Episode 4: Robb Seltzer, Chef

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Welcome to go to your room and make stuff. The podcast about making art, any kind of art, all by ourselves in a room or a studio, maybe outside. No one is telling us when, where, or how, or any combination of those things. This is a podcast for solo artistic adventurers. Those who are doing it and those who want to try it, support ideas and just plain fun. Well, hi, Rob. Thank you so much for coming on today. Chef Rob Seltzer is an experienced educator, chef and director of food and beverage operations with a 40 plus year history of working in the food service industry and higher education. Skilled in catering the hospitality industry, culinary arts and management, and wine. Strong education professional with a masters of Education focused in adult education and training from the American Intercontinental University. Chef Rob, welcome. Thank you. [00:00:59] Speaker B: Thank you. Glad to be here. So good to see you, Shawna. [00:01:03] Speaker A: Yes. And Rob and I know each other not through arts, not really through performing arts or food arts or culinary arts. Rob and I share. We're members of the Zipper club. [00:01:15] Speaker B: Right. I have my shirt up. I was going to. [00:01:17] Speaker A: Me, too. Yeah, you can't see mine today. Mine's right here, too. Yes, you can see it right there. We are members of the aortic dissection Club, the ones that are still here. And every, every once in a while, I get to come into these incredible support groups, and that's where I got to know Rob. And then you guys have this. You and Mindy had this amazing aortic chef tv show on YouTube. Those are so fun. [00:01:46] Speaker B: We have a good time. My wife is. She's a registered dietitian. So between the two of us, we have both sides of it. When we were first married, we always tell the story was, was. It was knives out in the kitchen, you know, because I would grab the butter and she'd be like, no, no, no. Put this away. You know, I had it, you know? [00:02:06] Speaker A: Right. [00:02:07] Speaker B: Yeah. After. Well, 48 years, we've kind of mellowed in that respect. [00:02:14] Speaker A: You guys took the most fantastic trip last fall, too. And I remember taking coffee with me on the cruise ship this year that I went on because you guys, they ran out of coffee on the cruise ship on one of your experiences, right. In Europe. And how long were you there? Were you there for three years? [00:02:30] Speaker B: We were in Europe for two months. [00:02:31] Speaker A: Okay. [00:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah. We started down in Athens and on the Aegean Sea, doing on a private sailing charter with twelve people, which is very cool. And from there, we then went all the way up to Amsterdam and then came back down to Rome. Yeah. By ourselves, you know, unplanned with a rail pass, and just kind of. I called my folder in my, you know, the computer for all the stuff for the trip. It was called Wanderlust. That's the name of my file. [00:03:06] Speaker A: Wanderlust. That's great. I love that. [00:03:08] Speaker B: So coming back, we canceled. We canceled the flight home and because we found a repositioning cruise, which is a great way to travel. [00:03:16] Speaker A: I know people that do that. Yeah, yeah. [00:03:18] Speaker B: You come back across, right. They go back, and when the seasons change, you know, the ships from the Mediterranean come to Florida for the winter, and then in the spring, they go back to Europe because of the weather change. So they're the two of a 16 day cruise around in New York for the both of us. You know, upgraded cabin was like, $2,400. [00:03:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:39] Speaker B: Yes. Amazing. [00:03:41] Speaker A: I lived vicariously your entire trip. That was. It was amazing. [00:03:44] Speaker B: But we had some rough weather. It was November, so we couldn't make one of the planned stops, and that's why we had a couple extra days at sea. And that's when they started running out of coffee, because we had to wait until they got to Bermuda, until we crossed the Atlantic to the next stop. So, yeah. [00:04:05] Speaker A: Just nowhere to pull in and get more. Yeah. [00:04:07] Speaker B: They ran out of everything. Yeah. And we were lucky. We carried. We also, when we travel like that, we always have coffee packets. So it's like you go to Europe, the Nescafe packets are everywhere. Even the coffee shops sell. You can buy as a choice, instant Nescafe. It's good stuff. [00:04:28] Speaker A: So before we dive into details about culinary art, can you share a fun or unique fact about yourself that listeners might not know? [00:04:36] Speaker B: Well, totally unrelated, I grew up in high school. I had a very interesting job, my summer job. I worked in an amusement park, and I was a ride operator, and I worked with carneys. It was kind of a family. My grandmother was a part owner of this amusement in Detroit, and it was everything. We had a wood roller coaster and the giant Ferris wheel and dodge them cars. And I ran the wild mouse and the giant Ferris wheel and worked on the roller coaster. Repairing. Used to hang upside down, you know, repairing. [00:05:10] Speaker A: Wow. Okay. [00:05:13] Speaker B: Back when we were invincible and. Right. So I did that, got even into college, so probably, you know, about six, seven years and a lot of fun. Got to be very interesting people. [00:05:25] Speaker A: Oh, I can imagine. I can imagine. The circus arts. That's. It's. Yes. Wow. Yeah. Carney's. Oh, yeah, yeah. [00:05:33] Speaker B: Plus the guests, because, you know, I mean, I was a suburban kind of kid, but we did that the fourth of big picnics for all the unions, the UAW, AFL CIO, and all these people. So all these, you know, factory workers. So I, you know, I got exposed to a lot of different types of people. [00:05:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:49] Speaker B: And also got a lot, got to see a lot of good acts because they had great entertainment back then. We would have the temptations. The four tops. [00:05:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:58] Speaker B: Aretha Franklin, you know, because they were local Detroit names and they would play at all these things. It's like, you know, it was a good time way before I got invested in an interest in the culinary arts. [00:06:11] Speaker A: So tell us about your art medium or mediums? [00:06:15] Speaker B: My art medium, well, is food, basically, and the palette is a plate. So I work with, you know, it gives me a full spectrum of colors and textures. I mean, just like anything else, you know, so I have color and texture and size and shape and always try to build trust. Contrast is a big part of my, the business, so to speak, or the art is making sure that you have contrast or else food's boring, you know, just like looking at a picture that's all blue. Right. [00:06:49] Speaker A: So you had your time at the, at the, at the amusement park. What led you from, from amusement park into food? [00:06:56] Speaker B: Well, my mother was a really, really accomplished cookie. I mean, she used to just, we'll just leave it at that. She was very accomplished, and everybody wanted to come, you know, our house for cooking, for dinners or parties, and she planned things, and she was very creative. So she put that spark in me. I started cooking was like eight. Yeah. And so it was very food centric family. And so eventually, I mean, I went to, when I first went to school, through college, I was going into politics and government, you know, so it wasn't until I actually. So I was in, I started college in 72. All right, so still, you know, Vietnam era and all that. And so I was going to go into poli sci, and that was it. And, you know, it was okay. But it was also, I ended up dropping out my second year because I just stopped going to class. Having too much fun. [00:07:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:07:56] Speaker