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What I ate last week. Ranked #182 in food podcasts in Mexico according to an email I just got.
NEWS / UPDATES
Great listener feedback from my sister who said she doesn’t understand what I’m talking about Wen I talk about The New York Times cooking recipes in the break room or cake room at my office. This is the kind of feedback I need because I stare at a wall and record this podcast and have no idea if it’s making sense or not. Cake room NYT Cooking Page-a-Day calendar recipes explanation – it’s just a coworker leaving pages from his calendar that have recipes on them in the break room, not the actual food itself.
An updated thought about the news story about pallets of french onion dip showing up at random restaurants and whether or not it was a mistake or a marketing tactic: even if it was a mistake, sometimes mistakes turn out to be a great marketing campaign, like the golden ticket idea on the office
Cloud23 hot sauce is actually super salty – one serving is 7% daily value
Costco raspberry sugar cookie
Brian left a bag of pumpkin seeds in the truck and a swarm of cardinals have been attacking the truck all weekend, trying to get inside of it
Used an appletini-scented swiffer pad again and Brian was like why does it smell like that? Why would they give it a scent that makes you think that it might also be edible?
Super late to the Rancho Gordo train but I’ve been wanting to buy organic dried beans and this urge has been amplified by the ongoing war and potential food price surges and don’t really know where to get them for a decent price so I thought I might as well get something interesting. Although on the last episode of Arthur Schwartz’s podcast he said he did a comparison of cooking conventional dried beans and cannellini beans from Umbria and said the beans from Umbria were significantly better; placebo effect?
9LBs: Scarlet Runner, Cassoulet (Tarbais), Santa Maria Pinquito, Christmas Lima, Domingo Rojo, Yellow Eye, Alubia Blanca, Mayocaba, Large White Lima
Big Red Ripper (Mandy) Southern Cow Peas
Should have ordered more than 1LB of each variety; beans are labor and energy intensive, so best to cook a larger batch at a time.
SCENTS
Change of plans: I ordered more samples. What is Ffern? What is Ormaie?
Daddy smelled like Home Depot
Final sample: Tom Ford Neroli Portofino
Official description: A sparkling citrus amber scent. Tunisian Neroli, Italian Bergamot, Winter Yellow Mandarin, Orange Flower, Lavender. Transportive and invigorating, Neroli Portofino captures the cool breezes, sparkling waters and lush foliage of the Italian Riviera. This reinvention of a classic eau de cologne features crisp citrus oils, surprising floral notes and amber undertones to leave a splashy yet substantive impression.
My review: 75% fresh, 25% orange juice. Love. I would love it even more if it had a slight woodiness to it. Great summer smell. The bottle is hideous. The reviews say it doesn’t last even an hour. Someone named Mon$ta Kodi says this scent gets him compliments from the ladies. A lot of the reviewers are from Boca Raton for some reason. Someone wrote “this is what being on a beach smells like” which I understand but also most beaches smell like hot garbage.
INTERNET
Travis Kelce & Patrick Maholmes steak house https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8byp7dk/
https://www.tastingtable.com/2123643/restaurant-chains-losing-locations-2026/
Vincennes, IN 38° 40' 50.9002" N 87° 31' 46.4675" W
Top Chef Season 23 Episode 2
Spoiler art, these are my notes that I took while watching the show
We open with Nana, the personal chef who hasn’t worked in a restaurant in over six years reflecting on the mental breakdown she had in the first episode. Jumping from cooking for someone in their house to you have 60 seconds to cook a sweet potato is probably not the best strategy for this show but let’s see how far she gets.
They’re in the kitchen for the first time, if you recall last episode they had to cook on a race track
This quickfire challenge is sponsored by Talenti, everyone’s favorite tupperwear brand; they have to make a savory dish based on the region from which their Talenti flavor is from that also pairs with the original gelato; “mediterranean’ mint chocolate chip people are doomed; there’s a pistachio flavor that represents California. The California pistachio lobby has been hard at work.
