Outrageous Food Advice, Our One-Minute Cooking Tip, An Interview With An Olive Oil Producer, Candied Orange Peel, Lunch Out & More!

Hi, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark Scarborough, and together with Bruce, my husband, uh, we have written, I don't know, 35 cookbooks, 36, including our latest, the Instant. Air Fryer Bible, which can get you using your air fryer in every way imaginable. In this episode of our Food and Cooking podcast, we wanna talk about tips for a healthier new year, or at least outrageous, insane tips for an, uh, new year, things that are just insane and silly. We wanna have our one minute cooking tip.

It's the new year and Mark and I have decided for a resolution not to make any resolutions because they, we just think I'm just too old.

I'm way too old. I, you don't really, you know what? The only renovation that's gonna happen to me is a coffin, so,

oh well maybe a knee or a hip, I don't know. Oh, maybe. I don't know. But you know, we had this thing when we'd lived back in New York and we could walk to our gym. We never went the first two weeks in January. No, that was a resolution we made. Not to go the first two weeks cuz it was so crazy, crazy. I needed it.

We belonged to Chelsea Pierce in New York City and it was only a block and a half from our apartment in Chelsea before Chelsea was. When Chelsea still had, oh, prostitutes on the corners at night, and so I, I just made this whole thing that I wouldn't go to the gym from January 1st to the 15th because it was just a billion people. And by 15th they were all gone. All gone. Nice. Okay, go back. Now we can go back to the gym.

So here's the thing. Every year I like to take a look at what the big media outlets say you should be doing to make your life better in the new year. I ran across some absolutely outrageous advice, tips, and we wanna share some of those with you.

Yeah. Here's what we wanna do. We wanna talk about three or four tips, maybe four, right? Yep. In which we found that are just absolutely bogus and crazy. We wanna talk about why they're bogus, and then we wanna talk a little bit about how you. How to adjudicate what you read in the media. So course a little bit about food media literacy. Mm-hmm. in this first segment. So let's start off with the mm-hmm. venerable New York Times that ran a feature about. Coffee.

Yeah. This was part of their how to like be healthier in the new year, and one of the things they said is, you should feel better about your morning coffee. Why? They say, well, a study found that people who drank three and a half cups of coffee each morning, I love this. We're 30% less likely to die. To die to die from a whole list of things than people who don't drink that much coffee. Okay.

I'm gonna say something before we even start into this, about drink three and a half cups of coffee each morning to have a better chance of not dying. , I want to say that one of the ways that you can be media literate is anything that says, a study says, or scientists say. Is bogus. I can almost guarantee you it's bogus. The, it doesn't mean that there aren't a collection of scientists who don't think certain things.

What does scientists mean? And the thing is, I found this same advice given in a lot of media news albums just slash the New York Times, and nobody said where the study was. No one said, so I had to do a lot of Googling and research to find the study and I finally found it. It was a, okay, here it is. Here it is. It was a UK study and it followed 200,000 people, which is let's

just. That's a great sample. 200,000 is a giant study. Mm-hmm. . Bruce: But let's also say it's just the uk, right? So, okay, wait, well go on. We'll get to that. But what they were looking at was not how much coffee you drink in the morning. They were looking at the difference between people who drank sugared coffee and black coffee. So people who drank the black coffee were more likely to stay alive than the people who drank the heavily sugared coffee.

It's because societal influence. where you live, the environment around you, the rest of your diet, behavior, what kind of medical care you get in your That's right. Community. That's right. All has a huge impact on whether you live or die. Not whether you're drinking three cups of coffee in the morning.

That's right. There was a study out not so long ago, and this isn't. To mean to pick on anybody. Oh, it was a couple years ago. I remember this study very well, and it came out that basically said that, you know, breaded, processed foods weren't as bad, uh, for you as advertised. Okay. That's all right. But the part of the problem of the study is the study was done. , almost a hundred percent in the Bay area of California, where physical fitness is a true fad. Mm-hmm.

Okay, well now you take the health and. Dietary behaviors, the people living in the part of the uk, and I didn't even say which part. My guess is that they picked one county somewhere. Yeah. Or, and now you London. And now you say, let's compare that to the people that live in Bangladesh. Yeah, exactly. You can't make that comparison. Or,

or you, you, you, you know, you use a sampling from, I don't know, bath England, but that doesn't take into account people who live in, I don't know, northern rural Scotland. No. , it's, it's really suspect, even as a study of Brits. But then to be extrapolated out and to drop the sugared part of the study and just say, well, coffee makes you live longer. That is exactly what happens now. One media outlet runs it New York Times, and then everybody picks it up.

