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 fair kitchens, learn about the fair kitchens code and join the movement at fair kitchens.com.

This week on meeting three, I'm about to go on maternity leave. This is Katie Bozeman Wadler and before I leave you in the incredibly capable hands of Team Hrn. We're rounding out Season Five with a deep dive into the food rules, weird cravings and overall hype about eating while pregnant. There are

a lot of safe foods to eat. And we shouldn't be sort of assuming that just because something is raw that it's dangerous.

I just found myself feeling like there was an alien piloting my body and brain and totally changed the way that I ate. So was it the egg plant? Sure. Why not? I just don't know. Tune in to this week's episode of meat and three anywhere you listen to podcasts. I'll be back soon with our newest and tiniest producer in tow

this is Dave Arnold your host coming to you live on the radio network every Tuesday from one to whenever reverse these start to get a hammer Lopez How you doing? Yeah. Got Matt in the booth. How you doing?

Do you have a turkey in your throat?

I could do it again and again.

I'm wild every time you do it. I'm doing better and better.

Again and again. Allison. How're you guys doing? I'm having a great day. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Why?

I got I got trainee engineer Jess in the booth.

Jess, how you doing?

Yell to the people. Awesome.

Yeah. And a trainee. So you are a sound engineer in training. I mean, get at the microphone. But this is what you wanted this and others. This is you're not a food person. You're more of it? Are you both a food person and a sound person?

Yeah, of course. I'm at Heritage.

I didn't get a good look at you. When I came in. Do you have the traditional mullet haircut of sound engineers?

You know, maybe soon.

Gotta go mow it. Matt's never gotten we've never had a full on Well, I guess cuz you guys aren't real. Like, you know, back of the club sound people like I used to deal with in the 80s. Like if you didn't have a mullet back in the 80s. When you were on the boards. No one would respect you. They're like, Who's that idiot without a mullet?

We could we could incorporate me getting a mullet into some sort of giveaway or

you do not want to rock them all. Yes, that's nice long hair. You monetized it, then like how you're going to de monetize it.

I can't handle that much party in my life.

But you're restricting the party just to the back right now you have an all around party. Oh, yeah,

that's great. I already have too much party. Yeah, my life does feel out of balance.

So Jess, what are your food interests other than your sound engineering? How did you arrive at Heritage Foods?

Oh, man. I spent a year actually as an au pair in Paris and I cooked for a family for an entire year. So that was crazy. So

is that considered in like an inverse au pair? I thought it always would be. I always hear about Americans getting Europeans. I've never heard about Americans going to Europe. I didn't realize it was a two sided kind of exchange.

Yeah, I don't really know why they wanted me.

Wow. Good confidence. You got there.

No, I mean, in terms of the food.

Oh, okay. Okay. But you were cooking for them. But had you grown up cooking?

Yes. And no. I mean, like cooking with my family, but nothing crazy.

And we're in we're in France, where you, Paris were in Paris. Well,

technically it was in the suburbs in a place near Versailles. And

oh, it's so nice. That you know what, you know, people don't realize Versailles is a great place to visit all year round. All year round. It's great every single season Versailles an amazing place to visit. Because if you go in the wintertime, you can see the architecture, not the fit. But the landscape architecture of the park is made clear by the fact that you can see through all of the all of the vegetation, then obviously, in the spring, it's amazing. Obviously in the summer, it's amazing. And obviously in the fall, it's amazing. It's a four season kind of thing. Did you go off and are really one of those weirdos who was like I'm not gonna go hang out beside the best garden ever anywhere.

I didn't actually go there, but I spent a lot of time in Paris.

You didn't go to Versailles the entire time you were there. No, I didn't. Listen, maybe you were turned off by like the by like the giant buildings with all the mirrors. Like maybe that's not your jam. But you didn't go to the garden.

It was amazing. It really is. I just you know when you're spending all your time with some crazy kids,

you know, it's a good place to take kids. The gardener for sigh

True. True. Big mistake.