B: And so I went to work, and I got a job in the restaurant business when I dropped out, and I really, really loved it. So that's when I decided to go back. And Michigan has one of the top hotel restaurant schools in the country. There's Michigan State Air hospitality. So that was my goal, to go back. And the second time around in college is so much easier than the first time. [00:08:19] Speaker A: Mom says the same thing, and I think she played too much bridge. That's how she flunked out and left the first time. Yeah, same thing. She went back. That was when it was very. That was when it was serious for her. Yeah. [00:08:32] Speaker B: Right, right. Yeah. Because then you had a goal. I guess it's all about goal setting and, you know, so made it through that and then onward, you know, that's where I met the people that really got me on the road. [00:08:44] Speaker A: So, like, right now, like, what, where is your room, your studio? Where do you work? Do you currently work as a chef? Where are you in your career? Yeah. [00:08:57] Speaker B: I work from home because I am fully retired as a result of my dissection. Yeah, I had no choice. I mean, I could probably go out and find work, but honestly, I'm two years out. And so that's. I've well into my recovery. But as I'm told, two years still. I'm not done yet. [00:09:18] Speaker A: No, I'm four and a half years. Yeah, it does. Although frankly, I can't imagine going to. And I'm younger, but I like the fact I work out of my house. [00:09:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:30] Speaker A: So while I'm not retired, I am able to rest whenever I need to. [00:09:35] Speaker B: Exactly. I mean, I can go back and teach because, you know, especially in pandemic, everything I did, everything from my house. [00:09:42] Speaker A: Right. [00:09:42] Speaker B: And continue to do on. Because when I was at the university, I, as the director, but I was also faculty, so I taught classes as well. They're all online, so that would be an option. But right now, you know, having too much fun. [00:09:57] Speaker A: Right. [00:09:58] Speaker B: You know, I think it's something you asked about. What about, you know, basically we have a saying, friends of us, we know now that we're retired, you know, every day is Saturday except Sunday. [00:10:11] Speaker A: I love that. Yeah, you've got time, you know, to go to Europe and take the longer cruise back. And do you find that you are spending time cooking more, less, the same than you did, say, three and a half, four years ago? [00:10:26] Speaker B: Four, a lot more now. I mean, once I was able to get back in the kitchen, because those first couple times, those first while, I mean, was first dinner I tried to cook. I mean, I made it about, I don't know, 1520 minutes, maybe 30, and I was done. I had to sit down and let Mindy finish. Yeah. You know, so that's why kitchen was way, way too much. Too much energy for me to go back into a commercial kitchen, you know, but so now, though, no, I've become, since I can't cook in my commercial kitchens, I do it at home and I'm pretty much the full time chef in the house now, you know, the kitchen is now my office and my area. I've got your tongue. So, you know, it gets a little older, but even young, when I go visit my kids, I go up north. My daughter lives in Michigan. Yeah, my grandkids, they're like, she's. When you're coming back? Because I'm tired of cooking as soon as I get in. I mean, I may arrive at 10:00 they're like, what's for lunch? You know, the whole time I'm there. We stayed there for two months before we went to Europe. Yeah, I cooked probably 98% of the meals, you know, and it was cool, you know, for her, it was a great break because, you know, being a mom and Stanley kids, you know, you had used. You get that job three days, three times a day or four times a day. She's got two boys, and one is a. He's like a horse. And so for her, it's a great break. My son in law, he's appreciative of my cooking. He's like, dad, you can come stay with us anytime for as long as you like. Mom, you can stay home with the dog. [00:12:11] Speaker A: We just need the chef in the house. Right, right. [00:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So I. Yeah. Because that's what I like to do. I mean, if you ask me, what is my favorite thing to do? You know, cooking has always been. It's my relaxation, it's my passion, it's my. It's my thing, it's my. No, it's always, I'm settled. I'm calm in the kitchen. I was never a screamer chef. You know, like they used to. And that stuff on tv, most of it's free. [00:12:42] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. The tv stuff is. The stories I got weren't the tv, because my friend in high school was going into hospitality. He would tell me the stories, the real ones, about the screaming. So I'm familiar with some of that in some ways. I think having been in theater for many years and worked, you know, on camera and also backstage there, there's some artistic screaming that sometimes happens that probably doesn't need to. And I remember thinking, this is. This is weirder than theater. And we think that people get weird in the theater world. Do you. Do you agree with that? [00:13:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Because kitchens are very. God, you get all sorts of people, or just restaurants in general, because you got the front and the back. And that's where a lot of the screaming and yelling comes between the. The service side and the kitchen side, you know, and the. You get all sorts of people. I mean, if you look, you read ordained stuff, you know, and follow. Used to follow Anthony, you know, he talks about that, how, you know, you get people off the street, you get drug addicts, which I did. Of course, I did have some of those. Sure. You know, alcoholics or you get college people. Great. You know, there's such a mix. But when they're in the kitchen, everybody's just, you know, working on the same thing, the same goal, and they. Most of the time, they get along, sometimes they don't. And, you know, these things happen, you know, but if you really got a scream, we have a screaming room, you know, that's a good idea called the walk in refrigerator. You go in, close the door, and that's what. [00:14:16] Speaker A: That's this space in my studio right here. I hit my head on it a couple times and I'm fine again. [00:14:21] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. It's probably where the thing, you know, go chill out. That's where it is. You go in the refrigerator, go chill out a couple of minutes. Yeah. Yeah. [00:14:31] Speaker A: That's great. So now. Now that you're not in that environment, that's. Now that you get to go to your own room, this is actually really appropriate when you're by yourself in the kitchen or it's just you and Mindy, you know, is, does that open things up a lot? I mean, just talk about that. I mean, how do you get motivated? You love it, right? So what is your motivation every day to, do you cook the same things all the time? I'm going to make a wild guess. [00:14:53] Speaker B: You don't? No, actually, now that, this, since I've been reintroduced to my home kitchen, you know, and I'm doing it all the time, I'm now, I think, getting even more creative. But there's creative use of leftovers or. You know, it's really. I just. I like to look in a refrigerator in the pantry and just, you know, stare for a couple of minutes, like, what am I going to do? And then something interests me, and then, okay, now what we do with this, what we do with that, you know, so it just builds, you know, and, yeah, I've been getting more and more creative. That's where I'm, especially with the aortic kitchen, too, because I'm creating new stuff for that. [00:15:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:30] Speaker B: And playing around and doing things with, you know, we're trying to, you know, teach people how to cook without salt, which is really important. So we experiment on