Two Call-In Smorgasbords (Reheat)

We're revisiting two "Call-In Smorgasbord" episodes from 2011, which were all about settling scores, issuing opinions, and learning about your kitchen innovations. In part one, we tackle a debate between an engaged couple, both philosophers, who want help answering the existential question: "Is it soup?" Plus, a woman in California shares a novel way to reheat pizza.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

  As we turn to fall and the weather starts to cool down, I think of things like crunching leaves. I think of sharing from the sidelines of a soccer game, walking the dog in the woods. And when I think of doing all those things, I'm usually wearing something from LL Bean. Whether it's my puffer vest, my puffer coat, my scarf, whatever you're doing outside this year, you probably need something from LL Bean, whether it's their boots, their Scotch plaid flannel, their rugged field coat, or more. Grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, be an outsider. As someone who has been lucky enough to go to Napa Valley, I can tell you, it's everything people say it is. Beautiful scenery, quaint, beautiful towns, and phenomenal food and

• 0:44Dan Pashman?

  drink everywhere you go. I don't even know that much about wine, but I know that every glass of wine I had in Napa Valley was excellent. I mean, there's no bad glass of wine and no bad meal. Choose between hundreds of wineries, tasting rooms, and chef-led restaurants from a low-key lunch on a vineyard terrace to a full tasting menu paired by the winemaker. Plan your trip at visitnapavalley.com.

• 1:07Dan Pashman?

  Hey, everyone. Dan here, coming at you with another Sporkful reheat. And this is the last reheat of our month-long 15th anniversary celebration. We have been digging deep into the deep freezer for especially old episodes to celebrate this special month. But you know what? I've had a lot of fun re-listening to some of these old episodes. I gather from the feedback you've been getting that many of you have enjoyed it as well. So, you know, I think from time to time, we're going to keep doing it, keep going deep into the archives. Now, this week, I'm bringing you two of our early call-in shows. We've been taking calls in the Sporkful since the very early days. These both aired in 2011, and you really get the full, early Sporkful ethos in these. My co-host, Mark Garrison, at the time, and I debated with listeners over the smallest details of food and eating, especially the language of food and eating. A lot of semantic debates back then. I grew up listening to

• 1:52Dan Pashman?

  talk radio, sports talk radio, and like morning zoo radio, and I just always loved when they take calls. I love a great call segment. It's the old radio person in me. And so I've always loved our call-in shows, and I'm very excited to share two of our earliest ones with you this week. Now, as always, if there's an episode of the Sporkful that you want us to pull out of the deep freezer, send me an email at [email protected]. Tell me what episode we should reheat and why. Include your first name and where you are. All right, here's the first of two early call-in episodes we're sharing with you today. Enjoy.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  This is the Sporkful.

• 2:39Dan Pashman?

  This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashmanlaw with Mark Garrison.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Hey there, Dan.

• 2:45Dan Pashman?

  We're about to challenge your assumptions about consumption and drop a sporkful of knowledge on you because we're obsessively compulsive about eating more awesomely. And because if history has taught us anything, it's that the hosts of food shows need a lot of catchphrases. Mark Garrison, how are you, sir?

• 2:57Speaker 01

  I'm doing great, actually. I had a really great slice of pizza on the way over here. We are at a different place of recording, which is to say it's not your apartment or mine.

• 3:05Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  And there's a great pizzeria nearby, so I was stoked about that. All right, let's get into today's topic for mastication and rumination, which is call-in smorgasbord.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  We haven't done one of these in a while, and that's too bad because we have a lot of fun when we do this. We get lots of different queries and cool ideas, and sometimes we have some fun debates, sometimes settle some scores and things like that, pass judgment, and we usually learn a lot, too. We get some cool ideas about that. So, let's get into it. Hi, who's this?

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Hey, this is Jonathan.

• 3:36Dan Pashman?

  Where are you calling from, Jonathan?

• 3:37Speaker 02

  I'm calling from St. Andrews in Scotland.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Very cool.

• 3:40Dan Pashman?

  How'd you-- it doesn't sound like you have a Scottish brogue. How'd you end up over there in St. Andrews?

• 3:44Speaker 02

  I don't. I came from the United States. I came here for my work. I'm a philosopher, and I finished my degree and came over to work at the University of St. Andrews in the philosophy department.

• 3:54Dan Pashman?

  What's on your mind, man?

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Well, I'll tell you what. I've got a soup that I like to make, and I think it's very delicious. And that's not actually the issue, whether it's delicious. What's the issue is whether it's a soup.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  It matters if it's delicious, though. I'm sure it is.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Oh, it does, but that's not contested in this instance.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  I see, okay.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  So far, everyone I've offered the soup to has agreed that it's delicious. But they don't tend to agree that it's a soup, which I find fairly frustrating. So I was hoping you might be able to help me out.

• 4:17Dan Pashman?

  All right, describe this dish to us.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  So, it's made primarily of roast vegetables. So I take some carrots and parsnips and turnips and potatoes and onions and garlic and chop them up and roast them in the oven for a while. And then I'm gonna take about half of the chopped up roast vegetables and blend it together with some vegetable broth to make a sort of rich creamy thick kind of milkshake-like consistency.

• 4:44Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  And then I mix it with the rest of the chopped up vegetables. The result ends up being very gloopy because there's so much chopped up vegetables and the liquidity bit is so thick that it sticks to it. So people say, you know, I try to pour it out and it kind of clumps out a little bit and, you know, maybe you could eat it with a fork, but you're not really supposed to. It's best eaten with a spoon.

• 5:05Dan Pashman?

  It's possible to eat it with a fork, though?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Uh, if you're a little bit careful. I mean, you could get eighty percent of it very easily using a fork. In order to get ninety-nine percent, you'd need to be sort of scraping the bottom with the pieces of vegetable, you know what I mean?

• 5:16Dan Pashman?

  Are there any other facts we need to know? Make your full case to us about why you think that it is a soup.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  So my fiancee likes to complain that it can't be a soup because it's not a liquid. Now, this just can't be right. So, I mean, there's a sort of two-step argument that I think is important to keep in mind here. So, step one is, it starts with this obvious case of a liquid, this sort of creamy milkshake-like stuff. And that's about half the material, or more than half the material, because it's had the broth mixed in with it along with half the vegetables. So that's clearly a liquid. Step two is, you can add chunks to a soup and it's still gonna be a soup. It'll now just be a chunky soup. And that's all mine is.

• 5:54Dan Pashman?

  The obvious middle ground might be stew. People think of stew as being a thicker, a thicker, hardier soup. Do you have an objection to it being classified as stew?

