The Fifth Hour: Benny Appleseed

you eat for breakfast. I did learn some fun facts though about the croissant that I was unaware of. That during the Ottoman Turk siege of Vienna back in sixteen eighty three, a baker baked a pastry in the shape of a crescent, like a crescent moon, to symbolize the emblem of Turkey. That is why the traditional croissant looks the way it does, like the crescent. Look, you can blame that on the Ottoman Turk's siege of Vienna in sixteen eighty three. And it is Austria. It's from Austria.

It's not from France. Marie Antonette, I think I put your that, But anyways, yeah, you know who she is, you know what I meant. And she first introduced the pastry to France back in the day because she married into the royal family and the rest is history. I guess it has changed the French bakers from what I read, fell down this rabbit hole. They made fancier versions of what was the Austria version. They enhanced it, made it better,

more sophisticated, and more elitist and all that. And of course, at the very basic level. It's just soft flour and then yeast, butter, milk, salt. That's it. But there you go. National croissante. Now, speaking of that, this somewhat relates. Somewhat relates, so you can call me Benny apple Seed. Now let me explain. So I'm going to blame the story I'm going to tell you here from a previous edition of the Fifth Hour podcast. Let's go back, not that long ago.

And it's not about destiny, it's not about Wanderluster. It's this podcast. So we go in the hot tub time machine. I spent roughly fifteen minutes talking about National Pie Day. Right here. I was in this studio, I was on this microphone and it was National Pie Day last Friday, and I started ranting about it. And I kept going and going and going and going. And I didn't know

I could talk that much about pie. I did. And then suddenly my wife and I were making decisions usually reserved for retirees, which I neither of us are people with nothing thing scheduled after lunch. Ever, and that's how these things start, not with a plan, but with a shrug.

So Friday morning, last Friday, as a little punch drunk from the radio wars and rambling into this microphone doing the podcast about pie, a podcast about pie, and I spent way too much time talking about it, and I got crap from Terry and England and some other people. He always gives me crap. He does not appreciate Benny's big board, very controversial Benny's big board on pie. Alf said he was thinking about leaving the show to go work on the Jason Smith Show because as a paid contributor,

because of my commentary about cherry Pie. He's a big fan of the cherry Pie anyway. So fast forward now, So get done with a podcast, you know, sleep a little bit, take a little bit of nap, and we decide, you know, what the heck, you know, i'd pie on the mind. Let's go somewhere. Let's let's go find pie, and not just your generic pie that you get anywhere. So after a brief nap, we did some improv We improvised. We got in the malamobile and we drove and we

drove and we drove destination Julian, California. Say what chances are you've never heard of Julian, California. I didn't know of Julian, California. I worked in the region where that town is, but I'd never been there. It's a town that has turned apple pie into an economic model. No subplots, no distractions. Pie is the headline. Everything else runs beneath the pie. And if it's National Pie Day, you might as well go there. So we left the Malor mansion

under a mug California. So Cow's son and it's the reason people move here. It's the kind that convinces people seasons are myth. In fact, just before I came into the remote studio, my brother who lives in Manhattan, my older brother, he is a fitness freak. He's out running around the streets of Manhattan early in the morning. He's

run the New York Marathon a bunch of times. So he's sending me photos of the Hudson River, the iconic Hudson River with chunks of ice and uh, and he's took this cool video and it was really it was really wild, and I juxtapos where I am and like, okay, uh, you know that's that's wild. It doesn't normally get like that obviously in New York. So back to these stories. So I left the Mallor Mansion with the wife. We had sunny skies and we just took off. We headed south,

Go south, young man. We passed the power plant made famous in the iconic Naked Gun movie starring OJ Simpson. Then Camp Pendleton and then Oceanside, and at that point we turned east, got down. There's a highway I think it's Highway seventy eight or something like that goes to goes by the community colleges in San Diego, Palomar and some of those. When I was at Saddleback, we went down there and I'd been in that area. And so

you turn east. That is where the mighty Blue Pacific fades away and is replaced by something quieter and a lot different. East County San Diego is the wild, wild west of San Diego. It's his own world. Now you're gonna drive for a while. You gotta drive about an hour and you keep going, and that's just part of the way. But you see vineyards that start appearing. Its wine country, San Diego style. Hot air balloons floating lazily, the Hutter balloon. I was on one, when I was

in one, when I was a kid. I remember the military basis here. We had El Toro and Tustin, and they would have open houses and they'd have a hot air balloon. So I went in there at one point, but we didn't it was tethered. I didn't go all the way like float away or anything like that. But the hotter balloon contributes nothing except proof that gravity occasionally kind of takes a day off. So the roads were