ourselves and not much experimentation anymore because I have been doing that for a long time. [00:15:44] Speaker A: Right. [00:15:44] Speaker B: Because that was one thing we didn't mention in my background. When I was at the University of Central Florida, I taught in the college of medicine as well. And I taught course. Yeah, I taught a course called culinary medicine to the fourth year medical students. [00:15:59] Speaker A: Oh, that's fantastic. [00:16:00] Speaker B: How to use food rather than pharmacy. [00:16:04] Speaker A: Yes. [00:16:04] Speaker B: And teaching the med students how to cook so that they could then teach their patients rather than just, I don't know, when you were in the hospital or afterwards or come home and see your cardiologist. I mean, they would just hand you a piece of paper and say, here, this is what you can eat, and this is what you shouldn't eat. [00:16:21] Speaker A: It was pretty wild because in Ireland, they let me eat everything, and they were like, you have to keep your drinking to two drinks a night. And I was like, wait, wait, I don't drink that much now. Like, well, you have to keep it consistent. So they assumed I would drink alcohol after post resection, and I do have some, but it's very moderate. And they also, I remember they served, like, what looked like a stick of butter with butter on the side. It was. It was cheesecake, but there was no dietary restriction mentioned at all when I came home. And then I was in a whole bunch of different hospitals. Then they went totally to dash. Complete dash. [00:16:53] Speaker B: Right. [00:16:54] Speaker A: And then I'm hypotensive half the time and can barely take my blood pressure medicine because I already have such a low blood pressure. They started adding a little bit of salt back in, but not too much. Yeah, I think we're all so different. [00:17:04] Speaker B: But you can't cut them all out. Yeah, that's good. But I spent several years teaching that course to the medical students. So it was already teaching them how to prepare foods, healthy foods, with, you know, no added salt is what we talked about. No salt because there's plenty of salt in the foods we get. So teaching them how to do it, how it looked good, taste good, you know, so they could then show their patients rather than just give it a piece of paper or something. So. But, yeah, so we play with that, and it's just. It's just fun. I try different stuff, and, you know, it's. Last night here. Quick little story on that. So the night before, my daughter, who has a lot of food requests, I have no idea why she's raised in this house. She's also worked in the business for a long time. In the front, not the back. But anyways, she asked me and also came across during this recipe project I'm working on an old Recipe for mushroom stroganoff. So it's a vegetarian version of the stroganoff using mushrooms. [00:18:08] Speaker A: Mushrooms, yeah. [00:18:10] Speaker B: Awesome. I mean, it's really good. So I, Mindy had just come Home from COStco with one of those big boxes of mushrooms, and so here we go. You know, make this big batch of mushrooms stroganoff with some buttered noodles and actually olive oil noodles. And, you know, we had dinner, so then there's some leftover. So last night, it's like, well, we're gonna have. I said, well, we're just gonna do the leftover thing. I don't feel, like, really going crazy. So then my daughter, because I was thinking, I made a loaf, my first one of pumpernickel bread yesterday. You're not really good. I tasted it this morning. So I was just gonna cut back and make, like, tuna sandwiches, you know, tuna melts or whatever on it. But she goes, how about tuna noodle casserole? We haven't had that for, like, 20 years. I said, well, we don't have this stuff. You know, we need the cream of mushroom. Wait, wait. We have leftover mushroom stroganoff. That's gonna be cream of mushroom soups. I turned that and tuna and some vegetables, and we had a whole casserole with the leftover noodles, the mushrooms stroking off that. I then added some more milk and some stock, vegetable stock and stuff. And also we had tuna no casserole for dinner last night. So, you know, and that's. [00:19:18] Speaker A: That is the art. You're opening the fridge, and there's all of the stuff you get to play with. That's right. [00:19:24] Speaker B: That's my palette. Yeah, yeah. So whether it's that or reading books, I love to read, you know, real quick books because they're inspiring, or they just. Just ideas and then pictures or walking through a really nice grocery store. [00:19:41] Speaker A: Farmers market for me. Yeah, now the mushrooms. Now you're talking about mushrooms. I want to go back and get the big thing of mushrooms I saw when I go back next week, I. [00:19:51] Speaker B: Already put it in the database. I'm trying to do things as I cook them now. But, yeah, so whether it's a market or grocery store or even a catalog, you know, when I was, I would get catalogs from my providers, and they were just full of all sorts of. I could do that with this, or I can do this or that, or try to remember, you find inspiration everywhere. [00:20:13] Speaker A: Cool. So talk about some of the projects that you're currently working on. [00:20:18] Speaker B: Well, I'm this. The aortic kitchen is number one. [00:20:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:21] Speaker B: And that's the project for Aortic Hope. The organization we work with belong to. I'm, you know, I had to do something, so I got. I started off just as a member of the support groups, looking for support, which I really needed. Like all of us, people don't necessarily understand how devastating what happened to us is traumatic. And so I, you know, started. We started our. Another group. I got involved. You know, I needed something to do. I've been working since I was, you know, 13, so I gotta keep. [00:20:52] Speaker A: Right suddenly, so many hours. Right? Yeah. [00:20:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So then we came up with the aortic kitchen. You know, I'm a chef means dietician. We can put that to use, and I'm a teacher, so we can teach our other members how to cook healthy foods. So we do that program twice a month. The first and third Wednesday, that is about an hour. The first couple ones were out of control. I think the first one, we went almost 2 hours. It was way too long. And, you know, it was amateur hour, which is fine because I've been doing it through the pandemic. We turned our kitchens at the university into studios. [00:21:28] Speaker A: Yes. [00:21:29] Speaker B: I brought all these, you know, camera. [00:21:30] Speaker A: Cirque du Soleil did that, too. Cirque du Soleil just put cameras on stage and kept doing art. Yeah. [00:21:34] Speaker B: And I got. I got, you know, I got, you know, things. The racks to hang lights and the hang cameras over the stoves looking down, you know, so we did all this type of stuff. So instead of the students cooking, we cooked for them and then put it online. Right. So I'm being. I was at Le Cordon Bleu for six years. I was a instructor at the culinary college, and so I'm very used to doing demonstrations and that, but it was a little bit different in the home, and I had a sidekick, and we had never done it before, so, you. [00:22:06] Speaker A: Know, there's a joy in that, though, too. I think there's something lovely about a fully polished, beautifully filmed, perfect presentation. And then there's something really lovely about when the dog jumps out. Not that. Not that this happened to you, but it could happen in my family. Upstairs, the german shepherd jumps up, and there goes the bacon. [00:22:23] Speaker B: But that Morty has made an appearance in almost every program. [00:22:27] Speaker A: I can't remember what kind of dog. What kind of dog is Morty? [00:22:29] Speaker B: A Yorkie. He's a five and a half pound Yorkie, so. Or, yeah, as we call him. He's a Yorkshire terrorist. [00:22:38] Speaker A: I have a corgi and a german