Episode 151 - Eggs with Mimi Smith-Dvorak!

Hello,

hello, welcome. Welcome to Fun Fact Friday, weekly podcast where we discuss fun facts surrounding different topic each week. And this week we have a special guest who will be introducing in just a moment. If you have any fun facts for us or corrections to any facts that we get wrong, because we are fallible, so no male FunFactFriday.com Yep. Hey everybody. This week we are talking about eggs and we have a special guest. Say Hi, Mimi.

Hello, this is Hello Mimi.

Be like the old airplane movie. Exactly. Don't call me Shirley. But yes, we have Mimi Smith of Warwick who wrote the book on eggs. This is going to be an excellent eggs pisode

definitely, yeah, she's an expert expert.

We have a lot of questions for you. Mimi. Mimi is the author of too many eggs. We're going to have a link to the book. You can go get the you can get the PDF for free or for a donation. You can also get the hardback or is it paperback? hardback, hardback? Yeah, that and after getting the PDF, we will be getting a hardback because it's it's fantastic. We'll talk about it in just just a moment. So

is the hardback to keep you from spilling your eggs on it?

To make your really strong

book totally.

So many books like

six pounds.

Wow. Yeah. With 750 pages.

Wow, that's, that's after I pulled out all the appendices. So

Oh, my goodness. Yeah,

we have one of those. Actually, we're going to be talking about that and diving into some exclusive content here for Fun Fact Friday. So unedited appendices.

We actually decided to not do an index in the back because it seemed kind of dumb when you'd say eggs and it lists list every page in the book.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking for that egg recipe. I wonder. I wonder where that was in the book. Which one? You know, the egg recipe.

Want to know how many times egg was in the book?

I don't even want to think about it. I don't want to think how many eggs I ate. During the production.

I would imagine I thought about that. Like, how are you not an egg?

Leila hand counted every sense of the word.

Totally hand counted.

But she says she did she probably just hit Ctrl F.

Yeah, I did. I mean, I mean,

here's a fun fact in the book, too many eggs Leila how many instances of the word egg were in the book?

4836.

Or my fingers are tight.

And that's just the one word.

And then there was 28 instances of the word quibell. Which is egg again. Yeah.

You add it all together. You get it? Yeah. That's a lot. That's a lot of words as too many eggs. Yeah. might say I turned to

him. And I'm like, how do you search for a word? And he's like, go to Ctrl F. And I was like, Okay.

I thought she was looking for something that she had seen earlier. And then she

thought about it could be really fun. I was looking for eggs Benedict, because I really like eggs benedict. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So before we get before we get into it, we're gonna do a little donation segment here in a second. Before we get into that we got a question and chat, where the E and the G keys on your keyboard worn off?

I've been through several key. Yeah, probably. I mean, it took me you know, this was written over about

a decade. What sells? What are my questions?

Yeah. And what happened was I I decided to get some egg chickens from McMurray hatchery. And yeah, what about minimum? Minimum orders? 25. So I went, Oh, how bad can it be? So I ordered 25 hands, and they came and there's cute little chicks and they grew up and they're annoying little animals. And I didn't realize that 25 hands will lay two dozen eggs a day.

Yeah. Yeah, my brother did the same.

So hey, at least you got stuff for us.

You'd open the refrigerator and be all eggs. So I mean, my neighbors wouldn't take him anymore. I would go up to him and they'd be like, No, thanks. You gave us some already. Oh, Ah,

some yesterday, why are you giving me all these eggs from?

So I, I have a huge collection of old cookbooks because I've collected cookbooks since I was a teenager. And I started going through it for making a note book on recipes that you would use at least a dozen eggs. Angel Food. Yeah, and the other one the yellowcake version of it. No, yeah. All those things. I became completely insane about it. So I decided to change to a book. And that made things way worse. So John says anything he'll go don't get her started talking

know, my brother came up with a nice solution. There's a little place in a neighboring town that sold bulk tea and herbs and things like that. And they would go in and they would do a like a swap. Yep. So they would like, here's, here's six dozen eggs. And then they get however many pounds of tea or whatever, whatever else they wanted from the store. And then the store owner would sell the fresh, you know, from a mile down the road eggs, you know? So

I just ended up being my perpetual motion machine once I would take the eggs and cook them up, and then give them with the shells included and give them back to the chickens to eat.

Oh, no. Solutions. Cannibal worked. Hey, you know, I mean, you mean you had a problem? You solved it.

Your brother your brother was talking about at lunch the other day? Your mom didn't have anywhere to put a chicken nugget that you didn't eat. And you're like, Oh, we could be taken aback to the chickens.

Yeah, anytime we go out to eat with my brother. If we have any, like little leftover scraps or anything. Take a chicken. He's like, Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I'll take it. Take it to the chickens. Why not? You know, because it's not wasted.

You know? You know, chickens lead anything? Yeah, literally. Yeah. So I mean, I kind of went off on tangents with that. So what's your

donations real quick.

We would like to thank some people. We had actually two of these we need to make an apology last week these came in. But we we neglected to mention them. It was our monthly sustaining PayPal donations, Dred Scott with the Oreo donation of 1912. Mimi, did you know that Oreos were invented in 1912.

I wasn't around then.

I didn't know it either. Until Dred Scott gave us that donation. I was like okay, what why is 1912 Thank you so much driving houses pay for servers and all these costs. And Dr. Actually, also, we were talking this week, and we've got an we're going to be hosting to host on the interplanetary file system which should cut down on bandwidth costs. Almost nothing right. So and then we had our $10 monthly sustaining donation

Yeah,

I have questions.

We have questions. So I'm gonna go ahead and question and get my wife's question out of the way. Since you do seem to know a lot about eggs my wife doesn't like she says she doesn't like eggs, but it's not entirely true. She likes hard boiled eggs. She likes deviled eggs. She likes egg drop soup. Anything else she's almost repulsed by and I was

like scrambled doesn't like runny egg fried eggs, even if they're like hard fried love eggs.

So I don't understand the difference on why she likes a hard boiled egg. But not a fried egg.

