July 9, 2020 • 37 mins
This brand of mass-produced canned pasta dishes started in the kitchen of an actual Italian American chef – Ettore Boiardi – whose picture is still on the packaging. Anney and Lauren dig into the history of Chef Boyardee.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vocalbaum, and today we're
talking about Chef Boyard the brand. Yes, because it came
up recently in our Oregano episode. Um, and I did
not know that Chef boyar D was a real person.
(00:28):
That was a wonderful, shocking surprise to me. So here
we are, we thought we would dig into that a
little bit more. M hm and Um. I did not
grow up in a Chef Boyardi household, so I was
under the misunderstanding that Lauren corrected that Spaghettios was a
(00:50):
Chef Boyardi product. And I've probably had that like three
or four times in my life. Um, okay, So I
don't know that I've ever had Chef Boyardi because that's
what I thought. That was my experience with it. When
it came to canned foods, I ate a lot of
baby corn. I loved it, and oh, I know, okay,
(01:12):
and then those like new potatoes, I love the cans
of that, and then um, green beans and green beans
like I canned green beans are fine. Um, They're usually
not great, but I do have a pretty strong nostalgia
for them. Because I loved them so much when I
was a kid. Me too, Yeah, there's there's something about
that texture that's both unpleasant and also very nostalgic. Yeah,
(01:35):
and and and yet Spaghettios are a rival brand to
Chef Boyard there from Campbell's. Yeah, I will say Chef
Boyard also has canned hoops of pastah, which I love. Yeah.
I'm not sure if they can call them ohs or
not um, and certainly not ohs of the spaghetti form,
(01:58):
but I I it did eat a certain amount of
canned pasta when I was a kid from from both brands. Um.
It might have helped that I was perhaps like peak
canned pasta age um, which for me, I would say
it was like five or six years old when my
family lived in Ohio and Pennsylvania, which is where the
(02:19):
Boyard brand is from. Um. And my mother at the
time worked in art and frame shops around Cleveland, and
one of her frequent customers was Mrs Boyar. D Oh
that's so cool. Yeah, yeah, and I was so impressed.
Five year old Lauren was like, you know a famous person? Yes, yes,
(02:43):
um my, so my mom and I recently did like
a pretty strict two weeks quarantine and then we'll see
each other because I hadn't seen December. Um. And it
was really funny because I we it was when I
was doing the research for this EPI, so didn't she
kind of randomly ate um, some chef boy or d
(03:05):
randomly to me because I've never seen her eat it before.
And she said like she had a craving for it,
and we got a whole conversation about nostalgia and um,
it's just funny. It was one of those like food
podcast moments of fortuitous nous. Yeah, yeah, well, I guess
uh this this brings us to our question. Yes, chef
(03:27):
boy r D what is it? Well, chef boyar D
is a brand of ready to eat Italian American foods
and meal kits, mostly canned pastas and either creamy or
tomato eat sauces, some microwavable cups for even quicker meals,
and some some pizza, dough and sauce kits which apparently
(03:51):
used to contain a cheese packet as well, but they
no longer do. And this is contentious, of course it is, yes,
and yes, the brand is named for an actual facts chef.
His picture is the picture on the package. It's that guy, um,
though it's a little bit hard to tell what stories
(04:12):
about him are real and what are like marketing tall
tales at this point. But they have a whole line
of products. Um. The classics are like a spaghetti and
meatballs in a tomato sauce, beef frabioli, and a tomato
and meat sauce beef aeronium, which is short lengths of
noodles in tomato and meat sauce, the meat Lovers, which
(04:34):
includes like tube noodles of some kind, and Italian sausage
in that same sauce, and lasagna by which they mean wider,
curly edged noodles in that sauce. But over the years
they featured a whole bunch of different sauces, butter sauce,
cheese sauce, Parmesan sauce, Alfredo style chili cheesy meat, which
(04:55):
I find fascinating, like a vegetarian tomato sauce. Oh my goodness.
They've got products with rice, some with a couple of
vegetables other than you know, like tomatoes and onions. Uh,
some with chicken instead of beef for pork, A couple
of cauliflower based pasta things, and gosh any dang number
(05:15):
of pasta shapes um Elbow, macaroni and shells, Your Your, your, A, B,
C's and one two three's Wagon Wheels co branded tie
in shapes. Right now, they've got SpongeBob and Pop Patrol
lines of pasta shapes. A few years back, DC Comics
had a line. When I was a kid, there were
(05:36):
teenage Mutant Ninja turtle cans and they were advertised aggressively
during like after school and Saturday morning cartoon blocks. Yeah,
I feel like my my older brother. My older brother
loved teenage mutant ninja turtles, and I seem to recall
a lot of teenage mutant Ninja turtle food products. Oh yeah,
(05:57):
yeah that and like Ghostbusters. One of my favorite things
was was high seas like Ecto cooler slimer on the package,
which made me think it was the coolest stuff ever. Yeah.
Oh man. Anyway, um yeah, chefiar d Is is definitely
marketed to two kids and two adults who are looking
for something quick and unpretentious and nostalgic. Um and and
(06:22):
you know they taste good, salty and tangy, sweeten and rich.
The texture of the pastas is soft, if that's the
thing that you're into. Um that the meat is tender,
you know, Yeah, yeah, I was. I was kind of
jealous of my mom when she was eating it, so
she said she only had the one can you can.
(06:47):
I got it, I got it. What about the nutrition? Uh?
As with many canned products, you know, salt and sugar
and fat are used pretty liberally in these recipes in
order to create products that can survive the canning process
that makes them shelf stable while still tasting good and uh,
(07:09):
you know, keeping the price relatively low. Read your nutrition labels. Uh.
And sometimes products that are purporting to be healthier choices
like a like A like that cauliflower based pasta versus
wheat based pasta aren't actually that much of an improvement.
If you're watching your sodium or fat intake, I'd say
maybe skip this line of products. Uh. They do have
(07:30):
some protein, though, I mean, you know, I'd say that
they will fill you up, but won't keep you going
in the long run. Yes, yes, yeah, Also, I mean
disclaimer probably obvious, but they are not a sponsor of ours.
We are just we are collectors of food knowledge. And yeah,
(07:50):
kept it, did it did? No brands brand histories, especially
brands that that were named for an actual human person,
are fascinating, Yes, yes, or even sometimes even the ones
like Betty Crocker. Betty Crocker is yeah it is, yeah,
well right right seats some some are. Some are fascinating
(08:11):
because they're a real person, and some are fascinating because
they're not. Yes, yes, people believe. It's so hard they
cry when they get to the headquarters and they're told
the truth. Oh no, they do. Yes, there's a so
there's always a Betty Crocker on site. There's a woman
you know, doing the roll of Bretty Crocker. And she says,
I write an interview with one of the more recent ones,
(08:32):
and she says she always has a box of tissues
for when people find out Betty Crocker isn't real. Yeah, no, sure,
sure that you know, like like people get really wrapped
up in in in food, food culture, and in in
personalities and uh characters, and so yeah, totally, yeah, I definitely.
