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Relentless Geekery: Olympic Memories, Healthy Living, and Culinary Experiments In this episode, the hosts discuss a plethora of topics, ranging from personal preferences for varied discussions to their shared enthusiasm for the Olympics. They reminisce about their childhood memories of watching the games and delve into the history and innovations in sports. The conversation transitions to healthy living, discussing their fitness journeys, weight management strategies, and the importance of curiosity and incremental improvements in life. They also explore their passion for culinary experiments, including making soda, soap, and sausage, and the science behind these processes. The episode wraps up with light-hearted discussions on scents, flavors, and wilderness survival tips. 00:00 Introduction to Relentless Geekery
01:01 Olympic Memories and Reflections
4:17 The Evolution of Sports and Technology
06:40 Human Achievement and Controversies
15:54 Health, Diet, and Personal Experiences
34:07 Balancing Help and Independence
34:47 The Importance of Physical Capability
35:20 Inspiration from Athletes
35:47 Personal Reflections on Health and Appearance
37:19 The Joy of Making Sausages
37:32 Exploring Homemade Beverages
42:23 The Fascination with Food Chemistry
45:47 The Art and Science of Soap Making
47:07 Adventures in Jamestown
49:44 Scent and Memory
01:01:37 Wilderness Survival Skills
01:02:22 Concluding Thoughts
[00:00:00] Do you like conversation on a variety of topics? Feel like no one wants to talk about the things that interest you? Tired of only hearing the same political, sports, or catastrophe talk? We feel that way too. Join two high functioning geeks as they discuss just about anything under the sun. We can’t tell you what we’ll be talking about each week because we don’t know where our brains will take us.
It will be an interesting conversation though, so hang on and join us. Here comes the Relentless Geekery.
Alan: There we go.
Stephen: Okay.
Alan: All right. I was looking for something Olympian, but this will have to do just a beautiful star struck. All right. How you doing? Good morning. Good morning. All right. So where do we want to start? I’ve got a bunch of topics [00:01:00] as usual. Let’s since I already threw Olympian out there, are you watching it at all?
I’m having a wonderful time.
Stephen: Yeah, I usually, for whatever reason, I used to watch Olympics a little bit when I was younger, and I just really haven’t gotten into it as I’ve been older. It just seems like always a choice of something else, and I go with that most of the time. I don’t know.
Alan: I really love them, and I’ve loved them ever since, my parents. Had us watch them, honestly, so I’ve been around since 59. I don’t remember 60 which I think was Tokyo. Actually, I’m not sure about year by year, that was, I have some tiny memories of when I was one, but I know I remember 64 and 68 and that kind of stuff.
And we used to, all crowd around the TV and back then it was like ABC random and there weren’t the plethora of ways to watch them. And so it was. Watch them in prime time, watch them on the weekends. They have occasional things during the day when something extraordinary happened, but they’d break into other programming.
And they’d always report on the wide world of sports. Exactly that. [00:02:00] One of the things I loved about wide world of sports and the Olympics is Instead of just being baseball, basketball, football, hockey, which are like the big ones in the United States, there was just so much other cool stuff, on wide world of sports, you’d see the log rolling championship at the lumberjack fest, and you’d see race car driving and you’d see bowling actually bowling was even before it was its own PGA tournament thing, but the variety of stuff in the Olympics and always back then it was such a history lesson to be like, this is why we have a hammer throw and a discus and a javelin because back then it was like military skills that were mostly the things that people competed about.
How far can you run? How high can you jump? That kind of stuff. The model city assault is 40. This is, let’s see, stronger, higher, faster. Maybe I get them out of order there. You know what I mean? But so yeah, 40 is just stronger. Altius must be altitude. So it is just anyway. So the, and I’ve always loved that.
Like the United States, at least [00:03:00] our networks have always had a very us centric, we’re proud of our teams. We want them to win the golds and stuff like that. But. They valued the quality of competition and when somebody from Norway one for somebody from Russia one, it was still what an amazing thing they talk about, nobody else in the world can do this skill and what training that sacrifice that often took to get to this level of performance.
Thrilling things like it’s funny when you talk to people about very firm TV memories. It’s often the moon landing and maybe the Kennedy assassination and stuff like that, but a lot of them are. Like Dave Waddle, and in a, a 200 meter race, I’m hoping I’m getting this anywhere near like this slender guy in a golf camp coming out of nowhere, like he was like, 10th place out of 10, and then just somehow found a gear that nobody else had, and ran past the rest of the field, and the rest of the field are like world class runners, so how do they do it?
And many of those things, when you first see Dick [00:04:00] Fosbury do the Fosbury flop. It changed the world. Everything up until then had been the scissor kick and vaulting it and so forth. And then here’s this guy that what in the world is he doing? Is he going to break his neck? And instead yeah, on the way to winning the medal, he’s going to crush you.
That’s what he’s going to do. So there’s always been. Innovation and they talk about, sometimes it’s a matter of a different technique in an event. Sometimes it’s a matter of equipment that they’ll say, they’ve got running shoes now that they last one race. They’re meant to give you the support and the speed and the traction, but they’re meant to also be incredibly light so that you’re not hurting anything extra.
And I guess that’s in defiance of nowadays. I’m seeing people with like big gold chains and they got stuff going on, but back then it all seemed to be, what’s the least you can do with a bike to make it so that it’s a bike, but not have to ride it for 26. That’s the mixed event, like the 10, 000 meter bike race or whatever else it might be.
I imagine every ounce is like extra energy, extra effort to push that thing around. [00:05:00] That cool combination of like how they talk about the athletes and how they’re training and the equipment. And of course the doping scandals and stuff like that. And talking about, human enhancement, it really matters to a country that they’re willing to cheat.
And what they get better at is hiding the cheating, not at training their athletes better. Such a, an embarrassment for Russia, East Germany, Chinese, not this year, but previous years, there were huge scandals like should watch Rocky three. Like that, Ivan Drago, was and also the cool technology that went into.
Now they can really not only have a photo finish, but they have electronic sensors that can really show you exactly who leaned in at just the right time like Noah Watts just did. Lyles, I’m sorry. And that they started to have now we can really judge in a swimming event who’s gonna touch the wall within like hundreds, if not thousands of a second.
And just seeing that as people got better and better, they had to be able to say, everybody in the pool here can [00:06:00] win this event. We need to be able to distinguish between gold, silver, andraj, where it really is a matter of, a knuckle on a finger. How clips they, so I’ve I’ve almost, I guess that’s cool.
Like ever upwards. Climb of athletes get better instrumentation gets better training gets better. If it really is Like I’m very much a futurist and a humanist that we can really do amazing things. And like the first time someone broke the four minute mile, there’s always the naysayers that say you can’t run that fast.
You won’t be able to catch your breath. You know what I mean? And maybe that was more applied to the first cars and stuff like that.
Stephen: You can’t go over 35. It’ll stop your heart.
Alan: Exactly. Or it’ll burst into flames or that, that kind of stuff. But when you keep seeing and Michael Phelps this year had a great attitude.
He, he was so dominant the last couple of Olympics, set all kinds of records. And then along comes from people that like just four years later are better than him. It’s like records are made to be broken. You know what I mean? I broke all kinds of records, some that had stood only a year or four. And when you see somebody like the [00:07:00] long jumper that broke Bob Beeman’s record, it had stood for something like 36 years, right?
