October 16, 2025 • 33 mins
In this week’s episode of American Gravy, Andrew and Lauren Gruel dive into the wild world of food rules and fall favorites. From debating whether pumpkin spice has finally jumped the shark… to Andrew’s latest kitchen experiment gone hilariously wrong.
They get candid about restaurant culture, family life, and why Andrew thinks air fryers might be ruining America. Plus…a listener Q&A on the best cold-sear techniques and how to rescue a burnt brisket.
Grab a fork, pour yourself something strong, and join the Gruels for another fast, funny, and surprisingly heartfelt serving of American Gravy.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everyone, Welcome back to American Gravy, where food meets
fun and flavor meets the absurd. I'm absurd. Oh, I'm
Lauren Gruhl.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Oh, I'm Andrew Girl.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
And today we're diving into some of the funniest, strangest,
and most mouthwatering food stories and making the rounds look food.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Has gotten crazy. Everybody's trying to push the envelope way
too far. The beauty of food, though, is that it
touches everything and everyone. So obviously our stories are going
to go beyond food, but we'll bring it back to food.
That's the centerpiece. I always say that food is the
great unifier. It's also the vehicle through which you can
understand everything happening in the world because everyone touches food
(00:41):
in some way or another, including the supply chain and
at the end of the day, what they're eating.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
So we're really excited to have you.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
We are incredibly grateful and thankful that we have this
opportunity to be talking food with all of you. And
for those of you that are listening for the first time, welcome.
For those of you that are back, welcome back. Hope
you had some good meals along the way.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I hope they used some of your your what is it?
What is that?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
My quick tips?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
No skills, your skills. Yeah, we got to sharpen the skills.
We were talking about ground beef. Last time we talked
about the cold seer. We actually did a video on
the cold seer.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I actually used the cold seer.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I know I can't so the cold seer, which is
kind of just in recap, is my way of like
cooking protein, starting off in a cold pan as opposed
to a hot pan, and then bringing the heat up
towards the through the cooking process and searing it at
the end, similar to the reverse here, but only in
a pan. I came home the other day and Lauren
had some chicken. She cooked it, and I'm eating it.
I'm like, this is great. She's like, do you know
what I did? And she gave me this little wink.
(01:37):
I said, you did the cold seer, didn't I.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Did do the cold seer, and I used a carbon
steel pan, which you also recommended last episode.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, that one came out of left field. Sorry about that.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
We weren't supposed to talk about the pans, but I
realized we need to talk about the pants. Talk about
the pants. Talk about the pants, talking about anything. We're
just Mike popping, as Corolla likes to say, pop. Yeah,
there we go. All right, So what's going on these days?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Okay, Well, they caught the guy who allegedly started the
horrible fires earlier this year.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah, that Palisades fire. So they were actually able to
catch climate change.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Ah yeah, I love that, that's what they blamed it on.
But no, it was a gentleman who is now behind bars.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Well, the Feds caught him. I think that's an important
distinction to make. This wasn't the state of California and
the Feds actually had to come in and catch this guy.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Well, it was like a crazy story because didn't they
didn't they already know he was there?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I think he was. Oh, he
was already invested, he was interviewed or investigated, and.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
He was the only person there. And this fire that
he started was started on January first, which then wasn't
fully contained, and then we had the high winds that
just created this Cataspha.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
The sant Ana wins, yeah, which they knew were coming.
By the way, we knew the Santa Ana wins were coming.
We knew that there was a fire. That is a
key piece of this is that the fire actually was
it was it was basically still alive from the original fire,
and then it spread by virtue of the Santa Ana wins.
Obviously complete tragedy. I think that it is important that
we're still investigating in that they're pushing forward and trying
(03:05):
to figure out who and why and how, and ultimately
the goal here would be push away all the politics
of this. The goal is to put a plan in
place in order to prevent a fire like this from
happening again. But it seems as if politics are being
emulsified into this conversation as usual.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I just don't understand why they wouldn't go out of
their way to do anything in their power, you know,
to prevent this in the future. I feel like they
haven't done anything.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Well, that's the bigger conversation here, right, and this is
where we can bring food into it, is that there's
been a process over the past ten or fifteen twenty
years to really ignore the land and to crush the
businesses of the people who are inherently, you know, built
(03:52):
to respect the land, farmers, ranchers, fishermen, et cetera, and
to move that power, to move that stewardship from the
individual or from the landowner, the private landowner, or ultimately
the people in a community to some kind of a
priori government entities. So the joke I make or and
so not really a joke when it comes to seafood
is that the fishermen are the best ones to be
able to be managing the ocean because it is in
(04:14):
their interest to keep our fish stock sustainable so that
their children in future generations can continue to fish that
particular stock or species. When it's being managed by some
government agency in Washington, DC through a spreadsheet, they don't
know what's happening on the ground. Same applies to business, right,
nobody talks to us about how to draft legislation when
(04:34):
it comes to small businesses restaurants specifically. Instead, you've got
somebody who's never run a business, knows nothing about how
to operate a business. They're team members writing the bills
for businesses. Let's use California, from Sacramento to California. Well,
the same applies to what you see is that there's
this government approach, an absent government approach to managing the
land when a lot of true environmentalists have been saying,
(04:57):
we need to clear the brush, we need to make
sure that the water right are there, and that we've
got private property rights and that we can manage our
property without some outside government agency telling us what to
do and what not to do.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
And then we find.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Out that all of the procedures that they had put
in place to either prevent or at least stop these
fires were empty.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Literally And isn't it.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Correct me if I'm wrong, But isn't.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
It SEQUA siquas Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, And they hold up everything in court.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, it's an environmental qualification study. That's so.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Then by the time you know, they can't get the
brush clear or whatever it is because it's in court.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Well, there's so much.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
There's SEQUA, there's the California Cultural Commissioner's Card, There's all
these like single letter agencies in California. They get in
a way of any any process, any procedure, any development,
any progress. Right now, what I find really interesting about SEQUA,
and this is something that I can bring into play
from a city council perspective, is that they are now
exempting builders and developers from the SEQUA analysis because citizens
(05:53):
they realize they put in all these agencies to stop
progress and to stop building, to stop development. But what
then cit since we're doing this, is that they were
using SEQUA as a basis upon which they could actually
sue building developers to stop building in their communities. But
as we know, it's in the government's interest to jam
down housing, specifically affordable housing into communities specifically along the coast,
(06:15):
because that's how they pushed them in there. So what
they did in the process is that then you'd have
these private citizens that didn't want the development suing using
SEQUA and saying you need to do an environmental review
and eer all of this stuff. So then the government
was like, oh, shoot, our own agency is working against us.
Our own you know measure is now working against us.
So we're going to give exemptions to all the builders
(06:35):
on SEQUA.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
So that's a very interesting way in which it's like
their own tool was turned against them. So then they
legislated to stop the tool. But sorry, I've digressed on this.
I think it's just interesting to understand the way in
which the government works only for their own interest and
we've lost the ability as residents to be able to
have a say in those You know kind of that
(06:57):
government calculus, and then we have this massive fire. We
all knew what led into it. Now we have an
individual and they blamed it on climate change for so long,
but now we have an individual who started the fire.
And it had to be the FEDS that came in
and actually shine the light on that, because the State
of California wasn't doing anything, you know, to really forensically
determine how the fire started, who started the fire, when where.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
It's all very unfortunate and you know, I can't even
believe it's been how long, and there has been no progress.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Really, there hasn't been progress.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
And this is obviously near and dear to us because
when the fire started, we knew there was going to
be an issue, which is when we started our firefund,
and we were able to bring products and food and
money and give people a place to stay and bring
it up and work with the Dream Center to bring
it up to Los Angeles to the directly to the fire,
the firefighters and the fire lines, to the shelters through
the Dream Center, et cetera. Because we said, we know
(07:50):
that in the face of a catastrophe, the last person
to respond or the last entity to respond is the government.
The first people to respond are always going to be
the community, nonpartisan, you know. I think the warm and
fuzzy feeling of what happened in the aftermath, the immediate
aftermass of the fires, was actually watching communities come together
(08:10):
to help their own. Yeah, And that's kind of the
takeaway or the thesis here, is that the people in
the community are always going to be there to help
each other, whereas the government seems now conditioned to politicize
things to the degree that they only help certain groups
based on what their political posturing is.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
And that's the unfortunate reality.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
So I think there's some closure by virtue of the
fact that they arrested the arsonists who started the fire,
But I still think that we need to do.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
A lot more.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
I agree.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Why isn't there much barbecue in California?
