FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Sip and Chew w/Mike & Stu 7.14.2024 "Mikeless", Midwest Food, Bierocks and Runza's
- Mike Bailey, a pioneer of the Gulf Coast blind scene, and award-winning food entrepreneur. - I know a lot of you wonder what to do with your moon pass, but I've got some wine suggestions for you. Lemon moon pass, sub-yum blon, shinny blon, or peanut gricho, steward, rib, Donald, acclaimed food and travel writer, and world-class chef. - I was the chef de casserole. I made the casseroles in the frozen food department. - For more than a decade, they've combined their expertise to answer your questions and introduce you to the culinary movers and shakers you want, or ought to know, four-time taste award finalists, ten-time nappy award losers. They are the dynamic duo of dining. - Drop, drop, keep a scream and put board! - Mike and Stew on FM Talk 1065. - Wow, that's a really, really dragon wild. - Yeah, good morning. It's time for Sip-A-Choo and Mike and Stew, but today it is Sip-A-Choo with Michaela Stew. Mike's feeling a little under the weather, so he's gonna take the day off and do whatever it is he does when he doesn't feel well. And we're gonna do what we do, which is talk about food and drink and whatnot. We're going to stay away from talk about everything from yesterday because this job, this show is supposed to be an exit from the drudgery of the regular day. We're gonna talk about food, we're gonna talk about drink and stuff like that. Probably going to delve into food of the Midwest because I happen to have a guy here with me from the Midwest. - How's opportunistic? - There you go. - So, you know, a couple of weeks ago I came on and I talked about the sandwich from Iowa, the state sandwich, the, heck, I'm forgetting the name of all this. - Oh, Tenderloin? - No, the ground pork one. - The ground beef one. - The ground beef. - Oh, loose meat. - Loose meat sandwich. And I thought about it so hard I ended up making some and it is delicious. - It's loose meat. What do you mean by that? - It's just ground beef. - Oh, okay. - They just brown it. And then put it on a bun like a burger. They just don't bother to make a patty. - Kinda like a sloppy joe without them. - Yeah, without the sauce. - Yeah. - We used to have something called beer ox, B-I-E-R, I think it was C-R-O-C-K-S, something like that. But we had those in school and this was, you know, we all had your favorite day when we knew this was coming kind of day. What they were was simply a bun stuffed with hamburger, cabbage, all chopped, and onions. - Right. - And you just squirt, you know, some ketchup at it. Oh my gosh, oh, this thing's for good. But you know what, I found out is I got older. I don't know what was the magic ingredient or the spice, you know, what they did to make that meat so, man. - Googled it. - I have. - Oh, okay. - And I can't find anything called beer rock. - Oh, okay. - So that's what I'm trying to wonder, you know, kind of wondering is what was the actual name of that? When you said loose meat that can trigger that. - I wonder if it's like a B-E-I-R, like the German word for beer. - Well, yeah, it is German, it's German, but I don't know if I'm still in the rest of the way. - If you are German and know what that word means, by all means, give us a call at 251-3430106, which is the Kalahans Irish social club tax line. Oh, and now you just typed it in and found it instantly. - Yeah, ding. So yeah, B-I-E-R-O-C-K. Yeah, it looks pretty. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. beer rock is a great dough pastry pocket sandwich. - Oh. - It's a savory filling originating in Russia. - Okay. - So we now know what the Russian version of a meat pie is. - Yeah. - Yeah. - That would be a Midwest staple. - Every culture has meat pies of some sort, you know, even-- - Hot pockets. - Yeah, yeah, some form of hot pocket. Like in Asia, you could say an egg roll, but really it's more the pot stickers. And Italy is a calzone. - Right. - All through Latin America, you've got empanadas. In the UK, you're beef pie, what we now call chicken pot pie. - That derived, didn't it from, I just went blank on them with the, my favorite, go ahead. 'Cause I just went blank on it. It's-- - On the pot pie. - Well, it's a pot pie, but it's got potatoes, you know, like mashed potatoes, lamb, and I, for goodness sake, you know-- - Oh, that sounds delicious. - Oh, yeah, it's a-- - Now, I ran into one in the central Midwest, actually great like States, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan. - Upper Midwest. - Yeah, upper Midwest, thank you. It's called a pasty, a pasty. What pasty is very similar to a pierogi. The pierogi being essentially a ravioli, it's the same pasta that you'd use for ravioli with meat and potatoes inside. That is Polish. And Mike's ex-wife used to make great pierogies. Well, the pasty is very similar, but it's like ground beef, mashed potatoes, and some cheese mixed in. But it's essentially a ravioli. Also, ravioli, pretty much another meat pie. You won't really think about it, but pasta is just bread. - Right. - I mean, it's flour, water, oil. - Right. - Yeah, it's essentially a bread. It's just not a yeast bread. - Shepherd's pie, that was-- - Oh, yeah, Shepherd's pie, no. It's important to note that there's two versions. There's real Shepherd's pie. There's