So that’s an amazing thing to think. What was the combination of yeah. This guy’s skill, maybe the lighter atmosphere in Mexico City, that just that day they totally got up for the game and nobody’s been able to duplicate it despite billions of people with those skills and that training still not able to get over.
The first time you see a perfect routine where it really was a 10 from Olga Corbett or Na Koman each. And I don’t know, I remember a lot of stuff, but it’s amazing how Colleen and I both, we have such firm memories of various different Olympic names because what they did was just amazing. And so that’s, I, there’s a famous quote I, or should be able to attribute it maybe not to menkin that, reading the front pages is man’s troubles and failures and reading the sports pages is man’s triumphs. And that’s I’m not a big sport. Oh, we’ve talked about that. The grind of playing 162 baseball games or [00:08:00] that a lot of things seem quite similar, but the Olympics seems to be there’s always room for surprises.
There’s always incredible improvement every. 4 years I just it inspires me. It inspires me to see. I don’t mean to tear up now. Patriotism that really isn’t about war, that isn’t about trade deficits, that is just You’re proud of where you grew up. You’re proud of your parents. You’re proud of, the system that enables you to be there on the podium now and the camaraderie that you see, so much in the Olympics has always been about put aside the troubles of the world and compete cleanly and together. And there’s been, Some ridiculous stuff going on where people can’t see anything except through the lens of their politics.
And so you had the Last Supper controversy and the, she’s not really a woman stuff. That is so much not to do with reality, not to do with if you’re an educated person. You know that was Dionysus slash Bacchus and that France doesn’t really have a tradition of [00:09:00] lauding, Last Supper and only Christian values.
And the fact that there’s manufactured outrage. often about something that should be clear of that. It just shows you how obsessed some people are with, you can’t even put that aside and enjoy this beautiful, powerful 16 days of the best human beings can be. So I didn’t mean to end on that note, but all the other stuff is just so wonderful.
And then it’s I, I remember going on a hike and someone complaining like a lot about various different things around. And it’s there’s this cathedral of beauty. Look at these majestic mountains. Look at the variety of flowers in this field. And all they could find like, wow, this shows up in your life much more than us taking a walk today.
Doesn’t it? That some people are just sour. Some people are just obsessed. And I think that ability to like, take a step outside yourself. And enjoy the Olympics and enjoy these extraordinary things. If you can’t do that’s a little weird. Oh, I use the weird word, but it really is. It [00:10:00] really is. You really can’t get look how beautiful the sky is tonight.
You know what I mean? You can’t just enjoy natural things and human things without
Stephen: all the It just reminds me of a meme. It may have been a true post, may, may not have been. A couple of them, actually. When the eclipse was happening, and some lady responded to a tweet from her school. Saying that’s ridiculous.
Cause Monday, all the kids are going to be in school and miss it. Can you schedule it for a different day? Hello. Or the lady that called the radio thing to complain because there was a deer crossing sign. And so many people get in accidents with deer there. Why don’t they move the signs of the deer cross somewhere else?
People in general, I think mostly people have been willingly. Getting stupid. I think it’s just the problem.
Alan: Honestly, totally believe in free speech and yet there’s something about also having a little bit of and wanted to say the truth and shame. If you don’t know it, then be quiet.
Don’t display [00:11:00] your ignorance. So probably and so
Stephen: lovely and ignorance is fine. You’re allowed to not know stuff, but don’t fight it that. I’m ignorant. And stupid. So you must be wrong. And this is, that’s the bad part. I’m ignorant about a lot of things, man. If somebody, for example, July 4th I got to ride in a monster truck and I was watching them, we’re driving, it’s cool.
We’re not going over cars or anything. It would have been cooler, but I’m watching them and they’re steering. They have one of those grip handles and they’re turning the wheel like this or the thing just to try to love. I’m like, Oh, hold on. I’m used to a car where I go like this and it follows almost one to one.
I’m like how do you do that? And then, and they started saying it’s the gear ratio. And with the big tires, you have to get that gear ratio. So you’re spinning it more. If you wanted to, the wheel would be like 20 foot around to make it one to one.
Alan: Exactly.
Stephen: And I, I’m like, I know nothing about this.
Please let me know. But that’s the problem. People are ignorant and they. [00:12:00] Think they’re right. It’s a Dunning Kruger effect. You can say all you want that’s not real and that they proved it doesn’t exist that bullcrap. I see it daily and people, that people get mad like their kids are not doing well in school and they go and yell at the school.
It’s maybe your kids should pay attention and ask questions and maybe we should
Alan: building some curiosity in them. Instead of I learned it packing time. I was 10.
Stephen: Yeah. And, and I’d love to see the Olympics more camaraderie. It’s the different athletes, I think the athletes for the most part are like, congratulations.
My God, that was a great run. You just did, but it’s the politics of the trainers and the, because they’re being led by the bureaucrats and, oh, we got to look good for the world. And, it, it loses some of that.
Alan: Exactly. Yeah. And I love the fact that the. I don’t know, curiosity is, whatever those top 10 related things to living a good life, curiosity just opens your world, [00:13:00] and if you lack it, if you actively suppress it because you think you know everything I don’t know, how many people have you heard in school saying I got enough math now, I’ll never use this for the rest of my life?
No, the world is made of math. You’ll be able to, you should learn as much as you can about it. Ratios and how that steering wheel works, how pricing in a market works, how the stock market works so that you can not be fleeced of your money.
Stephen: And they want to president Biden, our whole economy collapsed.
It’s all his fault. Prices are up.
Alan: I, that and whatever it’s got logic matters. Once you know how the various different kinds of things that work to prove something, and all the flaws, all the fallacies that people can fall into, that aren’t part of that proof, so much nowadays, it isn’t only a matter of they have false facts.
That they don’t know how to get from one thing to another with that makes sense that follows. And every time you have to explain what you got there is [00:14:00] confirmation bias. You expect to see something and then you see it and you actually tune out all the rest of the things that might disconfirm, unconfirm what you’re thinking I’m not, I’m sure I’m not subject to that.
No, there’s all studies. Every time they study this, then all kinds of people are like, that is exactly what happens in. In moments of, you don’t know, have enough information. So how do you, did I mention this? I Got a whole bunch of stuff for Prime Day. And one of the things that I caught up on was Annie Duke, who we talked about, she has a book, you’re like all about betting.
And that betting is what you have to do. We don’t have full information. You don’t have scraps of information as to what your cards are, what happened, with the flop, the turn, the river and so forth. What’s the relative pot odds and stuff, but it’s not just about poker. It’s about every situation in your life where.
You don’t have full information, but you have to make a decision. How do you do that? How do you minimize? Are you about maximizing what your return might be? Or are you about minimizing the loss? Are you about thinking, if I don’t know, what are the [00:15:00] outlier values and steer a central course so that your probability is highest?
There’s, and, but if you don’t think in that way, you don’t apply those kinds of things. You just go through life with yes, no wrong. There’s no spectrum. There’s no gray area. There’s no choosinator. I got three things that go into this thing. I just want two. I just want a bracketing system that says win, lose, win, lose to get to the thing.
That’s not how some things work. If you’re managing your health, it’s a matter of I got three different drugs and conditions and they interact. And so how do I make sure that I have The most gain for the least risk and a lot of people not only do they not want to do it They demand that from others.