Probably the texture but there's some great hard boiled egg recipes. One of my favorites that I didn't even know about until I started researching is the Scotch egg and a Scotch egg is a hard boiled egg that's then gets rolled in sausage. Just and then you can roll it in breadcrumbs if you want. And then you fry it or you can bake it in the oven, like it fried and you fry it up so the sausage gets cooked. And then you can slice it so it's got the sausage and then the egg

and really good

I really ended those and they're really great with like ranch sauce to dip them in with ranch dressing. So there's that. There's also you know, I have deviled egg, which some parts of the country called stuffed eggs. Because, yeah, it's in the book.

If we read it, yeah.

So, so there are desert deviled eggs so you can do you know deviled eggs don't have to be mixed with mayonnaise or anything. It can be cream cheese, you can sour cream, you can you can use the egg yolk and mash them up with a with a ripe avocado. The desert eggs though use cream cheese and you can use chocolate to flavor it. So you can have a chocolate stuffed egg which is delicious. These rested that stuffed egg recipes date back to the Romans and the Romans used to mix honey with

Oh, no, no, no, no. I think it's the pickled part of it. The vinegar. She is not a fan of vinegar.

Okay, the I was recently I've been playing with quail eggs and quail eggs are gorgeous. They hard boiled in just a few minutes. And you can to get the shell off you can soak them in vinegar, which makes the shell get really soft and they're easy to peel off. But the hard boiled quail eggs you can then put back in a wok and stir fry them so I think they're called mother in law's eggs. There are some recipes about that and some people use a lot of sriracha and and put them

they discontinued to Raja

Well, they didn't just continue with they can't get them they had a problem with the crop. Oh,

I thought I thought the company went out of business. I saw off brand the other day so I think we're safe.

But there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of interesting recipes just using hard boiled eggs so you don't have to use other things.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I guess I guess that answers your question. Probably is the texture,

texture changes depending on how you cook it. I mean, you can cook like you can cuddle an egg which is cooking really slowly and just kind of lukewarm water for a long period of time. It's kind of like the original cvwd and the egg comes out really smooth like just move you know you just kind of drink it down there but yeah, so it's like you know I I like my eggs cooked like ridiculously well but that's me.

i Oh, that's me too. I I like you can a little attest to this. I like everything to be burnt around the edges. Like every year. I like my steak medium rare but crispy on the edge.

When he makes meat on the grill, I have to have it like wrapped in tin foil so he doesn't char it.

I like the taste of carbon. So when I make fried eggs, the the edges are all you know Stand in rippled up in black. I love it. I'm

not cooking them the recommended way by chefs in France but okay, yeah, Dad

cooking in the French way.

I tell you what if I go to France if I ever, you know, adult though,

okay, there is the Spanish fried egg, which you heat up about an inch of olive oil. And you basically poached that egg in hot oil. And it's crispy on the outside. And it's delicious, like thrown over a steak. It's really intense.

I never thought I never thought about putting egg on a burger. Until we got a restaurant here that did it. And I was like, you know, why not? Right. And that is a fantastic combination. Yep. I had never had that before. And now anytime we go somewhere that does that. I'm like, oh, yeah, let's go.

Egg and your beer.

You see, I don't like beer. I don't drink. I did see all of those drinks with egg.

Yep. With. There was a lot of egg drinks though. Whiskey and

all kinds of stuff. I'm gonna mess around with some of those.

Oh, absolutely. It says some of the fizzes are in that. They're delicious. I actually have cooked every recipe in the book for about four.

Are you sure? Yep. I was looking for. And the poached eggs. You have a chocolate milk poached egg.

I do. Yep.

Have you made that one?

Oh, yeah. My kids hate me for it. How is it? It's okay. It wasn't one of my favorites. But it because it was just too sweet. And I don't really like sweet eggs. Yeah, that's what I thought. But I also I don't think it's in the book. I also tried poaching it and buttermilk. And I tried poach. I tried everything. I tried poaching it and all kinds of things. Yeah, egg and buttermilk is tasty

and looks a little things you posted. And I was like chocolate milk. I don't think that'd be very good. Like maybe if you have your eggs on the side,

just some chocolate milk and eggs is basically what she wants. Apparently servo in the chat says he wants some chicken fetus with your beef. And I'm like, yes. Yes, I do. Thank you. Thank you for asking.

Okay, so it's only if it's only a fetus. If it's been fertilized. eggs are fertilized. So all you're really doing is a chicken ovum. You're getting chicken. So you know, yeah.

delicious one. Yeah. So I've got a question not related to eggs, but to the book itself. The art. I love it. Oh my god, the art style with the the, like the wood was gone. With cats. Yeah, the wood plates. That's

my daughter did all the while she worked with the designers. And she's the one who picked all the art because I the book I envision looked a lot different. But she kept saying and I it's kind of old fashioned. Oh, she went with this super old fashioned look. I mean, I was just going to do with pictures and stuff. But I think it works.

I think we both were like, Oh wow, we love this aesthetic. It's, it's perfect for the subject matter. And the old wood cuts were really fun. May or may not have to print one or two and frame them. Legally, of course, I'll get the copyright for

totally, totally. No, they're they're all public domain. Oh, there we go then.

Awesome. Nice. Yeah. So I was looking through the book. And I got really hungry for some eggs. And I made the thing in the book that tastes the least like eggs. And I made Merengues Oh Marang. Yeah. Good. I made an oven for and that recipe that you have is delicious.

Oh, thank you. Before we get on the chat with you. She sat down right in front of her microphone and ate like 15 Yeah, so I'm hearing to Turner I had to turn her mic off. They are really good though. The great recipe.

I may or may not have accidentally spilled one of the eggs on the counter. So we're not going to talk about that.

She Leila's take taken an interest in cooking. She's actually made dinner for us every night this week. So she's made us chicken fried rice. What else chicken tacos.

beef tacos.

Taco. We've had a lot of tacos. But she's Yeah, but then she was like, I'm gonna go make these Marang I was like, go for it.

I was looking through it. And I was like, she has to have a recipe for Merengues Oh, yeah. Because I love her eggs. And I was like, yeah, they're made of eggs.

There's a list of I tried to cover every thing. I mean, I kept trying to find To as many recipes as I could find from different places, because when I was a kid, my parents moved me to Iran to Tehran, Iran. And so I learned how to cook there because we lived in a hotel for a long, long time. And the chef was trying to learn English and I was fine with learning French, but mostly he'd cook for me. So they would make this. I can't remember that I'm really bad at names. There's an Iranian dish,

That which egg ice cream?

