Desperation Pie with Sarah Archer

cottage cheese is just this glowing monolith you know doesn't matter whether you acknowledge it or not welcome to you're wrong about the podcast where we ask what what what do you feel like eating today um and sarah archer i lured you on here um as our kitchen correspondent to talk with me about american food trends and we would each kind of just talk about a handful of things that we personally like and are interested in because i think we're kind of a wash in food trends at the moment and we're kind of at peak food trend because i feel like do you feel like every time you're on social media someone's like let's try the viral red hot sauce and i'm like i don't know what to do with that i don't know what to do with that let's try the viral red sauce and i'm like let's try the viral red sauce and i'm like let's try the recipe for a thing you've never heard of you're like oh yeah of course every time recipe i've never heard of yeah right and in the olden days it took at least a few months for something specifically a recipe to work its way through the newspaper and word of mouth and so on and i just i love um trends in food as a way of learning about what people were going through and continue to go through and almost hilariously repeating cycles and so we're going to talk about that in a little bit but let's talk about what we're going to talk about in a little bit but let's talk about what we're going to talk about in a little bit but let's talk about what we're going to talk about in a little bit but let's talk about what we're going to talk about in a little bit desperation pies and cake and so forth yeah i immediately love this and is it desperation as in like the great depression or is it desperation in like more of an existential way here's what's great right is that i've definitely always heard about like water pie and vinegar pie exactly and ritz cracker pie ritz cracker mock apple pie which is which is mock apple pie yeah which which was on the box for ritz crackers through the 90s apparently or until the 90s yeah which i really like and i think it's a really good idea to do that i think it's a really good idea to really like that they were like yeah we know you want to make the pie um you're desperate to make but yeah i have always heard of them as depression pies but they are even more deeply within that desperation pies because i think like the pies i just named were all being made well not ritz pie because ritz crackers were invented and rolled out in 1934 i think they're they're a depression cracker through and through but those pies are like desperation pies that people were also making in the late 19th century um and also on the frontier which is very interesting oh that is fascinating and one of the themes here is that i guess we're looking at two two trends that i don't think are as in opposition as people sometimes act like they are which are desperation and convenience they go together like peanut butter and chocolate they do and they taste good together basically a mock custard pie where you use uh water instead of milk or cream and it is apparently quite good i realized today that i should have made all these pies so i could tell you about it with more accuracy yeah we can revisit that yeah let's go make the pie and come back and discuss but tell me about what well first of all tell us who you are and your kind of work in the kitchen arena and what you're going to tell us about today so my kitchen obsession is mostly is kind of the decades of the 20th century and i have a special affection for the world of tomorrow and gadgets and kind of american kitchen designers competing with the soviet union and kind of designing things sort of at the soviet union and at the at this very moment i'm working on a talk because there is a really cool exhibition uh opening soon at the museum of fine arts houston that is all about atomic age food and it involves this like my god i know and it's called miss archer i know i know so it's called mid-century menu oh my god that's the name of the exhibition which is curated by the great misty flores who is a decorative arts historian who normally is like a baroque and rococo person um so this is like she's moving far into the future by doing this and there's a really cool mid-century house that is part of the museum of fine arts houston campus called the rienzi house and it's a sort of post-war luxurious home that was donated and the thing that's interesting is that the people who lived there collected like 18th century porcelain so it's this kind of post-war like 60s house that that's full of rococo decorative arts and then the exhibition is in there so there's like a table full of fake food that misty flores had made for this exhibition i want to go wait how long is this for what are the dates here it is through july 31st 2026 oh thank god all right we have lots of time yeah so there's so there's bags of time and the rienzi house has a historical cookbook collection so that was kind of the genesis of this like you know like let's let's explore sort of you know what this would have looked like if you were sort of entertaining in 1960s houston at that level i published a book in 2018 called the mid-century kitchen which is sort of more about not so much about food but more about appliances right sort of appliances design and the transformation of the kitchen over time well you can't have a lot of the food without the appliances that's very true continues to be true yeah and a lot of it is about the advertising and kind of mythos around the kitchen so it's sort of less a literal study of kind of what everybody's kitchen was actually like and more a survey of like the ideal kitchen and kind of how that was marketed to american consumers and what it meant and what was the ideal kitchen at that time and and do you have a sense i guess there's like our culture is a little bit more open-minded maybe today but at least from like you know from an anecdotal perspective or whatever kind of sense you have of this like is there an ideal kitchen today like what do those look like to you so i have kind of a working theory about this i would say in terms of the post-war era so the kitchen historically had been it was a site of work and up until about the 1920s it tended to be either just things in your dwelling that you use to heat up food and water because you maybe lived in one room or two rooms or you were you were wealthy and you had people to do that for you so that was a room that you didn't go into so there wasn't really this the idea of the kitchen as a place where you hang out right is a relatively new idea well or i guess in the sense that maybe in the like if we're talking about you know let's say you and i are are settling on a farm in connecticut and i'm imagining a scenario described in one of my favorite books more work for mother mm-hmm and we would like basically live in one room probably as like you know small farmers and kind of like cottage industrialists and people like you know kind of doing a lot of little different kinds of work here and there and we would probably have like a hearth with a fire with like a big pot or a cauldron i guess on top of it we would be having some stew probably i mean is that fair to say more or less you might have a cast iron stove you might have two or three rooms and you might have a kitchen and you might have a kitchen and you might have a kitchen and rooms nice and you might hang out in the room that's most warm which is also going to be the room where you cook food so in as much as it's sort of it's a marker of how class in america has changed and what we expect and want for ourselves and so there's kind of um the way that kitchen technology was presented to computer to computers to the way that you see this is this is the result of ai um the way that kitchen technology was presented to computers to computers was presented