shepherd and the corgi we call speed bump, because he is more left to trip you in the kitchen. He is in the kitchen at all times, hoping something falls. Yeah. Which could be me. I have tripped over him several times. [00:22:52] Speaker B: He gets little. You don't see him. He just stands behind you, and you go to back up and say, you know, the other dog is a 45 pound. She's pity. And she's a mixed breed. [00:23:06] Speaker A: Okay. [00:23:07] Speaker B: Catahoula. And my daughter's yelling at me with their workshop. [00:23:11] Speaker A: No worries. [00:23:11] Speaker B: And what? And a Britney spaniel. [00:23:14] Speaker A: Okay. [00:23:15] Speaker B: Yeah. She's a service dog. She's a train service animal. [00:23:17] Speaker A: Beautiful. Okay. [00:23:18] Speaker B: Yeah, she's fabulous. [00:23:20] Speaker A: We had to teach. No, she a service animal for you. [00:23:23] Speaker B: My daughter. [00:23:23] Speaker A: Your daughter. Okay, excellent. Got it. Our dog. Because I don't have a service dog, we had to teach her not to jump on my chest when I came home because she was a puppy. She's a very, very enthusiastic german shepherd puppy. And we taught her gentle, gentle. And to this day, if we say gentle, gentle, she, like, backs up, puts her entire body on me, and presses up against me. And it's actually extremely comforting. And so she's become my therapy dog. [00:23:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Weight therapist. Gentle, gentle. That's what Bella does for my daughter. When she needs assistance, she will just actually lay on her or jump in her arms and press against her and give her the cuddle, I hear, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's very cool with the two dogs. They're always somewhere around and, you know, trying to make sure they didn't go crazy here today. So. Yeah. So, anyway, so the shows are great now. We've got them down to, you know, right at an hour, pretty much beautiful. Five to 65. And they're. They're going pretty well. So that's the number one project, planning those and doing those. And then number two is I just started going through my recipe files that have been building up over the years. I decided it's time to digitize them. So I'm busy typing away at my laptop. It's like back in school. [00:24:44] Speaker A: Are you photographing them, too? [00:24:47] Speaker B: No, not right now. No. [00:24:49] Speaker A: I probably could if that was just a thought I had, is there's something lovely as they're being typed up and digitized, though. There's also something lovely about seeing that original handwriting. [00:25:00] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. Because I got some from Lindy's mother. And these old books, which I'll show you in a minute, that actually, I mean, back from the thirties, twenties, and they have handwritten recipes in the. In the binders and in the margins and all this type of stuff. It's really cool. But, yeah, I mean, I can scan them all. I have a scanner as well. It's an interesting idea for at least certain ones, you know, because I. I didn't really want to throw away. My parents are gone, and I didn't really want to throw away the handwritten recipes, mother and stuff, you know, one. [00:25:32] Speaker A: Of the friends of my family, Lilas, was my surrogate grandmother, Lilas Dieter. She had a whole bunch of these, these handwritten ones, and he photographed them, typed them up, and then did a book with all the images of her as well. [00:25:47] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Sure. [00:25:48] Speaker A: Is that something you've also considered? [00:25:51] Speaker B: Uh, not at this point, though. I do have all the family pictures and stuff. Somehow they ended up in my possession for my great aunt. So I have even all the. The papers from my grandparents when they came to Ellis island, and, you know, all that type of stuff and all that documentation and pictures. [00:26:13] Speaker A: So the publishing world has changed so much. Yeah, that it is. It's a lot more accessible and user friendly than it used to be, including what we used to call it vanity publishing back in that. That was the old bad name for it when I worked in bookstores, and my dad was an author and my mom librarian. But these days, as long as it holds, you know, it holds up. It's pretty easy to do that. And same with, like, audiobook narration at this point, too. You can. There are people who narrate cookbooks. In fact, I know several people who've done brilliant jobs narrating cookbooks and making cookbooks accessible for those who can't read, too, anyway. But, yeah, but. So where are you in this project of collecting all the stuff? [00:26:57] Speaker B: Well, I'm actually working on it. As you know, I was doing something before you came online here, so I started this. That's Friday, maybe beginning of this week ended last week. I just decided it was time. I was sitting around and said, okay, because I was looking for a recipe, and I was like, oh, man, I really need to. Well, it's not that I don't have time anymore. [00:27:21] Speaker A: Right. [00:27:24] Speaker B: Here. So there's recipe and stuff. Yeah, there's my recipe. There's the old recipe file here that we've used as a collection spot for all the, you know, all the handwrites and things like that. There's avocado and pork aspic. [00:27:40] Speaker A: That's from when I was a shop at holy cow. I know what an aspic is. I can tell you. I've never made one. But I do know what they are, right. [00:27:51] Speaker B: That's when I was. I was executive chef at Notre Dame for a period of time, and that was. We did some really cool parties and all this stuff. So, yeah, so I'm just starting really. And every day, like, talking to you, we got some new ideas. So, yeah, you talk about books and you remind me of librarian. So one thing Mindy and I like to do is when we're traveling, we'll go to antique stores and look for books because I have quite a cookbook collection. Course. Yeah, several hundred. We've really little it down. Gave a lot to my kids. Gave some away because it's so hard, though. [00:28:23] Speaker A: They're like precious children. I can't ever. [00:28:26] Speaker B: As we move, it's like we got to get rid of more stuff. I know a lot of things. After 45 years, 40, you know, it just builds up and builds up and builds up. So this one is one of our favorites. This is called household discoveries and misses Curtis's cookbook. Okay. [00:28:45] Speaker A: Wow. What year? [00:28:47] Speaker B: I'm going to tell you. But here. But look at this. If you can see this, see right. [00:28:50] Speaker A: Here, I can almost smell it. I just love books like. And there's all the handwritten, hollow, handwritten. [00:28:54] Speaker B: Writing recipes right there on the inside. Sweet peach pickles chili sauce, household discoveries and encyclopedia practical recipes and processes. This book is written funny. But look, I mean, every page, devil's food cake. And it's dividing. I mean, the thing's falling apart. [00:29:14] Speaker A: Of course it is. Oh, yeah. Yeah. [00:29:15] Speaker B: Now, this book was sold door to door. You couldn't get it in bookstores. [00:29:22] Speaker A: This podcast is brought to you by the Seattle Voice Academy, and your host runs the podcast and the Seattle Voice Academy. This online voice school specializes in vocal health, singing, voiceover, and public speaking. Come check us out. Seattlevoiceacademy.com dot I remember that from when I was itty bitty. My. Yes, I know about this. [00:29:42] Speaker B: Here's an introduction from the success company's branch offices. One cent a word we will pay for new household discoveries, including all practical recipes and processes not contained in this volume. One cent a word for all we can use in future editions of household discoveries, corrections of errors or misstatements utilized by us will be paid for at the same rate. If you have saved money or have been otherwise benefited by using one of our recipes, write us all about it. So send them a recipe and they'll. [00:30:14] Speaker A: Oh, that's his history. That's cool. [00:30:16] Speaker B: Any word? So it's not offered through sale. This whole thing was just door to door. Petersburg, New York. There's more. Everything's. Everything's covered with handwriting. Ow. So it's very interesting. I think a page with the. I think it's 1930 something, because I couldn't find. I think I'd be really careful, of course. [00:30:42] Speaker A: I know. [00:30:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Because those pages actually can start to disintegrate. [00:30:45] Speaker B: Yes. [00:30:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:47] Speaker B: So. Oh, here it is. Copyright. I was wrong. I'm sorry. 