Huge mistake. You still have time though. You're still alive. You can go back and visit it. I will. Yeah. So what were you cooking for them? Were you cooking like downhome American fair for them. Are you cooking French though for them?

Neither. They were very strange and really wanted me to just like, grill up some meat. Steamed some veggies. Plop some bread on the table. Not fun.

What kind of meat when you grilling a lot of veal. Oh, okay. I like feel feels good. Like the like breasts. You had to like peel it and do all that stuff. And like guys splayed out flat dude stuff it like you doing any of the old school French stuff are literally just like almost salt and pepper, some veal, throw it on the grill have done with it.

Once in a while I would do a fancy thing. But really, they never appreciated it. So I would never

try to where they were French and they didn't appreciate food. I know. It makes no sense. How were their kids?

Just as bad.

Wow. Wow. Wow. You know, since they I mean the odds that they ever hear that you're bad mouthing them are roughly zero so I think it's fun. Yeah. What do I even start you have anything good happened this week and eating good food and or beverage things I saw that you found a picture of you cooking all of those chickens. And so you can put that up on the on the internet. I will now I don't want to say nothing but were the ones in the lower part of the picture like raw and you smash him up against the cooked ones. Ya know a lot of them are wrong because who cares if this Whiz Kids get salmonella? No, no, no, no, no,

no, no, we

we we did it. Oh, I see you just like you thoroughly renewed renewed all of it. Yes. Don't stray names better with your finger in it all crooked. Give it to people. The stasis sends me a snap of a snap. It's already it's what is it? 12 years 13 years old. So it's already faded a little bit. You know what I mean? And then she has has it all crooked. That's next. That's straight up the Stasi style. You can't do it any other

way. Chickens Switzerland.

Chickens Switzerland.

Dedicated listeners have our have seen this picture. Picture

of Anastasia with the chickens. Yeah, calling all of your Nastasia cooking in Switzerland related questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 By the way, and Stasi so I said before now we'll see whether this is all Anastasia because I'm never going to get in touch with my rear book person. So we can just forget that maybe because I don't get in touch with people. I don't get in touch with people. Are you with that? Yeah. But you know I ran into at the bar last week was Matt sartwell from kitchen Arts and Letters, one of the owners of kitchen arts and letters. And he also agreed to come on the show and do a kitchen Arts and Letters, aversions episode of classics in the field, which I think would be amazing. I mean, who better to do a classics in the field and the owner of kitchen Arts and Letters? Am I right? For those of you that don't know what kitchen arts and letters is what's wrong with you? What's wrong with you. It's like the cookbook store in the United States. As far as I can tell, I visited and I'm going to talk about a little bit later forgive it, it was in Edinburgh, there was a cookbook store, I don't know if it still exists. This was, you know, 18 years ago, owned by the two fat ladies people. There was an amazing cookbook store. But in terms of just yo a cookbook store, you're not going to find a better cookbook store than kitchen are some letters. It's just, it's just great. And it's up in the 90s on in Lexington. So if you come to New York, put it on your stop places to go. Now I know what you're saying. You're saying I can buy these books at Amazon. But and that's true. And I remember the very first time I went there, I was planning on buying it, the book I was looking for at a bargain bookstore, but I wanted to see it first because at the time, there was no look inside or whatever. So I wanted to go see it. And I realized that that having them curate the selection the knowledge that they have in that store is worth paying the extra to go buy it from them in person plus, plus they will turn you on to things that you had no idea that you needed in cookbook land. So if you're doing research for cooking, or you just like good things go to kitchen arts and letters and by the way, if you go there and you buy my book Is there liquid intelligence if you buy my book there i gave for them a recipe that I hand wrote out that they Xerox, it is only in the copies of the book. You get kitchen Arts and Letters. It's my milk syrup recipe but it's the only place that has been put well not being published. I hand wrote it on a piece of paper and gave it to them. Anyway. You have a caller caller you're on the air.

