Pod Insights The Sporkful The Last Meal Roy Wood Jr. Made For His Father About this episode Roy Wood Jr. has long used humor to discuss topical issues and get at deeper truths. As a correspondent for The Daily Show, and now as the host of Have I Got News For You on CNN, he brings his own unique sensibility to political comedy. In his new memoir, The Man Of Many Fathers, he goes deep on his complicated relationship with his father, and the role food played in crucial moments of his childhood.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:08 Dan Pashman? This episode contains explicit language.
1:12 Speaker 01 Arby's Steak Nuggets? Not gonna try them.
1:14 Dan Pashman? No, you're not gonna try them?
1:15 Speaker 01 Steak isn't something you just eat loose like dice.
1:20 Dan Pashman? It's funny, there's a psychological thing, because in theory, why should it be so different from chicken nuggets? But it feels different.
1:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like beef fingers. We used to have those. I don't know if you went to public school, but in Alab- in Birmingham Public Schools, beef fingers were a staple.
1:38 Dan Pashman? Really?
1:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, breaded chicken finger.
1:41 Dan Pashman? Chicken fingers with beef. Well, you have chicken fried steak.
1:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, but that's shaped different, and it makes sense. When you cut it into strips, psychologically, your mind says chicken.
1:51 Dan Pashman? Yeah, that's right.
1:52 Speaker 01 And like, beef finger, like, that sounds weird. Chicken fried steak, mmm. Same gravy to dip it in, too.
1:59 Dan Pashman? The weird thing is that neither chickens nor cows have fingers.
2:02 Speaker 01 No.
2:06 Speaker 01 I'm going to Raising Canes after this.
2:11 Dan Pashman? This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. I've been a fan of Roy Wood Jr.'s comedy for years. I've been to his stand-up shows, and I always loved watching him on The Daily Show. These days, he's hosting Have I Got News For You, a comedy and current events show on CNN. Roy has long used humor to discuss topical issues and to get at deeper truths. Here's a clip from his most recent stand-up special, Lonely Flowers.
2:41 Speaker 01 But we had to know it was coming. You had to know the malicious was coming. You knew it was coming. It's America. What we do in America, you have progress, then you have backlash. That's the cycle of this country. Progress, then backlash. You knew the malicious was coming. Just look at the last four, five years. You can't have the first black woman vice president, the first black woman Supreme Court justice, and the first black woman mermaid. It was too much. And they couldn't handle it. That mermaid, that's the one that broke them. That damn mermaid. When they get that little mermaid remake, it was like, oh, no!
3:21 Dan Pashman? Back in 2019, I had Roy on The Sporkful for the first time. We talked about his various jobs in food service and his strategy for getting extra sauce packets at McDonald's. We also touched on his relationship with his father. Now, that relationship is a focal point of his new memoir. We'll get to that. But as I was reminded when Roy joined me again in the studio recently, he's a person with many strong opinions about food.
3:43 Speaker 01 I am a guy that lives in a pocket that I hope never changes. When places close or take things off the menu, my world is devastated. I don't know how to replace this spot.
3:57 Dan Pashman? Like, what's something that you lost recently?
4:00 Speaker 01 I'll tell you one that hurts the most.
4:04 Speaker 01 Early 2000s, TGI Fridays had the Oreo Madness Ice Cream Sundae. Two large Oreo cookies, ice cream sandwich with Oreo cookie as the sandwich base. They took it away. And then it came back years later and they put it back on the menu and I go back and order it again. And it's not the same.
4:24 Dan Pashman? What was different?
4:25 Speaker 01 It's no longer one big Oreo. It's crumbled up Oreos compressed to make the Oreo cookie bread part of the thing.
4:35 Dan Pashman? Of the sandwich.
4:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, and for whatever reason, whole Oreo crispier than multiple crushed Oreos. So it's softer, so it doesn't have the same snap in the bite. The freshness of the cookie is compromised because you have crumbled it. So more air can permeate through the entire thing and now it's soft and it sucks. And little stuff like that will just devastate my life.
