Today we confront painful memories and our mixed feelings about mixes as nail our 95 theses of corn muffins to your headphones. We love having our own personal muffin and debate steel vs stone as we play rubbity rubbity with The Muffin Man. Join us at Chowder Fest as we Make it Happen Everybody!
Matthew's Now but Wow! - Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:00
Hi I'm Matthew. I'm Molly and this is filled out the show where we cook something delicious. Eat it all and you can't have any today
Molly 0:09
we are talking about corn muffins and we did just eat corn muffins, and we didn't save any for you.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:15
Yeah, I was pretty happy with that.
Molly 0:17
Wow, those were really good Matthew. I'm looking forward to hearing about what you made but I grew up with Jiffy corn muffins.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:25
Would you say that? That's part of your memory,
Molly 0:27
I would say that's part of my memory lane and I have really just run right into it. We're so professional. I have really fond memories, like associated with Jiffy corn muffin mix.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:37
I have mixed mixed feelings.
Molly 0:39
I haven't had it in ages. It's probably one of those things that wouldn't be as good now.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:42
Should we just like get right into the mix part? Sure. Yeah. Because like my memory lane is just like we've been making corn muffins for a long time. And I initially put mostly to go with chili and then Watson and I were talking about it and we were like, can we think of a time when we made corn muffins not to go with chili for like for any other reason? And we could not think of a time we had done that.
Molly 1:06
It's a really interesting point. It's hard for me to think of when I would make corn
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:11
Yeah, I mean like are they are good with other things and we'll get to that but like I just think of them as like the muffin that goes with chili.
Molly 1:18
Okay, fair enough. Like more than cornbread.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:21
No cornbread is good too. But I we will more often make corn muffins or corn biscuits just because like it's fun like cornbread we will make like as a meal like a southern style like not Sweet Cornbread. And like you know, stuff it with some bacon and cheddar and eat that as a meal with like a vegetable like green side. But like if I'm going to have like some core some form of corn bread with chili like I like a muffin or a biscuit more than like a chunk of corn bread just because it gets more like has more exposed surface area to Brown is a very good it's fun to have your own muffin. That's true. Well, and the thing there's really like nothing more fun than having your own muffin.
Molly 2:01
Think of any more fun than that. Oh, wow. I feel fired up just thinking about how fun it is to have my own muffin.
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:07
Okay, so Jiffy corn muffin mix. Let's let's go there. Yeah, it is. It is like as far as box products go it is good to me like compared to homemade. It's a little too sweet and kind of one dimensional. Also one time the CEO of Jiffy corn muffin was mean to me on any in an email. Wow.
Molly 2:25
Did you poke the bear?
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:27
I guess I did. So this this is something I hadn't thought about in quite a while. So many years ago, I wrote a book called Hungry monkey. I wanted to like use a recipe from the back of the Jiffy corn muffin mix box, maybe like a cornbread recipe. I don't even remember what it was or why I needed to like borrow a back of the box recipe. But there was a lot of back and forth between like my publisher and the company about like the specific what rights they were giving for the recipe. And then like out of the blue I got an email from how do you home senior, the yet I'm sorry, howdy, howdy home senior who was a famous racecar driver who then became the CEO of his family's milling company, which makes Jiffy corn muffin mix. emailed to me basically like telling me to fuck off. You didn't actually say fuck off. But but it was not. It was not like, like a formal or polite email. It was it was just like we're sick of dealing with your bullshit. You do not have permission to use our recipe go away. Wow. And I believe the company is now at that the CEO is now how do you Holmes the second. So probably we should probably like try and reconcile. And we probably should. You probably should. I mean I'm fine. I'm fine. You didn't have the NOR is dragged into this. So
Molly 3:47
my dad I remember I remember him proudly introducing me to Jiffy corn muffin mix. Like I remember him coming home and being like I have something that you're going to really like.
