Plumluvfoods ep 45 Appalachin cusine with The Vagabond Chef

We explore the cusine of the appalachian with good brother the Vagabond Chef from West Virgina

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Coming and a storming, a world of sound.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Chef Pull on the mic making hotspown, Chef Jeff Brown
a shotguns myself life, Chef Dead in the background making
new be found som Girl's a peace Laus down any
night job and a compensation so delight from Bull made dishes,

(00:30):
Street footstal side these Jeff Free made Munitum Guys, shun
it sound a podcast forever Chefs.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Jet bead bar.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Me snuck you off again, A conversation so.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
On the fast say.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Sun on the knee, Chef Fum and the list.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
And the rest.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Oh yeah, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
That'd be Saturday to you. Oh summertime is picking off you.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
You're doing well.

Speaker 4 (01:07):
It's plumb.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Food's live right here on WYCC, the voice of Connecticut.
I'm Chef Bumbing, joined with me as always is lovable,
the huggable, the leader of men, the legendary chef, one
of the greatest humans to ever walk the planet. Ladies, gentlemen,
Chef Jeff, you're sitting right here beside me, andybody.

Speaker 5 (01:23):
Saturday to you.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
What a wonderful introduction. As always on Saturday. I look
forward to seeing you as well. Bro.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
How was it going well? I'll tell you what, Jeffy.
It's been a busy, busy week. It certainly is. Uh,
it's up to something season. We can't talk about it,
but we're up to SCO. I'm very very excited about it.
We'll talk very soon about that. I was at the
Rose Soire this past weekend, though for more to day.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
I know. I was so sad to miss you guys.
You're so close but yet so far away.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
I know some of you saw the pictures on Instagram.
They took some very nice photos of me. I gotta
give them credit for that, and they sent me a
bunch of them, so okay, I got that out of
the deal. That's pretty cool. But great event. Uh we
served eight hundred people. Uh just we gave him fried
chicken and pickles. It was delicious.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Can't beat that.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
Man.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Everybody's walking around drinking rose, little flowy dresses and weird
little suits. There's people on stilts walking around and music playing. Yeah, yeah,
it's what they do. And weird people there. Nope, Nope, nope, nope,
they were just people.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Then. I didn't miss much, I guess, And.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
I served fried chicken and pickles that I knew that though,
everyone said that was the best dish in the building
as always. Yeah, I wanted to take a bad picture
of you, to be honest. I mean, come on, see,
you're very sweet. I appreciate that, Jeffie. We did our
We did a version of Nashural Hot Chicken. We call
it Hampton's Hot. And my whole line was always because
you know, if people come to your table, you have
to have a line. And I was like, you know,

(02:38):
it's sweet and spicy and full of love and everything
is nice, and don't worry. It is the Hampton. So
I didn't make it too spicy because people here sometimes
he was too spicy, too natural hot. They're like, oh god,
it's so hot, you know, So you toning it down.
Put a little sweetness in there, just like, you know,
a little sweetness from my friend chef Dan right here,
who was working with me. Shot the chef Dan from
the pantry. I was like, damn minute, So it's got
all the sweetness you could ever want, you know. I

(02:59):
was just ram mouse. So I said so many things,
and it's just hilarious that when you're at these events,
the lies you can tell and no one will ever know.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yeah, no, I mean some people can probably fact check
you and figure it out, but I mean, no one cares,
and you're just screaming fun stuff. It's like it's like
carnival barking. What I love about. That's what it's like
my favorite part about being at those kinds of events.
It's like it's just a crowd of people walking by
in front of us and you can just look up
and be.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Like, hey, brother, you know, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Well,
so the new gimmick that we had was we were
actually frying them to order. So we had a tabletop
fire behind us, a table in front of me, The
people come in front of the table in front of me.
We were working from the back. Dan was working the
fire for me. He's frying them up, and you know,
because we're trying to order, occasionally to be a little
bit of a wait, not long, you know, yeah, maybe
a minute at the most.

Speaker 5 (03:42):
We would do like fifteen twenty at a time.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
And so when people had to wait, I'd be like,
hang on, let's find out Dan, how long is this?
And Dan, we go sixteen and a half seconds and
I go all right. Friends will count down and they
would count down two one. I'm like, we got Chicken
and Dagglas. Now I was lying.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
And I was like, oh, I miss that.

Speaker 5 (04:03):
Rascally webbit dad.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
He always tricks us, gets us every time He's like, no,
I'm just kidd knock got. It was like, oh, double cross.

Speaker 5 (04:11):
Anyway, it was a great event.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Shout out to our friends over at snep's Media and
Dance papers. It was a fun event. They do a
bunch of events all summer, so if you're out out
in the hands, go check them out. They want to
do another one. I just don't think I can the summer.
It's just crazy, so, you know. But one of the
one of the things I like to do when I'm working, though,
Jeff is I enjoy listening to audio books. I enjoy
listening to podcasts in my ears while I'm working. Particularly
want to be a prep work by myself. I feel

(04:34):
like I learned things, right, don't you do that?

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah, that's what I do the same. That's and now
that I'm older, I listen to less music. I listen
to more people talking about stuff.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, we'll try to get smarter, right, try to be better,
become better leaders, better chefs, better people, and you know
learning right, Yeah, exactly, Well, I thought here on this podcast,
we should do the same thing, so I thought you
would start to do it. Plumb Love foods, Culinary cruise, Uh,
culinary what do we call on his Culinary Tours Culinary
Cuisine Cruise twenty twenty five where we're gonna take an

(05:02):
episode and we're gonna learn about a cuisine from across
our great country that maybe we don't know a whole
lot about.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
But as cherry cuisine cruise.

Speaker 5 (05:09):
Yeah, is that a literation?

Speaker 3 (05:11):
I like the illiteration, just a love food ration today
it's good.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yeah, plumb of Food's triple C culinary cuisine Cruise.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Culinary cuisine cruise. Well, where's our first stop, daddy? Uh, well,
don't you worry. We're gonna put this this cheval chev.
Let's trying to do some more sea words, making more literations.
I was gonna like cruise control and I don't know.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
We're gonna go check out our friend, chef Matt Welch
aka the Vagabond Chef. He is an expert in Appalachian
cuisine and he's an a joint us and tell us
all about apple Achian cuisine, which is something I grew
up on. But he is an expert on it. He's
from West Virginia and it's to teach us all about it.
I think it's a cuisine. It's really kind of starting
to blow up, and it's in my brain one of
the hallmarks of a you know, of a of a

(05:52):
home cooked meal, of a just food that makes you
feel good.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Well, you grew up on this type of food, correct.

Speaker 5 (05:58):
Yeah, I did?

Speaker 4 (05:58):
I did?

Speaker 1 (05:59):
You know?

Speaker 5 (05:59):
My dad was.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
It was a big He liked to cook a lot,
and he would make cat heads and leather breeches and
all these things which or which Matt will definitely just
you know, he'll break it down to tat all stuff.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Then it doesn't sound advertizing. I hope it's a thing.
You can change it. I hope you can change my
mind to cat cat does not sound like something I
ever want to see on a plate, my friend.

Speaker 5 (06:17):
Well, cathead does sound terrible, That's right.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
But hey, just so you guys all know before we
bring our guests on here, Jeff and I are going
to be at Steel Point Yacht Club on Father's Day.
We're gonna be out there right pig roast a night
and a beza. Jeffy, We're gonna be hanging out. It's
gonna be really, really fun. I got to find out
I people get tickets or how that works. But it's
gonna be awesome. I hope to see you there. It's
change off the chain of rolls. The pigs. We got

(06:39):
two hundred pounds local pigs.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
Yeah, celebrating each other for Father's Day. Out there cooking
pigs for the people.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
A literation, wow, pigs for the people. Did you smell
for the pH Yeah, of course I did, just for
the alliteration. Yeah, there you go, There you go, ladies.
I'm joining us right now. Is a gentleman who I
met years ago and have become a good friend with him.

Speaker 5 (07:01):
Happy to say it is one of my good friends.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
He is a fantastic chef, an excellent father, a fantastic husband,
but more importantly, he's also one of the most lovable
guys you're ever gonna meet. He's an expert on Applelastrian cuisine,
as you have our friend the vagabar chef.

Speaker 4 (07:17):
What's up, guys, how are you all doing today? I
am seriously stoked Saturday over here.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
Whoa?

Speaker 1 (07:25):
That's another literation, Jeffy, whoa? Do you have to have?

Speaker 3 (07:28):
Swell? Welcome?

Speaker 1 (07:30):
You have to have at least three, right, Okay, wow,
I mean a bit of a stretch, but it worked.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
It worked well.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Welcome.

Speaker 4 (07:38):
Well, hey, you guys doing today on this culinary cruise.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
A culinary cuisine crew. I don't know, we're doing fantastic, brother,
We're happy to be talking to you. You and I
just spent some time together at the Pro Start Nationals
in Baltimore and had a great time.

Speaker 4 (07:53):
Yeah, it was amazing. It's always a good time. The
pro Start crew are amazing. What the kids do is unbelievable.
And I mean, you know, if we're gonna be business
like about it, we can call it networking what we do.
But it's just great to rub elbows with other chefs
and hear stories and share stories and you know, work
with these amazing students and all the stuff that they're doing.

Speaker 5 (08:11):
Yeah, no doubt about it.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
And I think that's kind of the fun part about this,
about that whole thing, is that helping the kids is
obviously the number one thing for guys like you and me.
We love that part of it, for sure, But it's
the kind of getting together, meeting people from across the country,
different chefs and all that sort of stuff and kind
of just working together and you know, all to help
educate the kids. And for those of you who don't know,
pro start is the National Restaurant Association's education foundation. It's

(08:34):
the culinary programs in high schools. So what happens is
high schools from across the country all compete at a
state level. The winners of the state level competition then
move on to the nationals and get to compete against
people from all across the country. I felt this year
was bigger than ever. I mean the amount of people
that come and they scream and they sing, and there's
music and it's like college football. That's why I described

(08:54):
it at Matt. What do you think, Yeah, one hundred percent.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
Man, it's the super Bowl for high school culinary and
seeing what these these kids, I mean they're kids, man,
and what they can do. I mean they rival a
lot of professionals I've seen on the line, man, and
they just pound it out with like little to no resources,
wonderful ingenuity, great creativity. It's inspiring. I come away from
every year just like, wow, I'm stealing that idea. That

(09:18):
was a good one. And I'm just glad to be
part of this industry man.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, it's fantastic, So you know, shout to that. I've
ever ge a chance here in Baltimore in around April
May times when they do the Nationals. It's fun to go.

Speaker 5 (09:28):
People come just watch. It's pretty crazy. So Matt, I
want to talk.

Speaker 4 (09:34):
You know.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
I thought that there's so many different cuisines in the world,
particularly here in the Northeast. I think we get locked
up and thinking, oh, there's Southern food, there's Mexican food,
and China. We don't ever talk about the food just
of our country and kind of what we have here,
and like you don't hear people going, you know, I
want to go. I want to go to the app
Lachan restaurant. Let's go there, because we don't have any
of those. So I thought it'd be fun to kind
of have you on and talk about this type of cuisine,
where it comes from, the history of it, what it is,
some examples that sort of thing. Do you have a

(09:55):
restaurant that serves traditionally applache and food.

Speaker 4 (09:58):
Yep, yeah, I mean we we try to turn on
its on its head a little bit, uh and kind
of bring the past into the present, make it a
little bit more interesting. But uh, you know it it is.
I'm absolutely fascinated for this series that you guys are
gonna do. I think it's gonna be really great to
delve into these different pieces and parts of our country
and what people are cooking, and to find out like

(10:18):
what unites us. Uh, and also like the differences between
each region is gonna be really cool. Man.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Oh, that's awesome. See he makes me feel good. Any
test things like that, Jeffy, Oh, geez.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Wait to flip it on it to make us feel great.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
I know that was awesome. That was I mean, we
feel like good, great and gooder. Oh, professional broadcaster, thank
you very much to Matt.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
So just tune it out right.