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
That's my transition?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
I don't know, A good question.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
All you got is Dicky's Barbecue, which is a fascinating
You've gotals lucills, Yeah, do you like Luciles?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I don't not like it.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
I always say California barbecue is the land of liquid smoke.
A good barbecue though, I know, But there's it's the
Land of liquid smoke. Liquid smoke, for those of you
don't know, that's actually something you can buy at the store.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
And it's really just like.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
It would be as if you took the char left
on the inside of your grill lid and then you
liquefied it and put it in a bottle and when
you drop it into your food, it immediately tastes like smoke.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But it tastes like fake smoke. It is fake smoke.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
And there's like a lot of sodium in there, and
I'm pretty sure there's msg and there's like caramel coloring
all the fun stuff. Yeah, the Land of liquid smoke
because there's smoke, because there's not real barbecue now there
there's a few good real barbecue spots.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Portzos is great.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, there's a few one offs, for sure.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
There are one offs.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yeah, we gotta go to the great State of Texas
to get some good barbecue.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah. I like Texas barbecue. I like North Carolina barbecue.
A lot of people think of barbecue as the sauce,
barbecue as the process by what you're grilling and smoking.
When it comes to barbecue sauce, I don't like the
sweet and sticky barbecue sauce. I like the vinegar based
barbecue sauce.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
You get more of.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
That in like your Carolina barbecue, but in Texas, I
think you get more of that sweet and sticky sauce,
but you get really good barbecue obviously across the board
in Texas.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Oh my god, I'm hungry.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
I know where there's a few we took. So when
the pandemic hit, we got went and got an RV
because they cost virtually nothing.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
It was like, I'm not kidding, what was it like
thirteen dollars a day, and then insurance was like seven
dollars and we definitely got the insurance because we have
four kids, but it was like twenty dollars a day.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, it was twenty dollars a day. So we just
drove around. We left California, we drove all around New Mexico, Texas, Colorado.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
We went Utah. Yeah, we yep all the way through Utah.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
And what we would do is we were basically just
targeting barbecue spots and then we would go in and
we would get the barbecue. I mean pounds and pounds
and pounds of barbecue. I've never seen Lauren eat so
much meat. It was like Adam Richmond, I was also pregnant.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I was pregnant too.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, we touched on that last time we had pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
What did you reat pregnancy cravings?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
No, said you felt pregnant.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
I felt pregnant. It is true.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
We hey, men, send me a message. You know what
I'm talking about, right, feeling pregnant. When your wife is pregnant,
You're tired, you're broken, you're emotionally distraught.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Your belly always feels full.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Oh, I think, give me a break, Yeah, give me a.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Break, you know. Do you know what I saw the
other day of the news, the manopause?
Speaker 1 (11:16):
What's menopause?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So menopause for women? What is menopause?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Describe our hormonal changes?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (11:23):
They fluctuate, Okay, drastically.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
So now there's this thing called manopause. It's basically like
a man's midlife crisis.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Which is also it's your testosterone.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
My testosterone could drop, so many other hormones could drop. Okay,
So when you see me sweating in the middle of
the day, freaking out, stressing, anxiety ridden, crying, sitting in
the corner holding myself, eating barbecue, just understand that I
could be going through menopause.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Like he's going through manopause.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
She's not really having this one, so I'm not. I'm
gonna move on.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
We are in the midst of playoff season when it
comes to baseball, and baseball is the one sport I follow,
and I follow it closely. I love baseball because pastime,
our team, unfortunately is out.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
The Yankees talk about it. I'm so sad.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I know, I think everybody just threw something at the
at the screen, at the microphone. But the thing about
sports when it comes to food is that I used
to get excited about going to sporting events, right, Baseball, hockey, basketball,
et cetera, because there was, like you would go I
grew up in Jersey, right, we'd go see the Nets,
we'd go see the Knicks, or we'd go to other
(12:27):
basketball teams with the Celtics, what have you. And there
was different food in different stadiums, and like the hot
dogs didn't taste the same at each place. Something's happened
with sports food over the past ten to twenty years
that has really distilled into one flavor of junk.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Well.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I feel well, at least at the stadiums we go to,
I feel like they have more of a focus on
the drinks to get people.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
What's the focus though they have a big drink.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
No, they have all these like fun like micheladas and
like all these other drinks and specialty cocktails, and I
think their goal is to get people drunk, so when
they eat the food they don't realize how bad it is.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
That's actually a good point. You're right, Angel Stadium. There's
so many different liquor vendors all the way throughout. So
you walk through your right, you get the match alati,
you get the big fat cans, you get the you
get the beer, the craft beer. They have brought a
lot of craft beer brewers in there. That is a
very good point you make. Now, I will say, for example,
like Melissa's World Variety Produce, they have a lot of
fresh food that they bring into the stadiums, and like
those little snack grab and go snack areas. I don't
(13:25):
think those are highlighted enough. And there's a couple good
food items that like Angel Stadium, but by and large,
the main vendors, the main kind of like legacy food
vendors where you go up you get the popcorn, the
hot dog, crack of Jack's peanuts, nachos. It's always the same.
It's always the same. It's horrible. It's the hot dogs
just sit in a steam table for three hours. They're
nine dollars eleven dollars for a small hot dog. Now
(13:48):
you can't even get ketchup or mustard on the hot
dogs because they don't allow you to have the packets
because they're trying to save money. So you got to
go over to the little ste You got to go
over to the stand to go squeeze.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah, you're waiting in line. Everybody has their stuff everywhere.
You're like spelling ketchup all over yourself.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
And we've got four kids, so you know, four kids,
four hot dogs. Lauren eats one, so that's five. I
eat seven. Right, So now we're talking about twelve hot
dogs that I got to carry, and I've got to
individually slather the ketchup on each hot dog then carry
it back these Okay, sorry, why is stadium food so bad?
Speaker 1 (14:30):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Well I'm gonna tell you why, because it's the same
reason why food is so bad at all institutions, schools, hospitals,
you name it is because what's the food is secondary?
They want to make their money on everything else, including
the alcohol. So they bring in like one big vendor
who's going to manage and handle all the food service.
If I'm going to a stadium, Let's say in Orange County,
(14:51):
you've got twenty thirty chefs that you can bring in
to each run their own little food stand in there.
Like contract it out, let them come up with their
own menu. There's such amazing food through Orange County, California.
You've got the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam and Westminster,
Fountain Valley, Garden Grove. Right, bring in some Vietnamese a mansion,
(15:12):
a bond me at the stadium. Oh, that'd be fantastic,
just contracted out. They take a percentage of sales, and
every single stand, not everyone, because some people still want
the basics, which keep them as the basics, but every
other standard. So should be a specific local food vendor. Well,
there are some, there's a few.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
There's a few, but then you have to if they're
on only certain levels at a certain spot. It's not
like you you know, you get out of your seat
and go walk and then there's like, you know, twelve
of the same you know, food vendor or whatever over.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
We went to an Anaheim Ducks game preseason game, and
it's the same thing.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
You get the California Pizza Kitchen pizza and it's like
twenty three dollars for a microwave pizza. It's probably the
worst pizza I've ever.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Eaten in my life.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yet I still continue to eat it because even the
worst pizza is still better than nothing. Then you go
in and you get the microwaved hot dogs, so you're
dropping a pretty you know, one hundred dollar bill.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
You get the popcorn that's been sitting out forever.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
I'd rather grind that up and bread it on chicken
and have popcorn chicken. Just throwing a little tip in there.
So I don't know what's going on with the uh
with sports food, but I think that we need to
make a change. If we're missing something here, let us know,
hit us up, tell us where we need to study, fine, follow,
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
We're coming into Halloween.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
We are We love Halloween as a family.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
I'm a halloweener.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Oh yes, you are all right. So speaking of Halloween, Andrew,
what is if we can if I could ask what
is your favorite Halloween candy?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
If you have one Charleston chew.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
What the heck is a Charleston chew?
Speaker 2 (16:40):
What? What is that? What? Are you a communist?
