Speaker 1: Welcome to the solid verbal hull.
Speaker 2: That for me, I'm a man, I'm forty. I've heard
Speaker 2: so many players say, well, I want to be happy.
Speaker 2: You want to be happy for a day? Edith Steak
Speaker 2: is that woo woom?
Speaker 3: And Dan and Tye, welcome back to the solid Verbo
Speaker 3: Boys and girls. My name is ty hilden Brand, joining
Speaker 3: me as always on this magnificent Friday, the one and
Speaker 3: only Dan Rubertstein. Sir, how you doing.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good, Ty, I can't complain. I just had
Speaker 1: a nice mug of coffee. We're recording earlier than usual,
Speaker 1: so I imagine both of us have more energy than people
Speaker 1: may be used to, So I can't complain, Tie. And
Speaker 1: the only thing I will say, and I'm about to
Speaker 1: say it now please, is I can't guarantee anything in
Speaker 1: the way of staying in this room behind this mic
Speaker 1: after drinking two bucks of coffee to take a break
Speaker 1: here and I don't know from eighteen to twenty three
Speaker 1: minutes if.
Speaker 3: We hear dead air, We're just going to assume that
Speaker 3: your teeth are floating. You needed to step out, take
Speaker 3: care of some business, and then in Thista here.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show. I'm ty.
Speaker 3: He is Dan. Happy Fridays. Hope everyone is excited for
Speaker 3: the weekend. We are recording a little bit earlier than usual.
Speaker 3: As Dan said, this is a Thursday morning tea time
Speaker 3: for us, as we're going to talk through the news
Speaker 3: and do an interview with the gentlemen. We haven't had
Speaker 3: on the program in quite some time, which I don't
Speaker 3: know why, I have no reason for it, but Michael Felder,
Speaker 3: longtime friend of the show, it's going to stop by
Speaker 3: and speak with Dan here in just a little bit.
Speaker 3: We're going to go through that news. As I said,
Speaker 3: if you don't already subscribe to the show, please do so.
Speaker 3: Now we got all sorts of excitement coming down the pipeline.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 3: Soliverbal dot com is our website. You can find all
Speaker 3: the download links there. You can also find all the
Speaker 3: links to our social media accounts, our Instagram, our Twitter,
Speaker 3: our Facebook, our YouTube channel, and of course, if all
Speaker 3: those things aren't enough to satisfy you as an enterprising verballer,
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Speaker 3: talk about each and every show long after the final bell.
Speaker 1: Daniel if you want ties specifically write this down six
Speaker 1: to one, oh ur, just go straight to the source.
Speaker 1: TIS got you covered. So yeah, I think that covered everything. Ty,
Speaker 1: Let's get into some I don't know, Let's talk about
Speaker 1: what's going on. Let's talk about what's going on.
Speaker 3: We have breaking news. I'm not gonna yell. I'm trying
Speaker 3: to maintain my voice for tomorrow. I'm in a big
Speaker 3: golf tournament.
Speaker 1: I'll do an NPR boot boot boop.
Speaker 3: A boop boop, which begs the question why do I
Speaker 3: need my voice for a golf tournament? But nonetheless, the
Speaker 3: Big Ten says it won't revisit decision to postpone fallse sports.
Speaker 3: That is, according to Kevin Warren, as you know, Dan,
Speaker 3: because this is kind of like a weird time, a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff going on. You check Twitter, fifteen minutes,
Speaker 3: you check it again, and pretty much the whole world changes. Yep,
Speaker 3: we've now firmly entered into that territory of fans who
Speaker 3: have sources. There's always the worst time as it relates
Speaker 3: to sports content, but we're there now. And so amid
Speaker 3: all of this backlash with the Big Ten pulling the
Speaker 3: plug on its fall season, first Kevin Warren, new Commissioner,
Speaker 3: felt the need to speak out. He said on Wednesday
Speaker 3: via an open letter to the conference community that the
Speaker 3: vote by Big ten's Council of Presidents and Chancellors was
Speaker 3: quote overwhelmingly in support of postponing fall sports and will
Speaker 3: not be revisited case closed. Quote. The decision was thorough
Speaker 3: and deliberative and based on sound feedback, guidance and advice
Speaker 3: for medical experts. Despite the decision to postpone fall sports,
Speaker 3: we continue our work to find a path forward that
Speaker 3: creates a healthy and safe environment for all Big ten
Speaker 3: student athletes. Blah blah, blah blah blah. Okay, a number
Speaker 3: of headlines I guess that you could unpack from that,
Speaker 3: but chief among them is the fact that they're not
Speaker 3: going to be revisiting this plan to postpone fall sports.
Speaker 3: Stand Does that surprise you at all?
Speaker 1: No? I think the surprising thing was the initial thing
Speaker 1: where there wasn't too much clarity. The messaging seem pretty
Speaker 1: muddled by the Big Ten in terms of who decided,
Speaker 1: how they decided, what factors went into deciding what the
Speaker 1: plan is moving forward, what the plan is for the fall,
Speaker 1: what the plan is for the winter or spring eligibility
Speaker 1: testing as it stands now testing goals as it relates
Speaker 1: to what they didn't feel like they could meet, what
Speaker 1: unknowns they we were concerned with, Why they were concerned
Speaker 1: with it. I don't think they were hitting those specific
Speaker 1: messaging targets, and so now they seem to have done
Speaker 1: a better job of communicating the bullet points of their thinking.
Speaker 1: So I think it's if you make a decision, if
Speaker 1: it's based on what you consider to be sound reasons,
Speaker 1: I can always appreciate sticking to that decision. It's the
Speaker 1: clarity thing to me, and the Big Ten is now
Speaker 1: at least taking a step forward for that, and I
Speaker 1: don't think they wanted to take a step of Okay,
Speaker 1: we decided this, but now there's saliva tests that we
Speaker 1: can get back further after. I think they send them
Speaker 1: to a lab. Don't quote me on that. It's not
Speaker 1: on site. We can get the saliva test back, so
Speaker 1: maybe that's encouraging. The thing is, though people are not
Speaker 1: fully on campus, some schools are. I think you sent
Speaker 1: me a Penn State video that wasn't not great. No,
Speaker 1: it's not great, So I think it would have been
Speaker 1: even worse to say, you know what, maybe we'll do
Speaker 1: a five game season and just keep flip flopping. I
Speaker 1: think you got to stick to a plan and then
Speaker 1: do right by that plan instead of saying, well, make it,
Speaker 1: might change something next week and then the week after that.
Speaker 1: I think you just got to go with with what
Speaker 1: the consensus seems to be. And that's what Kevin Warren
Speaker 1: pointed to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to that frustration James Franklin. I think this
Speaker 3: was actually before Kevin Warren released the open letter. Franklin
Speaker 3: expressed frustration by the lack of communication from the Big
Speaker 3: Ten in canceling Fall Sports. I have the quote here
Speaker 3: from him. I am extremely frustrated because we still have
Speaker 3: very few answers to communicate to our young men and
Speaker 3: their families about their futures, and very little understanding of
Speaker 3: the factors contributing to the decision. So, as we said
Speaker 3: on our Wednesday show, the interview we did with Ross
Speaker 3: Dellinger from SI part of the problem here, of course,
Speaker 3: the virus is what it all stems from, but the
Speaker 3: communications effort on behalf of the Big Ten especially has
Speaker 3: been sorely lacking. Hopefully this open letter from Kevin Warren
Speaker 3: can do something to make that better. I did see
Speaker 3: Gene Smith offered a letter of his own, talked a
Speaker 3: little bit more about actively planning out how they might
Speaker 3: go about a season in the winter or the springtime.
Speaker 3: They're starting to think about those things now. Sandy Barber
Speaker 3: from Penn State had mentioned earlier in the week that
Speaker 3: she was starting to see plans for what she called
Speaker 3: a compelling plan for a spring or winter season. My
Speaker 3: guess is, now that the Big Ten is here, we're
Speaker 3: going to find out more and more information regarding what
Speaker 3: that plan looks like. At least that's what I would
Speaker 3: hope for. But I understand the frustration, frankly, if you're
Speaker 3: a player on one of these teams, if you're a
Speaker 3: coach on one of these teams. Again, it's unfortunately, this
Speaker 3: is not a problem isolated to anyone program. Within those programs,
Speaker 3: the little bubbles that they've created for themselves, by and large,
Speaker 3: they're all doing a pretty good job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely, And I don't think that was
Speaker 1: ever really too much of a concern. On the Big
Speaker 1: ten level. We saw some you know, the Florida State
Speaker 1: thing popped up, and then the receiver Warren Thompson said Okay,
Speaker 1: I think I miscommunicated and I spoke too quickly, and
Speaker 1: then there were you know, Syracuse stoppage, and they weren't
Speaker 1: happy with how often they were being tested. But now
Speaker 1: the ACC is I think, did you see three times
Speaker 1: a week?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, three times a week. So they're really ramping
Speaker 1: up efforts despite you know, I'm sure we're going to
Speaker 1: get to it in a second. Here some issues on
Speaker 1: campuses in terms of clusters, but yeah, I didn't see
Speaker 1: a specific Big Ten school that wasn't taking things seriously.
Speaker 1: I mean, even as it relates to James Franklin. If
Speaker 1: you remember the story that I think he was separating
Speaker 1: from his family because of health issues within his family.
Speaker 1: So James Franklin was sacrificing and taking this very seriously
Speaker 1: to have a season. So just for him personally, the
Speaker 1: lack of clarity, the lack of communications, it had to
Speaker 1: be infuriating, especially as he is the one that has
Speaker 1: to explain it to his staff and everybody within the
Speaker 1: program and every single player, and when he isn't armed
Speaker 1: with the information, it's got to be maddening.
Speaker 3: I get it, No, I do completely, So all right,
Speaker 3: We'll find out more on the Big ten front, but
Speaker 3: at least for the time being, let's put aside the
Speaker 3: fan rumors that I know are out there on Twitter
Speaker 3: and imors.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 1: Did you see there? What was it the Biden VP pick?
Speaker 1: There were certain people were paying attention to tail numbers.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, private plane tail numbers, and they've
Speaker 1: done that.
Speaker 3: Y'all takes the back all right. You mentioned some of
Speaker 3: the on campus issues that are out there. We're seeing
Speaker 3: it at both North Carolina and Notre Dame. In both
Speaker 3: cases they have paused temporarily their athletics programs amid some
Speaker 3: rising case numbers on their respective campuses. On the Notre
Speaker 3: Dame front, this is a quote from Father John Jenkins.
Speaker 3: He says, our contact tracing analysis indicates that most infections
Speaker 3: are coming from off campus gatherings. Good going, guys, way
Speaker 3: to go, great, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I wish you had got more specific. Most of most
Speaker 1: of the cases are coming from Brandan, Brandan, we see
Speaker 1: you on Orchard Street.