Speaker 4 (10:44):
Yeah, but they left a long time.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
They left. The seconds good they were gone, not even
the third good or the second gooder. So, Matt, tell
me a little bit about applectic cuisine, Like what is it?
Where does it come from? You know, what does it
mean to you?

Speaker 4 (10:55):
Well, I honestly, Appleachian cuisine is really defined by these
mountains and like what that creates, whether that's you know,
it's about what you can find forage or grow, and
that is very much dependent upon these hills and hollers.
You know, we don't get a lot of light. The
topography is pretty intense, so that changes what's available and

(11:18):
it also really insulates people. You know, people would kind
of get trapped in their hollers or or it gets
harder to get in or through Appalachia, which I think
is one of.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
The You said a word that we have to define
for Nyermens and know this word through their hollers.

Speaker 5 (11:33):
What does that mean?

Speaker 4 (11:33):
Yeah, so a holler, I believe holler comes from a hollow,
but it is like a valley, a steep valley in
between the hills. Okay, you know we talk a lot.
That's a phrase you'll hear a lot in West Virginia
or Appalachia's hills and hollers. So that's mountains and valleys,
but it's our.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
Version interesting Okay, Okay, hills and holler. So people like
a homestead could be a holler.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of times you're you're gonna be
building in the holler. Although in northern Apple, like where
I'm at in northern West Virginia, we build, we do
build on the hills up up there.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Okay, And so how far does this expand? Like, like
what parts of the world are parts of the country.

Speaker 5 (12:11):
I mean, sure it's probably not stone, but yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:13):
I think that can be debated too. I mean the
core it goes down down into the south like probably
all the way to the Gulf and then up into
like New York State. But this mountain range continues up
past you guys, and actually, uh, you know like in
the Pangaea times, it's all the way over into the UK.
That's the same mountain range.

Speaker 5 (12:32):
Whoa under the ocean?

Speaker 4 (12:35):
Well they when they were together before the continent separated.

Speaker 5 (12:37):
Okay, I was really confused. I was like, wait a minute,
how do you know that?

Speaker 4 (12:40):
You know, Yeah, it's really really cool. The Appalachians are
super super old mountains, man. And then there's a lot
of lore and a lot of like mysterious stuff because
of that.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Yeah, they say it's one of the oldest mountain ranges,
uh in North America. It's in fact, it's a it
dates back over a billion years. Some of the rocks,
especially the Blue Ridge Mountains in that particular range, its
like hasn't changed in a billion years. Like some of
those those rocks have been the same.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
There was no people around, haven't moved. Tell if it
was that old. There's no people who are there. I
could say this was here when I was here. Now
there was a guy with the moonshine still right over there. Man,
Oh he was in a hollow in the hollow over there.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
Oh man, that makes sense. Like that's so bad. I
wish I could just be dropped off somewhere and just learn,
just chameleon into that culture.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
So bad it would take you ten minutes fifteen, because
you're just a camelia when it comes to that stuff.

Speaker 5 (13:32):
Well, so I like how you said it's.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
You know, fine forage or grow, because it's not you know,
you know, it's not a very wealthy.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
Area, right right. We're an impoverished area for sure.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
And so the food kind of you know, it's almost
like you show me what kind of foods. I can
tell you where you live, you know, I can tell
you what your what your what your financial situation is
for the most part. So tell me a little bit
more about the cuisines itself, like some of the oldest
types of dishes, things that come from it, things like that.

Speaker 4 (13:59):
Well, let's talk about the iconic Appalachian dish in my opinion,
which is soup beans. Do you know soup beans, plum.
Did you grow up eating them? I did? And even
with soup beans, you're gonna find regional differences. Like I
call my a lot of times Yankee suit beans because
I make I make my soup. We'll me start at
the beginning. So souit beans are all about using a dried,

(14:20):
easily to store bean and then drawing all the flavor
out of a hamhok. So a lot of people would
think that it is like ham and bean soup, and
I would argue that it is not. It's very different
than that. And you will see in some areas they'll
use pinto beans and they'll have they'll call it brown
beans and cornbread, which is kind of similar to suit beans,
but it's more like soup. In my opinion, souit beans

(14:43):
is very thick and hardy, almost like a good baked bean,
not like that British baked bean bs, but like a
real good stand up on the plate baked bean out.

Speaker 5 (14:52):
Of them and make them really, really really just thick
and hardy.

Speaker 4 (14:55):
And creamy, you know. Uh. And then I like to
use I grew up using white Northern beans, so that's
why I sometimes call them Yankee beans. But you Basically,
it's just a little bit of garlic and some yellow
onion that you sweat, You add your beans in and
a hamhock and you just cook all the goodness out

(15:16):
of that hamhock. And it's like all of that stuff
is easy to store. You know, onions store for a
long time, and a root cellar beans can be dried,
hamhock is preserved, and then you can make a really tasty,
hearty meal out of that with next to nothing, right,
And that's what really defines Appalachian food.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah, I think I remember doing something some my mother
doing something very similar those beans, but she would use
black eyed peas, if that makes sense.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
Yeah, sure you can use anything.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
She cook out some dry black eyed peas with a hamhock,
some onions, a little garlic and just let it go
all day long and just you know, Yeah, that would
be dinner. Or maybe if we were lucky, we'd do
it with like roasted chicken thighs or something on top.

Speaker 4 (15:54):
Yeah, And a lot of times we'll eat it with
with corn bread, with fried potatoes. If we're lucky, we
can some ramps in there and do a ramp fraped
potato and a little bit of ketchup on that stuff.

Speaker 5 (16:04):
A little bit of ketchup, Jeffy, a little bit ketch
of this.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
I love this. You know, it's funny because you said, like,
I mean, pork and beans is like universally, I mean
that those are best friends, right, I mean, that's that's awesome.

Speaker 5 (16:17):
No doubt about it.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
I love that. Uh. You know when you were saying, like,
we're gonna see similarities, I can already see like some
of the things that are just gonna be congruent around
the world, like pork and beans.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
So this cuisine can stretch because of this, because of
this that you know, being connected to this mountain range,
it can stretch from a long way. So maybe from
like the southern apple Achian is different than northern apple Asha,
Is that correct?

Speaker 5 (16:39):
And can you tell us some of the differences.

Speaker 4 (16:41):
Absolutely, in Southern apple Atchian you see a lot more
Southern cuisine. You'll see like cath heads aren't something I
grew up with. That's more of a Southern a Southern cuisine.
They're like hutch puppies, aren't they.

Speaker 5 (16:52):
It's basically a biscuit that's the size of a cat's head.

Speaker 4 (16:54):
Ah, that's right, that's right.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
So yeah, we had biscuits, but we didn't call them
catheads my dad and my dad grew up in the
mountains and literally he was a coal miner and when
he would Sunday mornings, he would make cat heads for
breakfast and he'd make biscuits. And I was like, catheads. Oh,
that sounds terrible. It's just a biscuit. That's the size
of a cat's head. Yeah, right on cathead.

Speaker 4 (17:12):
But yeah, you know, being more in Northern Appalachia, I
tried to draw more of that sort of cuisine in
there because I don't think there's really anyone highlighting Northern
Appalachian cuisine and a lot of times people mistake Appalachian
food for just Southern food, and it is very different.

Speaker 5 (17:26):
Correct.

Speaker 4 (17:27):
So a dish to exemplify that would be city chicken.
You guys ever hear that?

Speaker 1 (17:32):
God?

Speaker 5 (17:32):
I think I know, Please tell me.

Speaker 4 (17:34):
So. City chicken is like Pittsburgh origin. We call Pittsburgh
the Paris of Appalachia. At one time chicken was at
Yes Yin's, chicken was actually more expensive than some other ingredients.
So city chicken was you would take a pork and
veal and skewer it, bred it and fry it and

(17:57):
it's kind of supposed to emulate like a chicken drumstick.

Speaker 5 (18:00):
Interesting.

Speaker 4 (18:01):
I feel that it would be expensive though. Well back
in the day it wasn't. Now it is. Yeah, wow, yeah,
that was cheaper than chicken.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Particular cuts of meat they would use like to make it,
like like the runk or something that was just you know,
a tougher cut of meat.

Speaker 4 (18:14):
Uh, I don't know what they used to use. I
like to use pork shoulder on mine, and then like stew.
Meat works really well. And the dish we do at
my restaurant is a is city chicken with a tomato
bacon gravy on it. And we do that with you know,
on a creamy garlic mashed potato and like a fresh
cyca ved it is. It's really tasty stuff. Man. But

(18:36):
we see a lot of pork and apple Achian cuisine.
Hogs grew really well in the in the mountains here
you see a lot of corn like grits and corn
influenced corn bread, you know, any anything like of that nature.
You see a lot of you know, you hear about
rams all the time. I think ramps are like a
national thing now right, everyone's talking about rend oh.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah, Yeah, everybody has a patch that go to and
no one tells you where it is and you can
find them on the side of the road and stuff,
and you don't pick them all so they'll come back
next year.

Speaker 5 (19:03):
And yeah, definitely a thing. I think.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Ram season up here is really short, which a fews
like a month, right, super short. Yeah, maybe the only
last maybe five weeks at the very most, but that's
if you're like cruising with the weather, like driving miles,
you know.

Speaker 5 (19:18):
Yeah, particularly now been terrible.

Speaker 4 (19:20):
So yeah, those sources of restrictions are very indicative of
Appalachian ingredients, like like pawpaws or another good one. They're
more of a fall harvest poppas. They look like they
look like little oblong green mangoes kind of yeah, and
they have a mango and banana kind of flavor to them.

Speaker 5 (19:41):
Fruit, right, it is technically a few Yes, it is
a fruit.

Speaker 4 (19:44):
They drop in the fall, and they're not really good
until they drop. And once they drop, the deer on
them instantly, so it's really hard to get them in time,
and then they're hard to process. They're they're full of
little seeds. The best way I found is to kind
of force them through like a colander to separate the seas,
and but the skin's really thin. They're a real pain
in the butt. But they're amazing. They taste really really good.

(20:06):
They're make a fantastic custard or they go really really
great in all kinds of different desserts or breads.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
They're hard to grow them. We don't grow them like commercially.
Like you can grow popas commercially.

Speaker 4 (20:18):
I've never heard of that, and ramps are very very
hard to do commercially as well.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
Yeah, interesting, some people have done it. I mean the
people cultivate ramps, and people definitely have tried to cultivate
pop us. But I don't think like the bang for
the buck is worth it. I think to work for
its work what it costs, and how much fruit you
actually get off of a pop up plant, you know,
it's like compared to what they're worth.

Speaker 4 (20:41):
You know.

Speaker 5 (20:41):
Interesting niche.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
It's a niche vegetable, and like you said that, the
seeds are kind of hard to deal with, so it's
not like an easy vegetable either.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
You know, it's kind of like a black walnut. You know,
it's like right, you know, it's like black water. We
deal with, but a lot of use, a lot of
like yeah yield. So you're checking out Plumb Love Foods.
We're hanging out today with our friend, Chef Matt Welch
aka the Vagabond Chef. We're learning all about Appalachian cuisine.
It's gonna be our little culinary journey here, a little

(21:10):
culinary I forgot the alliteration. Now whatever, Plumb Love Foods.
We're gonna teach you all about some different cuisines across
the country. If you miss any part of this, obviously,
you can get the first half anywhere. Our podcast Come
Now that comes out on Sunday. You can get it
there or of course listening live right here on WICC,
The Voice, Connecticut. I'm Chef Plumber Chefjeff were joined by
the Vagabond Chef. You're checking out Plumb Love Foods. Stay
right there, we'll be right back. We're learning all about

(21:31):
Appalachian cuisine. Papau's Jeffy. I think it's your nickname, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Born in the Alleys Glendale streets, firing my veins and
blistered feet, punk was my anthem, a battle cry. Salt
and smoke crazed me twelve years of Roads and Scarsta Show,
Countless Smiles, Where the wildlands blow blood and Nick my
story unfals. Megabone chef with a heart of cold. Knobs

(22:32):
and flames.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
They taught me well and every dish, my stories, dwell.

