Cubed frozen garlic and other tricks for realistic family meals (PODCAST E57)

Cubed frozen garlic and other tricks for realistic family meals (PODCAST E57)

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sorry it's the Adam regusia podcast episode 57. uh with me is my lovely wife Lauren recording this on Mother's Day that's right yeah best mother I know right here and we are going to talk about some um you know sort of like Home Cooking Time Savers and efficiencies that we have been uh learning about lately experientially as we have tried to Institute more strict evening meal time with the kids and we're making them eat or at least try what we eat right yes although what we eat we have been to that quite a bit well we'll get there but we want to talk about first is kind of like our favorite like new hot tip to share and this is hashtag not an ad um what is this honey it is from trade I bought it at Trader Joe's but it's not Trader Joe's hold it up for the people on home video it is crushed Frozen cubes of garlic each cube is supposed to be one clove of garlic and they're frozen and you can pop them out and the garlic seems to be almost pureed right like it's nearly liquefied yeah um and in terms of I mean this particular brand which comes from Israel uh ingredients are garlic water sunflower oil probably there to prevent some oxidation um and sea salt another salt in it I mean just as a preservative I'm sure okay yeah we also have ginger so and they make ginger too they make tiny little Frozen squares of garlic and of Ginger and I got the ginger at Target why is this so darn revolutionary this is the first instant garlic product that I've I I personally that ragusia gets the regusia seal of approval oh Lord um not an ad so when I was in college before you came along I used the jar of garlic jar of garlic right which is not terrible yeah and it was I didn't know and it was fine yeah I don't think I at that point like break garlic down is that the international symbol for great great garlic down break it down Smash It chop it okay peel it Etc um and then you came along and about the same time that I listened to Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential where which is a book where he has like a funny but regrettable line about garlic do you remember what he says he says that's that's not or no he talks about what comes out of the end of a garlic press That's not garlic yes he says yeah if you're too lazy to prepare garlic you don't deserve to eat garlic is what Anthony said first book super duperty ableist not nice thing to say but and that he completely retracted later in his life he was just like I was an angry cook I was hopped up strong opinions yeah exactly you know and and no he he would not have said that again later on in his life and so then I at that time because I had an Italian boyfriend and listened to Anthony Bourdain I started using real garlic which is delicious sure is and I literally never used anything but real garlic we was 17 years together until and I'm sorry I don't know if you know this but I saw these um on the Bon Appetit website oh yes in my own home so this is not like oh I discovered a thing I was like no the internet told me about a thing and I bought it it's great ba folks love you big fan I was before I started doing this for a living and now I can't really watch any other food content on YouTube lest it kind of drive me insane um gets in my head but okay I use these all the time for everything now these are incredible this is like the garlic solution that I've been waiting for and let's talk about why it works because we've tried everything and in fact we've tried everything on a video remember that yeah the paste and yeah we did like one of my first videos yeah that was a fun one we tasted all the different it was a garlic alternative taste test right yeah that was fun and that was fun and but you know garlic powder is fantastic stuff it just doesn't taste like garlic right and it burns um yeah and it burns really really badly um well all garlic Burns badly but dried garlic Burns badly because it doesn't have water and so it burns more readily yes um so garlic powder is delicious but it's kind of I always describe it's more like as dried mushrooms are two mushrooms right like not the same thing I think it tastes like garlic smells interesting you know what I mean I okay well hold that thought we might get there okay the Jarred garlic tends to be okay but it just lacks it's mellow Punch Yeah it's very mellow it's too mellow garlic in a tube same thing but even worse right like it just tends to have no punch whatsoever or it has like a weird sickly sweet taste to it well because they try all kinds of they try all kinds of different preservatives to get around the fundamental problem that I am now going to elucidate okay which is that the right word for is that even a word yes it looks a word and you used it correctly okay because it sounds like the kind of thing people would just say to no it's real sound like they're gonna elucidate something it's like oh your vocabulary is ostentatious I mean it is a little bit ostentatious that the word ostentatious is itself ostentation go ahead and elucidate I will elucidate okay so the problem with prepared garlic products is that the primary chemical component of garlic that we know and love from the taste of it I mean there's lots but the one that really makes it different from any other allium any other onion garlic is a kind of immature onion based Ball but basically um what makes it different from all other alliums is this chemical called allicin which is created when you damage the garlic When you crush the garlic cut the garlic it's uh you know it's there's two other chemicals in there that get they're normally kept segregated by cell walls and when they are able to come together they create this thing called allicin and that is the how would you describe the heat of garlic yeah it's got like a spicy yeah it's spicy in my mouth do you want to tell them that story we went to this really wonderful restaurant here at Knoxville the food is incredible and was it JC holder it was yeah that's a good