(08:52):
I think it's more like they don't think that's really
well obviously probably they don't think that's really Betty Crocker,
but they thought she was based on a real person.
When being a housewife is pretty much the occupation for
a lot of women, and you were alone and you
didn't have the internet. Betty Crocker was this really comforting
voice that you could listen to them, and people formed
(09:12):
a connection with her. Um. I totally see it. I
totally see it. Ah. Anyway, future episode yeah, yeah, y'all
talked about her though over on a stuff Mom never
told you, right, Yes, yes we did, so you can
go check that out if you're interested, and our future
episode over here. But yes, yes, now we have It's
(09:35):
a very small number of numbers, yes, but still they
count as numbers. They do well. It's it's hard to
track down solid continual numbers for a product like this
because these markets are real volatile. I think that the
boy or D brand makes something like over three and
(09:58):
fifty million dollars in sales per year as often, and
that it had done that for a long time, and
that then there was a dip, which we'll talk about
in the history section, but that's kind of back where
they are now. And as of they held of the
(10:19):
market share of prepared pasta Wow. Yeah yeah, all right,
all right, Chef boyar D. Well, that's where they are now.
But how did they get there? Uh, we will let
you know, but first we'll take a quick break for
word from our sponsor. And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
(10:49):
thank you, And we're back with the history of One
to Hector. So. I looked up the Italian and I
find it fascinating being that even I've listened to it
several times, my association, my Americanized association with this product
is so strong that I keep finding myself slipping into
(11:11):
saying it more like Boiarty Boyarty. And that's as we
talked about in our regular episode. That's one of the
reasons he changed it. Yeah, because salespeople and customers couldn't
pronounce it. So yeah, and um and Hector was was
not the name that he was technically born with a
(11:31):
thor uh was the Italian version, and it got switched
over probably when he came through Ellis Island. But I
imagine when he came through Ellis Island, although he might
he might have changed himself. Yes, yes, so disclaimer out there.
I'm going to try to pronounce it closer to the
Italian way, but I feel like, yeah, I think I'm
(11:52):
gonna slip as we go through. Um so Briarty was
born in in Or, in Italy, and the stories around
this kid would have you believing that he knew he
was going to be a chef from birth, that he
used a whisk as a rattle, that he was an
apprentice for a chef in a hotel by the age eleven,
(12:14):
which sounds like one of those sitcoms where the child
prodigy becomes a doctor at age nine or whatever. And
like you said, Lauren, there are so many legends and
marketing things hard to say. It is it is Uh.
Piacenza specifically is their hometown in in Italy, and and
times were different than According to his grand niece Anna,
(12:38):
all the brothers of the Boyartie family were all working
in restaurants by like age eight. So if that's accurate,
then it's not like impossible to see how he was
given an apprenticeship by age eleven. Um, but who mysteries history. Indeed, Uh,
in nineteen fourteen, at the age of sixteen, already made
(13:00):
the journey to Ellis Island in search of opportunities, and
he started at the kitchen in New York's famous and
swanky Plaza hotel, where his older brother Paul was the
major d A year later, he made head chef, and
he was hired away soon after to be the head
chef at Barbetta, a restaurant still in operation to this day.
(13:23):
According to his New York Times obituary, he catered the
wedding reception of President Woodrow Wilson and his second wife
in nineteen fifteen at West Virginia's Greenboro Hotel, which was
a very elite resort um. Just a reminder, if this
is true, he had only been in the US for
about a year and was seventeen years old. Somewhere in there.
(13:45):
Apparently the Wilsons were so thrilled with Poiart's work they
cast him with catering the meal for two thousand soldiers
returning home from World War One and nineteen eighteen. Oh yeah,
he moved to Cleveland, Ohio and nineteen seventeen and starting
a job managing the kitchen at Hotel Winton, He along
with his new wife Helen, opened a restaurant of their
(14:07):
own in nineteen four called Giardino Did Taia did Taia,
or the Garden of Italy. It quickly became a popular
staple in Cleveland. People waited in line to get in
it really made a name for itself pretty quickly, and
the dish this restaurant was most well known for was
this freshly made spaghetti topped with cheese. People loved it,
(14:31):
loved it. They loved it so much that they wanted
to make it at home. So Bo already started offering
take home kits with dry pasta, cheese and marinarro sauce,
along with the instructions on how to cook it. Um.
I think in the beginning he spent a lot of
his in heavy quotes free time uh ladling the marin
era into clean bottles of milk would have been for
(14:55):
milk um uh yeah. Yeah. It was such a mass
of hit that eventually, like that, became untenable to keep
doing um so much so the profits from takeout began
to eclipse some money he made from dining customers, and
this gave him an idea. With the help of some
regular patrons that owned a local grocery store chain, he
(15:17):
figured out the canning process and linked up with a
national distributor. Uh. And there's a story that was written
by one Robert L. Wolke Um that went up in
the Washington Post about Poorty contacting this Indiana Canning Company,
all like, I run a restaurant in Cleveland and I'm
catering parties by putting my spaghetti in a bucket. Can
(15:39):
spaghetti get canned? Uh? And the employee, the the author's
father who he contacted there, was like, well, you can
can almost anything, but I don't know what it would
taste like. Let's try. I love it. I love it.
I believe we discussed in our UH tomato episode that
there is the acid into patoes. Was kind of tricky
(16:02):
for people to figure out out a can yeah for
a minute. So well it worked out. Boiardi and his
brothers got a small processing plant up and running, and
the Chef Boiardi Food Company was born, and it spelled
with the Italian spelling and its original iteration um. The
(16:22):
first product they offered was a carton of spaghetti dinner.
So this was a jar spaghetti sauce, a box of
spaghetti complete with a package of Parmesan cheese. And it
came in three styles of sauce, traditional mushroom and spicy
Naples style, which I'm very intrigued by. UM. The kids
(16:43):
sold well, but Boiardi noticed that his American salespeople, yes,
and customers had trouble with the name, so he changed
it to the phonetic boy r D. Because these products
were inexpensive, tasty, and easy to make, they became a
popular option during the Great Depression and this helped introduce
Italian food two people across the United States, and the
(17:08):
ingredients he used were fairly high quality. The company was
one of the biggest importers of Italian olive oil and
Parmesan cheese, and they relocated to Milton, Pennsylvania. When the
farmers there agreed to grow a particular tomato type for
the company, they grew their own mushrooms to At its peak,
the factor was turning out two hundred and fifty thousand
(17:30):
cans a day. Who Yes, As we said in our
regular episode, Boyarty was commissioned by the US military four
rations for the Army during World War Two. In response,
the factory expanded their operation hours to twenty four hours
a day producing cans of spaghetti. For this work, he
was awarded the Gold Star for Civilian Service, which is
(17:53):
one of the tops honors civilians can receive for service
to the US military. M HM Barti's smiling face was
featured on the packaging from the get go, appearing in
print ads and later some of the very first television commercials.