• 6:05Speaker 02

  I do. I have a decisive one, unfortunately.

• 6:07Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  So, I mean, it does look a bit like a stew. I'm happy to grant that. The problem with classifying my dish as a stew is that nothing stews. Stews need to be prepared in a certain way.

• 6:17Dan Pashman?

  You've roasted the vegetables in the oven, is what you're saying?

• 6:19Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 6:20Dan Pashman?

  So they were not actually stewed? Okay, so...

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Does your fiancee have a kind of inflection point? Is it like a certain like level of viscosity when something becomes soup?

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Hmm. That is a good question.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  You might need to ask her that one. She's never communicated to me the point at which she thinks something stops being a soup.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  And she also is formally trained in philosophy, right?

• 6:43Speaker 02

  She's also a philosopher, yes.

• 6:44Dan Pashman?

  Can I just say, this is really a high point for the sporkful, I think, Mark. We have a real philosopher in Scotland, you know, at least a quarter of the way around the world, calling us to answer an existential question: Is it soup?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  It's a very important question.

• 7:04Dan Pashman?

  That just speaks to, you know, where we are in the world right now, Mark. We as the sporkful. You know, I think we've made some really tremendous strides that we can be very proud of.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Certainly.

• 7:13Dan Pashman?

  Now, I mean, Jonathan, while we have you on the phone, and you're a real philosopher, I mean, we should ask you, how do we even know that soup is?

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Oh. Well, soup is among the happier candidates for clear cases of existence. So some philosophers are worried about things that can't be sort of directly perceived. Soup happily, as it slides down the esophagus, creates all kinds of very direct sorts of sensations. So I think soup is a good candidate for direct perception.

• 7:41Dan Pashman?

  So you soup, therefore you are.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  I do, indeed.

• 7:44Dan Pashman?

  All right. Now, Jonathan, I have one strike against you here. I like the philosophical argument you just made, but I went ahead, you know, fortunately, when we have these discussions and debates about what different words mean and whether foods should be classified and defined by certain words, society does have a general repository where we list words and list their generally agreed-upon meanings. So I've gone ahead to dictionary.com, and the first definition for soup is "a liquid food." Made by boiling or simmering meat, fish, or vegetables with various added ingredients.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  I've got to tell you, that can't be right. I'm not going to dispute the liquid part, because I claim that my soup is a liquid.

• 8:28Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  But it can't be that it's an essential feature of soup, that it involved boiling and simmering and such. Because if I didn't put my chunks of roasted vegetables in, if I just pureed the whole lot, and it'd all be very creamy, nobody would ever doubt that it was a soup. That would be a clear, prototypical case of a soup.

• 8:44Dan Pashman?

  Well, here's the thing though-

• 8:45Speaker 02

  That just has to be too restrictive a definition.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  But, no, but also, I think that definition you had, Dan, read me the last piece of that. I think it was like with, there was a-

• 8:53Dan Pashman?

  With various added ingredients.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you could still fit into that definition with the added roasted vegetables.

• 9:01Dan Pashman?

  Now, this is a tough debate to fully settle without being able to see the soup ourselves. Jonathan, you've been kind enough to make a video of your soup. You put it on YouTube, you sent us the link. We're going to put that up on the blog, and we're going to let Sporkful listeners weigh in. You've heard what Jonathan has to say. You can go to the blog, which is linked off of sporkful.com. You can watch the video, and we want to hear what you guys think. But before Mark and I can fully weigh in, I think there's a person who obviously is missing from this conversation, and that's your fiance.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 9:33Dan Pashman?

  What's her name, Jonathan?

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Her name is Carrie.

• 9:35Dan Pashman?

  Carrie, all right. We have her number, we're going to give her a call, say goodbye to you, and get her on the line, and let her make her case for herself, and then Mark and I will issue a final judgment. Is that okay?

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Sounds good. Can I make one more point?

• 9:48Dan Pashman?

  Sure.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  If you're not going to call it a soup, I think you undertake an onus to find a plausible category of what it can be. This can't be a sort of stateless food. It needs some kind of category to be in. I think soup's the only candidate.

• 10:00Dan Pashman?

  That's an awfully rigid approach for a philosopher. I mean, maybe it just exists as it is, maybe it's its own thing. I mean, aren't categories just a construct, man?

• 10:08Speaker 02

  We do believe in such things, but it counts as a negative to call something super generous.

• 10:13Dan Pashman?

  All right, Jonathan, well, we really appreciate you taking the time to stay up a little late there in Scotland for this taping. We appreciate you sending us that video and your enthusiasm on this topic. We wish you the best of luck in Scotland. We're going to go get Carrie on the phone, and then we'll issue our final judgment.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  All right, thanks, guys.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  Hello?

• 10:38Dan Pashman?

  Hi, is this Carrie?

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Hi, yes it is.

• 10:40Dan Pashman?

  Hey Carrie, it's Dan and Mark from The Sporkful. How are you?

• 10:43Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm good. How are you doing?

• 10:44Dan Pashman?

  We're doing well, thank you. We were just talking to your fiance Jonathan up in, he's up in St Andrews in Scotland. Where are you?

• 10:50Speaker 03

  That's right, I'm Nottingham in England.

• 10:51Dan Pashman?

  Okay, so a little south of there. And Jonathan was bringing us up to date on what appears to be a long-running debate between you and him and others in your family and friend circle about whether or not this dish he makes is soup. And he's already described it to us, and we have the video up on the blog that listeners can go check out. But why don't you go ahead and make your case against the soup definition for this dish?

• 11:16Speaker 03

  Okay, I mean, there's not much that needs to be said here, really. I've had this dish now a few times, and you can eat it completely from a plate using a fork. And I think that's enough by itself. There is no soup that you can do that with. It's not liquid. So, I mean, it needs to be a liquid to be a soup. That's what a soup is. It's a kind of a liquid food.

• 11:39Dan Pashman?

  That's an interesting point that Jonathan did not say. You're saying that you could put this on a flat plate?

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 11:45Dan Pashman?

  And the food would not-

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Now, he actually serves it in a bowl, but you could serve it on a plate.

• 11:49Dan Pashman?

  And if you did, would any of the food run over the edges of the plate?

• 11:53Speaker 03

  No way, definitely not.

• 11:56Dan Pashman?

  That's pretty damning, Mark.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 11:58Dan Pashman?

  Now, what would you propose calling it, if not soup?

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, he brings this up. I don't know.

• 12:05Dan Pashman?

  He brought this up with us, too.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  There's no easy category, but, you know, he could make something up. I was suggesting a roast vegetable medley.

