I am all in again. Let's just.
Luke's Diner with Scott Patterson and iHeartRadio Podcast.
Hey Everybody, Scott Patterson, I Am all and Podcast, one of them productions iHeart Radio Media, iHeart Podcast. Luke's Diner episode with the the one and only Debbie Metnopolis. Debbie, Hi, welcome. How you're doing all the things? Yeah?
Hi there, How are you? Scott?
I'm doing well. Six time Emmy nominee.
You're Lucky seven is a charm.
You're the host of at Home and Family TV, recently published best only cookbook Hold it Up Greekish. It's all Greek to me. There it is, it's blurry. That's a great looking book cover. That's fantastic.
You know what's better? You know, well, my co host Mark Steinus from ET and From Home Family actually photograph this. Yeah. He's made an amazing transition into photography and he's really good. By the way.
Does it piss you off sometimes how talented that guy is and how good.
Looking he is And you can't have it all Mark?
Okay apparently again, she's also the founder of.
Okay. You're going to say it for you? Akaria, Akaria, there's an island in Greece called Igaria, but in English it's a karia. If I were to say Igaria, people would be like, what are you saying?
I want to go there?
It's the place where people forget to die. It's that's when it's been dubbed the most octagenarians on the planet forget. Yeah, they forget, Like why die when it's so beautiful here?
That's one of the like blue zones, is that what they call them? One of those places? Man? All right, so your co host for the View for two seasons at the age of twenty two, baby going into the lions then, and I'll bet you tore it up anyway, making you the youngest person to be a permanent co host of the show. Welcome to Luke Steiner. Thank you for having me listen. You and I go way back in the category of banana bread. Okay, that's a big category.
If people wanted to know. We made banana bread together on the air, and it was the.
Best banana bread I've ever had in my life. I still dream of it.
My mother's recipe and really good. Let me tell you, I grew up on that with like you know that real butter, just like just tons of butter on the banana bread.
That's the only way.
That's the only way to do it.
I just know.
So you grew up in a traditional Greek household, what are some of the earliest memories around food and family. I mean they have to be legion everything.
Everything growing up Greek, everything is based around food and family. Every single memory I have almost is of being in the kitchen at all times, you know. I mean, listen, we'd have gatherings at the house and people would start in the living room and everyone would end up in the kitchen. That's just how it is at an ethnic house, I think, especially when people are cooking, and it was
always about laughter and love and food. And you know, I mean most of my core memories, whether it was a celebration or something sad or something really important in life, always happened around like the kitchen table, and it was if there was a death, we ate, If there was a birth, we ate. If someone was sad, we ate, if someone was happy, we ate. And it's it I think has shaped my idea of food being more than just sustenance, food being a way of sharing your life
with someone. And I think that's probably why I was so interested in writing cookbooks because I felt like, for me, my love language is feeding people. I just if I'm feeding you, if I'm making something for you, you know that I love you.
Yeah, that's for darn sure. Was there a particular family member who really taught you, Hannah cook? Was there your mom?
My mom? Yeah? Everything, I mean everything, I know. Ninety percent of the recipes in both books are from my mom, or my grandma or my aunts. My uncle had a bakery in Greece, so a lot of the baked goods are from his recipes, but most of them really from my mother.
How often do you travel to Greece?
Growing up? It was like every other summer, And then when I started working, you know, and going to college, it sort of slowed down a little bit. But in the last since my daughter was born, since Alexander was born, we go every year. We just haven't been we think, the last year. But I am going in about three weeks, so I'm very excited. Oh oh yeah. I try to get there as often as I possibly can. My most of my family still lives there and we have a
house there. But it's also super important to me that my daughter can, like learns to speak Greek and that she carries on her you know, her roots, and that she is she knows. Listen, I'm Greek, and I'm going to continue to celebrate my culture. That's important to me because it's unless the family really pushes it, it kind of gets lost.
Right, it does. It truly does. So from your childhood, what's the dish that gives you the most comfort today?
What's the dish because it is comfort to David my childhood, Well, that's I'd probably say. There's a dish called yemi sta, which in English is basically stuffed peppers and tomatoes. And the way that my mother would make this. I think a lot of cultures have stuffed peppers and tomatoes, but the way my mom would make them was just incredible.