In this way, he became one of the first celebrity chefs.
By six the demand for these products had reached such
(18:16):
a point that Briarty was ready to sell the company,
and he also wanted to find a way to keep
on the extra staff he'd hired to keep up with
the extended hours of World War Two. At the time,
there were five thousand employees. Let's cell He did to
American Home Products for six million dollars. Briarty stayed on
as a consultant until nineteen seventy eight. At the time
(18:39):
of sale, the company was making about twenty million dollars
a year. Huh. I know, I just keep saying that
this episode, but so many of these numbers are so huge. UM.
I did want to put in here that some at
some point during the sixties and seventies, the Chef Boyard
brand uh expanded to frozen pizzas. Uh. But then those
(19:01):
went away and are merely a sweet frozen memory echoes
of food past lost forever. Um along with his son Mario,
Board also opened a flooring and tile company called Bardi Products,
which is still around to this day. Uh yeah, I
(19:24):
looked it up. That's a nice picture of the storefront.
Boy already died at age seven. In Night, Milton put
up a statue in his honor in and I have
I have here as Seinfeld reference that I think is
the very first time that I've ever beat you to
(19:46):
putting a Seinfeld reference into um into an outline. Okay,
So in the Seinfeld episode the Hot Tub, the original
script called for Cramer feed the horse. Kramer is feeding
this horse, and he fed it be FARRONI in the
original script, um. But the Boyardi company objected, And so
(20:10):
that's how the name of the product on the show
on the final airing of the episode was b Farino.
It gave the horse a lot of gas. Give it
gives the horse a lot of gas. Yeah. As of May,
which which is only like a year or so out
from the show from Seinfeld ending, Chef Boyarty was the
(20:33):
only company to ever turn down to mention on the show. Wow.
Although to be fair, I guess they only they only checked,
like their legal team only checked when they thought someone
might have an objection. And I guess that, you know,
a very flatulent horse is a pretty fair objection to
the use of your product. Yeah. Sure, it's not like
(20:56):
that product comes out with the best light the end
of that. No. No, Yeah, also got beef aino is
just very funny to say out loud. So I'm really
glad that Cheff Warward d pushed back. Yes, is excellent.
Thank you so much for bringing the Seinfeld memory back
(21:18):
to me. This is great. I suspect it's the first
and only time, but that I'm glad. I'm glad I
could help. Yes, thank you. Uh. In the year two thousand,
con Agra would purchase the company that held the Chef
Boyard brand at the time, and all those sales remained
(21:42):
strong through the early two thousand's, thanks in part to
more co branded tie ins like with the World Wrestling
Federation and with NASCAR. Um Chef war Dy sales began
to dip over the next decade or so. A lot
of long standing brand name prepackaged food companies had fall
to during this time due to a combination of factors.
(22:03):
Um you know, there was a greater emphasis on fresh
foods and home cooking, and simultaneously, a lot of store
brands came out with like more suitable, less expensive alternatives
to those relatively expensive brand names. Um. Even the then
new chief executive of ConAgra one, Sean Connolly told Fox
(22:25):
Business back in a lot of what's crept into big
companies is internal focus, bureaucracy, power point presentations the antithesis
of agility. Oh, swinging hard at power point right, I'm like,
thank you, sir, golf clap, Yes, yes, yes, that's funny.
(22:48):
Reminds me of our well used to have this video
series called Trapped in a Meeting. I feel like that's
sort of what he's absolutely. Oh, that's that's a weird,
beautiful one. If y'all ever want to see Josh and
chuck of stuff, you should know um doing a very
strange bit that I think is spectacular. Um. Also, I'm
(23:16):
trying really hard not to laugh through the entire thing
because our boss Connell, who is also sometimes an actor,
just got up and improv like forty five straight minutes
of absolute business bs. Yes, and it was hilarious, the
stuff of legends. Yeah, yeah, we were all trying to
(23:37):
keep straight face at any rate. Um in Uh Boyarty's
grand niece Anna boyarti uh previously mentioned, released a book
called Delicious Memories, Risipes and Stories from the Chef Boyardi
family love In YouTube Lava picks, Uh, somewhat famous for
(24:03):
uploading pictures of things being consumed by lava, uploaded a
video of a can of Chef Boyardy ravioli getting consumed
by a flow of lava. This is not something I
knew existed. Ah, and now I want to check out immediately. Yeah,
(24:25):
I mean, lava is pretty. Things exploding is funny in
certain context. Well, okay, thank thank you. Annie. That's you're
a better person than I am. Just looking out, just
looking out. Appreciate it. In Chef Boyardy and their current
(24:49):
parent company, ConAgra were sued for the use of deceptive advertising.
They're labeling claimed their products were free of preservatives, but
they did in fact use a preservative by the name
of citric acid, which is present in all citrus fruits
and even naturally produced in the human body. The plaintiff
behind the lawsuit was looking for five million dollars to
(25:11):
be paid out to any purchasers of Chef Boyarty products
in the preceding three years, but it was ultimately dismissed. Yeah,
citric acid is one of those things that it's it's
a it's a flavoring to I, it's both that that
that's a separate episode anyway. Um. Yeah, it was around
(25:31):
that time or so that the brand really began emphasizing
Boyarti's story in in their advertising. They released a line
of throwback recipes that involved more premium ingredients like beef
meatballs made with what sounds like like odd used to
make beef meatballs, um, instead of out of stuff like
(25:55):
a soy protein concentrate and mechanically separated chicken stuff like that. Right.
They're also more expensive, um than the normal line and
tend to be even higher in fat and salt, which
I found interesting. That's yeah, I find that interesting too.
Of like, when I was a kid, I much preferred
home style chicken noodle slop, but you know it was
(26:17):
in a can. It's just the addition of home style.
It cracks me up. Yeah. Yeah, and and that's the
same thing. These are still canned products, but sure. The
campaign for this line's release UM involved a song with
an accompanying music video, and this song is called start
(26:41):
the Party, uh huh, and it features Donny Osmond and
Lil Yati. Oh that's not a mash up I was in.
There's a lot of things going on here that I'm
a little surprised by this song hit number three on
(27:03):
Spotify's most popular playlist. What oh, I say with a
question mark, I've got to check it out now. You
were presenting a lot of cultural things that I have
missed and must be corrected. I could not even begin
(27:23):
to imagine what this sounds like. You know, I honestly
didn't look it up because I wasn't sure if I
had the strength today for whatever that's going to look like.