not contained ground beef. - No. - That's cottage pie, but in the US, we call it Shepherd's pie. - Right, exactly. They have actually, sometimes, stomach. In the original, in England, it was made from stomach muscle. - Oh, that's a tripe. - Tripe, thank you. - Yeah, yeah. Same thing that is the key element in Minuto, the famous hangover cure of Mexican cuisine, which is a soup. - But I didn't know that. - Yeah. It's-- - Yeah, it's-- - Isn't that interesting, 'cause what you're really trying to cure is your upset stomach. - Well, it's not a very spicy soup, and the tripe, if you've never had tripe, it's weird. It's not really meat. It's somewhere between fat and like cartilage. - Yeah, I don't do well with-- - It's not a texture I'm a fan of, but at the same time, it does contain nutrients and protein, and it is good for your body. - Is it the density? Is that-- - Is it weird? - It's simple, so it's just weird. - Yeah, yeah. - But just like every culture has some form of the meat pie, just about every state in the US has a signature sandwich, if not more than one. And I'm trying to put together a video series where I go state by state, and Alabama would be first alphabetically, and it's where I live, and I'm gonna go with-- If you do a Google search of this, most of the sites will say a pulled chicken sandwich with white barbecue sauce on it, which is something that people in South Alabama have never eaten, unless they went to North Alabama or got it since it's become trendy in the last few years. - I was gonna say, yeah, most of the white sauce is only bad. - But everyone in this state knows an oyster loaf, which now is often called an oyster po' boy. They are similar, but the original oyster loaf, you dug out the top of the bread to fit more oysters in it. So you might have 18 to 20 oysters in this sandwich. Just some shredded lettuce, tomatoes, may be tartar sauce or mayonnaise. - That's true. - And that's it. - And that's a whole sandwich. - Another whole sandwich. - Yeah. - Well, the po' boy has become more popular. It's easier to execute, it's easier to eat. It has more options than just oysters. - Feel more Louisiana, or Mississippi when I hear-- - Well, the po' boy originated in New Orleans. And but has spread across the Gulf Coast. Actually, the state that has is most identified with a shrimp po' boy is Mississippi. - Yeah, exactly. - And grilled, not fried. But the-- - I always said it was-- - Yeah, you get 'em both. But the grilled has like a butter garlic sauce that they toss it in after they grill it too. I've not actually had one. I lived in Mississippi three years and didn't get around to this, but that's where I had my first mofolada, which is what I'm going to call the sandwich of Louisiana. - Really? - Yeah. Because that's the only state that has it, whereas other states have no more. - And then they may have been more of an Italian bitch. - It comes from Italy, yeah. - Okay. - Yeah, I don't care what country it comes from in the state that it's in. That's where it is. And then Florida, Florida's the state where you gotta go with two. - Okay. - The kubano, the Cuban son. - That was so Florida. - But you get to Tampa, and it's about a grouper sandwich. And there's no definition. Any bread, grilled, fried, broiled, doesn't matter, grouper in bread, all over the Tampa area, the grouper sandwich. - Yeah, when I was living in Cocoa Beach, and in that area, we, I don't remember, that's a good question. I think it was more Atlantic based, because you had swordfish, occasionally. I mean, that was the extreme, but I don't know. - Right, it's been a while. Yeah, but the Tampa's on the Gulf Coast. - Sure, yeah. - Where the grouper is king, and they just love their grouper sandwich. But I would go with the kubano for the whole state, and Miami and Tampa are different on their kubanos. - What about the Alabama Florida part? - Oh, the Panhandle, yeah, they, whatever everybody else tells them to. They're sitting here going, "Why aren't we Alabama?" 2-5-1-3-4-3-0-1-0-6, is he? Callahan's Irish social club Texan called in line. - To get on the line, call 3-4-3-0-1-0-6. Now back to Mike and Stu. - Yeah, you are listening to "Cip-a-Choo" with Michaela Stu, and a few people we wanna think that make all of this possible. Wanna think the fine folks at Bob's downtown restaurant, corner of Fat and Happy, Tony, and the crew will always take good care of you, so go see them. Monday through Saturday, if you need lunch or dinner, go see the fun, find folks at Butch Cassidy's Cafe in the heart of the flow shell entertainment district. Roy Seer, good buddy in Mike and mine, and boy, he feeds his customers well. He really does. Don't forget those daily specials tomorrow. Red beans and rice, y'all. 