

Nice. So now we're going back to kind of what you what you find these things. So we I cooked a bunch of this stuff that you sent over. And so some of the stuff I had already known some of it, I didn't but so So where are you finding all this stuff? You just like going down to Charleston and hanging out with the Geechie? Boy Mills people are like, what, what how does this work?

Actually, I had a trip planned that I had to cancel because of the COVID Unfortunately, but so some of the stuff are things were so I moved to New Haven two years ago from San Francisco. And so part of the stuff is things that I used to be able to access quite easily. And then when I got here, sort of had, like, oh, I can't get this anymore without really searching it out. And I know a lot of people are in a similar situation. And so part of it was thinking oh, there's there's stuff that like Rancho Gordo beans that I used to be able to just walk to my corner, fancy bodega and pick up that I would love to be able to help other people have easier access to and then sort of expanding from there to things like Gucci boy, which I actually sort of tried out as I was thinking about this concept I had initially been thinking Anson Mills, but they're sort of less well set up for retail essentially. And then other things were my sort of other other life and career has been working on advocacy campaigns around the world. And so I've spent a lot of time in a lot of different places. And so thinking about amazing things I've had there that I could source either from a you know a Spain or Peru or Greece, or where I could find interesting domestic producers and help them to find more customers and really help to try and find a way to help smaller producers who are working generally more sustainably, generally producing more delicious food to to get to more people.

Cool. By the way, I've been cooking most of this stuff in my in my rice cooker. It has come to my attention that not everyone has a rice cooker. And I think that that's fine because not everyone needs to have all these crazy things. But I think rice cooker is one of the things that people don't necessarily know that they really want. If they don't have one I don't have bear in mind. I don't have an Insta pot. A lot of people have Insta pots not have an instapot I own a pressure cooker and a rice cooker. It's an instapot any good as a as a rice cooker.

Personally I don't use it for rice but I love it for the grits actually because you don't have to. You just put it in and then it's done basically and you start with the you don't have to do the whole stirring during and it comes out pretty much perfectly.

Yeah but I do that in my rice cooker. I do that in my Zojirushi induction rice cooker. If you're ever going to get like if you're ever going to get married, or if you're just rich, or if you have someone who's rich, who's going to give you like a really nice gift. Like I asked for the top of the line Zojirushi rice cooker I know that in other countries there are brands that are even more high flying, but in the United States, the Zojirushi like neuro fuzzy logic induction rice cookers are Vidic. Aeolus they are ridiculous. They never burn anything ever. I once kept rice hot for a week and a half in one to see whether the taste would change in a way that I thought was interesting. Spoiler it didn't. But like it didn't burn, it didn't get messed up. I mean those rice cookers the sociology rice cookers are crazy. So I do my beans in the rice cooker. And I do my I do grits in the rice cooker milk, no stirring, no breaking, no scorching, which is fantastic, right. Anyway, so I love it. But again, I don't have a lot of experience or any experience with the instapot. So I don't know whether or not you know, an instapot is a good substitute for the neuro fuzzy logic Zojirushi induction rice cooker. But who knows? Who knows? I mean, it certainly probably doesn't have the programming that the Zojirushi does for rice. So like if you care about doing like brown rice, semi brown rice, sushi rice, you know, kanji, and getting them on the nose every time I'm sure the Zojirushi is going to be better than the instapot for that, but I don't know. I don't know.