Speaker 2: We see you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Here is the thing, Okay. As Ross alluded to on
Speaker 3: the Wednesday show, there is a divide not just within
Speaker 3: the sport but around the country. We all know it
Speaker 3: regardless of how serious you take the virus, and there
Speaker 3: is a spectrum. I think we could all agree that
Speaker 3: the sheer optics of a large gathering among unmasked students
Speaker 3: is not going to bode well for college football.
Speaker 1: No, not necessarily, it's not going to bode well.
Speaker 3: It makes it harder for these institutions to move forward
Speaker 3: with any degree of normalcy. Consider the fact that they
Speaker 3: are coming at this almost entirely from a liability standpoint.
Speaker 3: You may not like to hear that, but that is reality.
Speaker 3: That's where we're at right now.
Speaker 1: It's at least a large portion for sure.
Speaker 3: That is where we're at right now. So to see
Speaker 3: pictures like that on Twitter and social media and in
Speaker 3: the news, it does not help our cause here, guys,
Speaker 3: that's all I'm saying. Please keep that in mind before
Speaker 3: you go out you're part of one of these off
Speaker 3: campus gatherings. I know a lot of people in the
Speaker 3: Notre Dame world were tweeting about some of these off
Speaker 3: campus gatherings, in particular two parties that some seniors through
Speaker 3: as students got back to campus. So, look, this is
Speaker 3: going to be recurring.
Speaker 1: If you even tried to reason with a seventeen or
Speaker 1: eighteen year old tie, I don't. I don't fault them.
Speaker 3: No, I get it.
Speaker 1: I get it.
Speaker 3: I you know how old are we. We're much older
Speaker 3: than that at this point.
Speaker 1: I'm in my early to mid twenties, and I just
Speaker 1: I get it. I mean, being young and virile and
Speaker 1: all those things tight. You put hundreds thousands of frankly
Speaker 1: horny eighteen year olds, and I'm not saying horny for
Speaker 1: each other's bodies. I'm just saying horny for being eighteen,
Speaker 1: for doing just going out and having fun and being
Speaker 1: in college and getting away from mom and dad. Like
Speaker 1: what do you throw a bunch of beef into a
Speaker 1: lion pit? Like the lions ate it?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: Come on, guys, respect the beef.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard to it's hard to in earnest get
Speaker 1: angry at seeing eighteen year old college freshman nights, you know, sophomores,
Speaker 1: junior whatever, acting like college kids. It's on the schools
Speaker 1: for expecting anything different.
Speaker 3: I would say I would, I would. Can't you agree
Speaker 3: with you?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean you've talked multiple times on this show. You're
Speaker 1: talking dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, of lucky Penn
Speaker 1: State freshmen coming into and out of your dorm room.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 1: It's sure this is something that you stick to and
Speaker 1: you stop talking about it recently, but you know, nobody
Speaker 1: forgets on this show.
Speaker 3: We'll see what happens. I don't get down it, but
Speaker 3: I think we all understand that this is what's going
Speaker 3: to happen on college campuses, right, And look, we hope
Speaker 3: everyone's healthy. I don't know, I'm not rooting for this,
Speaker 3: but we hope everyone's healthy in that. Surely we can
Speaker 3: continue on with the sport that we love. But you know,
Speaker 3: as Ross said, well we'll have to give it a
Speaker 3: few weeks to find out where things end up on
Speaker 3: the case front. By the way, on other Notre Dame fronts,
Speaker 3: they did announce that they're going to host South Florida
Speaker 3: on September the nineteenth. That's going to be their non
Speaker 3: conference game in place of was it Western? It was
Speaker 3: Western Michigan because the mac carceled so they needed to
Speaker 3: fill that spot. And looks like it's going to be
Speaker 3: USF on the nineteenth.
Speaker 1: Bowls on a winning streak against Notre Dame. This is true, yes,
Speaker 1: very true. I don't remember if they've played since they
Speaker 1: beat Notre Dame. I can look that up, but I'm
Speaker 1: just going to decide not to. They did lose. Charlie
Speaker 1: Weiss was the coach or was that early? I might
Speaker 1: have been early, Kelly.
Speaker 3: I don't even remember. I think I blacked out.
Speaker 1: I just hope that you're sweating just a little bit.
Speaker 3: I am a little bit, a little bit clammy underneath
Speaker 3: the arms right now. Okay, Florida State's gonna allow tailgating.
Speaker 3: Uh okay. Parking lots are going to open three hours
Speaker 3: before kickoff. Patrons must tailgate at their own spaces, and
Speaker 3: everyone should maintain a six foot social distancing standard between
Speaker 3: families and between tailgating areas. Face coverings are also encouraged
Speaker 3: while walking through parking lots and socializing. Dan, you used
Speaker 3: to do digital series for a little website some may
Speaker 3: have heard of called Sports Illustrated dot Com SI dot
Speaker 3: com for short.
Speaker 1: Yeah, SI tour Guy.
Speaker 3: SI tour Guy. Can you elaborate a little bit on
Speaker 3: how you feel this plan will or won't work Once
Speaker 3: out in the wild.
Speaker 1: I've seen every color of jello shot tie. I've seen
Speaker 1: shades of jello shot that would blow your mind. I've
Speaker 1: seen gradient jello shots. Bottom of the shot cup. It's
Speaker 1: green maybe, then a lime green, then a blue, and
Speaker 1: then an indigo. I've seen it all tie and what
Speaker 1: it leads to is social non distancing. Social cuddling is
Speaker 1: the word in the term I would use. It doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like a smart idea. It doesn't seem like we
Speaker 1: need this now. If the idea is we should all
Speaker 1: really be taking care of ourselves to prevent both infection
Speaker 1: and perhaps unknowingly spreading infection, we should limit all of
Speaker 1: the things that are not fully essential around college football.
Speaker 1: And I get it because this show is about food.
Speaker 1: I mean this specific episode, if not the show at large,
Speaker 1: is about food and community and yelling about college football.
Speaker 1: And I think it can be argued that tailgating is
Speaker 1: the single best part of college football culture. But we
Speaker 1: can take a far off. I think we can take
Speaker 1: a fall off and just do things at home and
Speaker 1: then show up to the game and practice safe procedures.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just it's not going to end well.
Speaker 1: Tailgating is a community thing.
Speaker 3: That's the key point. There are probably a million people,
Speaker 3: not a million people, A lot of people who will
Speaker 3: go will tailgate responsibly and will enjoy themselves, and they'll say, well,
Speaker 3: I'm keeping to myself, I'm not interacting with anybody. I
Speaker 3: think this is safe, and in those cases it is safe,
Speaker 3: I would agree with you. There are a lot of
Speaker 3: cases where people will not abide by the rules, and
Speaker 3: that's where I think the whole ending badly thing is
Speaker 3: is a more realistic possibility. But I don't know. We'll
Speaker 3: see how it goes, see how it goes that. I
Speaker 3: haven't heard of many other schools addressing the tailgating thing.
Speaker 3: My guess is that we'll probably hear more about this
Speaker 3: the closer we get to our purported kickoff of this
Speaker 3: twenty twenty weird fall season. We've got power three if
Speaker 3: you will.
Speaker 1: But let me tell you something tight about what it's
Speaker 1: like at eight forty eight am at ten oh four am,
Speaker 1: at nine to twenty six am at West Virginia, at Washington,
Speaker 1: at Oklahoma State, at Tennessee, at Ohio State. We're talking
Speaker 1: about twenty two year old women, twenty seven year old dudes,
Speaker 1: nineteen year old dudes, sixty three year old women, fifty
Speaker 1: seven year old dudes, all putting their arms around me
Speaker 1: and saying, let me tell you about azyzy football. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you of Loma State so overrated.
Speaker 3: You have the video footage you prove it.
Speaker 1: I do, I absolutely do. So that's my own personal
Speaker 1: experience that those gradient colored jello shots lead to a
Speaker 1: lot of social cuddling.
Speaker 3: So with strangers like me, with strangers like you, Yeah,
Speaker 3: total strangers.
Speaker 1: They were very quick to say you need to put
Speaker 1: me on. Let me tell you about Clint.
Speaker 3: Shelfeah at North Dakota State. They do it intense with
Speaker 3: like jet engine heaters to keep themselves warm.
Speaker 1: Incredible a site to be hauling. Believe, peable bacon everywhere.
Speaker 1: I loved it.
Speaker 3: But it's tough, throws our asses off, but incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Final tidbit here that I have on the list before
Speaker 3: I interview, and this is actually very significant. This goes
Speaker 3: to one of the points I think that James Franklin
Speaker 3: had expressed some frustration with, and that was a whole
Speaker 3: thing around eligibility. The NCAA Council is now recommending that
Speaker 3: twenty twenty fall sports athletes retain the year of eligibility.
Speaker 3: The Division one Council is recommending to the NCAA's Board
Speaker 3: of Governors that all college athletes whose sports are traditionally
Speaker 3: played in the Fall be allowed to keep their year
Speaker 3: of eligibility that is Yahoo and twenty four to seven
Speaker 3: sports as of Wednesday, naturally, after we hit the stop
Speaker 3: button on our podcast. This is a measure of potential
Speaker 3: eligibility relief that could ease the burden for schools and
Speaker 3: players amid the ongoing pandemic. This is a big deal, Dan,
Speaker 3: This is something that I think we've addressed a little
Speaker 3: bit here and there in our conversations with Richard Johnson
Speaker 3: and Nicole Auerback. The whole idea of eligibility to some
Speaker 3: extent goes out the window in what could effectively be
Speaker 3: a lost cause for all fall sports in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, I know this is just good sense. And
Speaker 1: I know schools are going to have to figure out
Speaker 1: how to juggle because we have incoming freshmen and not
Speaker 1: necessarily outgoing underclassmen or seniors if they're maintaining eligibility, So
Speaker 1: scholarship juggling will become a thing. And they're not cheap.
Speaker 1: These are They're not just in class for free. Are
Speaker 1: There are checks being written by athletic departments. And I
Speaker 1: commend the schools and the NCAA and the conferences for
Speaker 1: honoring scholarships, honoring eligibility. Because you're right, don't you know?
Speaker 1: We've already seen two major programs in North Carolina I
Speaker 1: think Michigan State and they're not playing, but North Carolina,
Speaker 1: Michigan State and now North Carolina as well Notre Dame.
Speaker 1: Excuse me pausing, already pausing things to get a sense
Speaker 1: of what's going on because of clusters and positive tests.
Speaker 1: I saw the test. The positivity test right at Notre
Speaker 1: Dame was around twenty percent after three or four days,
Speaker 1: which not ideal in terms of spreading, especially to older people.