And I remember coming home, like on cold nights from track practice, you know, like in ninth and tenth grade, and walking through the door and smelling the house and being like, oh my gosh, she's making yemmi sta. It's my favorite, you know, And she would and it would often be made with the tomatoes and the peppers that my dad would grow in the backyard in our garden, so you know, it's full of rice and ground beef and fresh tomatoes that are stewed and spices, and it's
just really yummy, so yummy. And I make her recipe exactly like she tells me to make it, and it's still not as good as hers. And she says to me, you know, I ham because mommy puts more love when she make it. Okay, I guess I gotta make it with more love.
Any dishes that you didn't really appreciate it as a kid but that you now love.
Yeah, you know what, surprisingly enough, because not only do I love it, I'm kind of obsessed with it. Lamb chops, the Greek lamb rib chops. And let me tell you why I didn't like lamb because I for Okay, Greeks, during Easter time, I call it Greaster. We have different Easter than the regular Easter, so ours is Greaster, yours is Easter. The Greeks have to wait until after Passover to have Easter because if you actually go back and look at historically, you can't have Easter without Passover. So
we wait for the passover that we have Easter. Okay, So it's always right after pass Over, like a week after so, and we also go by the Gregorian calendar. Anyway, So you make a lay on a spit in the backyard and it's a huge celebration and you know, the sacrificial lamb and everybody at all the Greeks gather in somebody's yard and whatever, and there's a spit and there's
a lamb on the thing. So as a child, this really scarred me, Like it was tough for me to understand why this baby lamb would be on the seat. It was not an easy thing to swallow or eat. So not only is a lamb, but it's a fresh lamb. So we would often go my dad and all of his greed buddies. We'd go down to the farm where they had these lamps for specifically for picking for this situation in Virginia. And you know, one year, my dad
took me with all the bodies. I was probably six, and I'm playing with these animals, not really at that point, I hadn't really understood what was happening. I'm there playing with farm animals and a dormle. They pick whatever. I don't see what goes down. We get in the car, we go. You know, a few days later, this thing is on our spit and I'm starting to put two and two together and very confused by this whole thing, and I actually asked them, is this what do you mean?
This is lamb? I just played with lambs and I put it together and it freaked me out really badly. So I didn't eat lamp for years. And then finally, you know, when I accepted the fact that we we as humans, if we're not vegetarians, do eat animals, I realized how delicious the lamb could be. And I am a meat eater, one thousand percent a meat eater, so lamb, I think, was the most difficult. I mean, it was bizarre. I even kept some of the bones and I took them to show and tell. When I was a child,
they must have thought I was bananas bananas. My mom still tells the stories. She said, do you remember when you were so scarred and you kept the bones from the lamb? I said, yes, I do.
Oh my god, that's hysterical. Speaking of cookbooks, congratulations, Greekish. This is a book filled with one hundred and twenty recipes. How'd you choose which ones to include? There must be so many more.
Oh, there are so many more. Well, I it was difficult but this one is different than the first one because the first one was all authentic, one thousand percent
all Greek recipes, tried and true, traditional family recipes. This one is called Greek Ish because my friends had been saying for years, Debbie, why don't you had other things into your cookbooks, because you know you've made Greek cookbooks, but people don't know that you really just you're a great cook so you can Why don't you add your steak? Why don't you add your smashed potatoes, Why don't you add your roasted carrots? Why don't you add your nachos?
So I said, you know what, You're kind of right, like, let me broaden this little bit. So there's the Ish part. So there's a lot of recipes that hear that aren't traditionally Greek. I have a great bolonnais, Like I have a secret bolonnais. The secret to that is you drop up a parmesan rind in the bolon a sauce for like three or four hours when you're making it, and it gives it this sort of unctious flavor and you can't really explain why, and people like, what is this?
I'm like, it's the run. So I think I just chose these based on my friends and family's favorites. Some that I feel like that are staples that people just need to know how to make. And I think my favorite thing about doing this book, which was different than the other book, to be quite honest, is that it has an interactive component to it, which is super cool.
So the interactive component is that there are bore codes at the bottom of a lot of these recipe pages, and when you scan the bar code, I pop up and I teach you how to make the recipe in my own kitchen.
Oh and in this day and age, it's like, look, so many people just go to TikTok or YouTube or Instagram and frankly they're too lazy to read the recipe, so they're not going to make it.
