Armchair Anonymous: Cooking Disaster
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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. We were just talking about this man, Cookie, we used to know. We met him on a vacation. He was working at the Hibachi Grill. That's right. He was adorable.

Adorable and lovely. And he wore really big, funny glasses and it made you uncomfortable. Well, he had a whole character and he did not break character. Yeah. And it made you feel antsy. Yeah. Like some people love this and some people have a hard time with it. Like if you go to one of these plays and you're in the bathroom, there was an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm about this. In fact, it was Nate's cousin playing the guy. Oh, okay.

Where you're in the bathroom and an actor from the play is in the bathroom acting like a guest and then he's doing some schluck. Oh, you're talking about when it's like an interactive play? Yes, before the thing starts and they're like tricking you and stuff. And then the person's in character and you know they're in character and you're like, do I play along? And by playing along, does he or she think they're fooling me? I don't know. It's too much for me. It's a lot for you. Mental gymnastics. Yeah.

And Cookie had such an over-the-top character. The glasses he was wearing were three feet wide.

And the kids were like melting down. This was a long time ago. Yes. The kids were melting down. So Kristen took them out and then it was just me and you there. And you like have never wanted to leave a situation more in your entire life. I was panicking. You were. Yes. Glasses were three feet wide. Hey, this is a ding, ding, ding. How? This is a cooking story. No, I know. And a cookbook.

And a cookie story. Well, yes. Cookie the chef. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, yes. So this is a tell us a crazy cooking story. Every warning that can be given. Oh, my God. You know, animals get hurt. Okay, really, guys? For real? There's an animal story that I do think a lot of you won't like. For real will not like. And it's the last story. And there's gross as hell things in here. So this is not for you.

Yeah. Don't listen to this. Don't listen. At all. But enjoy it. I hope you liked the introduction. Please don't enjoy cooking stories.

Hello? How's it going? Can you hear me okay? Yes. Is this Sarah? Yeah. Nice to meet you guys. This is so fun. Where are you, Sarah? You're in a closet, but where in the country? I'm not in the country. I'm actually in London. Oh my God. You're an expat or are you on vacation? No, an expat. So I've been here for three years and we're actually moving back to Austin in a few weeks. So London is coming to an end. Are you sad it's coming to an end or are you excited to get home? Kind of

both. I think it's run its course, but I've loved London. I met my husband here, so it's obviously been a great few years, but ready to get back. I love Austin. You're bringing a Brit home, though? Yeah. You're like Meghan Markle. Oh, gosh.

Okay, so you have a wild cooking story. I do. Yeah. I went to school in Boulder at CU, which is a big college town. I don't know if you guys have been to Boulder. And I lived on the hill, which is kind of the quintessential student area. So it's where all the fraternities are and sororities and tons of college student houses. And a lot of them are kind of old and

So at the time I lived with three other girls, we were all students and had jobs as like servers, bartenders. So one of my roommates and I all call her Jen. That's a good sign when you got to protect her identity. That's off to a good start. I didn't tell her that I'm telling this story. Jen and I worked at the same bar. And on this day, we were on the same shift together. So we both had an hour in between classes to run home, work.

and change and make food. We're in the kitchen, kind of popping between the kitchen and the living room and half watching a show and kind of mindlessly cooking and chatting. I was making a breakfast burrito and she was making pasta. It was like pre-made ravioli that you get from the refrigerated aisle of restaurants.

the grocery store. Yeah, they're kind of high-end. They're damp. They're pre-made. You boil them for like four minutes. But they're still tender. They're not dried out. No. Beautiful. Exactly. I scrambled some eggs, assembled my breakfast burrito, and went into the living room. And a few minutes go by, and I hear Jen screaming. I run into the kitchen, and in the pot of water and ravioli, there are a bunch of maggots floating around. Oh!

In the water. There's a bunch of maggots in the water. With the ravioli. Ew! Ew!

We immediately both launch into hysterics and are like, that is disgusting. We're going to sue the grocery store and become millionaires and we're never shopping there again. She dumps the maggot ravioli out in the garbage and scrubs the pot within an inch of its life. And because it still needs to eat, grabs a box of spaghetti, so like dried pasta, out of the pantry and puts it in the water. We're in the living room reminiscing on...

how gross that was. And the pasta is doing its thing. She goes back into the kitchen and immediately is like, what the fuck is going on? What the hell? It's like lots of expletives being thrown around. This time she's really freaking out. So I run back into the kitchen and in the new pasta, brand new box, there are more maggots. And we're

at a loss now. We're both kind of baffled. Yeah, I'm really confused because the first round of pasta came out of the refrigerator, presumably. And now this one's coming out of the cabinet. Didn't really make any sense. Jen is really spiraling at this point. So she came from a religious background. I think she went to an all-girls Catholic school. And this is obviously weird and inexplicable. So her mind went straight to like,

This must be the end of days, obviously. Oh. God is smiting her. Oh, it's a demon situation. Yeah. It's always lurking, no matter what happens. The devil's popping up in your pasta. Oh! Devil droppings. Stop!