Speaker 4 (22:37):
Ash and grit.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
They're part of the game. Every play to spark, everybody
to flame. Twelve years of Roads and Scarsta Show, Countless Smiles.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Where the Wildin's blow blood and ninc.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
My story un false.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Haga Bunch chef with a heart of.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
Cold, raised on fire with punkin' eye here, every flavors, memory, clear,
smoke in the air, I carve my name, Glenn del Cell,
playing lives world game from the alleys to.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
The open sky, cooking my truth, never asking why, sels
in my hands, fire in my soul, every mail of
dream making me whole.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
The vagabond chef right here on plumb love, Foods from
our band, our house band, the Flames, and we are
the only radio program across the country that has a
house band.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
Jeffy, it's true. It's true. It's a true statement that
song is a banger. True words never been spoken.

Speaker 5 (23:31):
Truer words have never been spoken.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
That song is a banger, Vagamond Chef joining us all
the way from Westervirginia talking about wonderful Applelatriic cuisine.

Speaker 5 (23:39):
That's just that's your song, brothers.

Speaker 4 (23:40):
That okay man that I'm gonna be really bummed when
that song is way more popular than my restaurant.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
That's your song, man, I'm gonna send it to you.

Speaker 5 (23:50):
You can play it at the restaurant. You can play
anytime you walk into a room.

Speaker 4 (23:53):
I'm gonna get a shirt with a with a with
a mic or a speaker on it so it just
follows me everywhere.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Speaker shirts. I think that was the thing at some point.
That's awesome. That's a good idea.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
I love this idea. That's a great idea. Hey, let
me throw his plugs real quick. We gotta you want
to follow our buddy chef Matt Welch The Vagabond Chef,
The Vagabond Chef on Instagram, at The Vagabond Chef Rides
on YouTube, or definitely check out his restaurant ww dot
The Vagabond.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
Ww dot anymore at dot com. Oh this is a
mess Vagabond Kitchen dot.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
You stop me. I was on a roll that was great.

Speaker 5 (24:29):
It kind of felt like you were hitting turn one
but taking that too tight and hit the corner there.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
I know the ww dot, it's my signature ww dot.
That's that's all you get, a signature wwww dot.

Speaker 5 (24:45):
Jeffy, I learned from Dan.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
He was the best.

Speaker 5 (24:47):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Vagabond Kitchen dot com is where you want to go
if you're ever definitely just traveling on a road trip.
It's a great restaurant to stop at and grab something
to eat, some great apple action because seeing great food. Uh, Matt,
tell us a little bit more. Man, We're diving into
this cuisine and kind of talking about some of these
dishes we had just before we went to break, talk
a little bit about the difference in Southern Appalachian and
Northern apple Achian. Is there like a central Appleatchi cuisine

(25:08):
that say different or is that combined the two?

Speaker 4 (25:11):
You know, not that I'm aware of, but it is.
It's not like pinpoints on a map. It's definitely more
of a spectrum through the areas, and you see it
like in minuscule points as well, like from holler to holler,
or little part of this state to a little part
of that state. There's going to be things that are
repeated and things that aren't or things that are different.

(25:31):
And I think that's one of the really interesting things
about it. You know, even through families, you'll see recipes
change or grow in a different direction.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah, talk about you've mentioned before about some of the
you try to kind of elevate some of this cuisine.
You bring back some of these like classic recipes and
kind of elevate them on your menu at the restaurant.

Speaker 5 (25:49):
At the back of my kitchen, you.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Tell us a couple of those, or tell us a
couple you know, Yeah, one of your favorites that you've done.

Speaker 4 (25:54):
Absolutely. Man, Well, I was talking about soup beans earlier,
so we do a churched up suit beans.

Speaker 5 (25:59):
On my menu, Jefferson. In fact, you said that, m hm.

Speaker 4 (26:03):
So you know, soup beans at their heart are are
beans with that just you're cooked down with hamhowk Right? Well,
what would make that better? Let's add a little bit
of bacon in that. So we start off when we
do our onions in the beginning, I also do a
round of bacon. Then I pull that out, cook everything
in that bacon fat, and then we we do render

(26:24):
it down ham to put in there as well, and
then with that soup bean mixture as a whole, instead
of doing corn bread on the side or this or that.
A lot of times it'll be garnished with with fresh
minced onions as well. I do a halopan you pickled
red onion to put on top, and then we do
a corn bread dust and candied lard on to go

(26:45):
on top of that, and that churches it up, so
that kind of brings it into thank you, thank you.
That brings it into the present day a little bit better,
makes it a little bit more interesting. One of the
things I run into a lot is if people have expectations.
They know their their MEMA's soup beans, they might be
upset if they get my soup beans and they're not
the same. But if I change it a little bit

(27:07):
so that they're open to that change, then then we
can really get somewhere.

Speaker 5 (27:12):
You said, mem not to be confused with Papa.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
That's a fruit me mos a person, right, I'm Jeffy.

Speaker 4 (27:22):
Can we dub Jeffy as Pappy Papa?

Speaker 5 (27:25):
Oh that's great, Jeffy Pappy Papa.

Speaker 4 (27:27):
I like that.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
Listen hit me.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Jeffy loves a good nickname. He'll be he'll talk anything
you want to give him. He likes it, Pappy, Papa.

Speaker 5 (27:34):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
So I think about some of these dishes too, And
you were talking about some of the dishes that you've
kind of had churched up, as you said, you know,
I remember growing up and I've mentioned before my father
grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, like this is
the kind of cuisine that he grew up on his
entire life.

Speaker 5 (27:48):
I can make from a lot of money. Rest in peace,
my dead dad.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
I was very young, but I do remember specifically doing
things like catfish fries with him, or he would make
something called chocolate gravy, which is just the craziest thing
you've ever heard of.

Speaker 5 (27:59):
Chocolate bravy is a thing, Matt, you ever heard of
that I have?

Speaker 4 (28:03):
I have not heard of chocolate grape. Well, I've heard
of it, but not like historically in my in my
experience is it like mole.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
Very very similar.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
It's like a sweet gravy and maybe a cocoa powdered milk, flour, butter,
everything you think you would put in that right, but
he would serve it over like a dark chicken. So
it's almost like a take on a moley it was interesting,
but it would be sweet, or he would serve it
with pancakes, or you would serve it with uh, you know,
we would help here, we probably just called it chocolate sauce, right,
just chocolate sauce. But like down there, my dad would
serve it for breakfast. He'd make chocolate gravy and pancakes

(28:32):
like that was a thing.

Speaker 4 (28:33):
That's cool, that's right.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
I mess with that. That sounds if it's cool.

Speaker 5 (28:36):
If it's just like you don't know what's called, so
you just call it chocolate gravy.

Speaker 4 (28:39):
Well, you know, if you're going to market something in Appalachia,
calling it gravy is a good way to go.

Speaker 5 (28:43):
Probably not a vet.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
Yeah, you know, well so is it. But it's like
a flour gravy, right, I mean like you're making this right,
which are in butter making like a simple room in
a pan, hitting it with what water or milk with milk,
rinking milk and then yeah, a little cocoa powder, a
little sugar or coca.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Powders or you know, my dad would always keep it simple.
He might even use like hershry syrup and make like
a thick chocolate milk, you know, especially it's kind of
like a bluete almost like a valute or you know,
or a besch and melt.

Speaker 5 (29:14):
Like a belt.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, but uh yeah, And we'd make a chocolate and
chocolate gavy and we sort it with stuff and it's
kind of fun, you know, and he'd get fancy. He
would you know, put some chocolate shavings on top of it.
Sometimes it's a cream and get really fancy. Got chocolate pancakes, boy,
come get some, you know.

Speaker 4 (29:28):
I love this.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
Uh. Another one that I think was kind of a
staple in my house and for applectric cuisine and and
Madam Hope you can speak this was apple butter.

Speaker 5 (29:35):
Apple butter is definitely a thing. Can you talk about that?

Speaker 1 (29:38):
I mean, you can use the sea sweet applications, savory applications,
so much use is for that.

Speaker 4 (29:42):
Oh man, apple butter is amazing, you know. And apple
butter and uh like honey and maple syrup and sorghum
even even which is a grass. All of those things
were sugar substitutes because we sugarcane doesn't grow in the hills,
and apple butter was a great way we could grow
apples for days, you know, and in the fall you

(30:05):
get these huge copper kettles, like the size of an
s ten and they cook down these apples forever until
they got caramelized and sweet and delicious. And man, you
can put the apple butter on anything. It's great on proteins,
it's great on dessert applications or breakfast applications. It's good
on just regular old toast or salt rising bread. There's
another apple Achian staple for you.

Speaker 5 (30:27):
Do you say salt rising bread.

Speaker 4 (30:29):
Yeah, Salt rising bread is not I've never made it,
but you use it's like a fermentation process instead of
yeast to make it, to make it loft like a
sour yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
Yeah. Oh so you like lactose ferment the flour with
like a salt water solution or something.

Speaker 4 (30:47):
Yeah, And it's like apparently it's like super stinky and
like everyone has stories about how their house would stink
when Mamoul makes salt rising bread and it takes like
two days. Like Apple Aachian food is slow food.

Speaker 5 (30:58):
Yeah, I love that, which is not a bad thing.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
No, that's my favorite.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
Can you talk a little bit about the history, like
what kind of jobs would people in this in this
region have and kind of what would they.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
Like a day to day life would be well, it's
a lot of subsistence farming back in the day. And
then we've got this very unhealthy relationship with industry where
you know, business interests from outside of the state or
the region would come in and you'd have a coal
mine open up, drainage from somebody's farm, the runoff from

(31:31):
that coal would ruin the water source for the farm,
and then the farmer would end up having to go
work for the coal miner because they had to put
food on the table. Oh Man, And that's what led
us to the Coal Wars and the Battle of Blair
Mountain in nineteen twenty one, where the union coal miners
rose up against and got shot at by Pickerton guards
from Chicago. Like that was a really big defining moment

(31:52):
for our history.

Speaker 5 (31:53):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (31:55):
Yeah, nowadays, there's all kinds of different industry. There's still
logging going on, there are still some whole mines. There's
there are chemical plants up and down the river. Like
I live on the Ohio River, so there's a lot
of that stuff going on there. My old man was
an aluminum worker. He worked, he was a steel worker,
and it's a lot of it's a lot of like
poorer people jobs, you know, like it's industry apple Achian

(32:19):
people are very smart, but they don't often have like
the opportunity to be engineers or architects or that sort
of thing. And that's definitely changing in modern day.

Speaker 5 (32:28):
But you can the term.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Food desert use a lot and and but I don't
think maybe some people think of this region as a
food desert.

Speaker 5 (32:35):
But you would probab disagree with that, wouldn't you?

Speaker 4 (32:39):
Yes, and no, plump. I mean parts of West Virginia
are a food desert these days because we've been kind
of suckered in by convenience and people are no longer
growing gardens. They're not canning like they used to, they're
not putting things up in the cellar at the end
of this growing season, and they're getting suckered in by
by chain restaurants and a lot of a lot of

(33:02):
communities the best source for food they have is Dollar General. Wow,
it's really heartbreaking.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (33:09):
And I've had the opportunity to work with like some
high school students and middle school students where they're learning
to grow food and I can show them how to
cook that food and they're like, oh, I didn't think
I liked squash, but I just didn't know how to
cook it right. Because people are losing those abilities, man,
and it's making them. I say, it's like going back
to the coal days, because in the coal mine you

(33:31):
got paid in company script, which was like a gift
card you could only use at the company store. And
then you were you were like stuck working for them
because there was no other way to put food on
the table. And nowadays with credit cards and all of that,
it were essentially working for script. Again.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
That's really interesting. I never thought about like that, Jeff.
You have you ever heard anything like that?