place I'll highly recommend Stacy holdaway downtown Knoxville Tennessee go but we ordered the dessert and it came with ice cream and what they did not tell us and I think they waitress didn't even know because they changed the ice cream flavor frequently yeah is it the ice cream had like chili powder in it or something which by the way like no no don't do that no don't do that um anyways I took a big bite of ice cream and it was like it you know it doesn't hit you immediately like I swallowed it and then afterwards my tongue was burning and I don't know I just said to you it's spicy in my mouth in my mouth and you've never let me forget it and now the internet knows where exactly else would it be spicy honey well one of our children likes to say that his lips are spiced out well this is the thing because capsaicin the stuff that's in chili uh will affect these pain receptors that you have in all of your mucous membranes not just the way ones that are in your mouth there are spots like the eyes and perhaps even more sensitive areas of the body where yeah don't cut peppers and then go to the bathroom yeah legit like you will have a problem ouch yeah so anyway um Allison and uh similar things that are in like ginger and you know lots of horseradish right what they do is they they don't act I don't think they act upon the same pain receptor that registers um that registers capsaicin or if they do they act upon it very differently it's a different thing but fundamentally it's still um you know a piece of food that you're eating and in addition to the taste and smell Sensations that it provokes in you it also acts on pain receptors that you have in your mouth and it's very easy for all of that to sort of become flavor in our minds and arguably all of that is Flavor um the sum total so because you were saying that it comes from when you like disrupt the garage and the texture of this is like that technique when you instead of you like mince the garlic and then you take the flat of your knife on The Cutting Board and you like smash it or you grind it down with some salt or something like that and that's the texture yes and I think that might be the more the result of the being packaged with salt and then being frozen and then that would cause it to sort of a lot of cell walls to rupture or leak or something right um but whatever so the point is is that Allison is the pungency in garlic it's the main thing that you kind of want in garlic and fresh garlic at least um and it doesn't work in prepared garlic products because it's it starts to uh break down the second that it is brought into being right the half-life of Allison at in an aqueous solution room temperature water in a watery solution right uh half-life of Allison is according to one study I was looking at this morning two and a half day days I think I've seen some others that would indicate it's even shorter right so it starts to go away the instant it you you create it and so if you chop up some garlic in advance of your recipe right it'll taste great in the refrigerator you know for today tomorrow it'll be a bit a little bit less powerful and the next day it'll be even less powerful right and if you flash freeze it exactly so this is pureed garlic flash frozen in tiny cubes and what you can do is you just sorry I guess I shouldn't be doing it yeah please don't get garlic you just pop it out it's spicy in my mouth all right you just pop it out right yeah you just pop it out it's directly into your pan and that's it and it melts and it's you know and I've been added as people on the internet have mercially made fun of me for it I have advocated for freezing things in like little cube trays for ever right yeah bolognese in the ice cube trays Perfection yes the the reason being that you can simply thaw out how much you want you don't have to kind of crack off a chunk of ice and then you know a big frozen thing with not much surface area takes a long time to thaw but if you give you know if it's small if it's got a lot of surface area relative to its total mass it thaws instantly and I made dinner for you tonight for Mother's Day and and I just dropped it straight I'm like I did some bacon in the pan uh and then before you know I was getting I was about to deglaze with a little bit of white wine as as one does the internet just went a lot and uh and yeah yeah I just squeezed one of these out directly into the pan I kind of bashed at it with the spoon a little bit to accelerate it's melting a little bit but I mean it just fell right apart I mean when I do like um steamed broccoli after I've done steaming the broccoli and I like drain the thing I put the broccoli back in the pan and then I dropped like a big pad of butter and one of those cubes in and put the lid on and the heat's off and like shake it up and it melt oh it all melts right away yeah it's it's it's legit the the greatest thing I I'm so so impressed by it and they make ginger too and which is great because dealing with ginger sucks yeah Ginger is kind of a pain to cut but so is garlic and you know everyone is you know there's already I'm sure comments people like they're so lazy you haven't tried this hack to cut the garlic because it's like no I said no dude nothing is it's all I've tried all the hacks they're all fine work a little and save you a little bit of time maybe but not much okay and please for God's sake let's not confuse laziness with efficiency if every single time someone was trying to make any system in this world more efficient and everybody was just like oh you're just so lazy why don't you why can't you just walk there why do you need a wheel you know caveman Bob why do you need a wheel why can't you just carry it right but also you know when I'm cooking dinner however many nights of the week a lot really and there's a chance that you know the people that I make it for are not gonna eat it then the notion that I smashed the garlic and peeled it and then I had to pick up all the little pavers another way and then I had to wash the damn knife and the garbage sticks because the kids got the sticky garlic juice on it got the cutting board and so you know what at least