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I've never heard what Charleston chew is. No Charleston chew.
Is this like chewy chocolate covered marshmallow? Inside it was
like yellow with blue writing. You've never heard of a
Charleston chew. Nobody gives them out anymore.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
That's probably why I've never heard of it.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
What's your favorite Halloween ca Okay.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Mine was the hundred Grand bars. But they did something
to them because I don't know last year and I
was like scouring through the kids Halloween bags. I ate
a couple and they were just not the same. They
were dry, they weren't as caremey as I could remember.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
If that's a lot of.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
These legacy brands do change their ingredients frequently that you know,
and like whether they up the high fructose corn syrup
where they changed the ingredient, It's not like they're changing
the fundamental recipe. They're just adding a new, cheaper chemical
to the candy bar.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah, it was horrible. I was super disappointed.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Well, all right, so you know, we're all into Maha
stuff and we want to eat healthy. The problem is
is that when it comes to like Halloween, that one
off right, Everyone's like, well, make your own fresh Halloween candy,
and I agree with that. We've done a lot of
videos showing you how to make your own Reese's peanut buttercups,
showing you how to make your own Reese's penises whatever
it is. And I knew you were gonna say that
(17:52):
Reese's pieces.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Sorry, Well, and the thing is too you know what
Halloween is like the you know, the time of year,
like we don't care like the kids whatever, I don't
care if they eat you know, their weight worth of candy,
which sounds horrible, but it's like Halloween, like that's what
we grew up with. Like I'm not gonna, you know,
make them eat a freaking cutie. Those little oranges.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I always loved. It was like we'd go to the houses.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
They'd give you like the pretzels, Oh my gosh, or
a or they give you like a like.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
A small leaflet, like religious handout.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
I swear one year somebody was handing out like celery
sticks and peanut butter, and I was like, what is
happening our poor.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Kids with raisins ants on a log.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
So but but but here's my point, right, what I'm
getting at is most families aren't gonna do that. It's
gonna cost more, They're not going to have the time.
I think that that's like elitism at its finest to
be like go make your own Halloween candy. You can't
do that, but you can look for like local candy makers.
Maybe try and find like Boutiqui type candy. There are
a few candy stores here in Orange County that feature
(18:53):
like those old school sugar daddies, like Charleston Chew's.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Well that is, Arche County has a lot of daddy's.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
And I'm not talking about the candy bar, but there
used to be like if you go back in history
and you look at all the candy companies, like there
were so many different types of candy, and now all
you get is Twizzlers, Eminem's, Skittles, Milky Way, Snickers, kit Kats,
twigs and Hershey, Like that's it.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
That's it. Jolly ranchers.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
If nobody's giving out jolly ranchers, I actually don't mind
jolly ranchers.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Well, they scare me because they're a choking hazard.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
That is true. Lawns.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Lauren's worried about choking hazards, which I think is great
for mother's mother, because our kids have choked. I know
that's do you know that William once I took them
to the dry cleaners, took our.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Son, Yeah, William. Everyone knows William.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
So William, I took my son to the dry cleaners. Well,
I didn't take them to the dry cleaners. It wasn't like, hey, buddy,
we're going to the dry cleaners.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And he was excited. I was going to the dry
cleaners and.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
They had the little what are the mints right with
the red and the white circles, and he the guy
gave him one. When I had my back turn and
William act, she start choking on it and I had
to give him the hime lick or the like, the
gentle heime lick. This was remember he was it was two,
two or three. It was the saddest, like right now,
I'm getting a little choked up. It was the saddest,
scariest experience of my life. So parents of the kids,
(20:13):
be careful.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Of the hard And I'll tell a story too. I mean,
this is I'm totally whatever. I was eighteen years old.
I was getting my eyebrows done. I'll never forget it.
They had a bowl of candy when you went to
check out, and there was a little girl watching like
her mom was getting her eyebrows done or something. And
she's staring at me and she just has tears flowing
from her eyes. She's not making a sound. She must
have been three four years old. And I realized, oh
(20:36):
my gosh, she's choking. I literally gave her the Heimelck.
I'm eighteen years old. I was so like shook it up.
From that, I'm like, oh my gosh. And her mom
still has no idea. I just saved her daughter's life.
She's oblivious, sitting in the chair getting her eyebrows done.
But those hard candies scare me, I know, So don't
give out hard candies and get.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Your eyebrows don because if Lauren hadn't been getting her eyebrows,
she hadn't been getting those caterpillars killed, then she wouldn't
have been there to listen save that little kid.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
It all happened. It all happened for a reason.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Why mom's in the background getting a Brazilian while our
kid is choking.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yeah, it was scary. So what the fork wt That
was a really sad Yeah, let's.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Let's lighten us up here, and what the fork wait?
Hold on?
Speaker 3 (21:17):
We never concluded though, So go try and find some
botiki candy, like obviously, you know, we give you the
get out of jail free card for maybe indulging in
some of the candy. Try and limit it. Go for
the those that don't have the artificial colors in there.
If anything, I would say like stick with the chocolate.
But the other option is is that have a pre
party or a post party where the kids are splitting
(21:38):
in their candy up and then you can make something
fresh and fun like and we'll post some recipes. But
chocolate covered apples, your own little caramel.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
A lot of people now are doing. They're having their
kids give them all the candy because there's a switch witch.
Have you heard of this? No, the switch witch?
Speaker 2 (21:55):
So you sound's delicious.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
The kids give the parents the candy and in the morning,
the switch twitch. It's like a tooth fairy. Oh, a
witch brings you a toy.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Jack's tooth fell out.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
We didn't I know, okay, but brings you a toy.
So you give them all your candy in order to
get this toy. So that's how parents are convincing their
kids to give up their candy.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
We're bribing our kids by creating false idols.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
And I just I end up just taking it all
to the restaurant and give it to our employees partially.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
But the funniest thing is, within twenty four to forty
eight hours after Halloween, Laura'll be like, oh, I'm taking
all this candy to the restaurant, and I'll go into
her car and it just there's just candy wrappers strewed
from wall to wall, as if she was just sitting
there watching the Hallmark Channel eating bonbonds.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
It's only the chocolate, the good chocolate. It's like it's
only twigs or one hundred grand. But like I said
last year, I was pretty disappointed.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Twigs are disgusting.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
What how the heck do you like for yourself? Eything
with a wafer like I just, first of all, I
hate the word wafer. Second of all, I hate things
with wafers.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Stop saying wafer the wafer?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Okay? A fork?
Speaker 1 (22:53):
What the fork?
Speaker 3 (22:54):
All?
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Right?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
So are what the fork story? It's Governor Newsom an
a Sembly Bill six twenty eight, which requires California landlords
to supply a working refrigerator, hand stove and rental units
starting with Lesa's on or after January first, twenty twenty six.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Well, okay, so I do think that if you're renting someplace,
it's always nice to have a refrigerator. So you know,
I don't want to for a stove.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
I mean, aren't these like standard?
Speaker 3 (23:21):
These are pretty standards, So I don't know why we
need to legislate it. Like that's the thing, that's why
I have trouble with all of this is that let
the free market do its thing. If there's a landlord
that's not providing a stove a refrigerator, that's a pretty
junkie landlord. This this is what my take on all
of these government mandates. They're mandating something that's good right
that we just assume is a given. For example, like
(23:42):
we're always going to pay above minimum wage because we
want to. We look at what the living wage calculator
is and we want to pay our workers more. We're
not doing it because the government's telling us to do it.
Because of that, we're able to attract the best workers
because the guys who are trying to skimp on their
employees and are paying them less. They're not going to
go work there when you mandate that those people then
(24:04):
start paying more, and then the workers go and work
for those workers, only to find out that they're not
good employers anyway. So you're artificially creating the veneer that
these are good employers when we need the free market
to wipe them out and the free market to force
them to do the right thing. So the same applies
here with landlords. If a landlord is not providing these things,
(24:24):
then you're not going to rent there. You're going to
go rent from the landlord that is providing those amenities exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
And like this is so the law aims to protect
tenants from the burden of buying these essential appliances. But like,
I've never rented a place that hasn't provided a stove
or a refrigerator.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
There might be some, I mean there's probably some in
like at bad areas of interest.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
It's like a refrigerator sometimes.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
But once again, the free market, do you know how much. Okay,
let's just say hypothetically, there was a building that was
built in Huntington Beach, right, and there was low income
tenants there and they need it twenty stoves and twenty refrigerators. Right,
So let's say that that's going to cost forty thousand dollars,
fifty thousand dollars. I guarantee you that if we got
the community together and so we're going to raise fifty
(25:10):
thousand dollars to help these people individually. Now they own
those at this point, not the landlord. Those people own those.