You need to be in the right place for sure. Yep,
watch out for your mental health, you know. Yeah, yeah,
(27:44):
maybe one day you can return. I hope so, I
think so, you know, Oh gosh. The brand has overall
been seeing an uptick UM in sales over the past
couple of years, and it did get a boost from
COVID nineteen isolation from you know, people making a rush
(28:07):
on shelf stable and nostalgic products. UM like stores have
been selling out UM and ConAgra overall has increased production
across a lot of their brands also right now, as
of like five days ago, UM, someone put up a
petition on change dot org related to the Black Lives
(28:29):
Matter movement. UM petition to replace the statue of Christopher
Columbus that's in Cleveland's Tony Brush Park, which is in
the city's Little Italy neighborhood. To replace the statue of
Columbus with a statue of boy Artie. And this petition
is really great. It makes a number of excellent points.
(28:51):
I do want to quote for you the end of
the petition because I cannot think of a better way
to end this episode. It's time for Cleveland to remove
its statue to a genocidal sociopath with a bowl cut
and erect a statue to an immigrant success story who
enriched our community with his food and iconic mustache. Agreed,
(29:13):
iconic mustache? Yes, um, I love it. Isn't there? Isn't
there a petition to change the name of Columbus to
Flavor Town because Guy Fierti is from there. I have
not seen that one, but that sounds like a thing
that would exist. Nope, It's definitely a thing that exists.
(29:35):
It's got thousands of signatures. So can you imagine if
they if it comes Flavor Town and then you can
go visit the chef Boyardy, that that would truly. I
say this with only the smallest amount of irony, like
that would be beautiful, that would be really nice. That
(29:58):
would make me so happy. And I'm not sure that
the humans who live there would be as equally pleased
with living in Flavortown, but I I would be psyched
about that. Like if Atlanta was like, you know what,
we're flavor Town now, I would be like, strange pivot,
but great. I just can't imagine like teaching your your
(30:21):
kids if you had kids, so I mean, hey, hey,
they've got they've got to learn about flavor toown somehow.
It's true, it's true, it's true. I think this is
(30:41):
as good a place as any to to end this episode.
That's that's clearly all we have to say. Oh, we
we do have some listener mail for you, but first
we've got one more quick break for a word from
our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you,
(31:11):
and we're back with beautiful. That was excellent, Annie together,
we were both excellent. Yes. Yes, Mike wrote, hello, I
was listening to your podcast on Green Onions and you
(31:32):
brought up a garden mishap involving garlic, and you mentioned smell.
I'd like to share with you my own gardening mishap
involving garlic. I was living in southern Arkansas for three
years and had a great garden. I ended up taking
a job in my hometown in Illinois and moved. A
roommate was taking care of our Arkansas house and my
(31:52):
garden until I was able to move everything to Illinois.
By the time I got down there in the middle
of the hot Arkansas summer, he had my garden go
and it was full of weeds. Luckily, I was able
to salvage my garlic. Once packed up, I picked said
garlic plants and made the mistake of putting it in
the U haul we had rented. Like I said, this
(32:13):
was midsummer, with TIMPs in the upper nineties and a
drive to Illinois of ten hours. You can imagine how
bad it felt when I opened that tour in Illinois.
All of the furniture reeked of garlic for months after,
and my wife even had me throw some stuff out
because it was so bad. Anyway, I thought you might
(32:35):
get a chuckle out of my mistake, and yes, oh no,
I'm yes, sorry, Uh, condolences, but that is quite funny,
that's very very amusing. Oh No, though I had a
similar incident. It wasn't as dis bad at all. But
I took a road trip with a friend and we
were in Nevada. We stayed at in Vegas for we're
(33:00):
five days, and we we were walking up to our
car to leave, and we both had this moment where
we paused, looked at each other in horror and said
at the same time, I kid you not the banas.
And we had left this like a bunch of bananas
in there, and the smell was horrendous and we were
like only halfway through our road trip. Oh wow, it
(33:21):
was bad. And they had likemented into Google it was
hard to go banana car. We call it the banana
car incident. Oh oof, I get I'm trying to think
if I had I don't have anything in a motor
vehicle like that. But um, the first time, like I was,
(33:47):
I was like a young professional. I was like just
out of college, and I was super proud of myself
because I like I like with my like first paycheck,
I like went and bought a crop pot and I
felt really adult and everything. Um, And I think I
was so worked up about the entire experience that I
wasn't paying attention to the recipe, and I put in
(34:07):
so much more garlic than it called for, like like
probably like it probably called for like one or two clothes,
and I probably put in like ahead. I was just like,
this seems like a lot, but that's going to be delicious.
I love garlic. And yeah, within like within like an hour,
(34:32):
it was. It was bad to the point that, yes,
it was a garlic apartment for at least a week.
That's a that was life trying to keep you humble. Uh,
it was. It was you know, I'm not going to
say that I needed that right then. Sure, but but
(34:53):
the but the lesson, the lesson is always welcome. Indeed, Uh,
Maggie wrote, I was listening to your green Onions Scallions
episode and it set me down memory lane. I currently
reside in California, but was born and raised in Taiwan,
and green onions were staple items. They're they're often used
(35:13):
as toppings for food, soup, porridge, grilled meat, even the
infamous stinky tofu. But as you mentioned in the episode,
green onions are often used to make scallion pancakes and
they've been one of my favorite food items. This historic
food item originally meant for farmers to eat on the
go has become an iconic street food here in Taiwan.
You can always find a street food vendor selling scallion
(35:35):
pancakes near tourist attractions. Some vendors even became so famous
that they are the attraction. There are lots of varieties, including,
but not limited to, scallion with fried egg, pancake, thousand layers,
scallion pancake, thick scallion pancake like about an inch um,
and exploding egg scallion pancake. The The exploding egg is
where they wrap an egg within the pancake and deep
(35:57):
fry it just enough that the outside is crispy, but
the yolk is running, so it explodes when you bite
in side note, exploding egg is a homonym to bomb
in Mandarin. All of that is to say that I
missed Taiwan and my family. I live here alone, and
with the current situation, I don't think I'd be able
to go back anytime soon, So typing all of these
(36:19):
out is sort of helping me cope with my homesickness. Ps.
Scallion is such a prominent plant here that my brother
Jim Wants vowed to make a scallion craft beer out
of his brewery in Taiwan. It's called Jim and Dad's
for anyone who's looking for breweries in Taiwan. Right, I
(36:45):
would like to try that? Yes, I would, I would.
I would definitely like to try that. That sounds, you know,
like there's there's a lot of flavors and especially kind
of like coppy beers, um, pale ales and etcetera. That
that of like kind of like grassy notes. And Scalion
also has some grassy notes. I would be be interested
to see what would what would happen there? I would?
(37:08):
And all those scaling pancakes sound delicious, so oh yes,
all right, the cravings are setting in. Thanks to both
of them for writing in. If you would like to
write to us, you can Our email is Hello at
savor pod dot com. We're also on social media. You
can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at savor
(37:29):
pod and we do hope to hear from you. Savor
is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts to my
heart Radio, you can visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagin and Andrew Howard.