if my children are gonna smell everything on the plate and then be like no thank you yeah I didn't shop Carla by the way uh the older one is now now believes that broccoli is spicy because I put Garlic because you put Garlic on it but he ate it so I didn't care he did he did he likes he likes broccoli a little bit yeah he ate it all he kind of makes this face lazy idiot um but he still eats it yeah he ate it all he didn't cry so that was good and to be more specific about it you know there's a lot of cooking that I do where I don't need to get out the cutting board like when I make pasta the only reason I get out the cutting board usually is to cut the garlic okay so like the tonight the bacon I snipped it in with scissors I always do that it's much easier to do with scissors right um and then you know herbs just tear them in uh cheese just grated in everything else can just get poured in nothing else needs to dirty The Cutting Board or the knife but the garlic and then the garlic gets it really dirty you can't just like wipe it down because it's so smelly and it's sticks to it it's sticky yeah exactly um so what this what the sort of the Frozen Cube technology allows me to do is to make more stuff without having to get out the cutting board and dirty the knife that I'm then gonna have to hand wash because you don't want to put a decent knife into a dishwasher and uh yeah so I am sold 100 on Frozen cubed garlic and ginger I think this is the solution I've been looking for and I heartily endorse it I wonder if they make them with like if they or if they made them with other like frozen cube of Basil or frozen Cuba of Rosemary if it would be the same I don't think it would because those well I don't know because they would they these are they they say that they're flash frozen and I don't have any reason to disbelieve that they're flash frozen and Flash freezing is just when you use like liquid nitrogen or something to freeze something much faster than you could by just sticking it into the freezer and this results in teeny tiny little ice crystals that are less likely to perforate cell walls to like and you know that which makes things sort of gummy and brown and whatever so if they flash froze like a like a pressed cube of basil leaves um I I feel I mean that basil starts to Brown so fast and get nasty that I feel just being pressed into the cube shape would probably turn it brown unless you froze it immediately after I mean I'm and I mean immediately okay so I'm thinking no all right but what other I mean what else could this be useful for things that you'd use a small amount of really frequently is it just for ginger and garlic probably horseradish not a lot of people yeah and that just comes in comes in here and tastes fine yeah comes in a jar 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watching yes the the uh the sponsorship is now over and so yeah so basically our children um are both terribly fussy eaters one more than the other one more so than the other and we kind of gave up at some point yeah and really just stopped feeding them there's certain things I make for them of a love but not not many right and we pretty much just you know dinner was just a separate thing there's dinner for the kids and there's dinner for us and now that they're older and the older one especially is has got like the kind of willpower to really push through some things even if he even if they really make him uncomfortable um we're trying to do family dinner night again and what have we been doing so far like what have we had what have been the hits so I think the most important thing we we started this was that we ate let go of trying to make them eat the things that we would make for ourselves because we would make more sophisticated also I mentioned this to you when I was like looking for recipes for things to eat is that the trend right now is like one bowl with all the things in it or a plate that has all the things in it and kids don't really eat that way no that is not how they eat it if your kids eat that way bless you I don't want to hear about it no but this is a really common thing you'll give a kid they want all these two things that they love to eat but if they touch each other on the plate a lot of kids will lose their minds yeah so it was like try honestly it was thinking back to like what I ate in the 90s for dinner and so it was like white rice and peas and you know a piece of chicken so we're hitting the frozen peas hard okay yeah there's really I mean Frozen cubes of garlic are close but individually quick Frozen iqr'd um uh peas sweet peas are just the greatest thing ever for all situations especially for kids they're so easy to make they're delicious um the kids like them they like to eat them one at a time yeah would that make sense to me if my mouth were much smaller I just think it seems fun I don't know um but like I made a pasta I I did make a pasta dish that was meant to all be together but when I gave it to the kids on their plate I did all three pieces separately um it was broccoli pasta and chicken I don't remember it's okay uh see now I'm cooking so many meals that I've lost them but I think the key is and also the other thing is we give them I give them very small portions so it's not overwhelming and it's not tremendously wasteful yeah and you don't have that kind of feeling of like you put this big beautiful place plate of handcrafted freshly harvested you know deliciousness and you scrape it into the trash and it's just it's Soul destroying because also like I was looking it up in like kids portion sizes are actually really small I know they're tiny they're little I mean it's the size of their little hands so like honestly we were probably all four seat way too much food as children if you grew up with a cleaner place you have to clean your plate situation yeah yeah for sure no doubt yeah yeah what was the one the other day you made it and you were like see I would it would never have occurred to me to make this that's what you said it would never have occurred to me to make this but that was so good and so quick was it boxed mac and cheese was one component oh