The community will always come together to help people. Of course,
I have an inherent faith in the community to do this.
We don't need the government to mandate how certain business
owners and individuals spend their money.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yeah. I don't know why everything needs to be turned
into a bill.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, well because they're bored. So I mean that's the WTF,
which I think is definitely an interesting one. It's time
in this part of the show to sharpen your skills.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
We got some cooking techs. Do you want to give
us one today? No, you don't want to give us one.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
I don't have any sharpen your skills. Like everything I do,
I need to be physically doing it. You're so much
better at.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
This scramble the eggs. So people ask me all that
I'm doing this off the top. I have this one
as impre rehearse. People ask me about salting the eggs
before they scramble them.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Don't do it, No, do it? You do, but you
don't do it because it makes them tough.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
No, how are eggs going to be tough? When's the
last time you were You were like, ah, those eggs
are too chewy.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Besides, let's try it, let's test it at home.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
So what happens is the salt actually denatures the protein, okay,
which then allows for it to hold on to more moisture.
So you do want to pre salt your eggs as
you're whisking them, in addition to hitting them with a
little bit of milk, because then that also changes the
protein structure and allows the eggs to retain more moisture.
So a little bit of cold milk, a little bit
of salt, whisk them up. I like to whist some
(26:32):
air in there, and then once again starting with a
medium to low heat pan. You don't want a high
heat pan. High heat and eggs just do not go
well together. There's nothing worse than brown eggs.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Oh, they're so gross.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
So I start with with butter in a low heat pan,
and I just stir and ster and stir and stir.
There was a like kind of a legend in the
industry or Scoffee, who was one of the greatest chefs
ever to live. He wrote a Scoffee's Bible and cooking
et cetera, where when you would have young komi or
apprentices come in and say, scramble an egg, or like
(27:05):
time is irrelevant, scramble the best eggs you can cook, period,
hands down. Any cook that brought out like an egg
cooking pan was immediately not hired.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
It was the cooks that started to cook their eggs.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
On a double boiler, interesting because it was that low
and slow, gentle heat that prevented the proteins from seizoning
it up too tightly. So you get that beautiful soft, silky,
velvety egg by doing it low and slow over a
longer period of time. You want to tell our listeners
what a double boiler.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Is, isn't it where you just have the water and
then you put something on top of it. The water
is like simmery.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah, so you're creating like you're essentially steaming. It's like
gentle heat.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
It's not that direct fire so you take a pot,
fill it with a little bit of water so it
creates steam, and then put a stainless steel bowl over
the pot, so the heat is coming from the steam
source underneath the thin stainless steel bowl as you're whisking
it slowly, cooking and me together.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
It's the fancy term of baine marie.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
It is a baine marie. You're right, double boiler.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Bab I'm like, what's a double boiler?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Well, I just I hate using the French term. I mean,
ever since the accident.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
All right, we were moving on to our eighty six it,
I'll tell you mine. Glamorizing these harmful stunts. Have you
seen these kids try and do all this crazy stuff,
you know, beating a train, like running across the train
tracks and all these craziness.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
I'm like, guys or subwoy surfing, and it's.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
It's for what for what for? Like likes and clicks.
It's so I'm like, oh my gosh, these kids need
to stop doing that.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
It's scary.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
There was just a girl that I saw in Chicago
who died. She was thirteen years old. She was subway
surfing for like a TikTok video and she died.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yeah, they need to stop, Like nobody like you don't
need to do that stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
I was even scrolling the other day and I saw
this kid jump off that This is the new one
where they're jumping off of buildings into water, but they're
jumping over so like let's say a building is set
back feet over like a street, they'll jump out to
go over the street into the water and narrowly miss
the edge. And I saw this one video where this
kid jumped, but I guess the I was. Of course,
(29:12):
I start reading to comments like a fool, he jumped
next to this long pole that was in the water,
and everyone's like, he narrowly missed the pole. And then
somebody commented, well, it was the only place I think
the person who took the video where it was deep enough,
so we had to get near the pole or next
to the pole, because that's how it was deep enough.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Yeah, he need to stop doing this stuff. It's not
worth it anyway. That was my depressed in eighty six.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Well, we're never going to let our kids do that.
That's where we don't let our kids have phones. Actually
I won't even let my kid have a rotary phone.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
No, our kids don't have social media, even our oldest,
because I just don't want her to feel pressured to
do any of these stupid things.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I might take your social media away. Please do I
know you've been playing with your eyebrows a lot?
Speaker 1 (29:53):
What?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
I don't know?
Speaker 1 (29:54):
What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Going back to the original story, I would say my
eighty six it is is someone in line with that
because it goes with like the why are you doing
this for clicks? So we talk about food influencers all
the time in the restaurant industry. People who come in
demand a free meal tell you they're going to give
you a ton of coverage. Order twenty items on the menu,
line the table with it, take a high res close
(30:17):
up shot of every single item, then leave all the food.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
All the food. They don't eat it. And I feel
like this was necessary. I want to say back in
like twenty seventeen, twenty sixteen, like you really did want
those food influencers in your restaurant and taking pictures of
everything because people really did like listen to them. Yeah,
but nowadays you don't need that.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
I was still I was still even then I was disgusted.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
We never paid anybody. So that's the thing. Some people
would like try to get us to pay them, and
I'm like, we're not paying you to post our food.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
A lot of the good original food influencers like Daily Food,
Feed and Devour Power.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, those were like the ogs.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Those were the OG's and they would eat it right
like they would eat it, and they would do a
story about the restaurant and they would cut more than
just the food. Now it's like, I want to come in,
I want to take my photo and I'm out, I
want to make money on my social media off of
your food, and I'm gonna throw the food away because
I'm wasteful.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah. One, it's just incredibly wasteful. And two it's like, okay,
I had this. I remember not too long ago. A
couple months ago, somebody reached out to me with, you know,
maybe five six thousand followers. I'd love to come in
and shoot some content for you and you know this,
that and the other. And I'm like, girlfriend, I don't
need you to come in. And she called her girlfriend
shoot some content. No I did not, but it's funny, girl,
(31:32):
girl don't need you.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
See this is she's getting feisty now or moving in
moving in past thirty minutes and she's ready to throw
the gauntlet. So I agree with that one that needs
to go. What do you guys think needs we need
eighty six these days, so be sure to hit us up.
I'm at Chef Gruel on X tell us what you
want to see eighty.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Six and I'm Lauren Girl on X. Yeah, let us
know or give us your WTF stories.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah, WTF stories you name it?
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Or what do you want to see? Like what sharpen
your skills?
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Yes, food questions all the time. I think that that
and of itself could be its own show. And maybe
we'll start doing a list. We'll create a segment where
we take a lot of the food questions we get
and we can answer them because we need to see
more people cooking at home. That's going to be the
key to increasing our health in America, reducing chronic disease,
but most importantly bringing the family around the table. I
think that so much happens over the table from a
(32:22):
community perspective that otherwise people wouldn't come together. I've always
said you could take the two of the most diametrically
opposed personalities, be it in politics, business and life and
put them, have them sit down, eat together over a meal,
and all they can talk about is food.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
And I guarantee you they will find so much common ground.
They'll say, maybe this person isn't that bad unless it's
Katie Porter.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
I've always said I'd love to sit down with Gavin
Newsom at French laundry have a conversation.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
I've always wanted to go to the French laundry, so
maybe we can have a little triple date.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
After he was caught dining at the French laundry, it
killed it for me, It really did.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
The French laundry.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Yeah, I don't want together, Yeah, I really don't.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
All right, well let's not.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Why don't I take you to the Spanish laundry?
