Speaker 1: Hi everyone, it's Virgin. It's been a minute, but I'm
Speaker 1: excited to share an episode of a podcast I think
Speaker 1: you'll like, called Proof, from our friends at America's Test Kitchen.
Speaker 1: Proof is a podcast that explores the weird and surprising
Speaker 1: and funny backstories about food. They don't give you recipes,
Speaker 1: or profile celebrity chefs or interview cookbook authors. Instead, they
Speaker 1: go into the curious, unexamined corners of the food world
Speaker 1: and tell stories that change the way you think about food.
Speaker 1: This episode you're about to hear it takes to you
Speaker 1: on a crash course through queer theory and culture to
Speaker 1: answer the question what is the queerest food? You'll want
Speaker 1: to stay tuned for the amazing ending. Let's listen from
Speaker 1: Proof the search for the queerest food. It started when
Speaker 1: I read this article America Your Food is So Gay?
Speaker 1: By John Birdsall. This is our friend Chad shan I.
Speaker 1: He writes America's Test Kitchen Kids podcast Mystery Recipe. Today,
Speaker 1: he's here with a very different story. Mister Birdsall won
Speaker 1: a James Beard Award for his twenty fourteen article, which
Speaker 1: ran in The Lucky Peach. In it, he describes how
Speaker 1: three gay men James Beard, Richard Olney, and Craig Clayborne
Speaker 1: were fundamental to the development of American food culture. In
Speaker 1: the intro, mister Birdsall describes a particularly decadent cheeseburger as unflinchingly,
Speaker 1: unapologetically magnificently queer. But to be honest, I didn't see it.
Speaker 1: This cheeseburger, which he calls the lou Burger, just didn't
Speaker 1: read all that queer to me, and so it got
Speaker 1: me thinking, what is the queerest food? Hey? Check, can
Speaker 1: I just break in here? What do you mean when
Speaker 1: you say queer food? Well, food is food, right, and
Speaker 1: so it isn't gay or straight or anywhere else on
Speaker 1: the queer spectrum. But when mister birds All described the
Speaker 1: burger in his article as magnificently queer, he was using
Speaker 1: it as a way of describing the queer culture of
Speaker 1: the moment. Okay, so if you're trying to answer the
Speaker 1: question of what is the queerest food, there might be
Speaker 1: just a little bit of creative license going on. More
Speaker 1: than a little bit, Yes, putting queer culture onto a
Speaker 1: cheeseburger it's a little much, But honestly I became obsessed.
Speaker 1: I mean, it can make some concepts that are pretty
Speaker 1: complex instantly more approachable to talk about. Also, just to
Speaker 1: say upfront, I'm gay, let me back up, actually, high,
Speaker 1: I'm Chad. My pronoms are he him, I'm a cis
Speaker 1: gendered white gay man, and I'm gayer than a rainbow bagel, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, isn't that hard because rainbow bagels aren't
Speaker 1: that gay? Okay, Well, then where do you even begin
Speaker 1: your journey to find the queerest food? First things first,
Speaker 1: I began by clarifying my terms, because words are important.
Speaker 1: The Dry Dictionary definition of the word queer in the
Speaker 1: way that I'm using it for this story is relating
Speaker 1: to a sexual or gender identity that does not correspond
Speaker 1: to established ideas of sexuality and gender, especially heterosexual norms. Basically,
Speaker 1: anyone who isn't cis gendered and straight. It is purposefully
Speaker 1: vague so as to be inclusive. When I use the
Speaker 1: word gay, and when mister Birdsall does in his article,
Speaker 1: he's specifically referring to homosexual men. But being gay is
Speaker 1: just one flavor of being queer. Okay, So if pies
Speaker 1: are queer, then maybe apple pies are gay apple pies
Speaker 1: or pie, but not all pies or apple right, yes,
Speaker 1: and then sometimes you can get a scoop of ice
Speaker 1: cream on top, or whipped cream or caramel. The possibilities
Speaker 1: are endless. And now I want apple pie with ice cream.
Speaker 1: But I think I follow great. Yes, yes, you definitely
Speaker 1: do so. Before we grab our spoons and eat this
Speaker 1: story straight from the cart in, let me say this.
Speaker 1: This whole concept is a little bit silly. I get that,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to take it very seriously from here
Speaker 1: on out. So what is the queerest food from America's
Speaker 1: test kitchen. I'm Bridget Lancaster and this is proofd okay, Chad.