yeah boxed mac and cheese there was pizza not Instant Mac not the stuff from the microwave which is kind of a technical technological Marvel that I want to talk about one day but it's not as good as the craft macaroni and cheese yeah which is like man that hits every time from the box from the blue box works every time was it just Brock I think it was broccolini that's what it was oh broccoli we just got some broccolini which is really good do not confuse broccolini for broccoli Rob they look nearly identical they look like sort of long stringy bra or baby broccoli-ish sort of stuff like that broccoli rabe is unbelievably powerfully bitter yeah broccolini was delicious broccolini is just wow you invited me on here to talk about these meals and now I remember exactly none of them that's okay we got we got there so so it was the broccolini with like you just butter and like the Frozen cube of garlic on it yeah next to the pile of like nuclear orange smooth yeah craft mac and cheese it was really good that was like the best dinner I've had in a long time right yeah yep and I'm trying to analyze why it worked so well I don't know just the flavors were nice well so first of all I mean one thing I mean this is a gospel that I've been preaching for years now which is that for like a normal weekday meal if you grew up in kind of the you know the Western culinary tradition that we did the expectation is that like every meal would have at least three components each representing the three major macronutrient groups there's going to be a protein there's going to be a vegetable a starch and then vegetable is not a major macronutrient group unless you count fiber as a major macronutrient which some people do and I think I'm one of those people so there you go three of the four are Patron macronutrients you don't need you don't need a fat group on the plate is all I'm saying like there's gonna be fat in other things okay uh you don't need that much fat fat is great but you don't need much of it um so we we always got thought like every meal has to have three components it's got a um you know there's gonna be a meat a vegetable and a starch that's how we grew up eating and everything that doesn't that isn't three things on a plate for me when when I first got out on my own and you know cooking for myself anything that wasn't three items on a plate felt like a dick or a snack or the way that I would normally eat but like I was you know what I was a 19 year old man like okay I ate garbage all the time I never ate a real meal you know um so it didn't count to me as a real meal and I just what I've tried to get over in my adulthood is is that right most weekday meals should either be like a bowl of things if assuming you don't have children who are not going to eat a bowl of things or they should be two things make a meat and a vegetable or make a starch and a vegetable see although the difference is when I'm when I'm cooking for the kids because there's a very high chance one of the things on the plate there are not gonna like because like oh you gotta hedge your best yeah I try to give them one thing I know they're gonna like one thing I think they're gonna like and one thing I want them to try like that's what I'm aiming for and so I do that's why I have been making like three things so they get three little piles of things on their plate right one thing they'll just like house one thing that they're like yeah this could be okay and maybe it'll become a new favorite and then one thing that I'm like this is a stretch but I'm gonna make them put it on their mouth and chew and swallow that's very good thinking though I will say that you're those usually aren't three things you've made from like scratch that are incredibly labeled no no no no like a frozen vegetable or uh I've been really trying to um oh like uh beans um canned beans yeah canned beans are the beans that are in the pouch that you microwave oh those are nice those are oh that's what it was I made the black beans remember in the pouch and the yellow and yellow rice so like packet rice I've been doing that a lot beans in the pouch were nice for among among other reasons just that is a smaller portion than a whole can and like we end up throwing away a lot of beans whenever we like open up a can of seasoned black beans for the kids yeah and that's not good yeah that is the other thing that this doing this has helped with because for a while there were things they would eat but they were like I will only eat them under these circumstances like they love not an ad Chipotle and they would house Chipotle's black beans I would try to give them black beans and they wouldn't eat them yeah and they would because they're not the same Latin Seasons nearly nearly I would not eat them yeah and so I my goal was to break them of that it's like if you like black beans you will eat the black beans right like you don't eat all the black so and then also like they look one of them loves the chipotle chicken but wouldn't eat grilled chicken under any other circumstance and so we're moving past that as well yeah Adam also made um which will hopefully be an upcoming recipe but he made um chicken fingers buttermilk chicken fingers they were so thank you for saying so however it was a total mess it was so much work and like I have gotten so much Flack for like a very early video that I made trying to say that like deep frying is just not really a good thing to do at home yes and I you know I intended it as sort of like a you know a hot take in the style that I had written for sort of print Publications on the internet for a long time right where you're not supposed to take it literally right I'm not saying you should never ever deep fry at home I deep fried at home the other day I was sort of I was delivering it with some some humorous hyperbole was my intent right and you know people either willfully or not disregarded the intent and uh no exactly Oh you mean people people on the internet went out of their way to get mad about something that you know probably wouldn't have made them mad otherwise if they hadn't made an effort to get mad do you know who that sounds like