Hey, Natasha, Dave. Matt, I think what Jessica Scott from Houston. Good good. I've been listening for a long time working through the back catalogue and working my way through liquid intelligence. appreciate all the work you put into this

have you gone to up preserve and had the cooking of our good friend Nick wha

that's on the agenda but I haven't yet I loved underbelly and I heard on the on one of your shows that Nick long was there and so I was like shit, I gotta go.

Yeah, Nick, what? Do you like that? Do you like the Bonomi shop that he likes? It's called something like California or California sandwich. Yeah,

yeah, that's one of my favorites. That's kind of like the chef's go to here locally. There's a couple others I like a lot with that one.

We want to call out the ones that you like you want to you want to give the ones that you like as recommendation?

Yeah, sure. I mean, just Vietnamese food in Houston is amazing. Just because a huge Vietnamese population here from immigrants back in you know 70s I think yeah, but anyway, my favorite bond me shops Kelly sandwich in Midtown, and used to be not in the Montrose area. But now up in the heights, there's one called layback get. It's kind of spelled a little weird with an apostrophe after the bat and before the get. I don't know. But you know, Google searching it's a little bit it'll come up but that was my favorite one because they use like a truffle Aeolian which is maybe not.

I don't know that I want truffles in my by me, man.

I hear you, but just you'd have to try it. Take my word for it and try it once.

I'll try anything once. I'm not a huge truffle guy.

No, it's very subtle. It's not it's not strong. I'm with you. I don't like truffle to overpower things.

I mean, I like Trump. I like truffle. No, no, no. All right. Wait,

you're not contact. you're skeptical in that context?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Very much. So Miss Darcy. Also skeptical. Oh, yeah. What about you? Matt? What about you?

I totally get it.

Oh, you're vegetarian crap. I do they make good vegetarian bond me?

Yeah, of course. Tofu.

Okay, what about you, Jess?

Chard, lemongrass flavor.

Jessie obame person, of course. Yeah. All right. What do you think about truffle oil in your in your bunk? That sounds wrong. I will try it though. Listen, man. I'm not like I am. I'm a big believer in Pooh poohing things beforehand. But still trying them with an open mind. I am not above being wrong on the regular.

Same here. All right. Good deal. Well, I'll be listening, you know, future episodes if you happen to try it and want to, you know, give your opinion on the air. I'll be listening

now. Alright, so what was your question? Hey, by the way, truffle oil good for training your dogs. If you want to train your dogs to search for truffles. truffle oil is a cheap place to start. Now, then you got it. The problem is, is once you train your dogs to search for truffles as I did, I trained major to search for truffles. Hey, there's no truffles where we live. So he wasn't able to find any but he could find in a large yard. Any thing that had had touch a truffle oil put onto it. Interesting. Yeah. Go ahead question.

Well, and just to set the record straight, it's not truffle oil in the sandwiches truffle aoli but

I don't know if that makes difficult. What do you think that is Manny's? Me with truffle oil. Right? Right, right. But

it's not just like the crappy truffle oil you get off at grocery store, which like

you're saying it's not like mayonnaise made with the crappy truffle oil?

Well, I don't know. I just know that I don't hate it. All right.

It's fine. A friend of mine says he hates mayonnaise. I said, Okay, I won't put any man is in it. How about I just put eggs, oil and other flavors. He's like, I see what you're doing. Now.

I'm always suspicious when I see like other flavors or something nonspecific on the label. Anyway, so I have two questions, you can take your pick for time sake, which one is more interesting to you?

I'll let the Stassi pick. Don't want. Alright, sounds good.

That's fine. So number one, I was making really great sourdough for a while there from the Tartine process. I have their bread book and I had a great I made the start recording the process. It was kicking butt for like four years. My bread was legendary among friends and family. We moved. Subsequently, I made some bread, it was good. I don't know if it was as good as before. And then the starter ended up in the sink. And then things ended up on top of the starter and it ended up getting washed down the sink. And I cried a little bit. Yeah.

