Episode 60

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Published on:

13th Nov 2025

The Courage to Cook: Learning new skills and Loving it!

How Cooking Mistakes, Burned Meals, and Starting Over Can Teach You More Than Any Recipe Book

Why are so many people afraid to cook?  It’s easier and more fun, even than you might think.  In this episode of Family Tree Food & Stories, Nancy May and Sylvia Lovely dig into the big reasons and excuses behind avoiding cooking.  Learn how even the most devout non-cook recently turned her “I don’t cook” mantra into a way to learn about her family history and a new level of confidence. 

From burnt pots and melted pie crusts to Engagement Chicken and freezer chili hacks, Nancy and Sylvia share practical tips and tactics to cut through your own fear of learning—or relearning—how to cook at home.  They also share how it might not just be you, but entire generations, who are challenged by cooking.  Shifting lifestyles, rising food prices, social media pressures, and even Food Network shows have distorted the reality and perception of what it takes to stay healthy, enjoy cooking, and put even a simple hot meal on a plate. 

Whether you’re an empty nester, have a large family, or are inviting friends in for a bit or a snack, there’s an idea for everyone in this next episode of Family Tree Food and Stories, because You Can Cook!

🔍 Key Episode Topics & Takeaways :

  • Common cooking fears—why they exist and how to overcome them without expensive tools or culinary school
  • Cost myths—why cooking at home is almost always cheaper than fast food or restaurant delivery
  • Cooking for one or two—realistic tips for empty nesters, those newly divorced, or anyone living alone
  • Why men are cooking more—and what that means for modern households, dating, and engagement chicken
  • Cultural shifts—how working parents, youth sports, and Uber Eats rewired how we eat (and why that’s changing again)
  • Mistakes that teach—what happens when you confuse baking soda with baking powder or overload your pasta pot
  • Creative ways to start small—using canned soup, leftovers, and community cooking clubs as a jumping-off point
  • Recipe preservation—how misreading grandma’s handwriting turned into seven cups of sugar instead of one—and why that memory matters

Additional Links ❤️

Listen on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite listening platform or visit us at: https://podcast.familytreefoodstories.com/

About Your Award-Winning Hosts: Nancy May and Sylvia Lovely are the powerhouse team behind Family Tree, Food & Stories, a member of The Food Stories Media Network, which celebrates the rich traditions and connections everyone has around food, friends, and family meals. Nancy, an award-winning business leader, author, and podcaster, and Sylvia, a visionary author, lawyer, and former CEO, combine their expertise to bring captivating stories rooted in history, heritage, and food. Together, they weave stories that blend history, tradition, and the love of food, where generations connect and share intriguing mealtime stories and kitchen foibles.

"Every Meal Has a Story and Every Story is a Feast." (tm) is a trademark of Family Tree Food & Stories podcast and the hosts.

Transcript
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Hey everybody.

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It's Nancy and Sylvia once again.

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Yes.

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Back here with another show of Family Tree Food and Stories.

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And Sylvia, how are you doing today?

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Oh, I'm doing just peachy Keen, although in Kentucky it's raining

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and been raining for three days

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Well, i'm going to tell you to build up your courage.

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I need to cook Actually, , I've done a little bit of that.

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Although when we reopened the restaurant, we started eating there every night.

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So that's what we do.

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Yeah, well, one of my favorite sayings when things get tough

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is , suck it up buttercup.

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So time to pull out that wooden spoon and start stirring Sylvia.

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I got it.

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I got it.

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yeah, uh, courage to cook.

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I, you know, one of my favorite stories about that is Meredith, our dear friend

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Meredith, we've had her on the show.

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She just a live wire.

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I mean, she is a character and I think we had a lot to do with this.

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There are a couple of factors that are gonna lead us into this conversation.

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Meredith.

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Really got into our book, , , My family Tree, food and Stories

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Woo-hoo.

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Right.

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She did, she started copying her mother's recipes and you remember her story.

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You know, she's 40, she's divorced, and , , she has her mother's recipes

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in her mother's handwriting, which she wanted, but she's also adapting

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some of those to her own recipes.

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And then she moved and she got a little bit bigger place and

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she said the kitchen is better.

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So she's actually started cooking now.

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I'll be able, later in December to taste her new cooking

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because she's having a party.

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Ooh,

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she's

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really getting courageous,

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a Christmas party.