what's that did you just look at me slowly you like turned to me really slowly less so now but you you I think before you made content on the internet you were the kind of Internet commentator oh I was the worst yes I am become I am become death no doubt okay uh live long enough in this world and you'll become what you what you despise but anyways um so I was deep frying chicken fingers because like the older one you know wanted to wanted to see how chicken fingers were made and I had showed the older one a babbish video of how to make chicken fingers it was because he was crying what was he crying about the other night that was completely insane um let's not tell him let's not okay all right all right that's true kids get upset about things that are like here he's like really that's what if if I gave you a billion guesses you'd never get cut to it I mean it's just like they fixate on the silly little I'm gonna tell them this one because it's it's so it it's so he I he asked if you need to type a lot in college and I said oh yeah you know you'll type you know 30 page papers in college and then yes he he filed that away in his worry file and got worried that he wouldn't be good at typing when he's in college I know and so it's like hours later he's crying because of that because that thought has not left his mind and I'm like anything like this kid is like really compute like instinctively computer literate like this this is a kid who like can figure anything out technologically as long as he's alone with it and he will totally figure it out but he didn't believe me so I had to distract him with something and I was like Hey so you were curious where chicken fingers come from what's the first chicken figure video that I can find really easily oh babish that's a safe bet right um so I played him the the babish chicken fingers video which is you know terrific as all that stuff is and then uh yeah he wanted to make chicken fingers so we made chicken fingers and like oh my God the kitchen was a wreck and they were so good they were good but not they were not worth it and I never saw the kitchen so I don't know I literally never saw any of it so well that would explain it to me they were worth it and then and then you know when the little one didn't eat much of it like I was that made me upset and it wouldn't have made me upset if it was like a thing from you know a bag that you threw down on the plate yeah exactly and and it so not only has it sort of reminded me of cooking for the kids not only has that reminded me of a lot of my like core principles as a cooking content creator about like keeping it simple stupid it's also just like I can't put it this way but honestly I feel like this is one of the messages I was I was put here to deliver you know this is the gospel that I was sent to preach and the gospel is lower your expectations yeah yeah Jesus Christ I'll be honest I don't know why you can't say that out loud I need the kids spaghetti recently and I used jar sauce because it was I think it was like they had it was fun piano lessons and I was like you know what I'm just gonna boil some noodles and pour some jar sauce over it and it's not just in cooking but it's especially in cooking expectations have gotten ridiculously out of control well I think is I mean especially from a mom perspective there's so many messages out there about like you know feeding what you feed your kids and what's in it and you know tied to how much you love them and how smart do you want them to be and first of all I just think all of that is fear-mongering horse yeah but and when dads do it like when I like get you know the bag of frozen things and put it into the tabletop convection oven uh you know it's like oh duh big dumb dads just doing his best isn't it endearing but when moms do it at least in our culture it's just like you're cutting Corners don't you love them how dare you yeah but honestly like it has never one single time mattered what was on the plate in those it's that we sat down and they told us about their day yeah like so and that I don't care if they eat it or not it's been a delight to sit down with them and hear about their day and yeah right and as we talk I mean I have a whole podcast episode about uh picky eating the technical term being food neophobia um and you know basically the the research literature indicates that almost nothing you could do really works they just have to kind of grow out of it and some people never do and that's just what happens but you know one of the few things that works a little bit is exposing people to a small amount of a new food a little bit at a time repeatedly over and over and over again they eat one bite and then after a while a Swip a switch flips in the brain where the brain is satisfied that this isn't poison you know it's like well we've had this a little bit at a time 25 times now and we're not dead yet yeah so we are evolved to find this okay now and that's how we I like the broccoli several times it was little bites with like the worst yuck faces you've ever seen and then the last time we had it I was like hey can you finish your broccoli fully expecting the answer to be no and he ate it all yeah legit yeah and I gotta I the big thing for me was letting go of them not eating a very big dinner right yeah because I used to just get I used and I think that's legitimate to be more freaked out about this when they're babies and stuff like they yeah they gotta eat you know but like now it's just like if you know if they don't really eat if they only eat you know 50 calories for their dinner that's their choice and they're gonna be fine yeah like they're not I mean they're not gonna starve and when they get hungry later that night I say well you should have eaten more your dinner and we're not under feeding them they're fine okay they're they're fine and like obviously all nutrition and health conversations about your children should begin with your personal doctor but like in our situation I think our personal doctor was telling us to tell us to do this years ago and they were just like don't worry about whether or not they get you know really their three