Pod Insights The Sporkful Rachel Maddow Fixed The Pina Colada (Reheat) About this episode Piña coladas are way better in theory than in practice. Take it from MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. "The tragedy of the pina colada is that it was never wholesome."
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:16 Dan Pashman? Hey, Dan here, and we are reaching deep into the archives for a classic Sporkful episode for today's reheat. This one was requested by a listener named Sandy in Michigan, who writes, "One episode that I've mentioned to more than a few people is Rachel Maddow fixed the pina colada. Like Dan, I also want to know when I can eat the cocktail garnish." That's something we cover in this episode. So perhaps this reheat could use a little revisit. You got it, Sandy. And I had the opportunity to work with Rachel Maddow when I was a producer. This was my first real job in radio. I was a producer on the now-defunct Progressive Talk Radio Network, Air America. Rachel wasn't on TV yet. And then, over the time that I was at Air America, her career took off. And so when I started this Sporkful, I was like, all right, I gotta get a couple celebrities on my show to try to get some
2:01 Dan Pashman? listeners. The only two celebrities that I knew or that I would respond to my emails were Marc Maron, whose show that I had produced at Air America, and Rachel Maddow, I'd worked with. So very early on, I called in a favor and Rachel was kind enough and gracious enough to spend quite a lot of time with me for this recording because I realized about halfway through that my battery had died and I wasn't recording. And she, we started from the beginning again. She's the best. This episode also includes my old friend, Mark Garrison, who is my co-host in the very early days of the show. Of course, remember there's an episode of The Sporkful you want us to pull out of the deep freezer. Be like Sandy in Michigan. Drop me a line to hello at sporkful.com. Tell me your first name, location, what episode you want to hear and why. Thanks so much and enjoy Rachel Maddow and the pina colada.
2:47 Speaker 01 If I was on death row and they let your last meal be liquor, which they don't, I think the pina colada would actually be one of those things that would be up there for a last meal. That said, I never drink them in real life because in real life, I'm not having my last meal and I have to live with the consequences of drinking a pina colada. It would be good right before an execution because then I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have to worry about the headache, let alone the stomach ache.
3:16 Dan Pashman? Yeah, you know, it's true. Pina coladas are way better in theory than in practice. Today on The Sporkful, I sit down with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and she tells us how she has fixed the pina colada. Yes, it's true. She fixed it with her very own recipe. Plus, we'll nerd out on cocktails big time. Which shape of lime garnish is better? Wedge or wheel? And what's the best way to eat the cherry that comes with your Manhattan?
3:40 Speaker 01 But see, you're sort of digging through your drink with a toothpick, trying to get that maraschino cherry out of the bottom, fishing it up through the drink, swallowing it and then finding this, putting the stem somewhere and then finishing off the garnish list drink.
3:52 Dan Pashman? It sounds pretty gross, the way you describe it. That's all coming up. Stick around.
4:06 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. Rachel Maddow is one of the best-known TV news people in America. She hosts The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as you probably know. She's also really into cocktails. In fact, she does a segment on her show sometimes called Cocktail Moment, where she shares a drink recipe that somehow relates to the news. Last year, during the election, she went on Jimmy Fallon and made a drink called The Millionaire in honor of Donald Trump.
4:35 Speaker 01 Okay, so this is the bitter part.
4:38 Dan Pashman? Yeah, and what is it, your little tiny little measuring cup thing?
4:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm measuring three quarters of an ounce of lime juice, which is a lot of lime juice, and if you have an ulcer, it'll make you barf blood.
4:47 Dan Pashman? If I was a-
4:47 Speaker 01 It's terrible.
