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Episode 04: Bread Mitts & Pudding Sneakers
58 Plays2 years ago
Justin is gearing up to go to West Palm Beach to celebrate a birthday and eat seafood and cubanos all week long. Zack recaps his ice cream class experience from Penn State. Zack talks about making tikka masala and naan in a home oven. He also talks about how he repurposes his leftover rice for a great breakfast dish. Justin makes a nice bean, sausage, and kale stew and talks about the versatility of dishes where you can swap out similar items in a recipe. They also do our best to decipher more fan mail from our faithful hogaholics. The guys also off their strong opinions on menu size. Bread mitts and pudding shoes will be hitting the merch store soon.
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Transcript
Introduction and Engagement
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, Zachary. Hello, Jettie. Good to see you again. As always, a pleasure to see you. And to everyone out there, welcome back to Scratch the Hog, where we talk about all things food. All things food, two dudes talking about foods. Is that the slogan? Two dudes talking about foods.
00:00:27
Speaker
That is it, the whole premise. We may not know what we're talking about half the time, but we seem to make sense of it. We say it with confidence and I feel like that's most of just making people believe what you say is that we say it with real conviction.
00:00:51
Speaker
Yeah, you say with with real gusto, anyone will believe you. Yeah, that's true. That is true. So are we this is episode. This is the fourth episode, right? Episode four. Man, did you think we'd make it this many episodes? I'm thinking that we'll make it to episode 10. And then it could. It knows where at all. Yeah, who knows what will go from there?
00:01:15
Speaker
OK, that's I look forward to the next six episodes with you and then never talking to you again. All right. So I guess maybe for our listeners, if they also have liked the last four episodes and look forward to the next six, like, subscribe, it makes a big difference. It really does. You know, we're missing. We need some stars. Hit the star buttons.
00:01:42
Speaker
write comments, review us and also email us. Like we we love the interaction of the dialogue. So email us at scratch the hog at Gmail dot com. You read all the email emails, email, we read them all. They all come in. But yeah, yeah. So what have you been up to?
Travel Plans and Memories
00:02:06
Speaker
So basically.
00:02:08
Speaker
just trying to wrap up as much stuff as I can because Mandy and I are headed down to West Palm Beach in two days. Her parents have a house down there and we're trying to make it an annual thing where we go down for Mandy's birthday.
00:02:27
Speaker
at the end of February, just because the weather down there in February is perfect, like a solid 75 to 80 degrees, not humid, you could just break a light sweat. And then that's it, it's wonderful. Okay, yeah, well, we had some surprise snow here today. Do you have any weather that we're down in Pittsburgh? We had maybe like 10 flurries all day.
00:02:51
Speaker
Oh, I woke up and I had to shovel twice. It was kind of crummy. I thought we were skating by going to get through February. There's chives growing out of the pot that I grew them in. And I was like, man, this is weird seeing things start to sprout in February. But everything died this morning, so it's fine.
00:03:19
Speaker
Oh, yep, yep. We currently have Lily's chives, dandelions, not daffodils, tulips. They're all they're all convinced that it's the tulips are we're puppets. So so wait, when you guys how long are you going to be in? What is that? It's like Miami area, right? Miami, South Beach. We're going to heat. Yeah, you listen to the style when you go down there.
00:03:45
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Oh, dude, let me tell you, the one time we went down there, we rented a convertible. I believe it was a Dodge Charger convertible. I'm just driving through Miami, just blasting, blasting that song. You're being serious, right? I am being serious. I love it. Of course. That's something like some Big Willy style to get you the moon.
00:04:10
Speaker
one way to tell all the native Miami people that we, to convince them that we are from Miami.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, we're probably driving around like vehicle with like Arizona license plates. Like Tennessee plates or something. Um, but yeah, we're going to be down there for a week. Um, which is the longest that we've been down there that we're going to be down there last year and the year before we've only been for like four or five days, but we figured why not spend a whole week down there just to gather up as much sun as we can, because we all know.
00:04:52
Speaker
in Pennsylvania, we get like 50 days of like actual sunny weather. So I think it's 58. But yeah, I just looked that up recently. Yeah, actually, it's funny you say that because I have my like vitamin D supplements right here. Oh, yeah.
00:05:08
Speaker
getting as much dn as you can. I meant to take them before we got on his call. So if I weirdly start taking a bunch of items, you know, or podcasts, that's why. Because I'm old, I'm an old man now and I have to take fish oil and fiber. So what do you what's the what's what do you guys do? What's the food in in West Palm? What do you guys you go out you cook? How's it? How's it work?
Food Adventures in Florida
00:05:35
Speaker
A little bit of both. So yeah, Manny, like I said earlier, Manny's parents have a house down there and they have a really nice kitchen. So typically we'll cook like half the time we're there, other half the time we'll go out to eat. Some days we'll just like kind of travel around and snack on stuff throughout the day. But the one thing that we look forward to the most, at least what I look forward to the most are Cubano's.
00:06:02
Speaker
I was gonna ask if you'd hit the Cuban food, nice. Oh, absolutely. It's phenomenal down there. And for people who don't know what Cubano sandwiches are, excuse me, they are sandwiches that are, it starts with a crusty, long sub, like crusty sub roll with sliced pork, sliced ham, Swiss cheese, yellow mustard, and pickles.
00:06:31
Speaker
that's brushed with butter and then pressed in like a panini press or just like any type of press. So it's really thin and the outside gets crispy. But the inside is like, I was going to say the dreaded M word, succulent, meaty, tangy, juicy. It's amazing. It's one of my favorite sandwiches ever.
00:06:57
Speaker
Oh, they are good. I feel like I need to make one because they're so good. And you don't need a press either at home. If you want to make one, you could just use like if you have two cast irons, you could stack them up or you could wrap a brick in aluminum foil.
00:07:19
Speaker
That's a good tip for you. Yeah, go find a dirty old brick outside. Wrap it in tin foil and press your sandwich in your cast iron with it. If you live in Pennsylvania, you have a brick lying around your house somewhere. There's 20 bricks within a block of your house, just loose. You could just go find them. They're everywhere. They're falling.
00:07:42
Speaker
They're falling from the sky. Yeah. Ask your neighbor, go over to like borrow some sugar if people still do that. Hey, can I have some sugar? Can I have a brick? Can I have some flour? Just like pull one out of their sidewalk or something on your way home. Yeah, they're not going to miss it. Like, yeah, it's fine. Yeah, exactly. Well, that sounds like fun. Do you try and get your fill of, you know, coastal seafood while you're down there too?
00:08:10
Speaker
Yeah, what's what's coming out of the ocean down there? Like, what's? Shrimp. That definitely shrimp. Jonah crab, like, okay, mostly. Yeah, Jonah crab claws or stone crab. I think they're also called. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then all like, you know, yeah, mostly crab, like shellfish, mollusks, like mussels, clams, like that, that
00:08:39
Speaker
down there. Um, I know lionfish is a thing down there too. Like you can eat, yeah, you can eat lionfish. Um, which we've never, we actually haven't seen it at a score, but are they an invasive species? I, I'm not entirely sure.