squares a day like that's dumb they're gonna be fine I was also getting real people are so judgy when you have picky eating kids yes and like if you have picky eating kids solidarity people are so rude about it oh my God they act like you have personally failed that child like do you think I want to be feeding him chicken nuggets for every meal I do not I'm doing the best I can here and like please don't make this worse by sitting across the table from my child and being like where are you eating yeah and then looking at me like I'm a garbage and they always look at you yeah not at me even though I am equally involved 100 maybe even you know no a little more than 50 50 but like it's just also also there is no one more sure of how to raise children than a person who has never had one yep you can take that opinion and put it somewhere else somewhere else no yeah because I mean when I before I had kids I was like oh sit down with my children every day and I won't make them a meal and we'll always have dinner together do you remember that like vegetable puree machine that you got in advance of the first baby because you were like I am gonna hand make all of the baby food for this baby I know and I made it I think I made it a couple a couple of times no no I made it a few months because you could freeze it um and then then those pouches I was like oh I could just give them a pouch of that pureed vegetables is great yeah um yeah lower your expectations dinner your own dinner like just chill just make just my food that people want to eat your kids you whatever it's fine I feel like eating Char Saucy jar sauce a box of craft blue with like with some with a good vegetable with it and lots of that vegetable because you'll usually if you only have a starch and a vegetable you're gonna end up eating way more vegetables than you would normally which is good anyway right like I you know you know very very few people within the sound of my voice particularly me needs to be like necessarily eating more food but I would love to kind of you know just recalibrate the balance of the categories and that's one reason why I enjoy magic spoon cereal sponsor of this episode uh I'm looking here at the Honey Nut one which um I really like the Honey Nut one uh it's an absolute Delight but they have so many flavors and in fact the limited edition flavors of the month are oatmeal cookie and chocolate chip cookie right so what magic spoon is for people who don't know is a cereal that is made out of well in place of the grain which would usually be corn or rice or occasionally wheat or oats uh in you know your typical breakfast cereal instead of instead of having grain and being based upon grain it's based upon basically protein powder like milk a milk protein blend that they use that is the primary substance of this cereal which are very crunchy little you know kind of Airy he owes the texture is real close to sort of the you know the child cereals that you remember from years ago and that you probably don't eat very much anymore because you know what adult needs to be eating a whole lot of that so the texture is very similar and the flavor is like identical they've got their flavor game down at Magic spoon it is crazy the Honey Nut is everything that you would expect from something of that flavor description um and uh you know the nutritional content is just really different compared to other other other cereals right you're just gonna have more protein relatively more protein and fewer carbs which is exactly what I'm after for most meals in my day and so this particular one which is the Honey Nut has one gram of total sugar four net carbs 13 grams of protein and that's actually a little bit more sugar than what most of the other um magic spoon flavors have because it's Honey Nut and they wanted to use real honey and I applaud them for that and I applaud them for not trying to replace it with a cheaper you know non-nutritive sweetener but others have even even less sugar and the like particular blend of non-nutritive straighteners that they use are low calorie sweet alternative sweeteners that they use in here is one that even like Lauren can tolerate and she often cannot tolerate her digestive system often cannot tolerate other alternative sweeteners and she does just fine with this fantastic so get five dollars off your magic spoon variety box at magicspoon.com regusia and you know you've got the cocoa you've got the fruity the Frosted peanut butter birthday cake tons of ones fruity is probably my favorite of the of the regular flavors but this month the uh the limited edition flavors are oatmeal cookie and chocolate chip cookie so get those while they last those are limited edition and they will not last last forever and Magic spoon is so confident in their product they back it up with a 100 happiness guarantee if you don't like it for any reason they will refund your money no questions asked so use that code regusia go to or go to magicspoon.com regusia save five dollars off your order today and uh be sure to get you know those limited edition flavors the oatmeal cookie or the chocolate chip cookie and uh keep an eye out for any future flavor launches they're always coming up with really interesting creative ones and by the way for the Canadians and the Brits magic spoon is shipping to Canada and the UK too as well uh now in addition to the United States so go to magicspoon.com