Yeah, the instantpot settings are mostly kind of nonsense. I think, like I just use set the minutes based on how long it should take, as opposed to using the soup setting or whatever, which is meaningless. Yeah,

I also use the I sometimes even use my rice cooker for reheating, soups and stews and stuff like that he's punching on the reheat. And that thing is ridiculous. I would say that, you know, I've had mine for, oh, I don't know. 17 years, 16 years, and it's still going straight every once in a while it'll die on me. I'll unplug it. And I'll like put it on an altar for like four or five days, and then I'll plug it back in again. And it'll work again. But the rice gods have smiled on me with my rice cooker. I remember when Booker was very young, so Booker is 18. Now when he was very young, he had a bunch of sensory issues about music, specifically music coming on. And so he wouldn't allow because it's a Japanese piece of kitchen equipment. It's got some goofy tune that it plays when it's done making the rice and Booker could not tolerate he like in other words, he would have anxiety about me making rice in anticipation of the music going off at the end of the Zojirushi. So I had to the I've voided any sort of warranty was already past warranty at that point anyway, but I have ripped it apart and rip the speaker out of it. So I have silence so she Ruchi which I don't know is that better? Or worse? Do you guys like the tunes that these things play?

No, that sounds great. Like the laundry machines that make this the happy jingle at the end? I don't I don't want to hear that. I'd much rather the silent version that sounds like an improvement.

I mean, like, I mean, as a manufacturer of equipment. I mean the Stasi, and I can like vouch for this. But like we could anyone could just make a silent mode for this stuff. And it would cost literally an extra five cents. Literally an extra five cents. So for you we're talking at like a retail maybe it's an extra 75 cents. You don't I'm saying? For me, it's like five cents in retail. We're talking to 75 cents. And then you could be like, You know what? No, I don't need to hear that when that'd be great.

I mean, I think you guys should make a version of the series all that plays a jingle every time you boot it up or turn it off. And then charge extra for charge extra for that

easier. This centrefeed

Oh my god. So like the we I remember we had a bunch of people when we were first making serials. And they're like, Can you can you like can you like make them different colors? Can you like put like rate? Can you put racing stripes on them? Can you and we're like, No, you idiot. It gets super freakin hot. It's glowing red. How am I supposed to paint it? You don't I mean, it's like, people just have a fundamental lack of understanding about how this is working right and Sasha

was one person and he was an idiot.

But the good news is he was a person with power so like the great thing about life is is it only takes one person in power to make you try to you know to spend a lot of time time seeing whether or not you can add color look we'll look maybe we could enamel it maybe I could like pull like an enamel and like no you can what no no the enamel will shatter and then there'll be little pieces of glass in your food crazy

missed opportunity because you guys could have been like a legacy I could have had my yellows here's all my you know lime green seers all

that exact sentence.

I knew I was capable of thinking like a total idiot.

Now if we ever make a torch those we can make different colors. Those we could put some racing stripes on. Do you know what's like an under like an undeveloped market. So Jeremiah Bullfrog from not Jeremiah stone here, but chef Jeremiah bullfrog. I never even learned his real last name because he just went by Jeremiah Bullfrog in Miami, a friend of ours from way back from back in the French culinary days, he had someone take a bunch of stainless steel like EC rippers, and then do hand art over the EC rippers. And then clear coat over that now that's cool, customized AC rippers those are pretty sick. You know, I'm saying like, that's something you could do because who lights there you see on fire although Anastasia and I did once the starts you remember when I had to make nachos for someone at home at their desk? I wasn't with you. Why were you? I don't know. Anyway. So like, the idea was we're going to someone's desk at Complex magazine. At first we feast and they were like, you're gonna make nachos at the desk. And I'm like, Well, what level of crazy do you want, and they were like, well, crazy. I'm like, Okay, then I'm going to walk up to their desk. I'm going to start with dried beans. And I'm going to make beans for the nachos at their desk while they're sitting there. And I this is totally not cool, but I put dried beans into an easy Ripper with excess water and salt and garlic. And then I put I sealed it and I put a torch on the side of the ISI Whipper so that I could build the pressure up to like 4550 psi with heat so that I could cook the beans in like you know in a minute. And so I cooked from dry beans in a minute to make the beans for the nachos and and I had liquid nitrogen for other stuff around me I was I totally invaded their desk and the looks of death and murder from the from the folks like on either side desk of me. I've never seen that much kind of wishing I was dead from someone outside my family. You know what I mean? It was like it was crazy. But the beans were good, but it's completely unsafe to put fire onto an EC and you shouldn't do it. No, I don't even know how we got onto that. Find out how we got into that. We're talking about rice cookers and grits. So what I did with your grits was I did do you do your grits with milk or not with milk? I don't I usually add a little bit of milk at the end but your water for most of the time guy yeah

so so I did them a few times I was doing I'm sort of fully loaded and then then tried it just with nothing but water and salt and found that actually like brought out more of the kind of corn like the corn Enos to it that I was going to losing a little bit with everything else.