Yeah, I have none. This is because they don't like ice cream.

Oh my. We should have read it our guests. Were ice cream people.

So it's John I've just like you know, I could take it or leave it but I never even thought about it. So I'm sure I'm gonna have to do the next edition of the book with some ice cream because it's basically just have frozen custard.

So yeah, just I thought of that. Like as soon as I was like ice cream with egg Oh, like custard. Okay. But anyhow, I can't say anything. Um, yeah, you see? Yeah, we've got an ice cream shop about a mile down the road. little mom and pop place and oh my gosh, and they have a they have a loyalty program. So we get a lot of free ice cream because we live really close to St it's nice to have in places like that where you know the

What's your current favorite recipe in the book?

Got to think about that for a second. Well, I already talked to you about I already told you about the the Scotch eggs the other the other recipes that I was absolutely fascinated with but technically they aren't my favorite and the four are the the savory bread puddings. Who because it you know I always had sweet bread puddings, I don't

you had made something recently that you really like,

I typically get up in the morning. If I'm going to make breakfast at home if I'm not good enough of going anywhere. I get a get a tortilla, some Jimmy Dean's hot sausage. And then I'll cut up either as like a Serrano and some onion. And then I'll just like I said, I'll just put some oil in there. Crack the egg. break the yolk, spread it around a little bit but not scramble it. And then, and then put everything together and throw it in the tortilla. See me? I did read in the book. I

that's based on old, old old cooking techniques I'm going back to I mean, even the Romans talked about not adding salt to an egg until after it was cooked. And I don't add salt to anything until after it's cooked. But with eggs if it I tried all the stuff I played around by adding salt in different amounts. And what it does is it it dries out the the

might be maybe no Yeah, no, that's valid.

So you know, like the My favorite way to make a scrambled egg is I take the eggs and I break them into a measuring cup. And then I add a little bit of either cream of tartar or lemon juice, a couple of drops. And then I only beat it just until it's mixed. And the lemon juice what it does is it makes all the proteins in the egg line up so they get they they start connecting together so they're long proteins instead of little

my eggs never looked like the ones at the restaurant that might be part of part of it. Because they look fluffy like the, I don't know, one of the breakfast places nearby. Their eggs are always nice and fluffy and and

you also want to cook on a medium heat. You don't want to cook on high. Oh,

that I know that one that ones that I've learned my lesson on. It's like instant burn. And not like the good burn that I like.

How you get different types of birds get different. You should write a book on how to burn your

food burning burning your food to deliciousness. For

Have you tried a blowtorch? That might be fun.

Oh my gosh. I was thinking about that with the Merengues. I was like maybe I should.

Yeah, just give me color on the top.

My mom used to make Moray And okay, so talking about the the salt, toughening up the eggs. And that's been known since the Roman times. My mother, I love her to death. She's a wonderful woman raised me up, right. But that woman did not cook when she did, but it was not good. I'm not my mother. I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I tell you. The only spices we had were salt, and pepper. And whatever the generic version of seasoning salt was. That was we had three

You've made it 20 years with this. Oh,

my my wife is a saint for putting up with me. Leila can attest to that or how she does it. I guess I got stories but not appropriate for Fun Fact Friday.

They're just different facts.

Just different. Yeah. I was you know, I was a early 20s guy, you know, it was it was a dude. So, okay, where were we got that one. We got them. Okay, so, chicken eggs? Is it just is do we typically eat chicken eggs just because they produce so many versus other birds? Or are there other birds? Do you know that produce as many as chickens and maybe why don't we do?

Ducks outperform chickens? Oh my god. chickens and ducks. Ducks lay consistently all year round where chickens stop laying when the days get short and they don't start laying again until the day start getting longer so they may take three months off if you keep them under natural light. Like no none of my chickens would lay in the winter months at all. And that's what they do. Ducks will keep laying so ducks are more consistent

I've had Turkey and duck s and then quail we had. We had a bunch of quills where I lived in Texas.

I remember in in England, they give special permits to collect a certain type of gall egg. They're only they release like a dozen people to be able to collect these eggs from the sheer cliffs. And the gull eggs are, like $250 is serving. Wow. And it served with some celery salt. It's hard boiled and served with Senator celery salt low sell yourself. And I understand I've never had them but they are a little fishy. Because eggs, eggs will take on flavors and colors based on what

now let's just add garlic. Yeah.

One thing I found really interesting is just a guy in New York State who has a restaurant. And he feeds them. This guy, Dan Baker. He's a chef in New York, I think it's called like Blue Hill restaurants. And he takes us chickens. He's got a special group of chickens and he feeds them a super intensely colored red pepper. That puts a lot of color into the yolk because the yolks are influenced by what the chicken eats the color of them specifically. So he ends up with these red yolks, these like

Yeah, my my brother feeds, they're all they've just gone off property and eat all the bugs and seeds and all the stuff just that's in his yard. He's got like nine acres and maybe 15 Egg 15 eggs. Okay, chickens. So they've got the realm of the place.

Yeah, they've got to be delicious eggs. And they're, they're better for you to they're way more nutritious.

Do you know what's not better for you? The fake eggs in China and India. Have you heard about these? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I hadn't until today.

No, I went through that whole thing. And it's like, yeah, yeah, let's eat more junk.

It was okay. So this just, it blew my mind. For the listeners here who may not know about it, like I didn't know about it. Fake eggs have been produced in China since the mid 90s. According to a 2012 Time article. They're about half the cost of real eggs. But the ingredients are resin starch, coagulant pigment and sodium alginate extracted from brown algae and that's to make the egg whites and then it's a mix of

resin yummy. Don't eat

I encourage all the little communities across America to allow urban chickens you know, I mean, you can have two or three chickens delete all your leftovers. You know, you don't have to worry about that part. They they're fun to watch because they're like little dinosaurs. They're good pets. And they'll lay you know, a couple eggs every week. You know, why not? You know?

Yeah, we've got quite a few in our neighborhood. Yeah, we got we've got we got kind of an apocalypse ready neighborhood I feel like

yeah, bullies deed is asking you to is telling us to ask you how to boil an egg so appeals and I know the answer.