4:50 Dan Pashman? Rachel and I actually worked together years ago at a place called Air America Radio. It was a progressive talk radio network with Al Franken and Janine Garofalo and Marc Maron. It was my first real job in radio, and no one knew who she was. And we both had to come in at like 3:00 in the morning, and I helped produce her newscasts, which was a ton of fun, other than the 3:00 AM part. Anyway, when The Sporkful launched seven years ago, I knew I had to have Rachel on to talk cocktails. I began by asking Rachel about the garnishes that come with cocktails. First question: How and when do you eat the olives in a martini or the cherry in a Manhattan?
5:26 Speaker 01 I think I'm going to be able to short-circuit this entire discussion.
5:28 Dan Pashman? Okay.
5:28 Speaker 01 You're never supposed to eat the garnish.
5:30 Dan Pashman? Arrgh!
5:31 Speaker 01 The garnish is not a snack. The garnish is there to modify the liquor that is in the glass. It is not there to provide you a tasty treat to go along with your drink. The drink is the treat.
5:43 Dan Pashman? So then, I think the use of the word garnish here is wrong. Because to me, a garnish is something that is on the side. It's just there to make it look pretty. If it is in the drink, then it's part of the drink. It's not a garnish.
5:54 Speaker 01 You're not supposed to eat that little carved radish that comes on the thing that you just ordered at Applebee's. They carved it three days ago, and it's been on six different plates. You're also really not supposed to eat the thing that's not liquor in your drink. Sorry, I know, it's very upsetting.
6:06 Dan Pashman? I would say that if you're going to eat your olive or your cherry or whatever, then it should be between- The one third of the way through the drink mark and the two thirds of the way through the drink mark.
6:16 Speaker 01 But that means you've got to be fishing in there with your fingers.
6:18 Dan Pashman? A straw, a straw can do it. Yeah, a straw or a stirrer, you know, you can poke it out, you can get it out of there.
6:24 Speaker 01 It's impossible to do it with elegance, though, isn't it? Admit it.
6:27 Dan Pashman? Oh, I didn't know that elegance was one of the criteria, right? If elegance was part of the issue here, that went out the window a long time ago, right?
6:33 Speaker 01 I'm gonna tie my hands behind my back and just oatbag nosedive into this thing.
6:38 Speaker 02 Okay, actually, a side question on that. I find I like the Manhattan better without the cherry, at least the maraschino kind of cherry they usually have behind the bar, unless, however, you have like a proper brandy soaked cherry, that's pretty good.
6:50 Speaker 01 But even if it's a fancy cherry like that and it's been sitting out in a plastic tray on the bar all night, like, really? Do you want to, like, would you eat something else from a restaurant that had been sitting out in the customer area, like, warm, in its own juices, festering?
7:04 Speaker 02 You've never been tempted by an olive, something in a drink, to try? Like, what if someone put like a calamata olive in a martini?
7:12 Speaker 01 That would be gross. It would have sullied the gin to a degree that I wouldn't have enjoyed the martini in the first place. I don't, I don't think I would do it. I mean, here's the thing, is that I do most of my, my cocktail drinking at home on the weekends, I have a bar at home and I make drinks, and so if I am having martinis with olives, although I'm more of a lemon twist person myself, but if I'm doing that and I want the olive, I've got olives, because I use them to make the drink, and I will make myself a little dish of olives and have it on the side. If you want snacks, get snacks.
7:44 Dan Pashman? Now, what about, Rachel, the best practices for using citrus garnishes?
7:48 Speaker 01 Citrus garnishes are a wonderful thing. What you're trying to do with a citrus garnish is express the oil from the piece of citrus onto the surface of the drink. So you don't need any of the pith, any of the pulpy part, right? You don't need any fruit, certainly, but you also don't need a very thick portion of the rind, you just want that outside part that's got the sort of oily pores on it. So really what you ought to do with the citrus garnish, like, I, for example, like a lemon twist with my, with my martini, is that you want a very thinly sliced piece of lemon rind, you spritz it, spritz the oil out of that piece of rind onto the surface of the drink, and then throw it away. You don't even need to put it in the drink. It offers, there's very little additional yum that you get out of having the expressed garnish sitting in the drink, what you want is the oil.
