Speaker 1: You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 1: Italy is an interesting place because it was for so
Speaker 1: long these city states. There was the Vatican, of course
Speaker 1: for thousands of years, which was Rome dominated by the
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic Church, and then there were you know, in
Speaker 1: the north there was a tremendous influence from German and
Speaker 1: French foodte you have butter. Then Genoa they were fishermen,
Speaker 1: of course, because they was on the sea. Did you
Speaker 1: know that the Neapolitans make something called pastela Genovese, which
Speaker 1: is a Neapolitan dish called pastase, and it's made one
Speaker 1: hundred percent with onions. And the point the reason they
Speaker 1: call it Allergendovese is because the Neapolitans think that the
Speaker 1: Genovesi are real cheap skates.
Speaker 2: They are apparently, well, I shouldn't say that, because one
Speaker 2: of my best friend is yeah.
Speaker 1: And so they Neapolitans make the cheapest dish they can,
Speaker 1: which is onions and they call Jennavese. Uh. And of course,
Speaker 1: as you know, every every region of Italy has a
Speaker 1: different specialty, certainly its own pasta. So in the south,
Speaker 1: in Pulia, they have orichuette, which are the little the
Speaker 1: little ear like pastas, and then in Bologna they have
Speaker 1: portalini or whatever. The story I like to tell about
Speaker 1: pizza because people think that pizza is this American staple.
Speaker 1: But the truth of the matter is when I was
Speaker 1: a little kid, you know, before about five years old,
Speaker 1: we used to go to a pizza and have pizza
Speaker 1: and no one knew what that was. Where was this
Speaker 1: in New York were we lived in Queens, but we
Speaker 1: my father would take us to a restaurant I remember
Speaker 1: called Luis Gino's and it was a very authentic news.
Speaker 1: This is the forties, This would have to be, yeah,
Speaker 1: in the forties, you know, forty four, because but no
Speaker 1: one knew in America, no one had ever seen a pizza,
Speaker 1: knew it a pizza. The kids said, what are you
Speaker 1: going to a pizzaio? What's that? And in fact I
Speaker 1: remember for fifty sons they he would even make a
Speaker 1: little pizza that I would get, and pizza, of course
Speaker 1: was a Neapolitan dish. But the American soldiers came up
Speaker 1: in World War Two through North Africa and up and
Speaker 1: went right through Naples, so they brought coca Cola, and
Speaker 1: they brought back pizza, and they brought pizza back to America,
Speaker 1: and then two years later pizza was the rare new thing.
Speaker 1: As a kid, everyone knew what pizza was and.
Speaker 3: What was the food like in the forties.
Speaker 1: What.
Speaker 2: So, you grew up in a family that cooked Italian food,
Speaker 2: But I think that there's a big difference between Italian
Speaker 2: food and Italian American food, don't you know.
Speaker 1: Well, none of my family the region we come from,
Speaker 1: not my mother's side that was Naples, but my father's
Speaker 1: side and my grandfather's side, and he dominated what kind
Speaker 1: of food his wife would cook, and he loved the
Speaker 1: classic Bernaldes food, which is Lucania. Lucania is if you
Speaker 1: look at Italy as a map, the arch of the
Speaker 1: that's Lucania between Pulia and over here is Calabria, and
Speaker 1: then in the center on the water and what's called
Speaker 1: the Medponto is this region where we're from. My grandfather
Speaker 1: wanted to eat Vanlez food. So my grandmother didn't know
Speaker 1: how to cook that food because, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: she was from South Italy, but she wasn't born there.
Speaker 1: Her father was from South Italy and he went to Tunis,
Speaker 1: because Tunis was a new city built in nineteen hundred
Speaker 1: and it was all built by Italians. And so he
Speaker 1: went there and he had three girls, my grandmother, and
Speaker 1: then Tunas. You had to be in cahots with a
Speaker 1: French partner because Tunas was a French protectorate, and the
Speaker 1: French partner double crossed him, and he got mad and
Speaker 1: left and took his daughters and went to New York.