But deem it you steam it. I tried every way possible. I went through dozens and dozens of eggs why I tried poking a hole on one hand I put it in vinegar water, I put it in water

yeah, you saw that in your book. Yeah, well

we get we get past Leila Leila makes a fantastic deviled egg with my mom's old recipe. The one thing that my mom did did actually make was she was able to boil eggs and then mush up the yolk with some mustard. And paprika. That was her the whole recipe. Apparently mustard and no, it was chili powder. Okay, I must have been wrong. We sometimes had chili powder on the spice rack. But um,

so just mustard as the as the liquid. Yep.

Hi, when I make a deviled eggs, I put mayonnaise. Mustard if we have it, but it's not really. Yeah. Sweet relish and a little bit of chili powder and paprika on top.

My mother who couldn't cook at all? I mean, she cooked every day rationally. That's why I didn't like eating

I have no right there with you.

My mother could make pork chops. So they appeared to be made on cardboard. Cuz Oh salmonella. You have to be or whatever. No. trichinosis or whatever it was. You have to cook a well.

Yeah, so my mom did. It was shoe

leather. So that was my mother, you know, boil things until there's no life left in him. But her deviled eggs were her mother's recipe and that was you know, mayonnaise and chili powder. And salt and pepper. And the chili powder kind of brings out some of the egg quality. It's interesting. It's a different style. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't like deviled eggs growing up. No. I didn't like eating when I was growing up. I've gotten over that.

I did. Yep. Once I learned to cook. Yeah, it was it completely different models body shape. Of course, when I stopped working at at Outback I wasn't walking five or six miles a night. So that kind of, but it did teach me to cook and I learned how to cook pork chops there. And the first time I made my wife proper pork chops, because her mom also did the you know, really cheap by the super thin ones. And see what cook

You know, I have lots of cookbooks. I've got probably 1000 cookbooks, because I like cookbooks. And I read them. I don't use them. I just read them. And when you look at cookbooks from the 60s and 70s they're dreadful. I mean, there's there's this compilation cookbooks where people would give all their favorite recipes. And it's really like one of them's the White House cookbook from the mid 1960s. And you look at it and it's all recipes for gelatin with crap floating. Junk.

Could say crap.

You know, like walnuts and olive chunks. And there's just it's like the entire cookbooks are just full of these blight on the planet. And chunks. And then there'd be recipes for like tamale pie.

tamale pie?

Yeah. Which is, it was. It was I found tons of recipes for this. It's hamburger with, I guess chili powder in it and olives and corn and creamed corn, and then a cornbread top and it's tamale pie. And my mother would make these things you know, I found a recipe in the magazine.

Please stop, please stop.

So yeah, we had a we had a period where cooking just destroyed itself. And then thankfully, we reinvented cooking.

Yeah, so we've got handed down cookbooks. A lot of them are from local churches. They do it as like a fundraiser. Everybody in the church contributes a recipe and then it turns out almost all of them are from the Betty Crocker cookbook and they you'd forgotten where they learned it and like the exact thing.

No, I have lots of those Women's League cookbooks, spiral bound things. I've got tons of them. The best one that I ever found, though, was one that was some. It was some corporation in San Francisco that clearly had some youngsters involved. And they had all kinds of pot recipes in the 1970s Cookbook.

Oh my gosh.

It was like really going wait, you put what in it? Hey I don't recommend those.

Yeah, yeah.

Go ahead. No, after you Oh, we had in the chat. Bully seed. Louis seed. Bully steed says asked me if she knows about stone soup.

Well, if I had to listen no agenda day and stay awake.

So I, I before I asked the question, because sometimes chat can be a little trollee. I looked it up real quick to make sure it wasn't something inappropriate. Stone Soup is a European folk story in which hungry strangers convinced people of a town to eat share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal that everyone enjoys, and exists as a moral regarding the value of sharing and traditions. The stone has been replaced with other common intangible objects.

Oh, here I am thinking about what Adam

I was thinking about that too. Because I was listening today while I was skimming through your book, I was actually listening to skim and, and put notes down. Yeah, the stone soup thing. Leila, you weren't listening today. They were, they're basically putting spices on rocks. And then telling people to pick up the rock and suck all of the flavor off of it. And then put it back in the bowl. And I'm like, I mean, why not just eat the spices out of a spoon.

I get the dirt man.

I dated this guy wants to as a pre med student. And I went out with him once. And he took a bite of food and a chew and eat, chew and chew and eat, chew and then he spit it out. I'm like, What are you doing? He goes, Oh, I have to keep my weight down. So I don't swallow. I just chew to get the flavor.

So that but but there's nutrients in the. And there's reasons you want to eat the.

And I was just like, Okay, check, please how I would,

I would rather just like cut your portion. And it's like, if you got a cake in case you normally eat a piece of cake, right? If you cut the piece of cake in half, you're getting half the calories. Right? So if you if you're doing half the calories, that means you can eat twice as much so

well, that's what Adam read today reminded me of. Like, right. You know, I'd rather just smell the food. Thank you.

Right? Just, I mean, but you know, folks, folks do what they're gonna do.

Yeah, don't make me watch. Yeah. The Well, the one thing that stands supermind me I was when I was starving and young and had an apartment couldn't afford anything. I started a buying club. So I talked all my neighbors and all my friends to splitting it with me. So I had to get 10 other people. And I would go buy, you know, a 10 pound bag of rice and I split it among us. And then I would divide it up and everyone would just pay it ended up being way cheaper than buying it from a

I did something less sophisticated, but similar when I would go to the store, I would buy I lived with eight guys in a three bedroom house in college. Okay, so rent was super cheap, but I would buy 212 packs of soda. Right? And then I would charge I'd like one of them was for me and one of them. If you wanted one you threw 50 cents in the box when you pulled us out. So it's like a little vending machine in the and the cans were only a quarter apiece. So I got free subsidies. So yep, yeah,

It's definitely I mean, there's i i buy everything in bulk. I mean I for a while I owned a deli up here that I started And it was a deli in spice store. So I had like, I don't know, 400 spices, and, and flavor salts and everything else. And it buying in bulk is the way to go. So then I kept buying spices that way, because, you know, a pound of spices is cheaper than those little teeny jars. You know, I so yeah, and I buy side to be every year, and I buy you know, I buy everything I

we we have a what you're just saying, Farmer stand nearby, right? And yes, one day I was there, and we were getting our stuff and it cost a little more than the grocery store. But you know, you're supporting local folks. Well, then they had bananas. What? And I was like, bananas in eastern North Carolina. That doesn't seem right. And I was like, Where are you growing these bananas? And they're like, oh, no, we grabbed those from the grocery store. We had some customers asking for

the next slot over?