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Yeah.

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I have to say that, , having a decent sized kitchen does

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make it a lot easier to cook.

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We had a, a tiny little galley kitchen up in Connecticut, mid-century

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modern I mean, really tiny.

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Yet at Christmas parties, we could pack in a lot of people

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in our teeny tiny little house.

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Everybody always ended up in the kitchen.

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It didn't matter.

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Maybe it was cozier, you know?

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But , I do have a funny story though, about cooking because some

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people are just so committed to not, but you never know when they

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might change like Meredith did, but.

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I attended the funeral of our dear friend Frida Merriweather a while back,

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Well, not Frieda's funeral.

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It

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got frida's mother's funeral, glorious funeral.

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Oh,

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Frieda's alive and

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Frida is very alive, but, somebody was telling me a story that Frida

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Frida's mother was a home cook.

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She'd go out and she'd pick weeds, and she knew the difference between weeds

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and all of that stuff out in the front

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The right kind of weeds,

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Yeah.

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that you smoke, right?

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And you know, the greens versus the Yeah, yeah, that too.

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Uh, Anyway, uh, Frida, I call her friend.

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She says, my mom says in her, casserole to put in a can of milk.

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Now what does that mean?

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And her friend said, Frida, that's condensed milk.

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Well, but is it condensed or is it sweet and condensed?

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Then?

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It depends, I guess, whether it's sweet or savory.

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Yeah.

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But anyway, the friend corrected her 'cause Frida was like, do

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I just pour milk into a can?

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Is that how it, so anyway, my dear friend, she and I are like soul

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sisters because neither one of us cook.

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But that's a good lead in to what we're gonna talk about today, about how to maybe

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overcome some of that and find the joys and the wonderful thing about cooking.

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Yes, especially these times because, , eating out all the time is kind of

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expensive and it also gives you a lot of.

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A lot of joy in being able to cook for others.

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For sure.

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You have the ability to be independent, self-sufficient.

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There's social interaction.

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I can't tell you how many people you call them younger people.

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Most people are younger than

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I'll, I'm not gonna put the age factor in there, but kids of

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friends who are now on their own.

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Who are finding that cooking becomes a way to take the edge off

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of a day just chill out and find some quiet time to themselves.

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So it's almost a form of meditation.

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I say there's like meditation, bacon can put it on

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there

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there's also the dietary needs that we've talked about.

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Sure.

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So gluten-free, if you are just gluten sensitive, you can go to a restaurant and

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order gluten-free like our restaurant.

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But, but it's a problem if you, truly are gluten, insufficient,

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whatever I'm trying to say.

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I think you can,

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I know what you're

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anyway, you know what I'm saying?

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But dietary needs.

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you can also be very tailored about your ingredients and know

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what you're putting into food, and so that is also a wonderful,

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wonderful side effect of cooking.

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And then when you become an empty nester.

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Now we don't have kids, so we've been empty nesters from the beginning.

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But even still, it's hard sometimes to get used to cooking for just two people.

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So yeah, it's there.

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Learning how to, cook well.

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And experiment for two or one or whatever that might be.

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So a lot of things that we can do.

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Yeah.

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And also a reminder of eras when people had to, , stretch food

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and in one case, stretch plates.

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The woman said that during the depression, if you dropped a plate, you picked

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up the broken pieces and used them to serve the food because you had to.

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And, and so, you know, you have all kinds of really, neat things.

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But why, I guess, is the next thing that we should talk about?

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Why did this happen?

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Why did people go away from cooking and start to believe they had to eat out

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all the time and that it was cheaper, and one of the reasons is culture.

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for sure I also, you I wanna get back to culture, but.

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also, food has become a form of entertainment, Not just at home, but

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food as entertainment in eating out.

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And anybody that we've asked who, well, family members in in particular,

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we have a few of them were, that were on Bob's side that were like,

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really large, I'll leave it at that.

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And they, Bob would ask, is food entertainment for you?

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And they would say yes, as opposed to sitting down and really enjoying.

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What you're eating and tasting it.

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It was the entertainment and the active eating.

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So that's kind of interesting.

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, It's been a challenge.

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Women went to work and kids had sports going on, and you had Uber Eats, which

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would deliver everything and anything.

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And I remember when Peapod first started.

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Didn't take off.

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That was back, I think in the early seventies originally is when Peapod

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trying to start to do delivery.