Speaker 1 (33:08):
All right? Sounds fun.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
It's where you bring your dirty clothes and then they
smother you and olive juice.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Oh I like it?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
All right.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
On that note, that was a little awkward, So we
like to leave you with the awkwardness, So enjoy the
rest of your day. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Be sure to follow us American Gravy wherever you listen
to your podcasts and subscribe whatever you got to do,
click all the buttons. Make sure you give us a
review five star, obviously, because Lauren's five star.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Oh dear, all right bye, guys,
Hey, everyone, Welcome back to American Gravy, where food meets
fun and flavor meets the absurd. I'm absurd. Oh, I'm
Lauren Gruhl.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Oh, I'm Andrew Girl.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
And today we're diving into some of the funniest, strangest,
and most mouthwatering food stories and making the rounds look food.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Has gotten crazy. Everybody's trying to push the envelope way
too far. The beauty of food, though, is that it
touches everything and everyone. So obviously our stories are going
to go beyond food, but we'll bring it back to food.
That's the centerpiece. I always say that food is the
great unifier. It's also the vehicle through which you can
understand everything happening in the world because everyone touches food
(00:41):
in some way or another, including the supply chain and
at the end of the day, what they're eating.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
So we're really excited to have you.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
We are incredibly grateful and thankful that we have this
opportunity to be talking food with all of you. And
for those of you that are listening for the first time, welcome.
For those of you that are back, welcome back. Hope
you had some good meals along the way.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I hope they used some of your your what is it?
What is that?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
My quick tips?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
No skills, your skills. Yeah, we got to sharpen the skills.
We were talking about ground beef. Last time we talked
about the cold seer. We actually did a video on
the cold seer.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I actually used the cold seer.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I know I can't so the cold seer, which is
kind of just in recap, is my way of like
cooking protein, starting off in a cold pan as opposed
to a hot pan, and then bringing the heat up
towards the through the cooking process and searing it at
the end, similar to the reverse here, but only in
a pan. I came home the other day and Lauren
had some chicken. She cooked it, and I'm eating it.
I'm like, this is great. She's like, do you know
what I did? And she gave me this little wink.
(01:37):
I said, you did the cold seer, didn't I.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Did do the cold seer, and I used a carbon
steel pan, which you also recommended last episode.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, that one came out of left field. Sorry about that.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
We weren't supposed to talk about the pans, but I
realized we need to talk about the pants. Talk about
the pants. Talk about the pants, talking about anything. We're
just Mike popping, as Corolla likes to say, pop. Yeah,
there we go. All right, So what's going on these days?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Okay, Well, they caught the guy who allegedly started the
horrible fires earlier this year.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah, that Palisades fire. So they were actually able to
catch climate change.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Ah yeah, I love that, that's what they blamed it on.
But no, it was a gentleman who is now behind bars.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Well, the Feds caught him. I think that's an important
distinction to make. This wasn't the state of California and
the Feds actually had to come in and catch this guy.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Well, it was like a crazy story because didn't they
didn't they already know he was there?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I think he was. Oh, he
was already invested, he was interviewed or investigated, and.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
He was the only person there. And this fire that
he started was started on January first, which then wasn't
fully contained, and then we had the high winds that
just created this Cataspha.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
The sant Ana wins, yeah, which they knew were coming.
By the way, we knew the Santa Ana wins were coming.
We knew that there was a fire. That is a
key piece of this is that the fire actually was
it was it was basically still alive from the original fire,
and then it spread by virtue of the Santa Ana wins.
Obviously complete tragedy. I think that it is important that
we're still investigating in that they're pushing forward and trying
(03:05):
to figure out who and why and how, and ultimately
the goal here would be push away all the politics
of this. The goal is to put a plan in
place in order to prevent a fire like this from
happening again. But it seems as if politics are being
emulsified into this conversation as usual.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I just don't understand why they wouldn't go out of
their way to do anything in their power, you know,
to prevent this in the future. I feel like they
haven't done anything.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Well, that's the bigger conversation here, right, and this is
where we can bring food into it, is that there's
been a process over the past ten or fifteen twenty
years to really ignore the land and to crush the
businesses of the people who are inherently, you know, built
(03:52):
to respect the land, farmers, ranchers, fishermen, et cetera, and
to move that power, to move that stewardship from the
individual or from the landowner, the private landowner, or ultimately
the people in a community to some kind of a
priori government entities. So the joke I make or and
so not really a joke when it comes to seafood
is that the fishermen are the best ones to be
able to be managing the ocean because it is in
(04:14):
their interest to keep our fish stock sustainable so that
their children in future generations can continue to fish that
particular stock or species. When it's being managed by some
government agency in Washington, DC through a spreadsheet, they don't
know what's happening on the ground. Same applies to business, right,
nobody talks to us about how to draft legislation when
(04:34):
it comes to small businesses restaurants specifically. Instead, you've got
somebody who's never run a business, knows nothing about how
to operate a business. They're team members writing the bills
for businesses. Let's use California, from Sacramento to California. Well,
the same applies to what you see is that there's
this government approach, an absent government approach to managing the
land when a lot of true environmentalists have been saying,
(04:57):
we need to clear the brush, we need to make
sure that the water right are there, and that we've
got private property rights and that we can manage our
property without some outside government agency telling us what to
do and what not to do.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
And then we find.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Out that all of the procedures that they had put
in place to either prevent or at least stop these
fires were empty.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Literally And isn't it.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Correct me if I'm wrong, But isn't.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
It SEQUA siquas Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, And they hold up everything in court.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, it's an environmental qualification study. That's so.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Then by the time you know, they can't get the
brush clear or whatever it is because it's in court.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Well, there's so much.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
There's SEQUA, there's the California Cultural Commissioner's Card, There's all
these like single letter agencies in California. They get in
a way of any any process, any procedure, any development,
any progress. Right now, what I find really interesting about SEQUA,
and this is something that I can bring into play
from a city council perspective, is that they are now
exempting builders and developers from the SEQUA analysis because citizens
(05:53):
they realize they put in all these agencies to stop
progress and to stop building, to stop development. But what
then cit since we're doing this, is that they were
using SEQUA as a basis upon which they could actually
sue building developers to stop building in their communities. But
as we know, it's in the government's interest to jam
down housing, specifically affordable housing into communities specifically along the coast,
(06:15):
because that's how they pushed them in there. So what
they did in the process is that then you'd have
these private citizens that didn't want the development suing using
SEQUA and saying you need to do an environmental review
and eer all of this stuff. So then the government
was like, oh, shoot, our own agency is working against us.
Our own you know measure is now working against us.
So we're going to give exemptions to all the builders
(06:35):
on SEQUA.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
So that's a very interesting way in which it's like
their own tool was turned against them. So then they
legislated to stop the tool. But sorry, I've digressed on this.
I think it's just interesting to understand the way in
which the government works only for their own interest and
we've lost the ability as residents to be able to
have a say in those You know kind of that
(06:57):
government calculus, and then we have this massive fire. We
all knew what led into it. Now we have an
individual and they blamed it on climate change for so long,
but now we have an individual who started the fire.
And it had to be the FEDS that came in
and actually shine the light on that, because the State
of California wasn't doing anything, you know, to really forensically
determine how the fire started, who started the fire, when where.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
It's all very unfortunate and you know, I can't even
believe it's been how long, and there has been no progress.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Really, there hasn't been progress.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
And this is obviously near and dear to us because
when the fire started, we knew there was going to
be an issue, which is when we started our firefund,
and we were able to bring products and food and
money and give people a place to stay and bring
it up and work with the Dream Center to bring
it up to Los Angeles to the directly to the fire,
the firefighters and the fire lines, to the shelters through
the Dream Center, et cetera. Because we said, we know
(07:50):
that in the face of a catastrophe, the last person
to respond or the last entity to respond is the government.
The first people to respond are always going to be
the community, nonpartisan, you know. I think the warm and
fuzzy feeling of what happened in the aftermath, the immediate
aftermass of the fires, was actually watching communities come together
(08:10):
to help their own. Yeah, And that's kind of the
takeaway or the thesis here, is that the people in
the community are always going to be there to help
each other, whereas the government seems now conditioned to politicize
things to the degree that they only help certain groups
based on what their political posturing is.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
And that's the unfortunate reality.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
So I think there's some closure by virtue of the
fact that they arrested the arsonists who started the fire,
But I still think that we need to do.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
A lot more.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
I agree.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Why isn't there much barbecue in California?