• 12:12Dan Pashman?

  So you think it's basically just roast vegetables with a pureed vegetable sauce?

• 12:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:18Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a good description, yeah. I like that.

• 12:21Dan Pashman?

  Well, you're right, Carrie. We did look up the definition of the word soup, and it begins by saying "a liquid food."

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 12:28Dan Pashman?

  Now, that, now I gotta look up "liquid."

• 12:34Dan Pashman?

  Because Jonathan, you know, Jonathan says there's some liquid in there. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't, but, but this definition- There's some liquid. Right, but, but the definition of soup does not say a food with some liquid. It says a liquid food. It's gotta be a liquid, right. Now, you guys sent in a video, which we're gonna post on the blog. I have to say, really, though, I think that the evidence, I'm gonna go ahead and issue a judgment here, Mark, and I'm curious to hear what you say, but this right here, the very first few frames, is really all that matters. Just the way that it glops off the spoon. It looks like a solid food to me. I'm gonna go ahead and say that this is not soup. Yay, alright. I think that seeing the video i- is helpful, but just hearing, to me, Mark, the, the piece of evidence

• 13:18Dan Pashman?

  that I found most decisive was that you could serve this dish, and I think Carrie's statement is confirmed by the video evidence. You could put this dish on a flat plate and it would not run over the edge. And I think therefore, you know, our definition that we're working with is, it starts with a liquid food. Now, if you put any food that we would all consider a liquid food on a flat surface, it should be messy. This is a food that you can put on a flat plate and eat almost entirely with a fork. And I think because of those two reasons, it is not soup. Mark, how do you feel?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  I'm actually going to agree, and the most compelling piece of evidence in, in the case was what, what drew you as well, that the fact that it could be served on a plate in its entirety and, and eaten with convenience without a spoon. I would still recommend a spoon, looking at that, it's still gonna get the spoon recommendation. But the spoon alone, that's not a sufficient condition for it to be considered soup, just because it's like, it's spoon-friendly. It's not spoon mandatory. But, I don't know that we've completed our mission, because we haven't really decided what category to put this in.

• 14:28Dan Pashman?

  I, I think that roast, roasted vegetables with a vegetable sauce.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  But it's not truly a sauce, because it's not, it's not prepared separately and then combined.

• 14:39Dan Pashman?

  Well, I think the way that you add the sauce doesn't make it a sauce or not a sauce. I think that you have a situation here where you're pureeing vegetables, then you're adding stock. Now, if I just said that to you, alright, I'm gonna take roasted vegetables, I'm gonna puree them until they're, until they're pureed, and I'm gonna add vegetable stock. I would say that the result of that is sauce.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  No, I don't think it's quite the same because like, let's say you're preparing a sauce by, you know, deglazing a pan. So you've cooked your meat, you took your meat out, then you're gonna add your, you know, your pork, or your sherry, or whatever, and you're gonna deglaze the pan, and then you're gonna have a sauce from that. But it's still being prepared separately, even though it has some, they share some certain components, but it's being prepared separately and then added to the main thing. So I think that makes it a sauce. I don't know that this is sauce here, but Carrie, since we're kind of like, you know, focusing on this, now that we've issued a judgment on, we have a majority ruling on not soup.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  That's all I care about.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  But then we're trying to figure out what we call it. Like, do we have, though, do we, does Dan's name hold up? Like, is there a sauce component to this?

• 15:40Speaker 03

  I'm not, I'm not so sure about this sauce thing. I mean, I have, I have, I share the reservations about calling that a sauce.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  I think, I'm happy, I think it just needs its own kind of name. I think Jonathan just needs to make up, maybe he needs some fancy French or German word for what this is. He's got, he's got to come up with a new name.

• 16:00Dan Pashman?

  I mean, you guys are philosophers. You can call it whatever you want. It doesn't matter.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  You can call it whatever you want, except for soup.

• 16:06Dan Pashman?

  Yeah. I mean, why don't you just call it chicken, in honor of Aristotle?

• 16:13Speaker 03

  It's about, it's about as good a name as soup, right? It's not a chicken either.

• 16:16Dan Pashman?

  Exactly, but neither is the sun.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 16:19Dan Pashman?

  So I think that's okay. I name this dish Chicken. That won't confuse anyone, will it?

• 16:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  No, no, that's fine, yeah.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  All right, so we're gonna, we're gonna put the video evidence up, because I know that there's some people that are going to side with Jonathan, so we want to get some good discussion about this up on the blog and such. Carrie, thank you so much, and thank you also to Jonathan. And even though you may disagree on this, you guys definitely have a good relationship going, and I predict successful marriage ahead.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  Thanks very much.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Sally. I'm from Oakland, California.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Hey Sally, thanks for calling. And tell us what's on your mind.

• 16:57Speaker 04

  Well, I have this new way I discovered of reheating pizza. And I thought I'd like to share it with you guys.

• 17:07Dan Pashman?

  We love to hear new food innovations. Go for it. Tell us about it.

• 17:10Speaker 04

  Everybody loves pizza, right?

• 17:12Dan Pashman?

  That's right.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  So, I have this leftover pizza in the foil. And normally, I would reheat it in a toaster oven on toast. But in order to kind of keep the soggyness out of the crust, or undo some soggyness, I take it off the foil. But then, you start heating it and the cheese starts dripping down into the bottom of your toaster oven. And if yours is like mine, little fires start and all that kind of stuff. Well, maybe yours is cleaner than mine. But anyway, so...

• 17:47Dan Pashman?

  It is not. Just a sort of thing.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  So you know those little fires?

• 17:52Dan Pashman?

  Yes, all too well. I'm on cheese drip patrol constantly. Mrs. Sporkful is much neater than I am. So she's always like, you know, she will sacrifice the crispiness for the sake of sanitation and keeping the toaster not on fire.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 18:07Dan Pashman?

  But I'm, you know, down the torpedoes. I want my pizza crusty if I have to burn the house down. We have insurance insurance.

• 18:13Speaker 04

  Well, maybe Mrs. Sporkful will like this tip.

• 18:16Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, let's hear it.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  So, okay, so I took a non-stick pan. And I started heating it just a little bit. Then I put my pizza in. I just let it go and kept checking it like every minute or so. And it got a little crispy crusty on the bottom. And then, my cheese wasn't melting as fast as I wanted it to. So I put a lid on it at that point. And so the reflected heat from the lid went back and heated the cheese. And then the cheese started oozing over the side and even created a little extra cheese crispiness around the edges.

• 18:58Dan Pashman?