I hated that. Devil sperm. Oh my God. Yeah. So she's like freaking out. She's like head in hands. I'm sure silently repenting for all the bad college student things we've been doing all year. And it dawns on me, they must be in the water. I don't know how, but maybe they got into the pipe somehow and are coming out of the

coming out of the tap. Interesting. Good job. We're turning on and off the tap and waiting to see something weird, but it's just water coming out. So we're both very confused. And as we're willing maggots to come out of the tap water, so we have some explanation, I hear a popping noise. I looked at the stove and it was a maggot sizzling on the burner. And then I noticed a few more kind of crawling around

on the stovetop and then Juan fell

fell from the ceiling. What? Then there were more falling from the ceiling and it was somehow raining maggots in our kitchen. This is end of days. I am starting to believe her. You're hitting your knees and you're recalling the prayers you've heard on TV. Oh, that's the big reveal. It was the apocalypse. Because we lived in an old, gross college house and I'm sure the landlord hadn't cleaned the vent in the hood for the last like 20 years, grease had spread

built up over time in the vent in the hood and flies I guess must have laid eggs in the grease and when the rising heat from the stove heated the metal they were jumping out

and falling onto the stove oh they were just raining out of the hood i'm delighted i was nervous that this prompt would only elicit fire stories because that's the most common cooking disasters but cascading raining maggots wow wow how many do you think there were probably 30 there were a lot there were a

decent amount of maggots from each pot of water and then on the stove. Jesus. They were kind of all over. Do you think Annie had made it into your scrambies? That's what I wanted to ask but I'm too afraid to ask. After we'd called the landlord and we're like, someone needs to come clean this out right now. This is disgusting. By this point, we were kind of like laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing was once we realized that we weren't being smited. I think we're kind of at this point like rehearsing how we're going to tell everyone when we got to work in 30 minutes. And then...

I went back into the dining room and saw the half-eaten breakfast burrito full of scrambled eggs that I had just made on the stove and wrapped in a tortilla so I couldn't really see what I was eating and realized that this entire time I had been eating a maggot burrito. Stop! There were maggots in your eggs? Yeah. Oh.

Oh, wow. I mean, it's probably a good source of protein if you can get over the gross out factor. Did you almost throw up or are you fine with this situation? At the time, I was pretty grossed out. I think I was almost throwing up, but I rebounded. I still have scrambled eggs. It's fine. Oh, wow.

I would imagine, though, it might set some irrational fear. Like, I feel like I'd always be checking the vent before I cook. Like, can I see any maggots up there? I mean, once that happens to you once, now that's a reality on Earth. I feel like all our listeners now, we've really implanted a fear. Yeah, I'm going to be checking ours. That's awful. Oh, man. It was gross. But yeah, I guess it's a PSA for everyone listening to this.

clean the vent in the hood over your stove, which wasn't something I probably would have thought about before, but I definitely do now. And it makes total sense. You get a buildup of grease up there. What a hospitable place to lay your eggs. Rain, rain, rain. Chomp, chomp, chomp. Scramble, scramble, scramble. Chomp, chomp, chomp. Oh, that's so gross. I love it. Yeah, that was gnarly.

That almost is like one of those urban legends where they get a cactus from the desert and then they hear noise and then it breaks open and there's a spider nest inside the cactus. This is one of the classic urban legends. Or like when you're sitting on the toilet and then a snake comes up the toilet, eats your butt. Up into your butthole, yeah. Yeah, it's right up there.

Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. Yeah. That was disgusting and great. Unexpected and wonderful. Thank you, guys. And I was wondering if I could give a few quick shout-outs. Of course. Yes, please. Roll call. Yeah. You have a strong contingency of London.

So I want to give a shout out to Taylor and Paul and Alex and Andy. We all are fans and always listen and compare notes and talk about Armchair Anonymous. Ah, and they're Brits. Alex and Andy are, Taylor and Paul are both American. We get on pretty well, don't we? Yeah, we're all like close.

cousins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very similar. Well, a delight meeting you, Sarah, and welcome home. I wish you an easy and painless transplant back to the U.S. Thank you. I appreciate it. It was so nice to meet you both. All right. Take care. See you in Austin. Bye, guys. Mmm, maggots.

That one was for you. That's going to have to have a trigger warning. I'm itchy. I'm itchy. I'm itchy. Maggots are gross. They're so gross. Remember when I found that bazillion of them at the bottom of my trash can outside and you just want to set fire to whatever they've been on? Yeah. Just get rid of it. Have you ever had any maggots in your kitchen? Knock on wood. Okay. No, please. Oh, knock on wood for real. Yeah, because that, I think I would move out. I would never go back. Hello. This is unexpected. Hi.

How are you? You're in the military and you seem to be... Crouched. At work. I am crouched and I am at work, yes. Oh, fun. Where are you? I'm in the state of Oregon. Oh, okay. What branch of the service are you in? United States Air Force. I'm in the Oregon Air National Guard and I'm on annual training. So I have a civilian job and then I'm part-time military.

How long have you been a reserve? I started active duty right out of high school, and then I joined the reserves, and now I'm in the Air National Guard for the state of Oregon.

Oh, I'm sorry. So I guess I didn't know the distinction between. So how does that work? Most of the stories that you hear are about kids who join right out of high school and they go off on active duty. Active duty owns you and they tell you where you're going to live and what job you're going to have. So I lived all over the world and 9-11 happened. So I went to war and then I decided I wanted to have kids. And so I got out to follow an active duty spouse who was in a Coast Guard, which then meant more traveling and moving around wherever there's water.