We learn that one of the contestants is a DJ named DJ Buenos Dias
Lawrence, the guy who cooks Turkish food, wins the quickfire. Great to finally see some Turkish food
Main challenge is seven course meal in two teams of seven that gets progressively hotter; inspired by the Carolina Reaper and Pepper X, developed by Puckerbutt farms, where they will be cooking. Why bother having a kitchen. Americans are either eating spoonfuls of mayonnaise or devoting their life to breeding 2.6 million scoville peppers
Nana talks about a spicy dish that her family member named Auntie Baby makes back in Ghana and shows a flash photograph of a very old woman sitting on a couch with sunglasses on, the flash from the photo is causing white circles to form on her sunglass lenses, causing her to look like some sort of character in a Terminator Matrix crossover reboot series
People are tasting their dishes and coughing and dying from the peppers
Getting a lot of great commercials for Josh wine, former sponsor of Top Chef, and Myrtle Beach. I will never purchase Josh wine or go to Myrtle beach so stop trying. Voss water is the water of choice this season (last season was Saratoga). Voss water is also the water of choice of the guy from Murder in Glitterball City, Jeffrey Mundt, who murdered a man and buried him in his basement.
A few people are arguing because one dish is hotter than the other but it needs to be the other way around; just change the order of the dishes so that it progresses? Why does it matter? They make the other person reseason her dish instead
They seat the judges in a greenhouse to taste all of the food; incredible idea
The Puckerbutt guy got to be a guest dinner judge. He was like “this dish is like an amusement park playing games in my mouth” and Kristin was like ok we gotta go back to the kitchen that we forgot we had and actually judge the food
Rhoda won for the second time. Jassi was sent home for serving dry lamb. Tom Colicchio said he shouldn’t have braised the leg of lamb and should have roasted it instead; thank you for the tips and tricks
America’s Culinary Cup, Season 1 Episode 3
Next challenge is on the farm that they’re still on from the last episode. This episode’s theme / “commandment” is sustainability. The theme is garbage.
1 hour to create a dish using hyper-sustainable ingredients where they use green vehicles which are Rivian trucks to drive around the farm and collect ingredients.
One guy takes his shoes off which is a great idea if you’re hoping to step in an ant hill or a knife. First day that my farm coworkers wore open toe sandals to work she stepped on a knife and it went into the side of her foot.
We find out that michael has a green michelin star, so let’s see how badly he screws this up, and also we also learn that he was born in a cult. Spoiler alert, Michael goes home. Somehow his quail, the smallest and quickest cooking poultry, is raw so he gets the lowest score and has to cook against Keith, who got the second lowest score, using food scraps. Michael, the sustainable green star chef, loses the sustainability challenge. Brutal.
March 16, 2026 (Monday)
8am: Little Waves coffee with half & half, made at home.
9:30am: A bowl of rice cereal with milk.
1:30pm: Chicken salad with red onions, chives, pickled banana peppers, and celery on Back to Nature Harvest Whole Wheat crackers, made at home, and a pour of Brew Dr. Gingerberry kombucha.
4pm: A bowl of Blue Bell coffee ice cream.
5:30pm: Leftover soup with parmesan, black pepper, and La Tourangelle olive oil.
6:30pm: A Hershey’s strawberry creme filled chocolate heart.
Crackers sorted of tasted like a watery, cafeteria chocolate cake which doesn’t make any sense? Flour, wheat
Gingerberry kombucha is ok. Again, it’s blueberry, but also blackberry.
I’ve been wanting to make a simple depression-style chocolate cake with a fudgy icing
Chocolate is a little grainy.
March 17, 2026 (Tuesday)
9am: Little Waves coffee with half & half, made at home, and a bowl of bran flakes with milk.
11am: Leftover chicken salad with Milton’s everything crackers.
12:30pm: Lay’s Wavy potato chips and oyster crackers at Brian’s parents’ house, and a pour of Brew Dr. Gingerberry kombucha.
6pm: Breakfast casserole with sausage, spinach, Tillamook smoked black pepper white cheddar, and chives, with Cloud23 habanero hot sauce, made at home.
7:30pm: Blue Bell coffee ice cream.
And we end the day with a bowl of ice cream to keep the diabetes away. I ate ice cream alone while brian ate 3 green apples, which actually keep the doctor away, at his parents house. His mom always has a huge bowl of lemons or green apples out which she usually ends up dumping into the woods. He said he couldn’t stop eating them which feels like it should not be that hard to do.