still driving. The road shrink. Now we're on two lane highways right, two lanes, one going north, one going south and wrapping around mountains mountains, and unexpectedly something happened that I didn't think was possible in San Diego. It rained. I'm talking real rain in San Diego. We didn't even bother checking the weather app because we left the Malor mansion it was sunny. And why would you, As the saying goes, you should be as reliable as the weather

in Sandan Diego. The easiest job in the world is San Diego weather person. So it turns out the weather still surprises occasionally if you drive far enough out into the boondocks. And so Julian sits in a mountain range. The kayamaka, I believe it is how you pronounce it. It's my version, which is close enough, so the Kayamaca Mountains. And it's a town Julian that outlived its original purpose. So I started going down the old spider hole and I was like looking around trying to I was like,

I heard about this. I'd seen some stuff online about this town dedicated to apple pie, and I was like, what's there. So when I say that Julian, California outlived its original purpose, it was a Confederate veteran from Georgia who named it after Mike Julian who had come out. There was a former slave named Fred Coleman who found the original gold that sparked San Diego's first and only gold rush. When you think gold rush, you think northern California.

Thus the forty nine ers back in the day. But no, it was. It was the gold rush of eighteen seventy. So we're going back them in in eighteen seventy. It's been a while, and it didn't last very long, as Russias tend to do, people did stay, though not many. Farming replaced the digging for gold, but the apple was the star of the show. That was what replaced instant

wealth dreams. And that part is interesting because by the early nineteen hundreds, Julian apples were winning all kinds of medals back East, that's where most people lived in the early nineteen hundreds. Twenty one varieties carefully selected praise for quality, not the novelty of all that. So no one tried to reinvent the apple. They just grew it. Well, the soil was fertile for the apple. And it's a lost art. And so National Pie Day, I was a little worried.

We were driving a long time. I was concerned. I was like, oh, man, where did we get shut out? Because it's a big day for the pie and crowds have a way of kicking these small weekend ghetaway towns and the balls. There's a food holiday and the town built around food. However, the good people at the Julian Pie Company and I should send out some photos. I'll send out some photos later today on Facebook and Instagram

so you can check it out. But the Julian Pie Company, they still had a couple of slices of apple pie left, and they have like four or five different versions of apple pie. And so we had a a like a raspberry not raspberry, it was boison berry apple pie and there was another kind of apple pie, and so we found it and we had it a la mode had little ice cream on top. Apple pie with ice cream arrived and immediately there was a separation. It separated itself

from the pack. This wasn't nostalgia bait. It was execution, warm apples that still had structure, crust, that knew exactly its role. It didn't overwhelm the pie. It was an addition to the pie. The ice cream did what the ice cream was supposed to do. It was a support item. The ice cream, the scoop of vanel ice cream not there to distract. So on the Malar report card for the Julian Pie Company, the West Coast birthplace of apple pie, still call it so one to ten, you know the rules.

One to ten Malor report card for the Julian apple Pie small little town out in eastern San Diego County. I'm gonna give it a twenty two out of ten. Twenty two. Some things break the scale. This was one of them. This was the greatest piece of pie, apple pie. I've had better banana cream pie, but this was apple pie, which is the everything pie. As we talked about last week, it's the Swiss Army Knife of pie. There's something for everyone there. So enjoyed it and it was great. We

also had a meal, not just just see pie. Later on we ate at the Julian Beer Company. I didn't even know what this thing was, but it had pizza, barbecue, and beer. Honest food, very straightforward menu, nothing really healthy. I didn't see the healthy. I had a barbecue sandwich and a little thing of mac and cheese that went into my belly. And on the Malard scale of barbecue one to ten, it earned a six point five, which

is above average, but not the greatest thing. It was respectable, competent, nothing to complain about, which is not the same thing as memorable. The pie was memorable. No context is everything. The problem I have is I've been to Kansas City, the whole land of barbecue, where Kansas City Joe serves the z Man sandwich, the Mona Lisa of the smoke mets with the barbecue brisket and the onion ring on top,

and the bread is so delicious. Now, once you've had that, your expectations recalibrate, whether you want them to or not. Now I've had major disagreement with my wife. My wife loves barbecue sauce, and having gone to kansasity, you don't need the barbecue sauce if you barbecue the food properly. Now, I will tell you, on a non Kansas city scale, Julian Barbecue got bumped up to a seven point five grading on a curve. It's not dishonest, it's just realism