Speaker 1: I am going to hand things over to you for
Speaker 1: the rest of the episode. The control room is yours,
Speaker 1: and I'm really excited to see where this queer food
Speaker 1: question takes you. Thank you, Bridget. My name is John
Speaker 1: Birdsall and I'm a writer in Oakland, California, and my
Speaker 1: pronouns are he him. John has a book coming out
Speaker 1: called The Man Who Ate Too Much, The Life of
Speaker 1: James Beard strongly recommend. In his article America, Your Food
Speaker 1: is So Gay, John describes growing up with these neighbors,
Speaker 1: a gay couple named Pat and Lou. I had grown
Speaker 1: up with these sort of uncles. You know, I wasn't
Speaker 1: related to them, but I called them my uncles. We
Speaker 1: grew up in a suburb of San Francisco, and so
Speaker 1: we could sort of see their backdack from our backdack
Speaker 1: and would wave. Pat and Lou became fast family friends,
Speaker 1: and like many a queer neighbor, they also became occasional
Speaker 1: babysitters and the lue Burger. You know, on those nights
Speaker 1: when they baby sat for us, Lou would pack these
Speaker 1: incredibly rich, you know, expensive delicious greens like blue cheese
Speaker 1: and dijon mustard and caramelized onions. John goes on to
Speaker 1: describe these salty cheeseburgers that he could only eat half
Speaker 1: of before feeling sick, but he loved every bite. It
Speaker 1: was really a statement about appreciating pleasure in a way
Speaker 1: that was detached from the kind of nutritional minded cooking
Speaker 1: that my mother did. You know, in a society where
Speaker 1: there were lots of rules and strictures, this burger had
Speaker 1: no rules at all. Believe me when I say, I
Speaker 1: am fully onboard. Right. An indulgent, juicy burger just slathered
Speaker 1: in cheese and love is the sort of rebellious antithesis
Speaker 1: to the nuclear family meal that being gay in the
Speaker 1: seventies was all about. The lue burger was a kind
Speaker 1: of middle finger in the face of a balanced dinner,
Speaker 1: and it paved the way for today's food to be
Speaker 1: queer in all the ways that it wants to be.
Speaker 1: But it does feel just a little bit dated. So
Speaker 1: I asked John what he thought the queerest food of
Speaker 1: this moment might be. Wow. Wow, that's a really good question.
Speaker 1: That is a really good question, Thank you, John. The
Speaker 1: lue burger was a metaphor, a rebellious and indulgent delight
Speaker 1: which expressed its joy through expensive cheese. In fact, but
Speaker 1: a lot has happened since Pat and Lou are stuffing
Speaker 1: burgers full of decadence in the nineteen seventies, And to
Speaker 1: figure out what the queerest food of today is, we
Speaker 1: need to make sure that we're all ordering off of
Speaker 1: the same menu. The changes in queer culture since nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy have not come easily. Change happened because of generations
Speaker 1: of queer activists and leaders, specifically black transwomen and other
Speaker 1: queer black indigenous people of color. Change happened because Stonewall
Speaker 1: was a riot we know it was another raid when
Speaker 1: all of a sudden we heard a crash. Somebody do
Speaker 1: rocked with the window. Change happened because trans women of
Speaker 1: color fought for my rights that night and for years
Speaker 1: and years after, women like Sylvia Rivera and Marcia P.
Speaker 1: Johnson donning I want my gay right now. I think
Speaker 1: at that time the gay bright and sisters goddam rights
Speaker 1: and espectly the women. Change happened because artists like Keith
Speaker 1: Harrying and writers like James Baldwin used their platforms to
Speaker 1: speak about issues like marriage equality years before it would
Speaker 1: finally be passed into law. You think you had the
Speaker 1: right around the right, shout anybody else who Oh, she
Speaker 1: should marry? H should love. Change happened because activists like
Speaker 1: Larry Kramer spent their lives fighting as the HIV and
Speaker 1: AIGE crisis derailed a generation of queer people. Plag we
Speaker 1: are in the middle of a fucking cloy and you'll
Speaker 1: behold like. The change happened because these people and so
Speaker 1: many others fought, rioted, and legislated their way to a
Speaker 1: better world. A better world where I am alive and
Speaker 1: free to put my queer energy towards the not at
Speaker 1: all silly journalistic pursuit of finding the queerest food as
Speaker 1: one siss white raisin and a beautifully queer trail mix.
Speaker 1: I know, if I'm going to tackle the question this big,
Speaker 1: I am gonna need some help. Oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is so cute. So you want to end like a
Speaker 1: list form where I can just like say it to you.
Speaker 1: I started at the queer watering Hole social media. My
Speaker 1: friend Arian immediately sent me a list Aryan is queer
Speaker 1: and non binary uses they then pronouns and is an
Speaker 1: absolute delight. My number one all the time being a
Speaker 1: black American is fried chicken. I'm talking about life seasoning
Speaker 1: and just flour and just you know, hot fried chicken,
Speaker 1: like it makes you have to eat it with your
Speaker 1: hands in a particular like way, like you know, because
Speaker 1: it's just like so it's just gayum thick boys, gay
Speaker 1: gay yummy thick boys. They love mashed potatoes or French
Speaker 1: fries or some sort of like tater situation with cheese
Speaker 1: on top of it. Cis, maybe let's just put like,
Speaker 1: let's just put the potato family as like three like
Speaker 1: strawberries always you say the word strawberry in a sentence
Speaker 1: next to your man, Where are we at? What are
Speaker 1: we doing? You know? So this is a very very
Speaker 1: promising start. But how am I to know when I
Speaker 1: found the answer? I needed something like something like a
Speaker 1: rubric food rubric, A queer food brick. Queer Food Brick
Speaker 1: trade mark twenty twenty. The first column on the queer
Speaker 1: food brick? Is this a metaphor? I think the queer
Speaker 1: food I'm looking for has some deeper symbolic meaning behind it,
Speaker 1: like the lue Burger. And while I've never enjoyed mashed
Speaker 1: potatoes more than I do, right in this very moment,
Speaker 1: I had to keep searching. With the lue Burger in
Speaker 1: my heart. I put on my journalism hat and I
Speaker 1: hit the streets. Or I was about to, and then
Speaker 1: COVID happened, so I hit the Internet, otherwise known as
Speaker 1: the land of awkward hellos. I can you hear me?