So to start the process, a family member guessed

it was a combination of blame between well, I'll take the ultimate blame because I put it in the sink to begin with, because I was just gonna wipe off the outside. You know, it's like that caught you know, if the world ever runs out of concrete, flour and water mix together will be the substitute. So I was just trying to wash that off.

Yeah, yeah. And I don't you mean, but Well, what do you what kind of vessel did you keep

in my wife put stuff on top of it. But that wasn't her fault.

She didn't know what it was. I get mad at my kids all the time. Because the thing is, is that here's what people don't realize you don't cook and stuff. So you'll back me up on this, especially in a smaller kitchen, I think of back me up. The sink itself, when you clean it out becomes an area where food prep happens, you'll put a bowl down into it. You'll never put a bowl in the sink to sweep like trimmings into. You'll never put a pan in the sink, chop onions on the board and then swipe them into the pan. Yeah, because your friends are garbage. But like when you're cooking by yourself, you can assume that people aren't going to come and turn the faucet on over the ingredients that you're working on. Sure. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

No, no. And ultimately, like I said, I'm taking the blame strong anyways, I have not had much success getting a new starter going, I don't know. And I've used the same process. I use filtered water once and then things weren't working. I was like maybe I just need to use bottled water and make sure there's no chlorine. Maybe that was killing the yeast. You know, I've I've done it multiple multiple times. And you want to use to make it it would immediately within the first couple of hours start to bubble up. And I would it would be like I would use this little Pyrex glass canister or jar and then like the plastic lid just loosely fitting over it or a dish towel and then it would like push up to where it was touching what was over even though it was only half full. It was getting that much volume.

Now what do they do they? Are they the ones that do the grape start who like what's their starter start again?

Well, they just do a 5050 whole wheat and bread flour mix with just like equal parts water.

But then for the very start for the very beginning

for the very beginning. Yeah. And then you let that go for two days. And then once you see some activity and it smells a little funky, then you feed it again to kind of you know you get it funky and then you train it so it's predictable.

Right? Who was it that did the gravestone was that was Nancy Silverton way back?

Yeah, that's the Silverton thing. Yeah.

Well, how far away Did you move from where you used to be?

Or maybe Alice Waters but I think she doesn't have to. I'm sorry.

How far away Did you move from where you used to live?

I mean, not far same basic water supply I think. I don't know if it's like I mean most of the yeast comes from the wheat germ right not like what's in the environment in your hand.

Things change things change over time. How How long did you have that first starter before you got really good at the bread

I mean honestly it's it's all credit through the book and not myself but the first read I made with it was fantastic.

So it's not like it's not like the because you know the makeup of the starter will it takes like a lot more longer than you would think to kind of level out at what it's eventually going to be assuming that you make bread at the same rate and store it at the same rate and feed it at the same rate right but you're saying that you're saying that very forgiving? Yeah, but you're well but but you're saying that it didn't it was good right off the bat and then you were just never able to get that result again. But yeah, once

I lost that original starter and tried to make a new starter the new starter just is lazy yeast or something it's just not doing what I'm supposed to do and I don't know. So here's the weird thing that gets the flavor like the bread I baked from it even though this even though the starter wasn't right and everything wasn't looking right I still was like well let's just make some bread and see what happens. That had the great flavor like the subtle sourness but not too sour. It just didn't get any oven spring it didn't arise like while it was proofing and I got no When spraying, there were little holes but not as much. And you use the same flower structure. Use the same flower in Arthur brand whole wheat flour, King Arthur Brown Bread flour all that same.

And the temperature of your kitchen is relatively stable same. Yeah, you know 70 to 72. And you didn't move. So the humidity is roughly the same.

Yeah, same place in Houston, where it's just for convenience.