So first thing I'll say before DAX my second son was born we were trying to come up with you know how you give nicknames to will maybe you don't like often you'll give nicknames to the babies before they're born that aren't their real names that you can use this kind of slang for before they're born. Here's was corny corn. Yes, corny corn. But the I did milk when I did I only cook the grits once but I did shrimp and grits in the rice cookers now. The thing was shrimp and grits is shrimp and grits is delicious but super heavy. So I tried to lighten it up a little bit. I did I did milk but not I don't think a lot of cream I use some very nice shrimp bacon and just a little bit of cheese folding it in tried to keep the the corn and the grit level high and the soup Enos and the kind of lead in your stomach down to a minimum because I feel shrimp and grits is something that is everyone finds delicious but it's just like a brick. It's just so heavy that if it's going to be the primary thing that you eat, like I can't do it traditionally it's just too much What do you think Ben is it's too much right?

I would agree yeah I love it doesn't work gotta be lighter for the man.

Right because it like traditionally it's just oh my god like I'm not and I don't I'm not a general believer by the way that you know like I'm not one of those guys who's like Oh, when I ate was so heavy. Oh, I don't feel good. Now. That's not me. You know what I mean? But like if I were like eat the amount of shrimp and grits that I would just naturally eat if you put it in front of me. At the end. I'll be like, Oh my god, shrimp and grits, but a lighter shrimp and grits with those. What do they call Jimmy?

The word just went out on me Red grits.

It those grits are ridiculously good, ridiculously good. Anyway, let me get to some questions. We had Jonathan from New Jersey right into us, saying, and this is just basically where I put it out there, I think on the show last week, and also just in general, you know, we want to hear how you guys are doing during the during the COVID. And he writes in big fan of the show, thanks for continuing to produce content during the crisis. While we're trying, Jonathan. I mean, we're trying, you know, it's like the we're now on Zoom, which we started with Zen caster today, went to ringer, and now now we're on Zoom, which will cut us like MS DOS, you should use zoom all the time, because it cuts you off hard after an hour

do and they don't want to have

this is a good thing to remember, we will run up against that wall. Yeah.

Stasis like super quick. At the end of last week's show, you asked people to write in what they were doing during lockdown. As a grocery store worker, our experience is so different from many Americans that I thought you'd like to know. I see people posting on social media about how they're bored, stir crazy, etc. But we're still getting up and going to work every day. I'm a chef to party for a whole foods at the Jersey Shore. And normally, My job involves coordinating food production and food safety for our salad bar, hot hot bar, and other prepared food venues. All of these have been shut down. And although the store is busy, our department is seeing a massive revenue drop. We have commitments to our vendors. We're continuing to deliver products that we're that we are pre ordered months in advance. But we now have no outlet for I have tasked my cooks with preparing everything for us to donate the food banks, as well as preparing box lunches that we are donating to our area hospital staff, police and EMS. We're also providing family meal twice a day to our staff as an appreciation for their hard work, but also to reduce unnecessary contact with the public from standing online to purchase food during their breaks. Which is a huge problem, by the way for any of you like who are not in a city. It's like even places that are social distancing outside of their stores. It becomes kind of a free for all insights kind of nuts. If you guys notice that. While you're not the city's who's John, have you noticed that?

Yeah, I've noticed that. When I was at a supermarket the other week the manager was coming by as I was paying, he wanted to shut down the store because there was so many people in there.