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:57
It is a thing a kid would definitely like and could like easily make themselves. I
Molly 4:02
have definitely not had it as an adult or not. And I feel like there would there was a an ancient episode of this show in which we talked about it. I'm sure
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:11
that's true. And I'm sure I told the same story anyway, I don't have any new stories.
Molly 4:15
I was so so prior to coming to tape with you today. I was having brunch with you. I didn't
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:21
offer you or for you any chili because you had can't come from brunch. But if you want some canned chili, no, no,
Molly 4:27
it's fine. I was having brunch and my friend Judy. Well, my friends were asking about what we were about to tape and I told them and Judy said you
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:35
told them we cannot reveal that information. It's privileged.
Molly 4:38
That's right. And then they then they stopped talking and I ruined all the fun. Yeah, whenever you are excused from brunch. Judy was telling me that her aunt Miriam, who is like a true southern lady who lives in South Carolina that Miriam uses Jiffy corn muffin sharks, and her sort of secret thing which I think is probably done by a lot of bowl is she adds an entire can of creamed corn per box. Sure. No, she's the only one. She is the only one who does that. But it is it is her thing. And she is, you know, she's a southern lady who would know.
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:14
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like, yeah, there's nothing wrong with Jeffery corn muffin mix. And like, I'm, I'm glad that the CEO is mean to me.
Molly 5:23
Because you're Thetis No, no, you're a masochist. Oops. I Yes.
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:30
Let's see what they're like other other people. I feel like I've had a lot of good experiences like tangling with like corporations on Twitter, and I never really got into that. So this was this was like before that.
Molly 5:40
Yeah, you really, really tried to take the man down and
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:43
really tried to take the Muffin Man. Have you seen the Muffin Man?
Molly 5:47
Do you know the Muffin Man?
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:49
I think he lives on some lane. Murray lane. Did
Molly 5:53
you know that there was a Drury Lane? Like right near my house growing up?
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:57
Did you like sneak out and goes
Molly 6:03
anyway, Matthew, what's on your memory lane?
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:06
Yeah, just making making corn muffins to go with chili so you didn't
Molly 6:09
grow up with Jiffy corn muffin mix?
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:12
I don't particularly remember corn muffins from my childhood or they may have been around. But I don't remember us always having a box of Jiffy corn muffin mix. But we may have I should have done more research into my own life. Like yeah, I tried. I got on a chat GPT and I said like Did Did I did I eat corn muffins when I was a kid. And it knew the answer. It was very upsetting.
Molly 6:37
You know, you mentioned a minute ago that Jiffy the Jiffy Mix is like easy enough for a kid to use. And now that you know that you mentioned it I do think that was one of the first things I ever baked by myself. And I felt so accomplished and then the other thing is then you've got this like a whole pan full of muffins that you can mow down
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:56
yeah you can absolutely mow muffins yep
Molly 6:58
no muffins mo muffin.
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:59
I say mo muffins Mo Problems, but I disagree.
Molly 7:05
Okay, so like what's a corn muffin? Why why are we talking about it?
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:09
Okay, we're talking about it because I suggested it because we were having trouble coming up with a topic
Molly 7:13
could it be that we've done 671 episodes
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:17
God so a corn muffin? It's as a kind of a sweet and savory muffin made with cornmeal wheat flour and very often add ins like cheese corn kernels, bacon, scallion herbs, chilies, that sort of thing. Maybe all of the above. Yeah. So in other words, it is northern style corn bread or like, I think on the cornbread episode like we started we talked about like the idea of like Northern style and southern style corn bread, but really what we're calling northern style corn bread is also very popular in the South. It's less true that southern style corn bread is popular in the north southern style corn bread being sweeter and kinkier being less sweet and less cakey Oh, whoops.
Molly 7:57
Okay, yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:58
Gosh, I
Molly 7:58
really got that backwards.