Just give me the pill that I need. Just give me the one thing I want the silver bullet. We even have those phrases for The solution that we want that won’t make me think wow. It is such an important thing a privilege to be able to say How do those
Stephen: things balance off against each other? And that whole you know that specific thing drives me crazy because [00:16:00] I would hate to be a doctor and looking at a patient and say you should, watch your diet and exercise.
That’s all they can say, because if they say, look, you’re eating like a slob, you look so unhealthy. You’re overweight to the point that something’s going to burst. You are not being smart and treating yourself, right? This pill may help, but it’s just a bandaid. If you would like, Get real exercise and the problem is what they’re dealing with is Again, we’re gonna go back to this people are willfully stupid.
They’re like I do get exercise I do eat right but they forget That okay eating right doesn’t mean eating four pork chops with three cups of rice For dinner and then following up with a bowl of ice cream. I used to have two bowls of ice cream So i’m eating healthier That’s not how it
Alan: is the antidote for all that pork.
You know what I mean? Yeah, I tease myself all the time about that. I’m really in the habit of diet soda, but you can’t go get a slice of pizza and a diet coke and say they trade [00:17:00] off, oh, yeah.
Stephen: The old joke about those people that say I’ll take three cheeseburgers and an extra large fries and a diet coke because I’m watching what I eat.
That’s not how it works, folks.
Alan: I get. incrementalism that you got to make small steps sometimes to make forward progress, but you don’t stop. You don’t say now that I’m doing diet Coke, I have permission to help every piece of pizza, every candy bar, every ice cream.
Stephen: I used to watch people I worked with.
They go at lunch, they go out to the parking lot and they’d make a lap around the parking lot. Now this isn’t a Walmart size parking lot, but it’s a pretty good size. They make one. Lap around the parking lot and then stop at the vending machine for a candy bar to treat themselves for x i’m like That doesn’t work that way.
It doesn’t happen.
Alan: Yeah is it so very personal? So i’m i’ve lost some weight i’m down like seven pounds and it’s because Not that’s why I got i’m on manjaro again, which I think I mentioned before it really helps To not have the [00:18:00] voice that’s continually saying, you’re hungry.
I have had that all my life and that’s one of the things that people most talk about is it’s just so nice to not be like, I had breakfast and by 1130, I really need to have lunch instead of no body’s doing fine. Actually. I’ll wait until I get a hunger signal. Cause right now I’m still in satiety satiation.
And another thing is I’m wearing a continuous glucose monitor here. There he is. Let me see. How do I orient myself? That right
Stephen: there is some new tech that has changed lives, you know We could bring that around to the new tech discussion, too
Alan: It is leaper three actually has it that I no longer I don’t get a signal to say hey Give us a hourly reading hold your phone up.
Now. It actually continually talks with near field communications and I, one of the things you’ve read in studies is a good way to get people to change their behavior is not to tell them what to do, but just to track them and let them know they’re being tracked. And then people in quantum physics, we’re covering it all today.[00:19:00]
It’s, it, you’re visible and people automatically respond. A lot of the things that they found out about work studies, where, Hey we’re trying to make the most widgets that we can let’s try various different methods in the factory and we’ll see which one is the most efficient.
What they found out the most efficient usually was that they’re being monitored and not in a big brother way, but just if you’re gonna if I’m going to have a score, I want to have a better score. I want to be able to do things more in line with, I did produce more widgets. Absolutely.
It works on me. I had there’s a cool thing here called the cinema program that, that our hospital system has, that it makes sure that there are, that there are correlations between heart things and diabetes things and weight things. And it works with all that together. So it doesn’t act as if there’s a silver bullet.
You really have to do all the right things with being in shape and watching what you eat. And So just having this on again, I had graduated from the program a couple of years ago because after having worn the CGM continuous monitor, I was like 90 percent of the time just in [00:20:00] the frame that I needed to be.
Occasionally had a spike because I would have a big old bowl of ice cream.
Stephen: That third slice of bread.
Alan: Like a big, exactly, hey folks, if you’re listening and you had to say in 10 words or less, Avoid simple carbs, avoid white flour and white anything, potatoes, bread, potato chips, pasta, they’re all, they are the things that jump into your bloodstream hypoglycemically, and then your body doesn’t know what to do with it, it’ll turn it into fat.
Or if it doesn’t have the insulin response that you have, because that’s what your body, it gets overwhelmed by how often you insult your body by having extra in your bloodstream. It stops maintaining that equilibrium, that stasis of how to. So I’ve been pleased that upon wearing this again, I’m really still writing.
I’m like at 92 percent that I’ve learned good lessons about the only thing that really spiked me this time. I went out for some sushi. And it’s that’s all, lean meat and, no, it’s all white rice. And but I’ve never had a [00:21:00] hypoglycemic where I go under and therefore you can think, you know what I mean?
My father had
Stephen: that several times.
Alan: So luckily that my body seems to respond. I’m not insulin resistant yet. And just knowing that I’m on the monitor and seeing that I’m staying within the envelope and what I occasionally go, you’re supposed to, and I have, put in what did you have for your meal?
And if you went out and had two slices of pizza at Costco funny, that didn’t send you soaring, but it absolutely brought you out of the best of the worst. Optimum zone and a slight spike. And then I had two pieces of pizza because that’s economical. I don’t know, four bucks or something like that.
But I also didn’t kill myself with cheap food. You can’t go into the Chipotle’s and the McDonald’s and all that kind of stuff and get a big old pure wheat burrito. Nope.
Stephen: So I pulled out the grill. We got hamburgers from the neighbors, neighbors are cow farmers. So we have this whole big box of hamburgers and I went and grilled up a whole bunch.
We’ve had them to eat for leftovers. If we didn’t make dinner or [00:22:00] lunch or whatever, we’ve all had amber
Alan: resapping. Exactly.
Stephen: Yeah. So I said, okay, I’m going to, I’m going to check this because I’ve gotten on, Various reasons. I’m like, I got to focus on this again, just like you I’ve gotten away from it.
So I had two hamburgers with like tomato and onion and some stone ground mustard and cheese and whatever, just, and that’s all I had with some water. And then I checked my blood sugar and it was like in the one forties. I’m like, okay, that’s not horrible. That’s fine with me. That’s about where I can do stuff without just having to drink water and eat apples and
Alan: air for an exact right.
Stephen: So the one night for whatever reason, I had my two hamburgers, but I was really hungry for some cereal we had. So I’m like, okay, I’m gonna have a bowl of cereal. So I two hamburgers and then a bowl of cereal afterwards. Check my blood sugar. 1 96. That bowl of cereal spiked it as many points as two hamburgers.
Alan: Amazing. I’ve had similar things when I’ve noticed that it’s gone up, like I said, not even, not into the danger zone, but [00:23:00] any kind of burger bun. So if I go to McDonald’s, and I get my cheap chicken sandwiches for 2. 69, like I should peel the bun away and have the contents. And we like, I would have popcorn and then we kept corn this weekend because Lakewood had an arts festival.
I knew going in that it’s now not just popcorn, a lot of fiber, some salt. They splattered sugar all over it. And indeed I’ve been very judicious. I don’t sit down and we got a big old bag, like a leg. I didn’t eat the whole thing, strap it on like a feed bag. We actually have Weight Watchers.