8:34 Speaker 02 And so what is your technique for making these twists? I know there is a tool that you can buy that makes it a little bit easier, but I've always been kind of embarrassed by the really ugly looking twists that I'm barely able to get off of a lemon.
8:45 Speaker 01 Well, if you have a, if you have a sharp paring knife.
8:47 Speaker 02 I do, and it doesn't work.
8:49 Speaker 01 It doesn't.
8:49 Speaker 02 I see the little tool that bartenders use to make those really perfect twists.
8:53 Speaker 01 Oh yeah, that's called a channel knife. But you know, that's an interesting thing though, that when the kind of twist you can make, it sort of looks like a, it cuts like a notch into the fruit. So you get this very thick, perfectly constructed, can be very long curly Q kind of twist. Very pretty, not very functional in terms of adding citrus oil to the drink. I mean, what actually works the best, if you're not good with a paring knife, is a potato peeler. Take a potato peeler to the outside of a lemon. It'll cut a very thin, if it's sharp, it'll cut a very thin swath off the outside of the lemon. It'll leave, you know, you'll leave, you'll leave a white streak on the lemon where you've cut it off. You won't see fruit or anything. It's very thin. And then just, you just want to spray it on it.
9:31 Dan Pashman? So the way you do it, Rachel, the citrus never actually touches the liquid.
9:35 Speaker 01 Right.
9:35 Dan Pashman? See, like I like a gin and tonic with lime and I want a lot of lime flavor in my gin and tonic.
9:40 Speaker 02 You're talking about the actual juice from the flesh of the, of the lime.
9:43 Dan Pashman? Right, yeah.
9:43 Speaker 01 Oh, I would put, I put, I put a bunch of lime in my gin and tonic, but I wouldn't, you'd never use like a lime twist.
9:48 Dan Pashman? Right, right. You wouldn't use a twist, exactly. If you're gonna use the wedge, I want a wedge where I can squeeze the wedge and get the juice out into my drink. I got a big problem then with the semicircle.
9:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:00 Dan Pashman? I want that wedge, I want the triangular wedge, because the semicircle, you know, when you squeeze it, it just kind of like crumbles and falls apart in your hand and not that much juice comes out.
10:07 Speaker 01 Or a wheel is even worse.
10:09 Dan Pashman? Yep.
10:09 Speaker 01 Oh, the wheel.
10:11 Dan Pashman? Why? Why? I mean, why would you ever want it in that shape?
10:14 Speaker 01 And you know, and that's an important thing to think about with citrus garnishes. Not twists, but rather having a wedge or a wheel or a wedge or a half wedge in the drink. Ideally, if the bartender knows what they're doing, or if you know what you were doing while you were making your drink. The wedge of citrus, the piece of citrus is not there to allow you to recalibrate the drink because it was mixed poorly. The drink is mixed properly and the fruit is there to be a pleasing visual experience. So if you need to be squeezing more citrus into your drink because it's too sweet, that just means the drink was made wrong.
10:47 Dan Pashman? So then is a wedge a garnish?
10:49 Speaker 01 A wedge is a garnish.
10:51 Dan Pashman? But I'm counting on that wedge.
10:53 Speaker 01 Don't.
10:53 Dan Pashman? For my...
10:54 Speaker 01 Ask the bartender to put more lime juice in your gin and tonic. Dan, I know, I'm blowing your mind. Look at you. You look hurt.
11:01 Dan Pashman? But I like having control. I like knowing that I'm gonna finish the drink and it's gonna be the way I want. I'm gonna squeeze the juice in and then I'm gonna push that lime all the way down to the bottom of the drink.
11:11 Speaker 01 So you have always got your paws in your drink. This is what we're learning about you.
11:14 Dan Pashman? Clearly aesthetics are not my concern.
11:16 Speaker 01 But also, like, do you wash your hands every time before you have a drink?