Yes, the next slot over and I'm like, Oh my gosh. So why am I going to shop with you, as you know, supporting, supporting us and I'm like, now,

I'll just give you some money. If I want to support you don't like

what's see i I've gone off the deep end, which is another reason why I live up here in this strange little place is that I only eat if it's locally grown and in season, which is with two exceptions I'll get I will buy oranges and I won't buy bananas. But everything else is all you know. So by the end of the winter, because we have long, hard winters up here. I mean, right? I park my Midwest standards, but it rains all the time. So all I'm eating is cabbage and kale.

I hear that that's the healthier way to do it is to only eat things that grow in your local ecosystem.

Yep. And it's interesting as I do it, because I'm a little bit insane. But I got really super into the slow food movement a few years, like, two decades back, I got so into the slow food movement, I wanted to make everything from scratch, which is a great idea kinda. So yeah, that I came upon this whole thing where, you know, why don't I just eat and season it's probably better for me, I don't like fruit anyway, when it's

are where we're at it's, we don't have real harsh winters at all. You can grow most things a lot longer here. Yeah, and we do have a lot of local farmers that basically it just comes down to a, you go knock on their door and be like, hey, and a lot of a lot of houses around here. Just have signs out in the front yard, you know, eggs for sale, or corn for sale, or when we lived. When we first got married, we lived in this tiny little house on the other end of the county. And our landlord had

That's, that's why I live up here and not in California where I just I have to go much further to get the same quality of foods. So

almonds and avocados, right?

Well, I'm not sure we have the first state licensed raw dairy. Oh, nice. And you know, they're neat people and it's a great place and there's a lot of honor farms where nobody's there. And you just put the money under a rock and take what you need. And you know, I that's how i i prefer that.

Yeah, that's that's cool. I hadn't heard that. I hadn't heard of that anywhere. So I feel like that could work in like our part of the county, but the more southern part of the county wouldn't work out.

Yeah, well, you know, and that didn't you know, I'm too lazy. have chickens anymore but you know having a couple chickens is always great. I'm way too lazy to have

it I hear from my brother it's it's a lot of work and it can be a lot of heartbreak if a fox gets in the in the hen house.

I'm right across from the National Park so I have bears mountain lions and foxes and coyotes and raccoons and eagles. I hate eagles. We've Owls

of ours, we have a huge owl that lives in our backyard. Most of the time with us.

Yep. Yeah, it's it's Wild Kingdom up here. We have deer all the time. You know, which is great. You know,

we've got so we have Yeah, it was afraid of deer. We had an incident. They're not

they're not nice little animals. I'm sorry. No. Yeah.

They are. They are massive rats. No offense to nick the rat. Oh, no. Absolutely. Yes.

They're just massive rounds get killed by one on one time.

Yep. In Sam's

in a Sam's Club. What? Yep, that's what everyone says.

I'll tell you the story because I tell it a little bit better than Leila does. She tells it really well, if you want to tell it. I'm bad at telling stories. Okay, so we're in Sam's, we're getting our Sam stuff we're loading up on, you know, five gallons of mayonnaise, that sort of thing. And we're going down the outside. I'll think we're looking for olive oil, napkins, something along those lines. And I hear some commotion behind me and I'm like, I don't even turn

I am afraid of deer and

well, I was in my backyard one day when the two of the boys decided to start playing. And I don't know, I don't know if it was reading season or not. But there's nothing more terrifying than seeing the house. And then I have to get past these guys to get to the house. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, but you know, their

Yeah. We we've got we've got lots of rabbits here and different other little little creatures. The most dangerous animal is seen in our county as we add a panther on the loose one time

like an outline. Yeah, yeah. And

and they actually ended up catching it, I think but I was like, Oh my gosh, that's the biggest cat. What that's not Whoa. I looked at and I was like of course Carolina Panthers. That's why because they're you know I don't know if somebody had brought it down from the mountains or keeping it as a pet or I don't know what was going on. But

yes, it was have bears roaming around. What we've

never seen one yes. So

yeah. Yeah,

I don't see I don't really go out and look for him all that much anymore because, you know, whatever. But in winter it when it snows, I go out and I look at all the footprints and it's like, oh, a lot more things are coming around than I thought.

Some Yeah, we have to worry about, like, people don't like hunting some folks and they're trying to but it's 100% necessary here. There's so many deer, the car accidents from them running out in front of cars, and it's, I know, five or six people who've hit a deer and it's messes them up, you know?

Yeah, it messes your car up. Yeah, that's yeah,

that's a mess. Well messes the deer up too. But it messes up everything. It's a it's a big problem.

That if you hit a deer, you can throw it on your car and bring it home and butcher it.

It's the okay, what's funny about our state, if you hit a deer, you can't pick it up and take it home. But the guy behind you can.

That's kind of a strange law, but okay. For meeting him on purpose.

Yeah, it keeps me from trying to go hunt them down with their car. But, you know, Unless I see the deer get hit, I'm not thrown in the back of my truck. Because you How long has it been there? You know, I mean, I've seen one of the one of the things that the teenagers do in our county is when somebody has hit a deer. They go by a get well helium balloon and I it's it's lit. It's about it's about funny. It's so sad, but it's so funny

When I was writing this book, I would go off on tangents. So I also have how you can dye eggs with you know, with natural ingredients like you know, like onion skins, and how you can make tempera paint. I have a lot of weird stuff in the book, but

got pruned.

Yeah, got friends sitting on the couch.

You know, anyway, you can always you can always do a even more too many eggs or too many eggs Part Two Electric Boogaloo. Yeah.