We also have some experience with and are wise about. You have the size bowl that you know is the right portion for that kind of thing. And even smaller than that, eat to satiety instead of. I love kettle corn and you just go into automatic mode because you’re getting the salt and the sweets and everything about brunch.
We’ve been able to have this hazard, this bag of kettle corn in the house without going out of my ranges, and I think mine is like optimum is 70 to 120. And then, you go up [00:24:00] into the, like the 180. And so I don’t know that I could have done that in the past when I’ve had Halloween candy in the house.
I need to not have Halloween candy in the house because it’s so easy to just say what farm can do? Boom,
Stephen: But I’ve done this multiple times. I can eat a candy bar and get less of a spike than if I eat a small bunch of mashed potatoes with gravy, a Snickers does not affect me the same way that does.
And that’s the thing. Everybody’s different. There’s other people that. Probably the potatoes would not affect as much as a Snickers bar. Everybody’s a little different, but I explained that to people and they just don’t get it. They’re like but the Snickers has sugar in it. I’m like, that’s not really how it works.
That the misnomer of blood sugar, we really should change that and get people used to something else.
Alan: It is that circulating, but it isn’t necessarily what you put in. Just like cholesterol. Isn’t a matter of only avoiding shrimp and cashews that your body produces other things, trigger it. And all [00:25:00] that kind of stuff.
I, one thing I’ve noticed is little incremental things that I’ve done. I don’t know why, except that I’ve had a sugar craving lately. I’ve been making, when I have my milk with dinner, we almost always have milk. We’re still fast. I put a little some quick in there, some Nestle’s quick and it’s brown, but that’s just a mask for the fact that it’s 80 percent sugar.
And by cutting that out, that saves my dinner by not, I had an omelet when we were out of town and it used to be that I would maybe get a little ketchup on the side. By just you, you don’t get it. You appreciate the taste of it by itself. So whatever those sugar habits that I’ve had, who doesn’t like sugar?
Any number of people do exactly what I did. They put ketchup on everything. Or it’s not just a matter of avoiding the Cinnabons. It’s avoiding all those little insults that I got in these habits. And it’s nice to be aware of, okay let’s not just do well, let’s do maybe as best as I can.
And then to be able to go to the doctor and say, Hey. I’m okay, you know what I mean? Even though I went up to 8. 1, which scared me [00:26:00] into doing all these various different things, I’m almost certain that my next time I’m going to be down below 7, and that the habits that I had of, Hey, I’m retired.
Hey, I think I’ll get an ice cream whenever I want. No, you just can’t. Save that ice cream for the extraordinary ice cream place. I think I laughed about going to handles and getting spouse, like a house where it’s got molted it. And if I’m going to do it, I’m going to save it up and end it up.
That we watched the British baking show and through one of the hosts, one of the judges often says it was worth the calories. And that’s in my mind now that you don’t want to have this mindless eating thing. You want to say, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to really do it out. I’m going to get that piece of turtle cheesecake, but I’m going to do that once every six months, not a single time I go to a
Stephen: restaurant.
And like I’ve found that we’ve talked about this, if I know if we do another brain freeze, I’m like, okay, for the three or four days before that, I’m going to make sure and get up and not just do about two miles. Maybe I’ll do two and a half to three miles of running, walking [00:27:00] and I’ll make sure and drink even more water.
And I will watch like no carbs. Extra for stuff, really just watch the lean proteins and vegetables for Thursday, Friday, and then through Saturday. And then when I go on the brain freeze, get the small little bit, and all that. And I guarantee my blood sugar won’t spike as much because I’ve tested that.
And along with that, I was thinking everybody has probably heard of Anthony Robbins, and I know he sometimes gets a bad rap and people pick on the stuff, but if you’ve ever listened to him talk, listen to his programs or his books and stuff, what it all boils down to, he’s super rich from the self help stuff, the tapes, the books, the videos, all that the appearances he makes.
He’s rich. But really the whole message of what it boils down to of everything he talks about is if you decide to do something, then you will find a way to do it. That’s all it is. He’s even stated that he will interview people that want to work with him. Look, I need to [00:28:00] change my life. I need to do this.
And he’ll talk to them and interview them. And if they’re like I need to lose weight. I needed to lose weight for 25 years. And I need to do this, but they’re talking like, yeah, give me the magic pill. He’s I can’t work with you. Sorry. But the people that come and say, look, my life is at the lowest point.
I need to make that change. It needs to be different. He’ll work with them. And he says, look, it’s like 3, 500 for one hour and only one meeting. If I can’t get you to change in that one hour meeting, I don’t want to work with you. So they come in with this attitude of, Oh my God, I’ve got to do this. And he says, my job’s easy.
I just let them decide to do it and they go and do it. And that’s all it is. And I’ve looked at that so often, like you did. Oh my God, my blood sugar is 8. 1. Bam. You’re doing it. You don’t need somebody standing over your shoulder. You don’t need to do all that. It’s I’ve decided to do it.
Now I’m going to do it.
Alan: I am three pounds away from the lowest. Weight that I reached on [00:29:00] Weight Watchers, and that’s because When I stopped Weight Watchers, I did it because I had melanoma and I had systemic stress from all the things I had to do to fight it there. And you probably
Stephen: shouldn’t be going around so many people going
Alan: through treatment.
Exactly. But whatever I did to creep upwards from then, I never went back to the worst of the habits I had before that because I learned from Weight Watchers and that kind of thing. And just the even now, like Manjaro, then not again, I, one of the things they talk about is that if you’re off of this stuff, you really might just get it all back because you will have that little voice that is, done by your GLP and agonist, they don’t, that silences, you’re hungry.
I don’t think that I’ve had that as strongly or that even if I had it, it was like, I got things to do besides eat all the time. I’m really pleased. A couple things are going into this is not only the scare from 8. 1, but we Colleen and I are, it’s, there’s lots of proof that says your metabolism slows down as your metabolism does [00:30:00] slow down.
It’s not much harder to lose weight and keep it off. We have things we want to do that kind of require us to be in shape. You can’t go hiking in the mountains without with being a blob. And we’re about to go, I talked too many times about this, but one more. We’re going on our Baltic cruise. When you go to an old city, there’s no scooter that you hop on, you walk the cobblestone streets to see all these architectural marvels, go through these old museums and stuff like that.
Pardon me, let me, and. I don’t want to I didn’t go on that tour because I couldn’t because it was the strenuous one and I can’t both. We have been walking virtually every night, sometimes okay, it’s gonna be raining but it’s not raining right now if I got an hour window, let’s get out there and do the walk.
Just to get, again, our lung capacity up, our heart up, our ability to do this, and not only for this cruise, but forever. You know what I mean? We want to be able to do, let’s go to Yosemite, and I don’t want to do the easy trails. I want to go, and I don’t know if we’re going to do Half [00:31:00] Dome or not, but I want to get close.
I want to be able to see, where did I have to turn back because I’m just now not able to do what I was when I was 25. I can’t go caving like I did when I was a teenager. I’m bigger and my, I don’t have the whatever happens that you’re just not as flexible. You know what I mean? I wasn’t ever a gymnast or a contortionist, but I was like, I can squeeze through there and then you just do it.