Speaker 1: So I do appreciate that the kids will not be
Speaker 1: affected in pursuing their dreams and completing eligibility and maximizing
Speaker 1: their NFL potential. So tip of the cap there, all right.
Speaker 3: As always, if you have any further commentary, please do
Speaker 3: hit us up. We are Solidverbal at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3: You can also find us on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook.
Speaker 3: We love to keep the conversation going. I know, by
Speaker 3: the way, we still do have a reverblind open. I
Speaker 3: lied when I said last week we'd keep it open
Speaker 3: till Wednesday. We'll keep it open until this coming Wednesday.
Speaker 3: That's sound okay with you, Dan, that's great by me.
Speaker 3: Four toh eight verbal one. That's four eight eight three
Speaker 3: seven two two five one. Call in if you've got
Speaker 3: any hot takes or thoughts about what we're seeing around
Speaker 3: the world of college football as it relates to postponements
Speaker 3: and delays and cancellations and all that. We'd love to
Speaker 3: hear from you, We really would. We'll mix it together.
Speaker 3: We'll get our boy Ryan to cut up a off
Speaker 3: season reverb segment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, I totally forgot when we were talking about
Speaker 1: the Big Ten perhaps exploring January options indoor facilities in
Speaker 1: various you know, Indianapolis and Detroit and places like that
Speaker 1: that are drivable to a number of schools. With Midwest
Speaker 1: and January inclement weather, I wanted to fit in the
Speaker 1: term tiodome, and I just didn't want that to be
Speaker 1: not in the ether. I didn't want that out in
Speaker 1: the universe. If that's what we are getting, some combination
Speaker 1: of Midwestern dome play, I'm ready for it, the TiO Dome.
Speaker 3: Our conversation today, specifically your conversation today is with longtime
Speaker 3: friend Michael Fielder. We haven't had Michael on in Forever
Speaker 3: for no good reason. We love Michael, we haven't just
Speaker 3: for whatever reason connected in what seems like forever. He
Speaker 3: is a video analyst for Stadium. He's also a co
Speaker 3: host on the Hand in the Dirt podcast, arguably the
Speaker 3: best podcast logo in the entire podcast year.
Speaker 1: You do like it. I mean it's a really great
Speaker 1: title because it's regarding football and gardening and growing vegetables
Speaker 1: and all things that I think we all should be doing.
Speaker 1: So great title, great logo. Yeah, and with that, I
Speaker 1: could not be more excited to only tangentially talk college
Speaker 1: football because we have Michael Felder of Stadium. You've seen
Speaker 1: him breaking down games, players, plays, schemes, anything you could
Speaker 1: possibly want to learn about college football. He's doing it
Speaker 1: for Stadium Michael Felder. But also if you follow I
Speaker 1: believe it's It's Felder on Instagram, you know that he
Speaker 1: does not eat store bought food. He makes food. He
Speaker 1: is in charge of his stomach and his family's stomachs,
Speaker 1: and that's why we have him here today. Michael Felder,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for rejoining the solid Verbal.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm super hyped to come on. I'm excited and yes,
Speaker 2: I love that you the way that you put it
Speaker 2: to tangentially talk college football. There's so much madness up
Speaker 2: in the air and so many balls up in the air.
Speaker 2: But to be able to talk about it from this angle,
Speaker 2: I'm very excited because I do. I love food, I
Speaker 2: love ingredients, I love cooking. One.
Speaker 1: There's no college football without food. Be it tailgating, be
Speaker 1: it watch parties, being it sad Thursday night acc game alone,
Speaker 1: eating something. They're just tied together, and they've always been
Speaker 1: for both of us for as long as we've been
Speaker 1: covering the sport. Let's start here. You cook, and you
Speaker 1: cook a lot, and you bake, and you smoke, and
Speaker 1: you grill and you roast and you saw Tay, How
Speaker 1: did you get started cooking? What was that process like
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 2: Man? I think it's a kind of a two. There's
Speaker 2: two different paths. One. I loved cooking growing up, so
Speaker 2: I started cooking all this stuff my mom made because
Speaker 2: in my house and it's my mom and my two grandmas.
Speaker 2: If you wanted to, I wanted to be around my
Speaker 2: mom all the time. Is the way that my dad
Speaker 2: said it. I was always upper skirt and just following
Speaker 2: her around attached to her leg. But if you wanted
Speaker 2: to be in the kitchen, which is where they were,
Speaker 2: you had to do something, provide some value. Otherwise you're
Speaker 2: just in the way. And so I started. The thing
Speaker 2: that got me started cooking was wanting to be near
Speaker 2: my mom and my grandmother's And it was literally, you know,
Speaker 2: you pull apart the greens, or you chop vegetables, or
Speaker 2: you do these things. And I graduated up the scales
Speaker 2: of pulling apart greens with my hands, to being able
Speaker 2: to use a knife to soak greens, to washing greens,
Speaker 2: to now all of a sudden, you can peel potatoes.
Speaker 2: And once you peel potatoes, now you can put them
Speaker 2: in the water to bowl them. And then once you
Speaker 2: put them in the water to bowl them, now you
Speaker 2: can mash them, and you can mash the potato and
Speaker 2: then you can now work on the sweet potato pie.
Speaker 2: And you can do this to the point where when
Speaker 2: I was probably I guess fourteen, maybe fifteen, I fried
Speaker 2: my first turkey for Thanksgiving for my family, and up
Speaker 2: until I moved to Chicago, I had been frying them
Speaker 2: ever since, for my not just my mom's, not just
Speaker 2: for my family, but also for my grandparents who lived
Speaker 2: in Fayetteville, which is like a three hour drive, but
Speaker 2: I would make sure to fry one for them, drive
Speaker 2: it over, bring it back, and then come back. But
Speaker 2: then also for my brother's family and his in laws,
Speaker 2: I always did two twenty pound turkeys for them every year.
Speaker 2: And then we got to the point where my wife's
Speaker 2: co workers were like, Hey, we want to fry a turkey,
Speaker 2: but we're really scared, and so I would fry a
Speaker 2: turkey for them, And so we got to a point
Speaker 2: one year I think I fried probably seventeen or eighteen turkeys,
Speaker 2: what yes, for a couple for us. And this I
Speaker 2: will tell you this is a pro tip. And we're
Speaker 2: out at Thanksgiving yet I know that, but pro tip
Speaker 2: for frying turkeys. Fry one bird first, put that bird
Speaker 2: out for people to eat off of in the morning
Speaker 2: they can pick off of it, and then fry the
Speaker 2: next bird that's actually your bird for dinner. That's just
Speaker 2: a pro tip because everyone wants the smell gets through
Speaker 2: the house, Everyone's going to want some, so fry too,
Speaker 2: and you want those leftovers. And then the other thing,
Speaker 2: Dan is the other thing that got me into cooking
Speaker 2: and I was always I could cook. I cooked through
Speaker 2: college and made dinners for everybody and a lot of
Speaker 2: my mom's like her classic recipes. But then when I
Speaker 2: was at Bleacher Report, I was working on a really
Speaker 2: big project and there was no demarcation. And as someone
Speaker 2: I understood you work from home as well, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: and so well we all work from home now, but
Speaker 2: correct as someone who was working from home, there was
Speaker 2: no demarcation from work to family, like time with my
Speaker 2: wife to bedtime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 2: Have a hard out or and so I just worked
Speaker 2: around the clock and I was snacking and maybe we
Speaker 2: ordered something or we bought like a to go thing
Speaker 2: or and I was like, I need to get back
Speaker 2: into cook and I just I felt horrible, and so
Speaker 2: I had to get back into cooking. And cooking gives
Speaker 2: me a hard shut off on the day. It allows
Speaker 2: me to say no to doing radio when someone's like,
Speaker 2: let's do radio at six fifteen and I'm like, I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: I want to I'm dry brining. Then yeah, well.
Speaker 2: It's good time with my family and shut things down.
Speaker 2: And so it gave me a good shut off, and
Speaker 2: then it also challenged my mind in a different way
Speaker 2: than football. And I don't know for people that don't
Speaker 2: work in this industry, and I know the forballers are
Speaker 2: they come from all they come from all walks of life.
Speaker 2: But when you work from you know, seven or eight
Speaker 2: in the morning until four thirty five o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 2: and you're all I'm doing is watching football. That's it.
Speaker 2: That's all I'm doing. And so I needed something that
Speaker 2: challenged my mind in a different way, and cooking gave
Speaker 2: me sort of a decompression time, but also still felt challenging.
Speaker 2: Like that was my Rubik's cube, was figuring out how
Speaker 2: things worked. And I spent I spent one whole year
Speaker 2: roasting chicken, and it was split breasts to wings, to
Speaker 2: whole chickens to spat spatchcock cold chickens and figuring out
Speaker 2: the thing that worked the best and doing them on
Speaker 2: the grill for stealing them in the oven. And then
Speaker 2: I spent a year working on braising, and it started
Speaker 2: in like twenty fourteen, different liquids, different proteins working on braising,
Speaker 2: and it really became a thing that I looked forward
Speaker 2: to once I could put sports down for the day.
Speaker 2: So that's those kind of two pairs. It's two separate paths,
Speaker 2: but they worked kind of together. I had the base
Speaker 2: knowledge that I needed because of my mother and my
Speaker 2: growing up in my family, but then I took and
Speaker 2: expanded it. And then obviously with Hand of the Dirt
Speaker 2: the podcast expanded it to like growing my own stuff
Speaker 2: instead of just buying everything. And yeah, we with the
Speaker 2: exception of like some like super my Wife favorites, we
Speaker 2: I don't think have had from an ingredient standpoint or
Speaker 2: a composition standpoint, we haven't had a repeat meal since
Speaker 2: probably twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: That is a wild thing, So let's go there. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people listening have their standbys, right
Speaker 1: They know how to make a burger, they know how
Speaker 1: to make a chili. You know, they'll throw together case
Speaker 1: ida is in a pinch or something like that. Where
Speaker 1: should people start If they're listening to this and they say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to push myself, I want to make more.
Speaker 1: And I think what you mentioned in terms of working
Speaker 1: all day and needing that hard out because people are
Speaker 1: in less control of their lives right now. You can't
Speaker 1: go out to eat in the way you could. You
Speaker 1: can't see friends in the way you could right now.
Speaker 1: So cooking actually gives you a little bit of control back.
Speaker 1: You can control what's going on plates in a way
Speaker 1: that perhaps you didn't think about before. So if people
Speaker 1: are looking to get away from what I think we
Speaker 1: consider to be sort of mainstream standbys, winch are great.
Speaker 1: Where should people start to get more control of what
Speaker 1: they're cooking? Is it on the grill, is it vegetable wise,
Speaker 1: is it bread wise? Where should they go?
