August 4, 2025 • 26 mins
We've learned a lot after writing and publishing after thirty-seven cookbooks. We'd love to share with you those lessons.
We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. We've actually written forty cookbooks, including two knitting books by Bruce and a memoir by Mark. We've been around the block! We'd love to tell you what we've learned over this long publishing career.
We've also got a one-minute cooking tip. And we're really excited about a specific type of melon and Mark's really excited about a specific way to cook goat.
If you'd like to get a copy of our latest cookbook, COLD CANNING, please check it out at this link right here.
Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:
[01:22] Our one-minute cooking tip: Store garlic at room temperature
[03:27] What have we learned after writing and publishing thirty-seven cookbooks.
[23:27] What’s making us happy in food this week? Melons and goat!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark (00:01):
Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein, and this is the Podcast
Cooking with Bruce and Martin.
And I'm Mark Scarborough.
And together with Bruce, you know wehave written 37 cookbooks, but you
also know that our latest cookbook,cold counting is on sale now.
Finally.
Mm-hmm.
Finally, we've talked about it enough.
It is.
Out there, small batch canning.
It is a gorgeous book.
(00:22):
Go out to our TikTok channel andwatch me do an unboxing video of
the first time we see this cookbook.
It's kind of fascinating.
I think I posted it on Instagram on mypersonal account too and on Facebook.
Um, it's fascinating 'cause a, I hate.
Author unboxing videos,but BI get to see it.
And, uh, this thing weighs a ton.
425 recipes on really highgloss, beautiful paper.
(00:45):
Tons of photographs.
How many photographs?
I
Bruce (00:47):
don't
Mark (00:47):
even remember.
A
Bruce (00:48):
2 25.
Mark (00:49):
Yeah.
Lots of photographs beautifullydesigned, beautifully laid out.
The publisher.
Little grounded.
Uh.
Bang up job on this book.
When we turned in the manuscript,I never expected it to look like
this, so go check out cold canning.
But before that, we dohave a podcast to do.
We've got a one minute cooking tip.
We'll tell you what we have learned afterthe publication of our 37th cookbook.
(01:12):
What have we learned aboutthis cookbook career?
And I will tell you what's makingus happy in food this week.
So let's get started.
Bruce (01:22):
Our one minute cooking tip.
Store garlic at roomtemperature, not in the fridge.
I, I don't
Mark (01:28):
think a lot of people know that garlic is a dried food product.
Mm-hmm.
It is dried.
And you talk about that for a second.
Well,
Bruce (01:32):
Gar, when garlic comes outta the ground as fresh garlic, it's very wet,
very pungent, and it has to dry out.
The husks have to dry out.
The cloves shrink a little bit.
Mm.
I mean, they're not driedlike gradable dried.
No, but they are, they shrink, theycondense, they get dried and is the
real term, even though they're not.
You know desiccated,
Mark (01:53):
right?
Bruce (01:53):
They're not like dried oregano,
Mark (01:54):
but
Bruce (01:54):
is a dry, you have to hang it and dry it.
Yeah.
My friend Rich has a beautiful garden.
He grows so much stuff and he growslike hundreds and hundreds of garlic
bulbs, and every spring and early summerhe comes over and he brings me these.
Beautiful braids as he's tied up ofgarlic bulbs and I hang them in my
kitchen and cut them off as I need them.
True.
All
Mark (02:14):
winter long.
True.
He also hangs onions.
Yep.
Right.
I don't think a lot of peopleknow that onions have to be
hung for a while and dried out.
I mean, you can't eat themright outta the ground.
You can't eat raw garlic too, or raw.
You can't eat fresh garlic too.
But um, it's best to let it dry.
It concentrates the flavor.
There's a whole
Bruce (02:30):
reason for this.
And garlic right outta the groundalso can cause stomach distress.
So there are chemicals in that that.
Break apart that you really don'twant to eat too much of when they're
first fresh outta the ground.
Not too much.
I mean, you can eat fresh garlic,but you shouldn't eat a ton of it.
But let me say, don't keep it unlikeyour window sill on a sunny kitchen.
No, because then yourgarlic looks gonna sprout.
It's gonna think it's time to grow, right?
(02:52):
Keep it hanging where the sun don't shine.
Mark (02:55):
If you buy garlic in a jar that is pre peeled, that should go in
the fridge or pre minced even worse.
Yeah.
Garlic, as they call it,garlic should definitely go in
the fridge once you open it.
Okay, that's our one minute cooking tip.
Um, before we get to the main part of thispodcast, let me say that it'd be great if
you could rate and like this podcast ifyou give it a review that's even better,
and subscribe so you don't miss a singleepisode of cooking with Bruce and Mark.
(03:19):
Okay, up next, what we've learned.
Now that we're publishingour 37th cookbook,
Bruce (03:30):
I learned how exhausting it is that, I don't know, maybe
it's, I'm getting older andthe books are getting longer.
Mm-hmm.
So it's like, shouldn't ithave gone the other way?
Shouldn't the books be gettingshorter as I get older, but
they're getting longer and bigger.
Mark (2) (03:42):
Our agent always.
Says about publishing that every yearwe get older and they get younger, they
'cause they get fired and a youngerperson comes in and takes their place.
So, oh, it is
Bruce (03:52):
true when we were younger as authors.
Our publishers and everyone whoworked at the publishing house
was like our age that we are now.
Or older.
Or older as we are now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And now it's flipped.
Here we are at our age being thewriters and our publisher and all the
people working there are the age wewere when we published our first book.
Mark (04:08):
Right.
They're all at 40 or under.
Yeah.
Which is really wild.
So here's some of the things we've learnedabout this cookbook career, and this is
not about cookbooks in particular, but Ishould say that this seems really funny.
We learned to not give up on the dream.
Mm-hmm.
We wanted to write cookbooks.
When we first got together, Bruce andI did, Bruce had published a drink book
with Clarkson Potter, an imprint ofRandom House, and then he kept trying to
(04:32):
publish books and nothing ever happened.
And then I got involvedand we must have written.
I can't even tell you.
30, 40 proposals for cookbooks.
We kept trying to sell a book.
Mm-hmm.
And we just kept at it.
And I think a lot of people thatI've met in my life who have tried
to get into publishing, have writtensomething, submitted it, gotten
(04:55):
a rejection, and then never done.
Another thing
Bruce (04:58):
I wanna say, this goes for.
Any creative career, not givingup on what you really want.
Shit, when we go out to a restaurantand if we start talking to the server
and they say they're really an actoror a dancer, my first question is
always, where are you taking class?
You know?
'cause clearly you're not in a show'cause you're in the restaurant, right?
Okay, so where are you taking class?
Where are you dancing?
Where are you acting?
(05:18):
If you're not doing that, then you'renot an actor, you are a waiter.
So when we said to people, well,we want to write cookbooks.
The answer is, well, whatare you doing about it?
Endlessly writing cookbookproposals endlessly.
Trying endlessly.
I've got an agent.
We are working on it.
We are always writing.
Mark (05:35):
I mean, really, honestly, we cranked out for about a
year and a half, two years.
Yeah, we cranked that proposalafter proposal after proposal
for various cookbook ideas.