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know either. I think they're kind of territory. I was wondering if because I saw that they kind of had more. I feel like I never saw people eating them. And all of a sudden now you have to be careful, too. Great, because there's like kind of a poisonous spike. So I assume when they're breaking them down, you know, you have to be some sort. You can't be like a schmuck like us, like we'd probably, you know, kill ourselves or, you know, go into some sort of cardiac arrest or something trying to break down a lionfish.
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think they snip like the spikes. Yeah, so you don't prick yourself. But I'll make note of all this and I'll come back. Teach me about lionfish. Cool.
00:09:48
Speaker
Nice. So I forgot, like the last time we chatted, we didn't talk about and I wanted to sort of talk about this because two in episode two, I was gearing up to go to the ice
Ice Cream Science and Craft
00:10:00
Speaker
cream course. Right. And then I don't know, we were like in a frat state of recording episode three and we were just hitting everything. And then we sort of glazed over the ice cream thing. So I was hoping I could tell you about the ice cream class.
00:10:18
Speaker
I want to know all about it. Yeah. So for those of you that are just tuning in today and didn't listen to episode episodes one through three, shame, but my brother and I went to Penn State's food science program and did their ice cream one on one class. So it was like a three day intensive and it was intense. It was
00:10:45
Speaker
Very intense, basically 730 to 530 every day.
00:10:50
Speaker
That's a lot of ice cream. Well, it was not. Well, the first so the first day was lecture and then Saturday and Sunday, the mornings were lecture and the afternoons were labs. So the labs were like in there, you know, like many little facility like manufacturing facility. And, you know, you seeing the machinery and talking to reps of like machines and stuff and
00:11:17
Speaker
testing all the sorts, actually seeing the stuff get made. But there's a lot of science, learned a lot of science, learned about ice cream, learned about what ice cream is technically and legally. It was awesome, man. It was really, really cool. Got a diploma. So basically, ice cream expert now. You're certified. You're a bonafide ice cream maker. I'm bonafide.
00:11:39
Speaker
I am. Yeah, no, it's cool. My brother and I are like start this ice cream journey. And we've we've experimented with some different a couple of different ice cream based recipes, just using them on our like my countertop ice cream machine or his countertop ice cream machine. And he made a peanut butter ice cream, too. And I texted him and asked him how it was. And he actually didn't reply. And I think about it. He's too busy eating it to actually respond. Yeah.
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, so we made a couple like vanilla bases. So typically when you make ice cream, you really only make a few different bases and you add things to them. So the things you add to them could be pace or inclusions or, you know, flavorings, all that sort of stuff. So we learned we learned a lot about that. But what's really interesting is like
00:12:38
Speaker
Basically, I have this, I've always liked cows, so let's start there. I always thought cows are really like this cool, majestic animal. They're just really lovely animals. They give us a lot. They eat grass, they produce fertilizer, they produce milk, they produce meat. They're really cool animals.
00:13:06
Speaker
So I have always really kind of been intrigued by cows. But what I didn't really realize is how perfect. Dairy is milk is for making ice cream like the the like the compounds that are in milk are so good for creating ice cream and I and I so. They're like.
00:13:36
Speaker
There's the right amount of milk fat. There's the right amount of water. And then there's this thing called lactose, which is like a really great emulsifier and binder, right? So those things exist in the world already in milk. When you start trying to do things like make vegan ice cream, which isn't healthy ice cream, you have to like replicate all that stuff.
00:14:04
Speaker
So you're using like coconut oil or palm oil and emulsifiers and binders and all this sort of stuff that just exists with with milk. So it's pretty cool. It was really, really neat.
00:14:18
Speaker
Just some things to other couple of things. Ice cream, because it's a term that's federally regulated, you or I can't just make anything freeze it and put it on a shelf called ice cream. It has to meet certain standards. And one of those standards is that it has to be 10% fat. That's the minimum standard for ice cream.
00:14:44
Speaker
Well, which is which is kind of interesting. And I don't know that there's necessarily a amount of sweetener that it has to be, but, you know, sugar in general depresses the freezing temperature. So the more sweet or the more sugar you add, the harder it is to freeze. Right. I've heard that before.
00:15:12
Speaker
Cause Mandy's really into making ice cream. She makes amazing ice cream. Um, like the flavors that she comes up with are awesome. I think later down the road, we should definitely, you know, have you two just chat about ice cream. Like the whole episode could be about ice cream. Um,
00:15:29
Speaker
But yeah, so we watched a video where to, you know, add like a fruit swirl to ice cream to prevent it from freezing. You need to add a lot of sugar. So it still has that kind of jammy consistency. Well, even with like fruit, like if you just put straight fruit into your ice cream, it'll basically turn into
00:15:52
Speaker
like pure ice and it will it will suck to eat. So you have to like macerate it or, you know, coat things in chocolate or candy them. And that's not that's that's like by design. So you're not the other really interesting thing, too, that I learned about. And when you think about when you're shopping, like if you're shopping for ice cream,
00:16:14
Speaker
in the store and you're looking at prices and you're like, well, why is one one price and why is the other another price? It's air basically. It's a product. It's an element called overrun and overrun is the amount of air
00:16:29
Speaker
that gets incorporated into your ice cream. So if I have one quart of ice cream base, I put it in the machine and I get two quarts of ice cream out. That is 100% overrun. So I effectively doubled the amount of money that I can make on my base, right? Uh, some, some, you know, like lower quality brands can go 120% overrun.
00:16:53
Speaker
and like really ultra premium brands are probably under 40, you know, 50% overrun. It's not necessarily a good or a bad thing, but it really, it changes how the mouth feels or the ice cream feels in your mouth and how it tastes and everything. So you get more of like a, like more creamy, luxurious texture with the lower than.
00:17:20
Speaker
Exactly. So you think about something like gelato, right? And gelato isn't a regulated term. But typically, it's there's less fat in gelato and less less overrun in gelato. And the reason for that so that when you get like if you ever get gelato, it's a smaller cup.
00:17:38
Speaker
that doesn't mean that you have less product. It just means you have less air than a big monstrous multi-scoops of ice cream. But the thing about gelato is you have all of these flavors, pistachio, almond,
00:17:55
Speaker
melon and if you can remove the air and lower the fat content, you taste those flavors a lot more. You also serve it as a lower temperature, which I don't know if like a good analogy would be like if you ever have like a really cold crappy beer is drinkable as that beer gets warmer, it becomes less drinkable, right? So
00:18:22
Speaker
There's like the colder a thing is, the less of it you taste. So if you know the reason you kind of have gelato at a lower temperature is you want to taste all the other things too. So that's probably enough of a rant on ice cream, but it's super interesting. Well, maybe one more thing. We did get a commercial
00:18:45
Speaker
a small sort of commercial style ice cream machine at a food auction or like a restaurant auction. Um, so we're going to be working to get that hooked up and, uh, running and I'll, uh, that could be a saga. Hopefully not. Hopefully it works pretty well. And we're off to the races. I cannot wait to see that. I'm so excited. Yeah. I'm pretty excited. Pretty excited. Um, but it was really cool. It was just like a fun, I can't tell you like the last time I had, I mean, we've been out of college for how long now and, um,
00:19:15
Speaker
it was really neat to just sort of be back in like a pure undistracted learning environment. It was kind of refreshing and cool. And to do something that was completely different to anything else that, you know, my brother or I, you know, have studied. So it was neat, really, really neat. That's awesome. Now, did you learn about how to make sorbets or like frozen yogurt, like that type of thing?