Now, you know, I'm actually kind of off eating eggs these days. I can't imagine it. Well, if the average American eats about three eggs a week, I was eating about six dozen a week for a while there. Try it because I try it. So, you know, the certain point I went,

yep. We did that with cat fish. We loved fishing when I was a kid. And we would go out to the river. And it was almost almost all cat fish that we would catch. And we'd bring them home and you know, get the meat off and put it in the freezer. And then we were we were like let's eat up all this cat fish. We ate cat fish. Nothing but cat fish for like lunch and dinner for an entire summer. And I think I'm fine. Never eating cat fish again, ever.

And you didn't do the cookbook?

Catfish cookbook? No, because my mother would put it in a skillet and sprinkle some salt and pepper on it. That was that was the extent of the so I had the same meal. That actually reminds me of a story I heard in New England back in the olden days. I don't know what time period but they were paying the lobster cruise from the lobster catching cruise. They were paying them in lobster. Oh yeah. And then a certain point they were like no we need money. Because they're like you're

You only so much of something.

Even though lobster is fantastic. Yeah, you're tired of it. So Leila How did the eggs leave the highway?

You want me to answer?

I don't want you to read it. I just wants you to be like I don't know Dad. Why

don't know Dad. Why? How

they went through the exit. Good one. Ah What did why did the egg cross the street?

I don't know.

To get to the Shell station now

what is so lame? was so lame. I'm sorry to both y'all.

I love it. Oh, wow. See, it's the problem is is we're both looking at the same notebook and leave those got all of them in front of her stuff and close it. Close it. Close it, minimize it. Just minimize you don't have to actually she closed her whole laptop.

Too late. It was already in motion. Okay, Leila.

I got to hit this one earlier, but I think this is probably my favorite.

isn't helping. I'm looking at your screen here. Let

me turn around. Knock knock. What?

Oh, who's here?

omelet? Omelette who? A lot smarter than you. I altered that one a little bit. Oh, wow. Oh, this one. This one's actually kind of irrelevant. I don't know when you wrote these. But um, what website the egg? Go to to chat. White eggs.com.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, there is.

Is there x.com? Yeah, I was thinking it's even funnier now. Because x.com is Twitter. Oh, eggs.com. The website literally just says, Hi, Ilan, what? Contact me here and it has a link to

a contact. Why did you click it?

And then it says or follow me on Twitter. And then copyright, eggs, eggs, eggs and more eggs. Alright, so

that's all it says on this website. We can chat.

I'll link in the show notes. I think the chat can go to eggs.com. I don't think I need to link to that.

But it's so funny. Wow. Yeah, no,

I wrote this book. Darby. And like, I want to say 2011.

But wow. I was one year old.

It was it was but it was a grief process. It was a grief project for me because my brother had had died by his own hand, unfortunately. And I went into this grief cycle. And it was like, How do I What do I do? I know I'll write an egg book. I was obsessed. And it's like, the best thing to do. Yeah. And it works. So yeah, that's why the book is dedicated to my brother. So

I didn't see that at the beginning. Yeah. I love the little picture. I love the little picture that's kind of faded out behind it with the boy eaten the egg together like shoved in his mouth. It's such a fantastic picture. I'm probably going to be printing that one. It's going to be in the studio.

Yeah, there was there a few rest egg one cartoons we had to pull out because they might daughter didn't realize that they weren't ready for primetime.

Oh, okay.

I'll send it to you. Okay.

Yeah, that's I tell you write in a book put on a show doing videos, anything like the process of finding the right art? That's, yep, that's copyright free, or no. I do

free, which is why you stick with old images. Like from the 1800s. That helps.

Yeah, I did a audio drama version of a Christmas carol on my other podcast, full cast, voice actors. And I did. I did Foley and music. And I went back and found some on the archive.org some records from like, the early early 1900s of people singing Christmas carols. Yep. And yeah, they're in the public domain now because they're so old. But then I had to go in and clean them up enough to where it sounded like people caroling outside of you know, Scrooges? That was really

Yeah. Well, I like was that creative comments and you look in the comments like for image free there's beautiful pictures there. I mean, originally my this egg book was going to have really old oil paintings. Oh nice. Like you know that was what it's too expensive to print in color. So

I will link these in the show notes. But where I go a lot of times is I'll go to pixels.com it has everything on the site is Creative Commons zero. So you can just use it for whatever for whatever purpose they do have a thing that says you know donate to the artist or they also have a if you want to credit the artist here's how they want to be credited. And I always do if I use their stuff in my other show, but um, yeah, it's it's a great place to go grab all kinds of super high

Yeah. Yeah. It's always the challenge. Although, you know, I'm not all that pleased. John likes the AI stuff, because he thinks it's fun. It's

fun. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah.

I get get over people having been on nine and 10 fingers. That's,

that's what's so great about it is that weird little stuff?

I know. It's like, it's like, find what's wrong in this picture?

Well, one of the things that scared me is I'm trying to start a career in voice acting. And one of the problems now is it, you can take my this podcast, and throw it into a training program, please, nobody do this. And you could have my voice reading your story. And I don't like that. And I've got friends who are actual, that's their whole profession is voice acting. And people have been taking their voices, and it's

About Kenny Valley when it comes to voices, no.

Well, it's getting by the day getting more unnoticeable. Getting more better, it's getting more better. Yeah.

But there's still an uncanny valley when it comes to the the faces of AI is generated art. I mean, we can tell

Yeah, we can. We can still tell for now. I mean,

when it comes to reading, like, like, let's say, like, an audiobook? What makes you know, audiobooks can be read by any human? Some humans are just terrible at doing.

Yeah. I will return an audiobook to Audible in a minute. After?

Oh, yeah, no, it's so I mean, I pick it now based on who's reading it? No, yeah. Even more than what the subjects about because, you know, so I'm thinking that the, the, this AI stuff can't actually do the inflection and the tones and the things that you look for with a really good voice.

There are they can I just watched a video, a guy on YouTube, made a trailer for his book, he made like an animated trailer for it. And he used everything on it was AI, because he had no money. He couldn't pay animators, he couldn't pay voice actors. So he just made this thing and it's just a commercial for his book. It's not like it would have had a huge budget and budget anyway, it took him months to do it by himself. But the all of the voice acting, he used openly available voice

If we go back to the whole other thing is that I can I, you know, I've read a lot of stuff that's AI generated, and after you read it for a while, you start realizing you can see the pattern because we are pattern recognition devices. That's what humans are. Oh, yeah. And it's there's some point where it's like music, I hate listening to music that has all the the pre recorded, you know, beats and the use, it's all like, you know, there's, there's no drummer on the thing. It's not

I think so. I think for short 15 second commercials, or Stinger trailers, things like that. That's where but like that, that is where you start in the voice acting industry is doing a little 32nd commercial or things like that. So the people who are already established in voice acting, they can say no, you're not allowed to use my voice for AI. You can't but the new people that are coming in all of the contracts they're going to have we want to train an AI model on your voice.