'Cause this Monday, you gotta do that laundry. - You can get to it, I wanna talk about that. - Okay, I also wanna think, Hall's sausage and wholesale meat company, they're in lovely Chick-a-Saw and Iroquois Street, but you can get 'em at local grocery stores, you can find 'em at rouses and grears and select Walmart's. And if you don't see it, ask for it. And if they say something nasty to you, kick 'em in the shin. But if they don't say anything nasty to you, they say thank you and go about your business. - Wow, okay, you had something you were gonna do. - Some red beans and rice. I had never been from the Midwest, and you were talking about Midwest foods. I had never, you know, had red beans and rice. We were always roast beef, ham and beans. That was my dad's staple. He would sit at the table, and he would pick every bean out that did not fit was not right. He would literally, before cooking it. - Yes, yeah. - Well, keep in mind too, in the period that you're talking about, it was not uncommon to have rocks get mixed in with you. - Exactly, right, exactly right. - And they still advise you to do that, but the machines now, they use lasers and stuff like that that are really good in detecting the density and the difference in texture and extracting 'em, but it's still a good idea. - Yeah, I was what he would do is separate, then when I see he separates the rocks. Most people just assume. So it's interesting, Phil and I were talking earlier off the air about jargon, a certain area of jargon and business jargon, and that's one of those things when you just kind of imply that when you're separating beans, you're separating rocks from the beans. - Right. - Yeah, but okay, thank you for clarifying. Anyway, so I never had, we had chicken every weekend. We had a full chicken, dead, we'd eat half of it. I ate the rest, that was it. I couldn't do wings, couldn't do the rest. But those are the three main staples that I remember. We rarely did hamburger. We did SOS, Steve on a shingle. We had a chipped beef on toast, which is awesome. - Yeah, well yes, that was also, we did some chippy, but that was a little expensive for mom and dad. But considering the history, again, my dad was raised, he was 78 when he passed, that's been 30 years ago. You got to reflect back on what he went through in the '30s and the '20s and they were dirt poor. Dirty '30s in Kansas, there was nothing. So yeah, they ate what they could get. Soup was a rock. You know, some made people joke on the stone soup. - Yeah, it's true. But I never had red beans and rice in there. It was a place and I cannot remember now, it's no longer there, it was in fear hope at a split. And they did a thing every year with the red beans and rice. - That is probably Judge Roy beans. - That was it, Judge Roy beans, I knew you'd think of it. And they did a festival every year and I just moved to the coast. And I was in another station at that time and we did a big, fast, drawing people out from all that. Man, I had never had red beans and rice in my life and I'm gonna tell you what, dude, I was like, are you kidding me? I've, where have I been on my life? - Not on the Gulf Coast. - Well, that's true. I believe those red beans are indigenous or grow best in Louisiana, South Texas. So, you know, Pezak cuisine, which is anything we would eat. You know, hamburgers, Pezak cuisine, fried chicken. That's all classified as Pezak cuisine. What the mass is eat. - Right, what you can afford. - You know, Pezak cuisine, right, exactly, is whatever you have handy. So the red beans were handy, they made something with it. And the whole tradition of you eat red beans and rice on Monday comes from the days when laundry was an entire day. So you needed the beans to just cook and cook and cook while you were doing laundry, not anything that required your attention. I had never heard of that until about five or six years ago, because honestly, that's probably a World War II or pre-World War II thing. - Oh, really? - Yeah, I don't think that as far as that was actually when people did the laundry, by the 50s, you've got appliances coming into the home and everybody's got their own washer and dry. - You hang around on the line, yeah. - But, you know, there's a lot of these things that we were told in old tradition stuff and Bill Finch has brought it up before. There's no way prior to the 1950s that they were using celery in their gumbo or any of their other food in Louisiana because we didn't have grocery stores. And celery is a cold weather ingredient and they wouldn't have had access to it. - Interesting. - His theory being that the stems out of collards were what they used. The similar texture, they're both green, so they're gonna give you that bitterness from the chlorophyll. - You didn't even think of that. Yeah, I think it's the key what you're saying. You know, a couple of weeks ago, we're talking to you and Michael talking about rhubarb. You know, we had rhubarb out on the back porch. - Yeah. - And it was a staple when my mom made rhubarb pie and, you know, I came down here and I'm like, "Where's the rhubarb?" And I'm like, "What's that?" And so that kind of surprised me of that. Same thing with-- - Yeah, it does not handle the humidity or the heat in the Gulf Coast. My dad got two plants to grow for one year so that my mom could make some rhubarb. It was not as flavorful as it was. - Was she from the Midwest? - She was from Wyoming. - Oh, wow. - Yeah, and she grew up with both rhubarb and red currants growing in the backyard. - Wow. - So she had currants too. She also had, oh man, it's another bitter green. Shard grew wild where she was. She hated it. She goes, "Shard is so bitter that it makes little kids like spinach." - Yeah. (laughing) - And I hated spinach, so yeah. - But they had shard growing wild where they-- And they were sharecroppers in Wyoming. I don't know what crop they oversaw. I know that my uncle who still sharecrops in Oregon usually