Speaker 1: So there were these three girls, very well educated. They
Speaker 1: spoke Italian because they were from an Italian family. They
Speaker 1: spoke French because Tunas was a French they spoke Arabic
Speaker 1: because their school was Arabic, and they spoke English because
Speaker 1: they were going to go to America. So my grandmother,
Speaker 1: what this wonderful grandmother was actually born in Tunis, but
Speaker 1: she married my Italian grandfather and he wanted to eat
Speaker 1: this type of food. It turned out that in the
Speaker 1: railway station of this region, the guy who cooked that
Speaker 1: the railway also went to New York, and that man's
Speaker 1: son taught her how to cook all this authentic what
Speaker 1: we call vernals food. And these are these very strange dishes.
Speaker 1: There's one I'll describe to you called new Marid New Marid.
Speaker 1: What Marid is is you take you take all the
Speaker 1: sort of sweetbreads and lungs and and and awful, and
Speaker 1: then you package it in something with it, you know,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, and you make these these new meriads,
Speaker 1: which then you cook on a grill like more like
Speaker 1: it's not but new Merid is this is nu Merid.
Speaker 1: There's only someone who knows it says this is numerid,
Speaker 1: This is not humrid. Also something called figurative. Will you
Speaker 1: take the lining of the stomach that looks like lace,
Speaker 1: and you put a pork liver and a and a
Speaker 1: bay leaf, and then you wrap all these all these
Speaker 1: It is so they ate that kind of food, even
Speaker 1: though back in Italy that kind of food was getting
Speaker 1: co opted and changed by modern influences.
Speaker 2: I mean they still there's a restaurant that has been
Speaker 2: around for centuries which only cooks awful.
Speaker 3: They give spinals slaghetti.
Speaker 1: The tragedy is in America, the food and the authorization
Speaker 1: have just blanketly refused to prove any awful whatsoever. So
Speaker 1: you really have to go to the butcher on your
Speaker 1: own and say this is just a personal.
Speaker 3: When I lived in Paris, Francis.
Speaker 2: There was a if you wanted to eat brains, they
Speaker 2: would bring you up the head of the veal.
Speaker 1: Well that we have that in our town. It's called
Speaker 1: kabutzel and kaboot cell is literally the half of a
Speaker 1: lamb's head split with the eye and everything in it
Speaker 1: and all, and then it's made of reganato like sort
Speaker 1: of regonato. Would be with the regano and breadcrumbs and
Speaker 1: stuff in the oven roasted and we would be They
Speaker 1: would bring this, and I was funny because the big
Speaker 1: challenge was no one that I knew, even my big
Speaker 1: brother who was daring and my grandfather. No one I
Speaker 1: ever knew. Did I ever eat the eye? But but
Speaker 1: I would eat the brain?
Speaker 3: But I would eat I would eat the.
Speaker 1: Brain because I thought if I ate the lamb's brain
Speaker 1: that I would become smart. You ever heard of something
Speaker 1: called lambroshone. What it is is, in reality the bulb
Speaker 1: of a hyacinth, and it's a dish that's it looks
Speaker 1: like a little onion, but it's not an onion. It's lombars.
Speaker 1: We called it lambashun. There's two hundred ways of cooking them,
Speaker 1: and it's your well, the favorite one is when you
Speaker 1: sort of you bar boil them and then you you
Speaker 1: score them, and then you put them in hot oil
Speaker 1: and they burst into flowers.
Speaker 2: What I want to talk about as well, There's so
Speaker 2: many things we should meet again. I'd like to know
Speaker 2: why did you buy a vineyard? You directed all these movies,
Speaker 2: you did great things. Why would you go and buy
Speaker 2: vineyards and start a great vineyard?
Speaker 1: Do you want to know why I bought a vineyard? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: because when I was I'm an Italian American, which means
Speaker 1: I never saw a table that didn't have wine on it. Yet.