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vocalbaum, and today we're
talking about Chef Boyard the brand. Yes, because it came
up recently in our Oregano episode. Um, and I did
not know that Chef boyar D was a real person.
(00:28):
That was a wonderful, shocking surprise to me. So here
we are, we thought we would dig into that a
little bit more. M hm and Um. I did not
grow up in a Chef Boyardi household, so I was
under the misunderstanding that Lauren corrected that Spaghettios was a
(00:50):
Chef Boyardi product. And I've probably had that like three
or four times in my life. Um, okay, So I
don't know that I've ever had Chef Boyardi because that's
what I thought. That was my experience with it. When
it came to canned foods, I ate a lot of
baby corn. I loved it, and oh, I know, okay,
(01:12):
and then those like new potatoes, I love the cans
of that, and then um, green beans and green beans
like I canned green beans are fine. Um, They're usually
not great, but I do have a pretty strong nostalgia
for them. Because I loved them so much when I
was a kid. Me too, Yeah, there's there's something about
that texture that's both unpleasant and also very nostalgic. Yeah,
(01:35):
and and and yet Spaghettios are a rival brand to
Chef Boyard there from Campbell's. Yeah, I will say Chef
Boyard also has canned hoops of pastah, which I love. Yeah.
I'm not sure if they can call them ohs or
not um, and certainly not ohs of the spaghetti form,
(01:58):
but I I it did eat a certain amount of
canned pasta when I was a kid from from both brands. Um.
It might have helped that I was perhaps like peak
canned pasta age um, which for me, I would say
it was like five or six years old when my
family lived in Ohio and Pennsylvania, which is where the
(02:19):
Boyard brand is from. Um. And my mother at the
time worked in art and frame shops around Cleveland, and
one of her frequent customers was Mrs Boyar. D Oh
that's so cool. Yeah, yeah, and I was so impressed.
Five year old Lauren was like, you know a famous person? Yes, yes,
(02:43):
um my, so my mom and I recently did like
a pretty strict two weeks quarantine and then we'll see
each other because I hadn't seen December. Um. And it
was really funny because I we it was when I
was doing the research for this EPI, so didn't she
kind of randomly ate um, some chef boy or d
(03:05):
randomly to me because I've never seen her eat it before.
And she said like she had a craving for it,
and we got a whole conversation about nostalgia and um,
it's just funny. It was one of those like food
podcast moments of fortuitous nous. Yeah, yeah, well, I guess
uh this this brings us to our question. Yes, chef
(03:27):
boy r D what is it? Well, chef boyar D
is a brand of ready to eat Italian American foods
and meal kits, mostly canned pastas and either creamy or
tomato eat sauces, some microwavable cups for even quicker meals,
and some some pizza, dough and sauce kits which apparently
(03:51):
used to contain a cheese packet as well, but they
no longer do. And this is contentious, of course it is, yes,
and yes, the brand is named for an actual facts chef.
His picture is the picture on the package. It's that guy, um,
though it's a little bit hard to tell what stories
(04:12):
about him are real and what are like marketing tall
tales at this point. But they have a whole line
of products. Um. The classics are like a spaghetti and
meatballs in a tomato sauce, beef frabioli, and a tomato
and meat sauce beef aeronium, which is short lengths of
noodles in tomato and meat sauce, the meat Lovers, which
(04:34):
includes like tube noodles of some kind, and Italian sausage
in that same sauce, and lasagna by which they mean wider,
curly edged noodles in that sauce. But over the years
they featured a whole bunch of different sauces, butter sauce,
cheese sauce, Parmesan sauce, Alfredo style chili cheesy meat, which
(04:55):
I find fascinating, like a vegetarian tomato sauce. Oh my goodness.
They've got products with rice, some with a couple of
vegetables other than you know, like tomatoes and onions. Uh,
some with chicken instead of beef for pork, A couple
of cauliflower based pasta things, and gosh any dang number
(05:15):
of pasta shapes um Elbow, macaroni and shells, Your Your, your, A, B,
C's and one two three's Wagon Wheels co branded tie
in shapes. Right now, they've got SpongeBob and Pop Patrol
lines of pasta shapes. A few years back, DC Comics
had a line. When I was a kid, there were
(05:36):
teenage Mutant Ninja turtle cans and they were advertised aggressively
during like after school and Saturday morning cartoon blocks. Yeah,
I feel like my my older brother. My older brother
loved teenage mutant ninja turtles, and I seem to recall
a lot of teenage mutant Ninja turtle food products. Oh yeah,
(05:57):
yeah that and like Ghostbusters. One of my favorite things
was was high seas like Ecto cooler slimer on the package,
which made me think it was the coolest stuff ever. Yeah.
Oh man. Anyway, um yeah, chefiar d Is is definitely
marketed to two kids and two adults who are looking
for something quick and unpretentious and nostalgic. Um and and
(06:22):
you know they taste good, salty and tangy, sweeten and rich.
The texture of the pastas is soft, if that's the
thing that you're into. Um that the meat is tender,
you know, Yeah, yeah, I was. I was kind of
jealous of my mom when she was eating it, so
she said she only had the one can you can.
(06:47):
I got it, I got it. What about the nutrition? Uh?
As with many canned products, you know, salt and sugar
and fat are used pretty liberally in these recipes in
order to create products that can survive the canning process
that makes them shelf stable while still tasting good and uh,
(07:09):
you know, keeping the price relatively low. Read your nutrition labels. Uh.
And sometimes products that are purporting to be healthier choices
like a like A like that cauliflower based pasta versus
wheat based pasta aren't actually that much of an improvement.
If you're watching your sodium or fat intake, I'd say
maybe skip this line of products. Uh. They do have
(07:30):
some protein, though, I mean, you know, I'd say that
they will fill you up, but won't keep you going
in the long run. Yes, yes, yeah, Also, I mean
disclaimer probably obvious, but they are not a sponsor of ours.
We are just we are collectors of food knowledge. And yeah,
(07:50):
kept it, did it did? No brands brand histories, especially
brands that that were named for an actual human person,
are fascinating, Yes, yes, or even sometimes even the ones
like Betty Crocker. Betty Crocker is yeah it is, yeah,
well right right seats some some are. Some are fascinating
(08:11):
because they're a real person, and some are fascinating because
they're not. Yes, yes, people believe. It's so hard they
cry when they get to the headquarters and they're told
the truth. Oh no, they do. Yes, there's a so
there's always a Betty Crocker on site. There's a woman
you know, doing the roll of Bretty Crocker. And she says,
I write an interview with one of the more recent ones,
(08:32):
and she says she always has a box of tissues
for when people find out Betty Crocker isn't real. Yeah, no, sure,
sure that you know, like like people get really wrapped
up in in in food, food culture, and in in
personalities and uh characters, and so yeah, totally, yeah, I definitely.