And you haven't tried to you haven't tried to keep this starter for like a month to see whether it gets more healthy. And just like, keep

going without? Well, yeah. I've been feeding it for like, yeah, for like two weeks straight feeding it. Every day.

feeding it, dumping it, feeding it, dumping it, feeding it, dumping it,

right. Yeah, just reserving like a tablespoon of what was there and then refeeding

you can keep more it's not going to get that acidic. You know what I mean? I mean, I don't I don't measure out an exact tablespoon. I mean, seems like it seems like you need to up, it seems like you need to up it's leveling power you need to up it's yeah, it's activity, but you don't want it to get too sour, right. So, but I think like your initial now look, I'm not an expert in sourdough, maybe someone in the chat room is, but I haven't worked with it. In many years, I used to keep a starter that kept the starter for years and years, but I haven't for years, and that they kind of the level of knowledge around sourdough has gotten much, much greater since I have done it. So I would not consider myself you know, 1215 years ago, you would have been like, Yeah, I know quite a bit about sourdough. But right now, like not only am I know, that many years distant from having done it a lot, but also the people's knowledge of it has increased a lot more since since that time. But it sounds like you're just not getting if the flavor is right, it just sounds like you don't have a healthy enough robust enough culture in there yet. And it may be you need to reserve more of it, feed it fresh to get it really kind of robust before you start, you know, pitching the almost the entire thing out and starting from completely fresh, I mean, you know, it's like, you'll change the, you'll change the makeup, depending on how fresh the medium is, you know, when you add when you when you when you dose it, obviously, it's going to change the makeup of the yeast and bacteria that are in it. But you know, I think that you're just not You're not vigorous enough. So I would, I would not, I would keep more of the original Intel, it's hyper vigorous. And then once it's hyper vigorous, you can go back to your old kind of routine.

Right? So one observation on its behavior, that might give you a little insight into what's going on chemically. A difference in, you know, post feeding, the old starter would rise in volume, and it would maintain its relative consistency viscosity pretty well. And I could like drag a spin through it and see all the bubbles. And that seemed like there was some gluten development where it would stretch. But now it's just like a puddle of like, really, it'll start thick, like a really thick pancake batter almost to it like almost a dough. But then as it goes, it'll loosen up and become really soupy, and all kinds of sour. So I don't do does that give you any insight as to like, what balance of bacteria versus yeast?

If it's more sour than yours, if the other one had been? It's hard to say but in general, obviously, acidity reduces gluten strength. So if you know if you're saying that the other one had more kind of kind of a more gluten left to it, that would indicate to me that it had a lower and the current one doesn't, and it kind of has a very sour kind of lactic taste to it or vinegar, depending like that you're getting a higher acid content in this one. And that that would mean you probably have, you know, a higher lactic acid or bacterial content and maybe lower on yeast. That was a guess. Again, I'm no longer an expert in this.

Right. Okay. Well, I'll go back to square one and we're all just you know, like you said, give it a little bit more of the starter and then just dose me or feed it let it go longer before I refeed and see what happens. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, get it to a place where you like and then and then keep it in stable mode.

Right. But as far as you know, it is correct that the majority of the yeast that don't say natural lemon is from the wheat germ not from like your hands in the environment, right?

I don't know I haven't done I haven't done a lot of the a lot of the none any research on it, you know? You know, I've done various wild ferments of, you know, yeast in fruit juices and stuff like this. But again, I've done that much more recently than I have bred I usually cheat though, honestly. And I buy yeast I like

I'm a cheater. I'm not opposed to doing that. As long as it makes good product.

I'm gonna assume a huge cheater. I mean, like, you can buy right like really good, interesting. Well in the brewing area you can buy like immensely awesome yeas, you know? Yeah. Okay, I don't know about. I don't know about bread baking I don't know if you can buy like super awesome yeast but most people are like I want the yeast grows in my house. Even if the yeast to grow in your house is not good. What if you have a house with bad yeast?