does soybean. - I was gonna say that that's-- - But they wouldn't have done soybean in 1930s. - No, no. - Yeah, they were doing whatever the people who own the farm wanted them to grow. - Wheat, milo, wheat. - Alfalfa is a lot out there. Because you're feeding the livestock without alfalfa. - Exactly. That's what milo was, was simply a feed. - Yeah. - And you're sitting with the milo to sweeten the alfalfa. - Yeah, but my parents met in Washington. My dad was stationed at an Air Force base that's no longer there. In fact, it was decommissioned like a few years after he got out after Korea. - Wow. - He volunteered to go to Korea and they sent him to Washington. And the only time he ever left the state was to go to Vancouver or to go to Tijuana. - It's like when I went into the Navy, they said, you're going to train in Orlando or the Upper Midwestern, the Great Lakes. And I was like, oh boy, I want to be in snow. No, I went to Orlando. - Yeah. - That was interesting. - Yeah. - From the Midwest boy. - At a pre-Disney world time, right? - Yes. - Sexual, well, Disney was there to Walt Disney. All it was, at that point, was the Magic Kingdom. - Yeah, okay. - Yeah, yeah. That was it. So I told you how old I am. - Well, we were talking during the break and you were talking about having lived in Florida and how vastly different the cultures are depending on the part of Florida that you're in. - Yeah. - Well, that was really the same everywhere. - Oh, even Alabama. - 'Cause if you hear something, right, exactly. People on the Gulf Coast don't sound like anything like people from Florence or Mussel Shoals. - Right. - That accent, once you get north of Montgomery, gets way twangier than it does down here on the Gulf Coast where we have ports and we had influence from people from other parts of the country and other parts of the world to change our accent. - Same with the point there is more. - Right, exactly. - Yeah, and that's what you're seeing now in more and more diversity and, you know, we had guests on the show talking about the Cuban and Hispanic influences coming through in the Asian, I mean, you've got a lot and that ebbs and flows. And one of the things, this is a more recent immigrant to our culture, but the Vietnamese and the Cambodians who fled during the war in the '70s, a lot of them ended up in Balabatry. And at first there was, they like us. - Right. - They don't look like us. They talk funny. - You eat from around here. - And then, you know, you get on a boat for six weeks out in the Gulf with a couple of Vietnamese dudes and you realize, man, they're two and twice the work anybody out here, and they're not complaining. These guys work. Now the Vietnamese community in Balabatry is, you know, every bit is beloved as the Redneck community, you know? And if you go to the blessing of the fleet in Balabatry, the first one I went to had all this great seafood to choose from, as you would expect. Then years later, I went back and it had two different sections, seafood on this side, Vietnamese food on that side. And there were contests for best Vietnamese food and best Cambodian food, and there were food trucks selling seafood and Vietnamese and Cambodian food. It's really interesting down there. - You made a comment not longer that you have an affinity for Asian food. - Oh, yeah. - So, yeah, I tend to tend to lean in that way. - Yeah, and people who don't understand the difference, think that everything they've seen on a Chinese buffet is the beginning in the innovation cuisine. - I know, first of all, most of that's not even from Asia. - No, it's very much. - It was created in San Francisco. - Yeah. (laughing) But it is drastically different. I started learning that in college. I dated a girl who's from Jakarta, Indonesia. - Oh, wow. - And so, I got to learn firsthand the differences in the culture, and she had emailed her mother, this is when email is new, for some traditional recipes, for me to prepare. And then Jane translated them from Indonesian into English so I could actually work with them. She and I went to an Asian market, we were cooking for a bunch of students. There's a bunch of us just gonna hang out, so I was gonna work through this menu. And we're at the Asian market and everything, and I said, "Ooh, wow, do we need to get chopsticks?" And she said, "For what?" And I said, "To eat with." She goes, "No, in Indonesia, we use this thing. "It's like a stick with a round in it." I think you guys call it a spoon. 2-5-1-3-4-3-0-1-0-6. It's a Callahan's Irish Social Club text line. - Wow. (upbeat music) - Mike Bailey, Stuart Red Donald, devoted to the complete gastronomic experience. ♪ I won a big butter and eggman ♪ - Mike and Stu on FM Talk 1065. - And we're back again with Cipichu with Mike and Stu. Mike is out today, he's battling a little bit of a head cold or sore throat or whatever it is. And you know, Mike is a big socialite. He's out there, he's shaking hands, he's kissing babies. He could be a politician, but he's too honest. - I'm about to say. - Yeah, but so he's feeling a little under the weather, and Steve and I are just sitting here randomly attacking various things in the food and beverage world. - Right. - He's eating random. Mid-west foods is what you started off with. - And then we ended on Indonesian soy sauce and-- - So far. - Yeah. - But getting back