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Yeah, well yeah, unfortunately in a low w Incomarius and
it's a it's a real problem.

Speaker 5 (33:58):
That's crazy, you know.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
It's that's like something that that kind of happens. And
I feel like it's a I didn't know about this,
the company script that you're only allowed to use in
the company store. I mean that seems that I.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Just kind of diabolic backwards. Well, you know, just because
you control the entire narrative that way.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
You know, if exactly a community is relying on you
for income, work, food, medicine, you know, whatever, you have
no other options. But work there and do whatever they
tell you to do, and that's that's becomes a kind
of an unfair power balance, and I feel like that's where,
you know, it's tough.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
So it's almost like this cuisine is born out of necessity,
where it is these foods have to be preserved and
canned and taking care of for the growing season. So
maybe because you're you know, having to get food from
the same place you're working, maybe you do have a
garden and you're growing things and you're passing seeds back
and forth between your neighbors and your friends, and so
you have well, you know, vagabonds got this amazing green

(35:04):
stripe tomatoes, So we're gonna give him some seeds here
from our you know, our onions or whatever, and just
you know, we're gonna grow things together and share stuff,
and then we're gonna all can it, and we're gonna
preserve it. We're gonna smoke it, we're gonna cure it
and leave these things in our cellar and pickling it
as a as a big part of the cuisine as well, right.

Speaker 4 (35:19):
Yep, absolutely, man, And I love looking into those heritage
preservation techniques. So a lot of places this you know
nowadays are starting to get electricity into these places, and
a big problem that we fight with is not of Yeah. Yeah,
and we're still fight with Wi Fi accessibility, Like a
lot of people don't have the Internet, which has become
a valuable utility in the modern day and a.

Speaker 5 (35:42):
Problem I'm guessing for school children and all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 4 (35:45):
Absolutely. You know, growing up when my dad was working
at the aluminum plant, we had a garden ourselves. We
lived on a dairy farm and my dad hunted avidly.
There were times when he was laid off of work
for a two year stretch and coach deer to feed
the family.

Speaker 5 (36:02):
Wow, that's incredible, man.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
You know, one thing All said before that got me
that is about uh, you know, people don't get a
chance to be architects and stuff like that. But the
ingenuity I feel like it takes to survive in an
environment like this shows like not only intelligence, but like
true grit you know what I mean, Like to be
able to like dig deep and do exactly like we

(36:25):
poach deer to live. That's like to me, that's that's like,
that's amazing. I don't know, I love it.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yeah, I think it's great and you you you I
was gonna bring up talking about some of the proteins
that we've already touched on a little bit. You just
actually word mentioned that veal is cheaper. I know that
hunting is as a as a big part of it too,
a big part of the cuisine as well.

Speaker 4 (36:43):
Right, absolutely. And you know we're talking squirrel, rabbit, venison,
you know mainly that some some birds, but we don't
have very many big birds. You know, usually it's more
like chickens, turkeys. But you know, a bullet is a
lot cheaper than going to the butcher and buying meat. Wow.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
Take a bullet to kill a squirrel?

Speaker 4 (37:06):
Well, I mean you have to be a really good
aim with.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
A rock, yeah, or with the hot my slink shots.

Speaker 4 (37:12):
Yeah, yeah, shot Yeah. I don't know very many people
that hunt with slingshots, but we do have we do
have arrows. You know, people hunt with bows and arrows
and compound bows and all that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
Wow, and does any of these foods like we talk about,
like we just bring up the hunting part of it,
do you find like even in your restaurant, would you
serve venison? Now?

Speaker 4 (37:31):
I have not made that leap yet. I almost did
last summer, and I had a problem with sourcing it,
which is ironic because I could, like, you know, throw
a milk crane at one out out of my bathroom window,
but I couldn't source it for the restaurant.

Speaker 5 (37:44):
That's hilarious.

Speaker 4 (37:45):
H you know.

Speaker 5 (37:46):
Another dish.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
I think a lot of applatch and cuisine which maybe
a lot of people don't think of it, but maybe
it's more towards, like you said, the Pittsburgh area and
that sort of stuff is a pepperoni role. I feel
like that's definitely like a very very much a naplatching
type of cuisine. It's think about a calazon. It's not
on both ends of pepperoni and cheese, and that's what
I think of it.

Speaker 4 (38:03):
Yeah, it's it's bread, it's a roll, it's it's usually
served you know, room temp. And it was developed in
the heart of West Virginia for for coal miners and
people going to work. It was something they could chuck
into a lunch pail and and eat midday and it
was gonna still be okay for them to eat. Essentially,
it's just pepperoni rolled up in bread.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
Is that just like regular old slice pepperoni? Or is
it like diced up, like do you gets and they
chop it up.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
Yeah. See, that's a that's a whole hotly debated topic
right there, buddy, really really, Oh it's huge. Yeah. There
you've got people that are on the side of doing
sticks in your pepperoni rolls. You got people that are
on slice side. They actually also do ground pepperoni in
the rolls. Okay, yeah, like you'll see its shredded. I like,

(38:50):
personally when I make them, I like to use usually
it's a sweet bread. I like to do more of
a wheat and when you put a little wheat in there,
you almost get a little bit of cheesiness to the
flavor of the bread and it's more hardy. And I
like the big four inch round Deli pepperoni, that little thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
So you serve like a pepperoni roll like for like
a lunch special or something at the restaurant.

Speaker 4 (39:13):
We have We don't consistently, but we have done that
a lot of times. They'll be served with sauce. You'll
have stewed peppers, peppers and onions that sort of thing
with like in a red sauce with it.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
That's interesting because it's not like you're thinking about like
like like tomato sauce.

Speaker 5 (39:27):
Like I'm like, you know, it's it's you except stew pepper's.

Speaker 4 (39:30):
Almost Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
My mom used to make a dish called Macaroni and
tomatoes where she would cook tomatoes down and then just
put put a pinch of salt. I guess maybe no garlic,
no no herbs or anything, and then just put a
box of macaroni in there and then call that. I
think that is a very like mid Atlantic Appalachian type dish.

Speaker 4 (39:52):
Right, No, I agree with you. There, we did. We
did that. We also did red noodles, which was like
a red sauce, but they weren't really it wasn't really seasoned.
It was more like a Macarini tomatoes kind of application,
but it was it was egg noodles.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, I tell you
what too. It's just it's funny how a dish like that.
It's so simple, Jeffy, But like like in my brain,
like I can taste it right now, like I remember
what it tastes like, I remember like a lot of
black pepper were going there in the end, like I
thought I would serve it myself.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
It's getting better, I'm telling you. At first, I'm like, man,
it sounds like your mom didn't like you as an Italian. Well, yeah,
she put a pinch of salt on some noodles and
just pour the can of tomatoes on there. Basically, my
grandmother would attacked you.

Speaker 5 (40:36):
But it's not my fault.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
I didn't do it.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
I know, just no. But and I know it's out
of necessity.

Speaker 5 (40:40):
I mean, grandmother would have saved me.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
They probably didn't have, you know, all the things that
you needed to spice it up, so it became like
a traditional dish. And well you're getting those cans of
tomatoes that you preserve from you know, last season's growth,
and you poured it in.

Speaker 5 (40:52):
You can feed the entire family, you know.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
It's it's that changes the game too, though, because homemade
can tomatoes different, right, are so good compared to a
can tomato from a store. I mean, yeah, it's just
night and day really.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
So yeah, yeah, so that that was one of those dishes.

Speaker 5 (41:07):
Now, sorry, go ahead, Matt.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
We all experience this every day. Like you come home
from work, you got to feed the kids. Everyone's hungry.
You didn't go to the store this week, you're like, shoot,
what do we have, what's in the what's in the pantry,
what's in the fridge, and you throw food together. This
whole cuisine was just based off of that, what do
we have? What can we put together? It's going to
make a good meal. Man.

Speaker 5 (41:28):
That's that's great. It's that simple.

Speaker 4 (41:31):
That's great.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
Yeah. I love that. I love the story of that. Actually,
just what can we put together? How do we make
it work? How can we get by? We got to
go to break here just a couple of minutes. But
I love just kind of throwing these dishes out of you,
these these like staples, and getting your opinion on them
and seeing where you are with it. And we talked
about how important you know, dryla goomes are and things
like that. But chicken and dumplings was a dish that
I grew up on as well, very very simple dumpling

(41:53):
mixture with flour, water, maybe some butter if you had it,
or milk, and then you have a chicken broth and
you make a chicken sotit and you just you know,
spoon in little dumplings that it cooked, and that would
be dinner.

Speaker 4 (42:04):
Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely, I'm.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Hoping you could tell me more about this dish, because
I don't know much more about it other than that.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
I mean, that's pretty much it, man. But you know,
simple simple soups, Like one of our family's favorites is
my Grandma's cabbage and potato soup. And it's cabbage, potatoes
and ham and chicken broth. It's that simple. But man,
that that super will change your life. Yeah, it's amazing.
And chicken and dumplings is the same way. It's like,
this is what we have. Uh, you know, for whatever reason,

(42:32):
we're not gonna make biscuits today, but we're gonna make
these dumplings on top of the soup. Maybe we just
you know, need to save the dishes. Who knows, But.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Yeah, different, And I tied to church it up now.
As we were saying earlier, it's like I'll put arragon
in it and try to like add these herbs and
it's still good. It's not the same though, it's not
the same.

Speaker 4 (42:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
To use dark meat, yeah, to use chicken thighs, and
we'd use chicken thiash because it was cheaper, but you
use chicken thighs because it was you know, it tastes
delicious and.

Speaker 5 (42:55):
You get the flavor out of it.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
You may even cook them down in that broth to
get that extra flavor out of it.

Speaker 5 (42:59):
You know, just you know, it's it's so simple.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
I think one of the biggest things you said that's
that strikes home with me is just how simple this
cuisine is and how I don't.

Speaker 4 (43:08):
Know, I love his.

Speaker 5 (43:11):
We're doing right now by the Maga.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Hanging out with us all the way from West Virginia
talking about Appalachian cuisine with me and Jeffy. And Jeffy,
I can see in your face you're thinking how you
can take some of these recipes and incorporate them in
some of these styles into your cuisine now that you
make Yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (43:26):
Have many questions, and I'm also fascinated by the by
the idea of just what you know, what you have
on hand and making something out of nothing. That to
me is that's real cooking.

Speaker 5 (43:38):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Right there, stay right there, We'll be right back here
on Plumbla Foods on w i c c is Chef Louves,
Chef jeff with Plumblove Foods.

Speaker 5 (43:44):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
I Love Foods right on a Saturday, hanging out with you,
excited to hope you're having a great kicked off for
your summer start for the summer, because Jeffie's summertime. I'm
very excited. I couldficially say a summertime now, right.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
It's summertime.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
Summertime, baby, you know, we love it. It's our favorite
time of year. We're talking all about apple Astric cuisine
with our good friend Chef Matt Welson, Vagabat chef all
the way from West Virginia, and Chef you are also
the executive chef for the parks across Westernia state parks, right,
that's right, man, which is a pretty cool gig.

Speaker 4 (44:35):
It is an awesome gig.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
Brother.

Speaker 4 (44:36):
I get to travel around to all the different state parks.
We've got thirty six in the state. Twelve of them
have food and beverage programs, you know, and like I
said in your program last week, the worst thing about
being chefs were stuck inside all the time.

Speaker 5 (44:48):
Right Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

Speaker 4 (44:51):
With this, I get to go to the most beautiful
places in my state and I get to love there.
So it's amazing. It's the best thing.

Speaker 5 (44:58):
That's fantastic, man.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
I know, we got to get you out of here
because you've got to go to one of those said meetings.
We're just talking about where you got to go tell
everybody in the farms or in a parks how you're
going to make food, which I still have quite figured
out how that goes hand in hand.