Yeah, what if your terroir doesn't want you to bake bread? Maybe my new house is just not yeasty enough. Yeah,

let's think people are like, I want the terroir of where I live. Maybe most likely where you live is not good for what you want. Right? You know, I'm saying like, like in upstate New York, like unless you like, it's good for some things. Squash, onions, great, you know what I mean? Like, but like, you know, certain things aren't just aren't going to be great there. You know what I'm saying? Maybe your house is one of those places where the East is just not great. In which case you could choose to move back. Just cheat add yeast or break into your old house. Right? To break into your old house.

Did you sample

Yeah, wait for the new owners to go on vacation. Right? You know what, you know, whatever window is the bad window that doesn't lock properly? Right? We all do. We all know which one that window is breaking. They're when they're on vacation. Do a starter? Get what? How the hell are they going to know? They're not going to know it? By the way, I did not recommend on the radio that you break into someone's house. Yeah,

it sounds a lot like you did.

Well, I will not be breaking and entering breaking any crimes. But you know, if they open the door and let me in.

That's another alternative. Just give them 50 bucks be like, Hey, here's 50 bucks. Keep this on your counter for a couple of days and give it back to me.

Right, right. Or maybe I could just go to the bakery down the road. That makes pretty dang good. Sourdough and just ask them if I can have a small amount of their starter.

Yeah, they might do it. Nope. It depends on the attitude. What depends on their attitude. Some some bakers are like, some like I remember there was a pizza place I used to go to back before pizzas were good, right? And they had a decent oven at the time. And I said to him, hey, you know, I'm interested in kind of, you know how your dough works. He's like, I'll show you the dough because you don't have the oven. There's no way you're gonna make a pizza like me. So like, okay, and then you know, he gave me the dough. You know what I mean? So it all depends on the attitude of the baker.

Yeah, well, they once gave me a whole bunch of pastry crust without even asking questions when I needed to make some beef Wellingtons became I'll give it a try I'll let you know how it works out

that's not how it works. Twitter you or something ZEV wrote in but he wrote it all No, he didn't write all in caps my machine put it on caps. Imagine if your name was ZEV all in caps that'd be kind of that's very very What does she read her name all in caps. Anastasia almost spent a weekend at shares house not

talk about that that I told you so many times that there's things you can't talk about. And

all I said was you want to spend a weekend to share his house. I didn't give any specifics. That's too much information. It

could be any share we don't even know which show

Oh bla bla bla bla bla bla there is only one share there's only one share I kind of had a huge argument with someone about share the other week because huge huge argument because like I think and I'm probably wrong about this but she was a very early use of the creative auto tune right? And then this person was like yeah, but shares you know Yeah, share all like always attitudes. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, shares got an amazing voice share does not need the auto tune. She used auto tune as like an artistic tool in like a very particular era of share late share, I have to say. And I think to good effect, I enjoy the you enjoy the share songs. I know. You like earlier stuff. Do you like her back in the Sonny Bono days?

I like her like when halfbreed is that? Sonny Bono?