You don’t think of this is going to hurt. So anyway I’m thinking that this is really a good thing that I’ve got going on and the hammocks that I developed and what you said that, I’m not looking for a silver bullet. I’m looking for all these little incremental things, and I’m, I don’t know that I’m ever going to be slender, but it sure is nice to be like, wow, my shorts fall down without a belt now.
You know what I mean? Whatever I got my biggest clothes that there really is goof all around me that I really did get pretty big and now I’m not. And every time you lose like inches off your waist, or your shirts fit better. You take a photo, [00:32:00] not only of like post where you suck your gut in, but like just a casual photo.
And I don’t look as chubby. That’s a really nice thing. You know what I
Stephen: mean? So I love the modern, the newer generations love yourself, love your body and all that. And I think that’s great. But the problem is people are using that to say it’s okay for me to be 450 pounds.
No, it’s never okay to be 450 pounds per health reasons alone, but don’t. Purposefully say I like being this weight so I can eat all the crap I want, but then expect everybody else in the world to bow down to make room for you to get through on your scooter or people that sue airlines because the seats aren’t big enough to accommodate them or airlines that say you can flip the thing up and we charge you for two seats.
That’s unfair. You chose to be 450 pounds. So that’s just, what you deal with. I, so those things bother me. I know people that are overweight and they’re like, Oh, I just [00:33:00] can’t get up. Can you go do this for me? Can you get that? Can you go take care of this? Can it’s okay, you know what?
Just because I’ve kept myself in shape, I’m not your servant because to make you feel better, I’ve known too many people like that and maybe that’s just But
Alan: I have noticed that we, they’re Maybe every family has someone that is this bad example, that is, they become less capable, they become more demanding, instead of being appreciative, they think because I can’t do it, somebody else has to do it for me, and most people are polite, and they will indeed help somebody out, but it’s so much nicer to be like, could you help me, as opposed to, Being ordered to take care of the thing that they can’t do anymore.
I don’t, I think that there’s a little bit of pride involved there that people don’t want to admit to their incapacity. They’re in capability. Maybe for some people as anger, but yeah, maybe it’s not what it just is. I’m glad I know we, our house is made of stairs, we live in a three story house with a basement and whenever it’s time to let I do laundry.
I’m the one that does that many flights of stairs for the laundry. When we go up and [00:34:00] down dinner wise and stuff like that. It isn’t always, Hey, I’ll stay here on the couch. Could you go get this for me, Colleen? Absolutely. We’re half and half with whose turn is it? And that isn’t even that we never even talked in those ways about We have watermelon caught up for dessert and then whoever just decides to get up first and I don’t want to be the guy that well, occasionally, maybe it’s hey, I twisted my ankle.
Well, injury is a different thing than letting yourself get permanently injured. You
Stephen: know what I mean? If you’re not moving off the couch. Each day, and you’ve asked 25 different times for someone to bring you something or get you something. There’s a problem that, there’s, I have no problem getting something for somebody a couple of times, but when it’s every single time you want something.
No now it’s not. There’s a little bit,
Alan: For the folks that have decided, what am I going to do for the rest of my life? I’m going to relax in my beautiful chair and read. I’m going to have nice meals that you really don’t have the vision of climbing around Yosemite. I can see that it’s not a big thing for them to be capable in [00:35:00] that way.
Okay. But I don’t know that you can fool yourself into saying the whole world doesn’t need that. You need to be able to get in and out of your car without having to contort yourself. You need to be able to walk to the grocery store or walk in the grocery store and whatever else it might be.
So it, I know that, we don’t need to talk at only the ends of the spectrum, there’s all this in the middle, but. I love again, seeing the Olympics and where people like everybody there sure seems to be like, they just did 10, 000 meters and they’re not tired. They are still capable of doing a victory lap.
That’s amazing. That’s really cool. So they’ve made their body into the ultra marathoning machine. You know what I mean? That they can run for 60 miles if they wanted to. It’s that’s inspirational to me. You know what I mean? And. It’s funny. I talked about all the things that I like about losing a little bit of weight and my better eating habits.
And I think late in the discussion, did I get to, and hey, I look good in my shirt. It really has never been about appearance to me. I’ve never been the guy [00:36:00] that tried to be like stracking. Hey ladies, we want me to take my shirt off. It’s nice when that was that case when I was in college and so forth and I got looks.
But. I don’t know that I’ve ever trusted that because I don’t want someone to like me for how I appear. That’ll last about 10 seconds. How could we have a conversation and see if we have a sense of humor and see if we have curiosity and all that kind of stuff. And having said that, there’s something about like your sense of confidence and your sense of like how you hold yourself in the world.
And to be able to I don’t know, walk into a room and feel like you’re in charge of it. As opposed to let me slink in because I don’t like my appearance. It does a lot for your sense of, I don’t know, I can stand up in front of the room and command the room when I talk and not be, wow, he really knows a lot.
I wish that we weren’t worried about him having a heart attack going up and down those stairs to the stage, because we have met some Mensa speakers are smart as hell and yet they really. Their smarts doesn’t extend to please stick around for a while longer. [00:37:00] Things get healthy. So we don’t lose you. You know what I mean?
So that you can go do whatever you want. Not you’ve lost 20 percent of the world because you can’t do that anymore. You can’t walk around Riga. Because you’re not gonna be able to go up a slanted cobblestone street, you’ll fall behind the group, right? Yeah, I’m not
Stephen: doing
Alan: that.
Stephen: Speaking of all this healthy, healthiness and healthy eating in that.
What’s this about sausage making
Alan: Yeah, as a transition and denial. We, a bunch of us have been getting together. I think I mentioned this to make Sodie pop. To make old time soda where it actually you carbonate it with yeast, or you make the syrup that then you can run through like a soda stream, get carbonated water because I learned this, you’re really not supposed to use the soda stream to carbonate the already syrup infused drink.
And it just, it’s an experiment in. Like flavors, and we sure haven’t tried to be dietetic. It really has had full sugar [00:38:00] things and maple syrup and whatever else goes into it. We’ve done a lot of that now and we’re okay, we don’t need to get to be truly expert about this.
What else do we want to try making? And but Troy, who I think I’ve mentioned before is the wonderful guy that used to do the not luck dinners where everybody brings various different ingredients and he would put together like a seven course delicious meal out of no matter what meat and vegetable and all the things that you brought.
Charcuterie, making sausage, is going to be our next thing. And I know nothing about it except I know what sausage I like. You know what I mean? I like Italian and Polish and those kinds of things. And I know that they’re made out of various different cuts of meat, whether it’s veal or, and now I’m going to learn all about it.
And guaranteedly, it’s going to be in order to make sausage, you have to have, if it’s too lean, it doesn’t taste like sausage. It tastes like jerky. There’s going to be like, It’s a cubed pork back fat that’s mixed into the sausage mix. It really is going to be, you feed meat in and it comes out the grinder and then you have casings that you put this in.
So that’s my level of knowledge [00:39:00] currently. But like tomorrow night, we’re going to make our first batch. Nice. And the red quotes, do you want I like fennel, but I don’t miss that. So I think that’s part of the Italian sausage. What goes with fennel? Is that like a sweet or a spicy? Is that I’m going to learn all about flavor combinations.
And I guess, because I’ve been watching. The baking show for so long, I’ve already learned sometimes that’s what you want is a contrasting thing between a spicy thing and then a cooling agent. You know what I mean? That kind of thing. And there’s something very satisfying about, you We made it.