The same. They say, think about hydrating with foods. Oh, instead of water.

Okay, I'm gonna hydrate with a steak. Seriously? , Bruce: I'm gonna hydrate with a steak. No, but they go on to explain the kinds of foods that you can hydrate with. Oh, okay. So here, what's wrong with this scenario? You come in from shoveling or gardening, you're sweaty, you're really thirsty, And you're only talking about me because you hate gardening and shoveling. So,

but I shovel too. So we come in sweaty, we come in thirsty. Do we turn on the tap and hydrate with a glass of water? Yes. Or do we eat a cucumber. No, we're a cantaloupe. No, because these are the foods they're suggesting you can hydrate with.

No, I mean, I'm an avid, avid gardener. Bruce enjoys the gardens but does not garden. And I have gardened, oh gosh, well over an acre of our property here in New England and. You know, I mean, I, I work really hard at it spreading metric, tons of mulch, and I come inside and the first thing I do is drink two or three glasses of water.

I think next summer when you come in, the first thing I'm gonna do is hand you a cucumber.

No, I, you know what? No, that is so dumb. Of course, there's a lot of water in cucumber or watermelon or cantaloupe or honey do, or tomatoes,

but you know what? Hydrates really well, water..

Yeah, the no . I don't want to come in and eat a tomato or go to the gym or go for a run and come in and eat a tomato. That is absolutely insane. I don't know. I don't know what they're thinking except they're just thinking that, oh, we wanna say something new and so we should say something to do. Vogue Magazine, here's another one. They approached a bunch of celebrities. This, I should tell you is another red flag.

Yeah. She said if floaters are a healthier body than than sinkers,

and I remember. Being so outraged. I think she's Mary Lou Hener. Exactly. I remember screaming at Bruce, how can you end good conscience even work on this advertising campaign because he paid our rent Well, okay. But, um, , I was just so obsessed with it because I thought, who is Mary Lou Hener to give me diet advice or to give anybody now.

Smoke more weed. Thank you. Seth Rogan, uh, g I mean, two wine. That was it. So they had this whole list. Some of it was actually good. One of the, I, I don't remember who they were, but one celebrity was like, get lots of sleep and one is drink lots of water. And that's great. I mean, I, I don't need a celebrity . To tell me that, but, Smoke more weed.

Uh, now I have to tell you this. Okay. And see, this is a perfect example. When I was a freshman in college, yes, this is true, and, and we're talking here the late seventies. So I was a freshman in college and this was all still pretty new stuff. And there weren't gyms around the as there are now. No, no, not at all. As why that was the better it. So I had a roommate who. Oh gosh. Who was just addicted to his bong and he would smoke that bong like crazy. Oh, maybe insane. It stank so bad.

and he might say, see, smoking weed kept me in shape. See, once again, you have to look at the weed, every aspect of the people involved in this study.

Yeah. Okay, so the Today Show offered it seven. Good for you. Transfer 2023 recently, and that included a plant. Based ranch dressing.

Oh, I love this. So you have to add this ranch dressing to your life to make you feel better in the world. That is so ridiculous. So ridiculous. Just because it's plant-based ITT make it healthier. Well, no, Dina Champion, who is a registered dietician or Ohio State says it does not necessarily a common misconception. She says, is that a label that states plant-based or vegan automatically equals healthier. But remember a vegan. Is still a donut.

Yeah. Yeah. There's the lesson for life of vegan donut is still a donut. I think that that plant-based is another one of those things that is a red flag for me in media literacy doesn't mean healthy just by itself doesn't mean healthier, and I am eating more plant-based, as we've talked about already on this podcast, long before the new year I started this thing that I won't eat meat more than once a day. As a general rule.

And we went out for tongue taco lunches.

Yeah, there. And there was no way, and I wasn't gonna be the idiot who was like, no, I can't go to the Taco Illa because you know, I can't eat meat and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I wasn't gonna be that person. So it's not a hard and fast rule for. I would prefer to eat meat or fish, and I count fish as part of meat no more than once a day. And so, yes, of course. Do I think plant-based eating is healthier? Yes, I do.

oh, it's not the kind of vegan cheese we have in that restaurant. That stuff is made from nuts and yeast. This stuff that you get when you order vegan cheese on a pizza is basically just congealed oil.

Uh, yeah. Now I'm sure there are high-end pizzerias who are doing, you know, cashew cheese instead of ri ricotta. I'm sure. For a general rule. Yeah, the general, the vegan cheese is, you might as well just eat Crisco.