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:00
So yeah, so Southern Style cornbread I think of is the kind that you make in like a cast iron skillet that's like rubbed with lard and often it's white cornmeal and little or no sugar. Okay, then like Northern style corn cornmeal is the kind that's mix of Of course I would often do a wheat flour also in southern style corn bread. Okay, northern style is like when you think of like a corn bread like a yellow corn bread that would be like you know you'd put honey on it or like you would be served with with chili that sort of thing. But obviously that's popular in the south also. Sure so so a corn muffin is a is a northern style corn bread baked in a muffin tin Okay,
Molly 8:34
so how do you know what cornmeal to use it because for instance, so the most widely available corn meal where we live is probably like Bob's Red Mill. Yeah. And and I feel like it's it's either like coarse or fine but there's also sometimes medium I don't know which to use. Yeah, so confuse
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:52
you. I use the I usually use the Bob's Red Mill medium. Okay, and because So a while back do you have any recollection of this, like I said that Bob's Red Mill cornmeal was not my favorite on the show. And someone at Bob's Red Mill heard this and sent us each a big box of cornmeal. This must have been a very long it was probably 10 years ago or more. But like since then, like whatever they it worked, like their intervention works because now that's what I usually buy and I do like it and I've just like, like, learn to appreciate the fact that they're so they're kind of two different axes of now there's more than two different axes of cornmeal because you get white or yellow cornmeal for corn muffins, yellow cornmeal, okay, then the other axes are like, is it whole grain or like D germinated corn, so like the box that you get in the baking aisle, like Albers. That's, that's D germinated cornmeal, and it's not going to be as flavorful as whole grain cornmeal, but not bad.
Molly 9:48
And I'm sure we've all eaten lots of it's not
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:52
it's yeah, there's nothing wrong with it. And then the question is, is it steel ground or stone ground?
Molly 9:57
And I'm guessing that steel ground is going to be more Even exactly Yeah, so
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:01
like arrowhead Mills is an example of a really like high quality whole grain steel ground corn mill. Okay. And I think it's really good. Bob's Red Mill is a stone ground cornmeal and what that means is Yeah, you get like even in like the medium, you get a range of like very small particles to fairly large crunchy particles. Okay, and so that's what you're gonna get in the finished product. It's going to have some texture to it. Okay, and so if that's not what you're looking for, use a steel ground cornmeal, like the Albers or the arrowhead Mills, but probably like if you kind of know that's what you're getting into, like a stone grind cornmeal pretty satisfied.
Molly 10:38
So a stone ground cornmeal is almost always going to have the germ,
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:43
I think, right? Yeah, like if they're gonna go out go ahead and stone grind it like they're gonna it's gonna be a whole grain type of deal.
Molly 10:50
And does it go bad noticeably faster than D germinated because Oh, that's a really good question. I'm more stuff to go back my storage
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:59
freezer and the bags aren't that big. So I haven't had a problem got it. Like the bags maybe like 20 ounces or something. So
Molly 11:09
for what we just ate you use the Bob's Red Mill medium? Yep. And what was the recipe? So
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:15
the recipe was from Cook's Illustrated baking illustrated, which was their, their yellow book. It's,
Molly 11:21
it's like where's it on your shelf here? Oh, there it is. Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:25
yep. So this was from 2004 I think okay, and like we've made this recipe enough that the the kind of falls open to the corn muffin page let's see if we can make it follow up open Molly's testing my hypothesis here it's near the near the beginning Look at that. Oh,
Molly 11:42
there we go. All right. Took a few tries. This is what you made today.
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:45
That's what I made today. Yeah, so it is a super simple recipes made with melted butter, sour cream and milk, a moderate amount of sugar and a two to one mix of wheat flour to cornmeal got it. Now if I were less a less lazy person I would have also made their more recent corn muffins ready cooks illustrate is more recent Corn Muffins Recipe because it is quite different. So are you ready? Are you ready for me to blow your mind? I have different this morning.
Molly 12:10
I already read it on the agenda. Yeah, so
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:13
the more recent one is like you know what if what if we really focused on like the corn flavor and not so sweet. And it has like three things that are different like it has very little sugar compared to this one which has has like a cup of sugar for like three quarters of a cup of sugar for 12 Muffins. You like hydrate the cornmeal with water in the microwave, which so make sort of a sponge kind of a deal. I think this is supposed to make it moister. I don't know. It's fun to do.