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So there's they talk a lot about your formulation and basically how to get the right. How to how to formulate your product, right? Sugar, dairy, water, you know, milk fat, you know, milk fat,
00:20:10
Speaker
or sorry, milk solids nonfat, like all of those elements have to like be in the right proportions. And you have to adjust them based on the stuff that you put in. So if you put in, you know, macerated fruit, you're adding sugar into your ice cream base. So that probably means your, your recipe needs to come back on sugar. If you add pistachio paste,
00:20:31
Speaker
or some sort of nut paste to your base, you're adding a lot of fat to your ice cream. So you're you're increasing the fat content. So you probably have to adjust that in account for that. So maybe instead you cut back on the cream or something. So, yeah, but sorbet, I mean, sorbet is pretty straightforward. Yeah. But, you know, it was such like a cool foundational type of stuff. We even learned a lot about plant based non-dairy
00:21:00
Speaker
frozen desserts. If it's not ice cream, you call it a frozen dessert too. It was cool. It was really, really, really cool. I'm excited for this journey. I keep calling it a journey because I don't know what else to call it. It is a journey. Yeah, it is a journey. Through a frozen oasis of creaminess.
00:21:24
Speaker
I kind of hope to just like, again, with this machine that we have, get it running and be able to just, you know, make pints and pack pints, probably gelato. I love gelato and... Gelato is amazing.
00:21:41
Speaker
It would be cool to just have pints of gelato that we're experimenting with and having them out to family and friends and all that sort of stuff. You can make me a pistachio gelato if you have time. It's the greatest. Pistachio gelato is the greatest.
00:22:01
Speaker
That's basically all I ate when Manny and I went to Sicily many years ago. Had gelato every single day. It's fantastic. And pistachio gelato was definitely my favorite. Yeah, it's so good. It's amazing. But that's awesome to hear. I cannot wait to see your journey. Thank you. Appreciate it.
00:22:32
Speaker
Okay. So moving on. Yeah. What did you have for
Home Cooking Experiments
00:22:38
Speaker
dinner this week? Anything good? I did. I did. So last, well, I guess what was it? Maybe Sunday. Jess and I were sitting around and you're like, I sort of looked at her and I was like, are you in the mood for deacon masala? And she was like, yeah. And we don't have an Indian restaurant here. So I was like, you know what?
00:23:00
Speaker
I'm just going to go down to the store. I'll buy some non. I'll get the things for Tika masala. I have, I usually have, I have all the spices I needed. I, you know, Garam masala and, um, turmeric and, you know, everything. Um, and I was like, Oh yeah, we'll do it. I haven't made it before, but how hard can it be? You know, we got Dutch oven. I don't have it. Tangine. Is that what it is? Tangine. Um, but Dutch oven works fine. Yeah. Uh, Eugene.
00:23:27
Speaker
So yeah, ran down the store. They're out of non. And I was like a little bit miffed because I was like, well, should I try and get some tomorrow? But I was like, no, you know what? I'm just going to make the non. I got the time. I got the time. I can figure this out, Zach. I'm resourceful. So I use the New York Times food app. I do like that app a lot.
00:23:57
Speaker
so handy if I'm walking around the grocery store or just need to like look up a few recipes or
00:24:05
Speaker
you know, having a like a party or something and you're just looking for inspiration. The New York Times Food app is pretty good. There are some things that kind of bother me about it, but mostly like their search feature kind of sucks because you have to type everything. You have to spell it incorrectly. And I'm just like a notoriously bad speller. So it's a little bit frustrating. But there's a lot of great recipes on that. So I found a quick non recipe, well, a relatively quick non recipe, I think.
00:24:34
Speaker
you know, total time, maybe like three hours with two proofs. And the tikka masala recipe, it was so good, man. And I basically replicated, I put my pizza stone
00:24:49
Speaker
in the top rack of the oven and cranked it to like 500 degrees. And when I rolled out my non-dough, I kind of switched it to broiler. So it was getting heat from both sides. That was pretty intense. And it worked pretty well, honestly.
00:25:08
Speaker
like for like skating by the minimum amount of proofing. They puff. They puffed up and they were. I've had worse non for sure. That wasn't mine. Yeah, it was good. It was really good. It's been eating cold tikka masala all week for for lunch. Cold Indian food, Indian food in general. I know, but it's cold, left like leftover cold Indian food hits different. And I love it. Love it.
00:25:37
Speaker
I don't know what it is about cold Indian food that is just so good. Yeah, I have no idea. Any type of Indian food. Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:50
Speaker
So I had a bunch of, um, uh, rice leftover too. And, uh, I was like, you know, I was eating so much tikka masala. I was like, well, what else can I make with this? Um, and I did like a Japanese rice and egg breakfast dish. Um, so, and I've been kind of riffing on that too, this week, but basically.
00:26:11
Speaker
oil, the pan, put your rice in. And the recipes I say to only like, say soy sauce, but I put some rice wine vinegar in it and some fish sauce because I just love the taste of fish sauce. And, you know, one or two sort of scrambled eggs, take it off the heat and mix it all together. Man, dude, like it's crazy good flavor.
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, like fish sauce is one of those things where like I have I still have a bottle. That's I don't know how many years old. It's probably fine. Oh, yeah. No, it's it's totally fine.
00:26:52
Speaker
It's, it's just one of those things where I don't like the smell, but it's such an important part. It smells terrible. Yeah. It's okay. I do not like the smell, but the way that it adds just like a certain little hint of it, it's just like such an important part of, you know,
00:27:18
Speaker
I cannot talk today. I know what you're saying because it changes how it tastes, but it doesn't taste how it smells or tastes straight. You wouldn't take a shot of fish sauce and a little bit goes a long way, like a tablespoon or a tablespoon and a half, depending on what you're using.
00:27:39
Speaker
It's the umami flavor, there's saltiness there, and there's a little bit of funk. It is a little bit of acidic. It is really hard to describe what it does to the dish other than kind of make your mouth salivate when you're eating it in the back. It does that thing. You can't stop eating it. It's so good. Now, when you add your fish sauce to your
00:28:09
Speaker
dish when you're cooking. Do you add it around the rim of the pan so it caramelizes as it goes down? That's a good question. So I've made this dish like three times this week because I had a bunch of rice. And the first time it was just rice and egg. And then I had chicken thighs. So I chopped up an onion and then grated some garlic and ginger and then put the chicken in and made like more of another meal. And
00:28:37
Speaker
some, I was putting it just on top and I was just sort of incorporating it, but I didn't, I had like a well, like an open space and I, one of the times I poured it on there and then like, you know, you get that big, you know, fish sauce smell right up the nose. Um, but I, but it was like, Hmm, you know, that might've done something differently to your point. Cause it like starts to caramelize that flavor. Yeah.