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
That's my transition?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
I don't know, A good question.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
All you got is Dicky's Barbecue, which is a fascinating
You've gotals lucills, Yeah, do you like Luciles?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I don't not like it.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
I always say California barbecue is the land of liquid smoke.
A good barbecue though, I know, But there's it's the
Land of liquid smoke. Liquid smoke, for those of you
don't know, that's actually something you can buy at the store.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
And it's really just like.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
It would be as if you took the char left
on the inside of your grill lid and then you
liquefied it and put it in a bottle and when
you drop it into your food, it immediately tastes like smoke.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But it tastes like fake smoke. It is fake smoke.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
And there's like a lot of sodium in there, and
I'm pretty sure there's msg and there's like caramel coloring
all the fun stuff. Yeah, the Land of liquid smoke
because there's smoke, because there's not real barbecue now there
there's a few good real barbecue spots.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Portzos is great.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, there's a few one offs, for sure.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
There are one offs.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yeah, we gotta go to the great State of Texas
to get some good barbecue.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah. I like Texas barbecue. I like North Carolina barbecue.
A lot of people think of barbecue as the sauce,
barbecue as the process by what you're grilling and smoking.
When it comes to barbecue sauce, I don't like the
sweet and sticky barbecue sauce. I like the vinegar based
barbecue sauce.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
You get more of.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
That in like your Carolina barbecue, but in Texas, I
think you get more of that sweet and sticky sauce,
but you get really good barbecue obviously across the board
in Texas.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Oh my god, I'm hungry.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
I know where there's a few we took. So when
the pandemic hit, we got went and got an RV
because they cost virtually nothing.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
It was like, I'm not kidding, what was it like
thirteen dollars a day, and then insurance was like seven
dollars and we definitely got the insurance because we have
four kids, but it was like twenty dollars a day.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, it was twenty dollars a day. So we just
drove around. We left California, we drove all around New Mexico, Texas, Colorado.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
We went Utah. Yeah, we yep all the way through Utah.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
And what we would do is we were basically just
targeting barbecue spots and then we would go in and
we would get the barbecue. I mean pounds and pounds
and pounds of barbecue. I've never seen Lauren eat so
much meat. It was like Adam Richmond, I was also pregnant.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I was pregnant too.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, we touched on that last time we had pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
What did you reat pregnancy cravings?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
No, said you felt pregnant.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
I felt pregnant. It is true.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
We hey, men, send me a message. You know what
I'm talking about, right, feeling pregnant. When your wife is pregnant,
You're tired, you're broken, you're emotionally distraught.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Your belly always feels full.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Oh, I think, give me a break, Yeah, give me a.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Break, you know. Do you know what I saw the
other day of the news, the manopause?
Speaker 1 (11:16):
What's menopause?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So menopause for women? What is menopause?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Describe our hormonal changes?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (11:23):
They fluctuate, Okay, drastically.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
So now there's this thing called manopause. It's basically like
a man's midlife crisis.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Which is also it's your testosterone.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
My testosterone could drop, so many other hormones could drop. Okay,
So when you see me sweating in the middle of
the day, freaking out, stressing, anxiety ridden, crying, sitting in
the corner holding myself, eating barbecue, just understand that I
could be going through menopause.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Like he's going through manopause.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
She's not really having this one, so I'm not. I'm
gonna move on.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
We are in the midst of playoff season when it
comes to baseball, and baseball is the one sport I follow,
and I follow it closely. I love baseball because pastime,
our team, unfortunately is out.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
The Yankees talk about it. I'm so sad.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I know, I think everybody just threw something at the
at the screen, at the microphone. But the thing about
sports when it comes to food is that I used
to get excited about going to sporting events, right, Baseball, hockey, basketball,
et cetera, because there was, like you would go I
grew up in Jersey, right, we'd go see the Nets,
we'd go see the Knicks, or we'd go to other
(12:27):
basketball teams with the Celtics, what have you. And there
was different food in different stadiums, and like the hot
dogs didn't taste the same at each place. Something's happened
with sports food over the past ten to twenty years
that has really distilled into one flavor of junk.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Well.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I feel well, at least at the stadiums we go to,
I feel like they have more of a focus on
the drinks to get people.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
What's the focus though they have a big drink.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
No, they have all these like fun like micheladas and
like all these other drinks and specialty cocktails, and I
think their goal is to get people drunk, so when
they eat the food they don't realize how bad it is.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
That's actually a good point. You're right, Angel Stadium. There's
so many different liquor vendors all the way throughout. So
you walk through your right, you get the match alati,
you get the big fat cans, you get the you
get the beer, the craft beer. They have brought a
lot of craft beer brewers in there. That is a
very good point you make. Now, I will say, for example,
like Melissa's World Variety Produce, they have a lot of
fresh food that they bring into the stadiums, and like
those little snack grab and go snack areas. I don't
(13:25):
think those are highlighted enough. And there's a couple good
food items that like Angel Stadium, but by and large,
the main vendors, the main kind of like legacy food
vendors where you go up you get the popcorn, the
hot dog, crack of Jack's peanuts, nachos. It's always the same.
It's always the same. It's horrible. It's the hot dogs
just sit in a steam table for three hours. They're
nine dollars eleven dollars for a small hot dog. Now
(13:48):
you can't even get ketchup or mustard on the hot
dogs because they don't allow you to have the packets
because they're trying to save money. So you got to
go over to the little ste You got to go
over to the stand to go squeeze.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah, you're waiting in line. Everybody has their stuff everywhere.
You're like spelling ketchup all over yourself.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
And we've got four kids, so you know, four kids,
four hot dogs. Lauren eats one, so that's five. I
eat seven. Right, So now we're talking about twelve hot
dogs that I got to carry, and I've got to
individually slather the ketchup on each hot dog then carry
it back these Okay, sorry, why is stadium food so bad?
Speaker 1 (14:30):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Well I'm gonna tell you why, because it's the same
reason why food is so bad at all institutions, schools, hospitals,
you name it is because what's the food is secondary?
They want to make their money on everything else, including
the alcohol. So they bring in like one big vendor
who's going to manage and handle all the food service.
If I'm going to a stadium, Let's say in Orange County,
(14:51):
you've got twenty thirty chefs that you can bring in
to each run their own little food stand in there.
Like contract it out, let them come up with their
own menu. There's such amazing food through Orange County, California.
You've got the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam and Westminster,
Fountain Valley, Garden Grove. Right, bring in some Vietnamese a mansion,
(15:12):
a bond me at the stadium. Oh, that'd be fantastic,
just contracted out. They take a percentage of sales, and
every single stand, not everyone, because some people still want
the basics, which keep them as the basics, but every
other standard. So should be a specific local food vendor. Well,
there are some, there's a few.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
There's a few, but then you have to if they're
on only certain levels at a certain spot. It's not
like you you know, you get out of your seat
and go walk and then there's like, you know, twelve
of the same you know, food vendor or whatever over.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
We went to an Anaheim Ducks game preseason game, and
it's the same thing.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
You get the California Pizza Kitchen pizza and it's like
twenty three dollars for a microwave pizza. It's probably the
worst pizza I've ever.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Eaten in my life.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yet I still continue to eat it because even the
worst pizza is still better than nothing. Then you go
in and you get the microwaved hot dogs, so you're
dropping a pretty you know, one hundred dollar bill.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
You get the popcorn that's been sitting out forever.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
I'd rather grind that up and bread it on chicken
and have popcorn chicken. Just throwing a little tip in there.
So I don't know what's going on with the uh
with sports food, but I think that we need to
make a change. If we're missing something here, let us know,
hit us up, tell us where we need to study, fine, follow,
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
We're coming into Halloween.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
We are We love Halloween as a family.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
I'm a halloweener.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Oh yes, you are all right. So speaking of Halloween, Andrew,
what is if we can if I could ask what
is your favorite Halloween candy?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
If you have one Charleston chew.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
What the heck is a Charleston chew?
Speaker 2 (16:40):
What? What is that? What? Are you a communist?
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I've never heard what Charleston chew is. No Charleston chew.