Molly 12:41
Did you notice the difference? Well, we'll
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:43
get there okay, and it's a two to one ratio of cornmeal to flour. So like a much higher cornmeal ratio than these. I have made that recipe at least twice like I've pulled it up and like oh, this sounds really good. This sounds like my kind of thing. And I definitely didn't dislike it. I don't remember it being that different from the from this recipe. It seems like it would be super different and we certainly ate them all but like you know I I've never felt like I that's the one I want to go back to they both seem fine.
Molly 13:16
Okay, fair enough. So how often do you think you make these
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:21
anytime we have chili and that's not necessarily just like you know, chili con carne can be like a white chicken chili it could be a pork chili verde I made these the other day to go with it with a pork chili viraday That was so good. Like I usually like crumble up the corn muffins and really like get them in there. Hang
Molly 13:39
on I'm looking this up again. How did you know to use medium cornmeal? Like it doesn't say that and the rest of
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:47
so I think well first of all like it's Cook's Illustrated. So the head node is like 8000 words long and I think somewhere in there I think they specifically recommend like steel ground whole grain because they
Molly 13:58
they do they say stone ground whole grain cornmeal and then they call for fine stone ground yellow corn. Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:03
no, they do say stone ground. Okay, so I don't know because like it didn't seem that different. And it's good, right?
Molly 14:09
It's delicious. Yeah, okay. Okay, fair enough. Yep. What about like corn sticks? Do you remember when those were a thing?
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:17
Yes. Like I've had these but I've never owned the corn stick pan Have you
Molly 14:21
know but I think my mom might have had one or I remember a period of time I remember when blue corn was the thing. I Yes. And I remember having like blue corn sticks. And now thinking this was incredible is
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:35
like a thing like you can get like they'll have like one brand of blue corn chips like in the the gym mile Garden of Eatin right or if you're at the like at the co op there'll be like three brands of blue corn chips. Because it's healthier because it's blue. Yeah.
Molly 14:51
I do like blue. I like I like the red hot Blues by goes are really good. Yeah, they taste so they taste like hippies, but really tasty.
Would you ever make a corn stick? Do you care
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:11
if I had the pan like I do like the idea because like, it's like a cast iron pan that bakes corn muffins in the shape of like corn on the cob. That's right. And so they're they're long so you get even more surface area and you can dip them that seems appealing, but
Molly 15:26
they're also not as if you're somebody who likes so one thing that I like about the muffins that you made today is they're nicely domed, they are nicely dome, and they have a really nice amount of like soft inner crumb to this crispy crust that's on the outside. And I think that a corn stick is maybe for people who prefer the crispy crust over the soft crumb.
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:50
That's true, but I still want a little corn stick.
Molly 15:54
Okay, fine. I'm sure you can buy one on that giant site that begins with an A.
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:59
Yeah, or probably I can get a free one from like, buy nothing or Yeah. that that raises an important point. And this is a really important point. When we when we were just eating those corn muffins, we eat them sort of unadorned, and like actually, no, this raises two important points. All right, that we're getting up to like, how many points did Martin Luther have when he like nailed a thing on a door? Like, like 50 like 12?
Molly 16:25
You know, I only know about the 10 commandments. Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:28
so when Martin Luther nailed the 10 commandments seemed like it was literally like, Thou shalt not nail thy neighbor's wife and yet, and yet he did it so what I don't even know I
Molly 16:41
think we just got so far off track and listeners. Yeah, yeah. Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:45
so two things First of all, like we talked about add ins and generally when I make corn muffins, I don't use any add ins, but if I were like eating them, like just as a snack, rather than as an accompaniment to chili, like, I really do like the idea of having some corn kernels or some chilies or some scallions or something in there.