With that, I was able to be in the reserve component. And then when we moved back here to the Pacific Northwest, there aren't large reserve units here, but the National Guard is the largest serving capacity in the state. So I transferred into the Guard. Okay, I guess that's probably where I was stupid, is I thought the reserves became the National Guard when they were needed. There are lots of statuses, but the easiest way to explain it is that there's a federal mission and then

a state mission. So we could get called up to do a federal mission when the president says, we need your help. But we can also get called up when the governor says, we need your help.

That was the missing piece for me. One's federal, one's state. Well, thank you for your service. Yes, yes, absolutely. Okay, so you have a crazy cooking story. I do. This involves an ex-husband, and I conferred with him yesterday to ensure that I had the whole thing right. You're still on speaking terms. That's good. We like that. We do have children together, so yes, we're on speaking terms, and all is good. He added some really wonderful elements, too, so I'm excited to add them to the story. What if it had rekindled the whole thing like a movie? Oh, sure.

Like a double meet-cute? Some kind of reverse meet-cute. That would be scary. Okay, so we grew up here in the Pacific Northwest and...

fried food is not something that we do at home. You go out for fried food. And when we were stationed at Coast Guard Station Lake Worth Inlet in Florida, we lived in military housing, right? Usually on big installations, there are lots of places for military families to live. The Coast Guard's a little different. Housing is rare because their stations are really small. But in

Florida, there's this very fancy place called Jupiter Island where a lot of very wealthy people live. And there's a historical lighthouse. Have you been? Well, I know that Burt Reynolds lived in Jupiter. Yeah, I think Celine Dion had a house there, Tiger Woods house there. The yachts that would drive by this housing unit were larger than the houses that we lived in.

that were built in the 40s. They're single story. So the government housing was actually on Jupiter, on the island with all the mansions. We were just before. We were like the gate right before you got to the mansions and the island. But our little Coast Guard beach was on the inlet where all their yachts drove by. And so we'd be on our little beach and they'd be working out in the gyms on the back of their yachts that were bigger than the gym for the

discard families. Wow. So important to the story, we had a one-year-old daughter at the time, and we lived in this single-story, built-in-the-1940s cinderblock home. Well, you're allowed to decorate and paint, which I had just done, lime green. Florida's always wet. It's always damp, right? Nothing really dries. So being new to the South, my husband at the time said, would you like to

fry something. I was like, okay, I'll give it a shot. I'll try some deep frying. So when I was in high school, I worked in a restaurant and I watched the fry cooks and I thought I could recreate that in the kitchen. So I took the largest chili pot we had and I filled it to the brim with oil. Okay. Canola oil. Yeah. Problem number one. Yeah. Like eight bottles of canola. Yeah.

And I turned it on high and I thought, this is great. So my toddler's toddling around, new to the Florida heat. She's in just a diaper. My husband was outside. I thought he was putting together a piece of furniture, but he says he was doing yard work. So he was just in board shorts. I, strangely enough, don't recall what I was wearing, but I remember the two of them pretty clearly. And I...

battered the shrimp. I dressed them in panko breadcrumbs and they were waiting for the oil to do what I remember the deep fryers in the restaurant doing, which was bubble. And so as soon as I saw the bubble, I went, okay, I can dump these in. I kid you not, the first shrimp I dropped to this chili pot, the entire...

Wow.

Apparently, I was not worried by this. I became very placid and I picked up my naked daughter and I walked outside to the carport and in the softest, calmest, sweetest voice, which he told me yesterday, it was the nicest I've ever been to him. I said, the kitchen is on fire.

So he walked in thinking I had a hot pocket in the microwave and that little metal sleeve had caught fire because of how calm I was. And meanwhile, the flames had now rolled from the ceiling and they're now coming back down the door on the opposite side where we were coming and going into the carport. Oh, my God. And so his first instinct was to go straight to it. And he goes, oh, I can't do water. Well, he burned his nipples. Shh.

Oh, my Lord. Burnt nipples.

Exactly. He picks up the pot and he runs it outside and drops it into the sandy driveway. And I'm just standing there looking at him like, what happened? And he goes, what happened? I was like, I filled it up. The oil was bubbling. I put one piece of shrimp in there. He goes, wait.

This was a deep fry, a shrimp fry. He's like, what kind of oil is this? I was like, canola. He had no idea what had happened. I had no idea what had happened. But thankfully, his assignment at that time in the Coast Guard was to manage that 60 acres and all of that housing. And so he ended up getting to work at home well before COVID ever allowed us to do so by scraping off that entire ceiling, repainting.

putting in new sheetrock. For whatever reason, the fire didn't spread to either side of the stove. So none of the cabinets caught fire and they were all that plasticky apartment. So we really avoided true disaster or burning the place down. Yeah, let's go over some PSAs about oil right now. That's fair. I think the one problem a lot of us who get into hijinks with hot oil is A, you're used to boiling water.

And water starts boiling. And water can only get to 212 degrees and then turns into steam. So it's never above 212. That oil, you think it's going to bubble. It doesn't bubble. It's the shit you put in there that causes the bubbles. Exactly. So it's just getting hotter and hotter. And that shit can get fucking thousands of degrees. I mean, not really, but it can get so hot.