5:02 Dan Pashman? So if you, if you want the giant chocolate cookie, like a giant version of that chocolate cookie that Oreo is made with. Yeah, I don't know where you get that.
5:09 Speaker 01 I do not know. I do not know, but TGI Fridays knows. Call that person back because this, this new cartel you're buying your drugs from stepped on.
5:20 Dan Pashman? And they have released so many different variations of Oreos in the last year. So many different flavors of fillings. There's a Selena Gomez Oreo. If you go to like H Mart, there's all kind of different Asian inspired flavors of Oreos that they don't even have in America.
5:33 Speaker 01 And I did that as a joke once at the Daily Show. I went to, um, was it Thailand? I did a bunch of US, I did some shows for the troops. Man, I came back to work. We had like the Daily Show, they have like a little snack area with cookies and little, you know, just nicknames. Just you graze and nibble whatever's on the table today. And I laid out wasabi flavored Oreos and hot wing flavored Oreos. And when I left work, they were still there. Four cookies removed from each bag and even those were halved.
6:17 Dan Pashman? As I said, Roy has a new memoir out called The Man of Many Fathers. It's about his complicated relationship with his own father and how he thinks about that now that he has a son of his own. A lot of the most powerful scenes in the book involve mealtime. Roy was born in New York. His parents separated when he was one. Roy and his mother moved to Memphis. He writes that when he was young, the meal he remembers most with his mom was breakfast. They ate together most mornings, but it wasn't around a table. Breakfast was eaten in the car, specifically in his mom's 1975 Old Mobile Cutlass Supreme. Like a lot of cars from that era, there was no center console between the two front seats. It was just one large bench in the front with room for three. So Roy would use the extra space between him and his mother to fix breakfast on the way to school.
7:02 Speaker 01 My mom whipping the wheel and I'm either working a biscuit. Like if we did something at the house, usually it's hot dogs. Hot dogs were the quickest and most convenient thing to prepare in the morning and I would have hot dog and fruit. And I know that sounds weird, but in my mom's brain, I think it was meat, bread. Same as a sausage biscuit.
7:25 Dan Pashman? Right.
7:25 Speaker 01 And then you'd have an orange or apple juice.
7:29 Dan Pashman? But it wasn't all just handheld foods like hot dogs for breakfast. These car meals sometimes involved plates and cutlery.
7:36 Speaker 01 There's certain stuff that you think you can't eat while you drive, but the secret is prep. And so you do the Eggo waffles, you butter and syrup them up. And my mom usually do three waffles. I do two and you put five waffles on a plate, prep them, chop them up real good, transfer it to a paper plate, two forks. I am the center console. And keep in mind, we're violating probably every child seatbelt law, like every motor vehicle. You're too young to be up front. Hey, me and mom's gotta eat, bro.
8:12 Speaker 01 Sorry, I'd load the fork and she periodically reached for the fork while she's driving, never take her eyes off the road. And that was the system. Same game with hot dogs. And, you know, I was always like her little helper.
8:25 Dan Pashman? Roy was a latchkey kid, making his own dinner many nights. He and friends also snuck into neighbors' yards to pull fruit off trees, which sometimes got them in trouble. In the summer, he would stay with his grandmother in Clarksdale, Mississippi. But the summer after third grade, when his mom picked him up from his grandma's house, everything changed.
8:42 Speaker 01 We leave Clarksdale to head back to what I thought was back to Memphis, same as always. Wrong, straight to Birmingham. And I'm looking at, like, I'm literally looking out the window and I'm not seeing my usual landmarks. Where are we going? Yeah.
9:03 Speaker 01 We'll stay with your daddy. We'll move in with your daddy.
9:07 Speaker 01 What?
9:08 Dan Pashman? Roy's mom had decided to move them from Memphis to Birmingham to live with Roy's father, all without telling Roy beforehand.