to consumers starting in about the 1930s and then really taking off in the 1950s was that you could almost jump a couple of notches on the class ladder and the way that they illustrated this was to show let's say what julia child would call the servantless cook this this sort of new thing in the world like a person who entertains and is well to do enough to entertain and have the kind of leisure time to do so and the money but isn't wealthy enough to have staff and this is again this is kind of a way to show that you're not wealthy enough to have staff a new category of person and so and that you're like throwing a dinner party and having and like being your own staff in a way and this is maybe like part of the consolidation of the middle class and post-war america exactly so this is the consolidation of the middle class and so the idea that you can then a lot of the advertising for kitchen appliances like remember that movie that we we watched in a previous episode it was a sort of industrial short for um i want to say it was it was from motorama but it was the sort of applied science fantasia where like a masked man yes whisks a woman away to show her all the kind of incredible yeah you know it was like frigidaire well it was like they were presented to women as if they were cars and it's interesting because it feels like the the consolidation of the middle class apparently involved women pulling off even more stuff yes basically that it's like the woman the protagonist is shown taking up hobbies and so the implicit message of that is that you have appliances doing stuff for you that you used to have to do like you can talk to a woman and you can talk to her and you can talk to her and you can talk to her and you can talk to her and you can talk to her and you can talk to her and you can talk to her and you can kind of leave things to some extent on autopilot and that that will free you up to do things like play tennis or play golf you know kind of lounge read just like sort of do something else and sort of become a lady of leisure in a way that would have been unthinkable for somebody from your background a generation before oh it's called design for dreaming i found it it's 1956 it's a promotional short film for general motorsports it's a short film for general motorsports it's a and it's all futuristic kitchen but a masked man whisks her away like like happens sometimes to all of us. I dreamt last night The moon was so bright It melted the walls away And it wasn't alarming When I saw Prince Charming Come into my bedroom and say Let me persuade you To come to the place Where tomorrow meets today Ooh, thank you. It sounds very exciting. May I come just as I am? And shows her the kitchen of the future. And the idea is that things, the kitchen of the future is so advanced that it's kind of like you're entering like a lab at IBM and everything kind of happens automatically for you and cakes appear and it's magical. Just like a man You give him a break And you end up in the kitchen Baking a cake But this was a kitchen Like none I'd seen Put a card in the door Put a card in the slot And onto the screen Pops a picture of just how your dish will look Plus all the ingredients you need to cook Then crucially, the woman is freed up to do all this other stuff. No need for the bride to feel tragic The rest is push-button magic So whether you bake or broil or stew The Frigidaire kitchen does it all for you Don't have to be chained to the stove all day Just set the timer and you're on your way The Frigidaire kitchen does it all for you Tick, tock, tick, tock I'm free to have fun around the clock And so that's the part of it that I find most interesting, the idea that it's unthinkable that you would do other stuff like anyway. Like there's the idea that you would, you know, read books or play tennis or be involved in the PTA or something. Mm-hmm. Well, and also we're seeing her like using a cabinet like a computer, but also a computer that doesn't exist yet because she's inserting a punch card and then like a color image of a cake is coming up and it's like, you guys were bluffing. But you know what's crazy though? I feel like we could do that now. Yeah, we should do that now and we should do it with index cards. People would like it. I don't know why we're not doing that. It's just, yeah. Like, what are we waiting for? Yeah. And now she's got like a rotating like cake display cabinet, like a diner. I mean, this is basically, this is basically promising to automate cooking for her. Right. And now she's kind of switching off to the leisure area. So tennis. She's twirling a golf club like a baton. Exactly. Which seems dangerous. Which seems odd. But also it's like she's skipping around really fast, like aggressively leisureizing in different forms of leisure. And it's like, whatever happened to To actual leisure. Lying around for three hours. I know. It's very active as leisure goes. It's very like skippy. Yeah. Jeepers. I'm exhausted. The kitchen of tomorrow is calling me. My cake is ready. I love her. I love her and her bangs. I think what's fascinating about the food trends is one of the things I touch on in the book is that there is also a form of almost like virtual travel that happens because, you know, there's this vogue for, in air quotes, "foreign food" starting in the late 50s and early 60s. And it coincides with the beginning of the jet age. Oh, OK. Tell us about that. So this is kind of a nifty kind of parallel. So the Boeing 707, not to like-- Oh, boy. --you know, complicate the vibes by bringing up Boeing. No, I love the vibes. --premiers in 1958. That was kind of the big high profile new jet. And it basically-- it's-- jet engines that replaced propeller planes. So if you-- there was tourism, and there absolutely were people going. But if you were to fly, say, from like New York to London or New York to Paris in, you know, 1952, that would have taken you somewhere between 12 and 15 hours. Jet engines cut that about in half. So what we're used to, where like going from the East Coast of the US to Europe is roughly like six, seven, eight hours, something like that, that starts to be true in late 50s and early 60s. It is still very expensive. So if maybe like-- like 1% of the population was traveling to Europe by propeller plane and like reenacting the scene from Funny Face, walking down the steps of the Louvre every, you know, once or twice a year, then a few years later in the jet age, it's still a tiny percentage. It just means that it's kind of more upper middle class people rather than strictly just wealthy people. So upper middle class people are going to Europe. They are taking vacations in Hawaii, which in 1959 becomes a US state. They are engaging in the fantasy of a nearby Paris, a paradise like Acapulco. They are, you know, visiting the Caribbean. And like all of this creates an interest and a buzz in the larger sort of American psyche because you can experience a version of it, like a mediated version of that, by either going to Disney World or going to a World's Fair. And you can do both of those things by, you know, going to New York or going to Florida. And when you do that, you'll encounter, let's say, you know, the pavilion from Thailand and maybe get your first taste of a version of Thai food for the, you know, the first time ever in your entire life in 1965. Or you can visit Disney World and go to, you know, the Polynesian Resort and experience a kind of fantasia of South Pacific culture, which it needs-- we don't need to say this, but of course, it is extraordinarily mediated and, like, kind of constructed of stereotypes. But I want to draw your attention to-- can I send you some images? Yeah, absolutely. Are you familiar with the International San which Gardens? No, I assume that they're not gardens full of sandwich-bearing bushes. But I sure was hoping that they were for a sec. I was picturing that. That's what I was hoping, too. But