  A lot of people value that. A lot of people value that cheese crispiness. I mean, and actually, I'm sorry Sally, but I should also mention that we just did our latest Gastrolab video for Slate, all about grilled cheese sandwiches, but focusing on how to get more burnt cheese into your grilled cheese sandwich. And that was quite an adventure. That video almost burnt my cousin's apartment down, and it was very exciting. So, so check that out if you haven't already. Of course, it'll be on the blog, Facebook, Twitter. Go to sporkful.com to find all those places and check out the latest Gastrolab video.

• 19:31Speaker 04

  Is it including flaming cheese?

• 19:33Dan Pashman?

  Uh, there are some near explosions in this video.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Not in like the Greek sense where we're, you know, pouring uzo and lighting in a fire like that. These were more, yeah, so there was certainly some use of hot grease and...

• 19:48Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, this was more like, Mark, you dial 91 while I do this.

• 19:53Speaker 04

  Well, anyway, I have to say that that reheated pizza was even better than, you know, when you're at the restaurant and you're getting down there to the last piece and...

• 20:05Dan Pashman?

  It's not as hot.

• 20:06Speaker 04

  It can be soggy a little bit, depending on your toppings.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Grease, yeah, if you have a pepperoni, certainly.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, or mushroom. Sometimes mushrooms get soggy. But anyway, it was excellent.

• 20:16Dan Pashman?

  Now, my first question for you Sally is, did you put any oil or butter in the pan, or did you put the pizza in dry?

• 20:21Speaker 04

  Totally dry.

• 20:22Dan Pashman?

  This sounds very promising to me, Mark, because I usually do go the toaster method, Sally, and the toaster I have right now is crappy for everything except reheating pizza, pretty much, because it reheats unevenly. And so it toasts on the bottom more than on the top.

• 20:37Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 20:38Dan Pashman?

  So that's actually good for pizza, because it will crisp the bottom without overmelting the cheese on the top and starting a fire.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  Uh huh, yeah.

• 20:45Dan Pashman?

  But that's just my dumb luck, and I understand that most people don't have that. Fortune or misfortune, depending on what you're trying to toast.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  I think there's a lot of good there. Now, for me, though, I don't have, I've never had access to the toaster oven in my own home on a consistent basis, so I'm often...

• 21:01Speaker 04

  Well, so how do you do it?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Actually, if I have pizza...

• 21:05Speaker 04

  You eat it cold.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Sometimes. I say cold pizza is a special, like, different genre of food that can actually be very good, but it's not, it's not, cold pizza's not a substitute for reheated pizza, and obviously, it's certainly not a substitute for pizza that's...

• 21:18Speaker 04

  But it is quicker.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  It is quicker. Sometimes, sometimes if I, if I give myself a little bit of planning, I can do it just like a regular kind of oven thing.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  Well, okay, but if you've got the stove, the pan, and seven minutes, you're good. On my way.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  I agree, I'm convinced. I'm sold.

• 21:35Dan Pashman?

  All right, well, Sally, we thank you so much for your experimentation, and we thank you for calling up and sharing it with, with us and all the Sporkful listeners around the world.

• 21:42Speaker 04

  Okay, well, thank you. It's been fun.

• 21:46Dan Pashman?

  Coming up after the break, another call-in episode from 2011. In this one, we'll dive into another linguistic question, but this time about cereal and milk. Stick around.

• 21:56Speaker 05

  It's time to open up a can of advertisements.

• 22:04Dan Pashman?

  When you're cooking, ingredients matter, right? You use higher-quality ingredients, you usually get better results. And if you're listening to this show, you're probably the kind of person who puts some thought and effort into your ingredients. But ingredients don't just matter with food, they also matter with laundry detergent. Of course, the cleaning job needs to get done, the odors and stains have to be tackled, and I want to feel good about the detergent and the ingredients in it. Because remember, whatever's in your laundry detergent is essentially in your clothes, and then you're putting those clothes on, you want good stuff in there. And All Free Clear uses only essential ingredients. It's 100% free from dyes, perfumes, parabens, and irritating residues. Check out the label and see for yourself, it lists all the ingredients and what they do. We've been using it in my house, we're very happy with it, and let me tell you, family

• 22:46Dan Pashman?

  of four, two teenagers, we do a lot of laundry, so we have put All Free Clear to the test. It's a powerful clean that you can feel good about. All Free Clear is the number-one detergent brand recommended by dermatologists for sensitive skin. When it comes to laundry detergent, the choice is clear: All Free Clear. Pick up a bottle for your next laundry day.

• 23:06Dan Pashman?

  You put a lot of love into the things you send during the holidays. It's baked with love, carefully packed with love, or shipped with love right from home. Because what you're sending isn't just what's inside the box. It's the time, thought, and care you put into it. And this holiday season, the United States Postal Service is delivering your love to more addresses in America than anyone else. So send it with love. Send it with USPS. The United States Postal Service. Learn more at USPS.com/holiday. As we turn to fall and the weather starts to cool down, I think of things like crunching leaves. I think of sharing from the sidelines of a soccer game, walking the dog in the woods. And when I think of doing all those things, I'm usually wearing something from LL Bean. Whether it's my puffer vest, my puffer coat, my scarf, whatever you're doing outside this

• 23:51Dan Pashman?

  year, you probably need something from LL Bean. Whether it's their boots, their Scotch plaid flannel, their rugged field coat, or more. Grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit LLBean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, be an outsider. Start the day strong with Quaker Protein Products. Quaker makes it easy and delicious to get a good source of protein. No matter what the day has in store, Quaker Protein Products give you a variety of ways to reach your protein goals. Oatmeal, granola, bars, and rice snacks in flavors you already love like maple and brown sugar, and blueberries and cream. Quaker Protein helps fuel you to start whatever's next. Get your protein with Quaker. Available at a store near you.

• 24:41Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back for another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman, and I have a very big, exciting announcement for you. This past November, I took a group of Sporkful fans and some others on a special trip across Italy to eat pasta, to retrace many of the steps I took on my own research trip for my cookbook, and we had so much fun and ate so, so well. We ate spaghetti alla sasina in Bari. We took a cooking class with Silvestro Silva Stori in Lecce. We ate with Katie Parla in Rome. And the folks at Culinary Backstreets who organized the tour, they added some stops that I didn't even know about, that were new to me, that were incredibly delicious and also fascinating. Point is, it was so great, we're doing it again this November. We just opened up spots. It's a small group, so space is limited. Bottom line, come eat pasta with me in Italy.

• 25:25Dan Pashman?

  For all the details, go to culinarybackstreets.com/sporkful.

• 25:31Dan Pashman?