Yeah, I put things in, they just explode. There's like any water in there. Well, that's what my friend just asked me. He goes, that shrimp had to still be wet. The water in the shrimp is what had to have caused that explosion. Because to this day, I've never fried again. I've never tried again. And when I was retelling the story to make sure I had all the details right, he even asked, what kind of oil would you use now? I was like, I have no idea. He was like, not canola. Yeah.

I don't think that's the issue. I think you can fry in canola, but part of it is the amount. You want to fry in like a small amount of oil and then you flip your piece of shrimp. Versus submerging as you do in the professional environment. Correct. Ah.

I had a tradition of doing a lot of deep frying for Super Bowl. That was my thing. Back when we were broke, we would get the breaded prawns from Costco, really go all out. And I had a big, like you're talking chili pot, and I would go a third deep. So it could still be in there bubbling around. It will bubble. You just don't have to do it like that. And I would recommend people don't.

Don't do a couple gallons of 700 degree oil. You do a thin layer where like it can at least get half of your meat and then you flip it. Well, that's our PSA. And then also, as everyone should already know, you don't ever add water to a grease fire. That's important to remind people. Yeah, because if your husband want to come in, start spraying water from the kitchen all over it. Well, what's really funny about this whole story is that one of my first jobs in the

food service industry. In the Air Force, it's called services. We do food, fitness, lodging, mortuary, and fatality search and recovery. That's a wide net, those last items. You know what the connecting factor is? Meat. Refrigeration. Refrigeration. So we've got the equipment packages already built and associated with the career field. So you have to learn and know all the things so that when you deploy, you could bounce from any one of those. We call them functional area codes.

Were you ever at Qatar or Bagram? I think that I was probably deployed the same time you were on your USO tour. I was in Kyrgyzstan when you were there. Okay, we went there. I did 07 and 09. And I feel like we did two different zones on both those trips. I got Robin Williams on my way.

my USO. Oh, hell yeah. That's great. That's awesome. That's a big one. It was big. Yeah. This is going to say a lot about the career field. We manage any morale, welfare, and recreation events in a deployed environment. So when you set up a bear basin, there's nothing there. You have minimal things to keep you occupied. So we play a lot of bingo. We do different competitions that don't require a lot of physical stuff.

And so when Robin Williams came through, I was running the bingo tournaments. And so we asked him to call bingo and he did it for us. He played the last round of bingo with us. And then he went on and did his HBO special, which was very special. That's so cool. What year was that? 2003. Hold on. Wait, 9-11 was 2001. So this was 2002. 9-11 is confusing. I often trip up on what the date of that was because of the 11. Yeah, but even though that should help us because one, yeah.

Yeah. September 1st, 2001. Or was it September 11th, 2001? See, here's my confusion. You're seeing it. Oh, boy. Well, wow. I'm glad you made it. Me too. This also goes to say, like, the most dangerous thing in the military is generally not the fighting. Oh, so true. The accidents that are not at all related to combat. Significance.

One last piece of this story is that years later, after my husband got out of the military, he went to culinary school in Portland and then he was teaching and he uses this story to remind people

So he does your PSA regularly for those who are just starting their culinary life. Oh, good for him because he's got a personal antidote, but you're the fall guy. He's not culpable at all. He just gets a detail of poorly managed. He should be telling us what oil to use. What he'd like to tell you is that he's lost sensitivity forever in his nipple region. Oh, no. I don't know how he's existing. I

I bet he's deriving so much pleasure from that erogenous zone. Oh, man. That would suck, though. I hate when just I wear the wrong shirt and my nipples get raw. I'm sure you ladies know all about this. I can't imagine having burnt nipples and then wearing a shirt. It must be agonizing. I'm now on his side, you know,

Well, thank you so much for sharing that. Great meeting you. Thank you for the opportunity. There are a lot of armchairs here in the Air National Guard. It's a thing that comes up all the time. People get really excited when they learn that we went to the live show or, you know, we've got T-shirts that we've made. I think 90 percent of my communication these days is related to one of the shows on armchair umbrella. That makes us so happy. So sweet.

And what a great representative you are of us as people. Thank you. All right. Take care. That was my first impulse ever to salute someone. I always wave goodbye now because you've got me waving, but I felt like I was supposed to maybe salute at the end of that. Did you get that urge? No. No. Okay. I didn't. That's fair. I have some stuff going on. You got an oil burn came out or a maggot bite? Maggot from the ceiling? Stop. Stop.

Okay, maybe that's a positive for this. No maggots are going to drop out because they could have. They were brewing. And we did have a barrage of weird insects on that tape. I know. Some of them might have even been. Maggots. Semen sperm. No, Satan's sperm. Devil's sperm is what you said. Satan's sperm probably works better because of the alliteration. Okay. Hello? It's a ghost. Oh, there you are. Oh, it's a handsome ghost. Okay.

Hi. Hi. Oh, my God. This is surreal. For us, too. Yeah. A handsome ghost just popped up on our screen. We heard the ghost, and then we saw the ghost. Brian, where are you? I am in a clothing-filled closet in Madison, Wisconsin. Oh.

Ah, Madison, Wisconsin. Are you in academia? I was previously in academia. I was a badger previously and then made my way back here as the family started to grow. Okay, Brian, you have a cooking story. I have a cooking story. Actually, I was in Madison and then I moved back to New York City, which is where I'm sort of from. I'm from Long Island originally, but I moved back to New York City to pursue a culinary career there.