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah. At my last job, there was a chef that worked there. And since he was a chef, I was really fascinated with his life story, where he worked, his techniques and things like that. And he told me that if you caramelize it, swirl it around the sides of the pan,
00:29:23
Speaker
caramelizes as it goes down, it just, you know, bumps up that umami flavor and you don't really get like that kind of fish sauce type flavor. Like it really amplifies it. Yeah, I could totally see that. Yeah, for sure. For sure. That's cool. Yeah. So I mean, that's what my food's been.
00:29:47
Speaker
This week, it was good. It was actually like I felt super creative and well nourished if that, you know, like sometimes, you know, some weeks you go and you're just like, what the hell I've been eating on crackers and stuff. Maybe not you, but sometimes I get that way. You're just like skating from one, you know, weird thing in the pantry to the next. But no, this week I feel good. I feel really good. I haven't been drinking either, though, for a while. So yeah, that's good. Not you know, we talk about not drinking, but
00:30:16
Speaker
Not that I drink a lot, it wasn't that at all, but it's interesting to not have a cadence of, oh, you're going to go have some social drink event this week or do something to just not do that or to go out and then decide to not do that. It changes and we could probably dig into that because I know you've been in that as well. But I want to know what you've been cooking this week.
00:30:43
Speaker
so yeah this week was weird mainly because we're trying to use up as much stuff as we can in the fridge so it doesn't go bad um so monday i was actually off on monday and i'm trying to remember what i cooked president's day it was president's day what did i make
00:31:05
Speaker
I remember. Sorry, this week has just been super crazy, so I'm like trying to remember everything. I'm going to throw these fiber pills in my mouth while you keep talking about what you ate. Get that D in your mouth. Fiber pills.
Stews and Cooking Philosophy
00:31:24
Speaker
On Monday,
00:31:27
Speaker
We made this Italian sausage bean and kale type of stew. That sounds wonderful. Almost bordering pasta fagiolo, but there was no pasta. And the types of beans that we used was called Royal Corona beans from Rancho Gordo.
00:31:49
Speaker
And they are actually bigger than gigante beans. I would say they're about maybe an inch of an inch and a half long. What are they? What are they called? Royal Corona. Royal Corona. And this is from that your your bean daddy plays Rancho Gordo.
00:32:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. And they're fantastic. They take a while to cook. Even if you let them soak overnight, they still take maybe like two hours to cook there because they're huge. But the skins are a little bit firm, but still tender and the insides are nice and soft and starchy and delicious.
00:32:34
Speaker
So it was, yeah, it was basically the stew of sausage, beans, kale. Um, and then we did a like mirepoix, celery, onion, carrots, garlic, olive oil, collaboration, chilies, like super, super comforting. Like, you know, amazing. Was there like a stock or broth or tomato thing element?
00:33:00
Speaker
Oh, yes, a can of whole peeled tomatoes that I squished with my bare hands. Oh, yeah. Squish me with your bare hands. Oh, oh, maybe maybe this will go more than 10 episodes. Who knows? It might turn into something else. No, I'm just kidding. That's I love. I love like those types of
00:33:27
Speaker
meals, especially this time of the year where they're kind of like that pasta visual esque.
00:33:35
Speaker
Is it a stew? Is it a pasta? Is it a broth? Those things are just so good and you can just scoop them all day. I love those types of things. I love them. They're so great. You can just change whatever you're putting in them. It's like whatever you have in the kitchen or in your fridge or in your pantry, it works. It totally works. It's what's cool about them.
00:33:59
Speaker
Yeah. If you don't have kale, use whatever type of hearty greens you have. You know, if you don't have, use any type of beans you have. If you don't have sausage, you know, you don't need sausage. It could be like vegetarian or that's super versatile. Um, it's, that's probably one of our go-to dishes to make on a weeknight. It's just any type of tomato-y,
00:34:24
Speaker
Stu that has like yeah pasta beans any type of greens me like anything. It's uh, it's awesome. I love it Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, sounds good
00:34:36
Speaker
So yeah, then we went out to dinner for Mandy's birthday on Wednesday, and then we've just been kind of snacking on leftovers all week, just trying to use up as much stuff as we can. Mandy made a really good
00:34:56
Speaker
coconut curry for dinner, which is fantastic. We had some leftover rice, we had some chopped up chicken, a bunch of leftover herbs, some like snap peas. So we decided to just throw everything together to use up as much stuff as we can. And it was amazing. It was really good.
00:35:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, uh, more people should just try that. You know, don't worry about the, don't worry about finding the recipe or following the recipe verbatim. Like just, just learn and, you know, it will still be edible. It might not be the most delicious thing, but the next thing will be better and it will taste good. You know? Yeah, definitely. Um, yeah, just find like a base recipe, um, and then just tweak, adjust.
00:35:45
Speaker
don't go out to the store just to buy stuff for one recipe, just use up what you have. Is there still be great? Did anybody, maybe this is our book, Justin, where we have a recipe and then we write all the things that you could substitute for that recipe. Is that a thing?
00:36:06
Speaker
Maybe. The way you said it, when you said our book, like we have a book. No, but we're going to. We are going to have after episode 10, after episode 10. That could be interesting, though, where it's like, hey, here's the recipe. But then here's all the things that can work in the implode. We shouldn't even say this out loud. We're going to censor this. We're going to cut this out because people are going to steal this idea. We have too many.
00:36:30
Speaker
Um, actually the, uh, the book, um, salt fat acid heat kind of does that. Yeah. Oh, it kind of does. Yeah. Um, they give you a recipe and then they, yeah, then they, they tell you, um, different ways that you can adjust to, you know, if you have this, use this vice versa. And then also this other book by, um, Carla lolly music, it's called that sounds so good. Does the exact same thing.
00:36:55
Speaker
Like she gives you a recipe and then it has like a list of different like proteins you could sell about like green. Oh, right. Fine. I know. I know. I know. I totally just trashed your book idea, our book idea in minutes. It's okay. It probably, you probably told me about it anyway. And then it was just like stuck in my head that I somehow thought it was my idea. And I said it was such confidence that somebody would have believed me anyway.
00:37:24
Speaker
He said it with such vigor that... Yeah. I was ready to sell it. Literally ready to sell it. Is that right though? Wait, what are you sipping on over there? I see you drinking something. Okay. So yeah, talking about me not drinking. Since January was over, I went back to drinking
00:37:49
Speaker
beer, but not as much. We're not there's no judgment. I know. I know. It's like, I for some reason, I keep thinking like someone is out there judging them. But like, no one gives a shit like no one cares. Yeah, that's fine. So I am drinking a beer by hitchhiker. It's called double dry, double dry hopped opposite main. They make unbelievable beers. They do make really good beers. Yeah.
00:38:20
Speaker
Can I have a whole episode on beer? Yeah, we should.
Exploring Beverages
00:38:25
Speaker
I feel like that would take a lot of prep for me because I don't want to shoot from the hip with that because I have a lot to say on beer. Not prep, but I would like to make a lot of notes and have a lot of thoughts ready because there's just so much to talk about with beer. There is. There's so many different things that you could do with beer other than just drink it.
00:38:44
Speaker
Yeah, I'm drinking, um, actually this is an LA 31 beer glass that I probably took from someplace in New Orleans. So I apologize to the restaurant that is missing one LA 31 beer glass, but it's just such a, it's a good, it's like a good logo, you know? Oh, I love that. Yeah. Um, so I've been carrying this around with me for a long time. Uh, but I'm not drinking beer. I'm just drinking San Pellegrino's with, uh, lemon and lime in them.