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Nobody wanted it,

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but now everything is fast and on the go, and that's not eating.

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That's just,

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Mm-hmm.

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don't know.

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That's filling your gut

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Yeah.

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You know, one of the things that I think I find fascinating is you're in

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traffic sometimes or stopped at a red light and you look next to you and

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there's a person eating a hamburger.

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I've done

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Uh, have you really,

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I, can't, I, I have never done that.

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I just can't imagine doing now I'll stop and get snacks, like pretzels or something

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like that, but a hamburger, I mean, it

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Well, like

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a McDonald's burger, I've done that on the road while traveling.

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Long distance and hours of driving kind of thing.

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And pull over, go to the bathroom.

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Ah, I'm

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I stand corrected then.

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'cause if somebody as cool as you eats a hamburger in the car

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while in traffic, then I'm all in.

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I'll try it one of these days.

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But there's also, uh, economic mess.

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They think it's too expensive to cook.

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And actually that's so not true.

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. You know, and , like this obsession with protein, there are so many good

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bean dishes, 'cause they can, provide complete proteins and stuff, you

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And different kind of beans.

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Really interesting ones

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Oh, colorful.

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so really I think that got into our heads.

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And then of course, the advertising that's always bombarding us about

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the cheapest thing, the value menu and all of that stuff, um, leads

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people to believe, oh, I,, I'll just go get four happy meals for my kids.

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And I can think of ways that you can do Happy Meals.

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You can prepare things in advance, like on Sunday afternoon, , get a glass of

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wine, prepare some food, maybe make some things, get very creative with, the kids

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and , like those little toys they get.

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I know, I know, I know.

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I am just barking up the wrong tree, but I

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meal for myself and mom too over the years.

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There you go again.

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Yeah.

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Well, mom and I out shopping

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the day.

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But, you know, soup, beans, chili, , goes a long way.

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I do a lot of freezing 'cause we can't eat an entire pot

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of chili, but I can freeze it

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Yep.,

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and, I learned the best way to freeze chili.

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You wanna know how to do that?

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I don't know, I just put it in Tupperware and do it, but,

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No, no.

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I got a better way to freeze chili.

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I learned this from my friend Mary, , and one Christmas we did chili for part of our

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Christmas party,

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and there was so much of it leftover.

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She said this was a trick that her mother taught her.

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You take a regular, a freezer sandwich.

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And you fill it with enough of one portion for chili, and then you squish

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it flat, so you take the air of it.

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And so now, instead of storing it in a three dimensional Tupperware, well I

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guess three dimensional, is it also a bag, but now it's flat, so you can stack

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them like flat, almost like flat dishes of chili, They're not dishes, but it

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takes up less space and now you've got enough for just one portion as opposed to.

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Taking the whole thing out and having to heat it up in a Tupperware thing.

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Yeah.

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So anyway, there's all those kinds of things and then there's also, there's

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the cultural, there's economic, and then there's the emotional reality.,

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You see delicious food popping up, you see it on Facebook, . Oh,

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and you think, I can't do that.

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, I've gotta go order it from someplace.

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, , I know in the restaurant business your prettiest dish and then you get a

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photographer to do it so that it glistens and it's so good and, then you make it

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at home and it doesn't have quite the prettiness, but it can taste even better.

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Well, part of the prettiness on true food photography, commercial food

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photography is all the little gimmicks that they use to make it look pretty.

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Yeah.

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I know,

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they use like Elmer's glue to make things milk look whiter and all.

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Right.

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so it may look pretty, but

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it.

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Yeah.

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I don't know.

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We don't go that far, but uh, yeah, we don't at the restaurant

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Mom's food never looked that pretty.

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It always tasted good.

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Well, most of it

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tasted good.

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Sorry, mom.

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Or kind of a mom thing.

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People do say, oh, I can't cook as good as my mom did, , or my grandma

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did, and they just walk away and they go get some fast food somewhere.

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Yeah, well, it doesn't, it doesn't always have to taste like Julia.

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Remember that woman who wrote, she, it was a movie, , called Julia

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on Julia, or something like that.

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Great movie.

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I absolutely loved it.

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Well, she was cooking those dishes just for herself and her husband,

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I think partially to learn how to cook and then just go through step

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by step by step and, and all the disasters that she went through.

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But in the movie, well, of course it is a movie, and movie is somewhat make believe.