9:15 Speaker 01 The whole time, I'm thinking my toys are still in Memphis. And I was just, the riot there, I was just furious. I was crying. I was just... Third grade, I was inconsolable, man. Like, everything you've known is just ripped away from you. She stops for gas and she comes back out with a hot dog.
9:34 Dan Pashman? Two hot dogs, actually, wrapped up. As Roy's mom pulled out of the gas station, she asked him to unwrap hers and give it to her with a few napkins, the same way he used to hand her breakfast when they were on the way to school.
9:45 Speaker 01 And, and just for a minute, I was like, all right, I'll stop crying. So, I don't know, I just still kind of reinforced, like, yeah, I'm pissed at you. But yes, of course, I'll still give you a hot dog with a napkin and still be the teammate. Like, we're still a team, but... Yeah, I didn't, I didn't like that. I didn't like that one bit.
10:05 Dan Pashman? In the summer of 1986, Roy and his mother moved in with his father. Technically, Roy's parents were still married, even though they'd been living in different cities for years. Roy's father was much older. He was 63 when Roy was born. He was a highly respected journalist who worked his whole career in radio news.
10:22 Speaker 01 He was as relevant a journalist as any journalist that you can name today. Most of the stations my pops worked at, he was the first black hire. At pretty much all of these spots and they thought he was white, but his voice was just so booming. They're like, ah, we gotta hire him. It's too good. It's too good. We'll just take the hit in the ratings. Hire the black guy. Just don't let him do any station events.
10:49 Dan Pashman? Here's Roy Wood Senior speaking in 1994, describing a job interview he once had that was supposed to happen over breakfast.
10:56 Speaker 02 When I knocked on the door, he says, come in. The door is open and Mr. Dean must have changed three colors of red quicker than you can say hello, Mr. Dean. And he says, I'm sorry. I had no idea that you were a Negro. And I said, well, Mr. Dean Negro or not, you and I had a breakfast engagement and I'm hungry.
11:19 Speaker 01 And so, you know, over the decades, my dad built a reputation with the black community as being a journalist who covered a lot of black issues and conflict and using his show as a pulpit for so many different public figures, national public figures of that time to come on his various shows. You know, he was embedded in the riots in Soweto in South Africa. He was in Zimbabwe during their civil war, like legitimate war zones, Vietnam, like you name it.
11:53 Dan Pashman? As, as well as some of the major hotspots during the civil rights era.
11:56 Speaker 01 All of the.
11:57 Dan Pashman? He was, he was at everything.
11:58 Speaker 01 All of them. Detroit, especially the sixties. And so he goes to Chicago and he co-founded something called the National Black Network and NBN was first of its kind in that it was a collective of black news reporters doing stories that would be syndicated back out to black news stations across the country, informing black people nationally about issues relevant to, to the black community. So his voice was in pretty much every black household, you know, in those days. Like for whatever you believe Lester Holt or Brian Gumbel to be like, whatever esteemed picture of journalism you think, you know, he was that.
12:40 Dan Pashman? So in the mid eighties, when Roy moved to Birmingham as a third grader, he saw his dad not just as his father, but as a public figure.
12:48 Speaker 01 People could recognize his voice before they even turned around. And so, yeah, he had a lot of respect. He was highly respected in the community and anywhere we went, you know.
13:00 Speaker 01 I mean, the only thing my pops paid for was gas and maybe groceries.
13:05 Dan Pashman? Or was he like personally?
13:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean personally, a little absent, you know, like my pops had, I have two younger half brothers. So my pops spent a lot, he had a second family. So half the time, my dad was at the house. He was over at their house and to be honest, it was weird moving to Birmingham because I still didn't see him as much. My parents were still married, even though my pops had the second family. And so there's a little bit of tension with that. And so, you know, him and my mom, it was never anything that became like a domestic dispute by definition, but it was not a good relationship. You can have this person that everybody loves, but even if he's nice to me, you're not nice to my mom.
13:52 Speaker 01 So it creates this weird energy between me and him.