00:39:14
Speaker
Zach is a much better influence than I am. Dude, I honestly think there's something addictive to these sparkling waters with fresh citrus. They're really the best lemon-lime sodas you'll ever have. Oh, hands down.
00:39:35
Speaker
They're so good. They're so refreshing. And there's no sugar in any of this stuff, right? I mean, it's just water, carbonated water and citrus. So can't beat it. Yeah, I don't want to sound too pretentious, but I'm probably going to come off as being too pretentious. But ever since we got back from our first trip overseas to Delhi, I switched to sparkling water and I haven't looked back.
00:40:05
Speaker
Yeah, no, I was with you because I always thought it was stupid. And well, I think there's two things.
00:40:12
Speaker
I grew up in where I live. We have really good tap water. Like it is very delicious and not necessarily the case in other places that I lived. It kind of tastes like dog shit. It tasted weird, like weird, metallic, heavy stuff. So I do understand why a lot of people do like the idea of canned water or sparkling water. But I kind of got on a kick
00:40:42
Speaker
Maybe it was in the summertime. Well, seltzers started like coming on strong. Like there's all these ranch waters and seltzers and stuff. And a lot of them don't taste good to me because they put artificial sweeteners and like aspartame and xylitol and all those things. They taste terrible. Like, yeah, I they don't taste like natural anything. And they're just horrendous. Like I can't I can't drink them. I can't taste them.
00:41:10
Speaker
Um, but Topo Chico, which is a, um, a water, uh, they make some seltzers that are actually pretty good. Um, so I started just drinking the Topo Chico's putting lime in them and I was like, man, these are good, but they're kind of hard to find. Um, because you either are buying like large bottles of it that go flat or lots of glass bottles, which is like kind of, um,
00:41:38
Speaker
It's kind of silly, to be honest, to buy a bunch of glass bottles. Yeah. Yeah. Even if you're recycling them, they're really heavy. They're not easy to find in any grocery stores that I've been in. So I can get this little San Pellegrino cans and, you know, I don't feel terrible about using them either.
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah, same. We used to get plastic bottles of the sparkling water years ago, but we've decided no more plastic. I hate plastic. I hate the idea of plastic. So we've switched to just regular cans. We've done the flavored sparkling waters. I think we still have a few
00:42:26
Speaker
watermelon flavored seltzers, um, in the fridge right now. But lately I've just been getting plain sparkling water and just adding stuff to it. Yeah, that's great. I was, um, I do. I want to get into, I was looking through my one cabinet and I have, um, like some, I was going to do some more research on this too, but, uh, basically like the companies that make really high quality,
00:42:56
Speaker
um, like grenadines or, uh, orgia, uh, you know, things that you use for, um, cocktail, like classic cocktail kind of making stuff. Um, not necessarily like getting into like craft mock tails, but, um, just thinking about, you know, adding some different things to sparkling water to liven it up even. Yeah.
00:43:23
Speaker
Um, yeah, uh, during January, we've, we found a lot of great, um, like non-alcoholic, um, aperteps and spirits that are fantastic in sparkling water. Um, like we've, we found a non-alcoholic Amaro, uh, that I absolutely love. And I'm usually not a fan of Amaro personally. Really? You don't like Amaro. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's not, it's not really my thing, but something about this non-alcoholic one just really hits the spot.
00:43:52
Speaker
It's delicious. Or maybe I just haven't had a good Amaro. Maybe that's something that I should look into. You know who makes a good one? Is Wiggle. Really? Yeah. It's a really nice Amaro. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Wiggle whiskey. Yeah. It was hard to find actually. There was quite a tomorrow shortage in
00:44:16
Speaker
You know, we live in Pennsylvania, so it's like the weirdest liquor laws, maybe next to Utah. Um, so it's just really strange. You only get with like the state buys and how it's allocated to different liquor stores. It's so weird, but
00:44:28
Speaker
Um, uh, yeah, there, it was hard to find tomorrow for awhile, but I think it's, it's relatively easy now. Um, yeah. So yeah, I don't know. I, I just find these, uh, maybe I just feel like, you know, smarter or pretentious or European or something. And when I'm, you know, sitting in my house drinking, you know, a San Pellegrino, maybe that's part of it. Maybe I'm just an asshole. Well, then we're both assholes. Cause we both, we both lost one. There's something wrong with that.
00:44:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's just something about it. Something about it.
Listener Emails and Humor
00:45:02
Speaker
Cool. So we had another email, by the way. But before we get into that.
00:45:13
Speaker
It turns out we didn't answer Suzanne's email correctly. I feel like it's less on how we interpret it and more about how it was written. I'm going to grab my phone because I got some clarifying text messages that, frankly, I found more confusing. I'm just going to read them out loud to you.
00:45:39
Speaker
And maybe you can decipher it. So is this from Suzanne? Does Suzanne text you? Yeah. Yeah. You know Suzanne? Yes. She's a big fan. She's the OG alcoholic. Oh, also, another friend of mine didn't listen to our podcast because he's vegetarian. And he only thought we talked about pork, pig stuff like pit pork. And I said, what? That's what you think.
00:46:09
Speaker
Well, scratch the hog. I can kind of see where they get that from. He also called it the hog show, and I was like, that's kind of a good name, to be honest. I don't know. That makes me think of old 70s game show. Yeah, the hog show. Yeah, the hog show.
00:46:33
Speaker
You know, hitting hogs with mallets or something. All right. So here's, she said, that's weird. So she said, use 0% answered my question.
00:46:45
Speaker
And I said, I'm so sorry. And I said, what was your question by Barley? I thought we were very clear. And she said, I expected to hear croutons, minced garlic, stuff like that. Not like what things in the middle isles would you suggest making at home instead of buying.
00:47:08
Speaker
like making, oh, like making homemade instead of buying, I guess, store bought, aka breadcrumbs or something like that. Oh, OK, so ingredients from the middle of the grocery store, right? Is she asking what we would buy or what we would make at home instead of buy?
00:47:32
Speaker
This is very unclear. I think this is a communication breakdown on Suzanne's part. And to be fair, I probably should have clarified, but I thought this would just make better content if we didn't understand anything. And we drug this out for another episode. We're going to get to episode 10 and we're never actually going to answer Suzanne's question. Probably true. It's 100% true.
00:48:02
Speaker
She's not going to be a hogaholic anymore. No, she's going to be a reformed hogaholic, yeah. Hogaholic's anonymous. How about that? So where do we start with that? I don't know. So is she asked, how do you interpret that? Like what would you make at home instead of buy at the store? Like croutons? I took that as what you would buy
00:48:28
Speaker
to make from the middle of the grocery store. That was my interpretation. Okay, so can you give me an example? Of what I would... Wait. See? This is the same thing, yeah. Let's just try to answer it and then we'll get yelled at again and then maybe by next episode we'll understand. Okay, well you go first.