to the Midwest, everybody, when they either think of the Midwest, they're thinking of either Kansas City or McHugh or Midwest hot dogs or pizza. - Chicago, yeah. - Yeah, Chicago. So-- - And St. Louis also known for the ribs. - I didn't know that. - Yeah, well, St. Louis, our ribs. - I never thought, never even-- - Yeah. - Because everything was so hammered, and I'm from a little-- When you look at Kansas, it's a square state. - It's a single-- - One side to the other. - One side, pretty much. On the right-hand side, it's a little, like a broken-off piece. My joke is pretty much, that pretty much describes the whole people. There's square and a little off on the right. But the whole point of being out in the Midwest, almost Colorado is where I grew up in the Plains. - Right, and people don't think about it. Colorado has very diverse ecology. We think of the Rockies, but there's a desert in Colorado. - Yeah, yeah. And there are-- - Two different ones, yeah. - Ones when you start to head out toward Utah and Mexico. - Right. - And then one, when you start heading out to Kansas, 'cause right in that area, it's just flat. There's nothing, like you said. Till you get to about Selena, which is midway through about two hours from where I grew up, and you can see nothing. It's starting to be hilly. - Yeah. - And you get to Pika and Lawrence and Kansas City, and all that. Point of all that is, is we were steak and potato. - Right. - I mean, it was, you know, two-inch. My dad wouldn't, he would just kind of go, "Flop, flop, done." It's ready. - Yeah. - You know, for me, I have to have it all the way through. Well done, and I like it mid now. I like a little pink, but not much. - Let's circle back to that in a second, 'cause I have a tip for people that like them like that. - Okay. - Yeah, 'cause I still have a satisfying thing. - I like tender, but I don't want it mooing at me, I guess. - Yeah. - If I don't like a bleed, would you like to take care of? - Yeah, please. - Do it in the oven. Start it in a pan, on top of it, with water, or anything like that. - No, no. - Just like you were just gonna cook a steak medium rare. - Okay. - 'Cause that's what you're gonna do. You're gonna cook the steak medium rare, then you're gonna slide it into a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes. - That makes sense, 'cause now you get a convection all the way through. - Right, and it brings it up a little slower, and it's not going to be as tough that way. - That's always been the problem. - Yeah. - I couldn't deal with, you know, if I want to jerky-durn it, I'd buy some beef jerky. - Yeah. - You know, it depends on the cook. - And I've always heard people say, "I want it well done, not burnt." Well, that's the same thing. Well done is burnt. If there's nothing red left in it, it's burnt. - Right. - But, I understand there's well done, still juicy and well done, not juicy at all. And the way you achieve well done, still juicy is even slower and longer. Don't walk into a restaurant and expect them to get you an 18 inch ribeye, well done in 10 minutes. - No. - That takes an hour. - No, filet mignon. - To keep it juicy. - In which you said Victoria, or the Victoria family, I love. - Yeah. - But that has to be soaked as it were, I don't know. - Marinate it. - Marinate it, thank you. - Yeah. - Filet mignon is actually a recipe, not a cut of meat. It's the filet, of tenderloin is the steak you use. - Okay. - Mignon means it is wrapped with bacon, cooked to medium rare only. There's no cooking this to order. It's a recipe, it's supposed to be medium rare. And I think usually like a peppercorn sauce with it or something like that. It was a recipe filet mignon was. - I've got you. - Using the filet of tenderloin. - So that's another misused number that people go, "I need to filet mignon." And when they get it, they go, "What is this?" - Yeah. - "I thought I wanted a steak that's tender." So yeah, you, Victoria, filet, and a filet, I got you. - Yeah, and then there's the petite filet, which is really off the smaller end of the tenderloins, where you get, 'cause it's the muscle that runs straight down the back. - Yeah. - On top of your spine. - Right. - It's the least used muscle, but it has no fat on it. - So it's tender still. - And it's Angus. - Well, it's great, I'm sorry. - Well, most people don't know that there's a difference between black Angus, a red Angus, and the meat in them, just because of the temperament of the animal. - Right. - If you get a standard herford, as it were, which is where you get most of your hamburger. - Yeah. - And certified heriford is, every bit as good as certified Angus. - Black Angus. - However, if the cut, not necessarily, it depends on how you cut it. - Well, certified is, it's a brand. - Right. - And they have higher standards than typical cattle, like certified Angus beef is better than most of the other Angus out there, 'cause it's treated differently. - Right, and fed differently. - Right, right, it's a certified Angus beef is a brand. - Right, right. - My grandpa actually raised certified black Angus. - Yeah. - Don't ever get in a pen with one of those. It doesn't end well. (laughing) I can attest, I can tell you ivory bone that's been broken. But yeah, they're very temperamental, very territorial, but they are very tasty. I don't know who in the first person ever