I didn’t go to the store and pick amongst the various different sausages. Even a good butcher has all kinds of different things. We’re going to see how this turns out. And of course, while we’re doing it, it’s not just slaving over the sausage grinder. We have wonderful conversations and we, we have a little dinner that everybody contributes to and if I often bake or I bring, I’ll make a prepared salad, if you will, or bring something it’s funny. I, I haven’t really analyzed it except to talk about it now. It’s just guys, but it’s not Hey, let’s get together and play poker, a traditional [00:40:00] only guys thing.
It just is the group that’s doing it is people that are all interested in this kind of stuff and we’re all wonderfully like friendly and compatible. So it’s not, we’re going to fight over whether it’s sweet or spicy this week. It just is mellow and fun. And the time flies by because, you spend a Two, three hours together, people that you like, and you always want more, Oh God, when is this going to be done?
So hats off to Robert Scott. I were taking on something simple. Can we make a ginger beer? Can we make something that tastes like diet? Dr. Pepper, I should say just Dr. Pepper. Like I said, there’s no diet involved here, but it’s also that little dose that you take it’s I, I’m not looking for I go through how many two liter, a two liter bottle of diet, Dr.
Pepper a day. And that’s why I have to make a diet, but all they’re doing is having a little tumbler, a little eight ounce or something like that. I think you can just take the sugar hit and enjoy the fact that, wow, this really tastes like an old time soap fountain drink. It’s cool. You know what I mean?
Stephen: Yeah. [00:41:00]
Alan: So yeah that’s making sausages. Our next adventure. Exactly.
Stephen: I looked at doing the soda pop thing when the kids were little, a little bit. I did do some beer making happened to run it. And it really wasn’t me doing a lot. It was this kit and it was essentially the syrup you boil, whatever.
Alan: Mr. Beer. Exactly.
Stephen: Exactly. But there are recipes. You just, you can use the kit with your own recipes after that. You don’t have to keep buying their syrups. So I experimented with a couple just to see and some of them are like, Oh, just take these three or four things, mix them up and boil it, put it in there and you’re good.
But then there’s other ones that are like, okay, so you mix these ingredients, get it to this temperature, boil it for this long. Then you add these, mix it, turn the temperature down. And then once it starts to. Do whatever reaction, put these chemicals in, then you put it in the thing. Three days later, you have to put this other stuff and mix it in and get, intricate, elaborate, 30 to 40 day process to get some of these really [00:42:00] big beers.
And some of them came out good. Some did not. But I don’t drink enough beer. Actually, I think I still have some bottles downstairs that are probably no good to drink. And he
Alan: got a little skunky by now. But
Stephen: yeah, but I started getting all these beers and I wasn’t drinking them all. So I like stopped, yeah,
Alan: To geek it up.
I am. I love the fact that. Out of all the history of humanity, we figured these things out. You know how to bake bread in exactly these proportions of flour to water to sugar to yeast, whatever else it might be. Same with beer, the amount of malt and barley and hops and the timing of things. It has to go to 120, if you go to 130, you change it, you kill it, that kind of stuff.
The algorithm of those kinds of things is fascinating to me. And we talked a little bit about, one of the reasons I love America’s Test Kitchen is because they said, we’re going to make a pecan pie. And there’s many different ways to make a pecan pie. We’re going to try a hundred of them. And we’re going to do all those little variations and say, on balance, it was number, 88.
That was the [00:43:00] perfect pecan pie because it was just the right ratio of nougat to crust to pecan. And we threw some raisins in that. No, nobody would ever do that. Sorry. My mother would put walnuts
Stephen: in it. Pecan pie with walnuts. She might put raisins in it too. She puts raisins and walnuts in everything.
It’s Oh my God, this is a hamburger. Why are there walnuts in this?
Alan: We were down in New Orleans for a MENSA thing. And we made, we had a wonderful meal and then for dessert I ordered pecan pie and she was like, honey, around here we call that pick home and she was just so perfectly Southern and gentle, but definitely he can’t tie is a Yankee saying that you know what I mean?
I’ve learned to mask my ignorance or my origin is a better way to put that. How various different things are said. So we I love the algorithm thing because some things are very simple and foolproof. So one of the joys of my bread machine [00:44:00] is you just measure things carefully and put it in and three and a half hours later, it’s done all the stuff.
But by watching the baking show, you’re really aware of It’s an art as well as a science, like how much you need it. And you learn to say, when do I know that it’s got enough gluten strings in it? You pull the dough and Oh, look, here’s windows where you let something drip off a spoon and it makes a V instead of a block.
And, so all those things that must’ve been handed down for generations and generations of, People that have done this since there was food, and when you didn’t have a an onion that you could eat, an oven that you could exactly regulate the temperature, you need to be able to peek in there and say, what’s the exact right degree of golden brown instead of I did it at 350 for 20 minutes and boom, it did it just like it’s supposed to.
I really, maybe that I liked the preparation of food in that way. As much as the eating of it, because it’s really cool when you’re like, wow, there’s a hundred things that could have gone wrong here, but I measured right. And I monitored it, and I did all the right, [00:45:00] mixing with a whisk instead of a spoon or whatever else, and then deliciousness comes out.
And that’s always, I’ve talked about baking is like, how do you take the simplest things in the world? And then through a miracle, it turns out into something really yummy, like good bread. And it’s doing it. The house is filled with the bread wafting in the, the aroma in the air. That’s another one of those wonderful things.
Like you really anticipate how good it’s going to be because browning onions, baking bread, there are certain scents that are just so immediate. If someone opens a bag of popcorn, you’re like, I want popcorn. It’s someone’s passionate. Is popping popcorn. That puts the sense of popcorn in the air.
The movie theater has figured that out. How are we going to make sure that there’s a snack that people are really going to want to eat? Get one of those popcorn poppers that just puts it out into the atmosphere, right?
Stephen: So the soaps that me and Casey make you know the same principles because you have to you have your fats and you have your oils and you have to get them to combine or they keep separating and that’s where you put lye with it [00:46:00] and the lye Forms the chemical reaction to actually fuse them together in the soap and people will look.
Oh I don’t use soaps that I have lying in. I’m like it doesn’t have lie in it when the chemical reactions. Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to use that. I’m like yeah, you do because they all do this to some degree. There has to be that chemical process of some sort. Maybe they use them though.
Yeah,
Alan: in your soap, it’s the catalyst that gets used up, but you don’t have any soap in your house that hasn’t had lie involved.
Stephen: Exactly. Or some, we’re like okay, but look at all these other chemicals in the soap. You’re using look at the 4 ingredients we have, and people just don’t get it.
And they’re like, oh, no, I wouldn’t want to use stuff like that. And we get all sorts of weird things. We’ve become, Casey, even more so than me, but like experts on soap making in the processes. And so when people say stuff, we come back with here’s why we have a booklet now that we can flip and show, show people this is what it is and all that.
There’s a lot of these types of [00:47:00] things, the food, the soap and all that sausages,
Alan: I forgot to put in our list of things to talk about. This weekend, we went to Jamestown, New York, because the National Comedy Center is there, and they were having Lucille Ball Comedy Festival. Jamestown is a cool town, it’s like a little town that used to do lots of furniture, if I remember correctly.