so this was at the 1964-1965 World's Fair in Queens. And the 7-Up Pavilion. And 7-Up was not quite as high profile as Pepsi. It was kind of a third banana in terms of soda. But-- I mean, let's be honest. They still are. They still are. But what a banana. Exactly. But it's a great banana. So take a peek at this image and maybe describe what we're seeing. I would love nothing more. OK. So first, we have a beautiful sign that has a little arrow. It says, "Entrance to the 7-Up International Sandwich Gardens." The International Sandwich Gardens. And it's a garden where you eat international sandwiches. And they're all on oval bread. And so they're like the space sandwiches in 2001 in "A Space Odyssey" a little bit. They're uniform. And so we have the sandwiches represented. And there's like four for each region, which is for totaling 16 international sandwiches, which I think is pretty good. Yeah, which is incredible. Northern Europe, the Pacific, the Mediterranean, and the Americas. Choose one of these four trays, four delicious sandwiches on each. All the 7-Up you want, $1.50 per tray plus tax. We should compete with the Russians again. It brought out the best. It brought out the best in us, at least in terms of sandwiches. Yeah, at least in terms of sandwich culture. Well, what do you think of also about the kind of advances? Because just with you talking about the jet age, I'm like, right, between 1949 and 1969, we first made these huge leaps in commercial passenger airlines. And then we went to space. And then we went to the moon. And so you can really forgive science fiction writers for being like, the year is 1991. The planets have taken over the planet. And only 14 humans remain. This is their story. Well, actually, it's good that you brought up space. Because here is-- OK, so I have-- this is kind of like I'm working toward like a grand theory of sandwich logic. So you know how in-- are you a Star Trek person? Have we talked about this? Yes. I haven't watched a ton of Star Trek. But I like Star Trek ambulantly. And I like being surrounded by Star Trek people. I feel very safe amidst them. We're very cozy. And I think one of the things that I have always found really funny and really entertaining about like the original series and I guess to some extent like the '90s reboots, less so nowadays because I feel like they're kind of getting more-- they're more far out in terms of the science in a way that's really cool. But it's kind of past the golden age that I would consider to be like basically you go-- you know, you're on a spaceship centuries from now. You go to a distant galaxy. And the alien life that you meet are basically like-- like people with like a very severe haircut or like shoulder cuts. Do you know what I mean? And it's kind of like-- Humans from the Ren Faire. Exactly. Where they're like, well, you got your Vulcans. And then you got your Romulans, who basically look like Vulcans. But-- It's like, oh, well, they have different eyebrows. So they're-- or they have like a slightly different nose. Yeah. But we ran out of latex. And so they're a Romulan. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. So what I love about this and that if you think about this, let's like put this together and have it hold hands with the Sandwich Garden. Ooh. So you are in New York City. You're American. You can point to sort of any point on the globe. And every other place will turn to you and say, yes, we have a version of exactly the kind of sandwich that you're used to that is made with like, you know, Russian ingredients or Vietnamese ingredients or, you know, whatever ver-- and I think it is fair to say that most cultures on Earth have a version of like a hand pie of some kind, like a sort of portable-- I, too, have-- have-- have pies to talk about, yeah. Right, so we're gonna link this to pies, but you know, there are pasties patties you know tacos there are versions of this all over the world but they are almost certainly not versions of this where everybody on planet earth gets like bread from an american supermarket that's oval shaped and puts like the exact same amount of stuff on it yeah so in the same way that there's this idea that you you can kind of go anywhere in the world and every alien you meet will sort of speak east coast english and kind of be more or less humanoid this idea that you can almost in air quotes travel sort of right an experience of a taste or a version of someplace exotic but what you're actually experiencing is basically like a creative director who works for seven up or better homes and gardens kind of conjuring an idea of something that's japanese or right you know exotic in some other way and i think that that idea of foreignness you can sort of as a commodity i think that that american access partially because we've had thank god so much immigration in i'm gonna be in my soapbox just for a second we have wonderful food from around the world made by people who are from the world right so we're not kind of stuck in you know making kind of like esoteric sandwiches that are based on a thought experiment but so i feel like the travel boom the sort of version of the travel boom that most americans could not partake in because it was still expensive it's like now it's still expensive to travel but this was a sort of instead of being on tiktok or instagram and kind of looking at people posting from their vacation on the adriatic you had this version of it you could kind of bring quote-unquote foreign food into your kitchen if you bought a cookbook like meals with foreign flair well and then there's something interesting too about the fact that like that food like is both like a colonizing agent right where it's like very painful and often profitable how food traditions are like destroyed and consumed yes and imitated by people who don't understand them and yet at the same time i think there's like this inevitable thing that happens you know it happens across all different kinds of cultural lines but i think it's just a thing that happens with food where it gets adapted by whoever is interested in it based on what they're familiar with and feel comfortable with and what they have at the store and what's available and so this this thing where you can say oh that's this is wiping out culture and it's oppressive and it's like yeah but also like we also just kind of like run home with ideas and don't understand it but i want to try something out and that's cute that we do that too it depends i think it depends on the on it depends on the motives i think really um but yeah these sandwiches are all like i think anyone from any of these cultures would be like like what what um because for example another example scotland is sliced lamb with minted dressing on scotch barley bread and you're like what about a scotch egg what about you know there's limitless canada baked ham with the pickled dressing on cheddar cheese bread it's like sure that's as canadian as canada pie exactly exactly and then what's oh in the usa sliced turkey with cranberry dressing on whole wheat bread something that no american eats on a daily basis but that makes you think of thanksgiving so yeah it's fun it's all over the place and it also does does this kind of visually it sort of standardizes um instead of like an idiosyncratic kind of things around the world sort of appear in different shapes and forms and might be one you know something might be a stew and the next thing might be a hand pie everything is a sandwich so it kind of uses the sandwich as like an organizing principle to give to sort of snap the entire world into a grid where like everything do you know what i mean like you can kind of find um yeah to put the whole world between two slices of bread if you will exactly if you will if you will and then put an incomprehensible dressing on it i have a question for you yeah that i feel like i hear this referenced a lot and it sounds