Speaker 1: United States had prohibition. But there was a rule in
Speaker 1: prohibition that a few people know about, is that wine
Speaker 1: drinking families. If you were a European or Italian, or
Speaker 1: French or Hungarian or German, you were allowed to buy
Speaker 1: the grapes and if you made it in your home,
Speaker 1: you could make two barrels of wine in your own
Speaker 1: fermenter in your home. So most Italians continued drinking wine
Speaker 1: during prohibition, but did so by buying the grapes and
Speaker 1: making the wine themselves. My grandfather did. But my grandfather
Speaker 1: had nine boys and no girls, so I had all
Speaker 1: these uncles, and these uncles told me of the fun
Speaker 1: of having the grapes come because they still used to
Speaker 1: steal the grapes because they didn't have fruit. A poor
Speaker 1: family like mine would take one orange and give each
Speaker 1: kid a segment of the orange. So they was so
Speaker 1: all I heard was how much fun it was when
Speaker 1: Grandpa made the wine and Italian Harlem. So when I
Speaker 1: made the Godfather and had a little bit of money,
Speaker 1: I suggested to my wife, let's buy a small house
Speaker 1: in Napa with grapes and we'll have like an acre
Speaker 1: of grapes, so we'll make wine and give it to
Speaker 1: the family. So we went with an agent and the
Speaker 1: agent told us this isn't for you, but they're going
Speaker 1: to auction the most beautiful wine property in a Napa
Speaker 1: valley and it's a chance to see it because it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not what you want to do. It's
Speaker 1: much more money, but it's it's the home of the
Speaker 1: family used to own ingle Nook because Inglenook was getting
Speaker 1: broken up at that So we went looked at it. Well,
Speaker 1: what year was this? This must have been after with
Speaker 1: the Godfather. What was the huh? So seventy five? So
Speaker 1: we went to see this place, and it had two things.
Speaker 1: That had a mountain, a whole mountain, beautiful mountain. It
Speaker 1: had one hundred acres of wine. And then there was
Speaker 1: the rest of it was that where the owner lived,
Speaker 1: and it was separate from the winery. And it had
Speaker 1: what had been a lake that was now with a dam,
Speaker 1: but it was sort of dried up, and it had
Speaker 1: a little swing on a tree, and I thought my
Speaker 1: daughter Sophia could swing on that swing. So I just
Speaker 1: my wife thought I was crazy, but I made an
Speaker 1: offer for it, and we didn't get it. Then everything
Speaker 1: we looked at seemed ridiculous compared to this gorgeous thing.
Speaker 1: So someone said that the people who did get it
Speaker 1: were going to build sixty homes on the mountain, but
Speaker 1: they ran into trouble with nap Is agricultural zoning. So
Speaker 1: I went before I was going to make apocalypse, I
Speaker 1: went to them and said, you know, I heard that
Speaker 1: your owners can't build these sixty homes, would be be
Speaker 1: interested in selling it to me? And they said yes,
Speaker 1: and I said okay, And so to borrow the money.
Speaker 1: It was about a million and a half dollars, which
Speaker 1: was a lot of money for me, but I had
Speaker 1: made the Godfather, so they gave me the loan and
Speaker 1: I went and made Apocalypse.
Speaker 2: Now do you think that having a vineyard and producing
Speaker 2: wine had parallels to making Oh?
Speaker 1: Definitely. When I came back after I had tried to
Speaker 1: buy an island in the Philippines, and my wife said, wisely,
Speaker 1: when you you know you'll never come back here again.
Speaker 1: It takes nine hours. And besides, you bought a winery
Speaker 1: and they're all asking what do you want to do
Speaker 1: with it? So I said, oh, you're right, And so
Speaker 1: it had one hundred acres of vineyards and then NAPA
Speaker 1: people come and try to put contract on. Other words,
Speaker 1: other wine makers want to get those grapes, and they'll say, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll pay for it, and we'll pay you a month.
Speaker 1: So I said, well, if everyone wants our grapes, maybe
Speaker 1: we shouldn't sell them. Maybe we should make wine ourselves.
Speaker 1: And she said to me, well, how do you know
Speaker 1: how to make wine? I said, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to make wine, but I don't know how to make
Speaker 1: films either, And so I decided to keep the grapes
Speaker 1: and make make the wine. And that's the wine you
Speaker 1: have there here.
Speaker 3: What you want to do.
Speaker 1: I want to taste this and I want to smell it,
Speaker 1: is what I want to do.
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Speaker 2: subscription is available for six or twelve months, with each
Speaker 2: oil chosen personally by our head chefs and varying with
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Speaker 2: really care for them with the gift. Visit our website
Speaker 2: shop the Rivercafe dot co dot uk to place your order. Now,
Speaker 2: if we wanted to learn about wine, how do people
Speaker 2: learn about wine?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't want to ever be one of those
Speaker 1: guys who.
Speaker 3: Talks like that I wanted to smell.
