Leila: Hello,
David: hello, welcome. Welcome to Fun Fact Friday, weekly
podcast where we discuss fun facts surrounding different
topic each week. And this week we have a special guest who will
be introducing in just a moment. If you have any fun facts for us
or corrections to any facts that we get wrong, because we are
fallible, so no male FunFactFriday.com Yep. Hey
everybody. This week we are talking about eggs and we have a
special guest. Say Hi, Mimi.
Mimi: Hello, this is Hello Mimi.
David: Be like the old airplane movie. Exactly. Don't call me
Shirley. But yes, we have Mimi Smith of Warwick who wrote the
book on eggs. This is going to be an excellent eggs pisode
Leila: definitely, yeah, she's an expert expert.
David: We have a lot of questions for you. Mimi. Mimi is
the author of too many eggs. We're going to have a link to
the book. You can go get the you can get the PDF for free or for
a donation. You can also get the hardback or is it paperback?
hardback, hardback? Yeah, that and after getting the PDF, we
will be getting a hardback because it's it's fantastic.
We'll talk about it in just just a moment. So
Leila: is the hardback to keep you from spilling your eggs on
it?
Mimi: To make your really strong
Leila: book totally.
David: So many books like
Mimi: six pounds.
David: Wow. Yeah. With 750 pages.
Mimi: Wow, that's, that's after I pulled out all the appendices.
So
Leila: Oh, my goodness. Yeah,
David: we have one of those. Actually, we're going to be
talking about that and diving into some exclusive content here
for Fun Fact Friday. So unedited appendices.
Mimi: We actually decided to not do an index in the back because
it seemed kind of dumb when you'd say eggs and it lists list
every page in the book.
David: Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking for that egg recipe. I wonder. I
wonder where that was in the book. Which one? You know, the
egg recipe.
Leila: Want to know how many times egg was in the book?
Mimi: I don't even want to think about it. I don't want to think
how many eggs I ate. During the production.
Leila: I would imagine I thought about that. Like, how are you
not an egg?
David: Leila hand counted every sense of the word.
Leila: Totally hand counted.
David: But she says she did she probably just hit Ctrl F.
Leila: Yeah, I did. I mean, I mean,
David: here's a fun fact in the book, too many eggs Leila how
many instances of the word egg were in the book?
Leila: 4836.
Mimi: Or my fingers are tight.
David: And that's just the one word.
Leila: And then there was 28 instances of the word quibell.
Which is egg again. Yeah.
David: You add it all together. You get it? Yeah. That's a lot.
That's a lot of words as too many eggs. Yeah. might say I
turned to
Leila: him. And I'm like, how do you search for a word? And he's
like, go to Ctrl F. And I was like, Okay.
David: I thought she was looking for something that she had seen
earlier. And then she
Leila: thought about it could be really fun. I was looking for
eggs Benedict, because I really like eggs benedict. Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
David: So before we get before we get into it, we're gonna do a
little donation segment here in a second. Before we get into
that we got a question and chat, where the E and the G keys on
your keyboard worn off?
Mimi: I've been through several key. Yeah, probably. I mean, it
took me you know, this was written over about
Leila: a decade. What sells? What are my questions?
Mimi: Yeah. And what happened was I I decided to get some egg
chickens from McMurray hatchery. And yeah, what about minimum?
Minimum orders? 25. So I went, Oh, how bad can it be? So I
ordered 25 hands, and they came and there's cute little chicks
and they grew up and they're annoying little animals. And I
didn't realize that 25 hands will lay two dozen eggs a day.
David: Yeah. Yeah, my brother did the same.
Leila: So hey, at least you got stuff for us.
Mimi: You'd open the refrigerator and be all eggs. So
I mean, my neighbors wouldn't take him anymore. I would go up
to him and they'd be like, No, thanks. You gave us some
already. Oh, Ah,
Leila: some yesterday, why are you giving me all these eggs
from?
Mimi: So I, I have a huge collection of old cookbooks
because I've collected cookbooks since I was a teenager. And I
started going through it for making a note book on recipes
that you would use at least a dozen eggs. Angel Food. Yeah,
and the other one the yellowcake version of it. No, yeah. All
those things. I became completely insane about it. So I
decided to change to a book. And that made things way worse. So
John says anything he'll go don't get her started talking
about eggs, please. That's fine. Yeah, so I kind of want to
reward, ya
David: know, my brother came up with a nice solution. There's a
little place in a neighboring town that sold bulk tea and
herbs and things like that. And they would go in and they would
do a like a swap. Yep. So they would like, here's, here's six
dozen eggs. And then they get however many pounds of tea or
whatever, whatever else they wanted from the store. And then
the store owner would sell the fresh, you know, from a mile
down the road eggs, you know? So
Mimi: I just ended up being my perpetual motion machine once I
would take the eggs and cook them up, and then give them with
the shells included and give them back to the chickens to
eat.
David: Oh, no. Solutions. Cannibal worked. Hey, you know,
I mean, you mean you had a problem? You solved it.
Leila: Your brother your brother was talking about at lunch the
other day? Your mom didn't have anywhere to put a chicken nugget
that you didn't eat. And you're like, Oh, we could be taken
aback to the chickens.
David: Yeah, anytime we go out to eat with my brother. If we
have any, like little leftover scraps or anything. Take a
chicken. He's like, Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I'll take it.
Take it to the chickens. Why not? You know, because it's not
wasted.
Mimi: You know? You know, chickens lead anything? Yeah,
literally. Yeah. So I mean, I kind of went off on tangents
with that. So what's your
Leila: donations real quick.
David: We would like to thank some people. We had actually two
of these we need to make an apology last week these came in.
But we we neglected to mention them. It was our monthly
sustaining PayPal donations, Dred Scott with the Oreo
donation of 1912. Mimi, did you know that Oreos were invented in
1912.
Mimi: I wasn't around then.
David: I didn't know it either. Until Dred Scott gave us that
donation. I was like okay, what why is 1912 Thank you so much
driving houses pay for servers and all these costs. And Dr.
Actually, also, we were talking this week, and we've got an
we're going to be hosting to host on the interplanetary file
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know what to do. Respectfully. So back to the eggs.
Mimi: Yeah,
Leila: I have questions.
David: We have questions. So I'm gonna go ahead and question and
get my wife's question out of the way. Since you do seem to
know a lot about eggs my wife doesn't like she says she
doesn't like eggs, but it's not entirely true. She likes hard
boiled eggs. She likes deviled eggs. She likes egg drop soup.
Anything else she's almost repulsed by and I was
Leila: like scrambled doesn't like runny egg fried eggs, even
if they're like hard fried love eggs.
David: So I don't understand the difference on why she likes a
hard boiled egg. But not a fried egg.
Mimi: Probably the texture but there's some great hard boiled
egg recipes. One of my favorites that I didn't even know about
until I started researching is the Scotch egg and a Scotch egg
is a hard boiled egg that's then gets rolled in sausage. Just and
then you can roll it in breadcrumbs if you want. And
then you fry it or you can bake it in the oven, like it fried
and you fry it up so the sausage gets cooked. And then you can
slice it so it's got the sausage and then the egg
Leila: and really good
Mimi: I really ended those and they're really great with like
ranch sauce to dip them in with ranch dressing. So there's that.
There's also you know, I have deviled egg, which some parts of
the country called stuffed eggs. Because, yeah, it's in the book.
Leila: If we read it, yeah.
Mimi: So, so there are desert deviled eggs so you can do you
know deviled eggs don't have to be mixed with mayonnaise or
anything. It can be cream cheese, you can sour cream, you
can you can use the egg yolk and mash them up with a with a ripe
avocado. The desert eggs though use cream cheese and you can use
chocolate to flavor it. So you can have a chocolate stuffed egg
which is delicious. These rested that stuffed egg recipes date
back to the Romans and the Romans used to mix honey with
the the egg yolk and stuff back into the egg. We like honey.
Yeah. So you know it's like there's lots of variation. I
mean, you can spend a lot of time on that. Does she like
pickled eggs? Because pickled eggs are another type of hard
boiled egg.
David: Oh, no, no, no, no. I think it's the pickled part of
it. The vinegar. She is not a fan of vinegar.