So if you scan the barcode, I'm legitimately in my kitchen. It's a homegrown situation, a one man show. I set my camera up and it's me. It's like if my neighbor came over, I'm like in shorts and a T shirt. Sometimes I'm barefoot. I'm like, hey, guys, okay, welcome to a cookbook. All right, So today you're gonna make you
want to make this. I'm gonna show you how to make it, and I show you how to make it, and then that way you could just turn it on your phone and be like, oh, okay, so that's what I'm putting next to some ends upposed to reading it.
That's brilliant.
Isn't that fun?
Whose idea was that?
I wish she was mine? It was the publishers. Isn't it a great idea? So the publisher came to me and said, you want to do this? And I thought, I will tell you this, Scott. I mean, I love cooking. I loved writing a cookbook, but doing the cookbook is like childbirth, and it takes longer. It takes about, you know,
beginning to end, about fourteen months. So it's a lot of reviewing recipes, writing recipes, testing recipes over and over, looking at the recipe and editing it and making sure your eyes aren't going cross side when you're trying to see did I leave a word out? Like you started to go cuckoo. So when they came to me and
they said do you want to do this? I thought, this is a commitment and I know what I'm getting myself into because I did it the first time, but at the end it's so you're so thrilled when it's finished, and you're like, I did this all by myself, just a few people and not a huge production team, you know what I mean. So and then they said, well, here's the thing that we think you're really going to enjoy, and we'll make it a lot easier for you because
this is your real this is what you do. So I said that, and I've said we're in let's do it right now. And we started the next day and it was so I mean, it was so fun. And another thing which is really great about this because the book is also digital. It's you can get it worldwide and not worry about shipping. But because it's digital, I can add recipes to the digital book okay, and add add videos as I go, and then they can print
to order. I mean, it's it's a new it's a new wave of what's happening in the world these days. It's not like it was where you print five thousand books, they sit in a warehouse or they sit at Bard's Noble and then people have to buy them. I literally can update the book in real.
Time, which is believable.
Yeah, I mean it makes me feel a little bit like some of the people that got the first uh the first book itself will have a different copy, but there's a huge barcode at the bottom of the front page, right like a QR code that will have every single recipe regardless of what copy you bought. So as I update, it's right there.
So I'm talking to my I'm facetiming my buddy yesterday pulls in In and Out Burger and he's a bit of a prankster, a jokestery, the funniest guys you ever meet. He's always on. And he pulls up and he orders his you know, burger, fries, whatever, and then he says, and I'd like that animal style, right, And he said I'd also like to virtual burgers. And I say, virtual burger? What is that? He goes, well, it's just you know, can you just I can't take it now, but can
you just email me a couple of burgers? And they're like, just pull up to the front place. So they give him his order and he says, take down my email. I want some virtual burgers, and the guy took his email to top it. We're getting to this point and it's like just a joke he was playing on people, but they kind of took him seriously and they didn't know. They hadn't heard from corporate that this was the thing. He says, But let me get your email and I'll
call corporate and we'll get you your burgers. We'll email them.
And I will tell you something. In and Out is so cool and they're so vibey and they're hip to all this stuff. And Linsey, who owns the company, is brilliant. She's like the youngest female billion there in.
The world or something amazing.
And she would get such a kick out of that. She would probably she if she found out about this, I bet you she would email him like two virtual burgers with a gift certificate to go get them. Like that's the type of thing that In and Out does, which is so clever. I love those guys.
They're so good. Yeah, it's so great media training, diet. Yeah, I'm getting a lot of press for the last thirty years. Yeah, but now it's really you know, really, the noise is getting really loud. Tell us a little bit about why Greek food is so good for our bodies.