  Now, back to this week's reheat. This second half is another one of our early call-in smorgasbord episodes. Enjoy. Mark Garrison, how are you doing?

• 25:41Speaker 01

  I'm doing pretty good. I had some vegetable content before I came over here. I have to go out of town in a few days, so I've basically, you know, have, when you do that, you have that mission of making sure you leave kind of nothing perishable behind in the fridge. So today was a double lettuce sandwich on toast.

• 25:57Dan Pashman?

  Double lettuce, wow. That's pretty bold. You didn't want to go triple lettuce?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  No, triple lettuce, it might not last through the week, because you want to, you want to use it all.

• 26:05Dan Pashman?

  You're rationing the lettuce.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Yes, you want to, ideally, you have that like last perishable item is consumed right before you go to the airport, so that's what I'm working on.

• 26:14Dan Pashman?

  That's true, although I'd rather err on the side of consuming the food a little early than having to throw something out.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, but then you got to kind of budget for some takeout or something else like that.

• 26:25Dan Pashman?

  It's not ideal, I'm just saying err on the side if you're going to, if you're going to mess it up. You can't go hungry. You're eating lettuce sandwiches here, Mark. This is a sad state of affairs, sorry.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  It's not the only thing I'm eating, but I just had to like earmark that for consumption.

• 26:36Dan Pashman?

  Let's go ahead, Mark, and jump into today's topic for mastication and rumination, which is call-in smorgasbord.

• 26:46Dan Pashman?

  Let's go to the phones. Who do we have on the line now?

• 26:48Speaker 06

  Hi, this is Jeff calling from Kelowna, B.C., Canada.

• 26:51Dan Pashman?

  All right, Jeff, what's on your mind?

• 26:53Speaker 06

  Well, me and my family have been having this debate about milk. And we all know that when you drink milk out of a cup, it's a beverage. But when you pour that milk over cereal, does that make it a sauce? Or a broth? Or is it still just a beverage? I personally think that it's a sauce, but my sister's insistent that it's still a beverage no matter what.

• 27:13Dan Pashman?

  And what's your argument? Why do you think it's a sauce?

• 27:17Speaker 06

  Well, first I'll say why it's not a beverage. It's not a beverage because you eat it with a spoon, and I can't name very many beverages that you eat with a spoon. So that's why I think it has to be a sauce. It's applied to the cereal, it makes the cereal good, just like when you apply ketchup to fries to make them awesome. That's my argument for it, at least.

• 27:35Dan Pashman?

  And how old's your sister?

• 27:36Speaker 06

  She's 17.

• 27:37Dan Pashman?

  And how old are you?

• 27:38Speaker 06

  I'm 19.

• 27:39Dan Pashman?

  So is this possible that you just have a younger sister who's giving you a hard time? She's just trying to start arguments with you?

• 27:44Speaker 06

  Exactly, yeah.

• 27:45Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, typical, yeah.

• 27:49Dan Pashman?

  Is your sister there? Is she home with you right now?

• 27:51Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 27:51Dan Pashman?

  Do you think, could you put her on the phone?

• 27:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, sure, just a sec.

• 27:54Dan Pashman?

  All right.

• 27:56Speaker 07

  Hello.

• 27:56Dan Pashman?

  Hi, what's your name?

• 27:58Speaker 07

  Salassi.

• 27:59Dan Pashman?

  Salassi?

• 27:59Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 28:00Dan Pashman?

  Hi, how are you? This is Dan and Mark. How you doing?

• 28:02Speaker 07

  Good, how are you?

• 28:03Dan Pashman?

  Good, good. So, your brother Jeff told us about this debate you guys are having over the breakfast table. You say that milk is a beverage even when it is poured over cereal.

• 28:13Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 28:14Dan Pashman?

  Why do you think that is?

• 28:16Speaker 07

  Because you can drink it after, and there's a lot more milk than there's cereal.

• 28:21Dan Pashman?

  But here's my question for you, Salassi. You're saying that it's a beverage because you can drink it after you've consumed the cereal.

• 28:29Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 28:30Dan Pashman?

  What do you call it when you're eating the cereal and the milk in the same bites? Is that still a beverage you're consuming with a food together in a spoon?

• 28:40Speaker 07

  It really is, because milk is just a beverage. No matter what you add it to, it will still be the drink milk.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  So, is cereal a beverage? Cereal with milk, is that a beverage?

• 28:50Speaker 07

  No. Cereal is a different thing itself than the milk.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  I... No, no, but the combined entity of cereal and milk in a bowl, is that a beverage?

• 29:02Speaker 07

  You have to chew it, so it wouldn't be much of a beverage.

• 29:05Dan Pashman?

  But when you pour the milk on the cereal, and you're having your breakfast, if I were to come, if I were to knock on your door and say, "Hey, Salassi, what's for breakfast? What are you having for breakfast?", what would you say to me?

• 29:16Speaker 07

  Cereal.

• 29:18Dan Pashman?

  Okay. Okay. That is a piece of evidence that I want to hang on to here for just a moment, all right? Now, you said a minute ago that milk is a beverage no matter what you do with it.

• 29:28Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 29:29Dan Pashman?

  What about if you use milk in, let's say, in the preparation of a dessert? In ice cream? Or in a cake of some kind? Is it still a beverage then?

• 29:44Speaker 07

  Well, no, because you're mixing it together to create a totally different experience.

• 29:50Dan Pashman?

  Exactly!

• 29:51Speaker 07

  And ice cream is solid. But whereas the milk is still liquid in cereal.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Because in the cereal, the milk does not change state.

• 29:59Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 30:00Dan Pashman?

  I see. All right. There's some validity to that.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  I think that's cool. I think I'm fine with that.

• 30:05Dan Pashman?

  Let us have Jeff back on the line.

• 30:06Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 30:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm back.

• 30:09Dan Pashman?

  All right, Jeff, your sister, you know, she's a tough cookie there for a 17-year-old. She's a real food philosopher. Mark, where are you leaning here on this debate? Do you have any more questions for Jeff, or are you ready to rule?

• 30:20Speaker 01

  I think I'm ready to rule.

• 30:22Dan Pashman?

  Okay, what do you want to say?

• 30:25Speaker 01

  You're both wrong.

• 30:26Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  In thoughtful ways, respectable ways. But the thing is, the milk in this case, in any of these cases we've talked about, except for drinking milk in a glass, or maybe, maybe, I'm not really going to concede this yet, but possibly when you drink the milk out of the bowl after the cereal pieces are gone. But in all these cases, milk is just an ingredient.

• 30:48Dan Pashman?