Mimi: Okay, the I was recently I've been playing with quail
eggs and quail eggs are gorgeous. They hard boiled in
just a few minutes. And you can to get the shell off you can
soak them in vinegar, which makes the shell get really soft
and they're easy to peel off. But the hard boiled quail eggs
you can then put back in a wok and stir fry them so I think
they're called mother in law's eggs. There are some recipes
about that and some people use a lot of sriracha and and put them
over with with ramen. There's a lot of recipes like that but
Leila: they discontinued to Raja
Mimi: Well, they didn't just continue with they can't get
them they had a problem with the crop. Oh,
David: I thought I thought the company went out of business. I
saw off brand the other day so I think we're safe.
Mimi: But there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of
interesting recipes just using hard boiled eggs so you don't
have to use other things.
David: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I guess I guess that answers your
question. Probably is the texture,
Mimi: texture changes depending on how you cook it. I mean, you
can cook like you can cuddle an egg which is cooking really
slowly and just kind of lukewarm water for a long period of time.
It's kind of like the original cvwd and the egg comes out
really smooth like just move you know you just kind of drink it
down there but yeah, so it's like you know I I like my eggs
cooked like ridiculously well but that's me.
David: i Oh, that's me too. I I like you can a little attest to
this. I like everything to be burnt around the edges. Like
every year. I like my steak medium rare but crispy on the
edge.
Leila: When he makes meat on the grill, I have to have it like
wrapped in tin foil so he doesn't char it.
David: I like the taste of carbon. So when I make fried
eggs, the the edges are all you know Stand in rippled up in
black. I love it. I'm
Mimi: not cooking them the recommended way by chefs in
France but okay, yeah, Dad
Unknown: cooking in the French way.
David: I tell you what if I go to France if I ever, you know,
adult though,
Mimi: okay, there is the Spanish fried egg, which you heat up
about an inch of olive oil. And you basically poached that egg
in hot oil. And it's crispy on the outside. And it's delicious,
like thrown over a steak. It's really intense.
David: I never thought I never thought about putting egg on a
burger. Until we got a restaurant here that did it. And
I was like, you know, why not? Right. And that is a fantastic
combination. Yep. I had never had that before. And now anytime
we go somewhere that does that. I'm like, oh, yeah, let's go.
Mimi: Egg and your beer.
David: You see, I don't like beer. I don't drink. I did see
all of those drinks with egg.
Leila: Yep. With. There was a lot of egg drinks though.
Whiskey and
David: all kinds of stuff. I'm gonna mess around with some of
those.
Mimi: Oh, absolutely. It says some of the fizzes are in that.
They're delicious. I actually have cooked every recipe in the
book for about four.
Leila: Are you sure? Yep. I was looking for. And the poached
eggs. You have a chocolate milk poached egg.
Mimi: I do. Yep.
Leila: Have you made that one?
Mimi: Oh, yeah. My kids hate me for it. How is it?
It's okay. It wasn't one of my favorites. But it because it was
just too sweet. And I don't really like sweet eggs. Yeah,
that's what I thought. But I also I don't think it's in the
book. I also tried poaching it and buttermilk. And I tried
poach. I tried everything. I tried poaching it and all kinds
of things. Yeah, egg and buttermilk is tasty
Leila: and looks a little things you posted. And I was like
chocolate milk. I don't think that'd be very good. Like maybe
if you have your eggs on the side,
David: just some chocolate milk and eggs is basically what she
wants. Apparently servo in the chat says he wants some chicken
fetus with your beef. And I'm like, yes. Yes, I do. Thank you.
Thank you for asking.
Mimi: Okay, so it's only if it's only a fetus. If it's been
fertilized. eggs are fertilized. So all you're really doing is a
chicken ovum. You're getting chicken. So you know, yeah.
David: delicious one. Yeah. So I've got a question not related
to eggs, but to the book itself. The art. I love it. Oh my god,
the art style with the the, like the wood was gone. With cats.
Yeah, the wood plates. That's
Mimi: my daughter did all the while she worked with the
designers. And she's the one who picked all the art because I the
book I envision looked a lot different. But she kept saying
and I it's kind of old fashioned. Oh, she went with
this super old fashioned look. I mean, I was just going to do
with pictures and stuff. But I think it works.
David: I think we both were like, Oh wow, we love this
aesthetic. It's, it's perfect for the subject matter. And the
old wood cuts were really fun. May or may not have to print one
or two and frame them. Legally, of course, I'll get the
copyright for
Mimi: totally, totally. No, they're they're all public
domain. Oh, there we go then.
Leila: Awesome. Nice. Yeah. So I was looking through the book.
And I got really hungry for some eggs. And I made the thing in
the book that tastes the least like eggs. And I made Merengues
Oh Marang. Yeah. Good. I made an oven for and that recipe that
you have is delicious.
David: Oh, thank you. Before we get on the chat with you. She
sat down right in front of her microphone and ate like 15 Yeah,
so I'm hearing to Turner I had to turn her mic off. They are
really good though. The great recipe.
Leila: I may or may not have accidentally spilled one of the
eggs on the counter. So we're not going to talk about that.
David: She Leila's take taken an interest in cooking. She's
actually made dinner for us every night this week. So she's
made us chicken fried rice. What else chicken tacos.
Leila: beef tacos.
David: Taco. We've had a lot of tacos. But she's Yeah, but then
she was like, I'm gonna go make these Marang I was like, go for
it.
Leila: I was looking through it. And I was like, she has to have
a recipe for Merengues Oh, yeah. Because I love her eggs. And I
was like, yeah, they're made of eggs.
Mimi: There's a list of I tried to cover every thing. I mean, I
kept trying to find To as many recipes as I could find from
different places, because when I was a kid, my parents moved me
to Iran to Tehran, Iran. And so I learned how to cook there
because we lived in a hotel for a long, long time. And the chef
was trying to learn English and I was fine with learning French,
but mostly he'd cook for me. So they would make this. I can't
remember that I'm really bad at names. There's an Iranian dish,
it's just a green omelet. It's got a lot of chopped green stuff
in it. And, and I started going there. None of the books in
America have egg books, you know, egg recipes from other
countries so much except for maybe the frittata and boring
stuff that everybody knows about. So I did try to get as
many, you know, exotic, interesting dishes. And then I
tried to cover everything that I could think of. I've probably, I
actually did forget about something someone reminded me
recently. I don't have I don't have any recipes on ice cream.
Leila: That which egg ice cream?
Mimi: Yeah, I have none. This is because they don't like ice
cream.
David: Oh my. We should have read it our guests. Were ice
cream people.
Mimi: So it's John I've just like you know, I could take it
or leave it but I never even thought about it. So I'm sure
I'm gonna have to do the next edition of the book with some
ice cream because it's basically just have frozen custard.
David: So yeah, just I thought of that. Like as soon as I was
like ice cream with egg Oh, like custard. Okay. But anyhow, I
can't say anything. Um, yeah, you see? Yeah, we've got an ice
cream shop about a mile down the road. little mom and pop place
and oh my gosh, and they have a they have a loyalty program. So
we get a lot of free ice cream because we live really close to
St it's nice to have in places like that where you know the
people who own it. Like you see a mountain about their kids. You
know, one of them was a teacher, Leila school and so but we had
Leila had some more questions.
Leila: What's your current favorite recipe in the book?
Mimi: Got to think about that for a second. Well, I already
talked to you about I already told you about the
the Scotch eggs the other the other recipes that I was
absolutely fascinated with but technically they aren't my
favorite and the four are the the savory bread puddings. Who
because it you know I always had sweet bread puddings, I don't
know sweet bread, puddings, whatever, the savory ones. It's
like you can feed you can feed an army with just you know,
stale bread and eggs and whatever leftovers from the
refrigerator. So I mean, it's just like it. It's delicious. So
there's that. What else did I make recently
Leila: you had made something recently that you really like,
David: I typically get up in the morning. If I'm going to make
breakfast at home if I'm not good enough of going anywhere. I
get a get a tortilla, some Jimmy Dean's hot sausage. And then
I'll cut up either as like a Serrano and some onion. And then
I'll just like I said, I'll just put some oil in there. Crack the
egg. break the yolk, spread it around a little bit but not
scramble it. And then, and then put everything together and
throw it in the tortilla. See me? I did read in the book. I
haven't read it word, every single word. But I did read in
there that you're not supposed to add salt while you're cooking
the egg. Nope. And I did not know that. And
Mimi: that's based on old, old old cooking techniques I'm going
back to I mean, even the Romans talked about not adding salt to
an egg until after it was cooked. And I don't add salt to
anything until after it's cooked. But with eggs if it I
tried all the stuff I played around by adding salt in
different amounts. And what it does is it it dries out the the
egg and actually dehydrated slightly. So that's you know,
not really it makes it more rubbery which might be why your
wife's not eating anything but hard boiled eggs
David: might be maybe no Yeah, no, that's valid.