Speaker 1: The No, I don't. I don't want that. I just
Speaker 1: want to appreciate it so I enjoy it.
Speaker 2: So this is oscar ursa Milier, which is a cabinet
Speaker 2: blend that's.
Speaker 1: Probably seven cabinet three percent lowe something like that. Smell it,
Speaker 1: put your nose.
Speaker 3: Are you going to have one too?
Speaker 1: So you look at it. It has a beautiful color,
Speaker 1: it's this red. What do you smell well, beautiful bouquet,
Speaker 1: A real wine. Guy goes, this is my laboratory.
Speaker 3: You're pointing to your nose.
Speaker 1: This is a classic book. Yeah, and new Bordos do
Speaker 1: not or not they don't want a lot of alcohol,
Speaker 1: you know, like less than fourteen percent of.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask you what is a classic border.
Speaker 2: Classic Bordeaux is blending of cabinet with mellow and then
Speaker 2: sometimes some others.
Speaker 1: So Pett, this was actually made the man who makes
Speaker 1: Chateau Margo and his is this your own? Chateau Marco
Speaker 1: is our head of our fantastic he does both. But
Speaker 1: this is a baby.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this is the twenty nineteen, twenty nineteen. Do
Speaker 3: you think it is too soon to be drinking?
Speaker 1: Oh for sure, for sure.
Speaker 3: When would you drink it? Then?
Speaker 1: In twenty years?
Speaker 3: In twenty years? Okay, but it's good, it's good.
Speaker 2: We just have a little shake that we'll see you
Speaker 2: here years. So what are you drinking now? What year
Speaker 2: would you be drinking now?
Speaker 3: Two thousand and five, two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: Let me let me tell you how to drink it.
Speaker 3: Okay, smell it, yeah, family, smell it.
Speaker 1: Then when you take it, you put enough of it
Speaker 1: so your mouth is full, but don't swallow it, and
Speaker 1: you judge the mouthfield that it's a pleasure. Then slowly
Speaker 1: you let it go and you see how long the
Speaker 1: finish is a good wine that takes a long time
Speaker 1: to finish. So this has a nice nose, pretty color.
Speaker 1: Now now the mouthfeel h and a long finish. So
Speaker 1: that is, but that will become much softer in four years.
Speaker 1: It will become softer if you just.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 1: Now, you know it's enjoyable. Now. But let me let
Speaker 1: me tell you something incredible.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: I had a taste of seventeen eighty three, seventeen seventy
Speaker 1: three eighty three Margo, which was a wine that Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson drank and you go on take it was unbelievable.
Speaker 3: Where did teach.
Speaker 1: Margo had a big tasting in la years ago?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: And I tell you this wine was incredible. And then
Speaker 1: also I tasted nineteen ten, same tasting.
Speaker 2: I want to go back to the seventeen eighty three wine,
Speaker 2: so that they would have taken that wine out of
Speaker 2: the bottle many many times, not really.
Speaker 1: If it was, it was obviously kept at Bargo, so
Speaker 1: it was perfectly. They might have recooked it a few times,
Speaker 1: but now this is a This is an interesting wine
Speaker 1: here because this.
Speaker 3: Was okay, say what it is.
Speaker 1: That's nineteen seven and nine knee Bomb couple. So that
Speaker 1: was the first wine I made when I told my
Speaker 1: wife that I was going to make. Uh, you want
Speaker 1: to taste it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course this is nice. We should It were
Speaker 3: seventy eight.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's seventy eight. That's the first one we made.
Speaker 3: I bought it last night. Beautiful wine.
Speaker 1: Be interesting. It be interesting to compare that with this
Speaker 1: because this is made by a master winemaker in perfect conditions,
Speaker 1: and that was made by jerk me back well, who
Speaker 1: didn't know anything. When I want but the grapes will
Speaker 1: I mean the terells, Yeah, yeah, If the grapes were great,
Speaker 1: the wine will be greally.
Speaker 3: How are you finding climate change effect?
Speaker 1: So far? Our last years have been wonderful, but climate
Speaker 1: change is coming and then there's going to be some
Speaker 1: devastating events. That's what I wonder how Trump is going
Speaker 1: to explain you know, he's saying there is it's a hoax.
Speaker 1: I don't know how he's going to explain some of
Speaker 1: the disasters they're.
