The Best of Eating While Broke 2024 Part 1

Piece of the planet, Charlamagne to God here and as we come close to closing out this year, I just want to say thank you for tuning it into the Black Effect podcast Network. There have been so many great moments over the past year. Take a listen to some of those captivating moments in this special best of episode.

Hey, guys, Eating while Broke. I'm your host Coley Witt, So I'm really excited to have you. I feel like I did the grocery shopping guys. So I know what he's making us is extremely healthy and budget friendly. Yes, so go ahead. What are you going to have me eating today?

So today we have overnight oats, very very basic. But the good part about it is you can get as specific and as curated as you want, depending on your budget and how many you're trying to make.

Oh I thought this was like a yogurt parfe or something.

It is it is.

So the way it is is it has a liquid base, which is going to be like the oat milk and everything that's in it, and then it has the oatmeals that absorb, and then you top it with whatever types of like fruit and everything that you want on top of it. So you could get as intricate as you want. You could get as basic as you want.

I'm nervous about this dish, but is this now? Is this considered vegan? No, huh, because the creek yogurt.

It could be depending on your ingredients. But I was using what I had in my kitchen.

I was actually shopping with my dad, and I was like, I called bullshit.

I called bullshit.

He was eating this out of Mason jars, Like come on. But then I was driving and I was like, you know, technically it could be considered broke because your oats, your honey, your chi seeds, they're the staple, right, And I'm guessing oat milk doesn't go bad because it wasn't in refrigerated section, So the only moving parts of this dish that you would have to rotate out would be the fruit and

Yeah, and for a lot of it. You have a lot of stuff at home. A majority of people have well my assagnsion, they have honey, they have oats, they've got some type of like milk or anything like that. Yeah, any milk can work. I just like oat milk because it's a little easier on my stomach. But I've used almond milk, I've used two percent anything that's good. And then, just like I was saying before, as you want to curate and make it more special, you can make it high protein by putting protein.

Powder in it.

You can add a lot of stuff. And then Mason jars. You could just get them from like the dollar store. The fruits are nice.

Yeah, you can get everything pretty much affordable. All right, But when you make these at home, do you make them like on the spot, like when you're making cereal, or do you like have these in your fridge? Why the mason jar?

So, the mason jar is good because it kind of ferments it, right. I usually make them the night before, so planning a lot of them, I'll do my meal prep for the week. So I'll make probably about five or six of these and one in one go so it's really really easy to make, but that's not the night before. If it's like, you can still make it

I'm just genuinely curious if you make it, say I'm I'm like, I love this dish. It's fantastic. I'm going to make these at home. And I like to meal prep on Sundays. I'm a huge meal prepper. Okay, yeah, but my whole thing is consistency. Like if I make this on a Sunday and I go and eat it on a Wednesday, is everything going to be like mushy and slow?

I mean, it depends if you go and put fruit in it and stuff, like the fruit eventually can start to get like mushy and things. I'm the type of person that I can make something on Sunday and eat the same dish over and over and over and over. Yeah, if you want to make sure it's not like a crazy consistency, you can always put like the fruit in at the end. So when you're about to eat it, maybe just like Gardner shit and put it on.

You're gonna say the milk was gonna make it nest. All right, let's make it all excited.

What are you gonna have us eating today?

Well, what we're gonna eat is a breakdown. Some call it a breakdown, some call it a spread. So you got your ramen noodles with a little chicken breast, a little pinch of jalapenos, Sprinkle it with a little bit of doritos to add a little crunch to it. You know, I'm a grill. I'm a grill those I'm gonna put some cheese on top, add a little flavor to it, and we're gonna have us an old school breakdown with not all they agreed. It's just like one of the brokenst days.

Now, this is is this well before Boone thugs and harmony or is this during after fiel me In this.

Junior high, but elementary junior high, high school, twenties, thirties, forties, eating this all ot.

And especially jail especially jail house too, because that's all you got, that's all Youah.

Yeah, yeah, that's hilarious. Yeah.