Nothing came of it, but we justwouldn't take no for an answer.
I
Bruce (05:48):
will say that.
It got to a point where Idid almost give up on this.
You did.
And we were running out of money andtwo years of this, we were, I had
been an advertising creative directorbefore this future year, Anna.
I mean,
Mark (2) (06:00):
honestly, we were counting Nichols at this point.
Mm-hmm.
Bruce (06:03):
And I had left my last advertising job before I met
Mark when my book came out.
And now it was like, Ineed to go back to work.
So I did.
I actually got a job as a creativedirector again at a small ad agency,
and the day I accepted that job.
Our agent called and saidshe had a book offer for us.
Yep.
So it was an interestingmoment, and we did both.
(06:23):
I kept the job and the book,and we did it all together.
Well, we needed a
Mark (06:27):
few more nickels even as we were writing that book.
Yeah.
So fortunately you kept that job, but Ishould also say that we've learned that
you have to be realistic about this dream.
Whatever your dream is in.
You do have to reallybe realistic about it.
You can't just be a cockeyedoptimist to quote South Pacific.
You have to be, uh, realistic about it.
So, you know, I can tell you over theyears we have written books that we
(06:48):
might not otherwise have written mm-hmm.
On our own, because thepublisher have has that.
I have said we want this book.
Yep.
And so we have written, I, I would saythat when we jumped from Rodale to.
Uh, Clarkson Potter to Random House.
Mm-hmm.
Together years later, I don't thinkeither of us wanted to write a slow
(07:11):
cooker book, but Random House wantedus to write a big slow cooker book.
Yeah.
And we did.
We threw ourself at it.
Bruce (07:17):
It was nothing I would've.
Ever thought I wanted to do it.
And it took me a while to figure outhow to make food in them really good.
And in the end, we did a bookthat was so full of recipes that
were delicious and so successful.
We sold out on QVC and thatbook became a bestseller, right?
So be realistic.
Sometimes you're gonna dothings you don't want to do,
but you're gonna do them anyway.
Take the role you don't want as an actor.
(07:39):
Work backstage as a dancer.
Do what you have to doto get in that theater.
Be part of your industry.
I think
Mark (07:44):
Old Cold Canning is a grand example of this because we met with our publisher,
uh, before, this is a year and a half agobefore we even started on cold canning,
and we were talking about what ournext book would be and he said, I would
really like a canning book in my list.
So we went away and we thought aboutit and we saw a billion canning books
(08:04):
of for ball canning and all the.
Big giant bestsellers, the homesteadingbooks and all this kind of stuff.
And we were like, well, howcan we compete in that market?
And we tossed it around between usenough that we came back to him with this
idea of cold canning, canning withouta canner where you just put it in the
fridge or the freezer and for storage.
And he loved it and bought the book.
(08:26):
So it, that isn't an ideathat Bruce and I generated.
It's an idea actually that itbegan with him and then morphed.
To by us.
I will
Bruce (08:34):
say that unlike the slow cooker book, though, it resonated with us
because I had been making jams and jelliesand pickles and canning the, you know,
with processing for years and years.
So at least when he broughtthat up, it was something
that resonated and excited us.
Yes.
So it wasn't a hard stretch tosay, Ooh, let's figure this out.
Mark (08:51):
Yes, that's right.
And I think that that's been, you know,largely what a lot of the things we've
done in our career, and not only thebooks we wrote, but the books that we
fixed for other people, they're notnecessarily books we would've touched.
We, over the years, have fixed and evenwritten celebrities books and, um, some of
them we would never have touched before.
I can't talk much about them.
Well, some of them confidentialityagreements, but we would
Bruce (09:12):
never have written Dr.
Phil's diet.
Oh, there's one without
Mark (09:15):
a confidentiality agreement.
Bruce (09:17):
Ew.
It was not a good experienceworking with a celebrity like
that who was so full of himself.
No, it was terrible experience.
No, it was not a good experience.
The book was great.
We did a great job on the book,but it wasn't a good experience.
So I
Mark (09:27):
think we've also discovered that over the years that food is
very personal and it's very divisive.
Mm-hmm.
And when you're a food writer andyou write a book or you write recipes
and then you tell someone about it.
Sometimes you get the idea responseof oh, or Wow or that kind of
thing, but you get a lot of ew.
And um, that is a really interestingproblem for a creative because I
(09:50):
don't think a lot of people whodance or sing or write novels, I
don't think they often get the.
Ew factor from it, right?
I mean, somebody might write anasty review online of a novel.
Well, that's refuse, butgently not to your face.
Mm-hmm.
I've never seen somebody at allthe book events we've ever been
to with novelists sitting around.
I remember seeing somebody come up to anovelist and go, I really hated your book.
Bruce (10:10):
No, it's about food.
It's 'cause it's about food.
If someone says they dance with a certaindance company and you don't like that
kind of dance, you're not gonna go ew.
Right.
But if you Exactly.
If you were to say to someone you'rewriting a book about, I don't know,
casseroles, and they had a terribleexperience with casseroles as a kid,
they're gonna go, Ew, because it's food.
And food triggers all of these
Mark (10:29):
emotions.
And I think one of the big changes thathas happened in all these years of writing
cookbooks for us is that cookbooks havegone, and I'm gonna use weird words
here, but they have gone from content.
Based to vibe based.
I explained that.
Okay.
So when we started writing cookbooks,cookbooks were compendiums of recipes.
So you get a book and the wholepoint of it was that it was all this
(10:50):
giant encyclopedic list of recipes.
But now a cookbook is as much aboutits design and it's vibe and it.
Feel right, the current word, thestyle vibe, that it gives you a certain
feeling, a certain emotional landscape.
You look at it and youthink certain things.
I think that one of the things that'schanged huge over our career is
(11:13):
this shift toward vibe based books.
It's really bizarre, uh, forpeople who came up in the era
of like the joy of cooking.
When you have these books or youknow, the big Julia Child mastering
the Art of French cooking that are.
Encyclopedias.
Bruce (11:28):
Well, you know who did that?
I mean, that was Martha Stewart.
She did that single handedly.
She
Mark (11:32):
was one of the people who started the vibe trend.
Yep.
Bruce (11:35):
She did that with her book Entertaining.
It was all about, oh, it's notjust that I'm doing a clam bake.
I'm doing a clam bake at my beach house.
Right.
And these.
This is the way I should decorateit, and this is the music that should
be played and the drinks served.
It was a lifestyle.
She turned content into lifestyle, and she
Mark (11:52):
also turned herself, I mean herself, former Wall Street Trader and all that.
She was into this, um, to use the currentword, tra wife into the traditional wife.
She turned herself into a characterin the same way that Paul Rubins
turned himself into Peewee Herman.
Mm.
There's this way that especially inthe late eighties and early nineties,
people were creating characters.
(12:13):
And the characters were actually infront of them in terms of the fame.
And I would argue that Martha Stewartwas a character of Martha Stewart.
Oh
Bruce (12:21):
yeah.
That wasn't really who she was.
No,
Mark (12:23):
not
Bruce (12:23):
at all.
But she did something else with books.
She's the one who startedthe trend for photography.
She did.
'cause before then.