Greek food is so good for us because simply because it's based around whole foods from our planet. Most food that you will eat, that is, Greek food has like five ingredients or less. Nothing is in there that she cannot pronounce. It's based They only use olive oil. Olive oil is so important and so good for us. I mean, the benefits of olive oil are astronomical. That lowers cholesterol, is great for your skin, is great for inflammation. I mean, it's I think it's anti carcinogen like all kinds of
things that it fights free radicals. It's really really good for you. And I think that's one of the reasons the Mediterranean diet is so good for us. But it also is based in grains and a lot of fish, in mostly vegetables. If you look at the history of the Greek people and the people in the Mediterranean, they're mostly eating a diet of fish, veggies, and grains. Meat comes in there, obviously the lamb, you know, the SUBLACKI
the you. They don't eat a lot of steak, They don't eat a lot of like they don't know a lot of burgers. This is not this whole like fast food thing is not. They do slow food. They don't do fast food, and especially in Greece and most of the EU, to be quite honest, there there are so many chemicals that are not allowed for farmers to use or anyone to use for their animals or for their fruits and vegetables and then bring those vegetables and fruits
to market. You're not allowed to put pesticides on things. It's illegal. It is absolutely illegal because it's poison. They would never imagine putting something on something that is a poison and selling it to someone because it's basically you're killing them. So that in itself is a huge reason why the Mediterranean diet is how it is. But then
again that's in Europe, not over here. So it's all about like when I remember when I wrote the first cookbook and I said to my mom, Mom, I'm writing the introduction and I'm talking about the Greek diet and organic in this and that. At my Mom's like organic, what is this organic? It's like twelve years ago, thirt two years ago? I said, organic, you know, mom, like
Mama did. And the card you grow it in the back, you grow it, no no harmful chemicals, no pesticides, no nothing, just you know, natural and she was like this normal, honey, normal, And I said, yeah, isn't that sad? And we now have to call normal organic?
Right right?
And not only that, she laughed, she was like, I can't believe now everyone based so much money for organic. We had to be organic because we want poor we want that. Isn't that funny? Like what was what was essentially poor people having to grow their own food has now become a bougie thing and they charged you three times the price. I mean, our world is upside down. It has been for a minute here, but I think you know that's what the Greek and the Mediterranean diet
is based in. And another reason that the Mediterranean died and that Greek people and people in that part of the world do happen to live longer, healthier lives is something that they don't really talk about a lot when you're talking about like the Greeks and why they're so healthy that because of our religion we're Greek Orthodox, we fast like by fasting, O explain what this means. We
fast for all the high holy holidays. So if I had to guess off the top of my head, you're probably fasting between ninety and one hundred days a year by fasting. This is what fasting is. You don't eat for that specific time, like whether it's a week or you know, four days or over Easter before Easter it's forty days. You don't eat any animal products at all. You essentially become vegan. No milk, so, no dairy, no meat,
know nothing, only olive oil. And if you're really hardcore about it, you don't even eat honey because honey came from bees. So I truly believe. I mean, I'm not a doctor, but I believe it resets your entire digestion system and it gives your body a chance to rest.
And you know, whether it's religious or whatever why they did it back in the day, whatever that reasoning was, it allows your body to actually chill for a minute, and I think that helps your cells regenerate, and I think it helps, you know, flush out any toxins or any disease that may be lingering in there.
To be quite honest, right, And this is following the Greek Orthodox calendar. Yes, okay, gotcha. Wow, that's fascinating because there's so much now coming out about fasting and the benefits. Yeah yeah, all right, let's say there's someone who's never cooked Greek food before. Where do you recommend they start buying your book now?
I would recommend first and foremost buying Greekish. It's on Amazon. You can go to Amazon just put in Greekish and you'll see it there. I would recommend the first thing they start with. Whatever you do, don't start with Filo doe. Oh my god, you'll never cook again.
Filo dough.
I love you, but she is a nighther to work with. She's brittle, she's harsh, so she could get really brittle, like if you don't go quick, it just starts to break and you'll start crying. I think the first thing you should do really is do the simple stuff, because truly, some of the best dishes are the simplest because they're not hiding behind anything. It's just those simple flavors that you taste and you go, wow, this is incredible. For instance,
you can do like my tomato feta toast. You literally take a hunk of sourdough bread, you toast it perfectly. You get a beautiful piece of feta in the brine. Do not buy veta that's crumbled or that's not in the brine, that it's just in a package because you haven't had real feta until you get feta in the
brine Brian. It's supposed to be moist. You put that on top, You cut up some cherry tomatoes, put that on top, chopping nod some basil, Sprinkle with olive oil and salt and dig in and let me tell you, that's like a typical on the go breakfast in grease and it is incredible. Another one would be like my watermelon feta, cucumber and mint salad. That's a beautiful one. You can drop heart of palms in there as well.