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Right?

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But I believe somebody actually did do this.

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So I have Julia Child's cookbook and I've made a few things out of there.

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you wanna hear a disaster that happened

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Let's hear a disaster.

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a courage disaster

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Okay, so I decided, that I would make a quiche, and I've never made, I don't

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make them that much anymore since we

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opened the restaurant.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Well, yeah.

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So anyway, you got all these like stations of things that you have to put together.

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So and I don't make my own crust, but.

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I get the crust, I buy the frozen crusts and I heat the oven.

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What I like to do is I like to heat it at first and get it kind of a crusty

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thing, and then I put the filling

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Blind baking, they call that.

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So anyway, I got a crust and I lifted the crust out and I looked down.

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I saw the.

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You know, metal pan, the aluminum pan, and I'm like, wonder what that's there for?

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I, or what?

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Why?

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'cause I'm, as I'm assuming it's on the bottom of, or one is on the

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bottom of the crust, put it in the oven at 400 degrees and I look inside

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and it's melted all over the oven.

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I didn't put it in this aluminum.

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Oh my goodness.

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What is wrong with me?

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I have to tell you that's pretty courageous to even share that story, so.

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I, oh, I had to sop it up and then start all over and, , should of

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just gone to get a happy meal.

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Right.

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Yeah, but I have to tell you the best quiche recipe that I have ever

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made, and you can tweak it a little bit with other ingredients, and

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I get compliments on it all the time, is Paula Dean's quiche recipe.

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It is the best.

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So.

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Hello, Paula,

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yeah.

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if you're listening,

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uh, I

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give us, give us a four star or five star.

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Yeah.

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That's one thing though about cooking for yourself is that you can do little

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tweaks over time that, probably you don't even have to look at a recipe

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anymore, you just know you're gonna do

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Well, and I experiment on friends, which isn't always the best thing,

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but it's always something else.

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I would never do that to them anyway.

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Alright.

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So some of the, , things that we see happening out there now,

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there's some interesting things.

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, You know, a person like Meredith, I never had to cook till I got divorced,

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, I mean, that's, out there too.

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Uh, men are cooking more and

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Oh yeah.

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Well, all the men chefs, right?

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They get all the accolades and so many of the women chefs don't.

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Other than Martha and Ina and a few others, but I don't think that's fair.

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So I think there should be more women professional cooks out there.

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It is interesting 'cause the more men are being home cooks, like my

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son, , Ross is the cook and the family.

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, It's just interesting to me and there's a dramatic increase in the

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statistics of men who are cooking and you see that a lot on television.

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If you pay attention to ads, it's fella preparing a dinner for his date coming in.

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And, and so that's, that's kind of cool.

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Oh, I'd fall in love.

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Yeah, and, and you can find all these recipes on social media,

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Well, I've got something for you on men cooking.

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So if you're a guy and you're listening and you're alone, I'll say alone in

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quotes, or looking for a hot date or looking to get engaged and married because

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all your other friends are going there, and I know a lot of men who are that way.

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There is a recipe that's floating around the internet called Engagement Chicken.

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Like caroline.

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Yeah.

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Well, here's the deal.

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Apparently there was a rumor that if you made this chicken for somebody that

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you had the hots for, well guess what?

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You could more than likely get engaged pretty quickly.

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that's, that's rumor.

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So yes, if you wanna get engaged, men or women.

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just look it up.

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Mm-hmm.

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Just look it up.

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Engagement or get married.

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Chicken.

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But it's a lemon roast chicken.

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I haven't tried it, so maybe, maybe we should go try and get engaged to

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our spouses again, or let them cook

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it for us.

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I'm gonna tell Bob to cook it.

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I'm not gonna take a chance.

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Bernie would probably find somebody else.

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Uh, , that's another interesting phenomenon.

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It's the same phenomenon that I hear a lot of people, a lot of

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young people are dropping Facebook.

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Because you , these people, I mean, they come on, , they have a million

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book seller, making a million dollars a year on this book, and they

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get vanity press kind of articles and their food is like that too.

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It just looks absolutely gorgeous.

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And you're like, you know, I got better things to do.

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So

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Food has

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do that.

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It is sexy.

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Yeah.

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It's kind of, kind of that, right.

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so, yeah.

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But it's also a hobby.

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I mean, there's a lot, of things that you can do , that can be fun

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and creative, even if you don't like to cook, let's say engagement

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chicken for one reason or another.