1908. Oh, my goodness. [00:30:56] Speaker A: That's why the book is starting to fall apart. Holy cow. That book's 100. What? 50? Yeah. [00:31:03] Speaker B: Yeah. What? [00:31:05] Speaker A: 16 years old. [00:31:06] Speaker B: Wow. [00:31:07] Speaker A: That's cool. [00:31:08] Speaker B: So this is for everything you needed to run a household. [00:31:11] Speaker A: You know, I can see why they're writing the margins, too, because paper wasn't. I mean, I'm not saying paper wasn't accessible, but it might not have been as accessible as today. [00:31:18] Speaker B: I love certain things, you know, starts with furnishing and decorating, heating, lighting and refrigeration. The day routine preparations for wash day soap and soap making, wash day ironing, day sewing and mending, day sweeping, day house cleaning, household garden, pest, family work room. Family workroom two. Family work room three. Right. The toilet and bath. Toilet preparations, hairdressing, teeth, candies and candy making. We get into food, vinegars, pickles, pickling. I mean, preservation, health hints, what to do emergency. So this is more of a, you know, it's how to run a household than this arrest, more than. It's really all this other stuff. So. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Wow. [00:32:02] Speaker B: The kinds of fuel, the favorite fuel back then was kerosene. And in here, you do everything with your kerosene. You got mosquitoes. Go spray your rod with kerosene. You have stains, use kerosene. [00:32:19] Speaker A: Oh, jeez. [00:32:21] Speaker B: You want to get rid of your husband, wash his favorite chair with kerosene. [00:32:25] Speaker A: And get him a seat on there. [00:32:28] Speaker B: Doesn't say that. [00:32:29] Speaker A: No, but, yes, but. Oh, my goodness. [00:32:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Everything is really how to build a fire. You know, all these types of things. So it's very hot. I can go on and on. So this type of thing. [00:32:41] Speaker A: Right. [00:32:41] Speaker B: It's really fun. [00:32:42] Speaker A: But taking all that history and then putting that with recipes you have from your family, that's really, really meaningful stuff. Not just for your family, but, I mean, other people are going to enjoy it, too. I mean, that's. [00:32:55] Speaker B: And then there's the world's modern cookbook. This is the other one. [00:32:58] Speaker A: I used to love the way they used to make the hardbacks look so beautiful. And I love kindles. I think kindles have their place. And, yes, I like having a tablet in the kitchen with me sometimes. Although I have a lot of cookbooks. And I do. I read them like they are my children. I don't think I've ever gotten rid of a cookbook. I get rid of other books. I give away books a lot, but, man, my cookbooks are stained. [00:33:19] Speaker B: So this one. This one just is full of child scribbles. [00:33:22] Speaker A: Well, that's how they had in a half hour to cook. They get you here, use this. [00:33:28] Speaker B: I mean, who it was for. Now these pages are stuck together, but the world's modern cookbook for the busy woman. [00:33:35] Speaker A: My goodness, the modern. It's very modern. The busy woman. Yes. [00:33:39] Speaker B: We had a complete guide to kitchen management. [00:33:41] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. This is great. And if they're in the public domain, it makes me want to go find them and read them out loud. [00:33:48] Speaker B: Some of these things. I mean, I love electric table stoves and kitchen conveniences. Here's the old ringer washers. [00:33:55] Speaker A: Wow. This is all stuff we do so differently now. I mean, outdoor dining, you know, that, that, that's cool. [00:34:02] Speaker B: It's nice, actually. [00:34:04] Speaker A: That looks quite. That's modern enough. I would. Yes. [00:34:06] Speaker B: Casseroles and baking, decorating your table. But, you know, they do whole venues with shopping lists and everything. So you go to the store, you get everything neat. [00:34:17] Speaker A: That's beautiful. [00:34:18] Speaker B: Because. Yeah, it's a great. [00:34:19] Speaker A: It's not a blog with 17 ads on it, which is what happens if I look up a quick recipe online. [00:34:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. The Internet is a dangerous place for recipes. I agree. [00:34:30] Speaker A: There's a lot of mediocrity that's easily accessible. [00:34:33] Speaker B: Right. [00:34:34] Speaker A: And I'll find that mediocre recipe occasionally. I've stumbled onto something wildly amazing. There's a really neat chef down in Australia doing some plant based stuff that is exceptionally tasty, but it's so rare that. And I stumbled on her, like, on Facebook, and I've since, you know, reached out to her and she has a printed cookbook because that's what I want. I want to hold the. Want to hold the book. I have my plastic thing. I put my cookbook in. Yeah. So I want to ask, too, with, with being a chef, have you ever had a really bad or a discouraging day where you just don't want to cook? And what do you do if that happens? Or are you always, always cool cooking? [00:35:17] Speaker B: Well, no. I mean, there's days, I mean, especially now, you know, I just had enough, you know, so that's the out to dinner or, you know, somebody else want to cook. Uh, but, uh, it's not so much discouraging. I'm just not motivated. I'm having one of those tired days, you know. Yes. When I was doing it professionally. Well, you know, there. You've got a place to run, you got people to feed, and you got to open up. You got to be there, and you got to do it. But you can get discouraged, you know, nothing like, you know, having, you know, bad interactions with customers, that person that, you know, just hates your cooking or you can't satisfy them. The old, I guess we call them Karen's now. [00:36:05] Speaker A: How do you handle critique? Because sometimes we don't think about it, but absolutely. Chefs and restaurants all the time. Of course, there are critics and all of that. How do you handle it. [00:36:18] Speaker B: Most? I tend to take a lot of it to heart and still split over when I was a faculty member, because students can just be ruthless in the reviews of their professors, and, you know, they love you or they hate you. So, same thing with diners. You know, the hard thing about, and I always had to remember this, is that the hard thing about cooking for the public is that everyone that you serve is a professional. They've been eating all their life, and they know exactly what it's supposed to be like and what they want and how it should be done. So, you know, you're up against another person that at least believes they know everything about what should be. So that's part of what makes a good chef. You know, they always ask me. People ask me that, what's it really take? And what I tell my students at La Cordon Bleu. I said, if you're lucky enough, I worked for a guy in South Bend. After I left Notre Dame, I had a restaurant that I hope it wasn't mine. It's called the East Bank Emporium. I think it's still there. Well, yeah, maybe that was a long time ago. And the owner, Bruce, he used to say, rob, you have a really good taster. I'm like, okay. He goes, yeah, no, and what that