11:21 Dan Pashman? Well, I'm pretty sanitary.
11:23 Speaker 01 If you are counting on digging around in your drink to fork the garnish out when you are only one-third of the way into the drink and you are counting on pawing your garnish, squeezing it in, and then shoving it down underneath the eyes, and in between each of these things, you are paying the bartender and shaking your friend's hand and getting change and all this stuff. I mean, you're Typhoid Mary, dude.
11:44 Dan Pashman? You mean, other people don't drink with their hands?
11:49 Speaker 01 I mean, liquor is antiseptic, but unless you are drinking 151 all day, nothing is antiseptic enough to make up for your muddy paw drinking habits, Dan. Leave the drink alone.
12:03 Dan Pashman? I don't know. The other week, we had researcher Charles Spence on the show. He talked about how much touch is part of the eating experience, how much of taste comes from what we feel with our hands. Yeah, I know, he didn't specifically talk about putting your hands in your drink, but I'm gonna assume he'd be on board with my approach. Anyway, the conversation with Rachel turned from drinks to bartenders. We talked about the many issues bartenders have to deal with, and then we got to a less obvious one: martinis. Now, a true martini is made with gin, but nowadays, a lot of people who order martinis expect vodka. So if you're a bartender, someone asks for a martini, what do you do?
12:43 Speaker 01 In an ideal world, everybody would know that a martini was made with gin and that would be the default and you'd have to ask for a vodka martini.
12:49 Speaker 02 It used to be that way. It used to be that way. James Bond and marketing, Stoli, all that changed everything.
12:54 Speaker 01 Yes, and so, and now you're in a situation where people are more likely than not expecting vodka rather than gin. But, you know, you can, as a bar, just decide you're going to make the wrong thing and call it a martini every day and thereby horrify everybody who knows how to drink and scare them away from your bar. Or you can ask. And I think you can ask in a way that is personable and not insulting. Did you want to, that with, I'm, you wanted that with vodka? Or you wanted that with gin?
13:19 Speaker 02 There were also really great hand motions with this. Doesn't come across on audio, but yeah, so it's not just the voice.
13:25 Speaker 01 But you do it with the inflection and you do it with eye contact and kindness and all of those things. I mean, being a bartender is a subtle, difficult humanitarian task.
13:34 Speaker 02 There's psychology involved, yeah.
13:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, you are, why do people drink? People drink at bars very rarely because they feel like they have to. Once you're an adult, there isn't a peer pressure situation that gets you into having a drink in a bar, especially now in the 2000s. If you are in a bar and you are feeling peer pressured into being there in order to like make right with your coworkers, nobody's going to be upset if you get a ginger ale. Nobody's going to judge you for that.
13:57 Speaker 02 Right.
13:58 Speaker 01 So we are in a situation as adults in the 2000s where if you are ordering a drink in a bar, it is for something in your life. It is to do something for your day, to do something for your state of mind, to do something, to pass the time in a way that is unlike almost anything else you'll do in your day. And so the bartender has a responsibility, the bar manager in some cases, to make sure that that time is stepping away from the rest of your day, unlike anything else that you experience in the day, and is a stress reliever rather than a, than an addition to the stress in your daily life. And that's a, that's a big responsibility. I don't even feel cynical about it at all, even with bad bartenders and bad drinkers around me. I feel a very earnest sense of responsibility about what it is to be a bartender.
14:42 Speaker 02 Right. You know, actually, if you were preparing for this, I was, I was curious, do you drink more when the left is doing well or poorly?
14:49 Speaker 01 For me, drinking is not about happiness.
14:53 Dan Pashman? Okay.
14:54 Speaker 01 For me, drinking is about, um, is about time. It's about having time to spend and wanting to spend it in a way that involves, um, that involves alcohol. So, yeah, it's not a, I tend to be a very happy drunk.
15:06 Dan Pashman? Right.