Yeah, but it's like, I think I was in a store where like everyone was on their six foot marker outside the store facemask and six foot marker. And then but you get in and the way that they have it working, the lines are unbelievably long, because those things have to be spaced out. So those things go into the shopping areas. And then they have fewer people on that are doing restock. So stocking stuff is in the aisles. So there's no way to make it through one of these stores without getting real bumped into somebody you know what I mean? It's pretty, pretty hardcore. Anyway. Where was I? Twice a day, during the breaks, okay. We've also implemented strict crowd control measures and a pre and pre shift temperature checks for our employees. So that's like a probably a forehead temperature check. Which is my worst nightmare when I used to fly to Hong Kong in China is that I will get quarantined. Do we tell a story about how you develop a fever on the airplane and I shoved Tylenol down your throat like months wasn't COVID People don't give me this. But remember that stars you were so angry? Well, you know, like, I tell you that my biggest fear in life is flying to another country and like getting sick, and especially in a country where back in the day they were already testing for fevers and quarantining people at the border that you would like fly, not telling me that you have a fever till you're on the plane and then get on the plane. And so like, you know, the Stasi I had like a blood Tylenol content of like 100%. It was like, I just not true, I didn't overdose her on Tylenol, I did not endanger her liver anyway. We've also implemented strict crowd control measures and pre shift temperature checks for our employees. As a member of leadership, I've been manning the temperature station at the employee entrance as well as working the front door to limit both the total number of guests in the building as well as the density of shoppers in a given department, which is important. I think that's where a lot of places are falling. Flat is in that regard. That's just a little bit of what's going on that people may not be aware of. Thanks again for continuing to put out episodes. I had the opportunity to visit ex con on my birthday in January, January. I remember back in January when we used to have bars and restaurants.

Go January when we weren't going outside because it was just a little cold.

Oh, January now brother. We're like, oh, yeah, it's a little nippy, mambo. You know what I mean? Now we're like, Oh, my God. Well, what I wouldn't do for February revenue. You know what I mean? What I wouldn't give for some like normally like we're hoping everyone's hoping that we can reopen in the summer. Let's not forget restaurant people that like 99% of like of us hated the summer in new York. So some of you like, like on the Jersey Shore, maybe summer is great. If you live in the Hamptons, you're making all your money in the summer. But for those of you that live in New York City, and have, you know, work in the industry here in New York City, like we're all like, oh my god, we're not making any money during because everybody leaves the city during the summer, right, Anastasia? Yeah. But now we're like, now we're like, Oh, my God, we can reopen in the summer. I mean, I've never had so many people wish they could open in the summer. Like we opened existing conditions in the summer, we've opened the first time. And we were all bent. We were opening during the summer time, because it's such a crappy time to open and now we're praying, praying, you know, for a summertime opening oh, wait a little COVID will do for you. What do you guys think the odds are, that we reopen, we meaning everyone reopen in, let's say, June, July, and then have to close again in September.

I don't even want to respond to that.

I mean, I mean, I don't know, I don't even I don't I don't know. I don't know. Anyway,

I mean, I like what seems so actually, I've got a neighbor, who's an epidemiologist has been doing a bunch of the research on this stuff. And one of the it sounds to me a little bit like, what we're headed for is the sort of partial Reopenings, and then partial closings, where like, it's not that everything will have to shut down in September, necessarily, but like, there will be places where there's flare ups, and those places will have to shut down. And the challenge will be how do we predict where those are? And how do we account for that and like, figure out how to adapt to that.