13:59 Speaker 01 My parents had a bit of an understanding. You also have to remember, my mom was very headstrong, was a very strong woman. And I think that she had made peace with the fact that this was a marriage that wasn't going to work. But being a single mom in Memphis versus me moving to Birmingham, I could stay in a separate room. My son has a father to body slam him when he starts, you know, becoming a little mouthy, which I was, I was starting to become a handful for my mom to handle on her own. So I think she looked at the arrangement as a way to continue her education, grad school, law school, which she did,
14:42 Speaker 01 and use that as a leverage to have the money that she needs to finally leave this situation.
14:51 Dan Pashman? Roy's father had children with other women before he met Roy's mother. And then he also had the second family while married to Roy's mother. Roy senior spent a lot of time with his second family. So Roy's parents lived separate lives, sleeping in separate bedrooms, not seeing each other all that much. Except for Sundays. They spent Sunday breakfast together and Roy's father always read the paper showing Roy all the different sections and commenting on the news. Sometimes Roy's parents would debate different news topics. His mom was in law school and would push back against his dad's opinions. Roy writes in his memoir, quote, "They were intellectuals who made each other better. But I think that's what also drove my father crazy. The silly lies he told other women simply did not work on my mother." While this new book is the first time Roy's talked openly about his parents in such detail,
15:36 Dan Pashman? his relationship with his father did come up the last time he and I talked. I have a clip I want to play for you. This is from 2019, the first time you joined me here on the Sporkful.
15:45 Speaker 01 Okay.
15:47 Dan Pashman? We were talking about your dad and food and a few different things. I asked you if your dad ever cooked for you. And you said, no, he didn't. And then you went on to say this.
15:58 Speaker 01 My dad's thing was groceries. You know, my dad, he's the one who taught me about doing the math on half gallons versus gallons of milk and figuring out what's the better value. You know, I learned a lot of those strategies from my father. But then my father also, um, damn, I never thought about that. My father also, if he was, if he was on some asshole shit for, you know, a week or two or a month or two, when he finally came back to the house, like there'd be days my dad just wouldn't come home. He'd be wherever. And when he came back to the house, that first day back in the house,
16:38 Speaker 01 it was a trunk full of groceries from Piggly Wiggly and it had all of my favorite food snacks. Trunk was filled to the brim with just junk food and that made everything okay. Like, like, you know, in that moment, I didn't, I didn't get that it was emotional bribery.
17:00 Speaker 01 Those bribes with food to forget what had happened.
17:06 Speaker 01 That was cool. He was the coolest person that, yeah, daddy brother, root beer, yeah. And then you get older, you go, wait a minute.
17:13 Dan Pashman? Right.
17:14 Speaker 01 Motherfucker, you was, that was a bribe.
17:19 Speaker 01 So what's real after that?
17:20 Dan Pashman? Right.
17:20 Speaker 01 What's real on some trust shit?
17:24 Speaker 01 Who's real? So now, as a forty year old father, I know that if I do something with my child and I feel bad about what happened, I will never bribe him. I'll never bribe my way back into his heart.
17:42 Dan Pashman? I always remember that moment from our conversation because part of what I appreciated about it was it, it felt like you were kind of having this realization in the moment as we were talking. And now you have this book out and it seems like a lot of what you were processing in that moment is also what you're trying to process in this book.
18:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. Already had those conflicts swirling because my son had been born three years prior. Like with my son, I would just apologize like, hey, I'm sorry. Here's where I messed up. What can I do next time? Like do a legitimate debriefing. Now, it takes a couple of days to get to the root of all of that, you know, in terms of what a tough conversation is, but yeah, yeah, I definitely, um, that definitely, that clip was definitely a moment of discovery, like in real time.
18:34 Dan Pashman? I mean, you talk about sort of the emotional bribery of food in that moment, but like, what was the larger thing that you were starting to understand as you were thinking all that through?