15:06 Speaker 01 I don't, um, at this point in my life, I don't drink to get drunk.
15:09 Dan Pashman? Yeah.
15:10 Speaker 01 There was definitely a time in my life when I did that, but I don't do that. That is sometimes a side effect of drinking.
15:14 Dan Pashman? Right.
15:14 Speaker 01 Uh, but it's not the goal. Um, if I do get tipsy, I tend to be a person who experiences slight euphoria and happiness about it. And so that's neat, but that's no more of, that's no more a reward, um, for a happy circumstance in life than it is a relief from an unhappy circumstance in life.
15:39 Dan Pashman? Coming up, more with Rachel Maddow. She'll reveal the secret ingredient of the Maddow colada. It's like a pina colada, but way better. And I'll ask her to name one food that's not improved by the addition of either melted cheese or chocolate syrup. Hear the answer when we come back. Stick around.
16:13 Speaker 03 Time to cook up some advertisements.
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17:53 Dan Pashman? Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. A lot of times people want to ask me like, oh, what are you cooking? What restaurants are you going to? They ask Emma and Andres and the whole Sporkful team the same questions. Well, it turns out, we provide a listener service to you that includes that information. It's our newsletter. We don't send it out all the time. We're not going to spam you. We're just going to send you useful information, recipes, restaurant information, links to articles that we're reading, shows that we're watching, and guess what else? You'll be automatically entered into giveaways for cookbooks featured on the show, as long as you live in the US or Canada. That's also where I'll email you to tell you about like, special sales happening on this Folini website, buy discounts on pasta and stuff. So, there are a lot of benefits, and you can sign up right now while you're listening. Head on over to sporkful.com/newsletter
18:35 Dan Pashman? to sign up today. Again, that's sporkful.com/newsletter. Thanks. Now, back to this week's reheat.
18:44 Dan Pashman? Before Rachel Maddow and I met up, I emailed her to ask her what cocktail issues in particular she wanted to discuss. And she wrote back with one line, "The tragedy of the pina colada." Now, as I said before, I was lucky enough to work with Rachel early in our careers. And let me tell you something, no matter what room Rachel is in, she is the smartest and also the most prepared person there. You come into a meeting, you think you found a great story or a great guest for the show to cover, Rachel already knows all about it. So, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that she did research before coming on the Sporkful. She had notes on the history of the pina colada.
19:19 Speaker 01 1957 is the date that is commonly assigned to the origin of the pina colada. And as with all drinking history, drinking history was written down by drunk people. And so it's all a little fuzzy, but this is what generally, this is generally what it is. And so it was invented in Puerto Rico and in 1949, so eight years before the pina colada is invented. Coco Lopez is invented. Coco Lopez you can still get, it's still called Coco Lopez. It's the same brand. It is, it is what we think of as cream of coconut and it is the base for the pina colada. The problem is that when we think about bad chemical drinks that make you feel bad and that give you a stomach ache and make you fat and sort of rob you of your brain cells and have made you feel like you've eaten Twinkies sort of thing.
20:03 Speaker 01 We think about having redesigned for modern ease or transportation or storage purposes, drinks that were once wholesome. The tragedy of the pina colada is that the pina colada was never wholesome. The pina colada in 1957, from the very start, was built on something horrible, which is Coco Lopez. Coco Lopez, cream of coconut. I grabbed the can. Starts off okay. Coconut, sugar, water, polysorbate 60, sorbitan monesterate, propylene glycol alginate.
20:34 Speaker 02 Polysorbate 60 is actually among the better polysorbates. Now, I feel like between like 37 and 45, that were kind of the high points of polysorbates.
20:43 Dan Pashman? Yeah, you get to 60, it really starts to fall off.
20:46 Speaker 01 Well, if you get to 60, woo. So the pina colada was invented from the first place to be a chemical slurry. Unlike other drinks that have been made into awful things in modern times.
20:56 Speaker 02 Like the daiquiri.