(08:52):
I think it's more like they don't think that's really
well obviously probably they don't think that's really Betty Crocker,
but they thought she was based on a real person.
When being a housewife is pretty much the occupation for
a lot of women, and you were alone and you
didn't have the internet. Betty Crocker was this really comforting
voice that you could listen to them, and people formed
(09:12):
a connection with her. Um. I totally see it. I
totally see it. Ah. Anyway, future episode yeah, yeah, y'all
talked about her though over on a stuff Mom never
told you, right, Yes, yes we did, so you can
go check that out if you're interested, and our future
episode over here. But yes, yes, now we have It's
(09:35):
a very small number of numbers, yes, but still they
count as numbers. They do well. It's it's hard to
track down solid continual numbers for a product like this
because these markets are real volatile. I think that the
boy or D brand makes something like over three and
(09:58):
fifty million dollars in sales per year as often, and
that it had done that for a long time, and
that then there was a dip, which we'll talk about
in the history section, but that's kind of back where
they are now. And as of they held of the
(10:19):
market share of prepared pasta Wow. Yeah yeah, all right,
all right, Chef boyar D. Well, that's where they are now.
But how did they get there? Uh, we will let
you know, but first we'll take a quick break for
word from our sponsor. And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
(10:49):
thank you, And we're back with the history of One
to Hector. So. I looked up the Italian and I
find it fascinating being that even I've listened to it
several times, my association, my Americanized association with this product
is so strong that I keep finding myself slipping into
(11:11):
saying it more like Boiarty Boyarty. And that's as we
talked about in our regular episode. That's one of the
reasons he changed it. Yeah, because salespeople and customers couldn't
pronounce it. So yeah, and um and Hector was was
not the name that he was technically born with a
(11:31):
thor uh was the Italian version, and it got switched
over probably when he came through Ellis Island. But I
imagine when he came through Ellis Island, although he might
he might have changed himself. Yes, yes, so disclaimer out there.
I'm going to try to pronounce it closer to the
Italian way, but I feel like, yeah, I think I'm
(11:52):
gonna slip as we go through. Um so Briarty was
born in in Or, in Italy, and the stories around
this kid would have you believing that he knew he
was going to be a chef from birth, that he
used a whisk as a rattle, that he was an
apprentice for a chef in a hotel by the age eleven,
(12:14):
which sounds like one of those sitcoms where the child
prodigy becomes a doctor at age nine or whatever. And
like you said, Lauren, there are so many legends and
marketing things hard to say. It is it is Uh.
Piacenza specifically is their hometown in in Italy, and and
times were different than According to his grand niece Anna,
(12:38):
all the brothers of the Boyartie family were all working
in restaurants by like age eight. So if that's accurate,
then it's not like impossible to see how he was
given an apprenticeship by age eleven. Um, but who mysteries history. Indeed, Uh,
in nineteen fourteen, at the age of sixteen, already made
(13:00):
the journey to Ellis Island in search of opportunities, and
he started at the kitchen in New York's famous and
swanky Plaza hotel, where his older brother Paul was the
major d A year later, he made head chef, and
he was hired away soon after to be the head
chef at Barbetta, a restaurant still in operation to this day.
(13:23):
According to his New York Times obituary, he catered the
wedding reception of President Woodrow Wilson and his second wife
in nineteen fifteen at West Virginia's Greenboro Hotel, which was
a very elite resort um. Just a reminder, if this
is true, he had only been in the US for
about a year and was seventeen years old. Somewhere in there.
(13:45):
Apparently the Wilsons were so thrilled with Poiart's work they
cast him with catering the meal for two thousand soldiers
returning home from World War One and nineteen eighteen. Oh yeah,
he moved to Cleveland, Ohio and nineteen seventeen and starting
a job managing the kitchen at Hotel Winton, He along
with his new wife Helen, opened a restaurant of their
(14:07):
own in nineteen four called Giardino Did Taia did Taia,
or the Garden of Italy. It quickly became a popular
staple in Cleveland. People waited in line to get in
it really made a name for itself pretty quickly, and
the dish this restaurant was most well known for was
this freshly made spaghetti topped with cheese. People loved it,
(14:31):
loved it. They loved it so much that they wanted
to make it at home. So Bo already started offering
take home kits with dry pasta, cheese and marinarro sauce,
along with the instructions on how to cook it. Um.
I think in the beginning he spent a lot of
his in heavy quotes free time uh ladling the marin
era into clean bottles of milk would have been for
(14:55):
milk um uh yeah. Yeah. It was such a mass
of hit that eventually, like that, became untenable to keep
doing um so much so the profits from takeout began
to eclipse some money he made from dining customers, and
this gave him an idea. With the help of some
regular patrons that owned a local grocery store chain, he
(15:17):
figured out the canning process and linked up with a
national distributor. Uh. And there's a story that was written
by one Robert L. Wolke Um that went up in
the Washington Post about Poorty contacting this Indiana Canning Company,
all like, I run a restaurant in Cleveland and I'm
catering parties by putting my spaghetti in a bucket. Can
(15:39):
spaghetti get canned? Uh? And the employee, the the author's
father who he contacted there, was like, well, you can
can almost anything, but I don't know what it would
taste like. Let's try. I love it. I love it.
I believe we discussed in our UH tomato episode that
there is the acid into patoes. Was kind of tricky
(16:02):
for people to figure out out a can yeah for
a minute. So well it worked out. Boiardi and his
brothers got a small processing plant up and running, and
the Chef Boiardi Food Company was born, and it spelled
with the Italian spelling and its original iteration um. The
(16:22):
first product they offered was a carton of spaghetti dinner.
So this was a jar spaghetti sauce, a box of
spaghetti complete with a package of Parmesan cheese. And it
came in three styles of sauce, traditional mushroom and spicy
Naples style, which I'm very intrigued by. UM. The kids
(16:43):
sold well, but Boiardi noticed that his American salespeople, yes,
and customers had trouble with the name, so he changed
it to the phonetic boy r D. Because these products
were inexpensive, tasty, and easy to make, they became a
popular option during the Great Depression and this helped introduce
Italian food two people across the United States, and the
(17:08):
ingredients he used were fairly high quality. The company was
one of the biggest importers of Italian olive oil and
Parmesan cheese, and they relocated to Milton, Pennsylvania. When the
farmers there agreed to grow a particular tomato type for
the company, they grew their own mushrooms to At its peak,
the factor was turning out two hundred and fifty thousand
(17:30):
cans a day. Who Yes, As we said in our
regular episode, Boyarty was commissioned by the US military four
rations for the Army during World War Two. In response,
the factory expanded their operation hours to twenty four hours
a day producing cans of spaghetti. For this work, he
was awarded the Gold Star for Civilian Service, which is
(17:53):
one of the tops honors civilians can receive for service
to the US military. M HM Barti's smiling face was
featured on the packaging from the get go, appearing in
print ads and later some of the very first television commercials.