This was in 2012. I was sort of a young, aspiring chef. Then I moved back to New York City to work at a restaurant called Eleven Madison Park. Yes, very fancy. Very fancy, yeah. Rob might be familiar with it. Rob, do you know it? I do. Great, I'm the only one here that doesn't know it. So it's a very, very fancy restaurant. We'd be cooking for celebrities, quarterbacks.

quite often. I got to do a private dinner for Jay-Z and Beyonce. We got top, top celebrities on a nightly basis. But we also got people who saved up for a year for their wedding anniversary to come. So it was a special place to work because people were putting out a lot of money for a three-hour experience that

they really never wanted to forget. So the stakes are just very high. Yeah, it's kind of like Disneyland. They've gone with the intention of having the best day of their life. That's a good place to start. Yeah, all that to say, very, very high intensity environment. Big kitchen, lots of cooks. And I don't know if you're familiar with like the French brigade system. So most fine dining restaurants are based off like the French military. Oh.

It's very regimented and all of the new cooks kind of come in at the bottom. So you start at the cold appetizer station, Garmanger, and then you work your way up to hot appetizers and then you start cooking the vegetables. And then maybe one day you start to touch meat. You work your way up all along these stations, sort of building up the experience.

And I had been there at that point about a year and a half. And I was what was called the tournant. So we were open seven nights a week. If you're really, really busy restaurant, you're obviously trying to maximize profits and you need to be open all the time. So

you need someone to give the cooks who work the stations every night a day off. So you need someone who goes around each day to work a different station. You're sort of like a jack of all trades, master of none. You've done everything in the kitchen, right? So I've worked all the stations and now I need to just help people get days off. So it's very stressful because you never really know

what you're walking into. You're not necessarily as good as the person who does it every day, but you sort of have this wily experience of working each station. You kind of know how to work smarter, not harder, all the tricks to sort of get you through the day. And this story takes place on a night where I was working the meat roast station. So some people might be thinking 11 Madison Park is a vegan restaurant. And that is true.

They are now a 100% vegan plant-based restaurant. But in 2012,

We serve meat up through, I think, 2018 or something like that. Oh, I didn't even know this. Well, I didn't even know about the restaurant. But wow, they switched. That seems like a crazy rebrand. It was a crazy rebrand. I remember hearing about it. And it was a very, very bold choice, especially if you're spending $300 a person, then that's drinking tap water. And that's not including tax and tip. It's a very...

very expensive experience and to not get meat, I think for some people rubs them or whatever. But this takes place at a time where we're cooking a lot of meat.

And the most famous dish at the restaurant was this whole roasted duck. And it was a honey glazed duck. We got these ducks from New York. We would dry age them in a refrigerator for two weeks. And then we would glaze them in honey and lavender and roast it. People would like fly across the world for this duck. Very crispy skin on the outside. Almost like a crackling. Oh, I love it.

want this. It's a shame that this doesn't exist in the world anymore. So basically, the ticket comes in and I'm working the meat roast station. And again, I had worked the meat roast station very comfortably for a long time, actually. It was probably the station I was most comfortable in in the whole kitchen. Probably too comfortable, which is like why I'm getting to talk to you today. Ticket comes in. I take the duck out. It's a very sensual experience. You dump honey all over the duck and then you rub the honey all over the duck into all the

crevices and into the skin. You cover it in lavender and coriander and saw all the great stuff. You roast it. 25 minutes later, duck comes out of the oven and it's sitting there. Beautiful golden brown whole roasted duck. So at this point,

The sous chef, who's kind of like running the line, it's their job to sort of plate all the dishes and then they go out into the dining room. They ask the vegetable cook who's on the meat side, hey, okay, we're bringing up two duck, fire two sides. So they start to get all the vegetables ready so that the sous chef can plate all the vegetables on the plate. And then when everything's ready, bring the duck. So I hear, all right, Brian, bring the duck. Bring the duck. So I grab the duck.

I pick up my knife and I think I'm shoving my knife into the duck and immediately I shove the knife into my wrist. The amount of blood that's shot out of my wrist. Honestly, it was constant.

It was comical. There was a wall about five feet away from me and it painted the wall explosively with the blood that shot out of my wrist. It was like cartoonish. It was cartoonish, right? You're in the middle of dinner service. Your heart is pumping. You're hot. You're tired. So you're almost like a throbbing vein in your wrist. I see the wall just covered in blood.

I immediately dropped my knife, grabbed my wrist with my hand. And there was a prep cook in the back of the kitchen. I make eye contact. He was staring at me like deer in the headlights. Like, what do I do?

I say, go to the office, call 911. So he immediately runs into the office, calls for an ambulance. Now, of course, because it's been 30 seconds since the sous chef called for the duck, he comes back because God forbid we're a minute late on a plate. And he's like, where the fuck is the duck? This world. It's a lot. So he sees finally what's happening. And thankfully, he gets another manager over and they're like, okay,

We have three walk-in refrigerators in the kitchen. We very quickly, and I think cleverly, go into the walk-in refrigerator to try and slow my heart rate down and cool my body off to slow the blood. Has anyone done a tourniquet yet? We have kitchen towels wrapping around and someone is holding my wrist above my heart. Yeah.