When did they broke up in the 70s? I think? I don't know. The many areas of share, share great, right? Everyone likes share. If you don't like share this best not to talk about it. You know what I mean? Anyway, there's ever I'd say not about share about books. I'm buying a gift for a produce enthusiast and considering a fruit or vegetable related coffee table or otherwise entertaining reference book. I know Dave has mentioned several times on the show a series of vintage books that catalogs fruits and vegetables of various regions now various regions, New York, but I can't recall the publisher or the name. I'm looking to spend about 100 bucks. I looked at apples of New York, but the original set is out of my budget and I fear reprints may not be all that nice. Any ideas? Thanks it okay. That series is the fruits of New York and the vegetables of New York and put out by the New York, the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, and YSAE s is the publisher but I They were put out between 1905 When Apple's in New York was put out in the 20s. Now listen, do you live in New York, because if you don't live in New York, or if the person you're giving the gift to doesn't live in New York, right, they might not want a book that's about New York. But you can find the apples in New York happens to be the best known one and 1905, two volumes small also not coffee table book, a normal sized book. If you want coffee table size, and you want to go with that series, you can go on the eBay, I looked this morning, and here are the things to search for. If you just search fruits of New York, it will only look up small fruits of New York. But there is the grapes of New York, the plums of New York, the cherries of New York, the peaches of New York, the pears of New York, and a small fruits in New York. Now, the grapes of New York is normally the most expensive of the lot. Not sure why, I guess because we grow good grapes for whatever reason that's become one of the more collectible ones. Many of them are available for under $100. But really, I looked on the internet. That's true on eBay. But you know, if your person is not from New York, I mean, I don't know. The other thing is that I, up until a couple of years ago, you could buy new copies of the vegetables of New York from them, the sweet corn, I believe, but I couldn't find the the source on the internet that Cornell completely changed their internet setup. And I wasn't able to navigate through to find any more. But I have to thank Yousef, because I have the entire series and I had all three, I had three of the four vegetables in New York, the small things that came out afterwards, I was missing only one, only one piece of New York. And I had had a search for years for years to get the piece of New York. And this morning, when I went to go search for you to see whether or not I could get a good price on the fruits of New York, there were not one but two copies of the piece of New York that were up for sale. And because they were two copies for sale instead of one, the price went down. And so I was able to get one for less than 50 bucks. Boom, boom, boom, I now. I know all the entire set. Busted. No one can say I don't thank you. So if

I tell you something terrible that happened this morning. Sure. I had a call like a random call. And I decided to pick it up. And it was a debt collector. Oh, geez. Go ahead for my old restaurant. Right. And it was just a flyer. Yeah. And it was like for workers comp. 15k. The guy's like, I'm gonna reduce workers comp insurance. Yeah, it was like an audit, they accidentally mailed us a check for 15k and said, Here, we made a mistake. And if I know you, you catch that stuff right away, put it in the LLC. And then they're like, Oh, that was a mistake on we need it back. But whatever. Anyway, so then the debt collectors like, we're gonna reduce it to 9k I lost my mind.

I wish I wish I could have been there and people out. There is nothing better than the Stasi of feeling wronged on the phone we should

talk about yesterday. Anyway. So. So the guy's like, you know, he's not he doesn't give a crap. And, and at the end of our conversation, I said, Do you like being a debt collector? And he said, it's a job. I've been doing it for 26 years. Everyone hates their job, right. But we can't all win the lottery. And I said some really bad things. And I said, I love my job. And then I hung up on him. Ah,

no. Good part.

Well, yeah, but like, that's just so sad. You know?

Hey, listen. Yeah, like, I remember. I mean, I remember a tow truck drivers to right, because there's there's tow truck drivers that help you. There's tow truck drivers, who what they do is they go to the side of the street, and they help you when you need help the most. These are tow truck drivers that you that, you know, this is an honorable job. You know what I mean? And then there's the New Haven tow truck operators who just go around the city towing cars that that the city has said hasn't paid their parking tickets. This is not an honorable job. No. So you consider it similar to a debt collector?

No, I think debt collectors the worst in they're also like, we'll just pay it now. And I'm like, I'm not worth them. Where am I getting this money? You know? And also,

I mean, so, like, did

you just I pass it on to the people that need it?

Did you just hurl obscenities at them?

No. I said, you know, I go crazy.

Do we talk on air about you threatening the life of a UPS worker?

What about yesterday? Yesterday, my internet was out.

Oh my god.

Yeah. And I called the guy and he's like, we can't get anyone there till seven. He ran through all these tests. He said something's up with it. I told him I was gonna buy a flight just so I could use their Wi Fi because it was better than spectrum. And he was like, go ahead. Yeah, something like impotent anger. Yeah, really agree with you. Then I called you that you were asked me a question. And then you were like, you just said the thing and all of a sudden I realized it was plugged into the wrong way. It worked.