In this way, he became one of the first celebrity chefs.
By six the demand for these products had reached such
(18:16):
a point that Briarty was ready to sell the company,
and he also wanted to find a way to keep
on the extra staff he'd hired to keep up with
the extended hours of World War Two. At the time,
there were five thousand employees. Let's cell He did to
American Home Products for six million dollars. Briarty stayed on
as a consultant until nineteen seventy eight. At the time
(18:39):
of sale, the company was making about twenty million dollars
a year. Huh. I know, I just keep saying that
this episode, but so many of these numbers are so huge. UM.
I did want to put in here that some at
some point during the sixties and seventies, the Chef Boyard
brand uh expanded to frozen pizzas. Uh. But then those
(19:01):
went away and are merely a sweet frozen memory echoes
of food past lost forever. Um along with his son Mario,
Board also opened a flooring and tile company called Bardi Products,
which is still around to this day. Uh yeah, I
(19:24):
looked it up. That's a nice picture of the storefront.
Boy already died at age seven. In Night, Milton put
up a statue in his honor in and I have
I have here as Seinfeld reference that I think is
the very first time that I've ever beat you to
(19:46):
putting a Seinfeld reference into um into an outline. Okay,
So in the Seinfeld episode the Hot Tub, the original
script called for Cramer feed the horse. Kramer is feeding
this horse, and he fed it be FARRONI in the
original script, um. But the Boyardi company objected, And so
(20:10):
that's how the name of the product on the show
on the final airing of the episode was b Farino.
It gave the horse a lot of gas. Give it
gives the horse a lot of gas. Yeah. As of May,
which which is only like a year or so out
from the show from Seinfeld ending, Chef Boyarty was the
(20:33):
only company to ever turn down to mention on the show. Wow.
Although to be fair, I guess they only they only checked,
like their legal team only checked when they thought someone
might have an objection. And I guess that, you know,
a very flatulent horse is a pretty fair objection to
the use of your product. Yeah. Sure, it's not like
(20:56):
that product comes out with the best light the end
of that. No. No, Yeah, also got beef aino is
just very funny to say out loud. So I'm really
glad that Cheff Warward d pushed back. Yes, is excellent.
Thank you so much for bringing the Seinfeld memory back
(21:18):
to me. This is great. I suspect it's the first
and only time, but that I'm glad. I'm glad I
could help. Yes, thank you. Uh. In the year two thousand,
con Agra would purchase the company that held the Chef
Boyard brand at the time, and all those sales remained
(21:42):
strong through the early two thousand's, thanks in part to
more co branded tie ins like with the World Wrestling
Federation and with NASCAR. Um Chef war Dy sales began
to dip over the next decade or so. A lot
of long standing brand name prepackaged food companies had fall
to during this time due to a combination of factors.
(22:03):
Um you know, there was a greater emphasis on fresh
foods and home cooking, and simultaneously, a lot of store
brands came out with like more suitable, less expensive alternatives
to those relatively expensive brand names. Um. Even the then
new chief executive of ConAgra one, Sean Connolly told Fox
(22:25):
Business back in a lot of what's crept into big
companies is internal focus, bureaucracy, power point presentations the antithesis
of agility. Oh, swinging hard at power point right, I'm like,
thank you, sir, golf clap, Yes, yes, yes, that's funny.
(22:48):
Reminds me of our well used to have this video
series called Trapped in a Meeting. I feel like that's
sort of what he's absolutely. Oh, that's that's a weird,
beautiful one. If y'all ever want to see Josh and
chuck of stuff, you should know um doing a very
strange bit that I think is spectacular. Um. Also, I'm
(23:16):
trying really hard not to laugh through the entire thing
because our boss Connell, who is also sometimes an actor,
just got up and improv like forty five straight minutes
of absolute business bs. Yes, and it was hilarious, the
stuff of legends. Yeah, yeah, we were all trying to
(23:37):
keep straight face at any rate. Um in Uh Boyarty's
grand niece Anna boyarti uh previously mentioned, released a book
called Delicious Memories, Risipes and Stories from the Chef Boyardi
family love In YouTube Lava picks, Uh, somewhat famous for
(24:03):
uploading pictures of things being consumed by lava, uploaded a
video of a can of Chef Boyardy ravioli getting consumed
by a flow of lava. This is not something I
knew existed. Ah, and now I want to check out immediately. Yeah,
(24:25):
I mean, lava is pretty. Things exploding is funny in
certain context. Well, okay, thank thank you. Annie. That's you're
a better person than I am. Just looking out, just
looking out. Appreciate it. In Chef Boyardy and their current
(24:49):
parent company, ConAgra were sued for the use of deceptive advertising.
They're labeling claimed their products were free of preservatives, but
they did in fact use a preservative by the name
of citric acid, which is present in all citrus fruits
and even naturally produced in the human body. The plaintiff
behind the lawsuit was looking for five million dollars to
(25:11):
be paid out to any purchasers of Chef Boyarty products
in the preceding three years, but it was ultimately dismissed. Yeah,
citric acid is one of those things that it's it's
a it's a flavoring to I, it's both that that
that's a separate episode anyway. Um. Yeah, it was around
(25:31):
that time or so that the brand really began emphasizing
Boyarti's story in in their advertising. They released a line
of throwback recipes that involved more premium ingredients like beef
meatballs made with what sounds like like odd used to
make beef meatballs, um, instead of out of stuff like
(25:55):
a soy protein concentrate and mechanically separated chicken stuff like that. Right.
They're also more expensive, um than the normal line and
tend to be even higher in fat and salt, which
I found interesting. That's yeah, I find that interesting too.
Of like, when I was a kid, I much preferred
home style chicken noodle slop, but you know it was
(26:17):
in a can. It's just the addition of home style.
It cracks me up. Yeah. Yeah, and and that's the
same thing. These are still canned products, but sure. The
campaign for this line's release UM involved a song with
an accompanying music video, and this song is called start
(26:41):
the Party, uh huh, and it features Donny Osmond and
Lil Yati. Oh that's not a mash up I was in.
There's a lot of things going on here that I'm
a little surprised by this song hit number three on
(27:03):
Spotify's most popular playlist. What oh, I say with a
question mark, I've got to check it out now. You
were presenting a lot of cultural things that I have
missed and must be corrected. I could not even begin
(27:23):
to imagine what this sounds like. You know, I honestly
didn't look it up because I wasn't sure if I
had the strength today for whatever that's going to look like.