Cookbooks didn't have photography, or ifthey did, they were very few pictures.
That's usually, it was just on the cover.
Our first 13 books that we published had
Mark (12:40):
no photos and, and that's none.
Sorry.
I was gonna say, and that'spart of the vibe thing.
Yeah.
Photos are the prime way that vibe gets.
Uh, communicated when you flippedyour book in a bookstore as if you do
this anymore, as if anyone goes to abookstore and flips through a book.
Um, I went to Barnes and Noble theother day and, uh, I don't know, it
seemed like a greeting card store to me.
Mm-hmm.
But anyway, like anybody goes to abookstore and flips through books, but,
(13:02):
um, uh, when you do, you're looking at thepictures, you're not reading the recipes.
Sara, you're getting thisvibe sense outta the book.
And
Bruce (13:11):
you can't have a book without photography these days.
So when you make a book proposaland you're trying to sell a book,
we have to even put in there howmany photos we think the book should
have to really get the vibe going.
Right.
And our books tend to get more.
And more and more photos in them
Mark (13:27):
and, and that's also part of this trend over the years of
that, we've published 37 books thatrecipes have shifted and nobody
really wants to know the how.
This is really interesting.
I think when, when we got into, I meanpeople still wanna know the how, 'cause
they wanna see the recipe, but when wegot into writing cookbooks, the head
note, that is the note above the recipe.
(13:48):
The head note was all about the how.
Well make sure that your temperatureof your custard is blah, blah, blah.
Was all the tips as you'regoing through the recipe,
right, of how to make it better.
Now that has all changed and the headnotes to recipes are all about why.
Mm-hmm.
Why should you make this recipe?
Why is this a good recipe?
Why does this recipe beat other recipesfor, I don't know, blueberry preserves?
(14:11):
Mm-hmm.
And that change, it may soundsubtle to you, but it is.
Huge in terms of how weapproach books because
Bruce (14:18):
it's part of the whole pitching a book idea to our
publisher in the first place.
Right.
Not only why this recipe, why this book?
Right, right.
Why should somebody buy this book?
The thing we always hate tohear from our publisher is.
Your book is the answer to a question
Mark (14:32):
nobody's asked.
Yeah, that's his, that's his constantcomment is that a book has to answer a
question that people are actually asking.
Mm-hmm.
And so, uh, this is why GoogleTrends searches are really important.
Google keyword searches are reallyimportant to sell a book because, uh,
the people, he wants people to see ananswer to a question they're asking.
I, I should say that when we first gotinto this business, uh, we wrote the
(14:55):
ultimate candy book and we turned it in.
This is.
2000, we turned it in.
Mm-hmm.
And, um, the head notes were fullof stories about Bruce's, uh,
relationship with Kandy as a kid.
His grandmothers going to candy stores.
The head notes were all full of hiding
Bruce (15:12):
it under my
Mark (15:13):
bed.
Yeah.
Rotting my teeth out.
All bits about.
Candy from his childhood, and that bookwas kicked back and we had to rewrite
it because the publisher had a strongdictum at Harper Collins that no personal
information can ever appear in a recipe.
So a recipe had to almost belike a science experiment.
(15:34):
It had to be.
Clean and objective.
These days there was no vibe, right?
No.
These days, what everybody seems towant is personal information like,
oh, Bruce made me this the othernight for dinner, and la da da da.
People seem to want the story.
Now I can argue, and this is biggerthan this podcast, I can argue that
part of why we were told to take.
(15:56):
Out personal material is the fearof homophobia in the year 2000.
But I think it was also apart of a general trend.
A lot of those booksmade a heater's books.
They don't include, I made a heatermaking this and how she made it.
Mm-hmm.
Now she found this recipe.
Mm-hmm.
And yada, yada, yada.
It's all about how to make this right.
The tips to make these cookies right.
Bruce (16:16):
But she did have this interesting thing going on in her books.
A lot of her recipe titles.
Were sort of personal andno one knew what they meant.
Yeah.
Like 22nd floor blondies.
'cause some woman in her condo in Floridaon the 22nd floor gave her this recipe.
Mark (16:31):
Yeah.
Bruce (16:31):
So it's like, what, what a 22nd floor blondies.
But,
Mark (16:34):
but it still, her head notes were not.
Very personal or I thinkabout Marcella Hasan.
I mean, yes.
Did you know about Venetian cookingand Marcella Hasan and her experience?
Maybe you knew, maybe you knewabout her experience in the
war, but maybe, maybe not.
No.
Um, and it was a, it was a whole.
Different vibe to the Cook Bowl.
(16:56):
Well, in a vibe, it was thisidea that a recipe's supposed
to be something objective.
This is the best way to make roast land.
I still think that over the years wehave discovered that US citizens are
not afraid of metric measurements.
Bruce (17:09):
Not anymore.
They were, it was terrified of itwere they were, oh my goodness.
It meant you were communist, butnow people are weighing their flour.
Mm-hmm.
Weighing their sugar.
Mm-hmm.
Mark (17:19):
Mm-hmm.
Bruce (17:19):
You know, sugar's one thing, this is
Mark (17:21):
particularly a millennial and Gen Z thing, they are not afraid
of the metric measurements when
Bruce (17:25):
it comes to cooking some things.
Weighing is not thatcrucial, in my opinion.
If I am pouring oil into a wok to stir frya dish, I'm not gonna measure out or weigh
my oil by the milliliter or the gram.
It's not that important.
Right?
But if I'm baking bread, I am soweighing that flour because four of us.
(17:48):
In this house can take up a measuringcup, dip it into that pot of flour,
and each come out with a differentweight of flour for that one dip.
Mark (17:55):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, in cold canning.
Uh, we put all the ingredients in both,um, volume amounts, like a cup and
a tablespoon, but we also have everysingle ingredient in a metric amount,
15 milliliters, 50 grams, 190 grams.
And that's because people are not afraidof the metric measurements anymore.
Mm-hmm.
Many people do have kitchen scales, and itis a far more accurate way, particularly
(18:20):
when you deal with things like sugar,where the grind of sugar in North
America, what we call granulated whitesugar, is different than castor sugar.
In the uk the grind is different.
So you really have to buy theweight of the sugar involved
to make the recipe work.
Bruce (18:36):
Absolutely.
Because you're canning, right?
You're preserving, soyou want your ratios.
Sugar and vinegar and saltand all of that to be precise.
So it comes out and it stays fresh.
Mark (18:46):
Right, exactly.
And so what's the most importantthing about this career?
Bruce (18:48):
Oh, keep things new.
Keep things fresh.
Yeah.
Keep things exciting.
Yeah, absolutely.
Which is funny because for years.
Like we did instant pop books.
Right?
Right.
And so we did four instantpop books in a row.
It's so hard to keep that fresh and new.
Oh my gosh, that's so crazy.
And we were desperateto do something else.
And the publishers, no,your books are successful.
(19:10):
Let's do another one.
Mark (19:11):
The the worst was writing what?
A 350 recipe instant pop book.
And then having our publisher say, Iwant another 350 recipe to follow it.
To follow it.
And I was like, oh my gosh, how are we?
We thought in 350recipes, we had killed it.
We thought we had done everything youcould do in an instant pot and now
we gotta do it again with new things.