Speaker 3: Going to have.
Speaker 2: But the one I was talking to the people that
Speaker 2: we buy wine from in Kianti, and you know it's
Speaker 2: agriculture and it's just changing.
Speaker 1: Well, but you buy the super Tuscans, right they are
Speaker 1: competing with these that's the Tinianello and.
Speaker 3: Actually came to the Elson.
Speaker 2: But they a lot of those young winemakers came to
Speaker 2: you to learn their fathers were farmers, and the new
Speaker 2: Italian winemakers are coming to California to learn what you're
Speaker 2: doing in that.
Speaker 1: But also you know there was a lot of wine
Speaker 1: made in areas like Salento or down in Leche that
Speaker 1: they that they used to put in the super Tuscans
Speaker 1: and benefit them now that they're coming out as wines
Speaker 1: from Salento, you know from the south, like have you.
Speaker 3: Had the wine from Metna from Sicily?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Oh we have? Do you like them? Oscar?
Speaker 2: They're real, they're they're they're growing the wine on the
Speaker 2: slopes of this is just open.
Speaker 1: But if you'll find that if you let this sit
Speaker 1: open all that I bet you this could go either way.
Speaker 1: We don't know.
Speaker 3: This is the seventy seventy eight, this is the one
Speaker 3: I made.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, let's see.
Speaker 3: For yourself.
Speaker 1: It's got a lot of nose.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you see immediately the color is so much,
Speaker 3: I mean brown.
Speaker 2: See when I invited you to come and do this,
Speaker 2: you didn't know you'd be drinking.
Speaker 1: It's got a beautiful nose.
Speaker 3: This is really this is fantastic.
Speaker 1: You get how old is it? If it's seventy eight,
Speaker 1: eighty eight, ninety eight, it's forty years old.
Speaker 2: No more, forty six wow, six years old and it
Speaker 2: still has this this horrible freshness today.
Speaker 1: And we just opened her, yeah, and we and we
Speaker 1: just opened this. This is so much. This is August
Speaker 1: as well. Imagine when this is forty.
Speaker 2: Years somebody bought me a nineteen forty eight bottle of
Speaker 2: Santa Mio which come in and he wouldn't decant it.
Speaker 3: He just opened it up, poured it out and said,
Speaker 3: just let's drink it right now.
Speaker 2: Said he said, it doesn't need to breathe, it doesn't
Speaker 2: need to that hold of canter myths, he said, it's
Speaker 2: a myth.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a myth. It only pertains the cabernet. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it's these other grapes, sirah or whatever, you're drinking
Speaker 1: it doesn't rowan wines. This is a pretty good for
Speaker 1: some of you. This was the wine that I told
Speaker 1: my wife, well, I don't know, I shall take this.
Speaker 2: Then the River Cafe, when you said lunch is now
Speaker 2: running from Monday to Thursday. Reserve a booking on www.
Speaker 2: Rivercafe dot co dot uk or give us a call.
Speaker 1: The thing to understand about me and cooking is that
Speaker 1: I love to eat. I just that's the most wonderful thing. Well,
Speaker 1: and I was very poor, so rather than be able
Speaker 1: to go to a restaurants, I couldn't afford that. So
Speaker 1: whenever I wanted to eat something, I would call my
Speaker 1: mother and say, Mom, how do you make spaheti with clams?
Speaker 1: And she would tell me how to make spaghetti of clams.
Speaker 1: And then I developed a technique of every time I
Speaker 1: loved something, whether it was in a restaurant, I would
Speaker 1: always if I loved it, I would go back and
Speaker 1: say how do you make it? So if I went
Speaker 1: to a Moroccan restaurant and they had a bastilla, I
Speaker 1: said how do I make it? And I learned how
Speaker 1: to make bustilla.
Speaker 2: With the almonds and yeah.
Speaker 1: So in other words, over the years, all my favorite dishes.
Speaker 1: I knew how to make most of my life. I
Speaker 1: was much heavier than I am now. But there was
Speaker 1: a time when Anthony Bourdain visited the a palazzo I
Speaker 1: have in the south of Italy, in the region of Basilicata,
Speaker 1: and it was film that I was part of it.