Mimi: So you know, like the My favorite way to make a scrambled
egg is I take the eggs and I break them into a measuring cup.
And then I add a little bit of either cream of tartar or lemon
juice, a couple of drops. And then I only beat it just until
it's mixed. And the lemon juice what it does is it makes all the
proteins in the egg line up so they get they they start
connecting together so they're long proteins instead of little
little chunked up proteins. And then you put it in a pan with
some Ideally melted butter already in the pan with me and
you push it from the outside to the center and it makes the eggs
really fluffy and light. Because these proteins, you know,
they're all together and they're they're long and it makes
luxurious cure curds of eggs. So that's my favorite way to make
eggs and then I'll take it out and put on salt and seasonings
and probably cheese knowing me
David: my eggs never looked like the ones at the restaurant that
might be part of part of it. Because they look fluffy like
the, I don't know, one of the breakfast places nearby. Their
eggs are always nice and fluffy and and
Mimi: you also want to cook on a medium heat. You don't want to
cook on high. Oh,
David: that I know that one that ones that I've learned my lesson
on. It's like instant burn. And not like the good burn that I
like.
Mimi: How you get different types of birds get different.
You should write a book on how to burn your
David: food burning burning your food to deliciousness. For
Mimi: Have you tried a blowtorch? That might be fun.
Leila: Oh my gosh. I was thinking about that with the
Merengues. I was like maybe I should.
Mimi: Yeah, just give me color on the top.
David: My mom used to make Moray And okay, so talking about the
the salt, toughening up the eggs. And that's been known
since the Roman times. My mother, I love her to death.
She's a wonderful woman raised me up, right. But that woman did
not cook when she did, but it was not good. I'm not my mother.
I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I tell you. The
only spices we had were salt, and pepper. And whatever the
generic version of seasoning salt was. That was we had three
bottles of spices on our spice rack. And when I went to go move
out of my own, I got a job at a restaurant. And one of the cooks
taught me how to cook. Oh my gosh, when I discovered garlic
powder. Oh my gosh, but I'm kind of one of the first cooks in the
family for for two generations. So I'm learning still. And I
feel like I should have known this by now. But with the wife
not liking eggs, we're coming up on our 20th Oh, happy
anniversary, by the way. 35 that's a that's a big one. Yeah,
we're about to hit 26 months. Yeah, so we got married young.
So we didn't
funny story about that my wife wasn't even 21 When we got
married. And we went on a cruise. And on a cruise. If
there's a married couple, and either of them are under 21.
Once you get into international waters, the spouse can take
guardianship over their spouse to buy alcohol for them. So in
the international waters, she could drink as long as I allowed
her to as her guardian. Wow, it was it was funny.
Mimi: You've made it 20 years with this. Oh,
David: my my wife is a saint for putting up with me. Leila can
attest to that or how she does it. I guess I got stories but
not appropriate for Fun Fact Friday.
Mimi: They're just different facts.
David: Just different. Yeah. I was you know, I was a early 20s
guy, you know, it was it was a dude. So, okay, where were we
got that one. We got them. Okay, so, chicken eggs? Is it just is
do we typically eat chicken eggs just because they produce so
many versus other birds? Or are there other birds? Do you know
that produce as many as chickens and maybe why don't we do?
Mimi: Ducks outperform chickens? Oh my god. chickens and ducks.
Ducks lay consistently all year round where chickens stop laying
when the days get short and they don't start laying again until
the day start getting longer so they may take three months off
if you keep them under natural light. Like no none of my
chickens would lay in the winter months at all. And that's what
they do. Ducks will keep laying so ducks are more consistent
duck eggs are delicious in baking. They're unbelievable and
baking you can make a sponge cake like because the yolks are
so thick for a fried egg they are I find them chalky but they
a lot of people like them. They're great for an omelet.
goose eggs only lay geese only lay about two months during the
spring. Same with turkeys. Their eggs are eggs ones, but they
don't leave very often.
David: I've had Turkey and duck s and then quail we had. We had
a bunch of quills where I lived in Texas.
Mimi: I remember in in England, they give special permits to
collect a certain type of gall egg. They're only they release
like a dozen people to be able to collect these eggs from the
sheer cliffs. And the gull eggs are, like $250 is serving. Wow.
And it served with some celery salt. It's hard boiled and
served with Senator celery salt low sell yourself. And I
understand I've never had them but they are a little fishy.
Because eggs, eggs will take on flavors and colors based on what
they eat. Hmm. So I made this really interesting decision rose
to three of my good layers, and I put them in their own little
cage. And I fed them a lot of garlic. thinking, well, wouldn't
this be interesting to have garlic flavored eggs? So it'd be
neat. You know, it's kind of, okay, it comes through. But
yeah,
David: now let's just add garlic. Yeah.
Mimi: One thing I found really interesting is just a guy in New
York State who has a restaurant. And he feeds them. This guy, Dan
Baker. He's a chef in New York, I think it's called like Blue
Hill restaurants. And he takes us chickens. He's got a special
group of chickens and he feeds them a super intensely colored
red pepper. That puts a lot of color into the yolk because the
yolks are influenced by what the chicken eats the color of them
specifically. So he ends up with these red yolks, these like
strawberry colored yolks. I think it's kind of interesting.
Our own battery cage chickens that you can get, you know, the
factory farming, they actually add a nado to their feed to make
it yellow, because otherwise we'd be pale, pale, pale yellow.
Oddly enough, if the chickens out there free roaming,
pastured, eating bugs, eating grass, eating everything, you'll
get this nice yellow yolk that's actually has more nutrition in
it than the other ones than the ones from the store for the
battery cages.
David: Yeah, my my brother feeds, they're all they've just
gone off property and eat all the bugs and seeds and all the
stuff just that's in his yard. He's got like nine acres and
maybe 15 Egg 15 eggs. Okay, chickens. So they've got the
realm of the place.
Mimi: Yeah, they've got to be delicious eggs. And they're,
they're better for you to they're way more nutritious.
David: Do you know what's not better for you? The fake eggs in
China and India. Have you heard about these? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I
hadn't until today.
Mimi: No, I went through that whole thing. And it's like,
yeah, yeah, let's eat more junk.
David: It was okay. So this just, it blew my mind. For the
listeners here who may not know about it, like I didn't know
about it. Fake eggs have been produced in China since the mid
90s. According to a 2012 Time article. They're about half the
cost of real eggs. But the ingredients are resin starch,
coagulant pigment and sodium alginate extracted from brown
algae and that's to make the egg whites and then it's a mix of
resin and pigment for the yolk. And then paraffin wax, gypsum
powder and calcium carbonate to make the shell unlike, you know,
wow,
Leila: resin yummy. Don't eat
Mimi: I encourage all the little communities across America to
allow urban chickens you know, I mean, you can have two or three
chickens delete all your leftovers. You know, you don't
have to worry about that part. They they're fun to watch
because they're like little dinosaurs. They're good pets.
And they'll lay you know, a couple eggs every week. You
know, why not? You know?
David: Yeah, we've got quite a few in our neighborhood. Yeah,
we got we've got we got kind of an apocalypse ready neighborhood
I feel like
Leila: yeah, bullies deed is asking you to is telling us to
ask you how to boil an egg so appeals and I know the answer.