(19:34):
It was an insane, daunting task.
It was
Bruce (19:37):
hard to stay fresh and exciting and new, but we did, and we made a really good
book that was new, but keep things new.
Change your style,change what you're doing.
Learn a new language.
Learn a new dance step.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Take up a new instrument.
Yeah.
Walk a different
Mark (19:52):
path to the store tomorrow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's really important, especiallyas you age, because as you probably
know, um, your memory is encodingwhere you go, let's say, and it's
holding those memories sacrosanct.
So this is why you can drivedown the street and not realize
you have driven down that.
Street because you've driven down itso many times that you get home to
(20:13):
your driveway and you're like, wait aminute, I don't even remember driving on
the freeway or on the surface streets.
Mm-hmm.
To my house.
And that's because you're not actuallyregistering it anymore in memory.
Your memory is holding that.
And so what your census arepicking up are not necessarily
going into your hippocampus andinto your memory at that point.
You're just, um, you know, wewould say doing it by rote,
(20:33):
but you're, you're sensing it.
Mm-hmm.
You know what you're driving down.
While you're doing it, but it'snot being laid down as a memory.
So as you get older, this moreand more happens and you need
to go different directions.
Mm-hmm.
And you need to take different,uh, approaches to life and you
need to watch different shows, andyou need to read different books.
And you need to read, eat different foods.
Mark (2) (20:50):
Absolutely.
Mark (20:50):
Because it's the only way you can keep from petrifying as you age.
And it's the truth ofa creative career too.
Right.
You
Bruce (20:57):
gotta keep moving.
You do have to keep me.
We watched.
You did lose
Mark (21:00):
it.
Watched a fabulous documentary last night.
It's only 30 minutes long on Netflix.
About the only woman in the orchestra.
That's the name of the documentary.
It's about this woman who wasthe first woman who got a seat
in the New York Philharmonic.
She played the double
Bruce (21:13):
bass, actually, wasn't it called The only girl in the orchestra?
Maybe The only girl at the time.
She was the girl.
Okay.
And back when she got in.
People like Zubin Meda, who was then atthe La Philharmonic were saying women
have no place in the Philharmonic.
Mark (21:27):
That's right.
Bruce (21:27):
And that by the time they reached 60, they're no good anymore.
While men are still good as musicians.
Right.
It's
Mark (21:33):
horrifying.
So it was this whole thing about her, andit was basically about her retiring at
like 87 or 89 or something like that, 80.
From the New York Philharmonic.
And what was interesting to me aboutthat, she was moving out of her New
York apartment into a smaller apartment.
And you know, I mean she had thesefour, um, antique double bases.
So one, one was made inthe 17 hundreds, right?
(21:54):
Mm-hmm.
Bruce (21:54):
And the Steinway Grand, right?
It was,
Mark (21:55):
she was a huge apartment, right?
And she was moving toa smaller place, but.
She was not stoppingteaching new students at 89.
She had a whole coterie of doublebase students who came from all
over the world to study with her,
Bruce (22:11):
and she taught group classes at the Manhattan School
of Music, and she just kept.
Ongoing.
Mark (22:16):
That's right.
Even beyond retiring fromthe New York Philharmonic.
So it was really fascinating.
She also talked about how she finally gotto go to concerts instead of having to
play the concerts, she was actually goingand sitting and listening to the music,
which is really a fascinating thing.
Um, check out the documentary.
The only Girl in the orchestra,only about 30 minutes long.
(22:36):
It's really fascinating.
Okay.
That's what we've learnedover the years in writing.
37 cookbooks, some advice, maybethings that we faltered on or that
we've learned and gotten better at.
It's all part of the process, Iguess, of being human, of learning
and learning and learning andadapting, and adapting and adapting.
Before we get to the last segment ofthis podcast, let me say that there is
(22:57):
a TikTok channel called Cooking withBruce and Mark, and on there you can
find all sorts of videos of, um, making.
Food, talking to each other, talkingabout our relationship, how we met,
all kinds of, uh, stuff is on there.
We also have a Facebook group cookingwith Bruce and Mark, and of course we have
our own Instagram and Facebook feeds, andI have my own Blue Sky feed, so you can
(23:18):
connect with us in all sorts of places.
Okay.
As these traditional, the finalsegment of this podcast, what's
making us happy in food this week?
Bruce (23:31):
As often For me, it's a kind of melon.
I love these hammi melons, HAMI.
It's a Korean melon.
It looks a little like cantaloupe,but it's not quite as sweet
and it's got the crunchy.
It's not nearly as sweet.
No, it has a crunchy texture of cucumber.
So it is so.
Freshing and Delicious and Mars.
(23:52):
Them.
I, I know.
I don't
Mark (23:53):
hate them.
I just don't like them
Bruce (23:54):
because
Mark (23:55):
they are very vegetal.
Bruce (23:57):
Mm.
I love them.
It like,
Mark (23:58):
and it is like eating a cold cucumber, but sweeter but orange.
Bruce (24:02):
Mm-hmm.
With a slight hint, hintof cantaloupe flavor.
Mark (24:06):
Yeah.
It's not my favorite.
I like the gushy soft,super sweet cantaloupe.
'cause that's what I grew upwith, so that's what I like.
But, um, trying something new.
Remember that's what we said.
Well, I have tried itand, uh, I don't like it.
So there you go.
Uh, I, I went outside onceand it scared me so I sign.
Uh, so, uh, there you go.
(24:26):
Um, I guess what's making mehappy in food this week is.
We had friends over for dinnerthis last weekend and Bruce
slow roasted a leg of goat.
And if you don't know, we wrotethe first ever goat cookbook all
about goat meat, milk and cheese.
Several years ago.
I think that book is still out there.
Mm-hmm.
And um, it was the first everall goat book written and
(24:49):
published in North America.
And we, uh, became very fond of goat.
Bruce sources goat from a local farm,so he slow roasted this leg and it
was really tender and delicious.
We had it with Tahini sauce and Pita, anda very simple Palestinian tomato stew.
(25:09):
He.
It was a really nice fine meal and we satat the table till like after 11 o'clock.
Mm-hmm.
It was really nice talking.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was really nice andit was a beautiful thing.
How long did you roast that thing For?
Six hours.
Yeah.
See, a long, long time.
I gave it.
I don't have the patience toget through a podcast, so Okay.
Bruce (25:28):
I gave it.
Palestinian Rub.
I used raw hannu and garlic and olive oil.
What is raw?
Mark (2) (25:34):
Han
Bruce (25:34):
Hannu is a blend of spices.
It means top of the shop, so everyshop in the Middle East, it's
gonna have their own version ofit, but it's Middle Eastern spices.
I mixed it with garlic and olive oil.
I put some sumac in for sourness andsome salt, and I rubbed that in and
then I shoved it in a covered casserole.
That's great.
About six hours
Mark (2) (25:52):
and kept it out on the grill so it didn't heat up the kitchen.
Mm-hmm.
Which was also really great
Mark (25:55):
to keep it on a low grill, a slow grill, as they say,
and not heat up the kitchen.
Okay.
That's the podcast for this week.
Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for being a part of this journey.