like it could be a myth to me i might have even asked this before so if i have i'm sorry but the idea is that cake mixes were invented american housewives didn't want to buy them because they didn't feel like they were doing enough and so they didn't need an egg but the cake mix people were like okay add an egg then you'll feel like you're baking so i have heard this too and i feel like i've heard people repeat that is that true i have heard that this is a myth okay but that the myth itself is instructive because it kind of shows that there's an attachment to the idea that people need to do this that like the egg kind of like women want to bake ultimately it's like their biological destiny to bake in like a labor-intensive way so i think that's like you're talking about the kind of like betty crocker some people were meant to bake some people were meant to cook everything in a rice cooker and they just throw it all in there and see what what the fuck happens exactly it's usually i mean it cooks it you know one way or the other totally totally yeah so i think that's a super instructive example and that it's kind of something that's taken on a life of its own in the culture and that there's like this what is it that we want to be true and like why why do we want that to be true and what do you think we do want to be true well i have to say i think the the whole sort of like egg myth ethos and the idea that people want to the egg psychodrama the egg psychodrama that people want to do things from scratch is people have spent many years making doing things by hand making things by hand cleaning cooking etc all that is time that our ancestors would never get back right it's all you know we had generations of women particularly before us who did nothing but that and didn't have a choice and i think the idea that there's an attachment to it and that people like it which is not to say that everybody hates it because i think people actually do right i mean as with everything some people like it some people do exactly um the idea that it's kind of a widespread desire is almost a way of making the lives of women of the past seem less sad because it means that maybe they were do you know what i mean like maybe they wanted to maybe they wanted to forego education and travel no you're right god that's really interesting just a theory this is just a this is just a hypothesis if you will no i i believe it though i mean it makes i mean and multiple things can be true you know or true to different degrees but that feels accurate to me and i mean that well okay so this connects to um can i tell you about one of my cakes yes okay so well this is really the cake of the hour and and so this begins with peg bracken of course who we've talked about many times oh my god of course peg and with 1960s the i hate to cook book oh so good which is a book of recipes for women who hate to cook and it has a very short dessert section which regrettably is subtitled because you're fat enough anyway oh god jesus christ yeah oh no oh peg oh no and you know i choose to let that one go by but you don't have to uh i know it's that's a tough one but it's a different time yeah but it has a recipe for what peg bracken calls cockeyed cake and so this is this chocolate cake that is deceptively simple i made it i was amazed at how it turned out like so when you you made it you you liked how it tasted no i loved it because it it doesn't have any dairy or any eggs whoa and it's this sort of novelty recipe where you mix dry ingredients and then you poke three holes you know in your like flour mixture and then i think into one you put five tablespoons of oil some recipes say six into one you put a little bit of vanilla and into the third you put some vinegar and it has baking soda and so the vinegar and the soda combine and leaven it while it's cooking and also you can make it right in the pan that you bake it in that's genius wow and it is because this is like very light fluffy moist delicious chocolate cake that apparently many many people who've talked about it um in newspapers starting in 1944 which is when recipes for this started turning up and in newspapers around the country um and in canada we're like that sounds wacky and then they make it and they're like oh my god this is so good and they're like and they're amazed and it's like a trick and so it's more commonly known as wacky cake i'm gonna try it now i'm inspired to try it that's like it's it sounds like a miracle it's fantastic and i think there's an interesting psychological difference between wacky cake and cake mix because if you make something with a cake mix which is operating on about the same principle although it does have an egg then you're like oh whatever it's just cake mix but if you make a wacky cake you're just throwing together a few dry ingredients and then adding a few liquids mixing it together and baking it but you've performed a miracle because you put the dry ingredients together it's like you've performed science like you've done science in your and it's kind of like this incredible kind of chemical reaction that is just with stuff in your pantry it's kind of cool to be able to do that right and so i feel like there's like the need to do that if you want to impress people because like one of the things that it seems like people have kind of always been reluctant to admit about cake mix is that a good cake mix takes a lot of time and a lot of time and a lot of time it takes a lot of time taste about the same as like a good homemade cake. yeah a cake mix is fine it's it's absolutely fine yeah I mean there's like different kinds of cake and many that you can't get with a mix but if you just I mean like cake is cake yeah and it's also one of those things that I think in a strange way I mean I personally I am not a fan generally of kind of very fancy like flourless cakes like that kind of doesn't really do it for me like I really want like birthday cake like that's what that would be you know what I mean yeah I want like the Duncan Hines slash wacky cake kind of a cake Duncan Hines like frosting from a tub is like which and because I think that's kind of like as an adult you don't have that a ton like there's not a ton of scenarios when that and if you don't have kids there's not like cupcakes happening all the time but if I do ever make something like that it is really good I'll take that over like a fancy pants you know New York Times recipe section cake oh yeah I also wanted to mention I do really enjoy the New York Times cooking sections email subject lines I've never cooked a single recipe they send me but it's always like you open your email you know and it's like nuclear armageddon urgent your identity has been compromised and then the New York Times is like turkey cutlet razzmatazz and you're like oh well that sounds good it is very the New York Times food juxtaposed with cherry stone clams or the clam at the end of the day and then the New York Times food juxtaposed with cherry stone clams exactly that like on the one hand we're living a life where we have time to contemplate like clam typologies and like leisure and on the other hand like we might be going to World War III like that both of the but that I mean honestly that's what the 60s were like too well that's a good point and and then as now we were fucking obsessed with our food and our houses yep and that's kind of nice that we're holding hands across time with with people from who are like in bomb shelters la la la I'm gonna get really into design if all of this is gonna get blown up I gotta get it looking perfect gotta get it looking absolutely perfect and then or recreating it underground to for the for the you know and to be clear I'm laughing because I'm doing exactly that I'm not not doing that that's not a laugh of duration that's a laugh of oh my god I'm doing that same thing with my life and so well okay so the wacky cake starts showing