Mimi: But deem it you steam it. I tried every way possible. I
went through dozens and dozens of eggs why I tried poking a
hole on one hand I put it in vinegar water, I put it in water
with baking soda. I did all the wives tale of things. The best
way is the way where you put a couple inches of water in the
pan and ideally use like a little steaming rack like for
vegetables and you put your eggs in there and then you cover it
you put it on a full boil and you let it just boil for
depending on the egg 12 to 15 minutes and then you instantly
pull it off the stick Beam and you plunge into really cold
water and you let them rest for a little bit and they will come
off. But if you no matter how you cook an egg if you have to
peel a bunch of them at once you use what's known as the old army
trick, which is in the pan that you're in, you shake the pan
really hard just after you finish cooking the eggs and then
you put it in cold water and it will crack all the shells and
they'll come right off. So
Leila: yeah, you saw that in your book. Yeah, well
David: we get we get past Leila Leila makes a fantastic deviled
egg with my mom's old recipe. The one thing that my mom did
did actually make was she was able to boil eggs and then mush
up the yolk with some mustard. And paprika. That was her the
whole recipe. Apparently mustard and no, it was chili powder.
Okay, I must have been wrong. We sometimes had chili powder on
the spice rack. But um,
Mimi: so just mustard as the as the liquid. Yep.
Leila: Hi, when I make a deviled eggs, I put mayonnaise. Mustard
if we have it, but it's not really. Yeah. Sweet relish and a
little bit of chili powder and paprika on top.
Mimi: My mother who couldn't cook at all? I mean, she cooked
every day rationally. That's why I didn't like eating
David: I have no right there with you.
Mimi: My mother could make pork chops. So they appeared to be
made on cardboard. Cuz Oh salmonella. You have to be or
whatever. No. trichinosis or whatever it was. You have to
cook a well.
David: Yeah, so my mom did. It was shoe
Mimi: leather. So that was my mother, you know, boil things
until there's no life left in him. But her deviled eggs were
her mother's recipe and that was you know, mayonnaise and chili
powder. And salt and pepper. And the chili powder kind of brings
out some of the egg quality. It's interesting. It's a
different style. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't like deviled eggs growing
up. No. I didn't like eating when I was growing up. I've
gotten over that.
David: I did. Yep. Once I learned to cook. Yeah, it was it
completely different models body shape. Of course, when I stopped
working at at Outback I wasn't walking five or six miles a
night. So that kind of, but it did teach me to cook and I
learned how to cook pork chops there. And the first time I made
my wife proper pork chops, because her mom also did the you
know, really cheap by the super thin ones. And see what cook
them she would cook them until they were like that too. And
once I made her some, you know, inch thick, you know, I let it
Brian for a couple of hours. And then you know, made like this
mustard. Oh my gosh, it was so good. But she was like, I didn't
know pork chops could be so good.
Mimi: You know, I have lots of cookbooks. I've got probably
1000 cookbooks, because I like cookbooks. And I read them. I
don't use them. I just read them. And when you look at
cookbooks from the 60s and 70s they're dreadful. I mean,
there's there's this compilation cookbooks where people would
give all their favorite recipes. And it's really like one of
them's the White House cookbook from the mid 1960s. And you look
at it and it's all recipes for gelatin with crap floating.
Junk.
David: Could say crap.
Mimi: You know, like walnuts and olive chunks. And there's just
it's like the entire cookbooks are just full of these blight on
the planet. And chunks. And then there'd be recipes for like
tamale pie.
David: tamale pie?
Mimi: Yeah. Which is, it was. It was I found tons of recipes for
this. It's hamburger with, I guess chili powder in it and
olives and corn and creamed corn, and then a cornbread top
and it's tamale pie. And my mother would make these things
you know, I found a recipe in the magazine.
Leila: Please stop, please stop.
Mimi: So yeah, we had a we had a period where cooking just
destroyed itself. And then thankfully, we reinvented
cooking.
David: Yeah, so we've got handed down cookbooks. A lot of them
are from local churches. They do it as like a fundraiser.
Everybody in the church contributes a recipe and then it
turns out almost all of them are from the Betty Crocker cookbook
and they you'd forgotten where they learned it and like the
exact thing.
Mimi: No, I have lots of those Women's League cookbooks, spiral
bound things. I've got tons of them. The best one that I ever
found, though, was one that was some. It was some corporation in
San Francisco that clearly had some youngsters involved. And
they had all kinds of pot recipes in the 1970s Cookbook.
David: Oh my gosh.
Mimi: It was like really going wait, you put what in it? Hey I
don't recommend those.
Leila: Yeah, yeah.
David: Go ahead. No, after you Oh, we had in the chat. Bully
seed. Louis seed. Bully steed says asked me if she knows about
stone soup.
Mimi: Well, if I had to listen no agenda day and stay awake.
David: So I, I before I asked the question, because sometimes
chat can be a little trollee. I looked it up real quick to make
sure it wasn't something inappropriate. Stone Soup is a
European folk story in which hungry strangers convinced
people of a town to eat share a small amount of their food in
order to make a meal that everyone enjoys, and exists as a
moral regarding the value of sharing and traditions. The
stone has been replaced with other common intangible objects.
Therefore the fable is known as ax soup. Button soup nail soup.
Mimi: Oh, here I am thinking about what Adam
David: I was thinking about that too. Because I was listening
today while I was skimming through your book, I was
actually listening to skim and, and put notes down. Yeah, the
stone soup thing. Leila, you weren't listening today. They
were, they're basically putting spices on rocks. And then
telling people to pick up the rock and suck all of the flavor
off of it. And then put it back in the bowl. And I'm like, I
mean, why not just eat the spices out of a spoon.
Leila: I get the dirt man.
Mimi: I dated this guy wants to as a pre med student. And I went
out with him once. And he took a bite of food and a chew and eat,
chew and chew and eat, chew and then he spit it out. I'm like,
What are you doing? He goes, Oh, I have to keep my weight down.
So I don't swallow. I just chew to get the flavor.
David: So that but but there's nutrients in the. And there's
reasons you want to eat the.
Mimi: And I was just like, Okay, check, please how I would,
David: I would rather just like cut your portion. And it's like,
if you got a cake in case you normally eat a piece of cake,
right? If you cut the piece of cake in half, you're getting
half the calories. Right? So if you if you're doing half the
calories, that means you can eat twice as much so
Mimi: well, that's what Adam read today reminded me of. Like,
right. You know, I'd rather just smell the food. Thank you.
David: Right? Just, I mean, but you know, folks, folks do what
they're gonna do.
Mimi: Yeah, don't make me watch. Yeah. The Well, the one thing
that stands supermind me I was when I was starving and young
and had an apartment couldn't afford anything. I started a
buying club. So I talked all my neighbors and all my friends to
splitting it with me. So I had to get 10 other people. And I
would go buy, you know, a 10 pound bag of rice and I split it
among us. And then I would divide it up and everyone would
just pay it ended up being way cheaper than buying it from a
grocery store. And I'd go you know, pick fruit and do it and
I'd go buy directly from farmers and I bought I bought everything
that way. And I managed to eat for free.
David: I did something less sophisticated, but similar when
I would go to the store, I would buy I lived with eight guys in a
three bedroom house in college. Okay, so rent was super cheap,
but I would buy 212 packs of soda. Right? And then I would
charge I'd like one of them was for me and one of them. If you
wanted one you threw 50 cents in the box when you pulled us out.
So it's like a little vending machine in the and the cans were
only a quarter apiece. So I got free subsidies. So yep, yeah,
that was like 80 cents apiece. Now for a can even if you buy
the 12 pack. Yep.
Mimi: It's definitely I mean, there's i i buy everything in
bulk. I mean I for a while I owned a deli up here that I
started And it was a deli in spice store. So I had like, I
don't know, 400 spices, and, and flavor salts and everything
else. And it buying in bulk is the way to go. So then I kept
buying spices that way, because, you know, a pound of spices is
cheaper than those little teeny jars. You know, I so yeah, and I
buy side to be every year, and I buy you know, I buy everything I
can in bulk. And then I shop at the otter farms or the the local
produce stands exclusively. I haven't been in a regular store
for years,
David: we we have a what you're just saying, Farmer stand
nearby, right? And yes, one day I was there, and we were getting
our stuff and it cost a little more than the grocery store. But
you know, you're supporting local folks. Well, then they had
bananas. What? And I was like, bananas in eastern North
Carolina. That doesn't seem right. And I was like, Where are
you growing these bananas? And they're like, oh, no, we grabbed
those from the grocery store. We had some customers asking for
them. So we just, we just get him from the grocery store, mark
them up. And I'm like, what, what else do you just get from
the grocery store in the markup? Like, oh, like, oh, this and
that, you know. And I was like, really? So you, you go to the
grocery store, which is literally, you can walk from the
farmer's thing to the food line in like, two minutes. So like a
two minute walk. Like
Leila: the next slot over?