really means, and I still use that term, I says, you guys, if you have a really good taster, you're lucky. If you're able to make something and taste it and you like it, you approve of it. And if you're lucky enough, it's something that everybody else will like and approve, you know, because not everything you make and you like anyone else will eat, right? [00:38:00] Speaker A: People. [00:38:01] Speaker B: Yeah. They don't have that. That balance, or they don't know how to temper stuff and make it so that it's, you know, acceptable to a lot of people. So, you know, got to have that good taster, I guess it's. Which I was blessed with that. [00:38:18] Speaker A: That's what's talent. Yeah, yeah. [00:38:20] Speaker B: I've always liked my cooking, always. And been very lucky in that. And so I think when we lean. [00:38:29] Speaker A: Into the stuff that we're. Yeah, atomic habits is a book he talks about that. He says, leaning into the stuff we have a little bit of aptitude for is easier than the stuff that we don't. [00:38:40] Speaker B: Because when I went to school to Michigan state, I was going to be no hotel restaurant manager, and I wanted to own an run and be a restaurant manager, you know, coat and tie and all that type of stuff. And I had a mentor at the university in Michigan State. His name was doctor Lewis J. Minor. Now, he was very, very famous and very influential in the world of chefdom. He invented the modern day soup base. [00:39:08] Speaker A: Okay, okay. [00:39:09] Speaker B: He was a food scientist and he taught the school. I mean, it was minor soup bases. They were out of Cleveland, and they were the first ones, you know, to make like a fresh, refrigerated, only, you see, and you can see them by Costco everywhere. [00:39:23] Speaker A: Right. [00:39:23] Speaker B: Concentrate soup bases, you know. [00:39:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:26] Speaker B: He's the one that invented them. Okay. So he was my favorite professor. This is the most ethical man I ever met. The most honest guy. I mean, I loved this man. I would spend hours in his office rather than going to class, you know, and so we became close, and he's the one that got me to go, where's the culinary sign? Accidentally, I already liked to cook, and I cooked in college. I, you know, my part time jobs, I was in restaurants, and I was always in the back of the house. Well, no, I did the front of the house, too, but I enjoyed the back of the house more, you know. And he said, you have to go to culinary school. So what do you mean? Says, well, you've got. You can get this degree and you can be a great manager, but if you don't know how to operate the kitchen, your chefs are going to take advantage of you and they will steal you blind. So you have to know what goes on in that kitchen. So, okay, so he, off I went, and he got me to matriculate to Johnson Wales College out in Rhode island, which is, back then it was only one campus, you know, smaller. A lot of famous people have come out of there. Probably most famous is emerald. He was there a couple years after me, but I ended up becoming an instructor there. That's where my teaching career started, right. So I, and he was disappointed in that because I went there and I, you know, I just graduated and I still needed income. And I talked to them and I did real well in school. They said, well, you know, you could teach in the academic side of it because we teach menu planning and sanitation and, you know, design and all that stuff. So. So they offer me a job teaching, and then I could audit any classes and go down to the kitchens whenever I needed to. So that's what I did. So. But I was exposed around that. And when I left there, I ended up going eventually into my first restaurant job as a chef with one of the, my professors from Michigan state who was consulting and needed somebody. And they asked me if I wanted to go open this restaurant with them. And it was great. You know, it was amazing, great experience. But a lot's happened since then. [00:41:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:41:44] Speaker B: Back at it, I sucked. I'm actually doing some of the recipes. [00:41:49] Speaker A: From that very first restaurant, and you're realizing how much growth, but at least you were doing it. I think that's something, too, where people, I've met some people who want to wait until they are ready, and I'm not saying people shouldn't be trained, training's great, but we could wait forever. There's that moment of starting even though you're kind of terrible or. I was very inconsistent. Most of the artistic things I have chosen to do, I'm wildly inconsistent. When I start, there's moments of brilliance and lots of really bad stuff. But I started and I do it anyway and just to get better. [00:42:22] Speaker B: I mean, my food was good. I mean, believe me, still, back then I made good food. But, like, I was just doing a recipe for spanakopita, for spinach pie recipe from that restaurant. We had it on the menu there and it's still a great recipe, you know, and so things. Which ingredients have changed? [00:42:41] Speaker A: Yes. [00:42:42] Speaker B: You know, we didn't have access in the eighties to, in the seventies to things that we have, you know, now the, you know, the world of whether it's just air, you know, air freight and Amazon and, you know, we can get food from Europe next day and things in the grocery store. When I was at Notre Dame, we did a dinner for the major donors. They're like the million, they had to give at least a million dollars in unrestricted giving. This is back in 84. And the Soren Society, Father Soren, he's one of the founders of Notre Dame. And so we like the CEO of Coca Cola and GM, all these so we had a chef, Michel Lebonier. He was the head of the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, and he was friends with our director at Notre Dame, Bill Hickey. So he came and we were doing something, and he told me one of the things he wanted to do is, I need some, you know, I want some good. Some French and some red wine vinegar. And so, I know, no big deal, but I told the purchasing guy, you know, we need good quality, you know? And he ended up, you know, with Heinz, and he came in and he was so disgusted, you know. But in South Bend, Indiana, we didn't have french red wine vinegar. [00:43:57] Speaker A: I toured South Bend, Indiana, in 1990 for the year. I was there just for about. I was there one week. [00:44:04] Speaker B: That's it. Did you go down to the river? The area there where they do the kayaking and all that? [00:44:09] Speaker A: When we were in South Bend, we saw Harry Connie Junior perform at the college, and we were doing Missoula Children's theater. There wasn't a lot of spare time, but I do remember I have been to South Bend. [00:44:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:21] Speaker A: But it was. It was mid nineties. [00:44:22] Speaker B: Right. So was your, you know, 1015 years after I was there. Yeah. Because we left in 86. [00:44:29] Speaker A: Okay. [00:44:30] Speaker B: All my kids are little hoosiers, so. [00:44:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:33] Speaker B: It's just funny the things that, you know, happen then. Here, I found something else. I'll show you. [00:44:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:39] Speaker B: The creative process. So, going all. Again, going through my file, I found this. I mean, look at. This is all. [00:44:50] Speaker A: Yes. [00:44:50] Speaker B: This is actually when I worked at the restaurant, the emporium. This was a separate. When we. When people wanted separate checks, we had these little pieces of paper that we. That were typed, that had the cost with the tax of every item on the menu. So the server could just circle it and do this, add it up and give us. Give people a separate check. [00:45:11] Speaker A: So for anyone listening, is that basically a check? One side looks typed up and the other side is handwritten. Right. [00:45:16] Speaker