Is this like chewy chocolate covered marshmallow? Inside it was
like yellow with blue writing. You've never heard of a
Charleston chew. Nobody gives them out anymore.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
That's probably why I've never heard of it.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
What's your favorite Halloween ca Okay.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Mine was the hundred Grand bars. But they did something
to them because I don't know last year and I
was like scouring through the kids Halloween bags. I ate
a couple and they were just not the same. They
were dry, they weren't as caremey as I could remember.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
If that's a lot of.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
These legacy brands do change their ingredients frequently that you know,
and like whether they up the high fructose corn syrup
where they changed the ingredient, It's not like they're changing
the fundamental recipe. They're just adding a new, cheaper chemical
to the candy bar.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah, it was horrible. I was super disappointed.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Well, all right, so you know, we're all into Maha
stuff and we want to eat healthy. The problem is
is that when it comes to like Halloween, that one
off right, Everyone's like, well, make your own fresh Halloween candy,
and I agree with that. We've done a lot of
videos showing you how to make your own Reese's peanut buttercups,
showing you how to make your own Reese's penises whatever
it is. And I knew you were gonna say that
(17:52):
Reese's pieces.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Sorry, Well, and the thing is too you know what
Halloween is like the you know, the time of year,
like we don't care like the kids whatever, I don't
care if they eat you know, their weight worth of candy,
which sounds horrible, but it's like Halloween, like that's what
we grew up with. Like I'm not gonna, you know,
make them eat a freaking cutie. Those little oranges.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I always loved. It was like we'd go to the houses.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
They'd give you like the pretzels, Oh my gosh, or
a or they give you like a like.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
A small leaflet, like religious handout.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
I swear one year somebody was handing out like celery
sticks and peanut butter, and I was like, what is
happening our poor.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Kids with raisins ants on a log.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
So but but but here's my point, right, what I'm
getting at is most families aren't gonna do that. It's
gonna cost more, They're not going to have the time.
I think that that's like elitism at its finest to
be like go make your own Halloween candy. You can't
do that, but you can look for like local candy makers.
Maybe try and find like Boutiqui type candy. There are
a few candy stores here in Orange County that feature
(18:53):
like those old school sugar daddies, like Charleston Chew's.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Well that is, Arche County has a lot of daddy's.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
And I'm not talking about the candy bar, but there
used to be like if you go back in history
and you look at all the candy companies, like there
were so many different types of candy, and now all
you get is Twizzlers, Eminem's, Skittles, Milky Way, Snickers, kit Kats,
twigs and Hershey, Like that's it.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
That's it. Jolly ranchers.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
If nobody's giving out jolly ranchers, I actually don't mind
jolly ranchers.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Well, they scare me because they're a choking hazard.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
That is true. Lawns.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Lauren's worried about choking hazards, which I think is great
for mother's mother, because our kids have choked. I know
that's do you know that William once I took them
to the dry cleaners, took our.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Son, Yeah, William. Everyone knows William.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
So William, I took my son to the dry cleaners. Well,
I didn't take them to the dry cleaners. It wasn't like, hey, buddy,
we're going to the dry cleaners.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And he was excited. I was going to the dry
cleaners and.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
They had the little what are the mints right with
the red and the white circles, and he the guy
gave him one. When I had my back turn and
William act, she start choking on it and I had
to give him the hime lick or the like, the
gentle heime lick. This was remember he was it was two,
two or three. It was the saddest, like right now,
I'm getting a little choked up. It was the saddest,
scariest experience of my life. So parents of the kids,
(20:13):
be careful.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Of the hard And I'll tell a story too. I mean,
this is I'm totally whatever. I was eighteen years old.
I was getting my eyebrows done. I'll never forget it.
They had a bowl of candy when you went to
check out, and there was a little girl watching like
her mom was getting her eyebrows done or something. And
she's staring at me and she just has tears flowing
from her eyes. She's not making a sound. She must
have been three four years old. And I realized, oh
(20:36):
my gosh, she's choking. I literally gave her the Heimelck.
I'm eighteen years old. I was so like shook it up.
From that, I'm like, oh my gosh. And her mom
still has no idea. I just saved her daughter's life.
She's oblivious, sitting in the chair getting her eyebrows done.
But those hard candies scare me, I know, So don't
give out hard candies and get.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Your eyebrows don because if Lauren hadn't been getting her eyebrows,
she hadn't been getting those caterpillars killed, then she wouldn't
have been there to listen save that little kid.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
It all happened. It all happened for a reason.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Why mom's in the background getting a Brazilian while our
kid is choking.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yeah, it was scary. So what the fork wt That
was a really sad Yeah, let's.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Let's lighten us up here, and what the fork wait?
Hold on?
Speaker 3 (21:17):
We never concluded though, So go try and find some
botiki candy, like obviously, you know, we give you the
get out of jail free card for maybe indulging in
some of the candy. Try and limit it. Go for
the those that don't have the artificial colors in there.
If anything, I would say like stick with the chocolate.
But the other option is is that have a pre
party or a post party where the kids are splitting
(21:38):
in their candy up and then you can make something
fresh and fun like and we'll post some recipes. But
chocolate covered apples, your own little caramel.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
A lot of people now are doing. They're having their
kids give them all the candy because there's a switch witch.
Have you heard of this? No, the switch witch?
Speaker 2 (21:55):
So you sound's delicious.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
The kids give the parents the candy and in the morning,
the switch twitch. It's like a tooth fairy. Oh, a
witch brings you a toy.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Jack's tooth fell out.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
We didn't I know, okay, but brings you a toy.
So you give them all your candy in order to
get this toy. So that's how parents are convincing their
kids to give up their candy.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
We're bribing our kids by creating false idols.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
And I just I end up just taking it all
to the restaurant and give it to our employees partially.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
But the funniest thing is, within twenty four to forty
eight hours after Halloween, Laura'll be like, oh, I'm taking
all this candy to the restaurant, and I'll go into
her car and it just there's just candy wrappers strewed
from wall to wall, as if she was just sitting
there watching the Hallmark Channel eating bonbonds.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
It's only the chocolate, the good chocolate. It's like it's
only twigs or one hundred grand. But like I said
last year, I was pretty disappointed.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Twigs are disgusting.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
What how the heck do you like for yourself? Eything
with a wafer like I just, first of all, I
hate the word wafer. Second of all, I hate things
with wafers.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Stop saying wafer the wafer?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Okay? A fork?
Speaker 1 (22:53):
What the fork?
Speaker 3 (22:54):
All?
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Right?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
So are what the fork story? It's Governor Newsom an
a Sembly Bill six twenty eight, which requires California landlords
to supply a working refrigerator, hand stove and rental units
starting with Lesa's on or after January first, twenty twenty six.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Well, okay, so I do think that if you're renting someplace,
it's always nice to have a refrigerator. So you know,
I don't want to for a stove.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
I mean, aren't these like standard?
Speaker 3 (23:21):
These are pretty standards, So I don't know why we
need to legislate it. Like that's the thing, that's why
I have trouble with all of this is that let
the free market do its thing. If there's a landlord
that's not providing a stove a refrigerator, that's a pretty
junkie landlord. This this is what my take on all
of these government mandates. They're mandating something that's good right
that we just assume is a given. For example, like
(23:42):
we're always going to pay above minimum wage because we
want to. We look at what the living wage calculator
is and we want to pay our workers more. We're
not doing it because the government's telling us to do it.
Because of that, we're able to attract the best workers
because the guys who are trying to skimp on their
employees and are paying them less. They're not going to
go work there when you mandate that those people then
(24:04):
start paying more, and then the workers go and work
for those workers, only to find out that they're not
good employers anyway. So you're artificially creating the veneer that
these are good employers when we need the free market
to wipe them out and the free market to force
them to do the right thing. So the same applies
here with landlords. If a landlord is not providing these things,
(24:24):
then you're not going to rent there. You're going to
go rent from the landlord that is providing those amenities exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
And like this is so the law aims to protect
tenants from the burden of buying these essential appliances. But like,
I've never rented a place that hasn't provided a stove
or a refrigerator.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
There might be some, I mean there's probably some in
like at bad areas of interest.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
It's like a refrigerator sometimes.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
But once again, the free market, do you know how much. Okay,
let's just say hypothetically, there was a building that was
built in Huntington Beach, right, and there was low income
tenants there and they need it twenty stoves and twenty refrigerators. Right,
So let's say that that's going to cost forty thousand dollars,
fifty thousand dollars. I guarantee you that if we got
the community together and so we're going to raise fifty
(25:10):
thousand dollars to help these people individually. Now they own
those at this point, not the landlord. Those people own those.