Speaker 1: I can't hear you. I'm not muted. Ow hi Hi.
Speaker 1: I started by asking more of my queer friends what
Speaker 1: they thought the queerest food was. I'm kevy. Pronouns are
Speaker 1: a day them and I definify somewhere between queer and
Speaker 1: by I'm Alice, my pronouns are she her, I identify
Speaker 1: as lesbian and we are married. Amazing. So if we're
Speaker 1: talking about queer food, what is the first thing that
Speaker 1: comes to mind? That was pretty a media talk me through.
Speaker 1: This is not a new idea, Nancy. An amazing podcast
Speaker 1: from WNYC all about queer culture recently had a whole
Speaker 1: thing about ice coffee and how queer it is. It's
Speaker 1: sort of hard to pin down exactly how it started,
Speaker 1: but regardless of how or when ice coffee became queer,
Speaker 1: it certainly is queer now for many reasons, and one
Speaker 1: of them is signaling. I think queer culture is very
Speaker 1: much about the hidden signals of how to identify someone
Speaker 1: who is like you without having to say anything or
Speaker 1: risk anything. And I think ice coffee has kind of
Speaker 1: become one of those things that's like a back pocket
Speaker 1: hanky or not wearing box or backpacks or subarus or
Speaker 1: glitter or overalls. Sorry farmers, you can just look at
Speaker 1: someone and kind of now, oh, that person's like me.
Speaker 1: This type of signaling is so important to the queer community.
Speaker 1: There have been many times where I've walked into a
Speaker 1: bar and had no idea if any of the men
Speaker 1: in there, or even attracted to my gender, never mind
Speaker 1: little one me. Too often, it doesn't feel safe to
Speaker 1: approach someone and start flirting without some type of indication
Speaker 1: that they won't react negatively or with violence. There is
Speaker 1: a long tradition of these nonverbal cues. These signals like
Speaker 1: backpocket handkerchiefs, a way to recognize other queer people. Ice
Speaker 1: coffee now being one of them. I think we claimed this,
Speaker 1: the gays claimed the ice coffee, you know, being someone
Speaker 1: who can drink something cold when it's really cold out,
Speaker 1: it does make you feel colder, but there's this sense
Speaker 1: of pride that yes, I'm queer and I can do
Speaker 1: this and I can put up with it and it's
Speaker 1: not a big deal. Yeah, I don't have the luxury
Speaker 1: of choosing the temperature of my coffee. Like we will
Speaker 1: suffer for the thing that we love and we have,
Speaker 1: so this is not that big of a sacrifice. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear that so hard. Let me sit my ice coffee.
Speaker 1: Cheers to our badge of honor love A good queer cheers.
Speaker 1: Ice coffee certainly checks many boxes on the queer food brick.
Speaker 1: For one, the experts aka the legendary queers over at
Speaker 1: Nancy agree with us. It holds a metaphor for the
Speaker 1: queer experience ants and it's signaling, and in that, it's
Speaker 1: all about suffering for what we love. But if we're
Speaker 1: getting technical with this, and of course we're getting technical
Speaker 1: with this, ice coffee isn't a food, one simple but
Speaker 1: fundamental column of the queer food brick, it must be food.
Speaker 1: I'll repeat that for any queers listening. Ice coffee is
Speaker 1: not a food. Please eat something for breakfast? Hello, Hi, Edward,
Speaker 1: This is Edward. His pronouns are he him? Can we
Speaker 1: do a lightning round real quick? Yeah? Bagels? No bagels
Speaker 1: with locks and cream, cheese, yes, samon, yes, swimming upstream?
Speaker 1: Just watch out for the bear peppers some of them.
Speaker 1: How about like stuffed peppers with like ground beef? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: are you kidding, honey, I'm a stuffed pepper with ground beef.
Speaker 1: But if we went on like this for far too long,
Speaker 1: I'll spare you if I say, what is queer food? Like?
Speaker 1: What jumps out at you? What comes to mind? First?
Speaker 1: I feel like pasta is because pasta is like the
Speaker 1: queer experience of being closeted ride. Pasta is the person
Speaker 1: who's not comfortable to be who they are, and then
Speaker 1: you put them in hot water aka college or like
Speaker 1: alcohol or like whatever it may be, and they're shown
Speaker 1: this like a whole new world of like heavy cream sauces.
Speaker 1: Pasta definitely checks off some boxes on the queer food brick.
Speaker 1: The transformation of it, this slow absorption of your surroundings
Speaker 1: to really cook and become what you're meant to be.