Yeah. Because all it takes is caring about solving your problem turns out which this dude could muster, you couldn't muster hearing about it. Did I tell my favorite kind of debt collection story? I don't know about that car?

I don't know. No, probably not.

Only if you don't know the story that I haven't told on the air. So years ago, when I lived in New Haven, I had a car it was a complete beater. It was a I forget which era this was. I think it was my 76 Pontiac Bonneville that huge car, huge car amazing. 10 miles the gallon, I bought it for 400 bucks. I love that car ended up spray painting a golden zip tying a cow skull to the front. Love that car. Anyway, so I used to get parking tickets regularly in New Haven. And of course, you know, I didn't have any money at all. So I didn't pay them. This is back when I just graduated from college. Is it back when Jen and I, we were living together and literally we would buy one pound of bacon and make it last all week as a flavoring meat. You know what I mean? Because we didn't have the money to you know what I'm saying? Like, we would eat only like beans, flour and rice, we would figure out different ways to arrange beans, flour and rice. You know what I mean? We allowed ourselves one $6 bottle of wine a week. You know what I mean? It was like that, you know, that was kind of how you live. You know what I mean? And so anyway, so I wasn't paying my parking tickets, and they towed. They towed my car, but I thought someone had stolen my car. So I went to the police station or whatever. It was in town hall in New Haven. I was like, Okay, listen. You know, my car. My car was, you know, like, what was it? Oh, no, no, no, no, it was worse. I went I was like, my car is gone. I assume they towed it because the parking tickets. This is what happened. I assume they towed because the parking ticket. So I went to the place where they tow the cars and I said, Where did you tow my car? And she's like, I'm not going to tell you where we towed your car. I'm like, What do you mean? You're not gonna tell me? Where did you tow my car? She's like, I won't tell you where your car was towed to tell you pay all your parking tickets. I was like, I was like, That is cold. That is cold. Like, I need my car. I don't really have the money to pay these parking tickets. You won't tell me where they towed it to. She's like, Nope, I will not tell you where we towed your car until you pay the parking ticket. So much money in particular is like, as like 150 bucks. I'm like, this was a lot at the time. You know what I mean to me. And so I paid her the money like 150 200 bucks. I paid her the money. I was so pissed. I was like, Okay, where did you tow my car? And she was like, We didn't tell you your car. It must have been stolen.

So sick. Also, that person loves their job. Oh, yeah.

I just hate the attitude of wouldn't it be nice if we could all win the lottery someday, like, I

hate that. I hate Yeah, don't wait to win the lottery, people

just win and now

just winning now. That's gonna be Oh, I bought a t shirt on the internet. Like they said that should be a t shirt now like just win the lottery. Now. Let's do it. Now. I bought a t shirt with a sleeve stack on it. You know what a sleeve stack is? No Is that what did we call that? Well, there was that Democratic candidate whose name was C stack, which sounds a lot like sleep stack. And then we called another person who looked like asleep stack asleep stack. And then there used to be that haircut that I would call the sleep stack haircut that was popular like three or four years ago. And it comes back every once in a while. But I think about sleep stacks, which is a land of the last character more than the average person. And so yesterday, Jen, my wife and I were making fun of the Candidate C stack. So we were looking at sleep stack again. And I saw someone like the internet. I hate how they monitor my feelings. But they gave me they put up a sleeve stack t shirt that was like 15 bucks. I was like, You know what, okay. And I never buy things that are marketed to me on the internet ever. But I was like, stack

I have to give a I have to give a an advertisement. Okay, Claire wants to know, Claire. Wait, okay. If there's anybody that wants a life coach out there to let her know. She's

like, she's like she wants to be the life coach now. Oh, my God, Dave don't.