Speaker 1: I was there, my granddaughter was there, and I tell you,
Speaker 1: I looked like a whale. And I looked at myself
Speaker 1: in this Anthony Bourdaine segment, and all I could see
Speaker 1: was the enormity of myself, and I said, well, I
Speaker 1: have got to do something about that. And this was
Speaker 1: well about four years years ago, I guess five years ago,
Speaker 1: and he passed away since then. And you know, my
Speaker 1: wife was very petite when I married her, and she
Speaker 1: was through the sixty years of our marriage, and she
Speaker 1: was always telling me, you know, you got to do
Speaker 1: something about your weight, because you know, it's a life threat.
Speaker 1: We all know. You don't see many three hundred pound
Speaker 1: eighty five row men walking around because they don't survive. So,
Speaker 1: seeing myself so gigantic, I went to a wonderful place
Speaker 1: that existed in North Carolina, part of the Duke Duke Schools.
Speaker 1: It was the Duke Fitness Center, and it wasn't really
Speaker 1: a spot. It wasn't like you go there and get
Speaker 1: pampered and get massages and stuff. It's more like going
Speaker 1: to college and taking your major in health so that
Speaker 1: you're taking courses in nutrition, in psychology. You know, there's
Speaker 1: like a lot of psychological reasons why you might might
Speaker 1: be obese. Your culture, your your family, what your traditional
Speaker 1: food is of your Mike case, I'm Italian Americans, so
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of pasta and pizza. And
Speaker 1: it was a fabulous experience. I was there almost four
Speaker 1: months and had a very interesting system. You learn a
Speaker 1: lot about the different food groups and what they contribute
Speaker 1: and then the balance between them, and then you sort
Speaker 1: of decide what your caloric intake is going to be.
Speaker 1: Yourself say well, I'm going to live on two thousand
Speaker 1: calories or eighteen hundred cal whatever it is. And you
Speaker 1: make your own menu a week before and you say,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have you see the options, and you
Speaker 1: make your menu and then you hand it in and
Speaker 1: when you hand it in the next week, when you
Speaker 1: go for your meals. Because you won't lead together with
Speaker 1: the other people in the program, they give you exactly
Speaker 1: what you had specified, and you can't say, well, give
Speaker 1: me a little bit more of that or a little
Speaker 1: of essen. Instead, you can't fudge with it. You did
Speaker 1: it and you have to stick to it. And so
Speaker 1: you become accustomed to what you have decided is the
Speaker 1: sensible and you have advice. I mean, you have a
Speaker 1: balance of elements, and basically you start, you know, at
Speaker 1: first you lose a lot of weight because most of
Speaker 1: it's water, and then you start traditionally losing weight, and
Speaker 1: then over what was four months, I lost about forty
Speaker 1: five pounds and continued. And this is also in goots
Speaker 1: with an exercise with so part of the day you
Speaker 1: do exercise part of the day, you go to classes
Speaker 1: part of the day. The psychological aspects are very interesting
Speaker 1: because there's some logic of why you might keep yourself
Speaker 1: overweight that you never may have considered. There were people
Speaker 1: there who were over four hundred pounds and it was
Speaker 1: so heartbreaking because you know that they're not going to
Speaker 1: live and they're prisoners of this addiction to eating.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing is that this is five years ago
Speaker 2: that you haven't gone off it.
Speaker 3: That is that your discipline. Do you think or there's.
Speaker 1: More to it than that. The human being is a
Speaker 1: marvelous creation, as you can imagine. And when you lose
Speaker 1: a lot of weight, suddenly your body thinks you're dying
Speaker 1: because traditionally rapid weight loss happens because you have some
Speaker 1: illness or you have some condition that's causing it. So
Speaker 1: the body does anything it can, and it has a
Speaker 1: lot it can do to get you to put that
Speaker 1: weight back on, so it manipulates your metabolism, so you
Speaker 1: start gaining weight. So most people who lose a lot
Speaker 1: of weight and comment about it on how they suddenly
Speaker 1: start gaining it back again. So what you have to
Speaker 1: do when you lose a lot of weight, you have
Speaker 1: to just keep it, keep it off for three years
Speaker 1: and then you reach your point. If you can manage
Speaker 1: to keep the weight off for three years, it sort
Speaker 1: of stabilizes and it becomes the new level. And that's
Speaker 1: what I did. So now it's been four or five years.
Speaker 1: But it's a struggle.