18:44 Speaker 01 How that relationship affected me and how can I identify how it affected me negatively to make sure that I don't corrode or pollute the relationship with my son based on stuff that I haven't thought through or dealt with or have a fuller understanding of. I think that a lot of us as adults are still dealing with some damage and whether or not you want to deal with that, fine. But then because you haven't dealt with your own shit, now you're polluting the relationship with your child in a lot of cases unknowingly. And I didn't want that.
19:29 Dan Pashman? Coming up, Roy talks about how he was finally able to get close to his father, and he tells me about the one meal he made his dad that he can't stop thinking about. Stick around.
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22:26 Dan Pashman? Welcome back to The Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman. Last week on the show, Colorado-style pizza. What's that? You've never heard of it? Well, you're not alone. Denver reporter Paul Carole spent six years trying to uncover the story of how Colorado-style pizza was invented and why more people don't know about it. We hear the tale of his quest and try to answer the biggest question of all. Does this pizza even qualify as its own regional style? Alongside New York Slices, Chicago Deep Dish, and the rest? In our episode, Paul goes looking for answers.
22:58 Speaker 05 Can you tell me the origin story of Colorado-style pizza?
23:03 Speaker 05 The origin story of Colorado-style pizza? All right. This is going to be hard with the microphone this close because I have to lay back and get in a really comfortable position to start thinking about that. I'll give you the real story, not the happy story, okay?
23:18 Dan Pashman? This is an epic episode full of twists and turns. It's so much fun. Don't miss it. It's up now. All right, back to Roy Wood Jr., whose new memoir is The Man of Many Fathers. In the winter of 1994, when Roy turned 16, he got his driver's license. And with that license came a change in his relationship with his father. Roy desperately wanted to drive his father's prized Lincoln Continental and spent months begging him to drive it just once. Then, to Roy's shock, his father said yes. Roy would later realize this was because his father wasn't well, was sometimes too tired to drive himself. So he let Roy drive him around on errands. He went to the grocery store, the pawn shop, or to his father's speaking engagements.
24:01 Speaker 01 We felt close. I felt close. The only time I felt close to him was in the car. It's the only time I had his undivided attention.
24:10 Speaker 01 In the house, you have two TVs going. He's constantly consuming media. My dad was a media. He would have loved these times to just have a news feed in your phone and just swipe, swipe and notifications and five streaming channels and picture and picture. He'd have lost his mind. And then when we were outside of the car, people wanted to talk and he liked talking. But in the car, I got your ass. Sometimes we didn't talk about nothing, but it was just being there, just being in that space.
24:44 Dan Pashman? Roy writes that at one point, he asked to change shifts at his job at a hospital cafeteria. So he'd be free to drive his dad more often, but he never told his father he did that.
24:52 Speaker 01 In hindsight, yeah, I just wanted to be around my dad, but I didn't know how to like verbalize that. It's just, this is a thing I would rather do. So let me pick up second shift instead of first shift.
25:05 Dan Pashman? Right.
25:06 Speaker 01 And that just became the way it went. I would drive him to the radio station. Sometimes I would go inside and listen. Other times I'd stay in the car, play my Game Boy. Sometimes I would just drive around the corner, some corner store, get a bunch of candy and then just sit in the car, just gorge on myself on Laffy Taffys.
25:24 Dan Pashman? Roy and his dad didn't sit down for meals on these trips. They usually picked up fast food or snacks. But Roy senior was particular. He always wanted to stop at Hardee's.
25:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, Hardee's, that was his spot. Hardee's and Fifth Avenue bars, those were his two things.
25:39 Dan Pashman? Those are classic.
25:40 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I, and I found Fifth Avenue to be such an eclectic, it's just a butterfinger that went to grad school.
25:51 Speaker 01 It's really all a Fifth Avenue is. It's all eclectic and classy.
25:55 Dan Pashman? It's all, it is funny that candy bars back then had this very fancy, even like, you know,
26:00 Speaker 01 Fifth Avenue, literally.
26:01 Dan Pashman? There's also like a hundred grand or a hundred grand bar.