20:56 Speaker 01 Like the daiquiri.
20:57 Speaker 02 The real daiquiri is a fine drink, but you will get horrible versions of it most places.
21:01 Speaker 01 That's exactly right. And so with the daiquiri now, you're likely to get it out of a slurpee machine. And it's made with some, some chemical stew that makes this, makes, makes Coco Lopez sound like mother's milk. And I mean, but you can reverse it or reverse engineer daiquiri to what it originally was, which is rum, lime, sugar. End of story. And it is a wonderful, wonderful drink. There's no way to do that with the pina colada. When you bring it back to brass tacks, it is as gross as it is today.
21:27 Dan Pashman? What if you were to just take fresh pineapple juice? Coconut milk and rum and just mix those things together and put it on the rocks.
21:36 Speaker 01 Thank you, Dan Bashman. I have re-engineered the pina colada.
21:40 Dan Pashman? Wow.
21:41 Speaker 01 Yes.
21:41 Dan Pashman? This is huge.
21:42 Speaker 01 Yes. Because the thing that you get from cream of coconut that you don't get from just using coconut is that you get this unctuous, in a good way, rich, positive mouth feel, deep-flavored coconut sweetness. And you can't get that just from using natural coconut milk.
22:00 Dan Pashman? Right.
22:01 Speaker 01 Or natural coconut juice.
22:02 Dan Pashman? Okay, okay.
22:02 Speaker 01 So you have to use unsweetened coconut milk, leavened with, this is the crazy part, orgyot.
22:10 Dan Pashman? That's the almond syrup, right?
22:12 Speaker 01 Almond syrup, which is-
22:13 Dan Pashman? Is that not the secret ingredient to a Mai Tai?
22:15 Speaker 01 It is the secret ingredient to a Mai Tai. It is a classic cocktail ingredient and you can get like organic, not gross, versions of it. There's a French one that you can get on Amazon, which is just like, there's no preservatives in it or anything. So it's essentially like an almond syrup, mix that with organic, unsweetened coconut milk. The original pina colada recipe, as far as I understand, used Myers rum, which is a very dark, but sort of acrid rum. When you're using this replacement for Coco Lopez, you need something a little more subtle, so I recommend using like an eight-year rum instead of the Myers, which is very, very dark. But you make those little tweaks. You trade away the chemical slurry of the Coco Lopez, which is original-
22:53 Dan Pashman? Right.
22:53 Speaker 01 And instead add your hippie-ass unsweetened coconut milk mixed with almond syrup. But it, it works.
23:00 Dan Pashman? That is great. Do we have permission, Rachel, to promote your recipe?
23:03 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
23:03 Dan Pashman? Good, because you see, this Sporkful is supposed to be a clearinghouse, a gathering place, where people come together and learn about new and better ways to eat. Where new innovations in food and drink can be shared.
23:14 Speaker 01 That's very high-minded.
23:15 Dan Pashman? Yeah, in fact, someday we're gonna form Sporkful University. Our motto is ruminate, masticate, promulgate.
23:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, my, my idea was that once I got fired from cable news, that I would try to seek my millions as an entrepreneur. So I, I had, I, this had been my business plan for life, but I've decided that you guys could probably do better with it.
23:36 Dan Pashman? But you know, if things for you take a turn for the worse, you know, you, you call us, we'll talk.
23:40 Speaker 01 All right. I could license it back from you.
23:42 Dan Pashman? Yes, we'll work together. It'll be like one of those behind-the-music things, you know, like where you sign your life away, like on a cocktail napkin, and then it turns out you need the money later on. But we own you.
23:50 Speaker 01 And then you guys are like, living in Memphis in some big mansion, and I'm homeless outside banging on the gate. I know how this goes.