was a conqueror this, but God bless him. (laughing) It's all I can tell. But Midwest foods are, it's not just, you know, we think of stick to your ribs, like stick to your ribs. - Yeah. - And the reason for that was an agrarian society where they do a lot of farming, they needed the carbohydrates. - Right. - And they needed the protein. - Right. - And the nutrients, they were again, probably drinking orange juice at breakfast. (laughing) Probably had a salad now on the other, coleslaw. - It don't have acid reflux, yes. - Yeah. (laughing) - Because apple juice is always the odd thing to all out. - But you're still getting some fruit and vegetables. And there's also, you're talking about a period of time where we didn't know about as much about nutrition and the body's needs for it, so we do know. - Well, there we always wish for vegetables. Vegetables, vegetables. - Yeah. And that's because that's the most healthy thing you can eat. Your body still needs protein and needs animal protein. - Yeah. - I mean, there are certain compounds found in animal fats that are not found in legumes or any other form of non-animal protein that your body has to have. And if you don't have it, your body's gonna break down sooner. That's why a lot of times, people that-- - Are we talking vegetarian issues? - Right, more vegan, I mean, the no animal fat at all. - Yeah. - Vegetarians, they'll still put butter on their corn. - Right. - So they're good, they're getting that. And I think it's the medium chain fatty acids, but they're very important. They help keep your joint health together. They're good for your skin. They help keep you, and the other thing is-- - Collagen. - The protein that you're trying to feed is muscle protein. That's what your body is. - Right, right. - The best protein, the best protein to keep it going is meat protein, because you're feeding muscle to muscle. - That makes sense. - Yeah, if you don't get enough protein in your diet, your muscles will cannibalize themselves. Have you ever advised when someone who's who is dietary and they're trying to get their basic shape in exercise and food diet? Have you ever advised anyone on that or considered doing it? - I've helped people out. - Okay. - And stuff like that. I don't want to pretend to be a nutritionist, although I dealt with so many that I've picked up a lot of stuff like, one nutritionist said, if you want to make sure that your hydration is right, look at your pee. If it looks like lemonade from Chick-fil-A, you got it perfect. If it's clear in the mat, you're drinking too much water. - Exactly. - You need to get lost the word, all of a sudden. The thing you get that electrolytes. And if it's too dark, you need to drink more water. And what you're going for is Chick-fil-A lemonade. - Right. - You know, just a nice, light, yellow color. - Yep. - These things, I learned this in college, as much as it may be unsavory for people to discuss sometimes. Looking at your urine and looking at your fecal matter is incredibly important to your health. And to sidestep that because, oh, I'd rather not talk about that. That's not smart. - We're talking about moving your life to the best you can. So when it comes to fecal matter, I know it stinks to talk about how I get it stinks, but you want firm and you want floaters. That means you're getting enough fiber. If it sinks, you're not getting enough fiber or enough water. And, you know, if it's not firm, you get other stuff. - Yeah, too much, yeah, I had a-- - Ebola surgery, hernia surgery, for the phone. - Well, it didn't happen. 14, and the doctor then told me, he said, "This is gonna go one or two ways." He said, "You're getting two different drugs." And either way, you're probably going to have a problem. And sure enough, I became septic. And a lot of fun. - No, that's not fun. - No, you know, and it was just, I mean, every, it seemed like every minute, or every two minutes, I felt like I had to go. And it was just nothing but water. Well, the whole point of that is that there was nothing left. - Right. - You know, I couldn't eat enough, I couldn't drink enough, it didn't matter. But on the opposite side, I've always had the problem with constipation. - Yeah. - So, not enough water, or, you know, enough fiber. - Yeah, yeah. - And that's why I was kind of going back to the vegetables. - I mean, that's another thing that can cause it. And I learned that through all the stuff I was going through in the hospitals, where I learned a lot of this stuff about digestion. - Right. - And all of that was having to literally stare at it on my stomach for two years. - Wow. - So, you get working and have explained to me what's going on. - Right. - And blockages, or the other thing that can cause constipation, those are far more serious than you just not get enough water, or not enough fiber in your diet. - Yeah, if you twist something, or if you, you know, if you've got spasms, things like that. - If you're diverse, you have diverticulitis, which is just little holes in your intestines, seeds and stuff will get caught in them, get infected, and then the infection will start growing and then it will block your intestines. So, that's what you're diver, they're called diverse diseases. - Yeah. - And, but most common is diverticulitis, and I think the other one is diverticulosis, and I don't know what the