Speaker 5 (45:10):
But I love that they have a chef, which is awesome.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
There should be more chef jobs and places that you
didn't think there'd be a chef. But I'm glad that
you're there. I can't wait to see what you're doing next.
We've been talking about Apleatri Cuisine's If you've missed any
part of this, you can go and get the podcast anywhere.

Speaker 5 (45:24):
The podcast comes out on Sundays.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
I'm sorry, it comes out on Saturdays around six o'clock,
So miss the show, you pick it up later. You
can get it on the podcast and all your devices
anyplace you get fine audio programming.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Matt.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
We were just talking a little bit about some of
the dishes and touching on a little bit of the history,
which is I mean, there's a massive history here.

Speaker 5 (45:41):
You can just so much research. You can learn so
much about the cuisine.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
If people want to get kind of you know, dip
their beaks in it kind of get their toes in it,
kind of learn about it. What's some of the dishes
you think are an easy starting point, Like, you know, okay,
start with this so you can kind of learn the
history of this dish. And how important is learned the
history of the dish before you make it?

Speaker 4 (45:58):
I don't. I mean, I think learning the history the
dish makes it more interesting, it makes for better dinner conversation,
but I don't think it's absolutely necessity. Sure, you know,
And I've going to encourage people to check out my
YouTube channel. I do a lot of demos on there,
a lot of different food dishes on there. But really
the best way to learn about this food is come
visit Appalachia. Come to West Virginia, Come visit our state

(46:19):
parks here, you know, uh, experience the people, the the
the the topography. It's just it's a beautiful place. Good
people down there, good people. Absolutely man. We've you know,
we've got our rewards and and blemish is just like
anywhere else, but it is, it's stunning and it is
no place like it on Earth. And having traveled a

(46:40):
lot of this world either, there is no other place
like Appalachia.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
So give me one dish that's so much to start with. Like, hey,
you're gonna start making an apleatic cuisine and learn make this.

Speaker 5 (46:49):
I mean, learn to make biscuits. Man, there you go,
there you go.

Speaker 4 (46:52):
Just learn to make some basic mix biscuits, learn how
to cut butter in you know, and do it up right,
and you make a good lofty bis good. You can
put that with anything that can be breakfast, launch or dinner.
It can be sweeter, savory. It goes great with chicken,
it goes great with jam maad.

Speaker 5 (47:09):
There you go. I love it.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Chef Matt's gotta go get to his meeting right now.

Speaker 5 (47:12):
But we appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
Taking the time to join us, brother and and kind
of give us a little educational applea chic cuisine. We're
gonna tal a little more about it, talk about some
of these recipes. So thanks for joining us.

Speaker 5 (47:20):
Brother.

Speaker 4 (47:21):
Hey man, it's always great to see you guys. Thank
you for letting me talk about something I love so much.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
You are the man and we look forward to seeing
you down the road. Jeffy get his plugs before we
get him out of here.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
Absolutely, you want to check him out at the Vagabond
Kitchen dot com. That's his restaurant, and then you want
to go the Vagabond Chef Rides. That's his YouTube channel
where you're gonna check out all his demos. That's where
you learn more about this type of cuisine. And then
of course follow him on Instagram at the Vagabond Chef.

Speaker 5 (47:45):
There he is right now, Ladies and gentlemen, the Vagabond Chef.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
Have a good day.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
Brother.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
Thank you very much for joining us.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
You know what we say around here is watch for deer.

Speaker 5 (47:54):
Watch for the deer, all right, and that means I
love you.

Speaker 4 (47:57):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (48:00):
Yeah, maybe there's a little bit of language barrier there.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
I don't know, Jeffy, I don't I'm not sure about that.
Always a good time, Jeffy, seeing our good brother, the
Vagabond Chef. That guy's got a lot going on, man.
I'm very proud of him. He's definitely done a lot
for that state of West Virginia and just a good,
good human, good.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Human, great chef, great dude. I'm just I feel honored
to have his time. I honestly, my only my only
complaint is I want more of his time. I want
to spend more time with him, talking with them more.
I mean, there's so many questions I have about Appalachic cuisine,
and like, like I, you know, it must change for
each season. Like I was gonna talk about the forging
aspects that I've always thought about, you know what that

(48:40):
food must consist of, you know, and like do you
get like Laurel, you know, in the mountains at a
certain time of the year, and do you add that
to your beans and then it becomes a different dish?
You know, things like that, Like, you know, I'm sure
he does.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
This is interesting because like the forging part is a
big part of the cuisine. But I think forging is,
interestingly enough, a big part of every type of cuisine
you even think about, like here to the Northeast, like
getting clams, getting oysters, that's forging, you know.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
Well, you know what, I never thought of it that way.
That's funny, this is forging. I mean, I guess I
always thought of it more of hunting, because you're getting
an animal, you know.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
I think of a lot of foraging as being food
you can get without putting yourself in danger.

Speaker 5 (49:11):
You know.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
Essentially, it's kind of where it came from. So you
because you don't want to get hurt, because if you're
you know, you're in the mountains and you're an Apalatriic
cuisine and you're down here on the coastlines of Connecticut
and New York and stuff, and you're forging and there's
not people around. Last thing you want to do is
get hurt. So if you got hunting, you could get hurt.
And you get hurt, you can't feed your family. So
you know, the best kind of food to eat. It
kind of doesn't run away.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
So yeah, I kind of that's how I look at it.
I'm not sure I'm right, but that's you.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Know, Yeah, it might fall into shell fishing.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
I don't think shell fishing is the word, is it fishing?

Speaker 3 (49:42):
Shell fishing?

Speaker 1 (49:43):
The original forging of like clams and oysters was you know,
there was no nets or anything like that. They would
just go and dig them up. Yeah, by hand, by hand,
thinking about getting steamers and things like that.

Speaker 3 (49:55):
You know, No, no, I get it, I get it.
I just feel like it's an animal. Ever put it
in the I always thought foraging was more like nuts
and berries and greens.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
I mean, I think about forging mushrooms. They're living mushrooms. Yeah,
Joe Rogan does it from space so mean and Joe
Rogan doesn't lie.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
That's absolutely you listen. If you heard it on Joe Rogan,
it was probably in the Bible.

Speaker 5 (50:20):
I don't know, it's probably in the Bible.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
I want to talk some more about these Appalachin dishes though,
because I think there's a lot of applications for it
here in cuisines that we have here in our state
and things that we make, you know, on our own,
you know.

Speaker 5 (50:31):
I think it was interesting he was talking about, you.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Know, doing the beans, and you know, beans in the
gooms are one of those things that you can dry
and keep forever and they hold, which is great, but
can also make a very very hearty meal out of it.
And you know, great northern white beans here. We have
a great you know, white bean dishes here in in
in the North, which are you know, a bean a
dry bean based dish which is very similar to what
they do make down you know in Aplachic was see Jeffrey, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
Absolutely, I mean soup beings. I feel like when he
said soup beings, I almost was like, oh yeah, like
and I was like, I didn't realize that was Appalachian cuisine.
I just thought that was like I thought that was
a New England thing, soup beans, like soup beans and
a hamhock, like you know, it's like I've I've made that,
you know, and I thought that was old world, but
it might be like old world pilgrim food that just

(51:15):
kind of like you know, held held strong in that region.
And like, like, I'm sure preservation that's another thing we
didn't really get a chance to talk to him about,
but I'm sure like all the things you have to
preserve and that that becomes on hand. And one of
the things that's easy to preserve is like a country ham,
like hanging a ham and salting a hell yeah, hanging
that that'll last a few years, you know, and so

(51:37):
be able to chop a honk of that off and
throw it in a batch of beans and cook it down.
And you know, lard, you know, pig lards lasts a
long time, especially if you keep it in a pool
like a like a root seller.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
And they just having those those things to after flavor,
like using those hamhocks, using those pieces that aren't you know,
and if you want to get fancy with it, which
I've seen people do, where you take those hamhocks and
you stew down your beans and you serve the beans,
and you show the hamhock my hand to meat that
stuff on it and put it on top as a garnish,
and you can make it look really nice.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
You know.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
One thing I didn't ask about and I don't know
much about, and I was wondering, is like he said,
ketch up, And I'm like, is that like the universal condiment?
Are there other condiments that are like Appalachian, Like you know,
you mentioned a chocolate sauce that your dad put on
a whole bunch of different things. Like is there like
a like a like a white gravy that's like the
universal too, like a salt and pepper white gravy or
something real simple like that. So I don't know if

(52:26):
it's actually apple Lachian cuisine, but we would make like
a sausage gravy, like a breakfast sausage and gravy, you know,
which is basically, you know, a milk based gravy that
you make using the fat from sausage and it just
goes over the top of a cathead. I feel like
that's a very I don't know, I might have applatchin
roots kind of thing, but you can make that same
gravy to put on anything else, Like, you know, you
can cook up some of your chicken fried steaks and

(52:47):
serve that same grave around on top of it, and
you don't. You can't get that right anywhere, but in
the South.

Speaker 5 (52:52):
Yeah, it's it's.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
Like you know, and that's honestly, it's it's like it's
the it's so it's like heartburn in the afternoon. But
I know, ever not get it when I see it
on a menu, Like I get so excited and then
I get so bummed if it's a can. You know,
you can tell the difference when it comes out of
the can and you're kind of like, you didn't even try.
This is the easiest thing in the whole world. And
all I wanted was a real traditional Southern breakfast, and

(53:16):
then I got this thing right.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
You know, you had mentioned some of the stuff, and
so we see about that they grow that can grow
really well.

Speaker 5 (53:22):
Their corn grows very well.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
And corn has a lot of uses and it's one
of those things that you could just keep, you know,
using over and over. And my dad would make cormeal mush,
you just.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Call it corn mush. Was it like porridge.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Think about like a porridge or an oatmeal, but using
using cornmeal, so that sounds great.

Speaker 5 (53:40):
You cook it down.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
He would add little honey to it and it would
just be cormeal mush and he would make a big
vat bottom and you know, a big pot of it,
and you spoon some in.

Speaker 5 (53:48):
Sometimes put grape.

Speaker 3 (53:49):
Jelly, blueberries, some wild blueberries and cornmeal mush. That sounds delicious.
I would eat that right now. I mean, that sounds great.
I love I love corn I love I love the
flavor of good grips too. I don't know if grits
it's an apple ash and thing. I know it's a
Southern thing, but I love I love grits.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Yeah, I think it's probably maybe cormeal mush and grits
that kind of kind of go hand in hand a
little bit. But you know, the cornmeal mush might finish
with a little bit of milk if you had it
a little honey. It's it's almost like I said, the
consistency of oatmeal, or like you said of porridge.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Yeah, well, he and he mentioned also corn bread. You know,
you said putting some things on corn bread. So I'm
sure that's got to be a staple. And can you
talk about corn bread in the South compared to like,
you know, it's not loafed usually, right, isn't it cooked
in a cast interesting?

Speaker 1 (54:32):
So yeah, it'd be done in a cast iron pan
where you kind of get you know a little bit
of dark on the outside of it, you know. You
my mom and my dad would make it in muffin pans,
and so it would be corn. But it wasn't like
a cornmeal muffin. It was a corn It was corn bread,
but in a little muffin. And I think they did
it so everybody can get a piece, and so we
should count how many pieces were there. But little apple
butter corn bread, it's delicious. It goes hand in hand,

(54:55):
you know, a little bit of honey on top of
the corn bread. It's great if you could, you know,
I think Matt would say too that honey was one
of the those you know, it's one of those things
you could get but was expensive, you know, like like
like the wealthier people had honey. You know, honey was
harder to get, but sorghum was not. And using sorghum syrup,
you know, which you could cook down and make sorghum
syrup very easy because sorgum grows everywhere.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
Yeah, you know, it's funny there. There are a lot
of syrups that are used in commercial cooking and commercial
baking that aren't used in regular barley syrups and sorghum
syrups and stuff like that, which are a lot cheaper
to I guess come across to and they're made from grass, right,
they're all yeah types sorgums and grassss Yeah, which is
pretty interesting that we can get those kind of sweeteners
without sugarcane.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
Yeah. Well you can also make that stuff and you
can use sort them to make gluten free drinks. I
wanted to ask them about, you know, some of those
some of those cocktails, the things we might make, you know,
for aplastic cuisine. Not really a lot to talk about there,
with the exception of moonshine, which is made from corn,
you know, which is interesting because they could grow it
and they could distill it and they could you know,
ferment it, distill it, and here you have this I

(55:55):
don't know why they call it a drink.