regusia five dollars off your variety box of magic spoon cereals and we thank you very much the good people at Magic spoon hey so while you're here honey yes um I've been collecting some like questions for Lauren that people have sent in should we try to hit a couple of those while we have some time sure okay which gentleman do you want uh either one okay oh he has Dio on his jacket oh yeah he can go first hey Adam my name is John Luke coming to you from Atlanta Georgia so I just started a full-time job and I have suddenly very little time um but before this I had a book manuscript I was working on that I had dreamed up a lot of interest in and now I don't have time to work on it anymore um so my question to you is uh at what point do you think it's worth I mean giving up on a passion project even if you think it might be a potential Money Maker in the future um and also for Lauren um if you have any writing advice for for someone who doesn't have a lot of time on their hands thanks thank you Jean Luke best name ever um so honey when should you give up on your dreams never never keep going I mean especially books don't have an expiration date you can work on it forever um I mean the time the timing thing or the time to write thing is something that I think about a lot because when I wrote my first five books uh well for the first several I had a job a full-time job I would work until five o'clock and then I would shop my office door and I would write for an hour and then I would come home so I had like a dedicated quiet hour time every day and I carved that out when I was on Deadline um and let's see I wrote gosh what will one two three four it's my fifth or sixth I don't remember anyway um in the first three months of our oldest son's life maybe it was the second one see I remember no they blend in together no I think it was the first one because he would only sleep um either on me or in the car so I would get in the car and drive around until he fell asleep and then I'd pull over in the nearest parking lot and I would pull out my laptop and I would write until he woke up um so I think the best writing advice when you don't have time is to not develop any rituals related to writing whoa that's contrary to the advice I usually get learn to write anywhere at any time if it's on your phone if it's in a notebook so like I knew a writer who she would commute to work on the subway and she would write on her BlackBerry this was before the subway had internet underground um so she would get on the subway and she would write on the subway on her BlackBerry all the way to work and then when she'd get above ground she'd emailed herself and she wrote an entire novel that way so cram it in wherever you can even in little tiny bits sorry on the internet now can't take it back um but yeah and I don't think you should ever give up if you're enjoying it if if it's making you miserable then that's a different story but if you really like it then keep working on it and obviously like because you like doing it is a good enough reason to do absolutely anything as long as it is not particularly harmful to someone else and it's not getting in the way of the of the more urgent things that you have to do now Jean-Luc says that it is like Jean-Luc says like you know Jean-Luc is working now and doesn't have time to write yeah I mean I think you um which may be true yeah or it may be just that it feels that way and you just need to sort of like find sometimes it feels that way when you tell yourself that you need to sit down at your laptop and light a candle and have you know the perfect music and then and an hour of uninterrupted quiet time and yeah that's really hard to come by but if you can write you know get to work 15 minutes early and sit in your car and write for 15 minutes before you go in that's that 15 minutes adds up every day until you have a full manuscript and I wanted to mention because I have definitely found lately um or really my whole life but especially lately whenever I get a creative idea I get like oh I should I could do a thing about this or I think of a good line or you know just a fun a joke or something right like I used to kind of think oh all you know that'll still be in my head later no no it won't be or I would think well that won't be in my head later but something that good will be in my head later and no right so whenever I get a good idea for anything I what I usually do is I just leave myself like little video memos on my phone where I just say hey Adam do you do the thing with the the thing I haven't I have a Notes app um note that's book ideas and it's like tens of thousands of words because every time I get a book idea I go in there and I like add to it yeah ideas are easy so one of my favorite um one of my favorite like little clips that I watch on the internet oh do I want to say this because it's by a show that I'd have mixed feelings about skip it no no it's fine okay so there's look I'm this is not an endorsement of The Joe Rogan program or anything having to do with it wow okay I don't watch The Joe Rogan program I just happen to see this like like you know those clips are inescapable on the internet the truth comes out yeah yeah yeah yeah and nor do I hate Joe Rogan like I think Joe Rogan is a complex person and and so he was talking to he was talking to Stephen Tyler from Aerosmith who is not in the Rolling Stones oh yeah so oops Yeah Aerosmith is on their farewell tour and they're gonna play Knoxville which by the way oh that's okay cool sure fine okay anyways um but yeah you confused I was like yeah let's go see Keith Richards and Adam was like yeah that's the wrong band but like like the correct thought you know the right lineage because I said the Rolling Stones and then it's Aerosmith and then opening for Aerosmith was the black crows and it was like grandfather father and son well said and I'm sure the the the question asked her with a do patch on the jacket is gonna appreciate that so that's great um so that one's for you Jean-Luc um and it's also like you weren't wrong like so this I you know when I make mistakes on the internet which I do all the time like factual mistakes like what I I make an effort to correct them like really prominently if I got the idea wrong if like the overall idea it was just like wrong okay if if I got like a minor fact within the idea wrong but the idea the overall big picture was correct like you know people in the comments catch them if it's a big thing I might say something but I don't make a big deal out of it right um so uh you know your your idea that we should go see Aerosmith before Keith Richards dies you've got you've got a fact wrong yeah right because you you know but like you could say the exact same thing about Stephen Tyler okay and Joe Perry don't let Joe Perry fool you just because he's had his abs etched like that guy is you know that that guy is uh