It is pour some oil on your pizza.

Right. It's the same thing as eating Crisco. It's just an emulsified, hydrogenated, and stabilized oil product. It's not necessarily healthier verse So how do you know who to trust?

Well, the North Dakota State University website. Offers up this advice North Dakota

State. Yeah. Do you know that of all, we had had this discussion of all, all,

no, we haven't had it on the podcast. We've had it with our nieces who are going to college next year. Year.

All public universities. I believe North Dakota State has the highest admission to. Ivy League business. Graduate programs of any state college, state run college.

If you're going to college, go there. . Okay, so North Dakota, Dakota State. So here's three things from their huge list. Are the recommendations made that you read based on a single study? Because one study may not prove anything. It might, but it probably doesn't. It takes several studies where evidence accumulates it's compared, and bit by bit the truth is uncovered.

Okay, and does the advice cast doubt on reputable scientific organizations do. Don't be skeptical or fearful just by implication and listen. There's a lot of ways that you cast doubt that actually begin as doubt and then reform scientific theory when thinks of string theory in physics that begin as a doubt and then slowly reform. But however, if it's sensationalized mm-hmm.

he's usually insane. Right. And does the advice include recommendations drawn from studies? That ignore the differences between groups and individuals. That's, this is, that's like the thing about the coffee study in just the uk. That's just the UK and it's not the rest of the world. Animals and people are different. So was the study about giraffes and now they're telling you how to treat your dogs and cats, men and women are different.

And you should know that there's a lot of research these days that, uh, for economic reasons, because it's less expensive, takes part in locations that are extraordinarily non diversified populations. For example, they'll go to the Azores or they'll go to the Canary Islands. Or they'll go to, um, I don't know, they'll go to Dubai and only, uh, do this study amongst East Indian workers in Dubai that there's an economic reason for this because it's cheaper to do this.

That's a wonderful study. And the results should be taken seriously by the East Indian workers in Dubai. Correct. It is not a worldwide.

No, because the cow I eat, or the beans I eat or the carrots I eat or the cabbage I eat has different chemical signatures, has different varietal problems, has different fiber content. Everything about it changes across low cow. Mm-hmm. , this even goes when comparing, say the food groups of New England and the dietary health of New England would say the dietary health of Oklahoma. Yeah. And I'm not casting as versions in Oklahoma.

Buy a pastry brush, keep it with your everyday tools based meat with it, instead of using a baster. If your recipe has you breading chicken breasts or cutlets and you have, you have to dip them in flour and dip them in eggs and dip them in bread crumbs. Use the pastry brush and brush them with flour, and then you could save a whole dirty bowl.

It's true. Buy your pastry brush. It's true. Pastry brushes are amazing tools in the kitchen. Mm-hmm. And there are also tools, uh, once you've finished for, uh, wiping crap off cutting boards, um, you know, I mean, there's all kinds of reasons you should have a pastry brush. Up next on our podcast, Bruce's interview with, David Garcia Aguire, the Master Olive Miller at cor. Olive company in California.

Today, I'm talking with Master Olive Miller, David Garcia Aguire from Corto Olive Company.

Hello, Bruce. Thanks for having me.

Oh, my pleasure. Hey, let's just start right up the top. What makes olive oil different from all the other oils we eat?

Anytime I have these kinds of conversations, this is how I start these conversations for a very simple reason. One of the most unfortunate things that happened to olive oil is that it got lumped into the edible oil category. I say that because all edible oil. Olive oil aside, but the rest of the edible oils, all of 'em, I don't care what it is, uh, they all are made in a very different way than olive oil is made.

Is that why not all olive oils are created equal?

I'd say there's two main reasons why olive oils are not created equal. Number one, we have a tasting that we use at Cordo, which, uh, we have divided into two flights as two parts of an equation. You have to have both of these parts of this equation in order to have a high quality product, and the equation is very, The fruit that the olive came from has to be fresh and high quality, so fresh fruit. The second part of the equation is the oil itself has to be fresh as well.

How do I know when I go to buy a bottle of olive oil in the supermarket that is not rancid?

I mean, honestly, like this is, this is the question I get asked the most is how. , you know, I'm in the supermarket how, and you're looking at a hundred bottles on the shelf. Right? Because it's a crazy category where it's just, you know, there's overwhelming amount of bottles. How do I know what's good and what's not? You know, from my point of view, you know, my, my job is a master Miller is not just making high quality oil. It's making sure that my customers get high quality oil.