We appreciate your beingwith us and we most.
Appreciate that you connectwith us in some way,
Bruce (26:11):
and I've said this before, I'm gonna say it again.
No AI here on cooking of Bruce and Mark.
You know that the internet is full of ai.
You don't know what's real and what's not.
Videos, podcasts, everythingyou see, you will always get.
Bruce and Mark here oncooking of Bruce and Mark.
No Ai.
Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein, and this is the Podcast
Cooking with Bruce and Martin.
And I'm Mark Scarborough.
And together with Bruce, you know wehave written 37 cookbooks, but you
also know that our latest cookbook,cold counting is on sale now.
Finally.
Mm-hmm.
Finally, we've talked about it enough.
It is.
Out there, small batch canning.
It is a gorgeous book.
(00:22):
Go out to our TikTok channel andwatch me do an unboxing video of
the first time we see this cookbook.
It's kind of fascinating.
I think I posted it on Instagram on mypersonal account too and on Facebook.
Um, it's fascinating 'cause a, I hate.
Author unboxing videos,but BI get to see it.
And, uh, this thing weighs a ton.
425 recipes on really highgloss, beautiful paper.
(00:45):
Tons of photographs.
How many photographs?
I
Bruce (00:47):
don't
Mark (00:47):
even remember.
A
Bruce (00:48):
2 25.
Mark (00:49):
Yeah.
Lots of photographs beautifullydesigned, beautifully laid out.
The publisher.
Little grounded.
Uh.
Bang up job on this book.
When we turned in the manuscript,I never expected it to look like
this, so go check out cold canning.
But before that, we dohave a podcast to do.
We've got a one minute cooking tip.
We'll tell you what we have learned afterthe publication of our 37th cookbook.
(01:12):
What have we learned aboutthis cookbook career?
And I will tell you what's makingus happy in food this week.
So let's get started.
Bruce (01:22):
Our one minute cooking tip.
Store garlic at roomtemperature, not in the fridge.
I, I don't
Mark (01:28):
think a lot of people know that garlic is a dried food product.
Mm-hmm.
It is dried.
And you talk about that for a second.
Well,
Bruce (01:32):
Gar, when garlic comes outta the ground as fresh garlic, it's very wet,
very pungent, and it has to dry out.
The husks have to dry out.
The cloves shrink a little bit.
Mm.
I mean, they're not driedlike gradable dried.
No, but they are, they shrink, theycondense, they get dried and is the
real term, even though they're not.
You know desiccated,
Mark (01:53):
right?
Bruce (01:53):
They're not like dried oregano,
Mark (01:54):
but
Bruce (01:54):
is a dry, you have to hang it and dry it.
Yeah.
My friend Rich has a beautiful garden.
He grows so much stuff and he growslike hundreds and hundreds of garlic
bulbs, and every spring and early summerhe comes over and he brings me these.
Beautiful braids as he's tied up ofgarlic bulbs and I hang them in my
kitchen and cut them off as I need them.
True.
All
Mark (02:14):
winter long.
True.
He also hangs onions.
Yep.
Right.
I don't think a lot of peopleknow that onions have to be
hung for a while and dried out.
I mean, you can't eat themright outta the ground.
You can't eat raw garlic too, or raw.
You can't eat fresh garlic too.
But um, it's best to let it dry.
It concentrates the flavor.
There's a whole
Bruce (02:30):
reason for this.
And garlic right outta the groundalso can cause stomach distress.
So there are chemicals in that that.
Break apart that you really don'twant to eat too much of when they're
first fresh outta the ground.
Not too much.
I mean, you can eat fresh garlic,but you shouldn't eat a ton of it.
But let me say, don't keep it unlikeyour window sill on a sunny kitchen.
No, because then yourgarlic looks gonna sprout.
It's gonna think it's time to grow, right?
(02:52):
Keep it hanging where the sun don't shine.
Mark (02:55):
If you buy garlic in a jar that is pre peeled, that should go in
the fridge or pre minced even worse.
Yeah.
Garlic, as they call it,garlic should definitely go in
the fridge once you open it.
Okay, that's our one minute cooking tip.
Um, before we get to the main part of thispodcast, let me say that it'd be great if
you could rate and like this podcast ifyou give it a review that's even better,
and subscribe so you don't miss a singleepisode of cooking with Bruce and Mark.
(03:19):
Okay, up next, what we've learned.
Now that we're publishingour 37th cookbook,
Bruce (03:30):
I learned how exhausting it is that, I don't know, maybe
it's, I'm getting older andthe books are getting longer.
Mm-hmm.
So it's like, shouldn't ithave gone the other way?
Shouldn't the books be gettingshorter as I get older, but
they're getting longer and bigger.
Mark (2) (03:42):
Our agent always.
Says about publishing that every yearwe get older and they get younger, they
'cause they get fired and a youngerperson comes in and takes their place.
So, oh, it is
Bruce (03:52):
true when we were younger as authors.
Our publishers and everyone whoworked at the publishing house
was like our age that we are now.
Or older.
Or older as we are now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And now it's flipped.
Here we are at our age being thewriters and our publisher and all the
people working there are the age wewere when we published our first book.
Mark (04:08):
Right.
They're all at 40 or under.
Yeah.
Which is really wild.
So here's some of the things we've learnedabout this cookbook career, and this is
not about cookbooks in particular, but Ishould say that this seems really funny.
We learned to not give up on the dream.
Mm-hmm.
We wanted to write cookbooks.
When we first got together, Bruce andI did, Bruce had published a drink book
with Clarkson Potter, an imprint ofRandom House, and then he kept trying to
(04:32):
publish books and nothing ever happened.
And then I got involvedand we must have written.
I can't even tell you.
30, 40 proposals for cookbooks.
We kept trying to sell a book.
Mm-hmm.
And we just kept at it.
And I think a lot of people thatI've met in my life who have tried
to get into publishing, have writtensomething, submitted it, gotten
(04:55):
a rejection, and then never done.
Another thing
Bruce (04:58):
I wanna say, this goes for.
Any creative career, not givingup on what you really want.
Shit, when we go out to a restaurantand if we start talking to the server
and they say they're really an actoror a dancer, my first question is
always, where are you taking class?
You know?
'cause clearly you're not in a show'cause you're in the restaurant, right?
Okay, so where are you taking class?
Where are you dancing?
Where are you acting?
(05:18):
If you're not doing that, then you'renot an actor, you are a waiter.
So when we said to people, well,we want to write cookbooks.
The answer is, well, whatare you doing about it?
Endlessly writing cookbookproposals endlessly.
Trying endlessly.
I've got an agent.
We are working on it.
We are always writing.
Mark (05:35):
I mean, really, honestly, we cranked out for about a
year and a half, two years.
Yeah, we cranked that proposalafter proposal after proposal
for various cookbook ideas.
Nothing came of it, but we justwouldn't take no for an answer.
I
Bruce (05:48):
will say that.
It got to a point where Idid almost give up on this.
You did.
And we were running out of money andtwo years of this, we were, I had
been an advertising creative directorbefore this future year, Anna.
I mean,
Mark (2) (06:00):
honestly, we were counting Nichols at this point.
Mm-hmm.