Well, then you know, you, you can negotiate a contract.

There's always somebody that will do it cheaper is my thing. Not that is always the case. But the problem is the, like the timbre of my voice. If they get that, and they can tweak, I don't know, it's, I don't like it. I don't like the AI stuff not to play with. And for things like small things, like I've got an image and I want to remove the background.

well, here look on the bright side, you know, any anytime a solar flare like another Carrington Event will just wipe everything out, we won't have to worry about it.

Excellent book on that one. And, hey, you know what we've got, we got provisions here we got Faraday cages we got, like I said, we're Apocalypse ready neighborhood.

But you know, I like when you pick up the phone, and it's a robo call. And you can tell us a robo call because of the one thing that they never take out. You hear the lip in the beginning. Yep. You always hear that blip. And it's like, Oh, I know what we're dealing with. So there's always going to be tails. Yeah, and we're really I mean, how long do you sit with a with a rowboat? I mean, the I start now is, is really saying hang up, hang up.

I do. One of two things. I remain perfectly silent. Yep. So they think it's a deadline. Or I do little has heard me do this in the car before when I've got time to do something. I work through the prompts to get to a live person. Oh, me too. And then once I get once I get to the live person. I say in the most commanding deepest voice that I can. This is a government line. How did you get this number? I'm like, you are going to regret it. If you do not take this.

You're going to regret it. Telling people you're part of the government. I didn't say that. I

said this is a government line drew,

I go the exact opposite. I get the person like Oh, hi. What are you wearing?

Hey, how you doing? Because I got all day I got all day. Is this one of the ones that's allowed to hang up on people or not? Because if you're allowed to hang up on me, I'm gonna go ahead and recommend that because I got nothing to do today.

I like watching the guys on YouTube. Yeah, owe it to

the scam. Scam scammers

like get Boga he's

I mean it but it's it is. Yeah, I mean, but we can tell. You used to be I get fooled once in a while. Yeah, never get fooled anymore. Because I've learned. Yeah, and it's gonna be the same thing with if I'm watching something. I'm like, they're evil people. Voice

Yeah, one of the good.

I mean, if, you know, I know what fake food is, and I'm not going to eat it. I'm not going to eat fake eggs from China. I, you know, I? If I'm like, a majority of the other people, when we start getting sick of hearing the same sounds, we'll just stop watching. Yep. So So I think that, you know, there's not that much innovation in the world, how we have innovation is everybody's got a different voice. Everyone's got a different sound, you know, their voices that are

know. And one of the things I was I was just I just did a Twitter space with Kylie Barry's a voice actor. And one of the things we were talking about was the gullible people. What will happen is, you know, you've got Sally gets a call from her son, and the sun is like, Hey, I'm in trouble. These guys are gonna, you know, whatever. They're gonna beat me

John got one recently that was the Grandpa, I'm in trouble and it's like, first he's like, well, since when does my grandson who is you know, seven years old to have a New Jersey voice?

Hey, grandpa. I need you to send me some money. I gotta get out of a situation I got myself and

go to your local Target gift card. Yeah,

they always want gift cards. Gift. Yeah, totally

get your money. Oh, boy.

You know, we're in a predatory world. Let's face it.

We are and I'm trying to try to teach Leila has got a very good have a good sense yeah, good sense about these things. She's she's been raised up right to be skeptical.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, that's what you I mean, I don't see how people raise kids to be naive.

Yeah, well, they don't they do though. I mean, yeah.

Well, that's not their job as a parent.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah, if I think yeah, no, this is the show though. I don't know if you've ever listened. But this is this is what happens.

We started talking about printers one time on the cheese episode. Oh my god, how we got to that

we were on printers forever.

Oh, when you do the one about street names? I haven't been street name for you.

Yeah, yeah, we're gonna do that next week. We've got street names that was suggested by our youngest listener, I believe it's our youngest listener, six year old suggestion on that one. So we're going to do that next week. And then in two weeks, we have Andrew Scott, the microphone guy from YouTube. Like the microphone guy, in my opinion, talking into the mics that he recommended for us right now. And then, two weeks after that, we were doing a mechanical

maybe not just the old ones in John's closet.

I would I would love to see all the keyboards that John has. I would that would that would be fantastic.

Only if you take all the old cables.

Now now well, my wife, oh my gosh. I bought it I bought a cable cubby. It's like a whole shelf with these little fabric boxes for cables. And they're the wall shelf thing is nice looking. So she doesn't mind like I've got my monitor cables in one. I've got my audio cables, and one of getting the USB cables and one. I've got my miscellaneous and yet notepads? Yeah. So I have I'm a bit of an archivist myself.

We have a closet that is just full of. I mean, remember, John used to work for magazines like the maggots and all that and people like every day, it opened the front door and there'd be 15 to 20 boxes on the front porch. People would just send stuff unsolicited, which was the bane of my existence. Oh, no. So it'd be software and hardware and, and books. And it was like, Oh, okay. And then we would get anywhere between 50

The intake because like, we intake too much. And that's just us like living and like we buy something because we need it. But like we still intake just, oh, I can't imagine getting an unsolicited hardware and software all the time. That would be I mean, it'd be neat to a point. But then you're getting every crappy webcam. Well, China makes.

You know, I used to always laugh. This was kind of early people would make software and Senator John like, you know, you understand this is like a lottery. Yeah, we get the stuff. And once in a while John will pick it up and go, Oh, I should look at this. Meanwhile, I'm trying to get the other steps shoveled out of the houses quick, because

it's a problem we had. We acquired an entire estate of items a couple of years ago, family member passed away and we got everything. And it was a couple it was a couple hours down the road. So we just hold everything up here. So we've been slowly going through it just when we have you know, and boy who it's that right there is enough. So

yeah, so well.