differences are. - Well, I mean, after all, this is what food is all about. First place is to, you know, your overall health, what you eat, what you eat is what you are. - Right. - For the most part, if I'm a junk food guy, I mean, I can't expect to, you know, be walking around with the greatest skin color, and the greatest health, and I color. - That's where I think a lot of what we have on the market now, the frozen food and the salt. I have, my ears ring all the time. - Not the salt, the other preservatives. Salt's perfectly fine, in fact. - Yes. - We don't eat enough salt. Really, they were wrong. Nutritionists, they lumped all sodium together. Sodium chloride, NACL, good old table salt. We're fine with that. If you ever notice, when a woman gets pregnant, doctor tells her to eat more salt. It's 'cause we don't need enough of that. - All this electrolyte stuff, all electrolyte, it's our salt right here. 251-3430-106, the Callahan's Irish Social Club text lab. I'm gonna talk more about that. (upbeat music) - For more than a decade, - And I fold a wick sip and chew with Mike and Stu on FM Talk 1065. ♪ I don't smoke, I don't shoot smack ♪ ♪ But I gotta spicy monkey ♪ ♪ Ride it on my back ♪ ♪ Don't eat me ♪ - I like the salt, man. ♪ Shoulder and don't work ♪ - All right, folks, wanna thank a few people today. I'm gonna mix up the order a little bit. Mike gets locked into that one order. So I'm gonna start with whole sausage. And whole cell meets there on Iroquois Street. Ask for 'em at your local grocer. If your local grocer doesn't carry 'em, ask 'em to carry 'em. They refuse to carry 'em, find a new grocery store. To purchase your sausage from, anyway. - Yeah. - I also wanna thank the folks at Bob's downtown restaurant, the corner of Fat and Happy, Tony and the folks, I always do a fine job. If you hang out there enough, they'll name something after you on the menus. Ain't that right, Mike, anyway. And also, when I'm hanging out here, Butch Cassidy's Cafe, which got us off on the red beans and rice tangent earlier. So too, so you can have hamburger steak. There's you a Midwest one. - Ooh, yeah. - Hamburger steak, and I will tell you, Roy seasons his hamburger steak, unlike anybody I've ever seen you do. Most people, you cook a hamburger. - Right. - Maybe put onions in it. - Right. - Some people add bread to it. When you do that, you shouldn't call that hamburger steak. That is now Salisbury steak. It's not the same thing. But, adding breading to the hamburger is pretty much the only difference between Salisbury steak and hamburger steak. Got hamburger steak should just be hamburger. But Roy also puts peppers in his. - Really? - Tri-colored bell peppers. - Nice. - Yellow, green. - Red, yellow, green. - Yeah. - And, wow. - A good deal of cumin. - Really? - Makes it taste totally different. It is really good. So try the hamburger steak there. And Roy also makes his mashed potatoes from scratch. He's not opening a can, he's not adding water to flakes. And he does something with that. He takes his garlic for his mashed potatoes. He just throws the cloves whole in the water with the mashed potatoes while they're cooking. - Nice. - Problem solved. And then you just mix all of it up at the end. - Nice. - It is so good. - That does sound good. - Yeah. Roy does some fantastic, just good homestyle cooking there. - I'd love to get down there again very soon. - Oh, well, he got Monday through Saturday. - Monday through Saturday. - Yeah. - So that wanted to thank our sponsors. We got a text, and you want to read that? - Yeah, we were talking Midwest in Thomas, noted in Nebraska that they have a hot pocket for something called Runzus hamburger. Meet Cabby Chanyons, cook down, and they put it into a pastry. Kinda like we was talking about what the beer are. - Yeah. - And I pulled it out when he said that, 'cause you and I have both had been in Nebraska. And we know it's pretty much, it's just corn fields, three cities. - Corn. - And I was thinking about that just as morning, there's only three cities in Nebraska. You've got Omaha, which is over a million people, probably the size of Birmingham are a little larger. Then you've got Lincoln, which is about twice the size of Mobile, and then the other one's like Grand Prairie. - Yeah. - And then anything else is a town. - Yeah, pretty much. - And they're sparsely populated. And what Grand Prairie, Grandview, I could forget the name again. It's in the middle of the state. - It's the third one you don't remember, hasn't it? - Yeah. - It's really late too. - Yeah, so Omaha's in the east, Lincoln's in the east. Grandview, Grand Prairie, whatever it is, is in the middle. And from their west, there's nothing in Nebraska. Half the state is just corn. - Well, it's corn and wheat. - Yeah. - And steak. My gosh, the beef is so good in Nebraska. I spent a week in Lincoln, and every place I went. If I ordered steak, and I made a point of ordering steak a lot, very different versions, you know? I went to an Indian restaurant and got some of their beef preparations. I went to a Japanese restaurant and got a Japanese preparation. But it was all local beef. And it was just phenomenal. Applebee's had a great steak. I was working for them at the time. - Oh, okay. - Well, they wouldn't sell it to the customers, but they served it to us. They didn't want to spoil them with the good product. - Wow. - That was what I was told. They did not want to spoil their customers. - That was in Grand Prairie? - This was in Lincoln, Lincoln, yeah, okay. 