Speaker 3: I love to Yeah. I always think that if you
Speaker 3: deny yourself.
Speaker 2: Sometimes if you say no to food, sometimes you're saying
Speaker 2: no to just being there, the pleasure of table and
Speaker 2: talking to friends and being with them. So it does
Speaker 2: take a lot of but you can eat very very well.
Speaker 2: I said to you a few minutes ago. It's not
Speaker 2: how much you eat, but I just want to make
Speaker 2: sure that you're eating food.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But aside from that, look, I've been in a
Speaker 1: food business and the wine business, and I'm happy to
Speaker 1: talk about the similarities between the wine business and the
Speaker 1: hotel business and food business with the.
Speaker 3: Film business making a movie, yeah.
Speaker 1: Because there are many similar parts of it. But we
Speaker 1: have a lot of needs and appetites, and unfortunately, food
Speaker 1: and alcohol are one that have been commercialized the most,
Speaker 1: and they are fortunes made in food and drink, both
Speaker 1: in quality food and drink and in junk food as
Speaker 1: they call it. So that you know, you're constantly being
Speaker 1: pitched to have you know, let's have lunch, let's do
Speaker 1: let's celebrate. Well, this is going to be Thanksgiving, We're
Speaker 1: going to have the big Thanksgiving dinner. Or this is
Speaker 1: the big Christmas dinner. We're gonna have plumb pudding. So
Speaker 1: most of our celebrations are tied into something that's connected
Speaker 1: to other people, the business they're in. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I looked at all of the all of the pleasures
Speaker 1: that we have. And I realized that of the many
Speaker 1: pleasures that I used to overindulge in, really the only
Speaker 1: two I'm allowed to do now, which I can do
Speaker 1: as much as I want. It has no bad result.
Speaker 1: Is learning. Learning is a great pleasure, and you can
Speaker 1: do that without limitation, and you get no bad reaction.
Speaker 1: If you drink too much, you get sick, and it
Speaker 1: will be not you. If you chase ladies too much,
Speaker 1: your wife will get mad and abandon you. If you
Speaker 1: eat too much, you'll get obese and die. But you
Speaker 1: can't learn too much, and you can't listen to music
Speaker 1: too much that they don't have a payback of unless
Speaker 1: you listen to music too loud. But you can listen
Speaker 1: to music all you want and not pay the price,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all you want. And so you know, basically,
Speaker 1: over the last five six years, I've become since I
Speaker 1: really lost a lot of this way that became an
Speaker 1: incredible reader. I just at night, I always have a
Speaker 1: book of my bed waiting for me, my companion. I'm
Speaker 1: actually reading. How do you pronounce it? A lot of
Speaker 1: stuff I read I can't pronounce the Greek, ancient Greek theogony, theogeny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds better inod right, Yeah, that's who I'm reading.
Speaker 1: It's the story of the birth of all the gods
Speaker 1: and how how in Greek mythology there were all these
Speaker 1: creatures and they were just involved in the most erotic
Speaker 1: activities you cannot but gave birth chaos, made it with
Speaker 1: the goddess of this and that and and it's an
Speaker 1: incredible story of love making, which is what about the
Speaker 1: earth as we haven't.
Speaker 3: That's so pretty good.
Speaker 1: Did you know that there are people alive living in
Speaker 1: the south of Italy and in Sicily who still speak
Speaker 1: ancient Greek. They call it Greco, but I mean it's
Speaker 1: a living language. The town is they speak ancient If
Speaker 1: you a Greek person were to go there, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to talk to them. Wow, isn't that amazing?
Speaker 3: I mean that must be quite a small No, No,
Speaker 3: there are.
Speaker 1: There are whole little communities throughout throughout the south. It's
Speaker 1: called Magna Grecia because Greece when it sent its colonies
Speaker 1: to the south of Italy, it didn't they didn't come back,
Speaker 1: they stayed. My father I was a terrible student, and
Speaker 1: my father said, if you're not. If you don't shape up,
Speaker 1: I'm going to send you to a Jesuit school. And
Speaker 1: Jesuit schools would terrify because they beat you if you
Speaker 1: didn't learn. And I said, you know, I wish he had,
Speaker 1: because then I would have had Greek and Latin.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Francis, Thank you for
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
Speaker 1: with Montclair