up in 1944 oh so it's wartime it's it's war it's like rationing okay exactly and we'll tell us a little bit about that well I mean my understanding is that wartime food was designed to basically it was a lot of workarounds it was kind of make do not unlike the Civil War too there were sort of like innovations and right you know ways to kind of like use a cut of meat that you wouldn't ordinarily and you could save up your ration coupons to buy you know a piece of steak and but it was sort of not the kind of thing that you could have all the time my dad was old enough to remember he was a little kid during World War II so he actually remembered the food what does he remember about that so he remembered having something called salmon loaf which I mean it was he described as being kind of like spam but it was made out of salmon and I don't know whether that's something that you could buy off the shelf or something that my grandmother made but the idea was that you're kind of using like every little bit and kind of gelatinizing it and making it into a sliceable entity well it does seem that you have this kind of you know you have depression recipes and then also wartime recipes where meat and and sugar and fats were being rationed and you could have like a limited amount you know per household and so there's a lot of meat stretching recipes and a lot of like you know using breadcrumbs or using oatmeal using a starch of some kind or potato I mean and also like you know you kind of like you need breadcrumbs for meatballs so it makes sense because kind of like you know upping the starch quantity or the ratio it's kind of like you know like you're kind of like upping the starch quantity or the ratio you're kind of changing the ratio and that basically and I think I don't believe they had a victory garden I I could be wrong about this because I do remember actually my grandmother who grew up on a farm saying that she didn't really understand why anyone would grow something that you couldn't eat like she didn't really understand flower flower gardens like she like just didn't it wasn't anti just didn't understand it you know it was a lot of like shelf-stable stuff and mac you know macaroni and cheese figured being like you know beefaroni like a lot of the sort of stuff that we now associate with like like young kid food is my understanding is that it was kind of perfected as a genre during the war and also I imagine in part due to advancements in you know food preservation technology due to the needs of the troops in world war ii yeah and I think like I think I learned in a carmen san diego that canned food was innovated due to wartime needs interesting well that's also there's a great book called the combat ready kitchen which we can link to in the notes that is a whole history of like food innovations in wartime kind of throughout history that sounds great anastasia marx de salcedo I wanted to to double check this to make sure I was getting it right so so combat ready kitchen is great it's like super fascinating kind of a lot of the innovations in preservation packaging you know kind of understanding what people needed in terms of nutrition all of that stuff and so that eventually filters into I mean a lot of the technology that we have even now for keeping things shelf stable originates in that time that's fascinating well I have a couple things to show you oh good based on our adventures in wacky cake because one of the things about it that you might remember is that it calls for only about five tablespoons of oil and so something that you know people who aren't scholars of world war ii because they read the molly books might not know is that um during world war ii people were also instructed to collect fat yes and donate it to wartime needs because it was it was useful I have a short produced by disney um that's going to explain it amazing wait okay first I'm showing you a poster so tell me what you see there okay I am seeing save waste fats for explosives take them to your meat dealer there's a hand like a manicured hand holding a sort of cast iron skillet pouring what looks like rendered fat into an inferno from which it looks like bombs are exploding basically so from the kitchen to the battlefield exactly like in in two easy steps take them to your meat dealer that is that is an interesting command exactly exactly um okay and then I sent you a link to the short and we're gonna watch this together so out of the frying pan and into the firing line wow a walt disney production in technicolor distributed and exhibited under auspices of the war activities uh all right it cut to some really beautiful looking bacon and eggs which mini is making and pluto who is smelling the beautiful bacon smell isn't it weird to realize that mini is an immortal being yeah I know he has a pet don't throw away that bacon grease housewives of america one of the most important things you can do is to save your waste kitchen fats bacon grease meat drippings frying fats we and our allies need billions of pounds of fat to help win the war so it is not pleased for fats make glycerin and glycerin makes explosives every year two billion pounds of waste kitchen fats are thrown away those idiots and what's cool is it kind of looks like a norman belghetti's patriot radio the radio that's in the the cartoon oh yeah oh yeah I see yes I mean the visuals are really good a skillet of bacon grease is a little munich I love how literal it is fat dripping off meat and turning into an actual and they're just exploding a german ship yeah yeah exactly whoa your pound of waste fat will give some boy at the front an extra clip of cartridges and then we see a picture of mickey mouse who is at war pour your waste kitchen fats in a clean wide mouth can that's right not a glass jar or paper bag please strain the fats through a kitchen sieve so this thing of like collecting fat in a coffee can feels very familiar like this is something people did for ages well yeah then it's also I guess something you would do to have you know have fat around yeah fat except for cooking needs and such and also not put it down the drain because it's not good for plumbing not even for household bomb making right or even just to throw away just you know eventually all in one unit coins okay ketchup ketchup can be paid in sausage pluto is now happy about the whole war effort and he's flying a little american flag off of his tail save waste fats to make explosives look for the official insignia in your meat dealer's window oh this is incredible technicolor you gotta go to the official fat collecting station wow the end so anyway these are the the circumstances under which the wacky cake was born so this is fascinating so that this explains exactly why you you needed to kind of find like let's find some ingredients that they don't need to sink axis boats right specifically and i guess vinegar and baking soda works yeah in this case you can use vegetable oil which is also what you what you use generally when you're baking with a cake mix yeah wow what a beautiful thing it's really and i love the colors it's very like what is technicolor yeah i mean you gotta have your your war propaganda and technicolor or else what's the point of all the innovation but it's i mean it is it's interesting to think about american food trends as something shaped by scarcity because i think if you look at american history it does seem like there are these almost unceasing waves of boom and bust yes and it seems like maybe some of the most enduring inventions and the ones that we end up liking the most are the ones that people come up with when they don't have access to the things that they're used to or when we have to innovate or when we have to figure out how to make something out of out of almost nothing yeah because it kind of it uh spurs a kind of inventiveness and kind of out of the box thinking that is unusual would you like to talk about