Speaker 5 (55:57):
I mean rocket fuel.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Have you ever had real like like apple Achian mountains?

Speaker 3 (56:01):
Yeah, well it's not I guess it's still Blue Ridge Mountains.
Ambrose family is from.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Oh yeah, yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (56:08):
Uh uh it's a cashiers, North Carolina. And uh when
I've been down there and they've gotten me some some
good old boy, good old boy white lightning.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Mississippi mud. Mountain dew what they would
call it. By the way, that's where mountain dew came from. Yeah,
mountain dew is another word for, you know, a little
corn liquor, and they would call the mountain dew.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
I did not know that. That is hilarious.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
And but I'll tell you it is rocket fuel. I mean,
you would drink that and every part of your body
will burn. Man, for some reason, we think it's the
best stuff ever. I don't get it.

Speaker 5 (56:47):
I don't.

Speaker 4 (56:47):
I don't.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
It's put me to bed medicine. I mean you I
drink too much of that. I can't. I'm not rocking
it anywhere. I'm just i gotta lay down.

Speaker 4 (56:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
But also it'll kill any any kind of cold or virus,
and to kill that.

Speaker 5 (57:02):
Too immediately immediately.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
It may actually kill some cells in your body as well.
But it's a staple and people would make it and
they started flavoring it. It mix it with you know,
you know, apple cores and things like that. When they're
distilling it start adding a little bit of flavor to it,
which is interesting.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
So listen, I'm into some shine, especially if you're mixing
it with stuff like a little like I've had. I've
went to a party and they did like a moonshine
and fruit kind of like a bowl, like a big
kind of like a fruit punch situation, and it was
like all these different pieces of fruit and moonshine, and
they let it sit for a couple of days and
then we all got in there and we're drinking. It

(57:37):
was berries, all sorts of stuff almost like a sangria
and moonshine. They might have been some other something in there.
I'm not sure. I didn't make good delicious, very intoxicating though,
like one of those things. And it was ice cold.
They had a bunch of ice in it. And everyone's
at the where we're all there's like a kind of
like pond kind of situation somebody had were like partying and.

Speaker 5 (57:59):
Just kind of went off, went off. The vegle was
flying that day.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Yeah, it was funny, It was fun but again, it
all comes from corn because corn is such an easy
thing to grow. I mean, it loves being on mountains.
It loves kind of, you know, a little bit cooler weather,
but it loves getting a lot of sun. It's it's
a it's a it's a vegetable that likes that region.
So what one hundred things can we make with corn?
How can we preserve that corn? They would dry it,

(58:23):
they would make corn meal with it, you know, and
when you're cooking, you would make like we said before,
corn mush you would you know, you could you could
do creamed corns where it comes from too, which takes
you know, it's not.

Speaker 5 (58:33):
Really any cream in at all.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
You know, when the corn is good, Oh, when it's delicious,
it's it's pretty, it's unmistakably delicious when you get it fresh,
like that corn cakes. You know, I think some Johnny
cakes Johnny Cakes came from corncakes. You know, kind of
the same idea of it, but using that corn to
kind of make and again, like Matt was saying, the
bag of my chef, like, this is food that was,

(58:58):
you know, from a food desert what we call these days,
places that don't have a lot of ways to kind
of fill you up. And you're talking coal miners. You're
talking to people who are working hard jobs and need
food to fill them up.

Speaker 5 (59:10):
You know, the pepperoni role he was speaking about before.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
You know, so using corn to make these cakes, to
make these breads, to make things like that, to put
in lunch pails, to put in to feed the dinner
table full of fifteen kids, which I never understood, Like,
if don't have any money, stop having kids.

Speaker 5 (59:22):
But that's a different story in itself, you know.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
Well, I'm just saying'm like, you make got all money,
why you're having kids?

Speaker 5 (59:29):
You can got kids and everybody's eating corn cakes.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
Come on, man, listen, having kids is one of the
few very affordable pastimes in these regions.

Speaker 5 (59:40):
It's okay, but yeah, so that's where it kind of
comes from.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
I think, Jeffy just you try to figure out ways
to feed your family throughout the year, even when it
gets cold and you know, harsher months and things like that.
You have these preserved foods, and preserving is a way of.

Speaker 5 (59:54):
Life, you know.

Speaker 3 (59:54):
Yeah, listen, I think getting creative with pickling is amazing
and and when you have all these like that with
what I was saying earlier, like the ingenuity to make
something last from what you're gonna have a short month,
like you've collected huckleberries or you've collected ramps. You know,
like they're only there for a month. How do you

(01:00:15):
keep those around? Well, you got to pick them, you
got to preserve them, You got to do something to
give them shelf life so you can have them for
the year. And the fact that that ingenuity has passed
down generation and generation. And I'm sure there's a lot
of mushrooms in those mountains are too, right, like great
mushrooms picking down there, which is another scary but you know,

(01:00:36):
tried and true ways of knowing exactly what you're looking for.
If you're going with somebody who knows what they're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
You know, I think, yeah, well that's a scary part too.
He Hey, try this and see what you think and
it makes you sick. Yeah, I mean, you're gonna find
out who that guy is to try it for the
first time, you know. I think one of the staples
in my brain when I think of aplastic cuisine is
trying to make you know, you want to make things
that are sweet and desserts, but out of things that
are typically savory. So you know, I feel like I

(01:01:04):
could be wrong. I think I'm ninety five percent right.
I think sweet potato pie came from appleachan cuisine where
they would take it and you could also there was
also a white potato pie, a sweet white potato pie,
which is using rigular potatoes and you sweet them up
with little sorghum or a little bit of honey, and
you make a potato pie, you know, basically, but it's
sweet and you know, for dessert. So you're trying to
figure out way to make a delicioussert out of, you know,

(01:01:26):
having ingredients that you already have because you don't always
have strawberries, you don't always have your dairy products to
make things out of.

Speaker 5 (01:01:32):
So I don't know, I think sweet potato pie might
come from there too.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
Or sugar, you know, like like they're saying like you're saying,
you're you know, using maple syrup and sorghum and all
these other things. Like it's a it's wild. I the
desserts coming from potatoes. That's you really had to be
on the bottom of the barrel to be like looking
around and being like, because I've never heard of a
of a of an Irish potato pie.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Yeah, it's a thing, and you can make it sweet,
and I don't know, I think it's worth I kind
of want to look it up trying to make one now.
So it sounds kind of fun actually to see if
they can make it sweet, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
Yeah, I'm sure you could. And the cool thing is
potatoes are so creamy, you know if if you treat
them the right way, So if you were to sweeten
it up, I mean it would it would mess with
your brain, But I mean the buttery flavor and the
creamy texture of a potato, you know, if you added
a little more heavy cream and you added something really
sweeten it to like lighten it up, and you kind
of really fluff them, and you put them into something

(01:02:25):
you can maybe even added like a little bit of
like a like a like a farmer's cheese or something
that's gonna you know, lend itself to the pastry. And
that sounds really great, honestly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
Yeah, I think another one we haven't talked about yet too,
but it's more Northern Appalachia is like buckwheat. Buckwheat is
a staple kind of as well, because it's really easy
to grow it grows like a weed, and people could
take buckwheat and as easy to fabricate and make buckwheat cakes,
which is a thing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
Yeah. I love buckweed. I like buckwheat as a side.
I like making buckwheat salads like grain salads using buckwheet.

Speaker 5 (01:02:57):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
I used to make a vegetarian chili where I added
buckweed towards the end and let it strike in there
and it would kind of acted like almost like ground
beef in the in the chili.

Speaker 5 (01:03:08):
Interesting, I never thought about like that. That's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
Yeah. Yeah, So I would make it kind of loose,
the chili beans, all the things that would be in chili,
and then before I cooled it, right right before I
took it off with the heat, I would just throw
in like a quarter cup or like a half cup,
depending on the size of the pot, stir it up,
and then pour it in the pan and let it
cool and soak into it, and it would give it
this like texture that was really that's great.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
You were talking about mushrooms before. I think morals are
one of those morales. Excuse me at one of those mushrooms.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
That I don't have any of those.

Speaker 5 (01:03:38):
That'said the wrong thing. Morales, It's on my notes. That's why.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Are very very applatching as well, like like like definitely
an Appalachian mushroom. They love the mountains, they love that
kind of area. So morals are definitely something and expensive.
Mushrooms is very expensive.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Oh man, I'm in And I'm sure there's a lot
of like a Porcini style like Bulette. I think there
is the is the family of them that Apporcini is.
I'm sure those girl all around up there. I love
a morel mushroom. I love when you get a big one,
like a big one. I love stuffing it with like
a sausage sort of filling or some sort of meat
farce and uh, you know, roasting it and then serving

(01:04:15):
it sliced with like you know, a nice little pan ju.
I just I's just such a fun, fun way to
eat them. And they're so good. It's just like it's
just such a cool flavor.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Yeah, they are a cool play. They're painted about to
clean though.

Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
It's one of them. What it's one of the mushrooms
that I always say just use the water.

Speaker 5 (01:04:31):
Because most people don't want to use water.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
Was wash mushroom because they sponge it up and soak
it up, and it's hard to saw tell them.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
I get it. I totally get it. A morele uh,
depending on where you get them. I mean, I've gotten
some beautiful, pristine moreles that don't need that much cleaning
and you can kind of just give them a light
brushing and all that stuff. But then I've also got
some that look like they literally came out of a
pine needle box. You know, it's just dirt and pine
needles and sand, and you're like, what's going on? Where

(01:04:56):
have these grown in the desert?

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
Like it's ok there, what is this from the sun?
What's wrong with this thing? Is it from a mouth
of a volcano? It's got rocks in it?

Speaker 5 (01:05:05):
I don't know this thing growing Jupiter.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
It's interesting because those those mushrooms, you know, are kind
of on the same wavelength with me as like a
crap cake or something. If you get a piece of
shell and it ruins it for me, you know, so
a little bit of grit ruins the entire thing for me.
It's not my thing at all. We're talking app Achian cuisine.
We had our guests, the Vagabond Chef always from West Virginia.
Check out the vagabax Kitchen dot com and of course
the Vagabon Chef Rides on Instagram. We come back.

Speaker 5 (01:05:32):
We're gonna wrap this up.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
Talk a little bit more.

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
YouTube Vagabone Chef Rides. This is YouTube channel.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
There you go, There you go. We're gonna wrap this up.
We get back, talk a little bit more. We've got
a few more things to throwout. You stay right there.
We're talking Appleatri cuisine right here on Plumblow Foods on
w I c C. All right, plumba Foods right here

(01:06:15):
on w I c C. We're talking apleatic Cuisine's your
boy chef, plump Chef Jeffy hanging out with you today.
What do we call you, Memo, Papaul? What wasn't the
name you got here?

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
Uh, big Daddy, Papa.

Speaker 5 (01:06:26):
Papaul Daddy.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:06:27):
Papa Daddy's a good name.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
Yeah, Popaul Daddy, Daddy, Papa.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Daddy, Papa, I don't know. Whatever it was, it was.
It was a great day. We're talking aplectic cuisine. Our
guest hanging out with us in the first half of
the show was our friend the Appalachian with the culinary
whiz that is the Vagabond Chef straight from West Virginia.
You have to check out his restaurant, The Vagabond Kitchen,
where he serves kind of uplifted traditional applatch and cuisine,
which is you know, like I said, we're doing a
whole Yeah, we're doing a whole series here. We're talking

(01:06:52):
all about different cuisines from across our great country.