Speaker 2: I think there's a couple of different avenues. One, if
Speaker 2: you're someone who's super ambitious and wants to go into
Speaker 2: like you want to really challenge yourself, I think baking
Speaker 2: is the way to go. From a baking bread. Not
Speaker 2: this sour dough that was like all the rage for
Speaker 2: the first month of quarantine, but like baking, like looking
Speaker 2: at make finding out how to make your own white
Speaker 2: loaf or your own wheatloaf, Like that's the thing we
Speaker 2: don't We haven't had store bought bread in a long time,
Speaker 2: because I have my own white loaf and I've modified
Speaker 2: the recipe to fit for me and what works from
Speaker 2: a consistency standpoint, I think that's what avenue if you're
Speaker 2: really ambitious baking and pasta making if you really want
Speaker 2: to make.
Speaker 1: Oh, you can control the sugar too. There's a lot
Speaker 1: more sugar in store brop bet store bought bread being
Speaker 1: go realize bingo so much sugar. I cut the sugar
Speaker 1: in half. And the other thing that I do is
Speaker 1: I use honey instead of sugar. Nice and it really
Speaker 1: it works. It works really well. And it's freezable too.
Speaker 2: Yep, exactly. And that's the way because there's no actual
Speaker 2: preservatives in the bread. The way that you have to
Speaker 2: preserve it is I put it in the freezer. When
Speaker 2: I need it, I put it in the freezer, sliced,
Speaker 2: I slice it hand, slice it, put in the freezer
Speaker 2: slice but when I need some I take it out.
Speaker 2: It takes fifteen minutes to thaw and you can toast
Speaker 2: it and it's fine and there's no preservatives, which is awesome.
Speaker 2: So I would say pasta and bread making or my
Speaker 2: go to would be my like if you're super ambitious,
Speaker 2: including like pizza Do. And if you just look up
Speaker 2: Thursday Night Pizza Do, it's a one hour Pizza Do
Speaker 2: recipe that is without fail. We'll give you what you
Speaker 2: get you where you need to be the other one
Speaker 2: that I would say, that's kind of not it's I
Speaker 2: think it's it's not to say that it's least it's
Speaker 2: less ambitious than baking, but I think it is more
Speaker 2: intense because baking there's so much time where you're resting things, right,
Speaker 2: something's rest overnight. But for me, I would say, yeah,
Speaker 2: grilling or smoking, especially in I'm gonna I'll say it.
Speaker 2: I think grilling feels like some sort of a male
Speaker 2: dominated situation, right. And I'm friends with Nicole Auerback who
Speaker 2: works for the Athletic and she just now started grilling
Speaker 2: during quarantine and she absolutely loves it and didn't realize
Speaker 2: it was a thing that she could do, and she's like,
Speaker 2: I'm learning so much. So I think grilling, if you're
Speaker 2: a person that has not grown, if you're a woman
Speaker 2: that felt intimidated by the grill, get into that. I
Speaker 2: think it's a cool way you can you pick your proteins,
Speaker 2: You learn about the balance of the fat, the salt,
Speaker 2: the sort of that sour umami flavor, You learn about
Speaker 2: all those things, and you really feel more power because
Speaker 2: like you don't have to have your boyfriend or husband
Speaker 2: come over and do it for you, like you can
Speaker 2: do it yourself. So I think that's a huge thing
Speaker 2: for people who either have not grilled, and specifically for
Speaker 2: women who felt intimidated by the grill because it always
Speaker 2: seemed like, you know, you see your dad and your
Speaker 2: uncles gathered around the grill, huddled around the grill, looking
Speaker 2: at the grill. I think that's a I think it's
Speaker 2: a really cool skill to learn and to challenge yourself
Speaker 2: and to feel some power over that fire, those flames
Speaker 2: and whether charcoal or propane, you can get that job done.
Speaker 2: And smoking is an extension of that. And I love
Speaker 2: using the smoker because it is I'm from North Carolina.
Speaker 2: I love eastern North Carolina barbecue. I think it is
Speaker 2: to me that is barbecue. I love vinegar.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that's interesting about grilling, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody listening to the show doesn't necessarily eat meat.
Speaker 1: You know, you have some vegetarians, you have some vegans,
Speaker 1: plant based people out there. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that I think I was probably too late to and
Speaker 1: this could be grilling, it could be roasting, it could
Speaker 1: be smoking, is and I laughed looking at your feed
Speaker 1: because you got very excited this spring about ramp season. Yes,
Speaker 1: a root vegetable, what do you like? And ramps are fantastic.
Speaker 1: And when we can talk ramps, we can talk leaks,
Speaker 1: we can talk whatever you want, parsnips. But one of
Speaker 1: the things is, I don't know if people think about
Speaker 1: vegetables and charring and really getting crisp vegetables without having
Speaker 1: to deep fry that much. What do you do in
Speaker 1: terms of, you know, sort of bringing vegetables more forward.
Speaker 2: So, oh man, this is I love this question because
Speaker 2: I love so going back to using your oven when
Speaker 2: we talked about baking. If you use your oven for
Speaker 2: roasting things like carrots, oh, it's the best. You get
Speaker 2: the sugar out of those carrots, and they're so delicious.
Speaker 2: You throw a little bit of cayenne, salt and pepper,
Speaker 2: olive oil, a little cayenne on there, and the robust.
Speaker 1: Some spicy honey on there.
Speaker 2: It's yes, there we go. It's so good. And on
Speaker 2: the grill, I'm going to tell you mentioned vegetables, but
Speaker 2: I'm going I'm gonna go fruit too. I think that
Speaker 2: do it. Watermelon on the grill with a little balsamic
Speaker 2: and maybe some goat cheese or some feta is fantast
Speaker 2: It sounds like it's so much, but the reality is,
Speaker 2: you slice those wedges pretty thick, you throw them on
Speaker 2: the grill. There's still a little chilled on the inside,
Speaker 2: but the outside gets a good char and they have
Speaker 2: those natural sugars. Like when you grill, whether it's steak
Speaker 2: or it's chicken, you have to add something to get
Speaker 2: those that caramelization. And with fruit, it already has it
Speaker 2: because it's naturally sweet. Vegetables have a lot of that too,
Speaker 2: because even though they're vegetables, they still have some sweetness.
Speaker 2: And so I love you mentioned ramps. I love a
Speaker 2: grilled ramp. I also, we're in hatch chili season right now,
Speaker 2: and hatch hatch chilies on the grill are remarkable. And yeah,
Speaker 2: so from a grill standpoint, the other thing I would
Speaker 2: say is take things that you cook inside, take them outside.
Speaker 2: You you're used to roasting a chicken, take that outside,
Speaker 2: put it on the grill. You can get a lot
Speaker 2: of the same flavors, but you'll also get a little
Speaker 2: bit more char, a little bit more that grill, especially
Speaker 2: if you using charcoal that grill, that smoke flavor. I
Speaker 2: love that. And the other thing I was going to say,
Speaker 2: and you beat me to the punch when you when
Speaker 2: you mentioned the vegetables. I was going to say, is
Speaker 2: pick a different ingredient. Yeah, if you pick a new ingredient.
Speaker 2: We don't get parsnips on the regular in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: So when I moved to Chicago, I saw them when
Speaker 2: I'm going to the grocery store and I was like,
Speaker 2: let's try these. And you you know, you can google recipes,
Speaker 2: you can just try it out yourself. But through some
Speaker 2: of those on the grill, and they were great. Put
Speaker 2: some in salt, they were fantastic. That's how I hate carrots.
Speaker 2: I have hated carrots my entire life. And I realized
Speaker 2: that if they are charred, they are good. They taste
Speaker 2: good all the way.
Speaker 1: They're so good. I was, it's funny. I was talking
Speaker 1: to my parents about this, and my mom was complaining
Speaker 1: that she can't get my dad to eat vegetables. My
Speaker 1: dad loves crispy food. And I was like, just char
Speaker 1: the hell out of some cauliflower, chart the hell out
Speaker 1: of some broccoli, and hit it with some sea salt.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not all that complicated. You just have
Speaker 1: to think about what you can do to vegetables beyond
Speaker 1: just putting them on a plate and steaming them. And
Speaker 1: by the way, your fruit thing, I will I will
Speaker 1: quarter some peaches and put them in a honey bath,
Speaker 1: just some honey.
Speaker 2: I've had a major Chicago find good peaches.
Speaker 1: I haven't yet. I had them in New York. I
Speaker 1: had some decent peaches, but I haven't found them in
Speaker 1: Chicago yet. But just big picture, anytime you can grill
Speaker 1: fruit and you get that charred sweet, even grilling vegetables
Speaker 1: charts sweet. It actually makes if you're also eating meat,
Speaker 1: it makes your meat better. You're adding variety to your plate,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're having a more complete
Speaker 1: eating experience. So I could not recommend enough. Whether it's pineapple,
Speaker 1: whether it's watermelon like you mentioned, and you get that
Speaker 1: a sweet salty thing that's hard to get with meat,
Speaker 1: you're getting actually a more complete flavor profile. Messing around
Speaker 1: with vegetables and fruit on the grill.
Speaker 2: Oh, I am so excited, Like I am, like this
Speaker 2: is this is the stuff I love to talk about
Speaker 2: because it's it's kind of like where are my passion lies?
Speaker 2: And I think that choosing a different gradient, whether it
Speaker 2: be a fruit or a vegetable. I also think look
Speaker 2: at what meats on sale. We're living in like a
Speaker 2: weird time right now, and part of that weird time
Speaker 2: is looking at different cuts of meat because everyone is
Speaker 2: so locked into boneless, skinless chicken breasts, which I will
Speaker 2: say this are the worst. They're the worst meat you
Speaker 2: can buy.
Speaker 1: It's just it's difficult. I mean, you can it's the
Speaker 1: hardest thing you can make.
Speaker 2: It's the hardest thing to cook. But it's the thing
Speaker 2: that most people go to that aren't good at cooking, right.
Speaker 2: It's no, It's totally true. Get your thighs. Thighs, you
Speaker 2: can cook them to death and they still are juicy.
Speaker 2: But you try a new ingredient, like we've been. I'm
Speaker 2: a New York strip guy, but New York strip has
Speaker 2: apparently it's people, that's the thing people know how to cook.