00:48:53
Speaker
So I'll tell you what, I'll answer it a different way and you answer it a way that you interpret it, okay? So if she says like mince garlic or croutons, like would I make those at home? Or what would you buy in lieu of making at home? Did you understand that? Oh, okay, so instead of making croutons at home, I would buy them at the grocery store.
00:49:19
Speaker
Maybe. I don't know. I would never ever buy a jar of minced garlic. No way, man. I don't like it. No way. It doesn't taste like garlic. It's weird. I don't like it. Yeah, me neither. I probably wouldn't, I wouldn't buy croutons at the store either. They're easy to make, especially when you have stale bread. You know, if you want to like make sure that you're
00:49:47
Speaker
creating as little waste as possible. It's a nice thing to do with your bread on the way out or blitz it and actually make bread crumbs with it too. Yeah, I don't actually understand the question. Here's one thing that I do- We just lost our only fan. I am not opposed to boxed cake mixes.
00:50:15
Speaker
Oh, I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of a box. I think you could still it's effectively you're still making a cake from scratch, except they just have all the dry ingredients in the box for you. Yeah, do you make a cake? It's hard. Like it can be hard. It can be hard. Yeah, I recommend buying cake from the box. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with it. I mean, it still tastes good like. Yeah.
00:50:42
Speaker
Don't buy your frosting, make a buttercream or something.
00:50:48
Speaker
Even that could be tricky. Really? It can split. It can split. Yeah. Or it could be too thick and then you're just having a nightmare. There's a little bit of practice, but it's worth it. I think it's worth practicing. But just by the box cake mixes. Honestly, most of your bakeries that you go to have giant bags of pre-mixed cake mix that they're just slinging cakes out with. Yeah. It's still good. Yeah.
00:51:18
Speaker
Like nothing, nothing wrong with it. Like if you're hosting a dinner party and you make all the food and you don't want to make the cake, just fucking cake mix. Like there's no shame in cake mix. Maybe that's a, that could be a t-shirt. No shame in cake mix or box and box cake. I like that.
00:51:36
Speaker
No shame, okay. No shame here. We don't shame anybody here, actually. No, no shame. No, we don't judge anyone for their food preferences. No. You like what you like. I agree. I think people like what they like. I just hope that people try things. I think that's important. Don't just not like them for the sake of not liking them.
00:51:59
Speaker
you could try something, it could open up a whole new world of food, you know? And that's exciting. So wait, did we answer Suzanne's question? I don't think we did, but I need to go back because I just said, oh, we don't judge people for their food preferences, but I'm pretty sure I judged you when you said you didn't like chocolate ice cream. We can judge each other, but we don't judge the fandom. Okay. Yeah, absolutely not. Yeah.
00:52:29
Speaker
I know you well enough that I could judge you on your terrible choices. I'm not liking chocolate ice cream. That's fine. That's fine. That's fine. I still stand by that. Honestly, even going through the ice cream course, we were trying... So one of the... We did like ice cream tasting.
00:52:47
Speaker
And it was like 14 or 15 ice creams that we were tasting. So think about like vanilla or base. And we were tasting them side by side by side by side and trying to understand what was different in them. Blind taste testing, taking notes. So like one might've used a different type of sweetener. One had more overrun. One had this, one had that. And I hated the chocolate ice cream. It's disgusting.
00:53:12
Speaker
And you know why? It's hard. It's hard to make it work because chocolate ice cream is typically made from a powder. And when you if you the amount of chocolate powder that you have to add to get chocolate flavor, it makes it a weird. It can make it a weird texture. Hmm.
00:53:31
Speaker
That's my, that's my point. That's my opinion. Yeah. That's my opinion. Yeah. So back, did we answer this question or we want to, should we move on and just wait till next, next episode? How are you? How would you answer that? Yeah, reread it. Okay. You 0% answered my questions.
00:53:55
Speaker
I expected to hear croutons, minced garlic, stuff like that. Not like what things in the middle aisles would you suggest making at home instead of buying. Like making homemade instead of buying store bought. AKA breadcrumbs. Something like that.
00:54:16
Speaker
Okay, so yeah, to me, that sounds like, would you make croutons at home instead of buying them at the store? Would you mince up garlic rather than buying jarred garlic? Would you make your own breadcrumbs instead of buying store breadcrumbs? Got it. That's what that sounds like to me.
00:54:37
Speaker
Yeah, none of those things I would ever buy at the store. You wouldn't buy breadcrumbs at the store? No, I'm sorry. I would buy breadcrumbs, but just panko breadcrumbs. Okay. I wouldn't buy the Italian seasoned breadcrumbs like that type of stuff. No, we usually only buy panko breadcrumbs, but everything else we typically try to make at home.
00:55:06
Speaker
We mince up our own garlic, we make our own croutons. Toasting your own croutons at home is delicious. They're so good. Especially when they're kind of crunchy on the outside, but with a slight chew, like a little spongy chew. You toss them in olive oil, they soak up the olive oil. So good. Then you can add whatever spices and seasonings you want.
00:55:30
Speaker
I would never buy minced garlic mostly because I don't think it tastes good. It tastes like a different, it's not garlic flavor. It's sitting in oil. It tastes like something else. I don't think it's a time saver. I think for you to smash, you get a garlic press. Just get a garlic press and smash her. It tastes the same amount of time.
00:55:56
Speaker
I have breadcrumbs on hand all the time, panko and regular, but to your point, usually not seasoned, because I have all the seasoning, so it seems silly to buy seasoned breadcrumbs. What other things might be in the middles that you're maybe making? I'm not churning my own butter at home, but... No, soup. I'll never buy canned soup.
00:56:23
Speaker
No, that's a good point. No, never. I just can't stand like processed soups. They're just way too salty. They don't have that much flavor. They're just not that good.
00:56:42
Speaker
So I don't even bother. I agree. But stocks and broths always great. We should have a whole episode on pantry stuff, having a well-stocked pantry. So you can basically... It's almost like...
00:56:59
Speaker
You can cook anything like if you have the right, you know, good stuff in your pantry. I always have, I always have chicken stock on hand, typically like low sodium, you know, zero to low sodium just because I like controlling the amount of salt in the dish. You know, it's an interesting product and I've used it a few times with really good outcomes is like the,
00:57:26
Speaker
Better than, is it better than bullion or better than something? Yeah, it comes in, uh, in the jar and it's a paste. Yeah. I love that stuff. That's a good one. Yeah.
00:57:40
Speaker
Okay, I thought maybe I did answer this. This is good stuff. Okay. Yeah. Um, yeah, definitely stocks for sure. Just because to make your own stock, it does take a while and you need like a whole chicken or chicken parts and like a lot of vegetables, which a lot of the times you don't really have on hand. Um, like it's great when you have the opportunity to make it, you have all the ingredients, you can make a
00:58:03
Speaker
is take out one cup measurements. You put the stock in little cups, freeze it, and then take out as many cups as you need, throw it in, blah, blah, blah. Don't glaze over that. That's a really good tip because if I'm making something or I have bones or carcass or whatever left over and I want to make a stock, I always
00:58:30
Speaker
put it in like court containers. And then I have like frozen icebergs of stock in my fridge that I'm like, do I need that? That not, but that's a really good idea. Like maybe get ice cube trays and freeze it in ice cube trays and put them in a Ziploc or just, you know, smaller frozen discs. So you can pull out, um, smaller quantities. They'll melt faster. That's a good one. I like that.