can't compete. And the appeal of this Julian it's it isn't just what you eat, it's what you escape. Right. In this case, sunshine gave way to the rain, the coast gave way to mountains, which gave way to one two lane roads, and it was interesting. And in southern California, which is a massive area of land, is not just beaches and traffic. Julian is proof that the state is so massive that it still has corners that don't shout. And then we had to drive home six hours round

trip for pie and a barbecue brisket sandwich. And that puts things in perspective, right, it does. It's not really an errand I didn't need to do it. It was more of an improv turned commitment for National Pie Day and something that started out casual, and then we had to get there, and it's one of those you save it for a free weekend, a craving strong enough to overpower common sense or in this case, a podcast induced laps and judgment. Blame it on the fifth hour, and

that's fine. Listen, Julian. The town, it's not supposed to be convenient. They have apple picking part of the year. You know, there's a lot of these places, and if you're in the Commonwealth, you guys have this all the time. It's not a lot of these apple picking apple pie type places, at least I know of, and so this was this was one of them. And you know, it's very specific. It does one thing extremely well and let's

the rest take care of itself. And so no rebrand, no expansion plan, just Apple's grown carefully year after year. National Pie Day is now done until next year. The rain did stop once we got out of the mountains. The slices obviously disappeared. The malamobile desperate for gas made at home and up in the in the mountains. The kayamaccas, I believe, but Kyamakas, yeah, I said. The apple tree kept doing their thing and very reliable, and we'll be back,

I imagine we'ving back at some point. I do not know when, but we'll be back at some point. So I said, humbaby, I think we're going to skip that. I'll get to that at some point over the weekend. I didn't want to talk about foody fun. Hooray for food he fun. Hooray for food he fun. Yes, foody fun. By request as I got an email from Mike. One

guy requested this one person. Mike lives in Texas, which is also a massive state that could be anywhere from Dallas to Houston to Austin, San Antonio or El Paso or anywhere in between. I don't know where. Mike just said he's in Texas, and he says he enjoys foody fun. Why have you stopped doing it? And I said, I wish I didn't write back, but I'll answer right now, Mike. We just moved on to other things. But in honor of foodie fun in ohioil getting me in the mood

and all that, So we'll start with this. The world's largest McDonald's has popped up in the in the headlines this week, and this is only good if you're in Orlando. There's a McDonald's that costs sixteen million dollars and it had renewed attention online. It was a viral video that had millions of views that showcased this McDonald's. Now, what do you get for sixteen million dollars? What do you

get for that? Well, for sixteen million dollars in Orlando, you get an arcade, pizza ovens, and an ice cream bar at this McDonald's. Because hey, it's right near disney World. Why not. It's it's huge. Just known as the epic mcdee. It's what it's known as. The site stands. I mean it is. I'm looking at the building here. I try to describe it for our blind listeners. It's nineteen thousand square feet. It is ridonculous. They have collectible souvenir machines.

You can also it's like typical touristy stuff. You can get pressed pennies and medallions. Because there's one thing I want is McDonald's medallion. That's what I want. That's what I need in my life. Absolutely, it's got futuristic touches throughout the building. There's an automatic trash can themed decor. So there you go. It's got all the McDonald's standard McDonald's food. However, it also has build your own pizza. So if you want to McDonald's pizza, go go to

Orlando Philly Cheese Steaks. Hey, sign me up for that and there you go. So the world's largest McDonald's. What do want a McDonald's cheese steak is like they have pasta dishes. You can get McDonald's pasta Belgian waffles and mentioned that ice cream bar, So that sounds sounds great. Absolute Vodka this is not really a food, but Tabasco is and they're teaming up with Tabasco. They're gonna launch

a spicy chili flavor. So Absolute Vodka partner with Tabasco to launch a brand new chili pepper flavored spirit called Absolute Tabasco. Let me know how that goes. Just in time for that football game in Northern California which will be played a week from Sunday, Dominoes is bringing back the six nine nine large two topping pizza carry out deal. And will you get off your fat ass and go down to the Dominoes and get the pizza for the seven dollars with the two toppings and all that. Were

you gonna make that move? No? I am shocked. I guess I'm this is another one of those things that hey, you're old. I don't mind going the store. I don't mind picking up food like to me. And I realized there's a lot of you guys that are in the food delivery business that listen to the show, and God bless you, and I'm glad you're making your money. And some of you have told me that business is booming and that it's it's just great. And I'm like, Okay, I don't know how much you make, it's none of