  Yes.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  That enables the cereal to become milked.

• 30:53Dan Pashman?

  It enables the cereal to become the cereal that we know and love.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:57Dan Pashman?

  And that's, Mark, you picked the exactly right word, and that's exactly where I was going to go as well. In the case of cereal, and most other instances, milk is an ingredient. It is neither a beverage nor a sauce.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  And I would also say, I'm going to go a little further than that, to say that after you've eaten all the pieces, the entity, milk-based entity that's left in the bowl, is not a beverage, even though it could be poured into a glass and consumed as such, because it is a component, a leftover component, of what it made together with the dry cereal. And so that's like almost another thing that was created from that. But again, it was all made with the ingredients of milk and cereal. What I want to know, Jeff, is what makes a sauce a sauce? Because you kind of compared the milk and the cereal as a sauce because it's kind of like ketchup, like putting ketchup on fries.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  And I think those are two different scenarios because the fries don't, ideally, I mean, hopefully you're not putting this much ketchup on, and the ketchup's not that thin watery, but the fries don't swim in the ketchup. They're not submerged in the ketchup in the way that cereal is and can be. It doesn't float in that. So, and I'm not sure what the answer is, but tell me how, what makes a sauce?

• 32:14Speaker 06

  I think maybe the rules you're applying to sauce are a bit too strict. I'm thinking a sauce could be like any liquid that you apply to a pre-existing food, like cereal is a pre, you can eat cereal on its own. Any liquid that you can apply to a pre-existing food to make it better.

• 32:31Dan Pashman?

  I just think that if you go with Jeff's definition of a sauce, then all liquid ingredients become sauces. And that's problematic.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  But in Jeff's scenario, I believe, as he was saying, that they are finishing strokes. It's put on a prepared dish.

• 32:49Speaker 06

  Right, that's what sets milk apart as a sauce. Because you could...

• 32:54Speaker 01

  You're still hanging with this milk as a sauce. Alright, alright, I'll allow it.

• 32:56Dan Pashman?

  I mean, it's not a bad case, Jeff. I give you credit. It is persuasive. I just feel like, I think what this comes down to, at its essence, is whether dried cereal and cereal with milk are two distinctly different foods. If cereal with milk is a distinctly different food from plain cereal that you eat out of the box with your hand and no milk, then I think it's an ingredient. Because it's essential. An ingredient is something that, without that, like, the food isn't the food without the set of ingredients that comprise that food.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  It's a different dish, yeah. It's a different dish without that.

• 33:36Dan Pashman?

  Right. A sauce is really something that's optional. You might think it's so much better with the sauce, but I'm like, you can have pasta with tomato sauce or without tomato sauce. You can make pasta plain. It's still, you're still eating pasta. But the default manner of eating cereal is with milk. And for that reason, I just, I hold very strongly to the notion that milk is an inherent part of the equation here. I know you can eat cereal without milk, but very few people do it. I think most of the time people eat cereal without milk, they're doing it because they're just kind of on the go and they want to shove a handful of food down their throat. They don't like say, "Oh, I'm hungry for breakfast. I'm gonna sit down and eat a bowl of cereal with nothing." People just don't do that very often.

• 34:20Dan Pashman?

  So because of that, I think that the milk is an essential ingredient.

• 34:25Speaker 06

  I think that's a pretty good point. I'd say that's a fair argument.

• 34:29Dan Pashman?

  And I'll give you one more point. If you look at the nutrition facts on a box of cereal, they will always list the nutrition facts for the cereal without milk and with milk. How many calories, how much fat, whatever, once a quarter cup or half cup or cup or whatever it is of milk has been combined with the serving size. Now, if you look at the, at the box of pasta, when you look at the nutrition facts, they don't say with sauce. The milk is so closely tied to the cereal that they, they factor it in on the nutrition facts, and you know, they don't want to have to add in any more calories onto those labels than they have to, because they're trying to sell you on the fact that this food's going to be healthy. So, but, but it's so much assumed that they put it on the, on the label.

• 35:10Dan Pashman?

  And I think that's another piece of evidence that the milk is an ingredient in the bowl of cereal whole.

• 35:16Speaker 06

  Okay, well, I'll keep that in mind next time I have my bowl of Mini Wheats.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  And you had a two cereal morning, right? Is that, is that correct?

• 35:24Speaker 06

  I did.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  It's very impressive.

• 35:26Speaker 06

  Bowl of cereal.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Were you, did you eat them concurrently or consecutively? Was this like a mix? Like, what was going on here?

• 35:30Speaker 06

  Oh, no. I, it was the, I started off with the Life cereal, finished the bowl, consumed the milk out of the bowl, and then, and then had a secondary bowl of Mini Wheats. I didn't want to mix the flavor of the Life and the Mini Wheats. I didn't know, that's kind of, uh, it's kind of untreaded ground. I didn't know if that would be good or not.

• 35:47Dan Pashman?

  One of the issues with combining cereals is you don't want a cereal that's going to, um, turn soggy very quickly combined with a cereal that is going to stay hard for a long time.

• 35:55Speaker 06

  You gotta have the right surface area to volume ratios, right?

• 35:58Dan Pashman?

  Jeff, you sound like you've been listening to a highly intelligent and evolved podcast for quite some time, my friend.

• 36:03Speaker 06

  Funny enough, funny enough, I'm actually, I'm a biology major.

• 36:07Dan Pashman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:08Speaker 06

  And for, on the, uh, on exams, if you don't know the answer to a question, if you put surface area to volume ratio on the answer, you have a pretty good chance of getting it right. That's kind of our go-to.

• 36:17Dan Pashman?

  Well, Jeff, that's probably why I bring that up so often, because it's the only thing I remember from biology class. Well, Jeff, we want to thank you so much for your call. Thank your sister for us. Uh, you guys are doing a great job up there in B.C. of, uh, thinking about food and having fun with food, and, uh, keep up the good work.

• 36:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, thanks.

• 36:41Speaker 08

  Hi, this is Robbie calling from San Francisco.

• 36:43Dan Pashman?

  All right, Robbie, what's on your mind?

• 36:44Speaker 08

  Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about mac and cheese, which is, I'm sure, a topic that you're going to get to eventually. There's lots you can say about cheese choice, or pasta shape, or all that.

• 36:54Dan Pashman?

  Plenty.