00:58:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We, we have a lot of the small daily containers, which are about a cup, two cups, and then we'll just take up all those and then fill them with stock and freeze them. So to your point, we don't have massive containers of stock. Um, if we only need like a cup or two. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Uh, so we move on to our second ever email.
Rants and Preferences
00:59:23
Speaker
Yes.
00:59:24
Speaker
Yeah, this is from a fan of the show. I don't even know if it's worth mentioning his name, Pete. Pete, I will begrudgingly read this email subject line favorite recipe with St. Patrick's Day coming up. I'd love to hear about your favorite Irish soda bread recipes.
00:59:49
Speaker
I bet Zach puts raisins in his. So this is an email trolling me for two reasons, maybe three. I don't like raisins in food. Well, that's not true. I like some raisins in food. I don't like arbitrarily just dumping raisins and things, you know, for the sake of for the sake of like, yeah, like a oatmeal cookie or a pumpkin muffin or a chocolate chip.
01:00:19
Speaker
oatmeal cookie is better than an oatmeal raisin cookie. Preach. Right? Yeah. And there's nothing worse than biting into something, thinking it's chocolate, only for it to be a raisin. Like, it's horrendous.
01:00:36
Speaker
That happens so many times. So it's like it's the most disappointing. One of the most disappointing things that you can encounter. Why? Why does it? Why does an oatmeal cookie? You already have oats. They're dry. Like why are you putting dehydrated fruit in your oatmeal cookie? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. No. All right. And then like breads. Breads don't need raisins.
01:01:06
Speaker
I will have to disagree with you there. I don't, I don't particularly like sweet breads like raisin swirl, cinnamon breads. Those aren't, those are not my favorite kinds of breads, but if that's where you're going with it, those are the only types of breads that I will actually eat. Cause I don't, I don't like raisins at all either, but
01:01:23
Speaker
in certain applications like Chelsea Buns, Panatones. I was going to say Panatone. I love a Panatone. I accept the raisins in a Panatone. I'm with you there. I do. I'm with you there. Those are the only way that I will really eat a raisin.
01:01:41
Speaker
Is that a bread, a panettone? It's kind of a bread. It's kind of a muffin bread cake. It's like a sweet bread, sweet, tasty bread. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. So back to the question. He knows that I don't love raisins. He knows that I definitely don't like the holiday of St. Patrick's Day.
01:02:04
Speaker
And he probably knows that I never ate soda bread. So this is just layered. This is all this is. This is this is Pete being Pete. And to answer his question, I will not be celebrating St. Patrick's Day. I will not make soda bread probably ever in my life. And there will not be raisins in it. We can talk about why I don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but that might be a lot to handle.
01:02:34
Speaker
Yeah. What about soda bread? I mean, I've had a good soda bread. That's it. Maybe like one. I've never made it, so I don't have a favorite recipe. Yeah, that's fair. And I'm with Zach. I wouldn't put raisins in it either. I mean, I like soda. I like bread.
01:02:58
Speaker
soda bread. Yeah, okay. Let me ask this question. I'll leave it. Are you Irish? No. Me neither, all right? This is why we have no ink. There's no part of our beings that's like, oh, we don't. St. Patrick's, it's almost like PTSD going through college in St. Patrick's Day. It is the most annoyingly aggressive
01:03:27
Speaker
unnecessary holiday, like what it's turned into from what it should be. That's my opinion here and make a lot of people mad. Oh, okay. Well, St. Patty's day in Pittsburgh is a big deal and I get it. It is a big deal. I lived in the Irish channel in New Orleans where they had a parade where they literally threw cabbages, carrots, potatoes at you on floats.
01:03:52
Speaker
I had a co-worker wearing football homes because she got hit by a cabbage and broke her nose the year before. Jesus. You can't throw cabbages. Cabbages are like, they weigh like 20 pounds. They're like rocks. Exactly. Man, you just have to go out there with nets and catch all that stuff and make a good corned beef later in the day. It's a shame that they don't throw corned beef at you.
01:04:23
Speaker
They cooked raw, just raw cuts of pastrami. It would make sense if it was cooked, because that way you can just take huge mouthful bites out of corned beef. Just like slabs, like a frisbee. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you have two slices of bread trying to catch each slice. Oh, yeah, good. Bread hands. With your bread mitts. Perfect.
01:04:55
Speaker
That'll be our, instead of oven mitts, we'll make bread mitts. Coming soon from scratch for the hog bread mitts. Bread mitts? So stupid.
01:05:08
Speaker
It's good though. It's good though. Um, so that's probably enough of a rant. I don't need to alienate most of the, uh, Irish, uh, following that we have, but, uh, it's just not simply, I grew up Italian, you grew up Italian. It's just not a holiday. It's not a holiday, right? We don't really, you don't look at it as a holiday. It's not our thing. So, uh, I don't eat soda bread. I love a pan of tone with raisins.
01:05:35
Speaker
How do you feel? You feeling OK? You good after that? No, no. I felt I felt for it. He was baiting me and I felt for it. That's what that was. Pete, why did you do this? Why did you do this? It's funny that like we're able to answer Pete's question. No problem. But Suzanne's question, we had to wait like three episodes to answer. It's true. So true. We're not sure if we answered it. Well, we'll find out.
01:06:06
Speaker
That's funny. We'll find out. That is funny. So what else? You had some good topics you wanted to bring up and talk about. Did I? Yeah, but while you're looking.
01:06:25
Speaker
We want we do want to hear from other people. I mean how could you imagine better answers to questions than this? So email us scratch the hog at gmail.com And this is a good time to like and subscribe whatever format you're listening to this set hit the stars hit the subscribe button. It's good
01:06:45
Speaker
and we are also on what? I was going to say share it, but what else are we on? YouTube. You just shush me, sir? No, I was going to say share it with your fellow foodies. We are also on Instagram at Scratch the Hog and you can also message us
01:07:05
Speaker
there as well. Oh, he could slip into our DMS. Yeah. Just slide right into our DMS. If you don't feel like opening up the email and all this other stuff, composing, just DM us. DM us. Yeah. Just send a stream of conscious through the DMS. Perfect. Um, yeah, I'd say let's wrap it up with something quick. Okay. Nice little, nice little shorty.
01:07:35
Speaker
All right. That's a shorty. Let me see here. Okay. All right. Menu sizes. I love this topic. Okay. Well, then I will start us off. So today, today,
01:08:01
Speaker
Mandy and I, we had a lovely Saturday. We just like went out, did some shopping, ate some food. We were really in the mood for hot dogs. We haven't had a good hot dog in a while. So we stopped at this hot dog shop in Lawrenceville in Pittsburgh called Frankie's. And there's only four things on the menu. Footlong hot dog.
01:08:29
Speaker
sausage sandwich, kielbasa, meatball sandwich. And the toppings are kraut, chili, cheese, onions, mustard, ketchup. That's it. Beautiful. Yeah. They know they, they, you know, have only four things. They do it right. It was good. Indulgent. I mean, it was a foot long chili. We got a foot long chili cheese dog. Oh, okay. Okay. Better than that.