my business. But for me, I was like, we have food delivery. It's you just drive there and there's a drive through and they'll give it to you right in your car at the fast food place. And I'm always like, if I'm too lazy to go to Taco Bell, then I shouldn't be eating Taco Bell, you know what I'm saying. And I don't really eat late anymore because of I'm getting older or whatever. It's not good for you to eat late, so I don't really do it. But anyway,

the six ninety nine, that's that's a good deal. And there's a store that I go to to get my tortillas when I have crunchy taco days, have Taco Thursday, not Taco Tuesday, but Taco Thursday. And I go to the taco place. It's a it's a store. It's a store in a Latin part of town, and so they make their own tortillas, which are just amazing. If you've never had I've talked about this before, but these tortillas

are the greatest thing and just wonderful. So I go there and next to it is a little Caesars Pizza pizza, and uh, it is always packed. It's like every time I've been there in the morning, I've been there in the afternoon, I've been there at night. It's always packed. It's it's it's wild. Uh. I mean, it's just it's not that because the price. Obviously, recently, I don't think we mentioned this, Crispy Chicken nuggets, which I've heard are

really good. I've not had them. Crispy Chicken nuggets are back at Taco bell is that their version of the McRib alongside a all new Hidden Valley Diablo Ranch sauce. I'm good on that. That's the Devil's blood. I don't need that. McDonald's has also launched a Hot Honey lineup featuring new Hot Honey Sauce. Okay, they have hot Honey sausage, egg biscuit, seventeen grams of protein, a bacon, hot Honey

Crispy sandwich. They've got that Hot Honey Crispy sandwich, the Hot Honey Snack Wrap, and not to be outdone, the Hot Honey Sauce dip cup with or they have sweet and spicy honey sauce with a light vinegar finish, a delicious and wonderful dipping option. Okay, there you go. What else do we have? Sonic has introduced chocolate new chocolate Peanut butter Shake. It's made by It's it's partnership with Reese's, so you can get that if you have a Sonic.

Papa John's has reintroduced the new and improved Pan Pizza. There you go, take that Pizza Hut, because when I want a pan pizza, I go to Papa John's. That shack, right, that shack, that's that's his operation. He's mister Papa John's. He's all about the Papa John's all about that Papa John's boss. It was weird seeing inside the NBA back this week. I was like, Wow, that's that's crazy. I didn't I didn't realize that they were they were still working.

I thought they were all over, that was it. They'd only worked a few times. Yeah, how about that? All right? What else do we have? Dairy Queen has launched a new dq Swicy menu. What is this here? Let me see you. I think the word is now it says spicy, not spicy. I thought that I screwed that up, but no, that's what it says at the Dairy Queen. It features us. See the items here. They have the new flamethrower chicken strips, all white meat tenderloin chicken seasoned and coated with a

blend of fiery peppers and smoky spices. They have the Pineapple Lemonade cooler and it's got classic lemonade, real lemonade juice mixed with pineapple flavor that sounds all right, and then blended with some other soft serve stuff pineapple lemonade sparkler. Okay, all right, I feel you on that. Okay, So there there you go. Some of the new items. And I don't know if I mentioned that. See Del there's a Del Taco story, but Del Taco's not. It's a regional thing.

It's in the West, it's not in the East. So if you're not here at Del taco I guess it doesn't. The spicy Jack, cheese and chicken case ideas our back, baby, they are back, thank god, hew lolujah, helllujah. Yeah. Absolutely, we'll get out on that. Danny should join me at some point this weekend. You can email the mail bag if you would like. It's available to you Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com. That's Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com. You can be part of the podcast,

which I know. Yeah, you're excited. No you're not. You're not excited about that. All right, Well, we will have a new episode on Saturday, another one on Sunday, because that's how we do it in the Audiohizsie, have a great rest of your Friday and we will hit you up. Well, tom I'll beg for you to listen tomorrow. So there you go, and we may have an ask Ben tonight. Didn't want to mention that. If you're still listening, good

job by you. Ask Ben on X. I'll do it like a late night version, late night somewhere around the time we're normally maybe an hour before the time we're normally under. It depends on my schedule. I might be a little later, got some things going on, but I will. I'll pop on there and do an ask Ben on X and hopefully at some point this weekend we'll do ask Ben on Facebook. So if you have any questions you want to ask for that, you can do it. But obviously send your questions in here on the fifth

hour mail bag and that's it. That's all. Later skater blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, Bye bye, bye bye, gotta murder, I gotta go. Aloha