Bruce (06:03):
And I had left my last advertising job before I met
Mark when my book came out.
And now it was like, Ineed to go back to work.
So I did.
I actually got a job as a creativedirector again at a small ad agency,
and the day I accepted that job.
Our agent called and saidshe had a book offer for us.
Yep.
So it was an interestingmoment, and we did both.
(06:23):
I kept the job and the book,and we did it all together.
Well, we needed a
Mark (06:27):
few more nickels even as we were writing that book.
Yeah.
So fortunately you kept that job, but Ishould also say that we've learned that
you have to be realistic about this dream.
Whatever your dream is in.
You do have to reallybe realistic about it.
You can't just be a cockeyedoptimist to quote South Pacific.
You have to be, uh, realistic about it.
So, you know, I can tell you over theyears we have written books that we
(06:48):
might not otherwise have written mm-hmm.
On our own, because thepublisher have has that.
I have said we want this book.
Yep.
And so we have written, I, I would saythat when we jumped from Rodale to.
Uh, Clarkson Potter to Random House.
Mm-hmm.
Together years later, I don't thinkeither of us wanted to write a slow
(07:11):
cooker book, but Random House wantedus to write a big slow cooker book.
Yeah.
And we did.
We threw ourself at it.
Bruce (07:17):
It was nothing I would've.
Ever thought I wanted to do it.
And it took me a while to figure outhow to make food in them really good.
And in the end, we did a bookthat was so full of recipes that
were delicious and so successful.
We sold out on QVC and thatbook became a bestseller, right?
So be realistic.
Sometimes you're gonna dothings you don't want to do,
but you're gonna do them anyway.
Take the role you don't want as an actor.
(07:39):
Work backstage as a dancer.
Do what you have to doto get in that theater.
Be part of your industry.
I think
Mark (07:44):
Old Cold Canning is a grand example of this because we met with our publisher,
uh, before, this is a year and a half agobefore we even started on cold canning,
and we were talking about what ournext book would be and he said, I would
really like a canning book in my list.
So we went away and we thought aboutit and we saw a billion canning books
(08:04):
of for ball canning and all the.
Big giant bestsellers, the homesteadingbooks and all this kind of stuff.
And we were like, well, howcan we compete in that market?
And we tossed it around between usenough that we came back to him with this
idea of cold canning, canning withouta canner where you just put it in the
fridge or the freezer and for storage.
And he loved it and bought the book.
(08:26):
So it, that isn't an ideathat Bruce and I generated.
It's an idea actually that itbegan with him and then morphed.
To by us.
I will
Bruce (08:34):
say that unlike the slow cooker book, though, it resonated with us
because I had been making jams and jelliesand pickles and canning the, you know,
with processing for years and years.
So at least when he broughtthat up, it was something
that resonated and excited us.
Yes.
So it wasn't a hard stretch tosay, Ooh, let's figure this out.
Mark (08:51):
Yes, that's right.
And I think that that's been, you know,largely what a lot of the things we've
done in our career, and not only thebooks we wrote, but the books that we
fixed for other people, they're notnecessarily books we would've touched.
We, over the years, have fixed and evenwritten celebrities books and, um, some of
them we would never have touched before.
I can't talk much about them.
Well, some of them confidentialityagreements, but we would
Bruce (09:12):
never have written Dr.
Phil's diet.
Oh, there's one without
Mark (09:15):
a confidentiality agreement.
Bruce (09:17):
Ew.
It was not a good experienceworking with a celebrity like
that who was so full of himself.
No, it was terrible experience.
No, it was not a good experience.
The book was great.
We did a great job on the book,but it wasn't a good experience.
So I
Mark (09:27):
think we've also discovered that over the years that food is
very personal and it's very divisive.
Mm-hmm.
And when you're a food writer andyou write a book or you write recipes
and then you tell someone about it.
Sometimes you get the idea responseof oh, or Wow or that kind of
thing, but you get a lot of ew.
And um, that is a really interestingproblem for a creative because I
(09:50):
don't think a lot of people whodance or sing or write novels, I
don't think they often get the.
Ew factor from it, right?
I mean, somebody might write anasty review online of a novel.
Well, that's refuse, butgently not to your face.
Mm-hmm.
I've never seen somebody at allthe book events we've ever been
to with novelists sitting around.
I remember seeing somebody come up to anovelist and go, I really hated your book.
Bruce (10:10):
No, it's about food.
It's 'cause it's about food.
If someone says they dance with a certaindance company and you don't like that
kind of dance, you're not gonna go ew.
Right.
But if you Exactly.
If you were to say to someone you'rewriting a book about, I don't know,
casseroles, and they had a terribleexperience with casseroles as a kid,
they're gonna go, Ew, because it's food.
And food triggers all of these
Mark (10:29):
emotions.
And I think one of the big changes thathas happened in all these years of writing
cookbooks for us is that cookbooks havegone, and I'm gonna use weird words
here, but they have gone from content.
Based to vibe based.
I explained that.
Okay.
So when we started writing cookbooks,cookbooks were compendiums of recipes.
So you get a book and the wholepoint of it was that it was all this
(10:50):
giant encyclopedic list of recipes.
But now a cookbook is as much aboutits design and it's vibe and it.
Feel right, the current word, thestyle vibe, that it gives you a certain
feeling, a certain emotional landscape.
You look at it and youthink certain things.
I think that one of the things that'schanged huge over our career is
(11:13):
this shift toward vibe based books.
It's really bizarre, uh, forpeople who came up in the era
of like the joy of cooking.
When you have these books or youknow, the big Julia Child mastering
the Art of French cooking that are.
Encyclopedias.
Bruce (11:28):
Well, you know who did that?
I mean, that was Martha Stewart.
She did that single handedly.
She
Mark (11:32):
was one of the people who started the vibe trend.
Yep.
Bruce (11:35):
She did that with her book Entertaining.
It was all about, oh, it's notjust that I'm doing a clam bake.
I'm doing a clam bake at my beach house.
Right.
And these.
This is the way I should decorateit, and this is the music that should
be played and the drinks served.
It was a lifestyle.
She turned content into lifestyle, and she
Mark (11:52):
also turned herself, I mean herself, former Wall Street Trader and all that.
She was into this, um, to use the currentword, tra wife into the traditional wife.
She turned herself into a characterin the same way that Paul Rubins
turned himself into Peewee Herman.
Mm.
There's this way that especially inthe late eighties and early nineties,
people were creating characters.
(12:13):
And the characters were actually infront of them in terms of the fame.
And I would argue that Martha Stewartwas a character of Martha Stewart.
Oh
Bruce (12:21):
yeah.
That wasn't really who she was.
No,
Mark (12:23):
not
Bruce (12:23):
at all.
But she did something else with books.
She's the one who startedthe trend for photography.
She did.
'cause before then.
Cookbooks didn't have photography, or ifthey did, they were very few pictures.
That's usually, it was just on the cover.
Our first 13 books that we published had
Mark (12:40):
no photos and, and that's none.
Sorry.
I was gonna say, and that'spart of the vibe thing.
Yeah.
Photos are the prime way that vibe gets.
Uh, communicated when you flippedyour book in a bookstore as if you do
this anymore, as if anyone goes to abookstore and flips through a book.