Did we have any more questions for me? I don't think we I think we I got through my set of everything. And then let's see.

Do you ever even ask me why there's different color eggs?

What do you for chickens?

Oh, yeah,

I just assumed it was like the white chickens. We laid the white eggs and the brown chickens laid the brown eggs is not like that. How you get chocolate milk from a brown cow?

No. It depends on the color of their ear lobe. They have visible ear lobes on their cheeks. I'm serious about

this. You're pulling You're pulling my chain.

Nope. So the eggshell colors based on the ear lobe. So if a chicken has white ear lobes that lay white eggs, and it has dark red or brownish ear lobes, they'll have brown eggs or a bluish tint they'll have little green eggs. But the exception are this one or two breeds depending on who you talk to. You have the Spanish breeds that will have a white your low but lay dark brown eggs really dark chocolate brown eggs but And the blue eggs that are like the americanas. You know, the Easter

I know weird so that when I go to the store, and I'm sitting there looking at the white eggs and the brown eggs, I'm always like the brown eggs must be healthier because they're look more natural. They don't look all bleached. It has nothing to do with it. Why am I paying more for the brown eggs?

Because the chickens are having to have a label. It's because they're heavier chickens, all the brown egg chickens are heavier. They're not this skinny white ones. Now eat food so that you're paying for the chicken food.

Okay, so yeah, the brown ones, in my experience, that shells are a little thicker. And I like that when I'm cracking them. It's less I'm less likely to I've gotten pretty good with the white ones too. But I can crack them without getting little pieces of shell and once

I used today for the Marang the yolk was so like thin with the membrane on the outside of it. Oh really? Yeah. I was trying to get the egg whites.

It was it was then where'd you get them from?

Food line? Food line? Yeah, food line. We got the natural ones, quote unquote.

And I think out of the egg cartons nonsense Find. Find a good local. That was probably because the egg was getting on the old side. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, you know, local pastured egg is better than anything. I mean, cage free doesn't mean they're not in cages. The cages are slightly bigger and a door is left open. Right. In the barn. You know? Yeah.

technicalities.

Yeah, but a pastured egg locally grown. I mean, it's there's so much better and there's so much healthier. And the eggs that you buy in grocery stores can be up to nine months old. They're kept in cold storage for that one. Wow. Oh, well

think about that.

One quick question for to verify something I told Leila earlier. The poop on the outside of the eggs. They're not allowed to wash that off, right?

I can wash it off, they don't use a detergent? Well, it depends. The reason that we have to refrigerate our eggs in this country is because we have had all of our eggs washed off. in grocery stores, it's all been long washed off, they wash off the balloon, which is a waxy coating that comes out chicken. When you have your own chickens, you leave the blue Mani, on the counter,

when I was when my brother got the chickens, and he was talking about selling them. I'm always one of those people that like wants to make sure that he stays on like that we stay on the good side of the law, you know, I didn't want him getting in trouble for selling eggs the wrong way. So I looked into the local laws on the bloom. And it said that for if you're selling eggs to the public, from your own chickens,

Every state is different. But okay, the state commercial eggs, they do wash the bloom off and in some cases, they put oil on it for a New Bloom depending on what you're talking about. Okay, but the blue but I mean the chicken only has you know one vant right.

So we call it the chicken but

their chicken berries. Absolutely. And you know usually if you have chickens, what you do is you keep like a, you know, a wash rag with you that's slightly damp and you just clean off as much as you can,

right just kind of give it give it a little while just to give it a little wipe.

But you know, I mean, I don't think I talked about it in the book, but maybe I do. You know, it used to be that you know, with our my grandparents would have kept the chicken eggs they would have been laid and then they would have been either put in a water bath or laid in straw and they would have been kept Yeah, until winter. Which is why really old recipe is talking about oh, it's a spring egg for Christmas cake and you're like I mean it's spring egg for Christmas cake.

Yeah, bully steeton chatter saying waterbath keeps eggs for months.

It can is as long as the Bloom is left on. Oh,

yeah. All right.

Are they use something that was called? It was It wasn't water, it was heavier than water. It was water with the chemical in it it was called a water glass. And I'm not really sure John's chemist in the family, so I don't remember what it is. But it would make the water heavier and more dense and it would keep the eggs for a lot longer. And there's a lot of books that talk about that. And I just never got into playing with it. I should have but maybe next book.

So one last question. Before we gotta go. What's your favorite way of like, separating the white in the yolk? If you have to.

If I'm if I'm in front of other people, or if I'm by myself

by herself.

I just break the egg into my hand. That's how I do it. Yeah.

So my wife does it. Yeah, I'm all I get I get like I do the either the water bottle trick. Or that's too many steps like do the egg shell to egg shell thing. But um yolks

if I have people around, I'll do the egg shell.

Because I was doing that earlier, but I was like, wait a minute, there's an easier way to do this. Yeah, and my hand

that's what my wife has always done when she makes my wife makes the best angel food cake I've ever I've ever had. It's so good. But she always just stands there crack through her fingers Chuck's Chuck's the yolk in and the trash.

If you get a little piece of crack of yolk into your eggs, the fastest way to get it out as you use the eggshell and you scoop it out. Yeah, the actual will will like magnet. Like go Oh, you're part of me. It'll run over to it. Oh, really? Amazing. Me. Yeah, really, is to get it out. Yeah. So and if you get a hangnail, you know how hangnails will drive you nuts. You take that inside membrane of the egg. And you wrap it around your finger and leave that on and it'll dry out that hangnail.

Every time I get a hangnail. Just chop the tip of the finger off. I'm just done with it. I don't mess with it. Gone.

We'll try the membrane.

I'll try that. Try the membrane next time. I'm down to slap down to three finger fingernails here.

That's horrible. Nightmares.

Sorry. Oh, wow. So we're gonna we're gonna wrap up the actual episode. If you want to stay on for just a few more minutes to talk. That's cool, too. But we want to go ahead and say bye to the folks on the recorded version. We're about to hit an hour and a half. So we're gonna go ahead and wrap up the recording. Oh, no, we don't. That's the beauty of podcasting. You don't have to worry about it. You get into good conversation. You can just keep going. But for the recorded

It was great being had.

Alright, have a great weekend. Bye. Bye. This is a this is Kyle. friend of ours friend of the show.

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