Jimmy Dean “Six Layer Breakfast Casserole” ingredients:
1 package Jimmy Dean Premium Pork Hot Sausage (shockingly few ingredients)
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 cup or 4oz shredded sharp cheddar cheese
3 slices hearty country white bread
6 eggs
¼ cup whipping cream
½ teaspoon ground cumin
Tells you to drain the sausage after cooking it (no)
You layer a slice of bread and the sausage mixture into a 1 and ½ quart casserole dish like a lasagna; so the result is the width of a single slice of bread? You’d have to have a very specifically sized casserole dish for this to work. This is like the America’s Culinary Cup lady who made a burger slider with the dimensions of a pepper grinder. Serves six people?
What I used:
1 package sausage, 1 red onion, spinach, 7 oz Tillamook smoked black pepper white cheddar, 3 slices La Farm sourdough, 3 slices Nature’s Own Honey Wheat Bread (glyphosates), 10 eggs, ½ cup cream, garlic powder, chives
Baked for 40 minutes at 325; at an hour the original recipe with only six eggs would have been fossilized. A dry bread pudding. Brian was like “this is how breakfast casseroles should be”, says a person raised on recipes from the back of packaging who thinks six eggs should be cooked for an hour minimum. A proper quiche? Yes.
March 18, 2026 (Wednesday)
7am: Leftover coffee with half & half and a bowl of bran flakes with milk.
Cake room: NYT Cooking Page-a-day calendar recipes for Ricotta Pasta Alla Vodka and Ham and Cheese Sliders, a stack of napkins, and a single slice of chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting in a tupperware container.
11am: Leftover breakfast casserole and a cup of coffee with half & half at the office.
3pm: A can of Durty Bull Crispy Pilsner and mozzarella triangles with marinara sauce at Dain’s Place in Durham, North Carolina.
7:30pm: Crispy fried polenta, beet salad, fatoush salad, broiled pimento cheese dip with chips, a slice of grandma pie with pepperoni, a slice of fried chicken pizza, and a pour of Heist Brewery Druid pilsner at Hutchins Garage in Durham.
I’ve been drinking rotten milk. Daddy wouldn’t drink the milk the past few days but when I switched to the new milk he immediately drank it. Test your milk out on an animal first; they can smell if it’s turned sooner. He loves milk so if he won’t drink it, something is wrong. The milk itself didn’t smell bad but as I would pour it out it would touch the older, rotting milk residue on the carton opening. The organic Whole Foods gable-top (had to look this up) cardboard carton isn’t worth the dollar off the price because it rots sooner from contact with the rot and you have to pour it out. My version of being a raw milk influencer.
https://dainsplace.bar/menu/ fried bologna sandwich
The internet was out so the music kept going out and nobody could pay by credit card; despite the crew of regular daytime drinkers this was a great spot for kids, food-wise, and they had coloring books and a huge ziplock bag of markers and crayons.
https://order.toasttab.com/online/hutchinsgarage
The fatoush salad was a great classic pizza place salad with big pepperoncini that feels like the kind of salad we’d get growing up ordering from a casual family pizza place in CT. Great dressing, very thinly sliced sundried tomatoes.
Beet salad was mostly greens and felt old and heavy
Pizza was ok. Floppy as hell. Everything tasted like paprika. Fried chicken didn’t really have vodka sauce or if it did it it was barely there. Somehow lacking salt or flavor of any kind besides green bell pepper. Grandma slice was underwhelming, skimpy pepperoni.
This is a great place to sit outdoors and grab a beverage in the summer with a group of friends on the picnic tables outside but I wouldn’t recommend coming here to eat food inside. Extremely loud, no sound buffer (it’s a garage). The kids loved the super plain, Chuck-e-Cheese style pizza though.
This was the day of mediocre, lukewarm pilsners.
March 19, 2026 (Thursday)
9am: Little Waves coffee with half & half, made at home.
10:30am: A leftover slice of fried chicken pizza.
1:30pm: Half of a Harlem chopped cheese sandwich from Ideal’s in Durham, North Carolina.
3pm: A double scoop of Howling Hot Chocolate ice cream and an iced Americano at Howling Cow Dairy in Raleigh, North Carolina.