Um, I went to Barnes and Noble theother day and, uh, I don't know, it
seemed like a greeting card store to me.
Mm-hmm.
But anyway, like anybody goes to abookstore and flips through books, but,
(13:02):
um, uh, when you do, you're looking at thepictures, you're not reading the recipes.
Sara, you're getting thisvibe sense outta the book.
And
Bruce (13:11):
you can't have a book without photography these days.
So when you make a book proposaland you're trying to sell a book,
we have to even put in there howmany photos we think the book should
have to really get the vibe going.
Right.
And our books tend to get more.
And more and more photos in them
Mark (13:27):
and, and that's also part of this trend over the years of
that, we've published 37 books thatrecipes have shifted and nobody
really wants to know the how.
This is really interesting.
I think when, when we got into, I meanpeople still wanna know the how, 'cause
they wanna see the recipe, but when wegot into writing cookbooks, the head
note, that is the note above the recipe.
(13:48):
The head note was all about the how.
Well make sure that your temperatureof your custard is blah, blah, blah.
Was all the tips as you'regoing through the recipe,
right, of how to make it better.
Now that has all changed and the headnotes to recipes are all about why.
Mm-hmm.
Why should you make this recipe?
Why is this a good recipe?
Why does this recipe beat other recipesfor, I don't know, blueberry preserves?
(14:11):
Mm-hmm.
And that change, it may soundsubtle to you, but it is.
Huge in terms of how weapproach books because
Bruce (14:18):
it's part of the whole pitching a book idea to our
publisher in the first place.
Right.
Not only why this recipe, why this book?
Right, right.
Why should somebody buy this book?
The thing we always hate tohear from our publisher is.
Your book is the answer to a question
Mark (14:32):
nobody's asked.
Yeah, that's his, that's his constantcomment is that a book has to answer a
question that people are actually asking.
Mm-hmm.
And so, uh, this is why GoogleTrends searches are really important.
Google keyword searches are reallyimportant to sell a book because, uh,
the people, he wants people to see ananswer to a question they're asking.
I, I should say that when we first gotinto this business, uh, we wrote the
(14:55):
ultimate candy book and we turned it in.
This is.
2000, we turned it in.
Mm-hmm.
And, um, the head notes were fullof stories about Bruce's, uh,
relationship with Kandy as a kid.
His grandmothers going to candy stores.
The head notes were all full of hiding
Bruce (15:12):
it under my
Mark (15:13):
bed.
Yeah.
Rotting my teeth out.
All bits about.
Candy from his childhood, and that bookwas kicked back and we had to rewrite
it because the publisher had a strongdictum at Harper Collins that no personal
information can ever appear in a recipe.
So a recipe had to almost belike a science experiment.
(15:34):
It had to be.
Clean and objective.
These days there was no vibe, right?
No.
These days, what everybody seems towant is personal information like,
oh, Bruce made me this the othernight for dinner, and la da da da.
People seem to want the story.
Now I can argue, and this is biggerthan this podcast, I can argue that
part of why we were told to take.
(15:56):
Out personal material is the fearof homophobia in the year 2000.
But I think it was also apart of a general trend.
A lot of those booksmade a heater's books.
They don't include, I made a heatermaking this and how she made it.
Mm-hmm.
Now she found this recipe.
Mm-hmm.
And yada, yada, yada.
It's all about how to make this right.
The tips to make these cookies right.
Bruce (16:16):
But she did have this interesting thing going on in her books.
A lot of her recipe titles.
Were sort of personal andno one knew what they meant.
Yeah.
Like 22nd floor blondies.
'cause some woman in her condo in Floridaon the 22nd floor gave her this recipe.
Mark (16:31):
Yeah.
Bruce (16:31):
So it's like, what, what a 22nd floor blondies.
But,
Mark (16:34):
but it still, her head notes were not.
Very personal or I thinkabout Marcella Hasan.
I mean, yes.
Did you know about Venetian cookingand Marcella Hasan and her experience?
Maybe you knew, maybe you knewabout her experience in the
war, but maybe, maybe not.
No.
Um, and it was a, it was a whole.
Different vibe to the Cook Bowl.
(16:56):
Well, in a vibe, it was thisidea that a recipe's supposed
to be something objective.
This is the best way to make roast land.
I still think that over the years wehave discovered that US citizens are
not afraid of metric measurements.
Bruce (17:09):
Not anymore.
They were, it was terrified of itwere they were, oh my goodness.
It meant you were communist, butnow people are weighing their flour.
Mm-hmm.
Weighing their sugar.
Mm-hmm.
Mark (17:19):
Mm-hmm.
Bruce (17:19):
You know, sugar's one thing, this is
Mark (17:21):
particularly a millennial and Gen Z thing, they are not afraid
of the metric measurements when
Bruce (17:25):
it comes to cooking some things.
Weighing is not thatcrucial, in my opinion.
If I am pouring oil into a wok to stir frya dish, I'm not gonna measure out or weigh
my oil by the milliliter or the gram.
It's not that important.
Right?
But if I'm baking bread, I am soweighing that flour because four of us.
(17:48):
In this house can take up a measuringcup, dip it into that pot of flour,
and each come out with a differentweight of flour for that one dip.
Mark (17:55):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, in cold canning.
Uh, we put all the ingredients in both,um, volume amounts, like a cup and
a tablespoon, but we also have everysingle ingredient in a metric amount,
15 milliliters, 50 grams, 190 grams.
And that's because people are not afraidof the metric measurements anymore.
Mm-hmm.
Many people do have kitchen scales, and itis a far more accurate way, particularly
(18:20):
when you deal with things like sugar,where the grind of sugar in North
America, what we call granulated whitesugar, is different than castor sugar.
In the uk the grind is different.
So you really have to buy theweight of the sugar involved
to make the recipe work.
Bruce (18:36):
Absolutely.
Because you're canning, right?
You're preserving, soyou want your ratios.
Sugar and vinegar and saltand all of that to be precise.
So it comes out and it stays fresh.
Mark (18:46):
Right, exactly.
And so what's the most importantthing about this career?
Bruce (18:48):
Oh, keep things new.
Keep things fresh.
Yeah.
Keep things exciting.
Yeah, absolutely.
Which is funny because for years.
Like we did instant pop books.
Right?
Right.
And so we did four instantpop books in a row.
It's so hard to keep that fresh and new.
Oh my gosh, that's so crazy.
And we were desperateto do something else.
And the publishers, no,your books are successful.
(19:10):
Let's do another one.
Mark (19:11):
The the worst was writing what?
A 350 recipe instant pop book.
And then having our publisher say, Iwant another 350 recipe to follow it.
To follow it.
And I was like, oh my gosh, how are we?
We thought in 350recipes, we had killed it.
We thought we had done everything youcould do in an instant pot and now
we gotta do it again with new things.
(19:34):
It was an insane, daunting task.
It was
Bruce (19:37):
hard to stay fresh and exciting and new, but we did, and we made a really good
book that was new, but keep things new.
Change your style,change what you're doing.
Learn a new language.
Learn a new dance step.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Take up a new instrument.
Yeah.