So it got big, it’s right at the end of the lake, and so we went into between shows and going to the Comedy Center to do the museum. We had a chance to wander around Jamestown, and they had a soap and candle store. And so I really was thinking of you, and I’m like, I’m going through all these different soaps and if I hold it up right to my nose and I can’t tell you what’s in it, that’s not strong enough.
I want some things to be subtle, but lavender should smell like lavender. So should cucumbers, so should mint, so should all these other things. And so I kept thinking I guess they’re going for a really subtle, but maybe a, you need to put more in here, and same with the candles.
And I know that if you smell too many of them, you get nose [00:48:00] fatigue. Yeah. You do too many baking smells. And then you can’t as easily smell other things because you’re a little, whatever the receptors are, they get tired. And yet, from the start, it really was, wow, if I hadn’t read the label, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that this is lemongrass.
And maybe I don’t know every scent, but Colleen is much better about scents and tastes. I’m very much a guy, it has to be like, here’s a big thing of bubblegum, and then I know it’s bubblegum. And whatever that scent really is, because that’s really some ester that, The bubblegum manufacturers have now associated with that’s what bubblegum smells like, because that’s not found in nature.
You know what I mean? So
Stephen: it’s like a jelly beans with all the different flavors and tasting the flavors. And, it’s not really roasted marshmallow, but it sure tastes like roasted marshmallow.
Alan: They got the, and I, that’s another. Fascinating scientific thing is, as we did all that chemical decomposition and figured out, that’s the essence of a banana.
That’s the essence of a roasted marshmallow. [00:49:00] That’s amazingly cool to me. I did this way back in school. I had an AP chemistry class And made various different things that really smell just like what they’re supposed to smell like. And I also made biturbic acid, which is what makes vomit smell like vomit.
And I, wow, as soon as that reaction happened, it’s I know what that is! It was terrible. Get the Vauban, make sure you have the ability to clean that up. That did, by the way, become useful, when it was Senior Ditch Day. And the seniors are supposed to let the juniors know just who’s really in charge.
I made some biturbic acid and put it in their hallway. And it was, maybe that was a bad stunt. I don’t think anybody like sympathetically vomited or anything like that, but that’s something that you, if you smell it, you need to get away from it or you can’t just say, Oh, I’ll tune that out.
We in our yard now I think I mentioned this we have, we got a whole bunch of different plants that are all good for bees, all the pollinators, and also we just wanted to have something that in our own yard we had nice sense. So we got some lavender right along our driveway, that every time you like, drive by it brushes the lavender, and then when you’re [00:50:00] walking from the garage towards the front door, you get this beautiful cloud of lavender, it makes me smile, every single time.
Instead of having to seek it out in a forest. I have it right in my yard. I just love that. Nature, let me know that’s a good scent. Roses have that beautiful scent and whatever other things the lilac. Finished, it doesn’t have any flowers currently because it’s an early bloomer.
And I was really looking forward to having the combination of lilac and lavender. And now the lilac is quiescent. It’s not doing anything because it’s done for the year or whatever.
How do you guys choose what to put into your soaps? Do you have favorites that you like? Or do you say, what is the market like?
Let’s get a whole spectrum.
Stephen: Yeah, that’s what, cause we’ve done soaps, lotions, and now beard oils. And the beard oils are the tougher ones. Because You got to mix several different scents and get it, give it something. And then there’s like finding, okay. 10 people tried it.
How many liked it or, it can’t be just what we like because there
Alan: is a feedback loop. Exactly.
Stephen: Yeah. But the funny thing is when we first started, we kept getting people going, Oh, this [00:51:00] is great. It’s Oh have you heard of that pine tar black soap from Dr. Squatch? We love that.
We use it all the time. We’re like, Oh, yeah. Okay. So we made a pine tar black soap, just like Dr. Squatch and it’s our worst seller. Nobody buys it and nobody even mentions it anymore. So it’s very fickle.
Alan: That’s interesting. I don’t know about this. You haven’t been doing it for years and years, but there must be things that kind of go in and out of style.
You know what I mean? That this is the year of I don’t know, roasted marshmallow and then they had it last year. They’re not looking for it. They’re looking to try something new.
Stephen: Yeah, now that we’ve got a base set of products, we’re trying to add a few here and stuff, but then we’re doing like specialty ones and premium ones.
Oh, yeah, this Christmas one that smells Peppermint and has read through it. You’re only go get this right now. We made two batches. This is all there is for
Alan: that season. Yeah. Yeah. So we’re doing that.
Stephen: We’re doing some Halloween stuff and, just trying to expand it a little bit. We [00:52:00] made our first Etsy sale with our soap.
So we were very happy. You’re
Alan: out on the site. That’s great.
Stephen: Yeah. So that was pretty exciting. Who doesn’t want to
Alan: take a shower with candy corn after all? You know what I mean? I want it all over me.
Stephen: Yeah we’re debating on that, but we’re going to try like a cinnamon.
So you have that warm cinnamon smell. I think that’s enough with maybe a little peppermint mixed in. I think that’s probably good enough. People don’t want to walk around smelling like peppermint all the time, which, and you’re, you mentioned those soaps in the store you were smelling.
We actually have our soaps in a store and Part of the problem is that when they sit for so long, they do lose some of their essence. The ones without smells, they could have been sitting there for three years,
Alan: boy, I hadn’t thought about that. They would exhaust themselves because they’re always, what’s the term for airing?
Come to me. They were all open so you could smell them, but then it also means that they’re outgassing. Exactly. Oh, okay. Okay.
Stephen: So what we did is we have [00:53:00] samples laid out and then the rest are wrapped. So you get a wrapped 1, but. With the humidity, we something else we found with homemade soaps.
The humidity will draw the oils out and make it feel oily. So the sales have been down for July part of June into July also. And we think it’s because when you pick it up, it’s like, Oh, that’s it. And then people
Alan: probably me, but it isn’t as. I already have trouble holding on to soap. This will spook right out of my hand.
Yeah.
Stephen: Yeah. We’re trying to figure out what to do about that because people don’t want to necessarily experiment and try a new homemade soap from somebody. I can go to the store. I know dove, I know Irish spring, which is weird. They’re comfortable with that. But ours are.
more natural ingredients with nutrients and better for your skin, but they’ll go with the stuff in the store just because it’s comfortable, which is, a lesson in marketing right there.
Alan: Yeah. I’ll tell you just the fact that you’re doing [00:54:00] Everyday chemistry to figure these things out. And I was laughing about with the sausage, I’m looking forward to be like, that works well together.
Or, the ratio I’m going to be the guy picking up the pork shoulder and the pork fat. And it’s like 4. 5 to one, so that’s the ratio that makes for sausage that has a little bit of fat for the joiner, the lubricant and, but you don’t want it to be, wow, this is. Like, why do they used to make sausage?
Because they had all these tailings of meat, and maybe it was about to turn, and if you spice it up enough, you can extend the life of that meat. Ours is going to be fresh out of the butcher and stuff like that, so I don’t think it’s to mask it, but there still must be. They figured out the ratios where it’s wow, I’m getting like, fat in my mouth.
That tastes and feels weird. The mouth feel is I got, I got to like brush my tongue, the oil off of it and stuff like that. So
Stephen: we’ll see. Yeah, that’d be cool. I can’t wait to hear about it. I know when there are lean sausages, [00:55:00] there are the fat free sausages and they are cardboard and dry usually.