Molly 17:00
I like I like the idea of maybe cheddar and green chili sounds
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:05
great. The other thing is like they are not as moist as like a blueberry muffin, and they shouldn't be because like part of their role is they're supposed to like soft things up. Hmm,
Molly 17:17
I think that said the corn muffins that you just served me like it was quite moist. Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:23
it's not supposed to be dry. But if you think of like a blueberry muffin texture, you could kind of like squeeze it. That's right. Like like a piece of Wonder Bread. Or like your enemy skull. Like the like this one. If you squeezed it, it would it would like crumble into pieces like your enemy skull.
Molly 17:38
So you mentioned corn biscuits, when would you make corn biscuit and how is it different from a corn muffin?
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:45
Okay, so in another Cook's Illustrated cookbook,
Molly 17:48
I mean, so obviously it's probably going to have you rub the butter in. Right.
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:52
So it's it's a cream biscuit. I mean, you can't make like a remedy remedy.
Molly 17:59
Remedy remedy. Matthew makes revenue
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:05
whenever I can, yeah. Like it's so this white for the show. Laurie, like, like zeroed in on this recipe in a different Cook's Illustrated cookbook. Please send help. We're being held hostage by Christopher Campbell. The from the quick recipe from
Molly 18:23
Wait, if I I've talked on the show, but
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:25
Christopher Campbell.
Molly 18:28
Please tell it again in his office at his desk. I'm having a hard time like remembering what it was like, I feel like maybe it was the he didn't make eye contact the whole time. Is that what the story was,
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:38
but you were staring at his bow tie the whole time anyway. Yeah,
Molly 18:40
no. And I mean, I think both of us were like, what, what is she doing here?
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:46
What were you doing there? I
Molly 18:48
think that um, I think that somebody who was a reader of my blog, invited me to come visit her at work and she worked for cooks illustrated. And then she said to her boss, like, Hey, you should meet this lady.
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:00
This was like the time that I that I like went to the office at Gourmet magazine. It was pretty off awkward, even though I did write for them, but like, I didn't know what I was doing. And no one knew who I was.
Molly 19:11
Did I tell I've told you about when I applied for an unpaid internship at sever magazine during my senior year of college probably but tell me again, they gave me like a fact checking exercise not a fact checking exercise, a research exercise and I had X amount of time and like this small selection of books in which to research and I realized then in there that like, I didn't want to do what I was gonna have to do and it was unpaid and so on and so forth. But I've often thought like, I don't know they must have thought I was a total idiot because I think I just sort of handed back in my piece of paper and was like, Thank you for having me. I was uh, you never I
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:50
was like applied for an online job doing Japanese to English translation and like I really was not qualified for it but but like, I got like feet they had me do like a translation exercise like translating a news article or something and I got feedback that essentially amounted to like you did like a weirdly good job with this considering the fact that you also made some absolute like bonehead obvious mistakes.
Molly 20:16
Wow, you were like thing.
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:18
Like I got the complicated part, right? But then like, you know, translated red as blue or so. i
Molly 20:25
Oh, I think what I had to do was I was supposed to research like summer festivals in New England or something like that for you know, some segment that was like about travel in New England and I was just like, oh my gosh, I'm so so not interested. I mean, this kind of like
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:43
the cider festival the autumn leaves festival this summer. It was the summer
Molly 20:50
festival master festival. Yeah, I don't know. I was. I was 21 I
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:54
was I was the clam festival.
Molly 20:57
Whatever.
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:02
chowder chowder fest chowder fest 2003 lobster roll fest Yep. So this the the quick recipe also from 2003 the same time they held the final chowder fast after after you ruined it by failing to include it in your article. Cornmeal biscuits are super simple cream biscuit they're very like light and crispy. They have a different texture than a corn buff and they are faster to make and so like they're like a skirt you make your pad out like a circle of thick circle of dough cut it into wedges and bake the wedges and they're really good
Molly 21:38
yeah I'm
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:39
sorry technically a muffin no I got the muffin isn't triangular
Molly 21:44
So you mentioned that you make corn muffins to eat with chili
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:49
I did yeah you did when else heatedly would
Molly 21:52
you do it? I mean I guess if I were making some sort of like I don't know God I'm realizing I never make corn muffins or cornbread like ever.