Speaker 2: So it's been more expensive. So I've been buying a
Speaker 2: lot more of flank and skirt steak, and with flank
Speaker 2: and skirt, the good thing about them is I don't
Speaker 2: feel bad about a cheaper cut of meat, about throwing
Speaker 2: that waking up in the morning, going through going through
Speaker 2: my more routine late mid late morning, throwing that into
Speaker 2: a marinade that I make. You throw some hoists and
Speaker 2: some soy sauce. You work in a little bit of
Speaker 2: olive oil. You know, whatever spices that you're looking for,
Speaker 2: you put those in there. Your fresh herbs or your
Speaker 2: dry herbs, you put those in there. You turn it
Speaker 2: over throughout the day in the refrigerator, you take it
Speaker 2: out an hour before you want to cook it. And
Speaker 2: now you've got a great skirt steak that you can
Speaker 2: use to as just eat a slice steak or guess
Speaker 2: what it's great on tacos tacos. Yes, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things too where it's going
Speaker 1: to take three minutes aside, it takes no time once
Speaker 1: you're actually making things. And something I discover with this,
Speaker 1: and because everybody's life is a lot of people's lives
Speaker 1: are thrown sort of backwards right now, that's sort of
Speaker 1: a zen time too. You can throw on a podcast
Speaker 1: and just sort of have your own little time. If
Speaker 1: you've got kids, if you're you know, with family, friends, whatever,
Speaker 1: it allows you to go outside and just sort of
Speaker 1: do your thing, whether it's turning a steak, whether it's
Speaker 1: making that sgetables. I wanted to ask you, and so
Speaker 1: I'm going to saturdays specifically, how do you strategize? Because
Speaker 1: I think like most people listening to here, and it's
Speaker 1: worked for you, it's a passion, it's fun for everybody listening.
Speaker 1: But how do you build your saturdays around both cooking
Speaker 1: and watching? You know, because it's going eleven central to
Speaker 1: one central. How are you programming your schedule? You're doing
Speaker 1: it ahead of time? Are you waking up early? How
Speaker 1: do you strategize?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an ahead of time thing because once eleven
Speaker 2: hits and everybody I know you're West Coast guy, like
Speaker 2: originally like it's yes, it's so people love this idea
Speaker 2: of nine am football. I'm North Carolina kid, I'm used
Speaker 2: to noon football. And what nuone also meant for me
Speaker 2: was I got to kind of lay around in bed
Speaker 2: until ten ten thirty, then get up, shower, get all
Speaker 2: my get my station, my workstation set up for the day,
Speaker 2: and then go out and do my thing. And now
Speaker 2: that eleven o'clock cuts eleven o'clock plus a kid cuts
Speaker 2: that down so much that I got to do everything
Speaker 2: before and so we do Fridays, we do Burger Night
Speaker 2: and it's we grind our own meat here and handcut fries.
Speaker 1: Wait, hold on, you grind if you have a hand grinder?
Speaker 1: Is an electric grinder with.
Speaker 2: The kitchen aid using the kitchen aid, okay, grinder attach?
Speaker 1: And what is what is the big advantage because people
Speaker 1: listening to this, I'm sure you go buy, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple pounds of ground beef at the market and
Speaker 1: you form it into patties and it goes on to
Speaker 1: the grill. What's the advantage of grinding your own meat?
Speaker 1: Is it a blend thing?
Speaker 2: The two? Well, there's I think the blend is really
Speaker 2: good because depending on what meat, what beef is on sale.
Speaker 2: If we're doing beef burgers, you can pick your blend
Speaker 2: because let's say, you know, if hanger steaks on sale
Speaker 2: or short rip bone the short ribs are on sale,
Speaker 2: grab those and I can juice the fat up. I
Speaker 2: can juice the fat with a little bit of bacon fat.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Can Also I've done burgers where we do burger we
Speaker 2: do beef with bacon in the burger.
Speaker 1: Yep, we do Lamberger ground. You grind down like a
Speaker 1: pork belly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that's been really cool. And so I've
Speaker 2: started making my own bacon, which I got to get
Speaker 2: some to you. It's been really fine. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: it's been great.
Speaker 1: It's so you buy your buying a pork belly. Are
Speaker 1: you grinding yourself, curing it myself or curing excuse me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, curing it myself. And then then I put it
Speaker 2: on the grip, put it on the smoker, smoke it.
Speaker 2: Then you have your bacon. I freeze you know what
Speaker 2: I'm not going to use. You can take it off,
Speaker 2: you cut what you want. It's great.
Speaker 1: Wow, what isn't worth the trouble? Because I hear you,
Speaker 1: and I'm hearing everything is worth the trouble. I'm hearing
Speaker 1: bake your own. I'm seeing pretzel buns. You're you're tweaking
Speaker 1: and figuring out, and I love the passion all around.
Speaker 1: But there has to be something where you're just like
Speaker 1: storebod is good enough as an element to something bigger
Speaker 1: and better.
Speaker 2: Probably tortillas, I would say, if I had one thing, tortillas.
Speaker 1: Tortillas are really they They are difficult because you're you're
Speaker 1: needing to get the right temperature, you're needing to get
Speaker 1: the right mix and water level, and you got to
Speaker 1: get really good corn flour or you need lard with
Speaker 1: traditional flower tortillas. I don't know if you've had the
Speaker 1: Milagro brand in Chicago. They're fantastic.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's and we by we buy those or La
Speaker 2: Bandarita's because I just when i'm tacos are, I will
Speaker 2: admit this, and I don't want anyone to don't come.
Speaker 1: After me safe plaisus are.
Speaker 2: They're an afterthought for me. That's a thing I would
Speaker 2: never order or would never pick to have. But my
Speaker 2: wife loves them. So when it gets to be three
Speaker 2: thirty in the afternoon and I'm wrapped, getting close to
Speaker 2: wrapping up my work day, and she's like, what are
Speaker 2: we having for dinner? And I say, I didn't get
Speaker 2: that far yet. I know I want to make this,
Speaker 2: you know, I want to braise this pork. But I
Speaker 2: was thinking maybe we do sandwiches. She was like, she goes,
Speaker 2: what about tacos? And I'm like, I have a tortilla press, yeah,
Speaker 2: but I say, don't. I don't want to make taco
Speaker 2: I don't want to do that tonight. Luckily, in the
Speaker 2: pantry we've got some pre made tacos that we can
Speaker 2: roll with.
Speaker 1: It's and one of the things with tacos or anything
Speaker 1: with tortillas, if you throw them on your stove, not
Speaker 1: in a pan, just throw them right on the burners
Speaker 1: and you char them up on each side one. It
Speaker 1: sort of rehydrates them a little bit. It steams on
Speaker 1: the inside and you get a nice char on there.
Speaker 1: Any store bought tortilla is made thirty five percent better
Speaker 1: by charring it right before you you throw in your filling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm I will say this, I'm lucky my
Speaker 2: my sister in law, she is Mexican and they they
Speaker 2: they don't make all their own tortillas either, So I'm like,
Speaker 2: I feel better about that. But oh, always on a
Speaker 2: gast of throw it's throwing the tortillas on the gas
Speaker 2: stove and just right on top and getting it done out.
Speaker 2: It's a thing I learned from them, m hmm, and
Speaker 2: from her that I have carried into my regular life.
Speaker 2: She is who bought me the tortilla press because she
Speaker 2: was like, I know you're gonna want to make them yourself.
Speaker 2: And there are times when I do make them myself, right,
Speaker 2: especially if we want like mission burritos or something right,
Speaker 2: and you got to have those big boys, and you
Speaker 2: can't always find those in the store. So I'll make
Speaker 2: those myself and then I'll i throw them on the
Speaker 2: grill to get that same toasted effect. But if it's
Speaker 2: if it's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night tacos, we're gonna we're
Speaker 2: going to the bag. That is the thing to me
Speaker 2: that's not worth it.
Speaker 1: When you are in the market, what are your standbys
Speaker 1: for multi purpose that? Okay, this is what I'm always
Speaker 1: buying because I know I can get five different meals
Speaker 1: using this ingredient. That it's always just like, if you
Speaker 1: look hard enough, this isn't a lot of what I cook.
Speaker 1: Whole chickens, yep.
Speaker 2: And I know they're intimidating to people, and I know
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't like bones, which goes back
Speaker 2: to our boneless, skinless chicken thing. But I'm telling you,
Speaker 2: if you can get yourself comfortable with cutting out the
Speaker 2: backbone of that chicken, you can get depending on how
Speaker 2: much your family eats or the size of your family,
Speaker 2: but you can get at least two meals out of that,
Speaker 2: and you can get where you have a nice like
Speaker 2: a French country roasted you know that, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, Like that roasted chicken with the rosemary and
Speaker 2: the lemons or stuffed in there, that herb roasted chicken.
Speaker 2: You can get that and then that, whether it's the
Speaker 2: next day or the day after that, you pull that
Speaker 2: chicken apart and you either have soup or you have tacos,
Speaker 2: or you have a pulled chicken sandwich, or you have
Speaker 2: a Philly cheese a chick a chicken cheese steak. You
Speaker 2: have all those things. They're on the table for you.
Speaker 2: It's great. True. I'm gonna go with onions too. I
Speaker 2: think onions. Yep, that's an auto buy at the store.
Speaker 2: Get your onions. I'm a red onions guy. What kind
Speaker 2: of onions are you? Do?
Speaker 1: You like sweet? Yellow? Usually because they saunte up nicely
Speaker 1: if you go raw, they're not as harsh on a
Speaker 1: a burger or cutting up on you know, into guacamole
Speaker 1: or something like that. I'll go with the sweet yellows.
Speaker 1: I like red, but that's generally the direction I go.
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask though, just with burger, because I
Speaker 1: know a lot of people listening that's going to be
Speaker 1: their plan for a lot of saturdays burgers and dogs.
Speaker 1: What is worth the effort? Is it the bun thing?
Speaker 1: Is it blending your own meat thing? What to you
Speaker 1: is that first step where it's just like, okay, let's
Speaker 1: take what you were doing with burgers and let's just
Speaker 1: make it thirty percent better. What's the priority?
Speaker 2: So I don't want to exclude anybody based on whether
Speaker 2: it's social economics or just space or equipment totally, So
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna go buns. Anyone can make a bund.
Speaker 2: If you have a kitchen, you can make buns. Yes,
Speaker 2: So I'm going to go buns first. I am partial.
Speaker 2: I'll get to this in a second, but I'm partial
Speaker 2: to buns. I think buns are great. You can do
Speaker 2: it brioche, you can do the pretzel, but you control
Speaker 2: all of it. I will also say this, I don't
Speaker 2: know if you've had them before. English muffin hamburger is
Speaker 2: top notch. Which is a thing you can buy at
Speaker 2: the store.
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, it stands up to a burger really really well.
Speaker 2: Yes, those nooks and crannies they stand up to the
Speaker 2: juice really well. They stay together. Love English muff and burgers.
Speaker 2: So that to me, if you're if you're looking for
Speaker 2: a twist this week on when we get to the season,
Speaker 2: you're looking for twist this season English muffin burgers, people
Speaker 2: are gonna be like, what is this? And I had
Speaker 2: my first one. I believe it was in New York City,
Speaker 2: good grip. We're on the Upper East Side. I think
Speaker 2: some little bar restaurant and they did their their burgers
Speaker 2: on an English maybe mellons. It might be, okay, I
Speaker 2: don't remember that. I don't remember the place it was.