David: Yes, the next slot over and I'm like, Oh my gosh. So why
am I going to shop with you, as you know, supporting, supporting
us and I'm like, now,
Leila: I'll just give you some money. If I want to support you
don't like
Mimi: what's see i I've gone off the deep end, which is another
reason why I live up here in this strange little place is
that I only eat if it's locally grown and in season, which is
with two exceptions I'll get I will buy oranges and I won't buy
bananas. But everything else is all you know. So by the end of
the winter, because we have long, hard winters up here. I
mean, right? I park my Midwest standards, but it rains all the
time. So all I'm eating is cabbage and kale.
David: I hear that that's the healthier way to do it is to
only eat things that grow in your local ecosystem.
Mimi: Yep. And it's interesting as I do it, because I'm a little
bit insane. But I got really super into the slow food
movement a few years, like, two decades back, I got so into the
slow food movement, I wanted to make everything from scratch,
which is a great idea kinda. So yeah, that I came upon this
whole thing where, you know, why don't I just eat and season it's
probably better for me, I don't like fruit anyway, when it's
shipped from halfway around the world, right? Then let's find
all the local people who like the farmers markets and stuff
that I can support. It gets really boring here about
February
David: are where we're at it's, we don't have real harsh winters
at all. You can grow most things a lot longer here. Yeah, and we
do have a lot of local farmers that basically it just comes
down to a, you go knock on their door and be like, hey, and a lot
of a lot of houses around here. Just have signs out in the front
yard, you know, eggs for sale, or corn for sale, or when we
lived. When we first got married, we lived in this tiny
little house on the other end of the county. And our landlord had
about 50 acres of farmland. And he had a little two acre plot
with just a variety garden, you know, like everything, tomatoes
for everything. And they were like, we grow way more food in
that garden than we can eat or giveaway. So anytime y'all want
some fresh vegetables within reason, pop over and grab them
and oh my gosh, pulling the corn straight off the the stock
walking inside. Shocking. Oh my gosh. When it's right off the
vine, it's so good.
Mimi: That's, that's why I live up here and not in California
where I just I have to go much further to get the same quality
of foods. So
David: almonds and avocados, right?
Mimi: Well, I'm not sure we have the first state licensed raw
dairy. Oh, nice. And you know, they're neat people and it's a
great place and there's a lot of honor farms where nobody's
there. And you just put the money under a rock and take what
you need. And you know, I that's how i i prefer that.
David: Yeah, that's that's cool. I hadn't heard that. I hadn't
heard of that anywhere. So I feel like that could work in
like our part of the county, but the more southern part of the
county wouldn't work out.
Mimi: Yeah, well, you know, and that didn't you know, I'm too
lazy. have chickens anymore but you know having a couple
chickens is always great. I'm way too lazy to have
David: it I hear from my brother it's it's a lot of work and it
can be a lot of heartbreak if a fox gets in the in the hen
house.
Mimi: I'm right across from the National Park so I have bears
mountain lions and foxes and coyotes and raccoons and eagles.
I hate eagles. We've Owls
David: of ours, we have a huge owl that lives in our backyard.
Most of the time with us.
Mimi: Yep. Yeah, it's it's Wild Kingdom up here. We have deer
all the time. You know, which is great. You know,
David: we've got so we have Yeah, it was afraid of deer. We
had an incident. They're not
Mimi: they're not nice little animals. I'm sorry. No. Yeah.
David: They are. They are massive rats. No offense to nick
the rat. Oh, no. Absolutely. Yes.
Leila: They're just massive rounds get killed by one on one
time.
David: Yep. In Sam's
Leila: in a Sam's Club. What? Yep, that's what everyone says.
David: I'll tell you the story because I tell it a little bit
better than Leila does. She tells it really well, if you
want to tell it. I'm bad at telling stories. Okay, so we're
in Sam's, we're getting our Sam stuff we're loading up on, you
know, five gallons of mayonnaise, that sort of thing.
And we're going down the outside. I'll think we're
looking for olive oil, napkins, something along those lines. And
I hear some commotion behind me and I'm like, I don't even turn
around. And then I look at my wife Phaedra and Leila are both
standing in front of me. And my wife's face just goes white. And
then I hear and I turn around and like as I'm turning around,
what was a 12 point buck? No, not 12 like a big old buck.
flies past me. My wife grabs Leila and throws her into the
rack of olive oil and stuff. And like as they like it was a two
inches from getting hit by this this book running through Sam's
and then this I mean support animal didn't know what's going
on. It runs headfirst, trying to jump over it headfirst into a
pallet of deerpark water. Water goes everywhere. It's got it
nailed stabbed it with its horns. Leila's standing there,
just completely stunned and like freaking out. And then there's
like an employee's running up with carts with seven. By the
way. I've got my hand on my pistol. Because I'm a concealed
carry instructor. I've always gone pistol with me, but I've
got my hand on in case this thing starts charging us again.
You know, I don't know what's going to happen. Anyway, it it's
disheveled from hitting the pallet of water. And I grab our
cart. And there's two employees and the three of us kind of like
work it into the back room where there's a the out the outgoing,
like garage doors for the trucks to come in. We opened that up
and it ran out. So Leila has a this was when she was younger.
This is a traumatic experience. It was a very traumatic
experience where
Leila: I am afraid of deer and
Mimi: well, I was in my backyard one day when the two of the boys
decided to start playing. And I don't know, I don't know if it
was reading season or not. But there's nothing more terrifying
than seeing the house. And then I have to get past these guys to
get to the house. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, but you know, their
deer just eat my garden all the time. That's why I've never This
is the first year I've actually had a vegetable garden in years
because they come in the middle of a night no matter what I put
around it, they get through it. They just eat everything to the
ground. I put I used straw bales and I did a straw bale garden.
So I planted in the straw bales where my dog run is I haven't
come in yet. So I'm happy.
David: Yeah. We we've got we've got lots of rabbits here and
different other little little creatures. The most dangerous
animal is seen in our county as we add a panther on the loose
one time
Mimi: like an outline. Yeah, yeah. And
David: and they actually ended up catching it, I think but I
was like, Oh my gosh, that's the biggest cat. What that's not
Whoa. I looked at and I was like of course Carolina Panthers.
That's why because they're you know I don't know if somebody
had brought it down from the mountains or keeping it as a pet
or I don't know what was going on. But
Leila: yes, it was have bears roaming around. What we've
David: never seen one yes. So
Leila: yeah. Yeah,
Mimi: I don't see I don't really go out and look for him all that
much anymore because, you know, whatever. But in winter it when
it snows, I go out and I look at all the footprints and it's
like, oh, a lot more things are coming around than I thought.
David: Some Yeah, we have to worry about, like, people don't
like hunting some folks and they're trying to but it's 100%
necessary here. There's so many deer, the car accidents from
them running out in front of cars, and it's, I know, five or
six people who've hit a deer and it's messes them up, you know?
Mimi: Yeah, it messes your car up. Yeah, that's yeah,
David: that's a mess. Well messes the deer up too. But it
messes up everything. It's a it's a big problem.
Mimi: That if you hit a deer, you can throw it on your car and
bring it home and butcher it.
David: It's the okay, what's funny about our state, if you
hit a deer, you can't pick it up and take it home. But the guy
behind you can.
Mimi: That's kind of a strange law, but okay. For meeting him
on purpose.
David: Yeah, it keeps me from trying to go hunt them down with
their car. But, you know, Unless I see the deer get hit, I'm not
thrown in the back of my truck. Because you How long has it been
there? You know, I mean, I've seen one of the one of the
things that the teenagers do in our county is when somebody has
hit a deer. They go by a get well helium balloon and I it's
it's lit. It's about it's about funny. It's so sad, but it's so
funny
we live in rural as well. So what since we're joking around,
I teased this a little earlier, we have a we have the Appendix C
which was which was pruned from too many eggs. And it is the
joke section. Now, some of them aren't, aren't quite as fresh as
the others I've highlighted my favorites. And just to keep the
time down because there is a lot. I know a lot of them.