Take me through the process of how you make. From the tree to the bottle at Corto,

I'll reinforce this message. We have to remember that olives are a fruit, and like any fruit, there's a very short window. When that fruit, it's at its peak. I, I like to use the analogy of an orange tree in your backyard. And you know that orange early on it was a blossom, and then it became a fruit, and that fruit grew and eventually it hits its pinnacle, right? That perfect moment, and that's usually sometime in December. And that orange is sweet. It's beautiful, it's gorgeous.

Talk about that process and how you put that philosophy into action.

Sure. So, uh, about 20 years ago, a new planting method was developed and this planting method through the entire industry upside. because up until that point, everything was hand harvested. And as you can imagine, the volume of extra quote unquote extraversion olive oil consumed was way more than we have people to hand harvest. Right? So this technological advancement, you know, 20, 25 years ago, really flipped the industry upside down.

oil. How do you then package it and transport it to retain its peak freshness?

So the moment the oil's out of the olive, It goes into our sellers. And our sellers we've determined are about the the best environment you can have to slow down oxidation. You can't stop oxidation. That's why the human body ages, right. We haven't figured out how to stop it yet, but we can definitely slow it down by doing things like. Keeping the oil cool, right. Keeping light, heat, and air away. So in our sellers we have stainless steel casks.

David, you threw out the words extra virgin earlier. So let me ask you, are those terms extra virgin and virgin still meaningful in the US olive oil market?

I describe it like. extra Virgin is like getting a D in school because there are two components to an oil being extra virgin. Number one, it has to go through a chemical analysis. And number two, it has to go through a sensory analysis. So a trained sensory panel tastes oils blind, but all they are looking for is any defect. So in order to be extra virgin, by the, by definition, the definition is the oil must have zero defects. Okay? And so why do I say that's like a D in school?

So you are not labeling your oils as extra virgin?

So we do. So California has its own extra virgin standard and it's the strictest standard in the. And that's great. The pro, so it's like, it's like a C minus . The problem with that is that all of the testing happens at the time of production. Hmm. . And as we know, olive oil, you can't stop oxidation. Right? So that has very little bearing with what's actually on the shelf.

Let's talk about cooking with oil. So now we, you've made this beautiful oil, you've packaged it in a way that will keep it as fresh as can be for as long as possible. I get it home. Should I saute with it? Will it lose its flavor? Nutrition over high heat?

So the answer is a very simple, fresh, high quality olive oil is the most stable cooking oil there. and there's a very simple reason for that. We've talked about what makes olive oil different from all the other oils, right? It's mm-hmm. . It's essentially, it's fresh pressed juice, so it retains all of the flavors. It retains the aromas, and it retains all of the antioxidants from the fruit itself when the oil is fresh.

Well, the quality of the fruit determines the quality of the oil. Exactly. It determines the qual. Exactly. Exactly. Smoke point. And then we shouldn't be worried about sauteing over high heat.

Not only should you not be worried about it, you should be excited that not only does it have a high smoke point, it also has a bunch of antioxidants. which make it a really healthy and stable cooking oil.

David, as a cookbook author, I'm always looking for new, exciting ways to use great tasting products. So I'm gonna ask you, what are your favorite ways to use olive oil? Aside from salads or simply using it to dip bread into, let's talk about.

Baking, for example, people always shy from using olive oil in baking because it has a strong quote unquote strong flavor, which is absurd to me because in my world, that just means you're not using the right variety of olive oil. because the, the olive oil in baked goods in, in, in, in, as a, as an ingredient in things has such a, a unique ability to be complimentary to foods.

At Corto, do you sell different varietals of oils?

So we use different varietals in our blend. So we, we deal mostly with, with chefs into food service. So really high-end restaurants across the country. And we have one product we call truly, which is a blend of aina and arana, which are two Spanish varietals. Mm-hmm. and uh, koi, which is a Greek varietal. And we blend that for a consistent product for chefs. Mm-hmm. . And when I talk to people now, it's like I can take my cordo hat off.

So aside from baking, if you want to have a really exciting, uh, use for the oil, something that'll make your dinner guests go, wow, what should we do?

Another one, another great pairing is olive oil and chocolate. Whether it's just a truffle sitting in olive oil with little salt,

chocolate, and olives sound like a fantastic combination.

That's one of the parts about my job that excites me the most is like, once people start under, like, once you think about it differently now, it's like, oh my gosh, like there's so much. That we can do with, with fresh, high quality olive that we're not currently doing because we haven't been thinking about it the right way.