Walk a different
Mark (19:52):
path to the store tomorrow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's really important, especiallyas you age, because as you probably
know, um, your memory is encodingwhere you go, let's say, and it's
holding those memories sacrosanct.
So this is why you can drivedown the street and not realize
you have driven down that.
Street because you've driven down itso many times that you get home to
(20:13):
your driveway and you're like, wait aminute, I don't even remember driving on
the freeway or on the surface streets.
Mm-hmm.
To my house.
And that's because you're not actuallyregistering it anymore in memory.
Your memory is holding that.
And so what your census arepicking up are not necessarily
going into your hippocampus andinto your memory at that point.
You're just, um, you know, wewould say doing it by rote,
(20:33):
but you're, you're sensing it.
Mm-hmm.
You know what you're driving down.
While you're doing it, but it'snot being laid down as a memory.
So as you get older, this moreand more happens and you need
to go different directions.
Mm-hmm.
And you need to take different,uh, approaches to life and you
need to watch different shows, andyou need to read different books.
And you need to read, eat different foods.
Mark (2) (20:50):
Absolutely.
Mark (20:50):
Because it's the only way you can keep from petrifying as you age.
And it's the truth ofa creative career too.
Right.
You
Bruce (20:57):
gotta keep moving.
You do have to keep me.
We watched.
You did lose
Mark (21:00):
it.
Watched a fabulous documentary last night.
It's only 30 minutes long on Netflix.
About the only woman in the orchestra.
That's the name of the documentary.
It's about this woman who wasthe first woman who got a seat
in the New York Philharmonic.
She played the double
Bruce (21:13):
bass, actually, wasn't it called The only girl in the orchestra?
Maybe The only girl at the time.
She was the girl.
Okay.
And back when she got in.
People like Zubin Meda, who was then atthe La Philharmonic were saying women
have no place in the Philharmonic.
Mark (21:27):
That's right.
Bruce (21:27):
And that by the time they reached 60, they're no good anymore.
While men are still good as musicians.
Right.
It's
Mark (21:33):
horrifying.
So it was this whole thing about her, andit was basically about her retiring at
like 87 or 89 or something like that, 80.
From the New York Philharmonic.
And what was interesting to me aboutthat, she was moving out of her New
York apartment into a smaller apartment.
And you know, I mean she had thesefour, um, antique double bases.
So one, one was made inthe 17 hundreds, right?
(21:54):
Mm-hmm.
Bruce (21:54):
And the Steinway Grand, right?
It was,
Mark (21:55):
she was a huge apartment, right?
And she was moving toa smaller place, but.
She was not stoppingteaching new students at 89.
She had a whole coterie of doublebase students who came from all
over the world to study with her,
Bruce (22:11):
and she taught group classes at the Manhattan School
of Music, and she just kept.
Ongoing.
Mark (22:16):
That's right.
Even beyond retiring fromthe New York Philharmonic.
So it was really fascinating.
She also talked about how she finally gotto go to concerts instead of having to
play the concerts, she was actually goingand sitting and listening to the music,
which is really a fascinating thing.
Um, check out the documentary.
The only Girl in the orchestra,only about 30 minutes long.
(22:36):
It's really fascinating.
Okay.
That's what we've learnedover the years in writing.
37 cookbooks, some advice, maybethings that we faltered on or that
we've learned and gotten better at.
It's all part of the process, Iguess, of being human, of learning
and learning and learning andadapting, and adapting and adapting.
Before we get to the last segment ofthis podcast, let me say that there is
(22:57):
a TikTok channel called Cooking withBruce and Mark, and on there you can
find all sorts of videos of, um, making.
Food, talking to each other, talkingabout our relationship, how we met,
all kinds of, uh, stuff is on there.
We also have a Facebook group cookingwith Bruce and Mark, and of course we have
our own Instagram and Facebook feeds, andI have my own Blue Sky feed, so you can
(23:18):
connect with us in all sorts of places.
Okay.
As these traditional, the finalsegment of this podcast, what's
making us happy in food this week?
Bruce (23:31):
As often For me, it's a kind of melon.
I love these hammi melons, HAMI.
It's a Korean melon.
It looks a little like cantaloupe,but it's not quite as sweet
and it's got the crunchy.
It's not nearly as sweet.
No, it has a crunchy texture of cucumber.
So it is so.
Freshing and Delicious and Mars.
(23:52):
Them.
I, I know.
I don't
Mark (23:53):
hate them.
I just don't like them
Bruce (23:54):
because
Mark (23:55):
they are very vegetal.
Bruce (23:57):
Mm.
I love them.
It like,
Mark (23:58):
and it is like eating a cold cucumber, but sweeter but orange.
Bruce (24:02):
Mm-hmm.
With a slight hint, hintof cantaloupe flavor.
Mark (24:06):
Yeah.
It's not my favorite.
I like the gushy soft,super sweet cantaloupe.
'cause that's what I grew upwith, so that's what I like.
But, um, trying something new.
Remember that's what we said.
Well, I have tried itand, uh, I don't like it.
So there you go.
Uh, I, I went outside onceand it scared me so I sign.
Uh, so, uh, there you go.
(24:26):
Um, I guess what's making mehappy in food this week is.
We had friends over for dinnerthis last weekend and Bruce
slow roasted a leg of goat.
And if you don't know, we wrotethe first ever goat cookbook all
about goat meat, milk and cheese.
Several years ago.
I think that book is still out there.
Mm-hmm.
And um, it was the first everall goat book written and
(24:49):
published in North America.
And we, uh, became very fond of goat.
Bruce sources goat from a local farm,so he slow roasted this leg and it
was really tender and delicious.
We had it with Tahini sauce and Pita, anda very simple Palestinian tomato stew.
(25:09):
He.
It was a really nice fine meal and we satat the table till like after 11 o'clock.
Mm-hmm.
It was really nice talking.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was really nice andit was a beautiful thing.
How long did you roast that thing For?
Six hours.
Yeah.
See, a long, long time.
I gave it.
I don't have the patience toget through a podcast, so Okay.
Bruce (25:28):
I gave it.
Palestinian Rub.
I used raw hannu and garlic and olive oil.
What is raw?
Mark (2) (25:34):
Han
Bruce (25:34):
Hannu is a blend of spices.
It means top of the shop, so everyshop in the Middle East, it's
gonna have their own version ofit, but it's Middle Eastern spices.
I mixed it with garlic and olive oil.
I put some sumac in for sourness andsome salt, and I rubbed that in and
then I shoved it in a covered casserole.
That's great.
About six hours
Mark (2) (25:52):
and kept it out on the grill so it didn't heat up the kitchen.
Mm-hmm.
Which was also really great
Mark (25:55):
to keep it on a low grill, a slow grill, as they say,
and not heat up the kitchen.
Okay.
That's the podcast for this week.
Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for being a part of this journey.
We appreciate your beingwith us and we most.
Appreciate that you connectwith us in some way,
Bruce (26:11):
and I've said this before, I'm gonna say it again.
No AI here on cooking of Bruce and Mark.
You know that the internet is full of ai.
You don't know what's real and what's not.
Videos, podcasts, everythingyou see, you will always get.
Bruce and Mark here oncooking of Bruce and Mark.
No Ai.
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