tv dinners i can and i'm thinking of like the international frozen meals thing that you sent me oh do you mean foreign flair yes i mean foreign flair okay because that's not frozen actually could you want to look at the cover of that yeah that would be great so here's the cover and i chose an interior spread and this is published in 1963 which is the same year that the french chef premieres on wgph boston interestingly and better homes and gardens cookbooks are like they're in every secondhand store you've ever been in like there's the kind of red and white check covered binder cookbook that's the standard and then they published a ton of the like dozens and dozens of these kind of more slim volumes that were you know like hors d'oeuvres or desserts or christmas cookies or meals for two and it was interestingly they're not individually authored so i did a little digging into this and the better homes and gardens um sort of creative authoring and i think it's a really good book and i think it's a really good book and i think it's a really good book and i think it's a really good book and i think it's a really good office in des moines iowa and part of meredith publishing we're just cranking these out and i think there's a case to be made that they're almost more like decorating magazines than they are cookbooks yeah which certainly happens today as well it happens absolutely today because if you like describe what we're seeing on the cover with meals with a foreign flair yeah and okay so meals with a foreign flair it has the title and big letters and like this big i would say like not probably technically technicolor but technicolor feeling like very vivid hues yeah photo on the front of this kind of buffet laid out of the foods that you're going to be able to make in here presumably most of which do look pretty bland and like broad interpretations on and also it's like foreign foreign flair what flair oh you know yeah exactly just foreign um 100 recipes from 18 countries main dishes desserts bread salads prize souvenirs from around the world and i think it's a really good book and i think it's a really good book and i think it's a really good book and i think it's a really good book around the world and then you open it you sent me a couple pages it says around the world a la carte italy sweden india and it's again like lovely pictures of these like fairly ambitious spreads that make sense as something that's being sort of written in haste recipe-wise right and it feels like you would it makes sense to me that you might have it kind of out as a way of showing the kind of person who you were and that you were you know interested in a new type of cooking also do you remember the madman episode where betty draper does like an international buffet i have not seen madman oh you haven't seen madman oh no it's so good terrible so there's a season okay so the episode is called a night to remember this is if you want to get into it it's season two episode eight and betty draper for context is a very glamorous like brin mar educated pretty former model who's married to our protagonist don draper the ad man and they have a house in austin i think and so there's a a cocktail party or a dinner party in which she decides to basically cook as though from this cookbook it's there's i think there's sort of uh dutch beer heineken there's you know different kind of i think she makes rumaki so there's a kind of um like around the world sort of set of hors d'oeuvres and foods and it turns out that this she has unknowingly shopped at the local supermarket where don's ad agency was doing an experiment sort of putting different kind of like international foods in key areas like end caps to see if like educated consumers would do and so she was the exact kind of like client that they were imagining and it worked and so then she gets she's furious at him because she feels humiliated because everybody at the party is like oh you're experimenting on your wife and in fact i mean essentially they don't mention this cookbook but this cookbook basically is like this episode the book huh and it's more about signaling to your guests that you have gone you know it may be 1962 or three you have leapt beyond fancy dishwasher and nice vacuum cleaner to exotic for imported foreign and she's somebody who graduated from a seven sisters college so there's this kind of aspirational idea that this you know it's a housewife who's really more like an educated hostess yeah and also that you may no longer be in the workforce but you're like still of the world exactly you are so you are in your house but you are of the world and so the cookbook allows you to and again the cookbook is very similar in content and kind of graphic design and tone to like the sandwich garden like it's it's more sophisticated than the sandwich garden but it's kind of similar to let's say like the world's fair food pavilions where you can sample you know tapas and thai food and and it's kind of sanitized in some way for an american audience and also it's as much the around the world as a a la carte spread that we looked at it's using um very attractive serving pieces like the one from sweden there's this kind of cool mid-century ceramic bird on a stick and a like a plate full of very nice looking apples and then meatballs and beans in black and white striped casseroles which are very chic antique trivets and little trays right they're beautiful place settings and it's like a stage managed kind of a thing exactly so this is very much like you're in the department store and it's you know new chic fondue pots from france like being sold on a version of foreignness that's more about kind of stage managing than actual you know exploring pardon me i mean having a rich cracker that sounds so good is there does the box have recipes on it for like mock apple pie or like rumaki or anything not anymore but it should it should yeah and it's mock apple pie just basically like solid ritz crackers and sugar no you make like a mix cure here let's find a recipe but you gotta make it um so depression era mock apple pie uses ritz crackers lemon juice cream of charter to perfectly mimic the taste of apples sugary syrup poured over whole crackers creates a soft fruit like filling so those so the depression version has no fruit it is purely sugar lemon juice cream of charter cinnamon and ritz crackers to kind of mimic the look and feel and taste of pieces of apple so that's that's rough like that that sounds like it might be kind of rough but a ritz cracker crust i mean i mean maybe it's good i don't know it's supposed to be very good and i mean the thing with these recipes too is i think that they wouldn't have caught on in the way that they did if they weren't good that's a good point because people do still make it maybe not to everyone's standards but i mean i want to make it it's kind of like when if you when you were a kid did you ever have those like stouffer's spaghetti and meatballs frozen like the the frozen dinners no but like we all have some version of that you know and it's those would just that would be just i would sort of say like your stouffer's spaghetti and meatballs it is not what you would expect or or recognize as spaghetti and meatballs in a restaurant or if somebody made it for you like it's its own strange entity but it's not bad let me read to you a little bit from um mfk fisher's how to cook a wolf which was published in 42 originally and is about kind of this question of how do you how do you feed yourself and others when things are scarce basically yeah um and she writes this is an introduction when it was reissued in the 50s there are very few men and women i suspect who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the 20s they will feel until their final days on earth the kind of culinary caution butter no matter how unlimited is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted meats too and