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:03
Okay, like I mean any any soup or stew like like, you know, North American European style super stew is going to be good with corn muffins probably like even if it was like like a beef bourguignon with corn muffins. That would be delicious. That's
Molly 22:18
true. That's true. Or chowder? Chatter chatter fest
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:22
Yeah, if you're if you find yourself at chowder fest they're gonna have corn muffin. That's right. Barbecue
Molly 22:27
Yeah, classic corn flavor just
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:31
thing is with when I when I Googled like, what do you serve corn muffins with what it's what it took me to was what do you serve corn bread with because it's the same thing.
Molly 22:40
Sure. Matthew, is there anything else that we need to cover about corn muffins?
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:44
Well, a lot of people swear by a recipe that is attributed to Kenny Rogers Roasters restaurant butchers runestones. Rogers Roasters is a is a minor chicken chain that I think still exists. Is it owned by Kenny Rogers? It was it was like founded by Kenny Rogers hedge fund like it was it was associated with Kenny Rogers. Yeah. Oh,
Molly 23:05
man. I was a big Kenny Rogers fan as a child. Oh, me too. Yeah, absolutely. Gambler? Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:10
that was the song that taught me so many things. And I imagine you can guess what some of those
Molly 23:16
things. You got to know when to hold them? Yeah. And when to fold them? Yep. when to walk away. What's the other one went to right there you go. Yeah, you never count. Ash always gets this wrong. You never count your blessings when you don't count your blessings when you're sitting at the
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:34
table. I feel like I feel like like that's the version like like You're like religious parents would teach. No, no, no, but you'd would count your blessings.
Molly 23:44
But it would be like showing off like counting your money. Never do that at the table either.
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:49
Yeah, let me count diamond for count when when the deal is done. Yeah, man. I yeah, that that is such a great song. Like what an unusual form of a chorus for a song that works so well.
Molly 24:00
I'm gonna listen to it on the drive. Yeah, Matthew. We have some spilled mail
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:03
we do indeed.
This is from listener Wendy, who writes I love the show so much. That's it. That's the whole email. Oh no. The next emails from from the guy from Jiffy card. Listener Wendy writes. I love the show so much. I wanted to respond to a couple of things from your tonic water episode. First, Matthew, I totally relate to your feelings of being shy or nervous about ordering a cocktail. I don't drink and never have but I do really enjoy drinking something that is tasty and fun. Often my friends will be ordering cocktails and I wish I could have a non alcoholic version but I always worry that the bartender will not be willing to make a non alcoholic version for me or will accidentally leave the alcohol in and unwittingly wind up try. That would be off dirty thing to do. Also, since I'm not that familiar with cocktail ingredients, I don't know which things will actually still make a drink if you order them zero proof. Yeah, I totally get that. I've learned that a virgin Mojito is usually really a safe bet. I really appreciate when restaurants have a zero proof section on the menu so I can have options be able to cook or eliminate. Also Molly I empathize with you on meat prep. It is not only that I'm squeamish about touching meat, although that's part of it. I'm squeamish about cross contamination. I hate figuring out how to get a chicken onto my baking sheet and salted without also touching the salt cellar with chicken goo hands. Thanks so much for making the show for all these years, you feel like old friends. I look forward to every episode best Lily Wendy and that's Lily meeting listener. I'd like to yum.
Molly 25:29
I forgot about that. Okay, number one. Yeah. Well, we're recording this episode, actually on New Year's Day. Yeah. I'm doing a dry January. Awesome. Yeah. So I love the taste of alcohol. So I am already you know, I've got I've got the fridge stocked with all kinds of things that I'm going to be drinking. I've procured some tonic water because I really like drinking tonic water. I got fever tree. Yeah, that's good. So I've got some athletic brewing non alcoholic beer. If you're not skeeved out by the color red, really like you know sand bitter. If you've seen sand better. No, it's like it's a product made by San Pellegrino. It comes in these adorable little glass bottles hard to find dealer NT has it. All right. It's bright red, like Campari. I really like to take like a bottle of sand, bitter and a can of spindrift grapefruit and mix them together. It truly is like a wonderful now non alcoholic cocktail. So I
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:28
do feel like this situation is improving. I think so too are like getting interesting. non alcoholic drinks out like improving a lot.