So we need to just be getting our hands on fresher olive oil made from better fruit, like what you're making. A Corto Olive Company Master Olive Miller, David Garcia Aguire. Thank you so much for spending some time talking about all things. Olive oil and what you're doing at the Corto Olive Company.

Yeah, my pleasure. Bruce, thank you so much. I,

I, I have to tell you a story. Well, Bruce knows the story, but I'm gonna tell you a story. When I was in grad school in Madison, Wisconsin, I, this is the mid eighties and olive oil is just becoming a thing in the United States. Of course, it's a thing in Italy.

Oh my God. It's been a thing in Italy for hundreds of years. Greece

and other places, but anything. And so I found a recipe in Bon Appetit. This has to be like 1986 in Bon Appetit for something, and it called for olive oil, and I had never actually a good southern boy. This is 86. I had never heard of olive oil, so we went to the supermarket to buy some. They had none at the supermarket in Madison.

I'm surprised it wasn't sold as a laxative.

Well, it could have been for all I know. I don't know. They ta, they said, go to the drugstore. That's the only place they have these things. And I was like, Okay, and I bought it Sweet Oil. Isn't that funny?

Well, my big takeaway from that conversation though is how oil is packaged. I am going to be looking for the bag in the box now because that is really clearly, according to David. The only way to make sure your oil stays. Unoxidized until you finish it up. And so start looking in our pantry mark for the olive oil, the bag in the box with the spigot. And we . That's how we're doing olive oil from now on.

Yeah, the box also keeps the, uh, the light away from it, right?

It does. It's a brilliant, it's a brilliant thing. It is.

Okay, so we wanna tell you a little bit of news information before we go onto the last segment of the podcast.

For our knitting listeners out there, many of you know that I am also a knitter. I've written some knitting books and many of my patterns, in fact, almost all the patterns I have knitted and created are now for sale individually on my website, bruce weinstein.net. I also have opened an Etsy shop where you can find all my patterns and you can go to Etsy shop and it's called Nice Knitting Patterns, and so just nice knit. I couldn't believe that name was available. See nice knitting patterns.

All right, our last segment as is traditional. What's making us happy in food this week? You get to start.

I love chocolate covered orange peel. We bought a ton of it when we were in Toronto. We did over Thanksgiving and No, no, we didn't. I did, and I thought we had finished it all and I found a little bag of them hidden away in one of our little pottery things in the dining room. So I've been enjoying them.

We were in Toronto and Bruce was craving chocolate, and I have to tell you that we were watching the Rings of Power, everything. Afternoon, we would go, we had this Airbnb on the 40th floor of this building with this gorgeous view of Toronto. And so every day we'd go out and we'd walk miles and miles and miles around Toronto. I mean, it was crazy how much we walked and exploring the city and having lunch and going various places and stores, and it was just, Brilliant.

It was a Swiss shop. I don't remember which one boat it was one of those Swiss chocolate companies and oh my goodness, dark chocolate covered candied orange peel Yum.

Yeah, it is a good thing. Okay, here is. Uh, well, what's making me happy? The food is this week and it is lunch out in the middle of the week. . I love this idea of going out to lunch in the middle of the week. We both work at home, of course, because of our career. We are around a lot. We're, we're recording podcasts, we're writing books, and I'm teaching a lot of literary seminars, so we're home a lot and occasion.

It's treating yourself. That is a good self-care wellness. Tip for the new year is once a week take. If you can do it once a week, take yourself out for lunch.

Yeah. And it doesn't even have to be once a week. It can be once every other week. And it doesn't have to be anything Makes fancy. I don't mean take yourself out to a five star restaurant. Mm-hmm. Mm. Yesterday we went out and I literally had a Thai salad at a place. Oh, I don't know. About an hour away from us in New England. It was just lovely. I sat there and had my Thai salad and my iced tea and we talked and it was, it was like this kind of mini vacation.

The only thing that would've made it a real vacation is if we'd had a drink at lunch.

Oh, I, yeah. No, I can't do that anymore. , we were talking about that last night cuz we, we were watching White Lotus on HBO O and they say drink, they drink a lot all day long, a hundred percent of the time. And I said to Bruce, I remember when I could go out and split a bottle of wine with Bruced for lunch at, you know, we'd be on vacation and we'd split a bottle of wine and that was like lunch. And I said to him, I just can't anymore. I can't.

A lot of people would need a beer to do that. . Mark: No, I need all my brain cells going, uh, together. Okay, so that's our podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the podcast. We are certainly grateful that you are on this journey with us. Thank you so much for being there.