You put olive oil on top and some salt. Refreshing, beautiful for summer if you you know, listen if you like Lamb, and I say, everyone will like Lamb if they have it prepared correctly. When people go, oh, I don't like Lamb, it's gross, I'm like, someone made it for you gross. That's why. So if you go get Lamb chops, beautiful Lamb chops that are hopefully from New Zealand or some ranch in California that usually those are usually the best quality, I believe it or not. You
can get them at Costco. I'm not kidding and their lamb is O really good, really so yeah, I was shocked. I'm like, dang Costco.
Y'all are killing it with your leg right right.
So get the lamb chops, the red chops, olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano, lemon, Squeeze it on top. Make sure you get a regano. Okay, get it on there. Throw them on the grill three and a half to four minutes on each side. Take them off, squirt, squirt more lemon on it. You won't believe it is the best tasting thing you've ever had.
So high heat, medium heat.
What you want to first, get it at a high heat. You want it to see your real quick and then turn it down to medium heat. I'd say keep it. Keep it at four hundred okay, seventy five, four hundred closed, three and a half minutes one side. Flip them over three out to four minutes on the other side. Make sure that your your rub is olive oil, regano, salt, pepper, rub rub, rubber up and squeeze with lemon and throw it on top.
And what are you what are you cooking it in another layer of olive oil? Heating that up in the on the grill, you're saying grill, yeah.
Which is another reason I think that people think lamb, because if you get lamb on a grill, you're like drooling.
It's so good, right right? Yeah, you know, I think Luke's Diner should add a Greek dish to the menu. What do you think it should be? What do you think? What do you think I should debut with?
What you should debut with? Well, it's hard to say, because you could just do a simple Greek salad, which is beautiful, But is that kind of boring? Do you think that's boring?
I I kind of want to do the lamb.
Let's do the lamb? Then, I wasn't sure if your viewers would you know, it could be sometimes you know, sometimes people say, you know, they get weird, but yes, do the lamb. I would love that. That would be my favorite thing in the.
World, right right, good? All right? So you're walking to Luke's Diner, right, You're you're in stars Hollow. You walk in. What would you order? Where would you sit? Where?
What I said? I think I'd order a milkshake. Yeah, that's what I would order.
All right? Well, it was fun catching up with you you've got to come back. We're going. Of course, you've got to come back.
I would love to come back. You're fantastic. You know what we should do?
Actually tell me.
We should do like a collaboration and I should either I should come to you or you should come to me, and I should show you how to make the lamp shops and we should just throw it on the grill.
Let's do it.
So my next book that I want to do that I've been thinking about and like just really, I don't know. It's been a long road for this, and I keep saying I'm gonna do it. I keep say I'm gonna do it. I'm I've never gotten around to it. I'm gonna do it now. I want to do a book because I'm always outside called Girls Who Grill The Ultimate Guide to Grilling, because like I don't know, like a lot of my guy friends like, what do you mean you grill? I said, it's one of my favorite things.
I grill, grill, I grow watermelon, I grow vegetables, I grill. I grill everything you can grill, lettuce. People don't know, and I'm like, why not, Why don't I just do a whole book about grilling.
So that's brilliant. So you're all set up there at your place. I'll come to your place.
You come over here and we'll grill.
We're gonna grill.
I mean, I should maybe do a podcast called Girls Who Grill and I just grill and I talk to people.
I think you should.
I think we just came up with an idea.
That's let's you know what, maybe it's a podcast, not a book. Let me talk to my people. Let me talk to my people.
You people need to talk to their people and get some.
People on the phone, and they're gonna be some conversation. Right. I love it when am I coming over? I want to come over when we right now.
Just stuff met the kids, get the wife, the dogs.
Come on, all right, I'll leave a letter. I'll just letter. Seriously, I'll come over. We'll do this.
That's actually very cool.
I want to cook lamb with you. Yeah, that's like the new thing. Now we'll make it a thing.
I'm coming over to make lamb inside joke.
Oh man, you're fantastic. Get her book Greekish. You can get it on Amazon. Debbie Mattnopolis. The she's just inevitable. Okay, it's it's just fantastic. All the best anyway, thanks for the downloads everybody, and as you know, we love your cards and letters and all your comments. And remember this, where you lead, we will follow. Okay, stay safe everyone, dot Hey everybody, and don't forget follow us on Instagram at i Am All In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com