The community will always come together to help people. Of course,
I have an inherent faith in the community to do this.
We don't need the government to mandate how certain business
owners and individuals spend their money.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yeah. I don't know why everything needs to be turned
into a bill.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, well because they're bored. So I mean that's the WTF,
which I think is definitely an interesting one. It's time
in this part of the show to sharpen your skills.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
We got some cooking techs. Do you want to give
us one today? No, you don't want to give us one.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
I don't have any sharpen your skills. Like everything I do,
I need to be physically doing it. You're so much
better at.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
This scramble the eggs. So people ask me all that
I'm doing this off the top. I have this one
as impre rehearse. People ask me about salting the eggs
before they scramble them.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Don't do it, No, do it? You do, but you
don't do it because it makes them tough.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
No, how are eggs going to be tough? When's the
last time you were You were like, ah, those eggs
are too chewy.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Besides, let's try it, let's test it at home.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
So what happens is the salt actually denatures the protein, okay,
which then allows for it to hold on to more moisture.
So you do want to pre salt your eggs as
you're whisking them, in addition to hitting them with a
little bit of milk, because then that also changes the
protein structure and allows the eggs to retain more moisture.
So a little bit of cold milk, a little bit
of salt, whisk them up. I like to whist some
(26:32):
air in there, and then once again starting with a
medium to low heat pan. You don't want a high
heat pan. High heat and eggs just do not go
well together. There's nothing worse than brown eggs.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Oh, they're so gross.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
So I start with with butter in a low heat pan,
and I just stir and ster and stir and stir.
There was a like kind of a legend in the
industry or Scoffee, who was one of the greatest chefs
ever to live. He wrote a Scoffee's Bible and cooking
et cetera, where when you would have young komi or
apprentices come in and say, scramble an egg, or like
(27:05):
time is irrelevant, scramble the best eggs you can cook, period,
hands down. Any cook that brought out like an egg
cooking pan was immediately not hired.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
It was the cooks that started to cook their eggs.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
On a double boiler, interesting because it was that low
and slow, gentle heat that prevented the proteins from seizoning
it up too tightly. So you get that beautiful soft, silky,
velvety egg by doing it low and slow over a
longer period of time. You want to tell our listeners
what a double boiler.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Is, isn't it where you just have the water and
then you put something on top of it. The water
is like simmery.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah, so you're creating like you're essentially steaming. It's like
gentle heat.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
It's not that direct fire so you take a pot,
fill it with a little bit of water so it
creates steam, and then put a stainless steel bowl over
the pot, so the heat is coming from the steam
source underneath the thin stainless steel bowl as you're whisking
it slowly, cooking and me together.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
It's the fancy term of baine marie.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
It is a baine marie. You're right, double boiler.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Bab I'm like, what's a double boiler?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Well, I just I hate using the French term. I mean,
ever since the accident.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
All right, we were moving on to our eighty six it,
I'll tell you mine. Glamorizing these harmful stunts. Have you
seen these kids try and do all this crazy stuff,
you know, beating a train, like running across the train
tracks and all these craziness.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
I'm like, guys or subwoy surfing, and it's.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
It's for what for what for? Like likes and clicks.
It's so I'm like, oh my gosh, these kids need
to stop doing that.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
It's scary.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
There was just a girl that I saw in Chicago
who died. She was thirteen years old. She was subway
surfing for like a TikTok video and she died.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yeah, they need to stop, Like nobody like you don't
need to do that stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
I was even scrolling the other day and I saw
this kid jump off that This is the new one
where they're jumping off of buildings into water, but they're
jumping over so like let's say a building is set
back feet over like a street, they'll jump out to
go over the street into the water and narrowly miss
the edge. And I saw this one video where this
kid jumped, but I guess the I was. Of course,
(29:12):
I start reading to comments like a fool, he jumped
next to this long pole that was in the water,
and everyone's like, he narrowly missed the pole. And then
somebody commented, well, it was the only place I think
the person who took the video where it was deep enough,
so we had to get near the pole or next
to the pole, because that's how it was deep enough.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Yeah, he need to stop doing this stuff. It's not
worth it anyway. That was my depressed in eighty six.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Well, we're never going to let our kids do that.
That's where we don't let our kids have phones. Actually
I won't even let my kid have a rotary phone.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
No, our kids don't have social media, even our oldest,
because I just don't want her to feel pressured to
do any of these stupid things.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I might take your social media away. Please do I
know you've been playing with your eyebrows a lot?
Speaker 1 (29:53):
What?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
I don't know?
Speaker 1 (29:54):
What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Going back to the original story, I would say my
eighty six it is is someone in line with that
because it goes with like the why are you doing
this for clicks? So we talk about food influencers all
the time in the restaurant industry. People who come in
demand a free meal tell you they're going to give
you a ton of coverage. Order twenty items on the menu,
line the table with it, take a high res close
(30:17):
up shot of every single item, then leave all the food.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
All the food. They don't eat it. And I feel
like this was necessary. I want to say back in
like twenty seventeen, twenty sixteen, like you really did want
those food influencers in your restaurant and taking pictures of
everything because people really did like listen to them. Yeah,
but nowadays you don't need that.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
I was still I was still even then I was disgusted.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
We never paid anybody. So that's the thing. Some people
would like try to get us to pay them, and
I'm like, we're not paying you to post our food.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
A lot of the good original food influencers like Daily Food,
Feed and Devour Power.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, those were like the ogs.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Those were the OG's and they would eat it right
like they would eat it, and they would do a
story about the restaurant and they would cut more than
just the food. Now it's like, I want to come in,
I want to take my photo and I'm out, I
want to make money on my social media off of
your food, and I'm gonna throw the food away because
I'm wasteful.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah. One, it's just incredibly wasteful. And two it's like, okay,
I had this. I remember not too long ago. A
couple months ago, somebody reached out to me with, you know,
maybe five six thousand followers. I'd love to come in
and shoot some content for you and you know this,
that and the other. And I'm like, girlfriend, I don't
need you to come in. And she called her girlfriend
shoot some content. No I did not, but it's funny, girl,
(31:32):
girl don't need you.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
See this is she's getting feisty now or moving in
moving in past thirty minutes and she's ready to throw
the gauntlet. So I agree with that one that needs
to go. What do you guys think needs we need
eighty six these days, so be sure to hit us up.
I'm at Chef Gruel on X tell us what you
want to see eighty.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Six and I'm Lauren Girl on X. Yeah, let us
know or give us your WTF stories.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah, WTF stories you name it?
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Or what do you want to see? Like what sharpen
your skills?
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Yes, food questions all the time. I think that that
and of itself could be its own show. And maybe
we'll start doing a list. We'll create a segment where
we take a lot of the food questions we get
and we can answer them because we need to see
more people cooking at home. That's going to be the
key to increasing our health in America, reducing chronic disease,
but most importantly bringing the family around the table. I
think that so much happens over the table from a
(32:22):
community perspective that otherwise people wouldn't come together. I've always
said you could take the two of the most diametrically
opposed personalities, be it in politics, business and life and
put them, have them sit down, eat together over a meal,
and all they can talk about is food.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
And I guarantee you they will find so much common ground.
They'll say, maybe this person isn't that bad unless it's
Katie Porter.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
I've always said I'd love to sit down with Gavin
Newsom at French laundry have a conversation.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
I've always wanted to go to the French laundry, so
maybe we can have a little triple date.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
After he was caught dining at the French laundry, it
killed it for me, It really did.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
The French laundry.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Yeah, I don't want together, Yeah, I really don't.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
All right, well let's not.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Why don't I take you to the Spanish laundry?
Speaker 1 (33:08):
All right? Sounds fun.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
It's where you bring your dirty clothes and then they
smother you and olive juice.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Oh I like it?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
All right.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
On that note, that was a little awkward, So we
like to leave you with the awkwardness, So enjoy the
rest of your day. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Be sure to follow us American Gravy wherever you listen
to your podcasts and subscribe whatever you got to do,
click all the buttons. Make sure you give us a
review five star, obviously, because Lauren's five star.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Oh dear, all right bye, guys,
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Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
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