Speaker 5 (01:06:56):
So we have some great food here in this country.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
I feel like it's sometimes you know, people like, oh,
I love Italian food with all. I love this.

Speaker 5 (01:07:00):
I love that we have great food here in America
as well.

Speaker 3 (01:07:03):
We do. We have an amazing, amazing, amazing melting pot
of peoples and cultures that come together and then all
influence these regions people. Peoples, Yeah, peoples. We all have peoples,
all our people. It's it's definitely very good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
So talking about this cuisine, this is like a working
man's type food people who you know, it was a
little bit of a harder upbringing, you know, with this
kind of cuisine, a lot of a lot of preserving,
a lot of canning, a lot of getting through the
tougher winters with the food that we grew. You know,
Matt before had mentioned about how people to end up
having to work for a coal mine because their farm

(01:07:39):
got inundated with chemicals from runoff from the coal mine.
Then they worked for the coal miners, and the coal
miners would pay them in essentially a gift card to
the store that they had on their work sites.

Speaker 5 (01:07:50):
So that's where the could get food for their families.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
They start trying to grow more food, and you know,
it's it's a really the story itself is kind of sad,
but what it creates and the ingenuity of people, I
think is incredible. So Jeffy has found a list for
us to look at that is all about coal miner cuisine.
Is that the right way to put a Jeffy, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:09):
I think it's like traditional things that people from that
that would take into the coal mines with them to
eat for lunch.

Speaker 5 (01:08:15):
With my peoples, that's what they would have for lunch.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
This is what your people's for sure had for lunch,
right right, all.

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
Right, let's go through. Lets see what you got, buddy.
We already mentioned I know, we mentioned pepperoni roles. We
talked about pepperoni roll is on the top of the list.
Standard This is a very very.

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
Big, big, big big dish in this region from north
to South people like a little spicy pepperoni which he's
wrapped in a roll. And to be clear, she doesn't.
It doesn't look Yeah, it doesn't look like a Stromboli.
It's not. It's it's it's more like a think a
Parker House roll with some pepperoni inside.

Speaker 5 (01:08:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
You would take a biscuit dough and you'd roll a
pepperoni in it and then you bake.

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
It, which I think is that sounds delicious.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
That fat breaks out and it cooks out and it's great.

Speaker 3 (01:08:56):
Has anyone ever put pineapple in one? Just to see
if anyone like this?

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
I think it's one of those is where you can't
mess with, like you just got it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
There's people will beat you up if you show come
to the barbecue with some pepperoni rolls and little pineapple
and pepperoni and.

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
There that won't they won't allow you to come in.
They'll be like, stop with the door, you can't security.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
Wow, Well you know I like the tradition. All right.
So the first one up on my list here, which
is a it's got a funny name, but it's very
interesting and it sounds delicious to me. I would eat it. Uh,
it's the miners mix sandwich.

Speaker 5 (01:09:30):
Miners mixed sandwich. So I don't know what this is.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
I'm gonna guess some sort of meat that's probably you know,
inexpensive and tough. So we gotta cook it down and
we're gonna add some kind of some kind of like sauce,
simple simple sauce with it, and cook it down and
just serve it on bread, very easy, with some onions maybe.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
Yeah, all right, so yes, so let me let me,
let me walk you through it. So this this was
a popular one in New England, honestly, the New England
style of the apple Ascian Mountains and then and the
community up there. Uh. It was basically a sandwich that
consisted of either corn, beef or potted beef potted which
I don't know if you know, if anyone out there

(01:10:08):
is familiar with potted beef or potted meat, potted meat sandwich, gross, Yep.
It's either it's like a lard and a meat cooked
down into a paste, much like a farce or a pete,
and it's put in a can and you can spread
it on stuff and it's it's actually it's it's pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
It's not white bread with a piece of iceberg letus
and black peppers, some dukes mayo.

Speaker 5 (01:10:28):
It actually works.

Speaker 3 (01:10:30):
Yeah, see that sounds great. I always had it with
Nance's hot mustard, you know that stuff. Yeah, sharp, sharp
and creamy hot mustard and a potted little potted meat
on white bread. So what they do is a little
potted meat or a little corn beef like that again,
cheap cuts of meat, white onion, sliced tomato, hard boiled.

Speaker 5 (01:10:47):
Egg oh okay, making it heartier, I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
And then in between two pieces of white bread. And
that was a very traditional mix. That's the things.

Speaker 1 (01:10:56):
And you're seeing it's funny because hard boiled eggs being
in that as interesting because you're trying to that more
and more in places who are making trying to make
fancy sandwiches by putting hard boiled eggs in it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
I I are you seeing that more?

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
I never where thinking about our friend Johnny when he
makes his exilence.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
Those are very traditional. That's a traditional Japanese cuisine top
ten percent ladies and gentlemen from a cuisine Aplasia is
the and it's actually the oldest region, so it wouldn't
make sense that when the Japanese left Appalasia and colonized Japan. Uh.

(01:11:35):
They brought hard boiled eggs with them and started making it.
A thousand year old egg comes from Yeah, milk bread,
same thing Appalachia.

Speaker 5 (01:11:44):
I mean, I'm pretty sure chopsticks came from there too.
That's the episode.

Speaker 3 (01:11:48):
That's a totally different episode. Check that on the Pantheon
Paon or the Patreons.

Speaker 4 (01:12:00):
He there we go.

Speaker 3 (01:12:01):
All right, so the minor mixed sandwich. I mean, you'd
eat that, don't lie?

Speaker 5 (01:12:05):
It sounds great. Tomato working in a coal mine?

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
Count me on?

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):
Oh man? And do you think it was thick? Think
everything was cut thick? On there?

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
I do actually have an actual audio recording of a
coal miner opening his lunchbox for the first time.

Speaker 5 (01:12:19):
Do you want to hear it?

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Yeah, so he's been working all day, he opens his
lunch box. And this is actually one hundred percent audio
from coal miners back in you know, the the early
turn of the century. Uh, in Appalachia.

Speaker 5 (01:12:30):
Check out their.

Speaker 3 (01:12:31):
Lunch big box, stop stop it out. Yeah, I think
that might have been some of that that was right there.
I'd have been pumped to that one. Maybe not this
next one. Let me let me hit you with a
new one here, this one, this one, I just don't
know exactly, and I've looked it up a few different

(01:12:52):
ways and it never sounds great. So I'm going to
hit you with it, though, gravy. So you hit them
with the bulldog gravy.

Speaker 5 (01:13:02):
Bulldog gravy.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
Yeah, and then do you like hot buds Sundays? Yeah,
much more than maybe, I don't know. So you take
some bulldog gravy and you're gonna slide that on top
of some a water sandwich. What You're gonna take some
bulldog gravy and you're gonna just scoop it on top
of your water sandwich.

Speaker 4 (01:13:23):
Okay, terrific.

Speaker 3 (01:13:25):
Let me let me walk you through this.

Speaker 5 (01:13:27):
Yeah, we don't know what all this is. Jeffrey.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
Sorry, I'm playing soundclip because I don't know what else
to say, because I'm like, well, I don't understand, trying
to I'm using the sound clips to use my expressive
face faces I'm making all.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
Right, So this is yeah, this this is so you
guys might have known it as monkey gravy as well.
That was in the mid In the Midwest, people called
it monkey gravy, but it's also called bulldog gravy. And
it is basically, uh, it's a recipe where you take
a quarter cup of drippings for neither sausage, bacon, chicken,
pork chops, whatever fat you have on hand. Sure you

(01:13:59):
mix in an equal amount of flour and then two
cups of milk. So we're talking pretty basic white gravy.
Bulldog gravy doesn't sound so bad eaten over a water sandwich,
which is bread soaked in lard and water.

Speaker 5 (01:14:17):
And then dried or no, I.

Speaker 3 (01:14:19):
Don't read anything about it being dried. I just but
soaking the bread and the lard. You just put it
fall apart. Yeah, And it was like kind of like
an open faced like a situation. Maybe become like a
mashed potato, Yeah, like a mush right something. It's interesting.

(01:14:43):
We're hungry if you want this for lunch, if you
can't be your mama or your papa. And you said,
mema and pappy papa over here, and we're like, Pappy, Papa,
do me a solid and get me an old water
sandwich with some bulldog gravy bulldog, and I'd be like yop,
and then I would come in and I would hit

(01:15:03):
him with just a plain piece of white bread that
I threw in an old, old pan that I had
laying out.

Speaker 5 (01:15:10):
Fat and some water. Just put that and just eat all.

Speaker 4 (01:15:13):
Listen.

Speaker 1 (01:15:13):
Here's the thing. It's how would you answer that? By
the way, Daddy Poark and I get one of the sandwiches. Yeah, yeah,
now here's my thing. Uh, very filling, I bet you know. Definitely.

Speaker 3 (01:15:26):
That's why you got to put the lard on there.
Otherwise that is sitting in your stomach for a week.
The lard is what it's gonna help you. Just make
sure this.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
I don't know, does that we watch these guys listen,
maybe it's it's a different version of people who would
do the Nathan's Hotdog Championship.

Speaker 3 (01:15:39):
You know, yes, I'm just I'm just like you. You're
taking like like a paste basically, yeah, flour when milk
and water and cooking that down and then you're pouring
it over more paste just water soaked on the bread,
which is just the flour gravy in a new form.
I mean, okay, this is a hungry man's meal.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
I love it. I love it all right. What else
you got for jeb? A water sandwich is interesting?

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
Yeah, I think I'm gonna try to serve one of those.

Speaker 5 (01:16:08):
I'd love to see how that goes over. Take a
video when you do it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:10):
Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. Uh. Speaking of which, there's
just the old lard sandwich, just like lard. Yeah, it's
the old lard sandwich. So what we would do here is, uh,
it kind of sounds exactly like what you think it would.
You would just uh, you'd have some lard, you know,

(01:16:32):
up in a freezer, maybe on on the countertop. It
would be bacon, could be a few different animals. A
lot of people would mix it, and then you get
some just some bread, maybe homemade bread, a little sour dough,
could be a peasant loaf that you had maybe something
about the store. I don't think you toasted it, and
I think you just rubbed some lard on it. And
I don't think it's a thin layer. I think it's

(01:16:53):
like a it's like you put an utella on a sandwich.

Speaker 5 (01:16:56):
Really just a thick layer of lard.

Speaker 3 (01:16:58):
Like lard, and then it's they eat them open faced
and sometimes they sprinkle some sugar on there.

Speaker 5 (01:17:04):
Sure sure?

Speaker 3 (01:17:05):
Which I said to my I just I said self,
I don't want a large sandwich.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
Right, what if it's all you got. If it's all
you got, you might as well some sugar ons make
it taste better.

Speaker 3 (01:17:14):
Again. You gotta be hungry, I.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
Mean, we established these are definitely hungry people working in
the coal mines. Not a lot of money, not a
lot of food, hungry.

Speaker 3 (01:17:26):
I mean, I just I'm so worried about the nutritional
value of a large sandwich or a water sandwich.

Speaker 5 (01:17:32):
You don't think it's healthy.

Speaker 3 (01:17:33):
I know. And these people are working so hard. This
is like a crazy hard job where you have to
be sharp. You will die in these places if you
make mistakes.

Speaker 5 (01:17:42):
You're burning calories though, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:17:43):
And you're living on water and lard sandwiches.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
Come on, man, look some people don't even get that.

Speaker 5 (01:17:48):
You should be happy for.

Speaker 4 (01:17:49):
What you get.

Speaker 3 (01:17:50):
Oh man, yeah, pick what you get.