26:04 Speaker 01 Yes.
26:05 Dan Pashman? Even like, you know, the peanut guy had his top hat and his cane. A lot of the early branding made it sound like these candies were so high class.
26:12 Speaker 01 This is aristocratic candy. It's like, oh, it's not for me then. I want some Snickers.
26:20 Dan Pashman? On these car rides for the first time in Roy's life, his father was speaking to him like a man. These rides with his dad had a big impact on Roy, but they didn't last long. Within a few months, Roy learned that his father had prostate cancer. He'd been diagnosed years ago, and it had returned. That summer, something happened that really changed their relationship. Roy Senior discovered that someone had taken his Lincoln Continental out and scratched it. Roy knew it was a relative who was staying with him at the time, but Roy's father blamed Roy for it. He never forgave him, and things were never the same between them. I asked Roy to read a section from his book about something that happened soon after that, during that final rocky period in their relationship.
27:00 Speaker 01 One night about a month before he died, I walked into the living room, and my father was on the couch going through his usual routine. Local news, international news, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy. I sat down near him and started watching the news. I didn't say anything to him. He didn't say anything to me, but just sat there in silence, watching TV together. About an hour into this, he gathered up enough courage to ask me to make him a baked potato. I obliged. I got up, wrapped the baked potato in a soaking wet paper towel, threw it in the microwave, and boom, baked potato. I plated it, added some butter and sour cream, and brought the little food tray over to the couch and set it there.
27:42 Speaker 01 I returned to my original perch and continued to watch television in silence. When Jeopardy finished, my father mumbled, "You can come get this." Turned around, and he was sliding the plate in my direction. He'd taken two, maybe three bites of the potato. His appetite was pretty much nonexistent at this point, and he was mostly drinking Ensure for nutrients. But for him to have eaten anything, I guess, was good. As I came over to get the potato, my father looked me in the eyes and said, "You did okay, didn't he?" And I said, "Yeah, he did the best he could." He smiled and patted me on the hand and thanked me for the potato.
28:26 Dan Pashman? Now, as we hear that story today, the meaning of that exchange may be clear, but to 16-year-old you, it wasn't exactly clear.
28:35 Speaker 01 No, no, I didn't, I didn't grasp at the time that, and he's going, I did okay, didn't I?
28:42 Dan Pashman? Roy thought his father was saying, "I did okay eating the baked potato, even though I don't have much appetite," right? Roy didn't think much about this exchange until a month later, when his father died. At the funeral, his half-sister approached him and said,
28:55 Speaker 01 "Just so you know, Daddy loved you, and Daddy did the best he could." And that's when the light bulb went off. I didn't grasp that he was asking me to assess his job as a father.
29:08 Speaker 01 That's what the question was. I was like, I was literally standing at the grave, and I'm like, "Oh, shit." That was my window to, to ask him all of the, "Why were you like this as a father?" questions. And I missed it. I just didn't know.
29:32 Dan Pashman? Turns out, there was a lot Roy didn't know about his father. In 2021, Roy went on the PBS show Finding Your Roots and learned that his grandfather, his father's father, had basically been disappeared when the family was living in Georgia. It was most likely a race-related murder, and the body was never found. Roy Senior was just four years old at the time.
29:50 Speaker 01 All I knew is that my grandparents was dead before I was born. My pops never talked about his parents.
29:56 Speaker 01 And how could you expect? "Hey, tell me about your dad you only did know disappeared. You wanna have a seat at the table, pops? Dust off that trauma for me and give it an old share."
30:09 Dan Pashman? There was one more section of the book I wanted Roy to read, the dedication in the front, where he addresses his father and reflects on being a father now.
30:17 Speaker 01 "Trying to raise a child before healing your inner child is a motherfucker. I've tried to pass down the best of you and discard the rest. Thank you for trying. Your son."
30:30 Dan Pashman? Are you still angry that he escaped accountability?