Mimi: When I was writing this book, I would go off on
tangents. So I also have how you can dye eggs with you know, with
natural ingredients like you know, like onion skins, and how
you can make tempera paint. I have a lot of weird stuff in the
book, but
David: got pruned.
Mimi: Yeah, got friends sitting on the couch.
David: You know, anyway, you can always
you can always do a even more too many eggs or too many eggs
Part Two Electric Boogaloo. Yeah.
Mimi: Now, you know, I'm actually kind of off eating eggs
these days. I can't imagine it. Well, if the average American
eats about three eggs a week, I was eating about six dozen a
week for a while there. Try it because I try it. So, you know,
the certain point I went,
David: yep. We did that with cat fish. We loved fishing when I
was a kid. And we would go out to the river. And it was almost
almost all cat fish that we would catch. And we'd bring them
home and you know, get the meat off and put it in the freezer.
And then we were we were like let's eat up all this cat fish.
We ate cat fish. Nothing but cat fish for like lunch and dinner
for an entire summer. And I think I'm fine. Never eating cat
fish again, ever.
Mimi: And you didn't do the cookbook?
David: Catfish cookbook? No, because my mother would put it
in a skillet and sprinkle some salt and pepper on it. That was
that was the extent of the so I had the same meal. That actually
reminds me of a story I heard in New England back in the olden
days. I don't know what time period but they were paying the
lobster cruise from the lobster catching cruise. They were
paying them in lobster. Oh yeah. And then a certain point they
were like no we need money. Because they're like you're
eating one of the finest dishes in the land. You should be happy
that we're feeding you this this and they're like you can only so
much lobster man.
Leila: You only so much of something.
David: Even though lobster is fantastic. Yeah, you're tired of
it. So Leila How did the eggs leave the highway?
Leila: You want me to answer?
David: I don't want you to read it. I just wants you to be like
I don't know Dad. Why
Leila: don't know Dad. Why? How
David: they went through the exit. Good one. Ah What did why
did the egg cross the street?
Leila: I don't know.
David: To get to the Shell station now
Leila: what is so lame? was so lame. I'm sorry to both y'all.
David: I love it. Oh, wow. See, it's the problem is is we're
both looking at the same notebook and leave those got all
of them in front of her stuff and close it. Close it. Close
it, minimize it. Just minimize you don't have to actually she
closed her whole laptop.
Leila: Too late. It was already in motion. Okay, Leila.
David: I got to hit this one earlier, but I think this is
probably my favorite.
Leila: isn't helping. I'm looking at your screen here. Let
David: me turn around. Knock knock. What?
Leila: Oh, who's here?
David: omelet? Omelette who? A lot smarter than you. I altered
that one a little bit. Oh, wow. Oh, this one. This one's
actually kind of irrelevant. I don't know when you wrote these.
But um, what website the egg? Go to to chat. White eggs.com.
Leila: Yeah,
Mimi: yeah, yeah, there is.
David: Is there x.com? Yeah, I was thinking it's even funnier
now. Because x.com is Twitter. Oh, eggs.com. The website
literally just says, Hi, Ilan, what? Contact me here and it has
a link to
Leila: a contact. Why did you click it?
David: And then it says or follow me on Twitter. And then
copyright, eggs, eggs, eggs and more eggs. Alright, so
Leila: that's all it says on this website. We can chat.
David: I'll link in the show notes. I think the chat can go
to eggs.com. I don't think I need to link to that.
Leila: But it's so funny. Wow. Yeah, no,
Mimi: I wrote this book. Darby. And like, I want to say 2011.
Leila: But wow. I was one year old.
Mimi: It was it was but it was a grief process. It was a grief
project for me because my brother had had died by his own
hand, unfortunately. And I went into this grief cycle. And it
was like, How do I What do I do? I know I'll write an egg book. I
was obsessed. And it's like, the best thing to do. Yeah. And it
works. So yeah, that's why the book is dedicated to my brother.
So
David: I didn't see that at the beginning. Yeah. I love the
little picture. I love the little picture that's kind of
faded out behind it with the boy eaten the egg together like
shoved in his mouth. It's such a fantastic picture. I'm probably
going to be printing that one. It's going to be in the studio.
Mimi: Yeah, there was there a few rest egg one cartoons we had
to pull out because they might daughter didn't realize that
they weren't ready for primetime.
David: Oh, okay.
Mimi: I'll send it to you. Okay.
David: Yeah, that's I tell you write in a book put on a show
doing videos, anything like the process of finding the right
art? That's, yep, that's copyright free, or no. I do
Mimi: free, which is why you stick with old images. Like from
the 1800s. That helps.
David: Yeah, I did a audio drama version of a Christmas carol on
my other podcast, full cast, voice actors. And I did. I did
Foley and music. And I went back and found some on the
archive.org some records from like, the early early 1900s of
people singing Christmas carols. Yep. And yeah, they're in the
public domain now because they're so old. But then I had
to go in and clean them up enough to where it sounded like
people caroling outside of you know, Scrooges? That was really
old thing. I can tell Yeah, I did did a really good job
cleaning it up by audio wizard.
Mimi: Yeah. Well, I like was that creative comments and you
look in the comments like for image free there's beautiful
pictures there. I mean, originally my this egg book was
going to have really old oil paintings. Oh nice. Like you
know that was what it's too expensive to print in color. So
David: I will link these in the show notes. But where I go a lot
of times is I'll go to pixels.com it has everything on
the site is Creative Commons zero. So you can just use it for
whatever for whatever purpose they do have a thing that says
you know donate to the artist or they also have a if you want to
credit the artist here's how they want to be credited. And I
always do if I use their stuff in my other show, but um, yeah,
it's it's a great place to go grab all kinds of super high
quality images. They have 4k video there they have. Oh,
that's great. Lots of stuff. Lots of stuff.
Mimi: Yeah. Yeah. It's always the challenge. Although, you
know, I'm not all that pleased. John likes the AI stuff, because
he thinks it's fun. It's
David: fun. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah.
Mimi: I get get over people having been on nine and 10
fingers. That's,
David: that's what's so great about it is that weird little
stuff?
Mimi: I know. It's like, it's like, find what's wrong in this
picture?
David: Well, one of the things that scared me is I'm trying to
start a career in voice acting. And one of the problems now is
it, you can take my this podcast, and throw it into a
training program, please, nobody do this. And you could have my
voice reading your story. And I don't like that. And I've got
friends who are actual, that's their whole profession is voice
acting. And people have been taking their voices, and it's
for funny little YouTube videos or whatever. But how long until
somebody does a project and just doesn't want to pay the voice
actors? You know, and that's a whole it's a whole thing.
Mimi: About Kenny Valley when it comes to voices, no.
David: Well, it's getting by the day getting more unnoticeable.
Getting more better, it's getting more better. Yeah.
Mimi: But there's still an uncanny valley when it comes to
the the faces of AI is generated art. I mean, we can tell
David: Yeah, we can. We can still tell for now. I mean,
Mimi: when it comes to reading, like, like, let's say, like, an
audiobook? What makes you know, audiobooks can be read by any
human? Some humans are just terrible at doing.
David: Yeah. I will return an audiobook to Audible in a
minute. After?
Mimi: Oh, yeah, no, it's so I mean, I pick it now based on
who's reading it? No, yeah. Even more than what the subjects
about because, you know, so I'm thinking that the, the, this AI
stuff can't actually do the inflection and the tones and the
things that you look for with a really good voice.
David: There are they can I just watched a video, a guy on
YouTube, made a trailer for his book, he made like an animated
trailer for it. And he used everything on it was AI, because
he had no money. He couldn't pay animators, he couldn't pay voice
actors. So he just made this thing and it's just a commercial
for his book. It's not like it would have had a huge budget and
budget anyway, it took him months to do it by himself. But
the all of the voice acting, he used openly available voice
acting trained, whatever. But you can go in and tweak the
inflection. And change the performance. And depending on
how nuanced to the thing is, which this wasn't super nuanced.