01:08:58
Speaker
Is that the old place at the beginning of Lawrenceville or just like, yeah, yeah. Like where the strip and Lawrenceville come together. Yeah. Yeah. I know that. I know you're talking about, I never ate there. It's it was solid.
01:09:11
Speaker
It was solid. It was, uh, yeah, the, it was a foot long, but the bun was like for a regular size hot dog. So it's like, you have like two inches of, of bear hot dog on each side. Okay. Okay. Of course. Why not? Which, I mean, I am not a huge fan of eating a hot dog without the bun. Um, but it was good. Nice. Um, a hot dog can be good for sure. Like, um,
01:09:38
Speaker
A good hot dog is a good hot dog. It doesn't have to be gourmet. It just needs to be done well to your point. Like if you know what you're good at, stick to it. Don't add other other B.S. Yeah. Yeah. So in terms of, you know, the amount of items on the menu, are you a fan of a very limited menu or do you like to have a lot of choices when it comes to
01:10:08
Speaker
dining at a restaurant or does it depend on the type of restaurant? Okay. Yeah. Those are, those are really, excuse me. Those are really good questions. So personally I have a hard time. Well, um, this could, we could get into like a whole conversation about how, like,
01:10:35
Speaker
the type of person you should be when you go to restaurants in a way. So like don't be demanding. Don't tell the kitchen to do a bunch of shit for you. That's they don't do, like don't do that kind of stuff. Obviously if you have food allergies or you cannot eat something for some, like there's certain, there's parameters and there's ways to do that. Right. Um, I have a really hard time
01:11:02
Speaker
I get overwhelmed with big menus. I'm pacing back and forth. Do I want a pasta? Do I want a meat? Do I want, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're giving me six pastas. You're giving me four meats. You got a whole thing for seafood. And I also feel like it's not like a indicator of high quality food across the board. It's really hard to cover all of that stuff well, logistically.
01:11:30
Speaker
you have to store all that stuff. So that means that it might become, it's a lot of frozen stuff or you're dropping things in the deep fryers coming from like a, like a, like a Cisco truck, you know, like food service stuff. Like they're, they're big men. It's not always the case. I'm sure there's places that have big menus and they're making a lot of things from scratch, whatever. But I would say generally speaking, the bigger the menu,
01:11:57
Speaker
There's, they're, they're cutting efficiencies and freshness to, to, to be able to cover that whole thing. So I like a limited menu for a couple of reasons. It helps me focus. Um, you know, you're only getting a couple items in like your, your appetite, like, you know, your appetizer starters.
01:12:18
Speaker
you know, maybe there's one chicken dish, there's one fish dish, there's one, you know, beef dish and, you know, sides, right?
01:12:29
Speaker
Uh, I like that because I can try different things. Um, and typically if a restaurant does that, they change it semi-frequently, which is also really exciting because when you go back, it's a completely different small menu and they're honing that whole thing, you know, to get it right. Um,
01:12:50
Speaker
I like small menus because again, I can't make good decisions. I also want to go there because I want the kitchen to tell me what to eat. Right. Yeah. Yeah. 100% agree. Okay. That's all you have to say on that. Did I take up too much air talking about that? No. I mean, you basically hit on everything that I
01:13:16
Speaker
my point of view and my preferences for that. Yeah, I'm the same way. And it also too, when you have a really huge menu, at least for me, I'm always stuck at that. The waiter has come to the table for the third time.
01:13:37
Speaker
No, yeah, I'm not ready yet. Yeah, it's like, like, I'm not ready yet. But everyone else is ready. And so it's like, I'll pick something real quick. You go to me last. Everyone makes they make the round and then it comes to me. I still haven't decided like, I'll go with this. But like, I didn't want that originally. I just I was too much anxiety of like trying to pick between like this novel of a menu. And then I'm stuck with this thing that I it's fine when I didn't want originally.
01:14:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's a lot. It's a lot. Yeah, I think, I wonder too, like generally dining, like we, big menus used to be a thing. Like that was definitely a trend. A lot of like chain restaurants have big menus, which is, I mean, it's, it's fine, but like if it's definitely
01:14:36
Speaker
Hard to do a big menu well when you're thinking about your food costs and the logistics of getting stuff out timely so it. Could mean there's a lot of like pre made stuff.
01:14:53
Speaker
coming from food service versus the kitchen staff is prepping that. I'm not saying that's the case for everything, but it just tends to be an indicator. They have cans of pudding. You know those cans of pudding I'm talking about, those big? No. Have you ever seen cans of pudding, like chocolate pudding? Literally never saw a tin can of pudding in my entire life.
01:15:20
Speaker
and you have not lived until you see a can of pudding. Where do you get a can of pudding? Go to GFS, Gordon Food Service. They have cans of pudding. Is it like a filling, like a pie filling?
01:15:36
Speaker
It could be a filling or what you put like on a buffet. Like, you know, when you go to like, when you're a kid and you went to Ponderosa, um, and they just have like the, the, you know, I kind of love a pudding, to be honest. Oh, pudding is amazing. It's so good. We were at, um, Kennywood in the summertime.
01:16:02
Speaker
And I was just like, you know, they have that, like, they have that like indoor cafeteria space. I don't know what it's called. You know what I'm talking about? At Kennywood. It's like a little, the cafeteria. At Kennywood? Is that what it's called? The cafeteria? Uh, wait, one minute. Food court.
01:16:20
Speaker
Yeah, whatever. And for some reason I saw like pudding just again, it's like July, it's like 90 degrees outside. And I was like, you know, so it seems like it's terrible decision. I don't know why it just looked good, but it had like the skin over it. It was terrible. Oh, no. Yeah, putting skin. But I do like pudding. I never saw a can of it, though. I always thought you had to like buy the powder and make it
01:16:49
Speaker
Or comes in like little snack packs, like little snack packs. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's so many vessels for putting storage. Canning, the can is one of them. You can literally put in anything. Yeah, that's true. You put in your sneakers. You'll take the thing for your sneakers. Darling, fetch my pudding sneakers.
01:17:20
Speaker
Well, I think we got the episode title, Old Pudding Snickers. Literally writing that down. Please do. That's amazing. There's no higher note to end this episode, I don't think, right? No. I think that's all I got. I will send you a cans of pudding.
01:17:48
Speaker
like images of cancer pudding of where you can find cancer pudding. Alright, and I'll buy them and put them in my sneakers and send you images of them. Please put pudding in just the sneakers. She'll kill me. Worth it though. Yeah, perfect.
01:18:07
Speaker
All right. Well, episode four in the bag. Um, I want to wish you and Mandy a wonderful, uh, vacation, detach, enjoy it. Uh, listen to all the big Willie style that you can get in. Of course. Um, and to our, uh, faithful hogaholics, thanks for sticking with us for another hour and 18 minutes, I guess. And, um, make sure, you know, share the episodes, like subscribe and, and send us, send us.
01:18:37
Speaker
DMS. Slip into our DMS. We'll answer everything. Except for Pete. Pete, don't DM us this time. Pete. God damn it. Pete. Pete. All right, buddy. Until next time. Zach, always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Take care. You too, bud. Later.