So I'll never forget it because one of the dining room managers came in and he said, okay, ambulance is coming. Why don't I get your stuff out of your locker? For the life of me, I could not remember the three numbers that I had been using for this locker for almost two years. My brain was like, you know, I was not there. They're like, okay, forget that. Get in the ambulance. In the ambulance, they start to sort of wrap me up more professionally and

And at this point, I get to a local New York City hospital. And I remember at the time, and this might not be true, but if you're less than 25 years old in New York, you go into the pediatric unit. Oh, wow. And I was like 22 or 23 at the time. Oh. So I am sitting in the waiting room of the ER, you know, in my fucking like chef whites. I look like an idiot. I have blood on me. And there's kids and parents and books and toys. Oh.

So they take me back. And now at this point, like I know I'm going to be OK. So now I start to calculate how many stitches do I need so I don't get shit when I go back to work. You want a lot, right? I can't go back to the kitchen with less than 10. Yeah, agreed, agreed. Yeah. At this point, I'm hoping like, do they need to take the head? Yeah, prosthetic would be the best return. There is nothing worse than going back to the kitchen after them being forced to do work for you. Luckily, it was probably like eight

nine or 10 stitches. I don't know if we got the double digit mark. I had just sort of a nick to the artery in my wrist. So like it didn't require any extra surgery. I had basically just put the tip of my knife through and I'm not as vascular as you are Dax. Well, don't sell yourself short. Yeah, we don't know.

I have some pretty thick veins and I obviously just hit those and creating that sort of explosion of blood. So I have to go back to get all my shit from the kitchen. I scurry back tail between my legs and it's probably like midnight, 1 a.m. at this point. All the other chefs are cleaning up. I walk into the kitchen and it's just an immediate onslaught of like, you fucking idiot. How did you do that? French brigade style.

Exactly. Like we had to cook an entire new duck because of you. Like you put us in the weeds, all this kind of stuff. So, of course, with love. Well, that answers my question. And I hate to admit this, but the whole time from the second you said you stabbed yourself, I've been dying to know if the duck had gotten blood on it or was salvageable. I did wonder about the blood. It's kind of like when I've had motorcycle accidents, my first thought is, is the bike total?

not what is my body. And shout out Dimitri. He was the chef de cuisine that night. I asked him when I came back and he was like, no, we had to throw the duck out. So that duck did not make it to the plate. I mean, you just can't do it. No, you can't serve it to a customer, but I think they should have saved it for you because who gives a shit if some of your blood's on it? Like you should have been able to eat that duck. Yeah, I agree. And you should have ate it with great prejudice. They should have sat me down at a table and been like, this is your punishment. Eat this whole duck right now by yourself.

This is your $100 fuck up. It was one of those nights that you simultaneously appreciate the chaos and I miss the chaos of the kitchen, but also like I'm so happy. I ended up working there for another six months, a year, but that ended up being just like my last job in hospitality, working in a kitchen. Yeah, you got to be built for it. Certain breed. Yeah, my body sort of started to shut down. I had like health issues and everything and I just had to walk away. Well, let me ask you, did you even feel it?

Or did you notice you were bleeding? I didn't feel it. I knew immediately that my knife didn't go through the skin of the duck. The skin is this crispy. I knew right away. I saw it happen. It slid off the surface of the duck and just straight into my wrist.

And then you saw the blood immediately. You know that you've done something terribly wrong. Do you watch The Bear? I watch The Bear. Some people in the industry don't love The Bear. I think for the most part, The Bear does as good of a portrayal of the hospitality industry as anything has ever done. And I think The Bear is pretty accurate. A lot of the people who write on the show and act on the show are in the industry. So I think that just gives it that feel that you're really in the kitchen. And head.

Did you read Kitchen Confidential at any point before you started? Of course. I was like the idiot young cook who's like, oh, this is fucking sick. Doing blow and staying up all night and boozing it. It's this romanticization of the lifestyle. I feel like every young cook either...

Watch his Top Chef or something had to get you to want to do it. And definitely like Tony Bourdain stuff made a generation of young cooks for sure. Yeah, I read that book was zero interest in ever being a cook. And I was like, oh, I would have loved that world. And I was already sober when I read it. But I was like, that would have been great for me.

You would have been great because you talk about like motorcycle racing and how it distracts you from everything else. And that's what it's like working in the middle of it, like a dinner service. You can't think of anything else. It's order after order after order and it's precision and it's doing everything perfectly each time. You don't have time to think about

any other problems. And then it's the nights, it's the weekends, it's not getting paid any money, which I think is a little better now. But at my time, I was getting paid nothing. Barely enough to get high. That was a great peek behind the curtain. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. That was kind of like an education on the whole chef system. Oh, I'm sorry that happened, but... Glad we got to talk to you. Glad we got to talk.

Me too. If I could, the chef at Eleven Madison Park, the chef de cuisine for most of my time there was Chef James Kent. He passed away on June 15th, very suddenly of a heart attack. And he was an unbelievable mentor. He impacted so many lives in the restaurant community. He was like a father to me. He really...

was an amazing influence on that restaurant, Eleven Madison Park, and on so many different restaurants and cooks. And I just wanted to dedicate that story to him. So this one's for Chef James. So I really appreciate you guys being able to let me tell it. Are you married? I have a girlfriend. She offered to buy more clothes to help with the sound quality, but I politely declined. Yeah, because I think, Brian, you're such a cat.