You need to be in the right place for sure. Yep,
watch out for your mental health, you know. Yeah, yeah,
(27:44):
maybe one day you can return. I hope so, I
think so, you know, Oh gosh. The brand has overall
been seeing an uptick UM in sales over the past
couple of years, and it did get a boost from
COVID nineteen isolation from you know, people making a rush
(28:07):
on shelf stable and nostalgic products. UM like stores have
been selling out UM and ConAgra overall has increased production
across a lot of their brands also right now, as
of like five days ago, UM, someone put up a
petition on change dot org related to the Black Lives
(28:29):
Matter movement. UM petition to replace the statue of Christopher
Columbus that's in Cleveland's Tony Brush Park, which is in
the city's Little Italy neighborhood. To replace the statue of
Columbus with a statue of boy Artie. And this petition
is really great. It makes a number of excellent points.
(28:51):
I do want to quote for you the end of
the petition because I cannot think of a better way
to end this episode. It's time for Cleveland to remove
its statue to a genocidal sociopath with a bowl cut
and erect a statue to an immigrant success story who
enriched our community with his food and iconic mustache. Agreed,
(29:13):
iconic mustache? Yes, um, I love it. Isn't there? Isn't
there a petition to change the name of Columbus to
Flavor Town because Guy Fierti is from there. I have
not seen that one, but that sounds like a thing
that would exist. Nope, It's definitely a thing that exists.
(29:35):
It's got thousands of signatures. So can you imagine if
they if it comes Flavor Town and then you can
go visit the chef Boyardy, that that would truly. I
say this with only the smallest amount of irony, like
that would be beautiful, that would be really nice. That
(29:58):
would make me so happy. And I'm not sure that
the humans who live there would be as equally pleased
with living in Flavortown, but I I would be psyched
about that. Like if Atlanta was like, you know what,
we're flavor Town now, I would be like, strange pivot,
but great. I just can't imagine like teaching your your
(30:21):
kids if you had kids, so I mean, hey, hey,
they've got they've got to learn about flavor toown somehow.
It's true, it's true, it's true. I think this is
(30:41):
as good a place as any to to end this episode.
That's that's clearly all we have to say. Oh, we
we do have some listener mail for you, but first
we've got one more quick break for a word from
our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you,
(31:11):
and we're back with beautiful. That was excellent, Annie together,
we were both excellent. Yes. Yes, Mike wrote, hello, I
was listening to your podcast on Green Onions and you
(31:32):
brought up a garden mishap involving garlic, and you mentioned smell.
I'd like to share with you my own gardening mishap
involving garlic. I was living in southern Arkansas for three
years and had a great garden. I ended up taking
a job in my hometown in Illinois and moved. A
roommate was taking care of our Arkansas house and my
(31:52):
garden until I was able to move everything to Illinois.
By the time I got down there in the middle
of the hot Arkansas summer, he had my garden go
and it was full of weeds. Luckily, I was able
to salvage my garlic. Once packed up, I picked said
garlic plants and made the mistake of putting it in
the U haul we had rented. Like I said, this
(32:13):
was midsummer, with TIMPs in the upper nineties and a
drive to Illinois of ten hours. You can imagine how
bad it felt when I opened that tour in Illinois.
All of the furniture reeked of garlic for months after,
and my wife even had me throw some stuff out
because it was so bad. Anyway, I thought you might
(32:35):
get a chuckle out of my mistake, and yes, oh no,
I'm yes, sorry, Uh, condolences, but that is quite funny,
that's very very amusing. Oh No, though I had a
similar incident. It wasn't as dis bad at all. But
I took a road trip with a friend and we
were in Nevada. We stayed at in Vegas for we're
(33:00):
five days, and we we were walking up to our
car to leave, and we both had this moment where
we paused, looked at each other in horror and said
at the same time, I kid you not the banas.
And we had left this like a bunch of bananas
in there, and the smell was horrendous and we were
like only halfway through our road trip. Oh wow, it
(33:21):
was bad. And they had likemented into Google it was
hard to go banana car. We call it the banana
car incident. Oh oof, I get I'm trying to think
if I had I don't have anything in a motor
vehicle like that. But um, the first time, like I was,
(33:47):
I was like a young professional. I was like just
out of college, and I was super proud of myself
because I like I like with my like first paycheck,
I like went and bought a crop pot and I
felt really adult and everything. Um, And I think I
was so worked up about the entire experience that I
wasn't paying attention to the recipe, and I put in
(34:07):
so much more garlic than it called for, like like
probably like it probably called for like one or two clothes,
and I probably put in like ahead. I was just like,
this seems like a lot, but that's going to be delicious.
I love garlic. And yeah, within like within like an hour,
(34:32):
it was. It was bad to the point that, yes,
it was a garlic apartment for at least a week.
That's a that was life trying to keep you humble. Uh,
it was. It was you know, I'm not going to
say that I needed that right then. Sure, but but
(34:53):
the but the lesson, the lesson is always welcome. Indeed, Uh,
Maggie wrote, I was listening to your green Onions Scallions
episode and it set me down memory lane. I currently
reside in California, but was born and raised in Taiwan,
and green onions were staple items. They're they're often used
(35:13):
as toppings for food, soup, porridge, grilled meat, even the
infamous stinky tofu. But as you mentioned in the episode,
green onions are often used to make scallion pancakes and
they've been one of my favorite food items. This historic
food item originally meant for farmers to eat on the
go has become an iconic street food here in Taiwan.
You can always find a street food vendor selling scallion
(35:35):
pancakes near tourist attractions. Some vendors even became so famous
that they are the attraction. There are lots of varieties, including,
but not limited to, scallion with fried egg, pancake, thousand layers,
scallion pancake, thick scallion pancake like about an inch um,
and exploding egg scallion pancake. The The exploding egg is
where they wrap an egg within the pancake and deep
(35:57):
fry it just enough that the outside is crispy, but
the yolk is running, so it explodes when you bite
in side note, exploding egg is a homonym to bomb
in Mandarin. All of that is to say that I
missed Taiwan and my family. I live here alone, and
with the current situation, I don't think I'd be able
to go back anytime soon, So typing all of these
(36:19):
out is sort of helping me cope with my homesickness. Ps.
Scallion is such a prominent plant here that my brother
Jim Wants vowed to make a scallion craft beer out
of his brewery in Taiwan. It's called Jim and Dad's
for anyone who's looking for breweries in Taiwan. Right, I
(36:45):
would like to try that? Yes, I would, I would.
I would definitely like to try that. That sounds, you know,
like there's there's a lot of flavors and especially kind
of like coppy beers, um, pale ales and etcetera. That
that of like kind of like grassy notes. And Scalion
also has some grassy notes. I would be be interested
to see what would what would happen there? I would?
(37:08):
And all those scaling pancakes sound delicious, so oh yes,
all right, the cravings are setting in. Thanks to both
of them for writing in. If you would like to
write to us, you can Our email is Hello at
savor pod dot com. We're also on social media. You
can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at savor
(37:29):
pod and we do hope to hear from you. Savor
is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts to my
heart Radio, you can visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagin and Andrew Howard.
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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