Now, when you're cooking this dish, I'm really curious to when you're cooking this dish on this show, if you are thinking about your milestones that you have reached from cooking this dish, because you guys have a lot of stuff you've done. You have a Biggie Easy Tupac collaborations Mariah Carey. Right, you know, we got to touch on all these topics, but I want to know all the behind the scenes. I don't want to hear anything you guys said during any other interviews. I want to I

Well, I started making this dishes earlier as I can cook. You know, we started cooking noodles very very early, you know, so, uh, it's from the beginning. Man, we want to elaborate.

I mean, you know we was, uh we had that's all.

That's all you had when you was coming up even you know, five six years old, coming up out that ruder man coming out that ruder and everything. You know, we was, uh, from the router to the tutor, from the very very very beginning times. You know, you know, because sometimes even as little as a little g all you had was something that sometimes you didn't have hot water. Sometimes you gotta eat that muff fucker excuse my french y'all,

It like that.

Sometimes you didn't have a chip. Sometimes you definitely had a breast and uh and the ingredients to go with it.

And uh so you.

Will have to put the top of the lid over there and just let it just simmer down and warm water because the noodles, you know, the longer they sit in news the water noodles sit in water, they swell, they get soft, so you know what I mean. So sometimes we didn't have the heat because we ain't had gas on at the crib.

So before all the lifetime achievements and all the accolades. Can you guys take me back to a time when you were making this dish and time wasn't it wasn't looking good and maybe you guys were just at the crosshoads of.

Despair.

Maybe can can any of you guys elaborate on.

About the Vasilia when the Visilia went like like we had on one of our stops up we had a stop on here coming out here. We had been out here for like two maybe two and a half maybe three months. We uh, we moved up to Voselia and this is before the easy e. This is before him taking a song and uh and uh, you know we was we was rough necking it real tough, real real

The apartment was really bad.

They was bad, you know what I'm saying. They sprayed a b boy on the wall and you know, yeah, not giving a damn about you know, getting kicked out and nothing like that. But yeah, it was you know, we was doing a couple of things to come up come up on a meal and everything and not again.

You know, we go like rob a piece of man.

Yeah, yeah, we'll hit up, but we'll hit up, you know, eighteen nineteen.

So yeah, so it was it was easy.

So it was before easy.

Yeah, it was before easy.

You know, we had to do the thing, you know, the north Ridge earthquake had just remember that we got we got caught up in that and then so but we was we was we was on some real struggle ship for real.

No, you guys could so were you guys all just living in a one bedroom apartment trying to pursue music or one.

Bedroom, two bedroom apartment that we shared. You know, it was all of us, all of us together, and you know, we had a couple of homies that knew somebody had to have two friends that was out here going to school playing ball.

They had was.

Holding down a little. I forgot what type of job there was, but they knew. They knew folks that can help us out and put us, put us in places as we was trying to get get it, get to get to our goals.

You know. So we're done, baby special.

That's a really good looking grilled cheese.

Look at that.

The cheese is bubbling, guys, it's bubbling over and it's a little buttered in.

I just learned a trick and making grilled cheese. What is it to stack a lot of cheese in the middle.

I mean, cheese is actually a pretty staple ingredient.

To the grilled cheese, I know, but I usually just put like one or two. Yours is like, first of all, you did it really.

Impress I tell you, I tell you, I tell you why though that's why you're healthy, though you said you were healthy before.

Look at the like the even colored color. I don't know if it's you did a really impressive grilled cheese.

Okay, yah, just low and slow. Okay.

So look, so I'm there and they're like, okay, so it's Saturday. So the five hundred bucks that you were promised you get that it's Saturday, so you get double the session fee on that plus like whatever you get like a holding fee and all of that stuff. So them making like three thousand dollars for this commercial, let me tell you what kind of American I am.

I come home.

And I'm doing my unemployment and it asked if you made any money? Yep, why I put the money on there.

Why, I don't know.

I've seen niggas get the death penalty for less. So so I put so, I put the money on there. I put the money on there, and this is what happens. They then readjust my unemployment quarterly.