Speaker 1: That's an a plus metaphor if I've ever tasted one,
Speaker 1: and it definitely is a food. Yeah, I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: I think it's the crux of the episode. Like, maybe
Speaker 1: take what I said and work around it. The third
Speaker 1: column then might read does this describe a shared experience?
Speaker 1: Coming out is absolutely a shared queer experience. Just by
Speaker 1: living in a heteronormative world, we are very often forced
Speaker 1: to announce ourselves as queer in order to feel seen
Speaker 1: and get to live openly. But as far as food
Speaker 1: metaphors go, this slow absorbing of our comfortable hot water
Speaker 1: bath isn't quite working for me. Pasta is predictable and
Speaker 1: gradual and hard to mess up. It's the same every
Speaker 1: time boil the water. Seven to ten minutes later, you're
Speaker 1: done perfectly, a'll dente. But coming out certainly isn't predictable,
Speaker 1: you know. I think about my queer siblings in the
Speaker 1: trans community. Coming out for trans people is something different entirely.
Speaker 1: It's layered and sometimes constant for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: It's something that happens every day at each new job,
Speaker 1: in each new relationship, and it looks different every time.
Speaker 1: So if not pasta where two, next, one answer I
Speaker 1: seemed to get again and again was some type of
Speaker 1: baked good, cookies, cakes, that kind of thing. It was
Speaker 1: a whole direction that I wanted to explore, and so
Speaker 1: I reached out to someone who sits right at the
Speaker 1: intersection of a queer representation and baking. I'm Michael chock Cravati,
Speaker 1: my pronouns he and him, and I identify as a
Speaker 1: gay man, a gay baker because I was one of
Speaker 1: the contestants on The Great with His Bake Off twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Michael was the contestant who cut his finger three times
Speaker 1: in the first five minutes of the first day. Become
Speaker 1: be slow, be confident, it's gonna be fine. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be fine. I just, oh my god, I've done it again.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, Michael again, for goodness sake, this is
Speaker 1: so stupid, which made him instantly my favorite one friend
Speaker 1: that I had talked to about this early on, we
Speaker 1: sort of spiraled and started talking about cooking shows and
Speaker 1: reality TV shows. Yeah, I think it's amazing, especially if
Speaker 1: you look about even ten years ago, if you had
Speaker 1: a gay character existing on reality TV, it was a story,
Speaker 1: it was a really big deal. You'd see these gay people,
Speaker 1: or these chans people, or these queer people going through
Speaker 1: really challenging situations. And now we're moving into a place
Speaker 1: where we are just equal. And that sounds so simple,
Speaker 1: but especially on bake Off, you think about my season
Speaker 1: like we were just seen as the same as everybody else.
Speaker 1: And I mean the very, very very last scene of
Speaker 1: that entire series was David kissing his partner Nick on
Speaker 1: the lips and giving him a hug. And for that
Speaker 1: to be one of the most watched television programs in
Speaker 1: Britain and walked across the world as seeing as this
Speaker 1: normal thing on such a popular program, That's incredible. And
Speaker 1: I think representation is so important because how are we
Speaker 1: supposed to feel whole, included and comfortable in our own skin,
Speaker 1: and so we can see people like us in the
Speaker 1: world around us. From Pat and Lou waving from their
Speaker 1: back deck to David kissing his partner on the Bacoff finale.
Speaker 1: These moments of gay men being visible are so important
Speaker 1: for people like me to feel like there's room for us.
Speaker 1: Imagine the world we could live in if queer, black,
Speaker 1: Indigenous people of color had as much opportunity for representation
Speaker 1: as I did. But I digress. We're here to talk
Speaker 1: about queer food. I mean, the first that pops into
Speaker 1: my mind is a rainbowcake because obviously, because obviously, but
Speaker 1: I got thinking a bit about just there where about
Speaker 1: especially things like The Great British Bake Off or in America,
Speaker 1: the Great Britist Baking Show. It's so popular with the
Speaker 1: queer community, and I think that's probably because it's just
Speaker 1: a show about kindness overall. I think that's why it's
Speaker 1: so popular, Like it Israel's TV, but it's it's doing
Speaker 1: something domestic and everyone's being kind to each other, and
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of lovely. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the queer experience is craving family and craving
Speaker 1: safe spaces and craving domesticity in a certain sort of sense.
Speaker 1: While a rainbow cake might be a bit on the nose,
Speaker 1: there's something here. There is this idea within the queer
Speaker 1: community about chosen family. Many queer people aren't born into
Speaker 1: accepting and understanding families, and so a lot of queer
Speaker 1: people need to seek out that kindness community and family elsewhere.
Speaker 1: I see a lot of this idea in baking. Baking
Speaker 1: is in many ways an act of care. You often
Speaker 1: share what you've made with other people. Right you make
Speaker 1: batches of cookies, cupcakes by the dozen. You're not supposed
Speaker 1: to eat an entire cake by yourself, or so I'm told.