You are a catch. You don't understand. The only thing I wanted was validation from you. If you would just comment on me. Oh, you're gorgeous and charming. Yeah. You're incredible. You guys are the best. Thank you. All right. Take care, brother. Bye.

Yeah, what a babe. Yeah, I was going to say that after we got off. That he was a babe? That he was a catch. Oh, yeah, yeah. Were you going to use that exact word? Mm-hmm. That's the right word for him. Because he's like adventurous and fun and he's got this cooking history. You love chefs. Second to magicians? If you had your pick between being married to a magician or a chef, what would you pick? A chef, obviously. Just because of the day-to-day? Yeah. Well, what if he did magic for you, though, every day? No. Okay. We solved that.

Hi. Hello, is this Tanya? I'm Tanya. Tanya. Help me out. Tanya, conventionally with an O or no? No. Always with an A. I think often with an A. How do I know if someone's Tanya? Tanya Tucker. So my parents, they fought over it and my mom won because I was born during the Indy 500 and my dad wanted Tanya with an O and my mom wanted Tanya with an A and he didn't get to go to the race. Oh my gosh. So he lost on both fronts, it sounds like. Yeah.

So there is a decision to be made, Monica. You can spell Tanya with an O. I've never seen it. I've only seen it that way. Wow. What do you think is more common, Tanya? I get Tanya all the time, but I like being original. So my husband's from Hungary and my daughter spells Ava with an E. So we kind of have that in common. Spell Ava for me with an E. E-V-A. And it's Ava? Yeah. Oh, God. There's a lot going on over there. Where are you at? I'm in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Oh.

Oh wonderful.

Well, I love Grand Rapids, Michigan. You've got a picture over your left shoulder of the Mona Lisa, and I think Mona's holding a cat in the photo. I do a lot of pet art, and I love it when they're kind of derpy and silly. So we're in my art room right now. Oh, fun. Did you paint that Mona Lisa with a cat picture? No, I painted the banana, the derivative of the comedian. Okay. And I did these magnets, and I have like a kitty derpy thing right here. You're fun. Yeah.

- Thank you. - I can already imagine that you fucked up something in the kitchen. I just wanna say that. And that's a compliment. - Oh, thanks. - Do you get a lot going at once?

I do because I'm a Gemini, so I have to kind of multitask. But in this story, it was actually my mother who was cooking. Oh, okay. Set the stage for us. What year? Where are we at? All right. So we are in early 90s and we're in Wayland, Michigan. That's where I used to live. Where's Wayland, Michigan? It's 30 minutes south of Grand Rapids. Oh, okay. It's just me and my mom.

and my sister and my brothers are at my granny and grandpa's for the weekend. My mom, recipes weren't available so she really loved Chinese food and she loved to eat something and kind of figure out what the ingredients are. She's like an armchair chemist. Yeah. So on this day she wanted to try sweet and sour pork. She's in the kitchen and she's doing her thing and then I'm about six years old and we have this bird named Homer. We're in the

den and I decide while my mom's cooking that I'm gonna get Homer out and Homer is a cockatiel and it's my brother's bird he's really beloved he's named after the Simpsons because we love the Simpsons and he can like do the Bartman when you go like this oh he can like dance oh wow are these the type of birds too that live for a really long time how long do these birds live they usually

I don't know, maybe 20 years. I'm just guessing. Okay. I've heard about people who have these birds that live like 50 years and then they die and someone's got to take them over. Have you heard about this, Monica? Mm-hmm.

It's the larger ones, the parrots, I think. Okay. So Homer, I decided to get him out and his wings aren't clipped. So my mom's cooking and then I'm trying to get Homer and I'm being like a good little girl. My mom said never to force him to be on your hand. I know this is a cooking story, but it'll. So I'm trying to get him to go on my hand and then he like flies off and he lands on the ground. Now we live in a ranch style house and it's kind of like a horseshoe.

So we're in the den and then there's the living room, the dining room, and then the kitchen. Homer jumps down and then I'm following him and I'm trying to pick him up, trying to get him to go on my hand. And he jumps up and he flies a little bit more and I try to get him to go on my hand again. And meanwhile, my mom's in the kitchen, sweet and sour pork, and she's cutting up the vegetables.

Heating up the oil and she's cutting up the meat and she's getting it ready. Oh, God. We're going to need a big trigger warning. Yeah, this one's going to definitely require a trigger warning. I know. I'm trying to get Homer and then he finally gets sick of me and he books it.

And he's like head height flying through the house. And I'm trying to go after him. And he goes from the den to the living room through to the dining room. And then he makes a right hand turn. And my mom's just doing her thing. She's about to take the pork meat and put it in the 10 inch diameter pot that's half filled with oil. And she's about to. And then she hears the fluttering of the wings behind her. And she turns around. She goes, oh,

And Homer, he flew and then he missed her shoulder and then he landed in the pot. No, stop! No, Homer, of all the places you couldn't fly to. There was only one eight inch area in the whole house. Oh my god, this is awful.

You're in so much trouble. This is your big brother's bird. You're fucked. Both of my brothers. And I'm the little one. And he's in there. And it's core memory. Like, this is my earliest memory. Do you remember Terminator 2 when, like, the bad guy goes in the lava? Uh-huh. All the lava is just going like this and spraying everywhere. That was the bird. And then my mom, she gets laid. And then my sister comes out. And she's like, Mom, get Homer. And she goes, it's too cruel to take him out.