Right? But also things in our business, right? It's like, there's a couple of things, right? The business needs to make money because rent, etc, etc. And the staff needs to make money because they're their people, we need to take care of the staff now. What the hell, you know what I mean? Like, like, there's a certain like, every restaurant, every bar, right? Every, like, well, food carts are one person can be one person operation. So that's a little bit different can be, but like every business that was built, you know, on a normal business model is designed to operate at a certain scale, and does not operate efficiently at a different scale. So you pay the rent, that you're going to pay based on the number of people that are going to be going through your establishment, then people you can put through your establishment, the landlord's know, this, which is why the rents in places where more people go are more expensive, which is why you pay more for a bigger space that you can get more in or that you haven't been like, because they know that this is built into the models, right? It takes a certain staff to staff a certain size place, right? Regardless of whether they're spread out if I'm putting, if I'm suddenly putting 50 people into two rooms, those two rooms are designed for 100 people, right? I still need to have extra staff because like a person who's in the front room, even though they could service all the people and do a good job of service. They no longer have a line of sight to all of their guests. And without a line of sight. It's hard to do good service, right? So it's, it's like the scales, everyone's designed for a certain scale. And then we have to kind of turn these taps off and on and then what people are supposed to go on their insurance and then back on COBRA and then back on their insurance and back off Cobra as we as we hire and re fire and hire and reframing. How's this going to work? Do you know what I mean? Like I have no idea. This is this is what keeps me up. You know what I mean?

definitely keeps you up.

I mean, it's just it's just banana Lammas anyway, also Capri Sun friend of the show, I thought he was mad at me because he bought a coffee grinder. And then I you know, he should know he was like, Do you want to buy the other coffee grinder, but I was like it got confused. I'm very bad at communication but anyway, I was supposed to in our Instagram Live that and Stasi and I did show off my clam broth house for those of you that have never seen the clam broth house sign in any across the river in New Jersey, there used to be a place called the clam broth house, and they had a big sign and it with a with a neon sign with a hand and that hand was pointing down in a kind of Deez Nuts symbol and it says clamber off house and it's like if so like you know Jack trim from existing conditions I walk on we'll get you clam broth, radiate radiate Ray and we point down with the you know, with the clam broth house. So anyway, he made us the cooking issues clam broth house shirt, and I was supposed to show it on Instagram, but I always wear a button up over my shirt. So I forgot to unbutton my shirt and show it so I'm apologizing to Capri Sun for that. Anyway, and John didn't see the picture of you wearing it though. He did see it all right. Yes. Karen wrote in and said, originally, Karen wrote in asking about the like uses of a nutrition ACARA. ACARA is the spent pulp that you have when you're making soy products, soy milk, tofu, etc, etc. wrote back in again and said, Do you have a reputable source to look up a nutrition information, ie the nutritional label info, not health advice, I'm trying to narrow down the root cause of some issues I've been having. So having a resource like that would be very helpful, since there's so much misinformation out there. Now, first of all, care. And I'll say this, I do not trust the labels on the back of the only source of general that I have is the label that's on the back of products. And luckily, most of process manufactures goods, you can now find Google, Google Docs have the nutritional information on the back. And in general, that's what I use for carbohydrate loads, ingredients and things like that, because they, they they have to be listed there. That's just the law. I don't trust them in terms of levels, because no one ever takes a piece of food, you know, puts it into a bomb calorimeter burns it and tries to figure out not even that that would be the way to I don't even know how to do it. But no one does that. What they do is, is they they take the list of nutritional information that they get off of their raw ingredients that are published by the federal government, and then extrapolate the extrapolate the amount of those, you know, things that are in in yours. And so I've seen many, many math errors. I've seen many out now just you know where the numbers don't match up. So I don't know I don't have a good source. What about any you guys have good source for this stuff? No, no? Yeah, I have a general lack lack of trust, although I do enjoy serving size bingo. So like, I like whenever whenever I buy a new product, I spin it around. I'm like, how many servings is this? You know what I mean? So I bought a half gallon jug of Taiwanese fermented chili. And I'm like, Hey, folks, what's the serving size and for these guys, the serving size of their of their fermented chilli sauce was two ounces 60 milliliters, which is preposterous amount of stuff. You know, other people were like, you know, you'll look at the serving size on on something else. And it's like, tiny, and they're like 395 servings. So you're like it. So it's like I love playing serving size Bango. It's my absolute favorite, my absolute favorite label game to play. I also, a lot of times when you guys asked me questions on the air, like how, how do you do X, Y, or Z? I look at the ingredient labels of people who do it, you know, on a larger scale. And it's pretty, it's fairly easy. If you have a little bit of knowledge of how individual ingredients work. You know, like, if you know what Xanthan does, if you know what the different poly sorbets are for, if you know what, you know, if you know some basic ingredient, if you have a basic ingredient, kind of what's the word literacy, you can figure out a lot of times what people are doing the exception, and we'll get to something kind of similar to this. The exception you get to that is when people are using very tweaked out functional ingredients that sometimes are listed or sometimes aren't. But that can radically affect, like, what's going on. So for instance, Oatly, who makes the oat milk that everyone goes gaga for? I've never tried it. And if you guys tried this Oatly stuff? I know. My coffee, remember I do. Yes. So you tried Oatly I use it. Is it good?