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But just cooking cookies.

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We've got the holidays coming up and cupcakes.

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And you can be very creative I have to say all the craft stores, , I'm trying

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to think of, oh, so Michael's Crafts and Hobby Lobby, which we have down here.

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Joanne's gone outta business, I think, or been bought by somebody, but they

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have big cooking baking sections, which is really very, very creative.

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Yeah.

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here's another thing that's could be discouraging.

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, Some people don't feel like they don't feel like they have a kitchen

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that will enable, or they don't have the right gadgets because everybody's

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got gadgets, And they've got state-of-the-art stuff or big fancy stoves

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They should have come to my kitchen in Connecticut.

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Yeah, no, no gagets

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Hmm.

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Yeah.

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So, ,, but that's a barrier.

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, People are, thinking like that.

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And learning to taste, you know, part of cooking food is tasting it,

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having that glass of wine sitting there and, one bite of lasagna or, the

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tomato sauce or Yeah, a little wine.

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And, you know, you can't do that if you're out in public.

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Right.

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Well,, Jacque and Julia, I don't think ever cooked without

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a bottle of wine at the side.

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Like, oh, you, I'm like, it's like the French chef on the Muppets, you know.

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So anyway, , then we have some ideas on how people can get started.

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Well, before we get started on that, let's take a quick little break and

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, we'll come back with getting started.

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So hang tight.

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So we left off with getting started on having the courage to cook, and

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you don't have to be courageous.

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We're not talking nights and.

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Lords and ladies, and waiting and chivalry and all that stuff.

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We just talk, picking up a spoon and even opening a can of soup and adding

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something to it to make it delicious,

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Yeah.

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I like tomato soup.

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the other day, I, I actually bought some soup at , Panera.

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Mm-hmm.

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their tomato soup,

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Oh, I do too.

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I had some rice leftover, so I put the rice into the tomato soup and it

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tastes so good 'cause it added sort of that I always get the balsamic

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and not, what am I trying to say?

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But anyway, it's great rice.

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It's brown rice,

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Oh, I know what you're talking about.

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it's real nutty.

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Basmati Rice.

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Is that,

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balsamic.

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Where was I?

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It's close enough.

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It's a food.

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but yeah, that might taste good in it too, but putting in that rice

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adds like a nutty flavor to it

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So I've got something you can add with tomato soup . One of Bob's nieces had

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run a, or managed a restaurant up in, I think it was Waterbury, Connecticut,

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and they made great tomato soup too.

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What they did is they made these croutons to go on top of the tomato

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soup, but they weren't really croutons.

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They were little teeny tiny.

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Grilled cheese sandwiches.

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So you take a grilled cheese sandwich, you grill it on a grill, then you cut

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it into little squares and you floated like a couple of these little pieces and

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oh my gosh, totally decadent and so easy can of soup, your little grilled cheese

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sandwich, grilled so it's nice and toasty and buttery and cheesy on the inside.

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And put the little tiny squares just like a cton and float it on top.

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Couldn't be easier.

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Yeah.

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no courage at all.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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or, or just being experimental, , adding things in that you hadn't thought about.

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Another way is to explore your family's lore and come up with

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a favorite recipe and try it.

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, We talked about that some with holidays.

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You can do that.

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or join a recipe club or a community thing.

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You know, I'm sure there's stuff all over

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I never heard of recipe clubs.

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That's kind of

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Yeah.

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A community cooking club, 'cause, you know, part of this

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and, and some people don't.

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I mean, some people will cook, Bernie and I just cook for each other . But,

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you know, it's a community event too.

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It's a social interaction.

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And I'm reading a book right now and I love this stuff.

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It's called If I Live to Be a hundred, and it's about the like the top three.

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Okay.

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I'll say like top three things that you do.

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Community interaction, community interaction.

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Community interaction,

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Seriously.

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Really, that's what they say.

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Oh yeah.

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They say if you control for everything else, you have people with bad

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eating habits, bad, any kind of habits, but if they hang out with

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other people and have rich social connections, it's just amazing.

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Well, think about potluck suppers, if you had those, that was, I don't

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call 'em the old days, but I remember my mom would, like, the women's club

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would do potluck lunches and everybody would bring them together, or at my

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dad's factory around the holiday times.

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What the workers, in the factory would do is he would

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close down the factory for one.