B: This side is a recipe. I grabbed one of these. [00:45:18] Speaker A: Oh, there we go. There we go. [00:45:20] Speaker B: I was working on a barbecue sauce. [00:45:22] Speaker A: And you grabbed the receipt. There we go. [00:45:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So this. That's why it's all stained and torn and used it for this really good barbecue sauce, because we used to do, you know, prime ribs, and we used to roast them on the bone and everything. So, yes, every Monday night, it was barbecued beef rib night. [00:45:41] Speaker A: We're gonna get off of the. Off of this call, and I'm gonna need to go upstairs and totally get into my fridge. Sounds so really, really, really good. [00:45:51] Speaker B: What else do I have here? Yeah, this is weird. You know, sometimes you just grab what you got. So this is my vegetarian eggplant chili. [00:45:59] Speaker A: Oh, it's great. On. On some beautiful. It looks like I can't all the stationery below it, but there's like some kind of small hamster at the bottom of it. But it's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:46:08] Speaker B: Oh, there's the paper. And I start writing it down. And while I'm doing to doing it. And this is when I entered a chili cook off. And, you know, I did the. Which was not very popular, vegetarian chili and a cookie had a chili cook off. [00:46:22] Speaker A: Although, and I'm not a vegetarian, but, man, a good vegetarian chili is really good. [00:46:28] Speaker B: I do it. I don't. People that can't tell it's meatless because I use. I chop eggplant and cook it like ground beef. [00:46:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:46:36] Speaker B: And you get these little chunks of eggplant, and it's. It's almost. It's pretty meaty, you know, but anyways, it's just the processes is fun and different. [00:46:49] Speaker A: So is there anything that we have not talked about today that you would like to bring up? Stuff that you're working on? Creative process thoughts, any advice you would have for anyone who wanted to get into the culinary arts? [00:47:03] Speaker B: Oh, there you go. First. If you discourage them. [00:47:08] Speaker A: Really think about this. Right? [00:47:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, I always go back to cordon blue, you know, because I taught every course in the college, from the intro course to the graduating kitchens and stuff. But I spent a lot of time in the first class, the intro, where my basic knife skills and introduction to tools and things like that. But we'd always have to talk about, do you know what you're getting into? And then they throw around the word the passion. You have to have passion for this, and it gets overused, but you really have to love the outcome. I mean, there's that serotonin blast from. It's actually when you serve a meal and you watch someone just, like, really enjoy it, and that's like being on stage and getting that applause, right? [00:47:58] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. [00:47:59] Speaker B: Because otherwise, in the kitchen is 90%. How can I say it nicely? Crap. Okay. And 10% good stuff. Because otherwise, you're back there scraping dirty dishes. You're. You're cleaning out the grease trap, you're hauling garbage. [00:48:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:19] Speaker B: You're fighting with people. You're, you know, you're this nasty. You know, spend half your time cleaning. If you're in a good kitchen. [00:48:26] Speaker A: Yes. [00:48:26] Speaker B: Should be. You know, and. But it's so it's 90% drudgery and 10%, you know, reward. [00:48:35] Speaker A: I think that's true in a lot of the arts. We just don't pull the curtain back. You don't see the back of the house. Right. You don't get to see the hours of going t duh tuh duh. How exciting is that? That's t and d so that I don't have splashy s's when I talk into a microphone. This is really boring, boring stuff and no fun. Yeah. I think that sometimes some people underestimate what the real job is. They just see the part that's been put out there. [00:49:01] Speaker B: Yeah, right. And kitchens are just. It's just messy, though. I mean, you know, you're not getting knee deep in garbage sometimes or. [00:49:09] Speaker A: I even think theater's not as messy as. I think the kitchen's even, even messier than theater. They've tear down. It can be dangerous. And all this, the stuff I have, my husband does for a living, he's backstage, and he would probably. [00:49:19] Speaker B: Yeah, we work with fire and sharp objects and fire. [00:49:23] Speaker A: Yep. Cirque du Soleil. I remember going backstage. My friends worked for Cirque, and we went backstage and the wall of EMT, of not EMT equipment and for falls, not for if they happened, but for when. And I think Cirque had the most obvious setup where you're like, wow, there's a lot going on here we don't know about. All this stuff is hidden. [00:49:46] Speaker B: Right, right. I used to tell students as well that, you know, until you really understand somebody's what they do, like their business, because you really have no idea what's going on. Like they talked about, I can spend an hour doing a lecture on peas, okay, if you really want me to. It'd be boring as hell. But I can talk about peas. But they think about how certain classes and things are such a waste. Or, you know, when you're in college, you have required courses. [00:50:19] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:50:20] Speaker B: It's like, why are they making this such, why is he making it so hard? It's a big deal, blah, blah, blah. I said, well, you got to understand, this person has dedicated their life to this subject and this of the utmost importance to them, and they're very serious about passing on that knowledge to you and expect you to take it seriously as well. And because that is what they do. That is their life. And you can't, you know, discount it because you don't really have. You don't really care about it. You're just being forced to be there. But you had it. You chose what classes, but, yeah, it's, they're serious, you know. [00:51:01] Speaker A: Is it passion and discipline? [00:51:04] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:51:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I think. Because you have to have the passion to want it. You have to love it. You don't have to love all parts of it, but that's what the discipline is for, because there's so much, there's, yeah. To be, to be really good as a chef, as an artist, and to never maybe sit still. Would you say you're still growing as a chef all the time? [00:51:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm always learning new things in the kitchen, saying, look what I'm this, you know. Yeah, yeah, all the time. Yeah. But you're always. And something you have to keep doing, you know, I mean, you know, you ride a bike to say, you know, you get back on. It's just like riding a bike, you know, but especially in the kitchen, and I'm sure certain art, I imagine painting and sculpting, especially, there's a lot of muscle memory involved. And, you know, like golf, you know. You know, golf is. That's why it's so difficult, because you use so many different muscles from your heads to your toe in the right place when you hit that ball is going this way or that way, not there, you know? [00:52:12] Speaker A: Right. [00:52:13] Speaker B: You know, same thing with the kitchen. I had to get back my night skills, you know, not after the dissection and not cooking for so long. So you have to stay up on those things. I imagine a sculpt, holding tools and or even, I guess, in a theater too. [00:52:30] Speaker A: Oh. For me to get it back on stage after having, I wondered if I could do it. I was really wondering if I could do shows live. I can, I do get a little more tired, and I take my beta blocker an hour before the show. That was the agreement we had with my cardiologist was to take. And apparently they prescribed