Speaker 1: Somewhere on my Queer Food brick, there's a line about care,
Speaker 1: about kindness, about showing each other love, but no offense
Speaker 1: to Michael. I can't possibly end the story by saying
Speaker 1: a rainbow cake is the queerest food. Queers love many things,
Speaker 1: but cliche is not one of them. And so I
Speaker 1: added love to the Queer food brick, and I moved on.
Speaker 1: After the break, Chad continues on his quest to find
Speaker 1: the queerest food. Before the break, Chad had reached another
Speaker 1: dead end in his search for the queerest food. Okay,
Speaker 1: back to you, Chad, Thank you Bridget. While I haven't
Speaker 1: yet found the perfect queer food, my queer food brick
Speaker 1: was growing. I knew this item needed to be a food,
Speaker 1: a metaphor, something for the queer experience, and something containing love.
Speaker 1: So I kept asking around. My name is oro Wise,
Speaker 1: and I use she her pronouns. I live in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: I am the culinary curator for Queer Anga que trans
Speaker 1: Wellness Collective, and I am also a coordinator of FIG
Speaker 1: Food Issues Group. I would say that in terms of
Speaker 1: the queerest food, I think that what that would be
Speaker 1: would be things that are hybrid that meals and foods
Speaker 1: and ways of eating that exists between more traditional and
Speaker 1: conventional spaces. I actually just wrote a piece with my
Speaker 1: dear friend Kim Choo about a para TiVo and kind
Speaker 1: of thinking about that in some ways as queer food
Speaker 1: or a queer food ritual because it takes place in
Speaker 1: between day and night, in this cuspy time. This cuspy
Speaker 1: time where a pair of TiVo takes place, fits well
Speaker 1: with what the word queer is starting to mean to me.
Speaker 1: To me, the word queer, in all of its enormity,
Speaker 1: is really celebrating this hybrid outside of more traditional and
Speaker 1: conventional spaces. I added it to the queer food brick
Speaker 1: and moved on. I'm Raddideta, I use the VM pronouns.
Speaker 1: I'm a two spirit renegade, artist, educator, and community builder. Well,
Speaker 1: when I first read your question, like tropical fruits came
Speaker 1: to mind because they're so like the outside never matches
Speaker 1: the inside, and it's always like a surprise on the inside,
Speaker 1: and like you can neveragine what it's gonna taste like
Speaker 1: based on what the outside wore the inside look like,
Speaker 1: and it's just like a bunch of contradictions, a bunch
Speaker 1: of contradictions that might be exactly what never felt right
Speaker 1: about the lue Burger. Thelue Burger was so upfront and
Speaker 1: who and what it was indulgent. But as queer people,
Speaker 1: we often grow up putting on a mask, some sort
Speaker 1: of external guys, not acknowledging who we are on the inside.
Speaker 1: In our most formative years, many of us grow appeal
Speaker 1: to disguise the fruit underneath, punintended, and even after coming
Speaker 1: out or being outed, that learned behavior is very deeply
Speaker 1: ingrained in our identities. Being queer as complicated well you
Speaker 1: know where I'm from. In Brazil, there's like hundreds and hundreds,
Speaker 1: maybe thousands more fruit varieties than anywhere else in world,
Speaker 1: and so I'm always discovering new fruits, things I've never
Speaker 1: ever heard of. There's always something new which feels so
Speaker 1: queer to me. And then there's some other ones that
Speaker 1: I don't even know their names, that are like from
Speaker 1: the jungle and have to like know how to even
Speaker 1: eat them, how to even open them and stuff. I
Speaker 1: had always thought that I had a pretty clear grasp
Speaker 1: on what it meant to be queer. I had encountered
Speaker 1: just about every fruit that there could possibly be, hadn't I. Well,
Speaker 1: queerness to me is like really undefinable because it's different
Speaker 1: for every person, and I think for most people different
Speaker 1: every day and sometimes every moment. You're constantly defining or
Speaker 1: not defining yourself for yourself, and it's like really empowering
Speaker 1: ourselves to like not be what's the word contained? There
Speaker 1: are over three hundred native varieties of fruit in Brazil alone.
Speaker 1: I can name like fifteen fruits total. My vision of
Speaker 1: the queer community has been the equivalent of a stop
Speaker 1: and shop produce section. But what does that mean, for
Speaker 1: this story, how can I possibly figure out the queer's
Speaker 1: food When I'm just one fruit in the world's largest
Speaker 1: produce section. I can't possibly distill every experience. I suddenly
Speaker 1: feel like I'm on an episode of Nailed It. In
Speaker 1: case you don't have your ex's Netflix password anymore. Nailed
Speaker 1: It is a competition show hosted by the beautiful and
Speaker 1: talented Nicole Buyer, where these amateur home bakers compete and
Speaker 1: try and recreate a gorgeously decorated cake. At this moment
Speaker 1: reporting this queer food story, I feel like I'm Season two,
Speaker 1: episode five, where they're building these giant rattlesnake cakes. Okay,
Speaker 1: here we go, two hours on the clock, thousand dollars
Speaker 1: on the line, it's time to know. At our slow
Speaker 1: slow It's like the clock is ticking down and I'm
Speaker 1: realizing I don't actually know how to build a snake cake.