30:32 Speaker 01 I'm not angry. Being mad at him does not help me raise my child. So I have to let go of that. Anger's not a sustainable emotion to have growth in your life. Just me saying, thanks for trying establishes where I've, where he is now in my level of degrees of anger or whatever. And so that way, you, the reader, can absorb this also with grace. You don't know what not having a man in your life would have ever done, or how that would have changed him. So the idea of, well, how do I,
31:13 Speaker 01 what do I do to work through everything me and my daddy? Can't worry about that. I gotta let that go.
31:26 Dan Pashman? Let's talk about fatherhood today.
31:28 Speaker 01 Okay.
31:28 Dan Pashman? And your son, how old's your son now?
31:30 Speaker 01 He's nine now.
31:31 Dan Pashman? So he's like, because the last time I talked to him, he was what, three?
31:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, three.
31:35 Dan Pashman? So now he's.
31:36 Speaker 01 He's a sentient being.
31:39 Speaker 01 Has opinions and favorites and likes and dislikes.
31:42 Dan Pashman? Yeah.
31:44 Speaker 01 Stuff he wants to do and not do, and he is adamant.
31:49 Dan Pashman? It sounds like he's got your mother's head strong.
31:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, yes. Yes, he does.
31:54 Dan Pashman? What do you cook for him these days?
31:56 Speaker 01 Uh, you know, I'm, I'm kind of a roasting chicken kind of guy. I want to do some lasagna and brownies at some point, but.
32:04 Dan Pashman? Lasagna's a lot of work.
32:05 Speaker 01 I know, I know.
32:06 Dan Pashman? It's a pain in the ass.
32:07 Speaker 01 It's an all day thing, and I can't wait. I've never done it before. I got one of those pans where it's only edges.
32:13 Dan Pashman? Oh, oh, with the, oh, that, nice, nice.
32:16 Speaker 01 The little maze.
32:17 Dan Pashman? Yeah, yeah.
32:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, buddy, I'm a.
32:19 Dan Pashman? You have, you have to enjoy the process. It's a lot of work.
32:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:23 Dan Pashman? And, and you gotta make a big one because you want to have those leftovers. Because you don't want to do all that work and then it's gone. You're like, what did I do all that for?
32:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
32:30 Dan Pashman? I'll give you a quick tip. If you have leftover lasagna, slice up a slice that's, you know, inch, inch and a half thick. Throw it in a frying pan with the cut, the open side of lasagna down in some oil.
32:42 Speaker 01 Okay.
32:43 Dan Pashman? And it will turn like golden brown and crispy. Then you flip to the other side and you reheat it that way. And you get like crispy edges and golden brown cheesy toasty.
32:51 Speaker 01 It's like lasagna fingers.
32:52 Dan Pashman? Yeah.
32:54 Speaker 01 All right, I can do that.
32:56 Dan Pashman? That's right, that's right. That sounds more appetizing than beef fingers.
33:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, nah, I'm not, I'm not an extensive cook. His mother, his mother is way more amazing in the kitchen than me. Like, she's baking shit from scratch. And me and him are like, doing stove top burgers and roasting chicken and.
33:15 Dan Pashman? But you know what? I don't, I don't, I love to cook with my, cook for my kids and with my kids when they're in the right mood. When I have some time, when I'm cooking something that I think they'll want to do with me. I don't think it really matters what you're making. What matters is that you're cooking for him. You know, at some point, I think he will come to recognize the amount of care that goes into you cooking for him.
33:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think the kids will piece it together. So that's why I'm not that panicked about him needing to go to therapy. If he does, it won't be because I wasn't there.
33:44 Dan Pashman? Right, right.
33:47 Dan Pashman? You ever make him a baked potato?
33:49 Speaker 01 No, he's not a big baker. He likes fries and steak. We'll cut fries and like roast potato, you know what I mean? I don't know the word.
33:57 Dan Pashman? Like roasted potato wedges or whatever.
33:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, we'll do that. Like some air fryer, convection oven type situation, but nah. I like baked potatoes. It's, it's every now and then I'll stare at one and think about my pops. I'm like, man, these were pretty good.