Like me, yeah, I would have told you not to do that so quarterly.

So it goes from being I go from getting five hundred dollars a week in unemployment to seventy five dollars a week in unemployment. So I go, Okay, this is the deal. It's not obviously, they don't think a nigga can live off this. So I'm just gonna go up to the unemployment office. I'm gonna talk to these people. That's why I'm my deal. I'm gonna gout to the uneployment office. I'm gonnak to these people. I'm gona straighten this whole thing out. So I go up there to

But you know what.

The funny the ge let that commercial ended up like making me that commercial ran.

Oh shit, I.

Didn't know anything.

I didn't know anything about being a commercial actors. So I would get a holding check every now and again, and then I started making money off the commercial.

But that's later. I didn't notice.

I came home, and when I came home, I was like, I have to find a job. I pulled up entertainment careers dot net. The first job was TMS tour guide.

You were a tour guide, yep, it was being a tour guid.

TMZ was starting a tour, and the tour was like you go around to different places and you show people different things that happened like on TMZ, like we would show you where Josh Hartnett got diarrhea. We would show you where my Richards fucked up at the laugh Factory. It's actually a pretty good tour. Actually, I was one of the first GUIDs on the tour. I was the

That's a brilliant concept now that I think about it.

They revolutionize the whole tour game. So I apply, and they're doing the tours like American Idol. They have all of these tour guys in there, and then every week they cut a guy. So I'm in there and like they have me coming in there and whatever. I get the whole thing. I start with the TMS tour. This goes through to about everything I'm talking about. I start with the TMS tour. I think April of twenty ten, maybe it might be twenty eleven, whatever it is. I start with the TMZ tour.

Then by.

You lie, I started in March.

By July, I'm on TV every day.

Within a couple of months, Harvey came.

In took the tour.

I was up there doing my thing, and I told a joke and he liked the joke so much that he.

Brought me in and put me into the.

Newsroom.

Into the newsroom.

Yep, okay, So then you get this newsroom opportunity, Your pay goes up. Benefits.

What are we looking at?

So this is the way it was working. I was making money because I was getting tips on the tour. So I was probably making fifteen hundred dollars a week straight cash off the tips on the tour. I was killing these motherfucking white people. I was killing them.

I was.

I was fucking killing them. And then you would you would come in and you would have like people from there was tourists, like they were from Australia, they were from Canada.

There was the thing that we do on the tour to where.

If you see a celebrity on the tour, you stop the bus, get off, you shoot the celebrity.

And when you're driving.

Around in LA at certain times, if you know where to go, it's impossible not to see famous people. Like if you were coming to LA and you and you were hanging out with me, and I was like, hey, you want to sit around and watch celebrities all day? There are three or four places I could tell you where it's going to happen, and so we would see him, and I'm a good spotter.

I would spot celebrities and we would see him and the people would go credit. We all kinds of people.

Fucking Lady God got Leonardo DiCaprio, David Beckham and just the other niggas that be around.

Just niggas that be around larious.

You would just say, you know the people I'm talking about in La, they just they'd be around. You see them all the time, Like, hey, weren't you in Yeah, like you see them. The funniest thing was b T Wars weekend right because there would be all kinds of celebrities that I would recognize that the bus wouldn't know who they were, and so the bus wouldn't believe me that these people were famous. I'm like, yo, I don't know if you know this motherfucker two number ones.

We ain't never heard of him before.

I don't know he signed to Luducris and Them's that's like, actually, I don't want to say the guy's name, but like that's actually that guy is a huge singer, Like you guys should probably care about him.

Wait, don't know, fuck them?

Keep going, Oh no, what's going on? How do you feel?

Charlemagne the God also known as hip hop's Howard Stern really best selling author of books Black Privilege, Shook One, and most recently, Get Honest or Die Lion, Why Small Talk Sucks. In addition to all these accolades, you have invested close to thirty years in the radio broadcasting industry. You're the founder of the Black Effect podcast network.

Where you can listen to eating while broke, where you.