beta blockers for stage fright. And it was like, where was this my whole life? It's really helpful. You do. You get nice and calm, go out on stage and do it. [00:52:56] Speaker B: It's nice to know I don't have any beta blockers. [00:52:58] Speaker A: We're all on different things. I'm on the warfarin, atorvastatin, beta, metrolin law, booker law. [00:53:06] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the beta blocker, right? [00:53:07] Speaker A: Right. Yes. [00:53:08] Speaker B: I've been there, done that. I have made the entire Medicare, I said, but they pay, they play medication, roulette, and I think I've gone all the way around the wheel now. Are you a couple times. [00:53:19] Speaker A: I can't remember the. The valve. Do you have a valve? And are you able to be. You don't have a valve, so I don't. Yeah, I have to go. Everyone should go back and watch his story on aortico, too. [00:53:30] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I did not issue. I dissected from above my heart above the vet. I had a full Stanford ab. [00:53:38] Speaker A: Gotcha. I know what that means. You guys can look it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:53:41] Speaker B: So, guys, from the top of my heart, my aorta tore all the way to my kidneys, and so I end up having my aortic arch replaced. [00:53:50] Speaker A: Yep. [00:53:50] Speaker B: Which is where the branches come off to go to your carotids. And, yes, I have my carotid replaced as well. [00:53:57] Speaker A: Yes. [00:53:57] Speaker B: Because that's where I felt. That's where it started. I felt the initial tear right up in here. And I just. [00:54:03] Speaker A: Carotids are these guys. Yeah, yep. [00:54:05] Speaker B: And just go to your brain and just travel right down. And then just kept going and kept going. Kept going this way and kept going and kept going and kept going. [00:54:15] Speaker A: So the good news is you're not on warfarin, though, right? [00:54:17] Speaker B: No, no. [00:54:19] Speaker A: Good. [00:54:19] Speaker B: Just an aspirin. [00:54:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:54:21] Speaker B: Wow. [00:54:22] Speaker A: Because I'm on the warfarin for life. I love when people are like, yeah, we got to get you off that warframe. I'm like, yeah, that's not an option because I have the same mechanical. [00:54:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:54:30] Speaker A: So it means my greens. It means I. I eat the most exquisite greens, and they have to be prepared so well because I only get so many. Like, I can eat. I can eat them, but I have to track them. Right, right. To be good, they have to taste really good. [00:54:43] Speaker B: So, yeah, like, I cook good greens. I like making greens. But, yeah, so, yeah, I don't remember on Facebook, I did a picture, uh, one day, I was doing my weekly or bi weekly medication reload. [00:55:00] Speaker A: Okay. [00:55:01] Speaker B: No, because I do two weeks at a time. I have two kids three times, you know, and so I had everything on the table, and it was massive. [00:55:10] Speaker A: So I took a picture. I have a robot upstairs. I pay a robot to spit my drugs out because it's different every day. I do eyeball it. And by the way, there are sometimes mistakes, so it's good to. If anyone else has one of those hero robots, eyeball your family's medication. But I'll tell you, it's great because if I had my drug dealers, and it does say drug dealer on my phone when it rings, because we have to change my inr, my dosing depending on what I've eaten or drank. So we're all, as dissection survivors. We're all different. We all have totally different things, which is interesting. But I tell you, I'm really grateful to be here. [00:55:47] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:55:48] Speaker A: And everyone who's on this, the aortic live and anyone who gets to tell their story, it's really beautiful to hear these stories because when we do wake up, it's one of those things where I'm like, all those things I was going to put off doing. Yeah. You know what? No. Now is a really great time to do things. [00:56:04] Speaker B: That's my mantra. Now. Do it now. [00:56:06] Speaker A: Me, too. Yeah. And I really, we, you know, we get to enjoy every day. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that people go out and dissect. This is not good for the body, and a lot of people don't make it, but it's that realization of just how precious each moment is. [00:56:26] Speaker B: People will live that hear those stories. She always wanted to go to Paris and all these years, and now she's gone. I had the same thing when I was in the wine business. I've done a lot of different things. I owned an import company. Food and wine and coffee, all italian. [00:56:47] Speaker A: All the good things. These are. [00:56:48] Speaker B: Yes. [00:56:48] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. [00:56:49] Speaker B: Anyways. But, you know, we would talk. Well, it really wasn't me. The Wall street journal, years ago, back in the, in the early two thousands, they had their, their wine critics. It was a husband and wife team. And they started this program called open that bottlenight. And it was once a year. And because everybody has those bottles that they're just saving for a special occasion. Right. Oh, no, I can't open this wine. And what happens is eventually either the wine goes bad. [00:57:26] Speaker A: Yes. I have several of those upstairs. [00:57:28] Speaker B: The person you want to share it with is no longer here. [00:57:31] Speaker A: Right. [00:57:31] Speaker B: You know, we'll bring it on our 50th. Well, let's just wait for our 60th now, you know, or whatever it may be or something terrible happens, and you just, you know, you can't have that bottle. So they created this open that bottle night, which was just, this was the occasion created to open that special bottle you've been saving forever and do it now. [00:57:55] Speaker A: Don't wait. [00:57:56] Speaker B: And it became a thing. I mean, people would, and I did this. I was one of the, those people that threw a dinner party on that night and then to open up the special bottle, even restaurant people in, and they would allow people to bring in, you know, their own bottles without corkage fees. [00:58:16] Speaker A: Nice. [00:58:16] Speaker B: That night and let them, you know, help them and enjoy that if the people weren't, you know, cooks and such. So it became a real big thing for about ten years. Then they, they found new wine critics and so it went away. [00:58:31] Speaker A: But I think. But I still think that's a lovely, I think it's something to think about and something that anyone listening, you know, if you, if you have thought about a project, if you have a great bottle of wine, either one. Both do it now. [00:58:42] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Just, just wines. And you talk to winemakers in that particular thing. They want you to drink it now. They don't want you to put that bottle and save it for 50. [00:58:52] Speaker A: You can buy some more. [00:58:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Or just enjoy my. It's like my food. Don't. Don't take my food and put it away in the refrigerator until it spoils. [00:59:00] Speaker A: Right. [00:59:00] Speaker B: Eat it while it's fresh and it's hot and it's. [00:59:02] Speaker A: And I think that's the, that's the life lesson. Yeah, eat it now. [00:59:06] Speaker B: Right. [00:59:06] Speaker A: Rob, thank you so much for being on. I cannot thank you enough. Be well. Be safe. From my repaired heart to yours. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening. To go to your room and make stuff the podcast for artists of any kind who want to make art by themselves. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast in all the places where you find podcasts, find us on social media. And if you ever have any artists you would like to see featured, please let us know. Now go to your room and make stuff.