It was like an action thing, you know. But you can you can, you
can train it to talk like somebody and it's getting there.
And the thing is, I mean, just it gets better daily is the is
the thing. And maybe it's I feel like it's just gonna become a
tool for people with no budget. And then a tool, a tool for
people with ridiculous budgets. Yeah.
Mimi: If we go back to the whole other thing is that I can I, you
know, I've read a lot of stuff that's AI generated, and after
you read it for a while, you start realizing you can see the
pattern because we are pattern recognition devices. That's what
humans are. Oh, yeah. And it's there's some point where it's
like music, I hate listening to music that has all the the pre
recorded, you know, beats and the use, it's all like, you
know, there's, there's no drummer on the thing. It's not
interesting to me, I hear it, and it's like, I zone out. The
second I start sounding out, I realized that I'm bored. Right,
so So I think that that's going to become a thing if people
start doing a lot of that we're gonna get bored with it.
David: I think so. I think for short 15 second commercials, or
Stinger trailers, things like that. That's where but like
that, that is where you start in the voice acting industry is
doing a little 32nd commercial or things like that. So the
people who are already established in voice acting,
they can say no, you're not allowed to use my voice for AI.
You can't but the new people that are coming in all of the
contracts they're going to have we want to train an AI model on
your voice.
Mimi: Well, then you know, you, you can negotiate a contract.
David: There's always somebody that will do it cheaper is my
thing. Not that is always the case. But the problem is the,
like the timbre of my voice. If they get that, and they can
tweak, I don't know, it's, I don't like it. I don't like the
AI stuff not to play with. And for things like small things,
like I've got an image and I want to remove the background.
You know, there's like in Photoshop, there's a one button
removed background that uses AI to determine what's the
foreground, what's the background, that kind of stuff.
I'm kind of okay with. So I don't really know where the line
is, you know,
Mimi: well, here look on the bright side, you know, any
anytime a solar flare like another Carrington Event will
just wipe everything out, we won't have to worry about it.
David: Excellent book on that one. And, hey, you know what
we've got, we got provisions here we got Faraday cages we
got, like I said, we're Apocalypse ready neighborhood.
Mimi: But you know, I like when you pick up the phone, and it's
a robo call. And you can tell us a robo call because of the one
thing that they never take out. You hear the lip in the
beginning. Yep. You always hear that blip. And it's like, Oh, I
know what we're dealing with. So there's always going to be
tails. Yeah, and we're really I mean, how long do you sit with a
with a rowboat? I mean, the I start now is, is really saying
hang up, hang up.
David: I do. One of two things. I remain perfectly silent. Yep.
So they think it's a deadline. Or I do little has heard me do
this in the car before when I've got time to do something. I work
through the prompts to get to a live person. Oh, me too. And
then once I get once I get to the live person. I say in the
most commanding deepest voice that I can. This is a government
line. How did you get this number? I'm like, you are going
to regret it. If you do not take this.
Leila: You're going to regret it. Telling people you're part
of the government. I didn't say that. I
David: said this is a government line drew,
Mimi: I go the exact opposite. I get the person like Oh, hi. What
are you wearing?
David: Hey, how you doing? Because I got all day I got all
day. Is this one of the ones that's allowed to hang up on
people or not? Because if you're allowed to hang up on me, I'm
gonna go ahead and recommend that because I got nothing to do
today.
Leila: I like watching the guys on YouTube. Yeah, owe it to
David: the scam. Scam scammers
Leila: like get Boga he's
Mimi: I mean it but it's it is. Yeah, I mean, but we can tell.
You used to be I get fooled once in a while. Yeah, never get
fooled anymore. Because I've learned. Yeah, and it's gonna be
the same thing with if I'm watching something. I'm like,
they're evil people. Voice
David: Yeah, one of the good.
Mimi: I mean, if, you know, I know what fake food is, and I'm
not going to eat it. I'm not going to eat fake eggs from
China. I, you know, I? If I'm like, a majority of the other
people, when we start getting sick of hearing the same sounds,
we'll just stop watching. Yep. So So I think that, you know,
there's not that much innovation in the world, how we have
innovation is everybody's got a different voice. Everyone's got
a different sound, you know, their voices that are
interesting. So, you know, I think it's not going to work in
the long term. I really don't
David: know. And one of the things I was I was just I just
did a Twitter space with Kylie Barry's a voice actor. And one
of the things we were talking about was the gullible people.
What will happen is, you know, you've got Sally gets a call
from her son, and the sun is like, Hey, I'm in trouble. These
guys are gonna, you know, whatever. They're gonna beat me
up. I owe him $500 Or, you know, whatever. Right? And it's gonna
be an AI voice trained on Billy's voice, which is not hard
to get if somebody posts anything online with their
voice. You know?
Mimi: John got one recently that was the Grandpa, I'm in trouble
and it's like, first he's like, well, since when does my
grandson who is you know, seven years old to have a New Jersey
voice?
David: Hey, grandpa. I need you to send me some money. I gotta
get out of a situation I got myself and
Leila: go to your local Target gift card. Yeah,
David: they always want gift cards. Gift. Yeah, totally
Leila: get your money. Oh, boy.
Mimi: You know, we're in a predatory world. Let's face it.
David: We are and I'm trying to try to teach Leila has got a
very good have a good sense yeah, good sense about these
things. She's she's been raised up right to be skeptical.
Mimi: Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, that's what you I mean, I don't see how
people raise kids to be naive.
David: Yeah, well, they don't they do though. I mean, yeah.
Mimi: Well, that's not their job as a parent.
David: Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah, if I think yeah, no, this is the show
though. I don't know if you've ever listened. But this is this
is what happens.
Leila: We started talking about printers one time on the cheese
episode. Oh my god, how we got to that
David: we were on printers forever.
Mimi: Oh, when you do the one about street names? I haven't
been street name for you.
David: Yeah, yeah, we're gonna do that next week. We've got
street names that was suggested by our youngest listener, I
believe it's our youngest listener, six year old
suggestion on that one. So we're going to do that next week. And
then in two weeks, we have Andrew Scott, the microphone guy
from YouTube. Like the microphone guy, in my opinion,
talking into the mics that he recommended for us right now.
And then, two weeks after that, we were doing a mechanical
keyboards episode with Emily and Kayla from QBO. The mechanical
keyboard manufacturer,
Mimi: maybe not just the old ones in John's closet.
David: I would I would love to see all the keyboards that John
has. I would that would that would be fantastic.
Mimi: Only if you take all the old cables.
David: Now now well, my wife, oh my gosh. I bought it I bought a
cable cubby. It's like a whole shelf with these little fabric
boxes for cables. And they're the wall shelf thing is nice
looking. So she doesn't mind like I've got my monitor cables
in one. I've got my audio cables, and one of getting the
USB cables and one. I've got my miscellaneous and yet notepads?
Yeah. So I have I'm a bit of an archivist myself.
Mimi: We have a closet that is just full of. I mean, remember,
John used to work for magazines like the maggots and all that
and people like every day, it opened the front door and
there'd be 15 to 20 boxes on the front porch. People would just
send stuff unsolicited, which was the bane of my existence.
Oh, no. So it'd be software and hardware and, and books. And it
was like, Oh, okay. And then we would get anywhere between 50
and 100 pieces of mail that were all press releases every day. So
basically, I lived in a stable with 15 horses that I had to
clean out every day. I don't know what to do with this stuff.
That's so long. Yeah, it was insane.
David: The intake because like, we intake too much. And that's
just us like living and like we buy something because we need
it. But like we still intake just, oh, I can't imagine
getting an unsolicited hardware and software all the time. That
would be I mean, it'd be neat to a point. But then you're getting
every crappy webcam. Well, China makes.
Mimi: You know, I used to always laugh. This was kind of early
people would make software and Senator John like, you know, you
understand this is like a lottery. Yeah, we get the stuff.
And once in a while John will pick it up and go, Oh, I should
look at this. Meanwhile, I'm trying to get the other steps
shoveled out of the houses quick, because
David: it's a problem we had. We acquired an entire estate of
items a couple of years ago, family member passed away and we
got everything. And it was a couple it was a couple hours
down the road. So we just hold everything up here. So we've
been slowly going through it just when we have you know, and
boy who it's that right there is enough. So
Leila: yeah, so well.