Speaker 1: Com I'm having a hard time keeping my head erect.
Speaker 1: At this point, I forget the queer food brick. Should
Speaker 1: I even be asking the question what is the queerest food?
Speaker 1: Is this premise wrong? Altogether? It's like the giant head
Speaker 1: of my rattlesnake cake is falling off and I'm diving
Speaker 1: for the panic button. Paddock, Y, I need help. Hello. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I was saying hi and still muted. No, You're fine.
Speaker 1: Why Hi, I'm assuming lad of this out. You assumed wrong?
Speaker 1: Matthew Matthews pronouns are he and him. What comes to
Speaker 1: mind when I talk about like walking down a path
Speaker 1: of queer food. The one dish that like I came
Speaker 1: up with as a dish, it's called law. Are we
Speaker 1: called it law? It's like this ground beef dish. It's
Speaker 1: probably what you get at a thaie restaurant that always
Speaker 1: like conserved, like with lettuce, they call it let us wraps. Typically,
Speaker 1: like as I become more comfortable with being mixed race
Speaker 1: within the queer community and you know, really cherishing my
Speaker 1: tie identity and tie dishes that specifically resonate with me
Speaker 1: and kind of feel true to my m intersectionality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when Matthew is talking about intersectionality here, he is specifically
Speaker 1: talking about the intersection of his racial identity and sexual orientation.
Speaker 1: Our society has many categories of identities, things like sexual orientation,
Speaker 1: gender identity, race, class, nationality, and disability to name the
Speaker 1: big ones, and all of these identities are interconnected. The
Speaker 1: beautiful buffet that is the queer community is as diverse
Speaker 1: as it is as a direct result of all of
Speaker 1: our intersectional identities. Being queer is what we have in common,
Speaker 1: but there are still so many ways we can be different,
Speaker 1: and those differences make the queer community so amazing. But
Speaker 1: where there are differences, there is often prejudice. So I'm
Speaker 1: mixed race, i am tie in German, and that's something
Speaker 1: I've definitely struggled with with. Being queer is just like
Speaker 1: experiencing racism within the queer community and just how hard
Speaker 1: that was when you know, you think it's a community
Speaker 1: that's gonna open you with loving arms. Each of our
Speaker 1: identities comes with either privilege or disadvantage. My identities are
Speaker 1: at the intersection of so much privilege. I am gay
Speaker 1: and that isn't always easy, But I'm also white and
Speaker 1: assist gendered man. The intersections of some people's identities make
Speaker 1: them the target of exacerbated disadvantage or hate, which is
Speaker 1: why it is so important to say here that black
Speaker 1: translives matter. For Matthew, because of intersectional identity, his queer
Speaker 1: food had to honor both his queer anti identities. The
Speaker 1: simple idea of just like a dish that reminds me
Speaker 1: of home and home is true to me and for
Speaker 1: me my identity as I'm queer, I'm tie and so
Speaker 1: it just feels like a dish that like just feels
Speaker 1: like me in a dish wrapped up in lettuce, wrapped
Speaker 1: up in lettuce. Yeah. According to my Queer Food Brick
Speaker 1: Trademark twenty twenty, the queerest food has to be food.
Speaker 1: It has to be a metaphor, it has to be
Speaker 1: of or relating to the queer experience. But the queer
Speaker 1: experience is so diverse, it's so tied to personal journey
Speaker 1: and intersectional identity and uniqueness and magic, that I'm beginning
Speaker 1: to realize the queerest food can't possibly exist. Maybe I
Speaker 1: can't answer the question what is the queerest food, but
Speaker 1: I can certainly try and figure out what is mine.
Speaker 1: Maybe my headless rattlesnake cake is salvageable, after all, you
Speaker 1: know what, that's a good cake. Thank you, You're welcome,
Speaker 1: all right, thank you. Of course, the lue Burger wasn't
Speaker 1: the queerest food for me. I didn't grow up eating it.
Speaker 1: Maybe my queerest food was something I did grow up
Speaker 1: eating or at least something tied to my early coming
Speaker 1: out days. Okay, so, hi Johnny Cortez. My pronouns are
Speaker 1: he his? And I'm gay? And how do we know
Speaker 1: each other? Oh? And we? What should I say? We
Speaker 1: were in a relationship? And how do I word this?
Speaker 1: This is very important? It's my introduction. We dated in
Speaker 1: high school, child and I dated in high school. Johnny
Speaker 1: was my first boyfriend. It was one of those high
Speaker 1: school relationships that was absolutely perfect until it stopped being
Speaker 1: absolutely perfect. But that first love is a memorable thing.