We have to let him die. He's done. And so we just sat there while he finished. I know no one can listen to this. I know. I know. But listen, PETA, sometimes there's accidents. It was a horrible, tragic accident. I'm not an animal person, so I don't know what anyone's supposed to do in that situation. I don't fully disagree with your mom. Like what? He's just going to be burned.

Well, yeah. Additionally, I'd say the bird flapping its wings in the hot oil, potentially spattering hot oil all over the place. Like there's many motivations at that point to get a lid over that pot. How did he taste?

My dad, when I called him yesterday to tell him, oh, I'm going to be on my favorite podcast and I'm going to tell the Homer story. And he goes, when your mom cooked it, it had no meat. What was she doing? It had no meat on it. So I remember that. And

And then I remember like going in the refrigerator. I don't know what my mom was thinking, but she put Homer in a box afterwards. Few follow-up questions. So she puts the lid on. That's got to be horrific while everyone's waiting for that to end. And then she turns off the heat, obviously. And then...

She pulls him out. And what shape was he in? Do we know? Did you see? I don't remember that part. My poor child brain blocked out the rest of it. But I remember looking at the shoebox. But my brothers were coming home that Sunday, like the next day. And so my mom was frantic. They didn't have internet. So she was like in the phone book calling pet stores. Like, I don't know. She was just trying to like soften the blow of my brother's bird dying. And she was like, I don't know.

And then we tried to go to a few Meyers when they had a good pet store back then. Yeah, good in quotes. I remember too. Nolan.

To get a new one? Was her goal to pretend it was the same or just go, but we got you a backup? Homer couldn't be replaced. Like, RIP, Homer. Yeah, he knew tricks and stuff. Oh, my gosh. My brother, Chris, he would record himself saying, like, pretty bird, pretty bird on repeat and then playing it all day. Oh, this sucks. It's just very traumatic. This is perfect timing because that happened to my mom and my mom loved that bird so much.

Last month, my mom, she babysitted my sister's house and she brought her chihuahua, Lily. And then when she went in the garage to park the car and she let Lily out, the chihuahua, she hit the garage door opener and then the garage door, she guillotined her.

Lily, I'm not joking. I'm not joking. I'm not joking. Like I told my siblings, she has the worst luck. Oh my gosh. But she's kind of like one of these husbands that somehow has lost three wives. At some point, you got to start getting suspicious. Like, well, what happened? She fell downstairs. Oh, that one did too? Also, the last time we had, well, one of the last times we had a really upset

upsetting animal incident story it was the woman with the bunnies yes drove over the bunnies and people were upset by that obviously obviously she was the most upset by it but then she had some other bad luck remember the dog had fallen off the yeah i feel like these things happen to people specifically

They happen. I love these pets and accidents happen and it's unfortunate, but it does happen. Like we love these pets, but it's just a fact of life. So I know it's a cooking prompt. Like it was cooking. It was cooking. She was cooking. So she deep fried Homer. Yeah.

bird of all animals would be able to just fly back up before falling in. Well, it's when she turned her hands, he always would fly and land on her shoulder. And then it's when he turned that he just like missed the landing and just... Jeez, blind landing. Right in the grease.

Man, that's gruesome. How mad were your brothers? Did they let it out on you or were they kind about it? They were fine. I don't remember that, but they have made up for it over the years. Like everything I loved, like something. They killed. No, no, no.

no, no, just to like mess with me. We went camping last weekend and we did bring up gerbil gate. I thought my gerbil squeakers died of starvation. Like as my mom said, while I was at my dad's for the weekend, but then like everyone was laughing around the campfire and I'm like, what happened? Like there's always these secrets with everyone because they don't want to tell others. Wow. But we had a good time.

good time you guys have lost a lot of pets you have you've been you've been through a lot of animals i feel like we kept talking there'd be more i know i know i think we might need to well yeah we raise our own meat here you're in it yeah wow that was quite a story poor homer poor homer r.i.p homer poor brothers i care less about them i care more about you as a six-year-old my girls would try to be in your grown up you know

know when you're six and you're trying you're being extra careful but it gets away from you because it is too big of a task for you well tanya what a horrific story horrific story thank you so much it was very nice to meet you yeah really fun meeting you tanya i'm so happy for all your success i'm such a fan and you guys deserve it and you guys are what the world needs i love you guys so much so thank you thank you we love you all right all my love to western michigan all right bye

Yeah, that's a Michiganda right there. Oh, she was awesome. Can you feel the spirit? Well, that was great. I knew cooking would deliver. As I said earlier, I was nervous they'd all be fire stories, but that wasn't the case. The fire in our home growing up was, uh... Did you guys ever have a kitchen fire, Monica? No. I wonder how common they are. It's always oil. Or the occasional rag gets left next to a burner. That's scary. Well, now I'm scared. Okay, well, be extra careful in your kitchen. I will. When you go home tonight, okay? Okay. All right, love you. Bye.

Do you want to sing a tune or something? We don't have a theme song. Okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions, and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly, I rhyme-ish. On the fly, I rhyme-ish. Enjoy. Enjoy.