It's the best non Milk Milk

fact. Especially for for coffee.

Yep. And your it lasts a long time. Right? Yeah, it does. Yeah. So the thing about a Oatly is, is that Oatly is doing something to the oat milk with enzymes. Right? That and we talked about this on the air a while ago that is doing a they're they're functionally altering the base product using an ingredient that is proprietary to them. And so for that kind of stuff, it's kind of hard to back. It's kind of hard to kind of back figure what they're doing. But most of the time people aren't doing that. That's the rare. That's the rare thing. So ashmit wrote in Hey Anastasia and the cooking issues gang. My question is about who a protein shakes. Who a protein shakes. I've never had a whey protein shake you guys any of you guys ever had a whey protein shake? No. No. The brand that I buy is a concentrate with added digestive of enzymes, however, there is no mention of the amount of them, what I do is that I make my drink and let it sit for 20 to 30 minutes. And my concern is that if I immediately drink the shake, the enzymes might get denatured from all the stomach acid and other crap, therefore waiting some time could partially in quotes digest the proteins in the shake with the help of the enzymes. Is this a legitimate concern? Does this waiting really help? Or is it a redundant step? Thanks so much. Big fan. Sorry for the long question. So all right, long, long story. There's I had, there's a lot to unpack here. Right. So most things that people add to products I consider to be scams. I'm just saying that straight up most things that people add that aren't to make something tastes better, I think are scams most. Now. There is the Herbalife which is well known, I mean, say what you like but they have been involved in some scammy things, right? They sell one of the enzyme things that is added to whey protein powders. And when you look online for website for sorry for peer reviewed papers about doping enzymes into protein shakes and there are a couple guests who they were sponsored by the Herbalife Corporation. Right? So it's like you kind of have to be careful there. Now I the studies when they when they were looking to see whether or not you got a bigger spike of amino acids. I think they were checking one study I read, I think they were checking blood level free amino acids, I don't really even know what that means. And then they were also checking excretion of nitrogen compounds in urine. versus, you know, control versus not. And they were doping at the time of consumption. So they were not waiting, they were making the shake, adding the enzyme and consuming it. Now whether So presumably, it takes x amount of time. And I've said this for this was one of my old diet, things that I used to say, and people always say I'm crazy, but I will reiterate it, even though this is not based in science, this is just based in logic. All right, I'm gonna pose you guys a logical question. Ready? Yes. Okay. So if you What do they always say? How many calories is a pound? Something like? What does it does anyone guys remember? 2000? Whatever it is? No, so so if you eat a teaspoon of oil, right? Azar your body can absorb that teaspoon of oil, right? Because your body can absorb that amount of oil in that amount of time right now. So let's say let's say that you have the amount of oil that it would take to get your daily allowance of calories, right? And you consume that. Great. Now, if I picked up a gallon of oil, and I drank that gallon of oil all at once, do you think that my body would convert all of that oil into usable food calories? Or do you think that I would have an oil slick and my toilet?