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Friday afternoon before Christmas, everybody would bring in their favorite

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family recipes and they would all cook them and share them, and it was a blast

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mm.

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People had fun

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Yeah.

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It's, not that tough.

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I, grew up in a lone Wolf family, so I am now catching up with

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my friends and all of that.

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We didn't do any of that, but here's some good stories . You can't

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control cooking all the time, but you can always control your attitude.

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Right.

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And and you remember during the pandemic there was a bread explosion where people

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literally, in some cases where Yeah, where people learned to make bread and they

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even ran out of yeast and some grocery

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yeah.

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And sourdough.

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That's right.

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A bread And flour.

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They couldn't get, or the yeast and

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But there, there are tons of stories, which are hilarious about bread

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that turned out to be a brick,

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Oh, I've got those

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Yeah.

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And sourdough overflowing the pan.

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or one of our storytellers in the book, Terry Hall.

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He was trying his best to impress his wife and he made mashed

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potatoes in some form of chicken.

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I'm just thinking of it right now.

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but anyway, it turns out she didn't like it at all.

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'cause that's not a food she liked.

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And here this guy spends all this time, so it's a thought that count.

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and he was so, , into it that he wrote that story for us.

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So it's in the book as are many of those little stories,

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but, pasta, volcanoes.

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Pasta volcanoes.

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Well, that's interesting.

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So I, I have a funny food story, can I tell you?

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Yeah, please.

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I used to, well, every now and then we make meatloaf.

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Right?

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Meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

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And one of my mom's friends made the best.

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She was from a, well, she grew up in the Asheville.

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North Carolina or Southern Pines, North Carolina area, I think it

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was, and made the best meatloaf.

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I don't know what she did, but she also put ketchup or tomato

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sauce or something all over.

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It was always just

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yum, yum.

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sister.

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But one day somebody asked me what Bob's favorite meal was and

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I said, oh, well that's easy.

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Meatloaf mashed potatoes and peas, and he's there, sitting there next to me.

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He looked to me like, what planet have you been living on?

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Really?

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He said, well, I like it, but it's not my favorite food.

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I said, well, why didn't you tell me?

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Well,

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asked.

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Well, the

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Bob.

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easy.

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It's easy to make, so, but I

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And it's a great meal.

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Meatloaf's one of those things that everybody's got a kind of recipe they put

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together and they add their own touches.

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I

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it's a blind recipe.

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You can do it with your eyes closed

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yeah, yeah.

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And, and different tastes.

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You know, I love a lot of that tomato sauce on mine, and some people don't.

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Some people like a traditional gravy or something, but

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Oh, we don't, I don't like gravy on, but it's just like onions

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and eggs and breadcrumbs and lots of herbs and spices and, yeah.

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Anyway.

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okay.

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There's the pasta volcanoes

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What's a pasta volcano?

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Well according to us to us that how much science plays into all of this.

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So people don't size the pot that they put starchy water in and it

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starts to overflow like a volcano.

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it gets too fat and you cook it too long.

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Got it.

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Okay.

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I can picture that one.

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Been there, done that for sure.

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You know

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how you stop the pasta volcano?

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Yeah.

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How.

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This I learned the other night from Bob.

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He says, you take, which I didn't know he did before, we've been

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married for almost like 37 years and we don't, I guess we don't talk

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enough, but that's pretty funny.

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You put a wooden spoon on top of a pot and when the water hits a

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wooden spoon apparently goes down

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Oh, how fun.

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the bubbles.

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Yeah, right.

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So next time you have a pasta volcano, try that.

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But you know, you, what you can do with a pasta volcano, I guess, is let your kid

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use it as a science experiment, right?

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Yeah, right.

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How about pan searing produces a lot of smoke and people don't realize

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that, and they probably don't turn on their fan or whatever they need to do.

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And one woman was remarking that she had become a first name

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basis with the fire department.

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Well, and all that, goo on the bottom is really good when you de glaze it with a

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little wine or something like, yeah.

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yeah,

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My

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Mm

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that pan shit.

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mm It's

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good.

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can I say that on the podcast?

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I think I can.

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Yes, of course.

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Um, one common mistake, this is interesting is baking

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soda versus baking powder.

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You know, You look at it quickly and you think saying baking soda or you

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look at it quickly and they're very different, and yet they're essential.