he's still got those lips are they good I think so okay if I'm picturing him correctly who says Stephen Tyler like on when he's on the Joe Rogan program I love this clip like he talks about how him and and Joe Perry the guitar player in Aerosmith would you know they'd get blasted all the time in the 70s and like and Joe Perry would just like like you know Walk This Way you know uh what's another iconic one you know um yeah loving an elevator no that's that's Sweet Emotion but anyway you know like all of those like genre defining riffs right like Stephen Tyler said that like Joe Perry would just get blasted and those would just pour out of him and most of them just evaporated Into The Ether and eventually Steven Tyler got his you know was sober for long enough to buy a tape recorder and he would occasionally like hold it in front of Joe Perry and then you know the Riff for Walk This Way would come out but like think of all of the ones that Joe Perry had that are just lost to drugs and alcohol right so this is why it's important too like whenever inspiration strikes you you know even if you if you're at work and you can't write like just pull out your phone and talk into it for two seconds and save that idea for later yeah type a note on your phone right on the back of a receipt yeah but the bigger question that John Luke is asking is like at what point do you do you throw in the towel on a creative aspiration that doesn't seem like it's going to be your career um and it's and let's assume that it's it's you don't really have the time to do it you know it's distracting you from other things more pressing things I think it about I ever it's recognizing that there are seasons and maybe this isn't the season for something but that doesn't mean you can't come back to it or ReDiscover it and so putting it aside is not the same thing as quitting yeah without a doubt so if you like it don't ever quit I've virtually put music aside in my life for you know years and years and years and years and then you know Seasons changed I got my drum set because I finally got a house with a room in it that could accommodate a drum set where I wouldn't make other people crazy yeah and I'm just having the time of my life learning to play the drums like it is so much fun yeah and the better the best thing about it is that now I'm old enough and frankly accomplished enough as you will be to Jean-Luc at some point most likely just sort of settled established enough in my life that like you know when I don't play well because I have no rhythm like it's it's it's fine it's it's fun it's for fun and maybe some publishable product project will come out of it at some point but it doesn't have to be like it's it's it's a thing to hit you can hit a thing that also makes fun music like what what's what's better than that yeah that's how I feel about writing it's like sometimes I just want to disappear and make up fun stories where it's like playing Barbies make the people do what I want them to do and make the things turn out the way I want them to turn out that's fun and by the way like if I had if I had listened to my instinct to put away childish things and just kind of get on with the real work of life I would never have done the things that led me to doing what I do now for a career right yeah and you were on me for years yeah about doing things that could have opened up the door to of the career like I that I have now I say to you all the time if I you know if five years ago I had said to you you should do a cooking channel on YouTube you would have blown me off someone's awake okay hold on I gotta go all right okay no uh it's easier for me to get out I'll do it yeah hold on anyway that's taking care of okay so you were saying that uh if you had told me to start an Internet cooking show oh yeah you never would have done it you would have blown me off yeah because I would have been like oh there's a million that can't work that can't work and I always used to tell you it's not about the idea itself it's about what you bring to it and here we are no without a doubt personality and sort of style of presentation is probably the most well no the most important thing is that you're talking about something that people care about second most important thing is that they like you and if they like you and you seem like a likable character Jean-Luc um I think that and they'll want to read your story they're going to want to read your stories you know so don't give up and then the last thing I want to say is that I don't want to presume anything about you or your life or anything all I I'll all we will tell you is that once back when we were childless we now know that we just frittered away time uh yeah like we were drowning in an ocean of time I'm so much more productive now that I have okay I take that back okay when I worked a full-time job I wrote way more than when I didn't now that I write full time I write way less okay for me it was like having finite forcing myself to use the available time I wrote before now that I have oceans of time it seems like I can always do it later right so yeah so the point is is that um I would encourage anyone listening to to truly interrogate like do you not have time or is it just that the time is tight and two if the answer is time is tight I would try embracing tight time I have definitely found tight time to be very useful at many times in my life that it increases productivity across the board to be tightly scheduled more tightly scheduled than your typical childless resident of a highly developed country you know but though of course there are innumerable exceptions and I'm not presuming anything about any particular person we're just saying to you that we realized once we had kids how much how many more hours there are in a day yeah um than what it felt like before and that that fundamentally is a good realization yeah should do you have any other questions for Lauren or me ask Adam questions at gmail.com um and uh yeah yeah thanks for thanks for being here and uh good luck on all of your endeavors make good choices

2023-05-17 21:12

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