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
Don't get water, You get what you get. You don't
get upset, oh water and large sandwich.

Speaker 3 (01:17:57):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
All right, give us give us another one, Jeffie. We're
getting the timers clicking. We got a few minutes left, right,
This one's better.

Speaker 3 (01:18:02):
This one is a coal miner's pastry. And this one
I can.

Speaker 5 (01:18:05):
Get this first of all, it's lard.

Speaker 3 (01:18:09):
Just yeah, First, ingredient lard pastry. Okay, we make a
pastry at a lard because lard right into some flour,
a little bit of ice, water and making a nice
pastry crust. Then we're gonna fill it with some cooked potatoes,
some cooked carrots, and then a meat of some kind,
could be any meat, onions, onion, carrots, meat. You're wrapping

(01:18:31):
that up, throwing it in there, baking it, and then
you sending them off to work with them like a
hot pocket. It feels like little hot pocket.

Speaker 1 (01:18:42):
That makes total sense. Yeah, but here's the thing. It
does sound like, okay, that would work, but like it
needs a sauce. Man, can we give somebody a saucy?

Speaker 4 (01:18:49):
Or what can we do? We need onion?

Speaker 3 (01:18:52):
Sure, or like a how about some garlic salt?

Speaker 5 (01:18:57):
I need the carrots in This isn't it?

Speaker 3 (01:18:59):
This is where I bet the Dollar General has helped
appalash and cuisine because there's a spice section of a
handful of things that would have really kicked U up
a notch.

Speaker 1 (01:19:07):
That's hilarious, Jeff, I think you're absolutely right. But just yeah,
some kind of give him a condomis some kind of sauce.
Give them a little mao or something. I mean, just
I feel like it's really dry.

Speaker 3 (01:19:16):
That's ketchup.

Speaker 5 (01:19:17):
Oh, I bet you're right.

Speaker 3 (01:19:19):
And what I would do in hard times, hard times, daddy,
I know hard times, And if I was in hard times,
I'd scort some ketchup inside that pastry. BEFO. I baked it, sure,
and that would be delicious. I bet you people would
not fight with you about that. People would be thrilled.
It tastes sweet and a little savory, sure, and real good.

(01:19:40):
And I think ketchup's good on everything.

Speaker 5 (01:19:42):
So yeah, account man, it sounds great.

Speaker 4 (01:19:44):
All right?

Speaker 3 (01:19:44):
The last one we've all heard of. It's got many names.
Are you ready?

Speaker 4 (01:19:49):
Let's do it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:51):
Pennsylvania Coal Region barbecue.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
WHOA, So you think of Saint Louis barbecue, You think
of Texas barbecue, you think even norther and barbecue. Yeah,
maybe Carolina style barbecue. What is this kind of barbecue?

Speaker 3 (01:20:04):
So the best part about this type of barbecue is
you don't need a lot of special equipment to make it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
This might answer a question I've had for my entire life.
Kind of just say it to you before you actual
I don't know what you're gonna say. This might answer
a question though. Growing up in Richard, Virginia, where I
grew up, when people would say barbecue, we're getting barbecue,
it was pulled pork. Like barbecue wasn't a style of food.
It was a thing that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):
Yeah, one thing you got there, right, We're getting barbecue
that's pulled pork.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
So I want to see it. And I've always wondered
why is that? Because everyone else don't know. Barbecue is
a style of cuisine, not a thing, and not something
you make in the style. So I just have a
feeling you might answer my question here.

Speaker 3 (01:20:41):
Well, again, this is from Pennsylvania, so uh and it's
it's stretched all around. It's got many names. This recipe
involves ground, beef, onion, ketchup, vinegar, brown sugar, and mustard.

Speaker 5 (01:20:58):
Did not answer my question. But you give us a
basic sloppy Joe recipe.

Speaker 3 (01:21:02):
You simber this down and you serve it on buns
or cat heads or whatever other bread you have on land.
But it's almost always served on bread. Maybe you could
put it on a water sandwich if you so.

Speaker 1 (01:21:15):
Gosh the water sandwich. First of all, I love this dish.
This sounds amazing. I haven't had Sloppy Joe in years,
I kind of want it.

Speaker 4 (01:21:23):
It's a really good.

Speaker 3 (01:21:25):
When I was a kid, I begged for Sloppy Joe's,
Like when my mom would make Sloppy Joe's, I was thrilled.
It was so good. It's like a it's a juicy, delicious,
messy burger saucy situation. Not what I would think of
as barbecue. But I love the fact that it's a

(01:21:45):
one pot meal. You know, everything just gets put in
the pot. It's stuff that everybody has on hand. It's
super affordable, like one onion's probably sixty eight cents, and
even in this economy, you know, a pound of chopped
meat or ground.

Speaker 5 (01:21:59):
Turkey stars and eighty cents. You gotta be with a
decimal in this economy.

Speaker 3 (01:22:02):
So sorry, yeah, well they're not imported, so I think
we're that's okay. But you can get a pound of
ground beef for probably what seven eight bucks, you know,
and then you have a the rest of the stuff
probably in your pantry already, and it's not a lot
of it, and then youking this thing down.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):
Yeah, and I would even open face, you know, kind
of on a bond, open face, and you know, use
four talking a healthy plumb again, I forgot, well, let
mess you up here, because I would put Duke's mayo
on it, all right, You just made it face like
someone kicked you in the leg.

Speaker 3 (01:22:33):
If you just took me to a left, I was
a hard It was such a hard left. I hit
the windshield. Why would you put mayonnaise up on a
sloppy joe?

Speaker 1 (01:22:42):
A little Manai's on sloppy joe is a little slice
of heven. Brother, I'm telling you, you put a little
mayo on that bun before you scoop that sloppy joe
on top of it and you eat it with a
fork and some salty potato chips or salt and vinegar chips.
Let me tell you something right now, that is one
of the greatest things in the world.

Speaker 5 (01:22:56):
It's one of life's best treats, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:22:58):
So spreading a little mayonnaise on your bread and then
building your sloppy joe. Not before we were talking open
face and you're like, then I'm gonna throw some mayonnaise on.

Speaker 1 (01:23:07):
It to put a little male on top of little
I was pictured.

Speaker 3 (01:23:11):
I was pushing going to the jar with a good tablespoon,
and just like clunk right on top of the sloppy Joe.
Just oh yeah, let's mix it good.

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
Mayonnaise was a protein in my life growing up. It
was a a We could use it for everything. I
think they even hung a wallpaper with it at one point.
Oh man, you a little doll up on top.

Speaker 5 (01:23:31):
Is delicious.

Speaker 1 (01:23:31):
Kind of mixing it while you're eating it, Oh man,
let me tell you something delicious.

Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
It probably makes it creamy. It probably yeah, a little
a little, a little another texture flavor to it, you know,
a little tang, a little tang.

Speaker 5 (01:23:42):
It's good, man, But yeah, a little on the bunch.

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
Enough on the bunch to where when you when you
take your fork and you cut it or you take
the bite, you see a little bit that mayo come
out the side. You need at least that much in there.

Speaker 3 (01:23:52):
Mmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:23:53):
Listen, you didn't believe me on about mayo and X
sandwich is now you love it?

Speaker 4 (01:23:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:23:59):
Well you got me because eggs and mayonnaise are friends,
and eggs salad is like one of my favorite things
in the whole world. So it's just like it's like
a real quick, cheap, poor man's egg salad. If you
put a little egg you know, mayonnaise on the fried
egg delicious. It took me to a new level. I've
changed my mind. I still want a little hot sauce
or ketchup on there as well.

Speaker 5 (01:24:18):
Ket ketchup. I don't have mail, but like mayo, is
the way they go.

Speaker 3 (01:24:22):
But so, you would never put mayonnaise on pulled pork.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
Sure, absolutely you would. Yeah, a little mayo and if
bon of pork is on a barbecue sandwich, heck yeah,
absolutely don't know. Jelly no peanut but banana sandwich with
bana mayo delicious? Come again, bananas and mayo is amazing together.

Speaker 3 (01:24:45):
Did you put a little crisp lettuce on that too?

Speaker 5 (01:24:47):
No, just bands and mayo.

Speaker 3 (01:24:49):
Have a little peanut butter.

Speaker 5 (01:24:50):
You could do peanut butter and banana, but I would
max peanut butter and mayo. They're not friends.

Speaker 3 (01:24:53):
Slice of blooney.

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
Blooney and bananas and peanut butter is great.

Speaker 3 (01:24:59):
Stop it.

Speaker 5 (01:25:00):
No, it's really good. It's savory. It's great, little sweetness,
little savory.

Speaker 3 (01:25:04):
It's awesome you got as a kid in your lunchbox.

Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
Probably probably my mom would always say elvios pressy likes it.
I think she would just tell me anything I thought
was rid of Elvis Pressy liked, which is just crazy talk,
but it's true.

Speaker 3 (01:25:17):
In my mind, I'm picturing your lunch box looking like this,
like pink sushi, but it's you know.

Speaker 5 (01:25:22):
But it's like it's crazy, like weird thinking like all.

Speaker 3 (01:25:25):
The sorts of stuff rolled up in bolooney.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
I would roll up baloney, iceberg, lettuce and mustard, and
that would be like a'd be like a treat.

Speaker 3 (01:25:32):
All right, dad, now you're speaking my language. I could
do that all day. I also used to get we
had the government cheese. I don't know if you guys
ever had any of that, but we used to get
lots of the government cheese cheese and then I would
we would cut that into sticks, and then we had
the French's, the French dressing. The Catalina French was always
on the door of the craft. So you put a
little of that out on the plate, and then you

(01:25:54):
put sticks of government cheese and we just dip them
in there. Cheese sticks.

Speaker 5 (01:25:58):
There you go, geese sticks with free.

Speaker 3 (01:26:00):
Have a fride him. I didn't know you could from
him until everyone's older and you just switched on different
right into French dressing.

Speaker 5 (01:26:05):
Ice cold that's disgusting, that's terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
Uh, we've been talking all about applectri cuisine here learning
a little bit from our friends The Vagabond Chef. You
can check him out on Instagram, Jeffy, where can they
find information about Vagabond Chef.

Speaker 5 (01:26:18):
We love Matt, He's a good guy.

Speaker 3 (01:26:19):
Absolutely. Well, you're gonna go to his restaurant, The Vagabond Chef,
the Vagabond Kitchen dot com and if you want to
check out his YouTube channel, The Vagabond Chef Rides and
of course on his ig is the Vagabond Chef.

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
Yeah, and we we appreciate you guys hanging out with
us today on a Saturday, taking a little trip down
Appalachian Lane and learning about some of these interesting foods
that maybe we don't talk enough about that have such
history and have such importance in our culture and in
our you know, just just history of our country.

Speaker 3 (01:26:49):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
I mean, food all has stories, and you know Apleatchrick
guzine is no different.

Speaker 4 (01:26:54):
Jeffy.

Speaker 3 (01:26:54):
No, I absolutely agree. And then and uh, I think
people need to to branch out. Should to be scared,
you know, should it be scared of like being a
little uh creative in the kitchen. If you don't have
a ton of stuff like background, see what you have,
see what you can put together. It's gonna make something delicious. Yeah,
and try to make something, you know, try to recreate
one of these simple dishes.

Speaker 1 (01:27:16):
Nonopy would look they had point the water sandwich?

Speaker 5 (01:27:21):
What not? Even the world does that even mean? I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
For chef Jeffy, my name is jeff Thanks for checking
out Plumb Love Foods rightre on.

Speaker 5 (01:27:26):
Wy c C.

Speaker 1 (01:27:27):
Happy Saturday to you. We'll see you guys next week
right here on Plumblove Foods. Jeffy, let's go make water sandwiches. Yeah,
with lard, lard, simple dishes.

Speaker 2 (01:27:39):
Seize These springs are fast to say something heaving on

(01:28:02):
the knee. See in the list

Speaker 1 (01:28:07):
And the rest