eggs and all the far-brought spices of the world take on a new significance having once been so rare and that is good for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself and i feel like that also brings up one of the merits of box cake mix which is that it's shelf stable and it's often extremely cheap and if it's not cheap it goes on sale yep you know because you can still buy a box cake mix for a dollar and you don't have - Right, exactly. - And it won't go bad. - Yeah. - So I think for people who. this is something i remember noticing a lot about like spending time with my grandmother who was an adult during the depression is that this is my dad's mom that she would do things like rinse and reuse paper towels and she didn't have to like she was she was not like paper towel deprived but what if all the paper towels go away tomorrow again exactly what if they all go away and we're collecting fat for bombs and there's you know it just i think it was so ingrained from like living through two world wars and the depression it was just kind of like this is how things are and she just sort of was she was mindful of materials in a way that i would say my mom and i are less so only because we grew up in the post-war world and so there's a kind of disposability that like if you know if you're sort of not including the environmental movement and the idea of kind of like reduce reuse recycle but kind of the era before that there is a kind of cavalierness about you know tinfoil it's like like there's you know there's always going to be more tinfoil you don't have to worry about it but there's i think for people in like mfk fisher world if you have been deprived of things like that you it it changes you in some way yeah and also you know to to get back to desperation pies like i think the general definition is that they don't have fruit in them they're right made with shelf staple items usually without dairy or eggs either or you might have like you know one of those things to make up for like a lack of fruit or ingredients generally so you also have like the sugar cream pie like something tart yeah or the vinegar pie which is like using vinegar as a substitute for the kind of tart fruit flavoring and fruit pies or like for example maybe a rhubarb pie and i think it's like humbling how well these things work and how easy it is to like not fully trick our taste buds but like a lot of these really like dirt cheap foods often hit the spot and i think that's kind of the reason why i'm so the spot in a in a profoundly great way oh absolutely yeah mac and cheese my god i i kind of what i often perceive on social media is that there's a kind of like authenticity arms race a little bit and that there's a kind of desire to find like the most obscure the newest the most authentic the most um highly specific you know restaurant that sort of serves food from a particular region of cambodia and it's very accurate and they only seat 16 people and yeah it's going to be a status symbol in like as many ways as there is it can be because you know what's interesting about food too is that like innovation will unceasingly happen because everyone has to keep eating something multiple times per day and also it's it's going to take on more symbolic freight than it can possibly carry because again everyone has to relate to it every day of their lives and whether they have it or not you're you know if you have it you're thinking about it and if you don't have it you're thinking about it more right you're thinking about it more exactly um let me read to you a little bit about pie i love hearing about pie okay so this is from a book called midwest pie this is from the introduction which is by phoebe mcgray in these early colonial days pies were practical foods they created their own gravy and could be a complete meal on their own they also gave bakers an easy way to use odds and ends leftovers and dried produce it was the perfect culinary standby for yankees who like to think of themselves as thrifty pragmatic and full of pride and they also gave bakers an easy way to use odds and ends leftovers and dried produce common sense by the mid-19th century pie had become much more than a practicality it was a favorite breakfast of ralph waldo emerson and some people ate it three times a day one british journalist visiting the east coast wrote that quote an unholy appetite for pie works untold woes in the american public thus cementing the new country's love for pie as a nationalist snub of the stuffy brits redyard kipling who lived outside brattleboro vermont between 1892 and 1893 was the first to eat pie in his life and he was the first to eat pie in his life in 1892 and 1896 somewhat derisively called new england the great pie belt due to the dish's prominent position in the region as more europeans settled in the midwest they found that local ingredients like choked cherries persimmons and black walnuts could all be incorporated into pie at will to make something delicious in 1851 a norwegian immigrant living in beloit wisconsin penned a letter home that read strawberries raspberries and blackberries thrive here from these they make a wonderful dish combined with syrup and sugar which is called the great pie belt due to the dish's prominent position in the region as more europeans settled in the region as more europeans settled in the region as more europeans settled in the region as more europeans settled in the region as more europeans settled in the region as more europeans settled in the region as more europeans settled in the region as more europeans settled in the region i can tell you that is something that glides easily down your throat they also make the same sort of pie out of apples or finely ground meat with syrup added and that is really the most superb by the early 20th century the dessert suffered some from the emergence of the nutritional science field it turns out that eating pie three times a day might not be the surest path toward long-term health but americans weren't able to kick their addiction so easily according to food writer matt siegel a writer for the milwaukee journal sentinel weighed in on the debate over the national flower by arguing that americans shouldn't be wasting time discussing plants when pie could easily serve as a national emblem wow that is fascinating and it also kind of underscores the idea that pie as we know it is very much an american dessert which i forget and also very utilitarian food and something that historically you could eat at any time of day which i think is empowering yes i think if your pie window is only after dinner that really decreases the amount of pie that you can eat and thereby the amount of pies that you can make whereas if it's a three times a day food and a snack yeah and i think the basic mechanics of a pie we're in kind of sandwich territory here there's something really universal about it but yeah the idea of um it being i think based on this argument too or this presentation of history may be a typically american food because it's so versatile it can be adapted you can put any ingredient in there or you can put nothing in there you have the famous water pie which is a very famous food and it's a very popular food and i think that's one of the reasons why it's so popular and i think it's one of the reasons why you pour in water and then add in your ingredients which is like flour and some sugar and mix it together and you bake it and it makes a custard and yet it seems like you just baked water in a crust right you know these like magic trick desserts that seem to have nothing in them that seems to define american food more than abundance and yet i think like as you're talking about the 60s it feels like we also have these phases of reaction against past desperation when we're like what you're talking about the 60s and you're talking about the 60s and you're talking No, no one here has ever been hungry. We're