• 36:54Speaker 08

  But I wanted to talk specifically about the practice of baking mac and cheese. I find that baked mac and cheese is really an abomination of the art form that is mac and cheese. You put on those weird breadcrumbs, you put it in the oven, and then it just gets dried out. It turns into some gelatinous cube. This maybe betrays my humble beginnings. But my ideal mac and cheese, I suppose, is that box mac and cheese. It's the blue box, right? Which, of course, you don't bake at all. You just get this gooey, cheesy, creamy mess. The problem with baked mac and cheese is it just dries out. And when you put the breadcrumbs on top, it's dry on top of dry, and it's no good for anybody.

• 37:39Dan Pashman?

  Because some people, like, really value the kind of crunchy corners and some certain quadrants you get when you bake the mac and cheese that way. But you place no value on that. You want a consistent texture across, and you want a soft texture.

• 37:52Speaker 08

  That's correct. In some foods, I would be happy, I'm happy to have changing textures and different sort of varieties of flavors. But in mac and cheese, I'm totally willing to dispense with those crusty bits and those corner pieces entirely. I think a good mac and cheese is pretty uniform, and the quality of the texture you get from a really al dente pasta. Hopefully, if the pasta is cooked correctly, you don't need those crunchy bits on the corners.

• 38:20Dan Pashman?

  Now, you're right, Robbie, that we're going to do a show, at least one show down the road, in which we'll get into mac and cheese in much more detail. You happen to be talking to somebody who served mac and cheese at his wedding. And so I take mac and cheese very seriously. But I have to disagree...

• 38:34Speaker 08

  As you should.

• 38:34Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, I should, and I do, and we all should. But I have to disagree with you on this issue. You're right that baked alone dries out. But I think you are wrong to dismiss out of hand the breadcrumb topping and the joyous and magical addition that it can bring when used correctly.

• 38:53Speaker 08

  What do you get from those breadcrumbs? Why do you need those?

• 38:57Dan Pashman?

  Well, they add a light crisp. And the best mac and cheese I have had was made in a pan, put into a shallow dish, and then covered with breadcrumbs and placed it in the oven for just a few minutes to brown and crisp the breadcrumbs. And those breadcrumbs soak up some of that sauce. They add a whole other textural element. They fuse with the sauce very nicely. You still get the sauciness from a good pan-cooked mac and cheese. It doesn't dry out because it's only been in the oven for a couple of minutes. But the breadcrumbs add a tremendous, tremendous

• 39:36Dan Pashman?

  special level of flavor and crunch and texture that is indispensable.

• 39:43Speaker 08

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're going to argue that the breadcrumbs are going to add flavor as well? I can maybe go with you on texture, but flavor?

• 39:51Dan Pashman?

  Well, breadcrumbs have flavor, don't they?

• 39:53Speaker 08

  Well, all the flavor that you should ever need in a good mac and cheese comes from the cheese itself. That's the whole point of the dish.

• 39:58Dan Pashman?

  Well, but I'm not talking about a thick layer of breadcrumbs. They are primarily there for texture. But they do add a little bit of extra buttery flavor. It's nice that you get a few bites that have that crispy, buttery breadcrumb-ness added to the mac and cheese. Then you have other bites that are just pure mac and cheese.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  I'll step in here. I'm going to say I'm also against Dan on the breadcrumbs question. I'm not fully against them, like they should never appear there. But I often find that they are not, you know, they're not adding enough to justify their presence. And I feel like that they are not a solid detriment. I won't deny that they do have good aspects to them. But I generally think they're kind of overused and overrated. I don't, however, though, think that, you know, a pan combined macaroni and cheese is automatically superior to one that's been baked. Because I think there are good baked ones and there are bad baked ones. And I think the bad baked ones are the ones where they usually just kind of, you know, put what would normally go into it and just kind of throw it in a pan and, you know, spread some cheese sauce over it and stick it in there and forget it.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  But I think when you do that, if you actually like take the time to like to make a roux and combine that in there and actually bake it there where... You give it a motivation to be baked. So I think you can have a very excellent baked mac and cheese. And you can have an excellent, you know, mac and cheese made in the pan. But I do agree with you, Robbie, that the breadcrumbs are kind of overrated.

• 41:19Speaker 08

  I'm glad I've got you with me on that point.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  If you're gonna go, if you're also, if you're gonna go like for things that can add crunch, like I just feel like there's other, you know, more intriguing choices that are out there.

• 41:28Dan Pashman?

  You're gonna say nuts, aren't you?

• 41:30Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'm gonna do nuts here.

• 41:33Speaker 08

  Nuts and mac and cheese, that's bold.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know, though.

• 41:36Dan Pashman?

  I thought that was a classic garrison. Oh, I don't like crunch, just throw in some nuts. Hazel nuts. I agree with you that fully baked is a part, but I think that the combo approach is superior than the two polar extremes.

• 41:48Speaker 08

  I suppose one of the things that I like about a mac and cheese that is not baked is when you, you get that, the sort of cheese goo leftover in the bowl. And sometimes if the cheese goo to macaroni proportion is too heavy, then you get a pretty substantial amount of sauce leftover. When you bake it, you don't get any of that. It just sort of bakes onto the pan or into the pasta or goes somewhere. It just doesn't seem to exist anymore. But there's something special about getting to the end of mac and cheese and still having just a little bit of that sauce left.

• 42:18Dan Pashman?

  Robbie, I agree with what you're saying about the leftover sauce, but in my combo approach, mac and cheese, you still get that. You gotta try it.

• 42:26Speaker 08

  So it's baked, it's baked so, so little that there's even some of that redness of the sauce leftover.

• 42:32Dan Pashman?

  That's right. I mean, we're talking five minutes.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  It can be done.

• 42:35Dan Pashman?

  Five, you could probably, you'd probably even just broil it, because all you're really trying to do is-

• 42:38Speaker 08

  Yeah, a real quick broil.

• 42:39Dan Pashman?

  Brown the top to get some breadcrumb crispiness on top without drying it out. That is the money approach for mac and cheese, I think.

• 42:46Speaker 08

  I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical, but I think it's worth a try.

• 42:50Dan Pashman?

  All right. Well, I appreciate your open mind in this, Robbie, and thanks so much for the call.

• 42:54Speaker 08

  Thank you so much.

• 42:59Speaker 09

  Hey, it's Eric, calling from Vancouver, Canada. I wanted to talk to you guys about the rate that people eat at, like, the speed they eat at. If, uh, I like to think that people eat too fast and that people should slow down when they're eating.

• 43:12Dan Pashman?

  Okay. What got you thinking about this?

• 43:15Speaker 09

  Uh, I'm in university right now. We're taking a course and, uh, we pretty much can launch into any project. And after listening to many months of Spotify, I thought like, why not have a food-related project? So, one of the issues I wanted to tackle was, uh, when people eat too quickly, they don't really get the full flavor of the food. They don't really get to enjoy it, favor every innuances of the flavor in the food. So, I thought I'd try to figure out how this, I could do something about this problem and maybe try to help people, convince some people that slow down when they're eating.