Speaker 2: It was also the time when I walked up there
Speaker 2: from Midtown and saw Chris Fowler. I didn't say anything
Speaker 2: to him, but I saw him.
Speaker 1: That is yeah, he lives uptown. I forget if it's
Speaker 1: the Upper East up or West.
Speaker 2: Might be the West West, Upper West. Okay.
Speaker 1: My big thing with burgers that has that has improved
Speaker 1: him by thirty percent that I get the most compliments
Speaker 1: on is over time. And you've talked about tweaking recipes
Speaker 1: and just finding what really clicks my burger sauce. It
Speaker 1: has made burger so much better. And I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people are quick too, and it's delicious. Just
Speaker 1: mix ketchup and mayo. Call it a day. Maybe throw
Speaker 1: some salt in there and call it Thousand Island. If
Speaker 1: you look up burger sauce recipes, and I found one
Speaker 1: that I really liked from a restaurant called Husk both
Speaker 1: in it's in Charleston and Nashville. Now I think it's
Speaker 1: in Greenville. I started with their recipe for their burger
Speaker 1: sauce and I made it my own. And it's mayo
Speaker 1: and a thicker barbecue sauce, mustard chopped like really finely
Speaker 1: diced dill, pickles, serracha, lemon juice, salt, pepper onion salt,
Speaker 1: and I thrown a little bit of tortilla masa to
Speaker 1: thicken it nice. And it's such a game changer to
Speaker 1: put thought into a burger sauce.
Speaker 2: I'm a sawt listen sauce boy right here. Of course,
Speaker 2: I absolutely love sauce as I could go all day
Speaker 2: on those. If we were going to add to the
Speaker 2: things that I said that people can do to step
Speaker 2: their game up, sauce is another one of them. Learn
Speaker 2: how to make a gas stream, learn how to make
Speaker 2: an aoli. Those are all things that you can do.
Speaker 2: They're great. I love sauce, so yeah, I think adding
Speaker 2: a sauce is fantastic. I've been playing with my own
Speaker 2: barbecue sauce, and the issue that I had had for
Speaker 2: a while is that once it's not warm anymore, it
Speaker 2: thickens too much. Yes, And playing with the vegetable oil
Speaker 2: or the olive oil component of that to keep it
Speaker 2: a little more loose so that I can pull it
Speaker 2: out of the fridge to use is important. But I
Speaker 2: mean molasses with bourbon you throw in you know, your
Speaker 2: onion and your garlic and all those things, and a
Speaker 2: little seasoned salt and whatnot, and you get it. I love,
Speaker 2: I love a saucy burger, So yes, I think I
Speaker 2: would go bun, I would go sauce. Then I would
Speaker 2: go if you've got the time, the space, the ability
Speaker 2: to grind your own meat, I would go there. And
Speaker 2: the reason I say that is the thing about ground meat.
Speaker 2: That and I'm not one of these like weird I'm like,
Speaker 2: and I'm not going to call people freaks, but I'm
Speaker 2: not one of these people just like weirded out by
Speaker 2: like meat. I'm not weirded by it, of course, but
Speaker 2: what I am weirded out by a little bit at
Speaker 2: least is the fact that that ground beef comes from
Speaker 2: a bunch of different cows. Yes, And there's something too
Speaker 2: knowing that that meat that I'm grinding came from this
Speaker 2: one cow. It's one piece of that cow's origin.
Speaker 1: It's homogenous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that to me, I don't know. I find
Speaker 2: benefit to that. The same thing with like that's the
Speaker 2: same thing with vegetables, right, like you, I like to
Speaker 2: just get that one whole onion or that one whole
Speaker 2: bell pepper. I know what that is, and then I
Speaker 2: can I can cut it up myself. But I think
Speaker 2: it's the same thing with meat for me where I know,
Speaker 2: which is also probably why I buy whole chickens most
Speaker 2: of the time, because that's the whole thing. That's it,
Speaker 2: that's the guy and that so. And I do think
Speaker 2: that there's a difference in quality, and you can do
Speaker 2: it in a food processor. I use the meat grinder,
Speaker 2: but there's a difference in the consistency where it's not
Speaker 2: those long strands, right. That makes it a lot easier
Speaker 2: to not just patty out. But it also I don't know,
Speaker 2: when you when you bite it, when you eat it,
Speaker 2: it tastes you can taste. The difference is what I'm.
Speaker 1: Saying would have been your biggest failures. I mean, you
Speaker 1: mentioned barbecue sauce. But what if you were going to
Speaker 1: tell people I have failed at this already, so don't
Speaker 1: do what I did. What what are the failures people
Speaker 1: should skip or at least get beyond.
Speaker 2: Oh read the instructions like it sounds so easy, but
Speaker 2: read like. There have been times when I was making
Speaker 2: what I've been baking bread, especially early, when I was
Speaker 2: baking bread, that I, you know, left out the vegetable oil,
Speaker 2: or I left out you know, I wanted to add
Speaker 2: rosemary into it and then I left that out, or
Speaker 2: I left leaving ingredients out because I wasn't reading close
Speaker 2: enough is incredibly frustrating. Pay attention to your oven. Oh yes,
Speaker 2: not knowing your oven is another huge sveil that I had.
Speaker 2: And I will say this this is not my tip.
Speaker 2: This is a coach illustrated tip. But if you take
Speaker 2: just go buy the cheapest white bread you can find
Speaker 2: at the store, Put it onto a sheet pan, put
Speaker 2: it into your oven, turn your oven to three p fifty,
Speaker 2: give it ten fifteen minutes, and look where the bread
Speaker 2: is burned versus the bread is not cooked at all.
Speaker 2: And now you know your oven's hotspots very important, but
Speaker 2: I just didn't know. When I moved to Chicago. I
Speaker 2: didn't know the oven, and so stuff that I was
Speaker 2: doing at home in Charlotte kept not working here. And
Speaker 2: the good thing is I've cooked enough that I could
Speaker 2: save stuff or turn it into something else. But there
Speaker 2: have been braizes where I take the lid off to
Speaker 2: get a char at the end, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: we've burnt something and we don't have any We got
Speaker 2: no more juice at the end because it's the broiler
Speaker 2: works way better on a gas oven than it does
Speaker 2: in an electric one, and so we've kept all the
Speaker 2: juice out. And now I've got to figure out what
Speaker 2: I'm going to do with this meat that's a little
Speaker 2: bit dry we've got. Oh goodness, gracious, I have I
Speaker 2: told you missing ingredients on bread? Look looking, check and
Speaker 2: see if you're using baking soda or baking powder. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: that is another one that's been huge, and it's they
Speaker 2: don't do the same things. And when you're substituting ingredients,
Speaker 2: I advise that you write them down because maybe everyone's
Speaker 2: smarter than I am, but Dan, I have forgotten in
Speaker 2: the middle of trying to double a recipe, to double everything,
Speaker 2: and gotten to the point where, oh, this looks like crap.
Speaker 2: Well we're going to have to restart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, restart Yeah.
Speaker 2: And my most recent fail this key lime pie, and
Speaker 2: it's I forgot to spray or butter the pan, and
Speaker 2: so the gram crack her just kind of stuck to
Speaker 2: my Pyrex dish and I couldn't get it out. The
Speaker 2: filling tasted great, couldn't get the crust out. And that's
Speaker 2: happened to me two times. I think it happened to
Speaker 2: me with a pecan pie a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: It happened to me with the key Lime pie, simply
Speaker 2: because I was so anxious to get the crust done
Speaker 2: in the crust in that I forgot to spray. And
Speaker 2: guess what, you can't go back in spray once you've
Speaker 2: pressed out a gram cracker crust into a Pyrex dish.
Speaker 1: Where do you look for recipes? Where are your sources?
Speaker 1: What do you look for in a recipe? Where do
Speaker 1: you what do you trust?
Speaker 2: So I am I stand Chef John all day. Chef John.
Speaker 2: I think he's on all recipes yep. I love his
Speaker 2: white bread recipe that I've modified a little bit English
Speaker 2: muffin recipe. Same chef. John's the man. He does his thing,
Speaker 2: he handles his biz. I am a humongous Vivian Howard fan.
Speaker 2: And she is you know, she's from She's on PBS. Okay,
Speaker 2: she's from. A chef. She owns a restaurant called The
Speaker 2: Chef and the Farmer. She own she does a show
Speaker 2: called it Chef in the f and it is I
Speaker 2: love it partially, well not even partially, largely because it's
Speaker 2: North Carolina recipes and like food that I grew up
Speaker 2: eating and food that I know really well and how
Speaker 2: to make it. But she puts little she's a classically
Speaker 2: trained chef where she puts a twist on all this
Speaker 2: Southern cuisine, right, this soul food, this southern good home good,
Speaker 2: down home eating. She puts an elevated twist on it.
Speaker 2: And that kind of inspires me to take, you know,
Speaker 2: to take my mom's pork chops that she she spent
Speaker 2: her time like she made those, and now I'm and
Speaker 2: she used to get the pork chops, toss them in
Speaker 2: the in the flower, the seasoned flour and then we
Speaker 2: would fry them and they were so good, to the
Speaker 2: point where she used to fry decoy pork chops so
Speaker 2: that my brothers would take those, but not the ones
Speaker 2: we're going to have for my brother and I would
Speaker 2: not the ones we're gonna have for dinner.
Speaker 1: But the seeming like a theme here, like the pre
Speaker 1: cooking theme to keep everybody happy while they wait.
Speaker 2: Well, listen, if you cook, you know that you're eating
Speaker 2: the whole entire time, and of course you're not. If
Speaker 2: you're not eating while you're cooking, you're not tasting your food,
Speaker 2: then you don't know what you're putting out there.
Speaker 1: That's a huge, huge deal is taste your food as
Speaker 1: you're cooking in to always be tasting your food as
Speaker 1: you're cooking in. Also, by the way, with recipes, one
Speaker 1: thing I really like to do. I don't have a
Speaker 1: ton of huge preferences in terms of destination, like I
Speaker 1: find bone appetite recipes are usually pretty good. America's Test
Speaker 1: Kitchen pretty good. I look for consensus where it's just
Speaker 1: like everybody's using soy sauce in a brine for this.