23:58 Dan Pashman? I gotta say, since this interview was recorded, I have made Rachel's pina colada many times and it is so good. It has all the pineapple coconut flavor. It has that sweet syrupy mouth feel without the grossness and without all that slush. It's just served on the rocks and it's strong. Two of these and you are well on your way, let me tell you. If you're looking for that organic French orgeat almond syrup she mentioned, the brand is Tessair. And more pina colada madness for you because our pal, Daniel Gritzer from Serious Eats, he's got a new piece going up about pina coladas. And he says one of the reasons why it's hard to make a great pina colada is because ideally you'd use fresh pineapple juice. But fresh pineapple juice can be all over the map in sweetness and in flavor.
24:43 Dan Pashman? So getting consistency in your recipe can be really hard. Daniel recommends combining some fresh juice with some store bought juice. And he uses lime juice too, which I think is genius. Get a little tart in there. Check out Daniel's pina colada piece on Serious Eats. Anyway, coming up, Mark and I get to the bottom of Rachel's personal food preferences. That's after the break. Stick around.
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27:19 Dan Pashman? Welcome back. Let's get back to Rachel Maddow. Now, in the early days of this pork food, we used to give our guests a questionnaire in the style of the Proust questionnaire. You know, the one James Lipton used to give on Inside the Actors Studio? But we refashioned it to be about food. So would Rachel be up to the task? Are you ready?
27:37 Speaker 01 All right, I'm ready.
27:46 Dan Pashman? Rachel, what is your favorite food?
27:49 Speaker 01 Um, that's like asking, what is your favorite song?
27:54 Speaker 01 Um, I would, I would say, um, pumpkin pie.
27:59 Dan Pashman? What is your least favorite food?
28:01 Speaker 01 Uh.
28:05 Speaker 01 Red bell peppers.
28:06 Dan Pashman? Cooked or raw?
28:08 Speaker 01 Yes.
28:10 Dan Pashman? What dish do you cook best? Or we could say, what cocktail do you prepare best? Or both?
28:15 Speaker 01 I am not a, I am not a cook. I have a hard time combining ingredients with heat. The thing that I make the best, um, is, uh, I actually think that I, that, uh, given the proper, uh, tools, ingredients and time, I'd make a world-class martini.
28:31 Dan Pashman? Excellent. And with the lemon twist is your preference, right?
28:33 Speaker 01 With a lemon twist and orange bitters.
28:35 Dan Pashman? Oh, orange bitters, okay.
28:36 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm. One dash of orange bitters.
28:38 Dan Pashman? What dish do you wish you could cook?
28:41 Speaker 01 Oh. Um. My mom makes bread every Christmas time, which is, um, an oatmeal molasses bread. And it is the thing that I associate with, uh, I, I'm not, I'm not a fan of Christmas, but the fact that my mom makes that bread at Christmas time makes me like the entire season. It compensates for everything else that is bad about Christmas. And she's given me the recipe five or 10 times. I've tried to make it a million different times. It not only doesn't even come out as good as my mom's Christmas bread, it doesn't even come out as bread. I don't know what it is that she does, but she has-
29:16 Dan Pashman? Poly 60.
29:17 Speaker 01 It's a poly sorbait 60 it could be. Coco Lopez, baby, yeah.
29:21 Dan Pashman? You know, this is something that I've been pondering for years. What is one food that is not improved by the addition of either melted cheese or chocolate syrup?
29:30 Speaker 01 Um, white rice is not improved by the addition of chocolate syrup, nor by melted cheese.
29:35 Dan Pashman? Really? You never have any cheese on rice?
29:37 Speaker 01 No, I, yeah, it's not, it's not a good move.
29:39 Dan Pashman? All right.
29:40 Speaker 01 Yeah. If, if served, if served rice on a plate and there's melted cheese elsewhere on the plate, you know how, if you like melted cheese, you have a way of moving it around on the plate so that it makes its way into every forkful? If rice is one of the other things on the plate, I will not do that with the cheese.