• 43:44Dan Pashman?

  Is this an engineering class, psychology class, a design class? Like, what, uh...

• 43:49Speaker 09

  Yeah. Well, I'm approaching this from a design point of view and we're hoping to have maybe some kind of eating experience where people come into it and then get them to slow down the way to eat, maybe through utensils or through some kind of, um, I don't know, maybe we'll use some kind of manipulation based on like, uh, something to do with the way the food is arranged.

• 44:10Dan Pashman?

  Give us the one or two best, you know, sort of specific, concrete ideas you have so far for your project that you think could work.

• 44:17Speaker 09

  Right now, the best idea we have is that we have something going on that, uh, we went to a food tasting kind of event, kind of thing where, um, one of our professors knows a chocolate maker in Switzerland and they sent over a package of chocolates to try out and wanted us to rate each of them. And we realized that when you really, when someone asks you to, you're kind of like, oh, tell me what flavor this is, you really stop and think about it, like, oh, it's kind of floral, it's got a sweet, you got that honey taste in there, or it's dark, it's got a coffee aftertaste or something like that. And that really slows us down. Um, the other big picture thought we had about this is try to really emphasize on the

• 44:57Speaker 09

  senses because we can eat food mostly through, uh, taste, but there's also sight, like, the way we visually see the food, uh, the sound of food. Like, I know you guys really like the crunch when you bite into things.

• 45:10Dan Pashman?

  Especially Dan.

• 45:11Speaker 09

  Yeah. Yeah, so mostly, I read a study where like, I can't remember where it was from, but the potato chip, if you, it's the same bag, they give you potato chips, but they amplify the crunch of it, you feel it's fresher.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  And what I am glad to hear is that you did not choose the idea, which a lot of restaurants have chosen, not to get you to slow down, but to get you to spend more money without knowing it and saying that you should do small plates. That's one of the big, common scams in the restaurants that became very popular in the past like 10 years or so, and it's just kind of a bill amplifier. I mean, in theory, you would get to try more things, but the portions are so small that often you have to get a bunch of them to spread them around the table, and so, so I'm glad you're not choosing that method.

• 45:51Dan Pashman?

  I think that a lot of it has to do with how hungry you are and being at the right level of hunger.

• 45:58Speaker 09

  That's true.

• 45:59Dan Pashman?

  Because, of course, you want to be hungry for a meal, because you're going to enjoy it more than if you're not that hungry. But if you come to a meal starving, if you're really, really hungry, that's when I find that I tend to eat too fast and forget to really enjoy the meal. When you're right in that sweet spot of hunger, you're hungry, you're ready to eat, but you're not dying of hunger. That's when you can have a little bit of patience. When is this assignment due, Eric?

• 46:24Speaker 09

  It's due in April, and then we'll be having a showcase for it and everything.

• 46:29Dan Pashman?

  It's due in April. So, but, so essentially, I just want to make it clear to everyone, what you're doing here by calling us is asking us to do your homework for you, is that right?

• 46:38Speaker 09

  No, no, no, we have our ideas, but we'll probably get a outside source and see what happens.

• 46:44Dan Pashman?

  You're calling us in as consultants on the project.

• 46:46Speaker 09

  Consultants, that's a good word.

• 46:48Dan Pashman?

  Okay, fair enough. So, I think that it might be interesting, I agree with what Mark said about the small plates, not only because of the cost, like I've done a few times where you do this, like a tasting menu type thing, where you get like six or eight or 10 courses, and each one is really tiny.

• 47:04Speaker 09

  Yep.

• 47:05Dan Pashman?

  And that's just torture. Basically, each course puts a slight dent in your hunger, and then that dent goes back to full hunger before the next course comes. And so, the meal ends and you're still hungry, or only half-full.

• 47:15Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 47:16Dan Pashman?

  I would like you to also try, put the plate down, let them see it, let them take one or two bites, and then take the plate away.

• 47:24Speaker 09

  Okay.

• 47:26Dan Pashman?

  Then you're allowing the person, forcing the person to reflect upon what they just ate. Then give them the plate back. Don't take it away for too long. You don't want to tease them and you don't want them, you don't want to have them wait 20 minutes and they're back to being starving again.

• 47:40Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 47:40Dan Pashman?

  You want them to take a couple of bites to stave off that initial bit of hunger so they're not starving.

• 47:45Speaker 09

  Yep.

• 47:46Dan Pashman?

  So give them two or three good bites. Then take the plate away for just like one minute. And give them that time to stop and think, what did I just eat? Boy, I'd like to have some more. And by forcing them to kind of revisit those first few bites, when they get that second chance at it, they're going to pay attention to the things that they were thinking about while the food was not in front of them.

• 48:09Speaker 09

  Hmm, that's interesting.

• 48:12Dan Pashman?

  That's my theory at least, based on no science whatsoever.

• 48:14Speaker 09

  That's fine.

• 48:16Dan Pashman?

  But I also, you know, there is a danger here, Eric, that we need to be aware of. When consuming food in great quantity is part of your goal, eating too slowly is a problem. Because you might make the mistake of realizing that you're full.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  I'll throw something else out. What if different people are served different dishes? What I'd like to see is if you kind of do, kind of bring like the telephone game into it, where, you know, someone has a food and then describes it to another person. Then that person would then be at the table that has that food and then would describe it to the next person. And what it would be interesting to find out is like, what's the thing that was to be in common with what the first person described it as?

• 48:56Speaker 09

  Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Yeah, I kind of like that, because it gets people talking to each other and the social part. Because when you eat alone, you try to eat faster. When you eat with other people, you kind of slow down because there's conversation, there's this and that shit going on.

• 49:11Dan Pashman?

  Eric, best of luck with the project. We want you to send us a full report on how the project ended up and what grade you got. And if we're not satisfied with the grade, then Mark and I are going to get your professor on the phone.

• 49:21Speaker 09

  All right.

• 49:22Dan Pashman?

  And we're going to give him what for.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  We'll find out, yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 09

  That sounds great. Thanks, guys.

• 49:25Dan Pashman?

  Thanks so much. Take care up there in Canada.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Good luck with your studies. Thanks again.

• 49:29Speaker 09

  Thanks. Bye.

• 49:32Dan Pashman?

  The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern. And senior producer. Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is. Jared O'Connell. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive producers are Nora Ritchie and Colin Anderson. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 50:19Speaker 10

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