Speaker 1: That's that feels like the right move. If I across
Speaker 1: the board. If I'm looking up recipes, I want to
Speaker 1: make an Asian skirt stick or whatever, and everybody's using,
Speaker 1: you know, honey and ginger. Okay, I'm noting that, and
Speaker 1: I want the whatever recipe I end up using to
Speaker 1: have honey in ginger's. That's me is crucial.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're spot on when I'm looking for something that
Speaker 2: So I mentioned already find a new ingredient. So when
Speaker 2: I find a new ingredient, I'm like, does this go
Speaker 2: with this? So I look up. What I like to
Speaker 2: do is google the two ingredients, see if they go together,
Speaker 2: see how people have used them together. And then you
Speaker 2: pull up you know, if there are four or five
Speaker 2: recipes that call for the same ingredients in the same
Speaker 2: kind of configuration. Now you pull up those four or
Speaker 2: five and you can kind of create your own Frankenstein's
Speaker 2: Monster of all those ingredients. Yep. To get to where
Speaker 2: you want to be. And I think that's really I
Speaker 2: think that's crucial. I think that's huge. And yeah, it
Speaker 2: just but to go back to what I was saying,
Speaker 2: the thing I've been doing the same reason. I love
Speaker 2: Vivian Howard. I have her cook cookbook. My wife tried
Speaker 2: to go get her cookbook signed for me, wow, because
Speaker 2: I was on a work trip, because you know, I
Speaker 2: love She's I mean, she's from Kinston, North Carolina, Like
Speaker 2: that doesn't happen routinely, and she elevates all this stuff.
Speaker 2: And so what I've been doing is take the things
Speaker 2: that my mom cooked, the things I grew up learning
Speaker 2: how to eat, the things I grew up or grew
Speaker 2: up learning how to cook the things I grew up eating.
Speaker 2: Let's add fresh herbs instead of dried herbs. Let's add
Speaker 2: a little brine or a little soak, a buttermilk brian
Speaker 2: or a little buttermilk soak. Let's add that to this
Speaker 2: mix to see if we can take it to the
Speaker 2: next level. And it works. It does, It works. That's what.
Speaker 2: There's a reason why there's a restaurant in like what
Speaker 2: is it, Tennessee that has like crazy expensive fried chicken
Speaker 2: because they do this expert buttermilk brine versus just what
Speaker 2: Popeye's does or what somebody's grandma does on Sundays for church.
Speaker 2: So yep, it's that little elevation is something I'm always
Speaker 2: looking for. And once you think you got to this
Speaker 2: next level, try something else. And I'll tell you this, Dan,
Speaker 2: I love I love plating too. I absolutely love it.
Speaker 2: And I think that's another way that people can get
Speaker 2: more out of the cooking. Is it's not just stuff
Speaker 2: you slop on a plate and then and then and
Speaker 2: then you know, just you shovel down your throat. It's
Speaker 2: it can be art. Yeah, and you talked about it
Speaker 2: with sauce. You spend your time making a gas streak
Speaker 2: and then what do you want to just slap it
Speaker 2: on there? Now, let's drizzle that on the plate and
Speaker 2: then find a way to put the things on there
Speaker 2: nicely and make it look good. And hey, it's not
Speaker 2: just that, like we're all we're all at home now,
Speaker 2: so let's make dinner a time that's visually pleasing to
Speaker 2: the eyes and it tastes good.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you it's this as well. If you
Speaker 1: are dating, if you're single, and you have an ability
Speaker 1: to have go to's that are very clearly homemade, it
Speaker 1: is enormous. It is such a big deal because just selfishly,
Speaker 1: you will come across as thoughtful, You will come across
Speaker 1: as considering somebody's meal more though he made this for me, Yes,
Speaker 1: oh absolutely, it's thoughtful. And is there. And this is
Speaker 1: something that I don't think people think about as well,
Speaker 1: just in terms of when you get started cooking, because
Speaker 1: you can do breaking bake desserts, whether it's cookies or
Speaker 1: brownies or whatever. You can make very simple desserts right
Speaker 1: out of a package from the grocery store. But if
Speaker 1: you go just a step further and make cookies and
Speaker 1: make brownies or make some kind of bar or whatever,
Speaker 1: it's something that, especially with dudes, I find because I
Speaker 1: love making cookies. Cookies are great. I've got a lemon
Speaker 1: ricotta cookie that I sort of made my own from
Speaker 1: a Jota da Lorentis recipe of a salty chocolate chunk
Speaker 1: toffee recipe. I think it's a bonappetite cookie recipe. What
Speaker 1: is it that if you were to say, okay, specifically,
Speaker 1: let's be as specific as possible. There is a dude
Speaker 1: listening who wants to make dessert for a date and
Speaker 1: wants to be seen as sort of unexpected. What's the
Speaker 1: recommendation with I would say a relatively beginner skill level.
Speaker 2: Beginner skill level, Oh, I think cookies are Brownies are
Speaker 2: your go to?
Speaker 1: I think it's such an easy call.
Speaker 2: Especially because with a brownie or a cookie. Nobody expects
Speaker 2: you to make your own ice cream. Correct, So you
Speaker 2: can have store bought ice cream with a homemade brownie
Speaker 2: and you still look like a star.
Speaker 1: Oh it's I would, and I would lie if it's
Speaker 1: not true. I would lie and say it's your mom's
Speaker 1: recipe or your grandma's recipe, because that also makes you
Speaker 1: seem very connected to family, and you just oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just you know, it's a special date. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to make special cookies. I think that's a
Speaker 1: huge deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're I mean the idea off you make,
Speaker 2: Like you mentioned those, the chocolate salty toffee cookies. Imagine
Speaker 2: if you make two of those, you get out your
Speaker 2: briers or your eaties or your dryers or whatever it
Speaker 2: is where you live. You scoop one scoop of ice
Speaker 2: cream out, you put it in between there, you make
Speaker 2: an ice cream sandwich. You guys go sit on the
Speaker 2: patio and watch, whether it's fireworks or you do whatever.
Speaker 2: That's I think that's I think that's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's a no brainer. It's an absolute no brain. You
Speaker 1: mentioned a little bit of gardening. That's that's a level.
Speaker 1: And you talk about it on your podcast. Hand in
Speaker 1: the dirt. That's a level that I don't think people
Speaker 1: even if if they're living in an apartment, if they're
Speaker 1: living in a house, whatever. Where should people start with gardening?
Speaker 1: Is it just basil and cilantro, something that you can
Speaker 1: grow out a pot on just a porch or whatever?
Speaker 1: How far should people go? Where are the difference makers
Speaker 1: in the dirt?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Go herbs first? Yeah, you think about how much
Speaker 2: we spin on herbs in the grocery store. True, go
Speaker 2: herbs first, and you can harvest your own herbs. You
Speaker 2: make your own fresh pesto and pro tip, freeze that
Speaker 2: stuff and like an ice and like an ice cube tray.
Speaker 2: Ooh interesting, you got Yeah, you got it for days
Speaker 2: freezing an ice cube tray. I got Listen. I'm a
Speaker 2: tips and tricks guy because I am always trying to
Speaker 2: figure out how to maximize the space, especially now in
Speaker 2: Chicago where we have we do have we're lucky enough
Speaker 2: to have two refrigerators with fringers on the top, but
Speaker 2: we don't have space for gardening. So herbs first, rosemary, basil, cilantro,
Speaker 2: great love tomatoes. My neighbor, they get all the sun
Speaker 2: we don't get any of the sun that they get,
Speaker 2: but they're growing a bunch of tomatoes and peppers which
Speaker 2: are fantastic.
Speaker 1: And people are happy to give them away because over
Speaker 1: a summer bucket full, you get a bucket full. And
Speaker 1: this goes back to charring your fruits and vegetables. I
Speaker 1: just made a charred tomato salsa where you just you
Speaker 1: char up the halopanos, tomatoes, onions, garlic, you throw it
Speaker 1: in a blender with a little bit of lime, maybe cilantro,
Speaker 1: and salt and it's it's maybe a twenty two minute process.
Speaker 1: It is a nothing process, and it's so much better
Speaker 1: than any store bought salsa you will ever find.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm right there with you. We did a show
Speaker 2: with Elizabeth Flake, who's she's by trade. She's a wedding planner,
Speaker 2: which their industry has been hit hard obviously. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: she also has been working on the farm that she
Speaker 2: grew up on in Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, and she
Speaker 2: they canned forty jars of salsa and they're doing a
Speaker 2: bunch of different types of pickles. So like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: salsa is a great way and if your neighbors give
Speaker 2: you some tomatoes and then you can give them back salsa.
Speaker 2: That is a great kind of way to be neighborly
Speaker 2: type thing. So I am all for it. I think
Speaker 2: herbs are where you start. I also I'm a I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna I'm a flower lover, like it doesn't all
Speaker 2: have to be food, but I love a flower too.
Speaker 1: No, it's true.
Speaker 2: You can get some flowers in there's what's your go
Speaker 2: to Vinka's and geraniums.
Speaker 1: Wow, man, you are you were covering the entire table. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not just the food part.
Speaker 2: You are.
Speaker 1: You're creating centerpieces in your lawn working on it. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: What do you what is your big picture? And I
Speaker 1: just asked this, I think on the solid Reble Instagram feed.
Speaker 1: What is your big goal for the fall season in
Speaker 1: terms of mastering, tweaking, totally learning something new food wise?
Speaker 1: What is the fall of twenty twenty? Hopefully we have
Speaker 1: a season where you're just like, Okay, this fall I
Speaker 1: am I'm getting reps in doing blank.
Speaker 2: If I'm talking about what I want to master going
Speaker 2: into the fall from a I want to grow lettuce
Speaker 2: more lettuce. I had some success in North Carolina growing
Speaker 2: Swiss yard and spinach, and I want to figure out
Speaker 2: how to do Swiss yard cabbage spinach, grow that in Charlotte,
Speaker 2: but then also use it here. And I feel like
Speaker 2: I've got pasta pretty down pat. So the next thing
Speaker 2: that I want to do, and this is a little ambitious.
Speaker 2: And we talked about my me not particularly gloving making tortillas,
Speaker 2: but my wife loves raps. She eats a rap in
Speaker 2: the morning for lunch, for breakfast, she eats a rap
Speaker 2: in the midday for lunch. She loves raps. So I
Speaker 2: want to be able to go from spinach or Swiss
Speaker 2: yard in my own container garden to in my house
Speaker 2: to make a spinach rap for her that's made from
Speaker 2: my spinach that I hand roll out or hand pressed,
Speaker 2: that was spinach mixed.
Speaker 1: With a flower of some kind to make to make
Speaker 1: some sort of rap.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, I can do it imposta. I've done it
Speaker 2: in pasta. I've done it in pasta very well. I
Speaker 2: can do it in pasta. I've made red pepper pasta.
Speaker 2: I've done squidding pasta. I've done spinach pasta, jalapeno pasta,
Speaker 2: done all that. Have not done it from a rap standpoint,
Speaker 2: from a tortilla standpoint. And that's the thing. It does
Speaker 2: feel intimidating. And I say, this is someone who's a
Speaker 2: relatively accomplished cook, but it feels intimidating. And so that's
Speaker 2: my next that's the thing I want to do this fall.