Can which you yourself is literally the only reason why we're able to do this interview. In addition to all that, you are the creator of Black Privilege Publishing. I read this quote. I was hanging out in my dad's apartment. He had this quote on the wall and I took it. And the whole irony in this quote is that he actually took it from me. But I read this quote and I thought of you. Excellence is never an accident.

I really don't know.

I was racking my brain when they kept telling me, and I watched the show and I'm like, they kept you know, you got to have a broke dish and I'm like, I didn't really have a broke dish coming up. And the reason I say that is because even though we were poor, I didn't realize we were poor until I got older, because you know, I grew up in Monks Corner, South Carolina, and you know, when you grow up in a ruined area like that, everybody is pretty

But the one thing.

That we always had was food in funny food, funny and family literally, you know. So it's like the things that people would call broke meals or the things that I still love now, Like I love grits and eggs. You give me some scrambled eggs with some grits and butter, I'm good.

Like my grandma used to make this.

She used to make cheese toast. So she would just take the toast. My mouth started water and thinking about it. She would just take the toast and like you know, put the butter on the center and then put a slice of cheese and literally warm that up.

And I would drink that with a cup of tea.

And now that I think about it, I'm like, oh, that was like the meals that they were giving us because that's what they could afford to give us, like even you know, but it was amazing that it still tasted good.

Like it don't make me feel like something.

It's something that I still enjoy now, you know, so to me, that's not It might be a broke dish, but I still love it.

I love hearing guests say that they were broke but they didn't realized they were broke. But in those types of cities, what I did notice is that, yeah, everyone looked the same. But what differentiated kids from knowing whether they were broke was at least I don't know, we're close in age, but it was the like kicks, Like were you going to school with the cool kicks or something?

So or nah, I ain't had none of those.

My dad, I remember, I wanted they used to be these boots called high tech boots, and my dad they they saw the boot leg version that pay less, and I wanted them so bad that I'm like y'all get the bootleg version that.

Pay less, and they didn't.

The kids didn't noticing me.

Well, no, I woke up one morning and my dad had the high tech sitting by my bed.

So I was like, oh, shoot, you know what I mean.

So I actually had the real you know, all black high texts, you know, So I didn't have like the Jordans and all of that stuff like that. I don't I don't even what kind of sneakers did I have.

Back then, But I'm saying in that environment, that wasn't the thing that differentiated a poor kid from it because in those environments everyone's technically in the same economic structure. But I remember growing up in upstate New York where even though we were all kind of in the same category, there were some kids that would go to school wearing Jordan's or Nikes, and then they would look at the kids and say, we're payless and be like, okay, you're poor.

But the people who had the Jordans and stuff when I was growing up with the drug dealers for the most part, you know, I mean, either the drug dealers are like the football players because you know, people in their minds like all these people are going places, so you know, let me throw them some shoes or something like that. But for the most part, the drug dealers had to fly kicks that I remember, you know, growing up.

You know, That's all I could really think of.

So take me back to the cheese toast, which by the way, I did have. On the show. Someone had did it with sugar and that was impressed.

Mine was stray cheese toast, the butter with a slice of cheese, cup of tea. That's what my grandmother would give us. And I can even still right now think about that, that feeling of having that, like it was just an amazing meal. I can't remember that. That wasn't even breakfast. That might have just been like, yo, you just got home from school. You might get some cheese TOAs with with with a cup of tea, you know, definitely like I said, gritch and eggs for breakfast.

And you keep referencing your grandma's house. Is there a reason because did you stay with her?

No?

Well, when I was young, my mother, my mother was a school teacher, you know, and my grandmother was a lunch lady. Right, So you know, I grew up in the era when you was in fifth grade.

You know, you.

Get I could get dropped off at my grandma house and wait there till the adults come. And you know, I would never dare do that with my kids now, but you know, just back then, life was different. So I would literally wait till my mom came home from school. So I spent so much time, you know, at my grandmother's house. Like so, yeah, I spent a lot of time over there. Again, thank you for tuning into The Black Effect Podcast Network. Seeing you in twenty twenty five for more great moments

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