29:54 Speaker 02 Okay, what alcoholic beverage did you drink too much of as a teenager, thus rendering the beverage undrinkable for you for the rest of your life?
30:02 Speaker 01 Oh, get back on the horse, people. There is no such thing as an undrinkable beverage that is undrinkable because of a prior bad experience. There are all sorts of undrinkable, bad alcoholic beverages, but they have nothing to do with your wussy childhood teenage experience. Get back on the horse, please.
30:21 Speaker 02 Good answer.
30:22 Speaker 01 Buck up.
30:22 Dan Pashman? All right, what is a food that you loved as a child that you hate now?
30:26 Speaker 01 Um, I used to drink, um, the brine out of black olive, uh, canned black olives when I was a kid.
30:33 Dan Pashman? Oh, my God.
30:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:34 Speaker 02 Okay, speaking of brine in jars, what do you think of the growing promotion of the pickleback, which is a shot with a pickle juice chaser?
30:43 Speaker 01 I, um, am not opposed to the idea in principle. I have never tried one, nor am I intrigued.
30:52 Speaker 02 I think that's also the right answer.
30:55 Speaker 02 Okay, what is a food that you hated as a child that you love now?
30:59 Speaker 01 Oh, nuts. I hated all nuts as a child, all nuts.
31:03 Speaker 02 Was this an allergy or anything?
31:04 Speaker 01 No, it was, I had convinced myself as a kid that eating nuts would give me splinters in my mouth. Cause I thought they were like wood. And so I was not only, I not only didn't like nuts, I was afraid of them. I thought they would cause me injury.
31:17 Speaker 02 Do you remember the moment when you discovered you were wrong about the woodiness of nuts?
31:23 Speaker 01 Susan, my partner Susan, makes chocolate chip cookies with nuts in them, with chopped nuts in them. And I remember telling her, yeah, I don't, I don't eat nuts in chocolate chip cookies. And then there's chocolate chip cookies there. And so, yeah, I'm eating them and it's fine and I'm not getting splinters and everything's okay.
31:37 Dan Pashman? Final question, Rachel. If heaven exists, what would you like to see on the menu?
31:43 Speaker 01 If heaven exists, I think that we no longer have to make decisions about our food choices. We are constantly being enlightened as to what it is that we love, not through past experience, but through trust in what is to come.
31:57 Dan Pashman? Kind of like with that bartender.
31:59 Speaker 01 Exactly. Sometimes some bars are heavenly because the bartender knows what you ought to be drinking way better than what you think you ought to be drinking.
32:20 Dan Pashman? That's Rachel Maddow, host of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. And if you want her pina colada recipe, it's on sporkful.com. Or get it when you sign up for our newsletter, go to sporkful.com/newsletter. This show is produced by Anne Sanney and me, Dan Charles is our editor. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Jenny Radelit. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
32:44 Speaker 02 And this is Douglas from Memphis, Tennessee, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
33:09 Dan Pashman? This reheat was produced by
33:10 Speaker 01 Gianna Palmer.
33:12 Dan Pashman? The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer
33:15 Speaker 01 Emma Morgenstern.
33:16 Dan Pashman? And senior producer Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. 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.
34:03 Speaker 04 Hey, that's me, Teddy Swims. You hear that? That's life. So go grab it. Grab your old friends, grab new friends, grab a white cloak. Grab flavor for everyone in your group. Grab music, laughter, and moments you'll never forget. You'll never regret it. Hey, man. Grab new friends, grab old friends, grab life by the glow, White Claw.
34:29 Speaker 05 Please drink responsibly. White Claw Celta Works, Chicago, Illinois.
34:31 Dan Pashman? Hey, it's Dan here. Thank you so much, first of all, for tuning into this porridge every week. We really appreciate it. And I want to let you know, if you want to hear new episodes ad-free, subscribe to Sirius XM Podcasts Plus on Apple Podcasts, or visit siriusxm.com/podcastsplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. Thanks.
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