34:14 Speaker 01 See where he digs these. I don't do them in the microwave, though. That's just barbaric.
34:19 Dan Pashman? You've gotten high class on us, Roy?
34:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in those days, yeah, I was stabbing the holes.
34:26 Dan Pashman? Yep, yep.
34:27 Speaker 01 Wet towel.
34:29 Speaker 01 Wrap it up.
34:29 Dan Pashman? Yeah.
34:30 Speaker 01 Basically, super steaming it. But yeah, it, it's, I, I think it's the moments of, you know, do puzzles and do Legos and like, there's these more quiet moments like that, that my son and I share, that I think are like really, to me, special. You know, but it's not always cooking.
34:50 Dan Pashman? Is there like a memorable meal you share together?
34:53 Speaker 01 No, not yet, but I'll tell you one I'm looking forward to. Either in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, uh, there's a Japadog cart. It's a Japanese style hot dog food cart. And it's the best hot dog I've ever had. I think I'll take him to the one on the Santa Monica Pier because there's rides and there's other stuff to do, but. Kobe beef, there's seaweed, they put the sauteed onions on it, Japanese mayo.
35:20 Dan Pashman? Like a cup of mayo.
35:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's halfway to Miracle Whip.
35:23 Dan Pashman? Yeah, it's really good.
35:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's, it's very good. They toast the bun and, I don't know, just sit on the pier and talk. I think some of the best meals are the simplest ones. For whatever moments my mother and I had with hot dogs, I think this is the perfect upgrade. Cause I've got money now. I can have an eight dollar hot dog. No more Oscar Myers. You know? Is that not the sign of growth in life?
35:51 Dan Pashman? Yeah, you're moving on up if you hit an eight dollar hot dog.
35:54 Speaker 01 The experiences you didn't get to have. So if my mom and I had hot dogs and bonded, then my son and I were doing Kobe beef. Like a couple of gentlemen.
36:09 Dan Pashman? That's Roy Wood Jr. His new book is The Man of Many Fathers. He's also the host of the CNN show Have I Got News For You, which features comedians Michael Ian Black and Amber Ruffin. And of course, Roy is always doing stand up all over the country. You can find his dates at roywoodjr.com. And hey, if you want to win a copy of Roy's book, sign up for our newsletter by December 8th. We are giving away one copy of the book to one of our lucky newsletter subscribers. And if you're already a newsletter subscriber, you are already entered to win. So you want to be on that list because even if you don't win this time, you might win next time. We're always giving cool stuff away. So sign up right now at sporkful.com/newsletter. Must be in the US to win. Audio of Roy Wood Senior in this episode came from the Birmingham Black Radio Museum. Next week on the show,
36:54 Dan Pashman? how does a traumatic brain injury affect the way you cook and eat? I talk with filmmaker Cheryl Green about what it means to live with an invisible disability, how it affects her cooking, and why asking for help can be a beautiful thing. While you wait for that one, check out last week's show. Did we discover a new regional style of pizza? Denver reporter Paul Carole thinks he might have, and he goes on a multi-year quest to find out. That one's up now. Check it out. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the Sirius XM app? Yes, the Sirius XM 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.
37:39 Dan Pashman? And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the Sirius XM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. This episode was produced by me along with managing producer
37:49 Speaker 04 Emma Morgenstern.
37:50 Dan Pashman? And senior producer
37:51 Speaker 06 Andres O'Hara.
37:52 Dan Pashman? It was edited by
37:53 Speaker 04 Camille Stanley.
37:54 Dan Pashman? Our engineer is
37:55 Speaker 05 Jared O'Connell.
37:56 Dan Pashman? Our interns are Morgan Johnson. And Jasmine Sutherland. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
38:08 Speaker 04 And I'm Amanda from Binghamton, New York, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
38:29 Speaker 02 Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper. So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app. Participate in McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper, 7-Up, Inc.
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