Speaker 1: So is there anything that your average ambitious person, but
Speaker 1: your average at home cook beyond burger buns? Beyond getting
Speaker 1: better with a whole chicken? And we haven't really mentioned
Speaker 1: seafood at all, But if you are coaching up somebody
Speaker 1: at home, is there anything else this fall that they
Speaker 1: should make the added effort to not necessarily master, but
Speaker 1: at least.
Speaker 2: Try try out all your tools. Oh okay, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: going to go. Listen. I didn't mean to turn it,
Speaker 2: drive the car to the left, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: go try it all your No, you're good. Like there
Speaker 2: are so many people that I know, and you know,
Speaker 2: back in the before days, I would go and we
Speaker 2: would have dinner at someone's house and I would be
Speaker 2: helping them cook. Or I would go cook dinner at
Speaker 2: someone's house as that because they hosted the party, but
Speaker 2: I would do the cooking. And I'm going through their
Speaker 2: drawers and cabinets and they have all this stuff that
Speaker 2: they've never touched. Because you get married, you get all
Speaker 2: these things, and you've you've you've gone through bed bath
Speaker 2: and beyond or Creighton barrel whatever and clicked all these buttons,
Speaker 2: and you have all this stuff. You have to start zesting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: use your garlic press. Use your garlic press, use your zester.
Speaker 2: Find out what that weird thing that looks like it
Speaker 2: looks like? Uh like, find out how to use your
Speaker 2: your juicer. You like your lime and limon juicer to
Speaker 2: do that out use those things.
Speaker 1: Use a magic bullet because get a smooths.
Speaker 2: Yes, get us Oh my goodness. Yeah, like use that stuff.
Speaker 2: And I think that's to me, that's number one one.
Speaker 2: To get good with.
Speaker 1: Knives nice, keep your knife sharp too.
Speaker 2: Oh that is my best friend Scott Ryan Taylor play
Speaker 2: for the packers for att while. What do you even
Speaker 2: see with me? He never hesitates to repeat. The most
Speaker 2: dangerous thing in the kitchen is a dull knife.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh absolutely, and it costs nothing. It costs nothing
Speaker 1: to sharpen your knife, and it makes such a big
Speaker 1: difference as you slice things all day if that's what
Speaker 1: you're doing.
Speaker 2: Yep, get good with knives. Get sharp knives, because food
Speaker 2: should be sliced, it should be dice, it should be minced,
Speaker 2: it should not be sawed, which is what you have
Speaker 2: to do with a dull knife.
Speaker 1: I also will say this, look up go to YouTube.
Speaker 1: Go to YouTube and look up dishes you want to
Speaker 1: get better at, and you will not only learn recipes,
Speaker 1: you'll learn techniques. You'll learn, oh, don't chop like this,
Speaker 1: or this is how you roast something like this, and
Speaker 1: you will find channels you like, you will find recipes
Speaker 1: you like, and you will get better at technique. It's
Speaker 1: just it's doing it every day. It's getting comfortable, because
Speaker 1: nobody's good when they start, but it's And I also say,
Speaker 1: if there's a restaurant you like, if there's even like
Speaker 1: a national you know, food personality you really like, and
Speaker 1: you see something that they make, or you've eaten something
Speaker 1: at the restaurant you like, google the recipe these.
Speaker 2: People have out of copycat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's copycat stuff. There's cookbooks where it's just like
Speaker 1: you go to the meatball shop in New York and like, oh,
Speaker 1: those were really good chicken meatballs. You can just google
Speaker 1: chicken meatballs, meatball shop and you're probably going to find
Speaker 1: that recipe. More of those exist, More of those recipe
Speaker 1: sites with specific things you've eaten and like exists than
Speaker 1: you realize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I mean, it's a combination of muscle memory
Speaker 2: when it comes to the actual technique and tools work.
Speaker 2: It's expanding your skill set and it's just looking just look. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you want like And I think the thing is is
Speaker 2: you want to have pizza tonight. Instead of ordering pizza,
Speaker 2: google the ingredients to make your own dough, make your
Speaker 2: own sauce, and throw some pepperoni on it, and you're
Speaker 2: good to go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know what, the first time might not
Speaker 1: be great, but one you're not just tasting the food.
Speaker 1: You're tasting accomplishment because you're actually producing something. And the
Speaker 1: second time is gonna be even better. Third time even
Speaker 1: better than that.
Speaker 2: Oh man, Okay, and yeah this I'm gonna I know,
Speaker 2: I know, we're gonna go. I just two things I
Speaker 2: was gonna say, please. One, I will give this pro
Speaker 2: tip for cooking pizzas. Get yourself a pizza stone. They
Speaker 2: are not expensive, yep. And get yourself a pizza peel.
Speaker 2: They are also not expensive because then when you have
Speaker 2: those two things. You throw a little corn meal on
Speaker 2: the peel, a cornmeal on the stone. You can put
Speaker 2: your uncooked pizza on the pizza peel and put it
Speaker 2: off into the stone like a pizza parlor or like
Speaker 2: a pizza restaurant, instead of par cooking your crust and
Speaker 2: then taking it out of the oven and then topping
Speaker 2: it and then put it back in. It's a great
Speaker 2: way to do it. Pizza on the grill. By the way,
Speaker 2: if you put your pizza stone on your gas grill,
Speaker 2: it's going to get hotter than your oven will ever get. Yep,
Speaker 2: it's a pro tip. The other thing I was going
Speaker 2: to say, Oh my gosh, I think I just forgot
Speaker 2: about it. I think it. I was so excited about
Speaker 2: the pizza peel thing, I forgot about what else I
Speaker 2: was going to say. But oh, oh, cooking. Cooking it's
Speaker 2: the same as podcasting. And this is the thing that
Speaker 2: I have said to a couple people. It's like sex.
Speaker 2: You're not going to be good at it the first time,
Speaker 2: but the more you do it, the better you're gonna be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially if you learn all the tools like you
Speaker 1: just mentioned, If you learn about all of your tools
Speaker 1: at hand, you're just going to get better. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: so true. It's one thousand percent true. I think that's
Speaker 1: a perfect place to end this. Felder, Please tell people
Speaker 1: where to find everything in anything you produce, and where
Speaker 1: to find the pictures of your food. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I think that's the one place. And this is I
Speaker 1: know this is antagonistic for for having a guest on
Speaker 1: and criticizing them. Your plating is fantastic, but I think
Speaker 1: the photography that's that's become a passion of mine. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a phone thing. I don't know,
Speaker 1: if it's a light thing, I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: whatever it is. I think we need to have a
Speaker 1: conversation about your food photography. That's my only criticism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got to get better at that. Listen, it's
Speaker 2: you and it's my brother, both of you guys coming
Speaker 2: at me for this. I listen, at some point, I'm
Speaker 2: just going to break down and get the DSLR. And
Speaker 2: and they're not pricy.
Speaker 1: It's you don't even need the DSLR. It's more about
Speaker 1: And I have this conversation with our friend Jeff Schwartz
Speaker 1: all the time. He's trying to get as good as
Speaker 1: his brother is. At food photography, it's about light. It's
Speaker 1: about sometimes you just got to move your plate next
Speaker 1: to the natural daylight at the window and get like,
Speaker 1: get a good scene.
Speaker 2: I can't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I might.
Speaker 2: I might just have to start moving these cameras around
Speaker 2: and dialing in the light and just go that way.
Speaker 1: Oh you get You get a nice camera though with
Speaker 1: the light and you get that bouquet, that creamy blurriness
Speaker 1: in the background. It does. It makes a difference. As
Speaker 1: somebody very vain about food photography, I will say.
Speaker 2: I'm taking the criticism. I'm taking it. I'm hearing it.
Speaker 2: I'm appreciating it because this means that you care, and
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Of course. I look at your food on Instagram. It
Speaker 1: was like, damn it, this dude is so good and
Speaker 1: so dedicated and this food looks so good. But I
Speaker 1: think that's the missing piece for you right now. That's
Speaker 1: that's my note. That's it.
Speaker 2: There we go. I got it, So listen, folks. On
Speaker 2: that note, make sure you follow me at in the
Speaker 2: Bleachers on Twitter, yep on Instagram to see my not
Speaker 2: properly lit photos at It's Felder. I'm on watchstadium dot com.
Speaker 2: We're doing we're working on some digital series include and
Speaker 2: as well as the shows that you can find depending
Speaker 2: on who your cable provider is. And I do Trash
Speaker 2: Treasure podcasts with Amina Smith. But and I will say this,
Speaker 2: and we talked about it a little bit when it
Speaker 2: came to grow, I'd love doing Hand in the Dirt podcast.
Speaker 2: It is so awesome to do to talk about not
Speaker 2: sports or sports adjacent.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: It's basically hand of the Dirt. It's a gardening podcast
Speaker 2: about football, and we have college football people on, but
Speaker 2: we also have gardening people on. And if you want
Speaker 2: to send a voice memo, win send us in a
Speaker 2: voice memo. But we love doing the show. It's been
Speaker 2: really fun and this has been really fun as well.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for thinking to me, of.
Speaker 1: Course, Mike Felder, thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 3: Already, Dan, good chat.
Speaker 1: Yes, Ty, if you are going to give me a
Speaker 1: vanity episode to nerd out about food and cooking and
Speaker 1: growing vegetables and figuring out ways to utilize ingredients and
Speaker 1: multiple dishes and strategize for saturdays and leftovers, I'm going
Speaker 1: to take that opportunity, and I'm going to run with it.
Speaker 1: So I'm very thankful that you were able to step
Speaker 1: aside and allow for me to take off on the
Speaker 1: caloric runway that I was able to do.
Speaker 3: Caloric runway. It seems like a good way to wish
Speaker 3: people fond to do as they head into the weekend. Look,
Speaker 3: whether you're out there on the golf course or whether
Speaker 3: you're out there having a picnic with friends and family,
Speaker 3: hopefully keeping your distance and staying safe. We wish you
Speaker 3: all well. We thank you so much for supporting the show,
Speaker 3: for downloading the podcast, don't forget, Please do subscribe, Please
Speaker 3: do leave us a review, preferably of the five star variety.
Speaker 3: If you like what we do, all that stuff helps
Speaker 3: us and follow along on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and the like. Daniel,
Speaker 3: hope you have a good weekend.
Speaker 1: Hey, Ty, you too, Stay stretching, you know, ice your knees,
Speaker 1: if you have a heating pad, treat the lower back correctly,
Speaker 1: get plenty of sleep, drink plenty of water, and do
Speaker 1: your best to unwash how washed. I'm sure you and
Speaker 1: I already are.
Speaker 3: For that guy over there, my good friend Dan Rubnstein,
Speaker 3: for myself, Ty Hilton Brandt, have yourself a great weekend.
Speaker 3: We'll catch you all on the flip side in the meantime.
Speaker 3: Stay safe, stay a solid peace MHM.