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And so you can have, really big mistakes from not doing that,

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for not looking closely at your recipe.

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If you're following one like cookies and things like that,

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you know, you have to be careful.

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and the, I love this last one though.

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you couldn't read grandma's recipe.

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Right.

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This one woman, I think this was such an interesting story,

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she put in seven cups of sugar.

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Instead of one Now, who would do that?

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I mean, you know, I don't know.

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Well, okay, so I have made, I have made the mistake of

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tablespoons versus teaspoons.

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oh yeah,

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Salt, right?

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Tablespoons versus tea.

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I did that with cookies one year we were up in Massachusetts at my

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folks house and I made the Christmas cookies and I think it called for

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like half a teaspoon of salt, and I put in two tablespoons of salt.

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Oh,

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And, but they're cookie cutter.

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, so you wouldn't necessarily know until you've bid into them.

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my dad tried everything that I made and I was like, Hmm.

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You know, uh, a, a good dear, but a little salty.

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I was like,

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thanks, dad, for the encouragement

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yeah.

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Yeah, you gotta read closely that little TSP versus

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tv.

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right.

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That's a, that's, that's a big one.

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That's a big

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Oh, it really is.

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So anyway, these failures are fine.

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Folks out there don't worry about it.

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just chalk it up though.

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A little fun and a, and a good story that you can put in your book of My Family

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Tree Food and Stories and laugh about it.

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and that's what our book is filled with those little, about 25 of those

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little stories of mostly mishaps or, or

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A lot, a lot of mishaps.

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I mean my bread that I was trying to make when I was trying to learn to make

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bread and how my dad actually cracked a knife in one of my loaf of bread.

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So

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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He

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years of practice and trying, I've got actually, Sylvia

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France of the woman who makes

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Fred Bread is going to come in two weeks to our house and spend

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the night, and she's going to give me a lesson on sourdough.

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So, I'll share what I learn

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Nice,

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nice.

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Okay.

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That is so

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Yeah.

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you already did it

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But my

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sourdough is a little dense.

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, I'm not a, sourdough aficionado, so I will, learn and if there's anything new

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that I learn, I will certainly share it

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Pass it along.

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That's right.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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So anyway, that's, uh, courage to cook.

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Try it, create those memories.

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Just understand that anything you do is an act of love and an act of sharing and

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an act of community because every meal has a story and every story is a feast.

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And after all, it's something you can do on a cold Sunday winter

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afternoon, because we're getting there.

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And don't forget, all right, Sunday afternoon, so start before five

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o'clock and have a glass of wine.

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Oh yeah.

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Oh yeah.

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And while you're having that glass of wine, give us a five star on podcast

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at Family Tree Food and Stories.

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Come listen, come share, and we hope to hear from you soon.

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Take care.

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Bye-bye.

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Goodbye.

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About the Podcast

Family Tree Food Stories
Where family, food, and stories build on the generations of love, laughter and joy.
Family Tree, Food & Stories podcast is where your hosts, Nancy May and Sylvia Lovely, take you on a mouthwatering journey through generations of flavor! We're digging up and sharing the juiciest family secrets, hilarious dinner table disasters, and the heartwarming moments that make your favorite foods, meals, and relationships unforgettable. From Great-Grandma's legendary cheese crust apple pie to that questionable casserole your Uncle Bob swears by. With Family Tree, Food, and Stories, we're serving a feast of laughter, tears, and everything in between. So, are you ready to uncover and share those unforgettable stories behind every bite and create some new memories along the way? Join our growing family of food enthusiasts and storytellers as we Eat, laugh, relive the past, and learn how to create new memories together because. . . every recipe has a story, and every story is a feast.

About your host

Profile picture for Nancy May

Nancy May

Nancy May is a corporate leader, business advisor, author, speaker, and nationally recognized podcast host. She has spent her career working with CEOs, Boards of Directors, and senior leaders in the public and private corporate sectors. These experiences gave her the strength and foundation to step in and provide her parents with guidance and support, both as their POA and Trustee, and diehard advocate as they aged. Nancy credits her father an entrepreneur, innovator of innovative eyewear design, and her mom for encouraging and preparing her to acquire the many skills needed to start, build, and lead several successful businesses. She has transitioned these competencies and life lessons to into her new business, CareManity, LLC, which focuses on providing family caregivers structured ways to obtain practical knowledge, resources, and access much-needed support.