Molly 26:37
There are. I mean, I know so many people who have either given up drinking or cut back on drinking in the past couple of years. And I can't believe the number of options I see on menus all the time. I mean, it really is changing at least where you and I live. It's very common.
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:54
Yeah, I imagine like there are regions where it's more difficult but yeah, but like yeah, like we talked about this on the non alcoholic beer episode. Like, I feel hopeful that we've like turned the corner to where we no longer just assume that drinking alcohol is something everyone does. Yeah, yeah.
Molly 27:09
And then you know, as far as the chicken, chicken go, I mean, chicken Gill it is real. That stuff's real.
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:15
I wanted to comment on that because like something one of my favorite phrases to use in the kitchen is proprietary blend and I use that phrase whenever I'm like mixing up any sort of spice blend even if I'm just following exactly what the recipe told me to do, but I will also use it when I just like put some salt into a little Pyrex bowl or some like a mix of salt and pepper for exactly this reason, so I can reach in there with contaminated hands and not worry about it. Yeah, yeah, I recommend this highly.
Molly 27:43
That's really smart. Very smart. Well, thank you Wendy. Delightful to hear from you. Matthew. I understand you have a now but wow, I do.
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:58
This is a mystery novel that came out fairly recently and was a gift to me from wife of the show Laurie for Christmas. And it's called Vera Wong's unsolicited advice for murderers by Jesse Kyusu. Tonto Jessie Setanta is the author of The as for Auntie's series, which is a very popular series I think is going to be a turned into a Netflix series. Is it? Is it cozy mystery? Yes. Okay. Yeah. And so this is this is cozy mystery also, and I really enjoyed it. It is set in San Francisco Chinatown. There is some incredible Chinese food in the book that like actually sort of figures in the plot. The main character of Euro Wong is the owner of Vera Wang's world famous tea house that is not a not a typo. She called it Vera Wang is because she thought it would bring in more customers if they thought it was associated with Vera Wang. And one night a dead body shows up in the middle of the shop and the cops say it's an accidental death, but Vera thinks that it's murder and decides to solve the case by befriending all of the possible suspects. I love and it's delightful.
Molly 29:00
Wonderful. So that's Vera Huang's unsolicited advice for murderers. Yeah, by Jesse Kyusu Tonto fantastic. Our producer is Abby circuit tele.
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:10
Molly has a newsletter called I've got a feeling that's available at Molly weisenberg.substack.com. Matthew
Molly 29:16
has two bands that he's a part of early to the airport and Twilight dinars. You can find both of them on Bandcamp Spotify everywhere music is found
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:25
and you can rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. And
Molly 29:29
you can chat with other spilled milk listeners on Reddit at everything spilled milk.reddit.com
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:34
Yeah, maybe start a start a thread about like, what do you serve corn muffins with and like they're gonna be 71 replies and we're all just gonna say chili if someone actually did that, that would make me so happy like it with the chili replies.
Molly 29:49
I can't wait until it happens. Make It Happen everybody.
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:51
Until next time, make
Molly 29:53
it happen everybody.
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:54
Yeah, like that's her. Let's like one of my favorite podcasts. Jordan Jesse. Go there. Come up with a slogan for the year for every new year. I think ours is going to be make it happen, everybody.
Molly 30:05
That's right. Whatever whatever needs to happen, make it happen. Make
Matthew Amster-Burton 30:08
it happen. I'm Matthew Amster-Burton.
Molly 30:10
I'm Molly Weissenberg.
Matthew Amster-Burton 30:19
You didn't realize when you got up this morning that you would you would be faced with the most difficult challenge of your life.