'Cause ground, you were saying small, and everything else is small. Grand Prairie is actually a township. So it's still not super large. - But it's the third largest city in the state of New York. - Yeah. - And so Nebraska's different. But I'm looking at the runs, huh? - And what I would compare this to, which is another meat pie, or type thing, is a collacha. The dough on this sandwich that I'm looking at looks like the collacha dough, which is more of a doughnut dough. - Very thick, very nice. - It's a yeast doughnut dough, I do believe. So it rises when you bake it, probably brushed with egg white on top. But I would eat the heck out of this. - Yeah, I would, too. 'Cause it differs, though, it almost looks like a poll boy. - Yeah. - But everything's inside the room. I do a sandwich that I call Guido's torpedo. I used to run this as a special down on the island because the barbecue place I was at for a while had been an Italian restaurant. So they had a deep freeze still full of Italian ingredients. And so I would break 'em out every now and then work through 'em, and I would run this Guido's torpedo, and I would take the poll boy bread, cut one end off, you know, just the crust off. And then I hollow out the inside, okay? Grill the bread, just lightly toast it, and then stuff it with meatballs. - Ooh! - And then I put it on a plate, poured the sauce completely over everything. Parmesan cheese, and you ate it with a knife and fork. - No mozzarella? - No mozzarella, Parmesan. - Man. - That does sound good. - It was good, and it sold well, extremely well, but you just, you really didn't need the mozzarella because that bread is absorbing that tomato sauce the entire time, and you're getting a stringy texture already. - Yeah. - And a lot of what we do with cheese in America. - Just let 'em ask, yeah, what's the one American cheese? - Like people that love American cheese. Well, if you put American cheese on a burger and mayonnaise, you're basically putting mayonnaise on your burger twice. You're going for a texture, not a flavor. American doesn't have a strong flavor. Any cheese, when you melt it, loses a lot of its flavor, a good deal of its flavor. That's why if you're making mac and cheese, something like that, you wanna use sharp cheddar. 'Cause if you use mild cheddar, it's just gonna taste like you use milk. - Right, and the example that I like to give, which is not a knock, it's their stylish, church's fried chicken. Their mac and cheese has very little cheese flavor. - I've noticed that. - Simply because they're using mild cheddar instead of sharp. And when you melt cheese, it loses a flavor. When you melt American, it loses most of what little flavor it has. So you're essentially just looking at hot mayonnaise and cold mayonnaise. - Okay. - So it's a, and that's one of the things that we do as Americans that make us fatter. If you've got, you're essentially getting the same texture, the same mouth field and everything from melted American that you get from mayonnaise. So why do you need both? - Interesting. - Pick one. And I usually, and I'll tell you that my preference on most burgers, I don't want cheese or mayonnaise. Or bacon. It doesn't need it. I want the original burger, which was mustard, ketchup, pickle, and onions. And that's all that came on 'em. - That is so good. No tomato. - No, I don't mind those. I eat those because I need the health. - Well, from the health standards. - That's the vegetable part, right? - I need the salad. The whole point of a sandwich, and I wrote a book about this, an ebook that you can go download from Amazon called No Sides Needed. - Okay. - You should not be eating sides with a sandwich. The entire purpose of the sandwich is put the entire meal and in case it in bread. - That makes sense. - That's the whole point. So you don't need sides with sandwiches. But we sure love 'em. All right. A lot of people are like, I can't imagine eating a burger without fries. - Well, why do we? - I can't do it all the time. We need a bigger burger that way. - Why don't we get any chips? Why don't we have, it seems like that's an expectation. - And real quick, because I know we gotta wrap this up, I finally went and tried sassies in Hurley, Mississippi. They have two size burger patties. The small is an eight ounce patty. - Wow. - The large is 10 ounce. I, of course, got the 10 ounce. - Oh. - Yeah, I did a little video that will be on Sip and Chew about my trip to sassies next Friday. This coming up Friday. - Okay. - Mike had the latest off the Eaton Trail. - Okay. - Did it Friday, it dropped. I'm trying to remember where we were. - That's on Facebook and YouTube. - Yeah, it's on our YouTube channel, which is Sip and Chew Mike instead. - Right. - And then tomorrow's is another Ask the Chef. I forget which one it is. I make a bunch of these at a time and then schedule them out, so I don't remember which one is which. - You know how I exist. - But folks, we gotta get out of here. We gotta go out there and make sure these servers are earning these tips and these folks are tipping them. And we gotta make sure that everybody, probe alone. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)