David: Did we have any more questions for me? I don't think
we I think we I got through my set of everything. And then
let's see.
Mimi: Do you ever even ask me why there's different color
eggs?
David: What do you for chickens?
Leila: Oh, yeah,
David: I just assumed it was like the white chickens. We laid
the white eggs and the brown chickens laid the brown eggs is
not like that. How you get chocolate milk from a brown cow?
Mimi: No. It depends on the color of their ear lobe. They
have visible ear lobes on their cheeks. I'm serious about
David: this. You're pulling You're pulling my chain.
Mimi: Nope. So the eggshell colors based on the ear lobe. So
if a chicken has white ear lobes that lay white eggs, and it has
dark red or brownish ear lobes, they'll have brown eggs or a
bluish tint they'll have little green eggs. But the exception
are this one or two breeds depending on who you talk to.
You have the Spanish breeds that will have a white your low but
lay dark brown eggs really dark chocolate brown eggs but And the
blue eggs that are like the americanas. You know, the Easter
egg chickens, as they call them? Yeah. Turns out that those are
an anomaly. Because they have, they actually have different
color ear lobes. And it's because they had a virus that
infected them when they were living in South America. And it
was, it caused a genetic mutation that causes this color,
this greenish color. I think it's called biliverdin or
something to accumulate in the chickens body, so then it gets
deposited on the egg when it's laid. Wow.
David: I know weird so that when I go to the store, and I'm
sitting there looking at the white eggs and the brown eggs,
I'm always like the brown eggs must be healthier because
they're look more natural. They don't look all bleached. It has
nothing to do with it. Why am I paying more for the brown eggs?
Mimi: Because the chickens are having to have a label. It's
because they're heavier chickens, all the brown egg
chickens are heavier. They're not this skinny white ones. Now
eat food so that you're paying for the chicken food.
David: Okay, so yeah, the brown ones, in my experience, that
shells are a little thicker. And I like that when I'm cracking
them. It's less I'm less likely to I've gotten pretty good with
the white ones too. But I can crack them without getting
little pieces of shell and once
Leila: I used today for the Marang the yolk was so like thin
with the membrane on the outside of it. Oh really? Yeah. I was
trying to get the egg whites.
Mimi: It was it was then where'd you get them from?
Leila: Food line?
Food line? Yeah,
food line. We got the natural ones, quote unquote.
Mimi: And I think out of the egg cartons nonsense Find. Find a
good local. That was probably because the egg was getting on
the old side. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, you know, local
pastured egg is better than anything. I mean, cage free
doesn't mean they're not in cages. The cages are slightly
bigger and a door is left open. Right. In the barn. You know?
Yeah.
David: technicalities.
Mimi: Yeah, but a pastured egg locally grown. I mean, it's
there's so much better and there's so much healthier. And
the eggs that you buy in grocery stores can be up to nine months
old. They're kept in cold storage for that one. Wow. Oh,
well
Leila: think about that.
David: One quick question for to verify something I told Leila
earlier. The poop on the outside of the eggs. They're not allowed
to wash that off, right?
Mimi: I can wash it off, they don't use a detergent? Well, it
depends. The reason that we have to refrigerate our eggs in this
country is because we have had all of our eggs washed off. in
grocery stores, it's all been long washed off, they wash off
the balloon, which is a waxy coating that comes out chicken.
When you have your own chickens, you leave the blue Mani, on the
counter,
David: when I was when my brother got the chickens, and he
was talking about selling them. I'm always one of those people
that like wants to make sure that he stays on like that we
stay on the good side of the law, you know, I didn't want him
getting in trouble for selling eggs the wrong way. So I looked
into the local laws on the bloom. And it said that for if
you're selling eggs to the public, from your own chickens,
you have to leave the bloom on by law. And I didn't know if
that was like a nationwide thing or if that was like a something
that everybody does anyway, or I didn't know what the situation
was with like factories or whatever.
Mimi: Every state is different. But okay, the state commercial
eggs, they do wash the bloom off and in some cases, they put oil
on it for a New Bloom depending on what you're talking about.
Okay, but the blue but I mean the chicken only has you know
one vant right.
David: So we call it the chicken but
Mimi: their chicken berries. Absolutely. And you know usually
if you have chickens, what you do is you keep like a, you know,
a wash rag with you that's slightly damp and you just clean
off as much as you can,
David: right just kind of give it give it a little while just
to give it a little wipe.
Mimi: But you know, I mean, I don't think I talked about it in
the book, but maybe I do. You know, it used to be that you
know, with our my grandparents would have kept the chicken eggs
they would have been laid and then they would have been either
put in a water bath or laid in straw and they would have been
kept Yeah, until winter. Which is why really old recipe is
talking about oh, it's a spring egg for Christmas cake and
you're like I mean it's spring egg for Christmas cake.
Evidently, the eggs that are just too loud to lay and to to
of age with the bloom on start getting slightly dehydrated by
about December. And that was actually called for in certain
recipes. And I, of course, I thought about playing around
with it, but I didn't. So but yeah, eggs are amazing.
David: Yeah, bully steeton chatter saying waterbath keeps
eggs for months.
Mimi: It can is as long as the Bloom is left on. Oh,
David: yeah. All right.
Mimi: Are they use something that was called? It was It
wasn't water, it was heavier than water. It was water with
the chemical in it
it was called a water glass. And I'm not really sure John's
chemist in the family, so I don't remember what it is. But
it would make the water heavier and more dense and it would keep
the eggs for a lot longer. And there's a lot of books that talk
about that. And I just never got into playing with it. I should
have but maybe next book.
Leila: So one last question. Before we gotta go. What's your
favorite way of like, separating the white in the yolk? If you
have to.
Mimi: If I'm if I'm in front of other people, or if I'm by
myself
David: by herself.
Mimi: I just break the egg into my hand. That's how I do it.
Yeah.
David: So my wife does it. Yeah, I'm all I get I get like I do
the either the water bottle trick. Or that's too many steps
like do the egg shell to egg shell thing. But um yolks
Mimi: if I have people around, I'll do the egg shell.
Leila: Because I was doing that earlier, but I was like, wait a
minute, there's an easier way to do this. Yeah, and my hand
David: that's what my wife has always done when she makes my
wife makes the best angel food cake I've ever I've ever had.
It's so good. But she always just stands there crack through
her fingers Chuck's Chuck's the yolk in and the trash.
Mimi: If you get a little piece of crack of yolk into your eggs,
the fastest way to get it out as you use the eggshell and you
scoop it out. Yeah, the actual will will like magnet. Like go
Oh, you're part of me. It'll run over to it. Oh, really? Amazing.
Me. Yeah, really, is to get it out. Yeah. So and if you get a
hangnail, you know how hangnails will drive you nuts. You take
that inside membrane of the egg. And you wrap it around your
finger and leave that on and it'll dry out that hangnail.
David: Every time I get a hangnail. Just chop the tip of
the finger off. I'm just done with it. I don't mess with it.
Gone.
Mimi: We'll try the membrane.
David: I'll try that. Try the membrane next time. I'm down to
slap down to three finger fingernails here.
Mimi: That's horrible. Nightmares.
David: Sorry. Oh, wow. So we're gonna we're gonna wrap up the
actual episode. If you want to stay on for just a few more
minutes to talk. That's cool, too. But we want to go ahead and
say bye to the folks on the recorded version. We're about to
hit an hour and a half. So we're gonna go ahead and wrap up the
recording. Oh, no, we don't. That's the beauty of podcasting.
You don't have to worry about it. You get into good
conversation. You can just keep going. But for the recorded
folks, y'all have a fantastic week. We'll see you next week.
We are not doing a live show next week is going to be pre
recorded. Leila is starting back to school. We got a whole lot of
stuff to do with school and get that all back up and running. So
recorded episode next week but then we'll be back on the 31st
with Van Drew. So y'all have a fantastic weekend. It was very
nice having you Mimi.
Mimi: It was great being had.
David: Alright, have a great weekend. Bye. Bye. This is a
this is Kyle. friend of ours friend of the show.
Kyle Hebert: Fun Fact Friday with Leila and David Mitas media
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