Speaker 1: Do you remember, Oh gosh, do you remember where our
Speaker 1: first date was? I really don't. For some of us,
Speaker 1: at least, I tried to get him at least to
Speaker 1: think of a food that might sum up our relationship. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I can think of a specific food that reminds me
Speaker 1: of you lot. What is that? It actually reminds me
Speaker 1: of your mom a lot, because she would make it
Speaker 1: for me. This is so funny. She would make it
Speaker 1: for me when I would just be like chilling out
Speaker 1: your house. I don't know where you were, but I
Speaker 1: would just be there like all the time, and she
Speaker 1: would always make me tuna fish sandwiches on some sort
Speaker 1: of like really good thick bread. But she'd use a
Speaker 1: miracle whip and she'd toasts the bread. Oh, what is
Speaker 1: queer about sandwiches? What's queer about sandwiches. It's a kind
Speaker 1: of like a party in your mouth. Like it's like
Speaker 1: all of the best things in life. It's like the best.
Speaker 1: It's like the carbs, it's the cheese, it's the meat.
Speaker 1: There is definitely something to this. A sandwich is layered
Speaker 1: with multiple different parts, all being celebrated, working together to
Speaker 1: make one solid lunchtime staple. They're complex, there's so many
Speaker 1: options and varieties. There's something here. I had one more
Speaker 1: question left to ask. Did you like my mom more
Speaker 1: than you liked me? Yeah, that's allowed, it's fair. She's great.
Speaker 1: She's great. I'm just kidding, But I do still think
Speaker 1: about your mom. Off. Then that's when it hit me.
Speaker 1: What made this sandwich so special to Johnny was the
Speaker 1: care and the love that my mom put into making it.
Speaker 1: It was a way my mom showed him that she
Speaker 1: cared about him even when I wasn't around, which is
Speaker 1: so sweet. It's almost my perfect queer food. There's just
Speaker 1: one little bitty issue I just don't love sandwiches. It's
Speaker 1: picky and lame of me because this metaphor is so
Speaker 1: adorable and so perfect, but they just aren't my favorite.
Speaker 1: But in thinking about the food my family would make
Speaker 1: me growing up, I realized the perfect answer had been
Speaker 1: sitting right in front of me the whole time. My
Speaker 1: dad sent it to me on day one when I
Speaker 1: first posted this question on social media. Hello, Hello, Hi,
Speaker 1: how's it going? Good? Is it needs to be facetimer?
Speaker 1: Is this good? No? This is great? Perfect, perfect. I
Speaker 1: didn't do my makeup today, Dad jokes, what's going on, Junior? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know that I'm working on a story that's
Speaker 1: trying to answer the question what is the queerest food? Yep?
Speaker 1: I had posted this on Facebook and you had sent
Speaker 1: in an answer. Can you tell me what that answer was? Yes?
Speaker 1: I said the crunch rep Supreme? Yep, the crunch trap Supreme.
Speaker 1: And what is a crun trap supreme? For anyone who
Speaker 1: hasn't had one before? Oh, it's a little slice that
Speaker 1: happened comes out of Castle Bell. Picture a taco, a
Speaker 1: standard taco in a hard shell filled with whatever meat,
Speaker 1: let us tomato, cheese, And when you eat that it
Speaker 1: always falls apart. So to keep it together, you place
Speaker 1: it inside the very middle of a what's the bread
Speaker 1: does it's not the heata bread, is it? Yeah, the
Speaker 1: heat bread tortilla, but close enough. You put in salo cream,
Speaker 1: you put in cheese, and everything stays together. It's just
Speaker 1: wonderful and the flavor is phenomenal. It's just wonderful. A
Speaker 1: little sice of heaven called the crunch rap supreme. So
Speaker 1: what makes you think of a crunch rap supreme when
Speaker 1: I talk about queer food. When you look at the
Speaker 1: crunch wrap, you see no crunch involves in it, So
Speaker 1: how do you call it a crunch rapt It's just
Speaker 1: almost like a pocket sandwich, and when you start eating it,
Speaker 1: there's a surprising inside. It's just the oddest thing to
Speaker 1: me to go from a sandwich looking item to a
Speaker 1: taco and no time at all. I thought of the
Speaker 1: crunch rap because you look at it and you see something,
Speaker 1: and if you like it or you don't like, you
Speaker 1: judge it by the look, just like you would homosexuality. Somebody,
Speaker 1: as you and i've been in the city before, we
Speaker 1: say this really flamboyant gentleman walking down with a yellow leotard.
Speaker 1: Just the look at him very unique. But you start
Speaker 1: judging now, and now there's where you're going the wrong way.
Speaker 1: So the crunch raft looks one way on the outside
Speaker 1: and on the inside it's a taco, which is something
Speaker 1: everyone wants to eat. So I guess my point was
Speaker 1: judging by the looks, you have no idea what's inside.
Speaker 1: It's outside an interior don't always align. It's a contradiction.
Speaker 1: The outside never matches the inside, and it's always like
Speaker 1: a surprise. It looks like a pocket sandwich, as my
Speaker 1: dad so eloquently explained, with something inside that everyone wants
Speaker 1: to eat. It's a kind of like a party in
Speaker 1: your mouth, Like it's like the carbs, it's the cheese,
Speaker 1: it's the meat. It exists in this kind of in
Speaker 1: between space, not quite a taco, not quite a burrito,
Speaker 1: not really a sandwich. Things that are hybrid that meals
Speaker 1: and foods and ways of eating that exists between more
Speaker 1: traditional and conventional spaces. Whether he realized it or not,
Speaker 1: my dad served me up a response that checked all
Speaker 1: the boxes. It's a food, a hybrid existing in between.