And it’s exactly that. You got it. I know people that, Oh my God, used to grill with my cousin, camping, we’d make hamburgers and, he’d plop the hamburger down and then he’d sit there flipping it and pressing on it to press all the juices out. And I’m like, what are you doing?
He’s you get all, I’m like, you don’t want to get all the juices out. You want it to sear and stay in there. That’s what gives it the flavor.
Alan: Exactly.
Stephen: He’s Oh, no, you put enough of this on. He’s this salted flavoring, whatever on there. It’s fine. I’m like, Oh, man,
Alan: I will.
So this is from a long time ago. My, we went to Germany, my parents and the kids in 76 and 77. My mom hadn’t seen her parents in 18 years after they had emigrated. One of the things we went driving all over Germany and surrounding countries and often went for walks in the forest and we would get Landjäger, it’s a hunter sausage that every village has its own thousand year old recipe.
And, but they’re all, [00:56:00] they’re meant to be like traveling sausage. So they really are a little bit like tougher and more like Turkey, but they had very unique tastes and they didn’t taste necessarily dry like cardboard. It might be that they were just, Tough. And so you really had to chew it around for a while in order to get the taste released.
But that’s one of the things I’m hoping that we’ll do in sausage time is not only big casing, like you poke it with a fork and the oil jets out. I really want to see if we can make something that is It’ll last forever. This is the kind of stuff they take on trails, knowing that it’s going to be good for six months because there’s no, not enough fat to turn it rancid or whatever else is one of the things that can preserve things, so whatever they used to do when they had Pemmican and those kind of like settler things. Oh God, Pemmican. Oh, geez. Something that would last forever. Yes. You can’t eat something again. The runs and diabetes entry, according to they’re
Stephen: done that if you think bubblegum lasts in your gut for seven years.
Yeah. Pemmican never comes out. Yeah, that it’s you watch those guys with chew. And it’s had [00:57:00] great strong jaws. Oh, my God. Pemmican. Yeah, you’ll live off of it, but you wish you wouldn’t.
Alan: Reading. I know we’re jumping around a lot. I know I’ve seen like Arctic documentaries where they say they eat like sticks of butter in order to get like the amount of calories that they need.
They need to have a compressed delivery system and they’re just like eating a stick of butter to get that. Wow. That’s a little bit. The thing about the fat in the mouth that I was talking about.
Stephen: Yeah.
Alan: I guess you don’t die
Stephen: talking about the chemical reactions of when my sister went to Russia in the late eighties.
They did not have milk chocolate because milk was a shortage. They didn’t have enough to make milk chocolate. So they had chocolate that was made from powder in a different way. And she brought that some of that back. And I wish I remembered clearer how it And all that, you know, but I just found it interesting.
I never thought about there being chocolate candy made for people that wasn’t milk,
Alan: interesting, that I don’t see from the baking show [00:58:00] is they’ll often talk about. Something that everybody knows how to do make a shoe pastry, that if you don’t do it just right, it really can split or get gritty or something like that.
And I hardly ever have that because I follow the recipe. But once in a while, it really is what happened here? The eggs. They curdled they didn’t just stay smooth and go in with other things. Was the egg ready to turn? Was there like some little lemon that I didn’t know about?
What would and oftentimes I’ve not known what to do. You just had to dump it and start over. And so you’re not on a time show where now you’re like, you’re under time pressure to fix. You couldn’t get it to caramelize, right? You know what I mean? You’re boiling sugar. But then if you like touch it, it crystallizes right at the point of contact.
And then it doesn’t caramelize. turn into nice smooth caramel, it turns into gritty crystal stuff. So I like understanding that, crystals are ready to form like a rock candy thing. You know what I mean? If you put it on, it forms more and more, but you can’t, if you’re trying to avoid that, then don’t give it that first start that point of
Stephen: contact.
[00:59:00] Have you ever seen the I’ve seen some videos on YouTube. I’ve actually experienced it once where they have a water bottle. They put in the freezer and when they bring it out, it’s still water, but you hit it just right. And suddenly it just all freezes. Yeah, I was camping once and we had water bottles of water and they were water.
And it was very cold. I just woke up. Mouth is dry. I’m very thirsty. Cause people don’t realize that when you’re camping and it’s winter, that will suck the moisture out of you. You really need a lot more water than you think. So we were making coffee cause we had to have our coffee. So I opened it and started to pour it and it froze coming out and I’m they’re holding frozen water.
It was under pressure. So you need a different temperature, but once it got exposed to the air, it was just enough to Freeze it. So that’s very cool.
Alan: I thermos wise, I’m going to look when I travel and I want to bring my Manjaro with me, it’s a thing you keep in the refrigerator. So I need to figure out how do I make it so that it stays at the refrigerator temperature.[01:00:00]
I can’t just put ice in with it. Cause I, I don’t want us to freeze and I, I’m having to do that little bit of I need to make sure that it seals. We tried doing it on the way to go see our comedy festival and it, even in the car, it got hot. And thermos that we thought we had wasn’t perfectly sealed.
So then I’m like, hope this is still potent. Cause then what if it boiled away the essence? You know what I mean? That kind of thing. I love that somebody figured out how to do that. Wow, this is going to stay like for 16 hours, the same temperature that it was not get hot, not get hold. And of course the joke is how does it know, it was just that there’s no heat transfer either in or out.
And that’s how it knows. But. I love that somebody like they had to come up with it as a way of preserving and being able to carry, I don’t know, medical things that had to stay at a certain known temperature or just any anything that mattered. The guy, the first guy that did that captured. vacuum that things don’t cross, through a vacuum.
What a brilliant idea. Did he notice that in nature? Did he see [01:01:00] that, like an igloo, if you have enough ice, it’s not that you’re cold, like the ice, it’s keeping out the intense cold air and your body heat is enough to warm the inside of it. And Right. I hope that people figured that out without having to die to figure it out.
Stephen: And if you have a one person small igloo with a candle, it can raise the temperature as much as 15 degrees above what the outside is by one candle in your body heat. And not only that, but what starts to happen is the inside shell starts to melt just a little bit, but it’s so cold and it refreezes like immediately.
So you get a ice show and that whole helps hold in more of the heat. Yeah we did a whole thing with wilderness survival when I was in scouts about all that.
Alan: Even like just that the forms of water, that Ice is different than snow is different than slush is and that if you want to get something really cold, it isn’t necessarily put it in with ice cubes, it’s make a slurry, because then the liquid transfers in and actually takes away the heat that much more efficiently.
I love lurking that kind of stuff and [01:02:00] being able to apply it, that’s how an igloo works. Wow. I hope that I’m never in a situation where I’m going to cut some blocks of snow and I hope this works. And also, the reason that they have that little thing at the top is that you could breathe out enough carbon dioxide captured in there with you that you go to sleep forever.
So yeah, you have problems.
Stephen: Don’t be burning your grill inside the igloo like that. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Hey, I think we got a good time.
Alan: Good point. All I was up. We actually geeked it up though. All kinds of science today. Oh yeah. Chemistry, the joys of physics. That’s cool. Being
Stephen: fit and all of that.
Cool man.
Alan: Have a great week.
Stephen: Tell Colleen I said, Hey,
Alan: I will do that. Okay.
You have been listening to the Relentless Geekery Podcast. Come back next week and join Alan and Stephen’s conversation on Geek Topics of the Week.