6:30pm: Pork, shrimp, and leek dumplings, jasmine tea, scallion pancake, eggplant with garlic sauce, sauteed string beans, white rice, and chongqing noodles from Chengdu 7 in Cary, North Carolina.
Chopped cheese traveled shockingly well and was fabulous. I would have ordered the special but it wasn’t on IG: “Subway sandwich” spicy coppa, spicy soppressata, pepperoni, chili mayo, candied jalapeno, red onion, lettuce, grated cheddar mix
Chocolate flavored ice cream with marshmallow swirl and chocolate chunks; similar to Phish Food but without the caramel and a much drier, less generous marshmallow component. Brian got a campfire milkshake that tasted like a bath and body works.
Chengdu menu item called “Handmade colorful facelift”
Also got a lot of wet dishes that weren’t good for sharing: egg drop soup, hot and sour soup, sauerkraut and shredded pork noodles
Japanese grocery store was closed so I couldn’t stock up on croquettes; went into a Mexican grocery store instead and it smelled like a giant open bathroom; smelled really wet. It’s too bad because they had loose bulk beans but I can’t buy food from a bathroom. Like things are getting bad but not bad enough that I’m buying beans from an open toilet. My friend’s child picked out a honeydew melon for their road trip and we made him put it back. Imagine cutting open a melon in a moving car.
March 20, 2026 (Friday)
9am: Little Waves coffee with half & half and two leftover slices of cheese pizza.
12pm: A leftover slice of fried chicken pizza and a pour of Brew Dr Mango Passionfruit kombucha.
2pm: Promise Land chicken salad from Friendly Market in Morehead City, North Carolina.
6:30pm: Leftover grandma pizza, romaine lettuce with parmesan, Briana’s creamy caesar dressing, and black pepper, and half a can of Other Half Snaps pilsner.
Felt like a bottomless pit today which is perfect because I have a fridge packed full of leftovers. Whole pot of coffee, three slices of paper thin pizza. Hutchin’s garage leftovers, Chengdu leftovers, leftover fossilized breakfast casserole, pasta salad and chicken salad from Brian’s parents’ beach trip.
I feel like Bethany Frankel eating chicken salad out of a plastic deli container from a beachside market
Chicken, mayonnaise, pecans, eggs, dill, relish, celery, dijon mustard, onion, house seasoning; I mean it’s good and i love the dill flavor; pretty whipped up and choppy. I don’t need nuts in a chicken salad because it tricks you into thinking you’re eating cartilage or a bone.
Nice to have a crispy cold pilsner. I was harsh on the pizza.
March 21, 2026 (Saturday)
8:30am: Little Waves coffee with half & half, made at home.
10am: Leftover breakfast casserole.
12:30pm: A pour of Brew Dr. mango and passionfruit kombucha.
2:30pm: A fully dressed bacon cheeseburger, bacon ranch wrap, and cheese curds from Cook Out in Oxford, North Carolina, with Texas Pete garlic hot sauce.
4:30pm: Andy Capp’s hot fries.
7:30pm: A cup of Earl grey tea with half & half, made at home.
I order a small burger “with everything on it” and about 20% of the time they put bacon on it. I typically order a bacon ranch wrap as one of my sides in the likely event that the burger doesn’t have bacon on it. The bacon is always perfectly crispy but this was too much bacon.
Hot fries aren’t even good but I’ve been a bottomless pit all week except for meal time. These were one of the few options for “extras” that you could purchase after lunch in elementary school.
Almost went to the Viking Experience to see the fish slap
March 22, 2026 (Sunday)
9am: Little Waves coffee with half & half, made by Brian.
10:30am: A bowl of bran flakes with milk.
12pm: Friendly Market chicken salad with Back to Nature Harvest Whole Wheat crackers.
3pm: Andy Capp's Hot Fries.
5pm: Pork meatballs in Thai red curry with potatoes and kale over basmati rice with black lentils, made at home.
7pm: Blue Bell coffee ice cream.
Gave Daddy the cream top from the milk and he licked it and ran away
Cutting chives in such great quantities with scissors that it makes my eyes cry; I have abandoned the paper towel method in favor of sharp kitchen shears
Meatballs
1LB pork
1/2C yogurt
2TB chinese chili flakes (by accident)
1TB garlic powder
1/2C chopped chives
1 egg
Breadcrumbs