Speaker 1: It's accessible. A metaphor for my queer experience, and it
Speaker 1: is uniquely personal to me. My dad is talking about
Speaker 1: the crunch raps that he used to make for us
Speaker 1: at home, or to first thought it, we used to
Speaker 1: have tacos, and we like tacos. Well, we stopped as
Speaker 1: a family, you guys stopped eating them because it was
Speaker 1: such a chore. So when I saw the crunch wrap,
Speaker 1: I got excited. I wanted to make one at home,
Speaker 1: so I tried. I tried before you guys came to
Speaker 1: visit on your days to visit, and the thing just
Speaker 1: kept falling apart. So I didn't know how to keep
Speaker 1: it frying, how to keep together. I needed to weigh
Speaker 1: it down with something, and as a troubled shooter, I
Speaker 1: looked around and I found a really heavy candle, big
Speaker 1: heavy candles. I placed the candle, after cleaning it, of course,
Speaker 1: on top of the crunch trap, and that kept the
Speaker 1: weight down to the entire surface group cook. Well, from
Speaker 1: my perspective, it was this thing that I knew that
Speaker 1: I really liked, and then I had a dad who
Speaker 1: went out of his way to figure out how to
Speaker 1: make it for us, and so that was just like
Speaker 1: a really nice thing. That's how I saw it. Was
Speaker 1: just like you knew we loved it, and so you
Speaker 1: learned how to make it so that we could have
Speaker 1: it more often. That crunch trap was away. My dad
Speaker 1: showed me what family was all about. You figure out
Speaker 1: how to give the person you love what they want,
Speaker 1: even if it means making pocket sandwiches out of fajita
Speaker 1: bread using big, heavy candles. It was a simple act
Speaker 1: of kindness through food and it meant everything to me.
Speaker 1: I love that. That's really nice, and it was so
Speaker 1: nice to see her sponsor felt really validating, and I
Speaker 1: felt really lucky to have grown up in a household ware.
Speaker 1: I was taught to try the cruntrap supreme and not
Speaker 1: judge it based on how it looks on the outside. Well,
Speaker 1: that is a two way learning experience. Because I did
Speaker 1: grow up in a small town. We had a couple
Speaker 1: of gay families, but we're very sheltered. And as I
Speaker 1: grew up with you, I learned more and more to
Speaker 1: not think about the topic of homosexuality. Just look at
Speaker 1: that person and you love that person. And for me,
Speaker 1: it was a piece of cake to go through all
Speaker 1: of that. I'll be honest with you, chat, I think
Speaker 1: you might have been six or seven, when I called
Speaker 1: my brother Steve and I asked him about that. I said,
Speaker 1: how would you know? And Steve said to me, what
Speaker 1: does it matter? And I'm like, there you go. That
Speaker 1: just sends that story, so I didn't have to think
Speaker 1: after that. That was really a help for me. Shout
Speaker 1: out to Uncle Steve for knowing how to handle that
Speaker 1: question so long ago. It made such a different and
Speaker 1: I think for that reason, for a lot of other reasons,
Speaker 1: the cruntrap is where I'm ending the story. I think
Speaker 1: it is the queerest food that I can think of.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a very like fond, happy, loving childhood memory.
Speaker 1: Well that's excellent. That really, uh, you know, not knowing
Speaker 1: that it really makes me feel good. I do feel
Speaker 1: good about what we did as we grew together. But
Speaker 1: that's a nice, little, nice little chat. Thank you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. Sure, maybe when I come visit, we can
Speaker 1: make some cruntraps. Define that sounds cool, and when you
Speaker 1: bring your baking skill that This story was brought to
Speaker 1: us by Chad shana I and be sure to check
Speaker 1: out The America's Test Kitching Kids podcast Mystery Recipe with
Speaker 1: your Young Chefs at Home. Thanks to everyone that we
Speaker 1: spoke to for this great story, and if you'd like
Speaker 1: to donate to Ura Wise's group queer Anga, We've put
Speaker 1: a link in our show notes and if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about this story, then please visit our
Speaker 1: website that's www dot America's Test Kitchen dot com slash Proof.
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Speaker 1: us a review. It really helps other people find the show.
Speaker 1: Proof is hosted and produced by me Bridget Lancaster. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Caitlin Kelleher. Sarah Joyner is our managing producer.
Speaker 1: Associate producer Caroline Ricord. Scoring, sound design and mixing by
Speaker 1: Matt Pointon of Ultra Violet Audio. Brian Campbell of Signal
Speaker 1: Sounds composed our theme music. Additional music by Kyle Forrester
Speaker 1: and Jordan Pearson. Post production supervisor is Hen Margolis. Our
Speaker 1: production manager is Diane Knox. Thanks to Marie soladav for
Speaker 1: consulting on the script. Jack Bishop is Chief Creative Officer
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Speaker 1: Doc Proof is a production of America's Test Kitchen.