eating food from every country that has ever been. And part of that also, don't forget, is cult war propaganda. Like there were the two. Do you know about the American and Soviet exhibitions that happened in New York and Moscow in 1959? The one in Moscow was the site of the kitchen debate and the one in New York had like a Soviet fashion show and kind of a typical Soviet kitchen. I bet you told me a little bit about this before, but tell us. Yeah. And so essentially, like a big piece of this was like sports, you know, each side trying to position their way of life as a kind of triumph of their system. And both countries were, God knows, the Soviet Union certainly was, you know, very well acquainted with famine. So there's a kind of an emphasis on the American side of sort of what all this technology can do for you as an individual housewife. And the Soviet design, the Soviet exhibition was much more geared towards the American side. And so, you know, there's a kind of an emphasis on the American side of sort of what all this technology can do for you as an individual housewife. And the sort of what our system can do for society. Like it was kind of so that it was sort of competing visions of abundance that had different political ends. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's revealing kind of what we see food as being for. And certainly as American individualists, we will use it as a marker of class identity a lot of the time as well. I mean, what do you think of my conclusions here? I guess that my argument maybe is that American food is fundamentally defined by inventiveness and desperation. And also that we keep sort of like going through the same cycles and not really being aware because of course, now everyone's trying to stretch meat again. And we're sort of, I don't know, falling into these historical cycles where nothing is really that new. But that also is what makes it fun and what makes it able to connect us with people throughout history who have also been trying to feed themselves and their families. A hundred percent. And I would add to that, that food is politically charged at every turn. Oh God. Yeah. Especially lately. Lately. So we've got all the like cuckoo, all this like Maha ridiculousness. So we've got the beef tallow people. We've got, you know, that's, that's now. And before that it was, you know, fat is terrible, but carbs are great. And now I guess fat is great, but carbs are terrible, or I don't know what, what cycle we're in. And, you know, or it's the civil war or world war one, or it's the invention of breakfast cereal and the idea that like exercise and pressed grains are good for you. And, you know, all sorts of different theories about what people should be eating and the food pyramid. So there's, it's kind of like the government and society at large will sort of not leave anybody alone when it comes to food, but it's also food famously and understandably is not something that you can do alone. Like it's to feed this many people, it, you know, 8 billion in the world. And I don't know, it's like 340 million. In the U S I think it must be a group effort on some level. And, you know, this kind of, I think it's, it gets all sort of balled up with like ideas of gender and strength and sort of beauty and, you know, all that stuff interpreted differently in different eras. And so nowadays, I think there's, there's a way in which like, I'm old enough to remember in the nineties, when everybody was focused on fat, that something like, you know, pasta primavera, pasta and vegetables would be considered like the perfect thing for a woman to eat. And now that would be considered, you know, in kind of like trendy food world would be considered decadent because pasta is carcinogenic. carbs and it's you know yeah we just kind of keep going back in these loops we keep going into kind of there's different versions of what it means and not to get too far into like the more extreme ends of what's going on today but like i do find the carnivore diet thing so fascinating and disturbing and one of the things i always come back to is this idea that like well ancient man was eating all this butter and it's like we wouldn't have butter if we hadn't had agriculture and like domesticated and created like the cow as we know it and like where was all this butter coming from that ancient man was supposed to be eating and i realized that that's not really the point it's just like creating a frame story so people can eat butter because they always wish that they could i don't know you can just you can eat butter you can just eat butter and it doesn't have to be a philosophy it's not you can just like you can just eat it and that's also kind of like like protein creep like there's kind of a scope creep happening with like protein creeps yeah protein is now well that really is like one of the huge food trends of today and i haven't researched this so i'm not gonna like yeah opine too much but it but it is like it's something that you know things become trends for many reasons but i think partly this seems like very convenient for like the dairy and meat industry which are becoming uh you know too expensive and who can maybe hold hands with some people who are active in conservative politics who can say right and meanwhile just you know you could also try and get enough fiber and it's interesting how also in this like push for protein where we're putting protein in water now i'm seeing very little advertising for lentils where is big lentil lentils have i think an equal amount of protein and fiber oh ton no they're like like incredible yeah show me big lentil they're so small that big lentil would only be medium yeah i mean it kind of there is a strange way in which this it reminds me a little bit of display i think you can see you can see images of it if not actual film footage of norman belgetti's design for um it was actually the original futurama that was at the 1939 world's fair and this was basically a kind of future occupied by this huge system of highways and it was sponsored by general motors so it's kind of like it's this idea that kind of like we're imagining they could have imagined a sponsor free you know all buses and trains future or all sort of public transportation but no and so it's kind of and i think there's a way in which sometimes if we're like if we're not looking critically at who's paying for something it can feel like oh this is a cool idea like the future is going to be this particular kind of convenience and everybody's going to love it yeah and we're going to take away these forms of labor nobody needs the bus exactly and then of course now we're in the like trad wife era of you and as you and i have talked about in the past and something that i think we see like throughout the history of homemaking technology is that it then becomes a flex to like take on more raise your standards like cakes as we know them today would like refined flour and a very kind of like smooth and fluffy texture have only been with us since the 19th century when flower technology improved enough and there's always going to be an arms race of the american housewife or of the american woman and this idea that you need to keep perfecting yourself as the technology gets more advanced in a way and i will just say for anyone who needs to hear it do less do less always do less you know just like if you don't enjoy doing it then see if you can get out of doing it that is a great rule of thumb for so many things and of course there are some things that we need to do but there's like a lot else that gets drilled into us as something we need to do and then you think about it you're like i don't need to be doing this and possibly no one does it used to be normal to iron your sheets or at least not unheard of and can you imagine i used to do that i used to iron my pillowcases this is something i used to do i mean look if i were really avoiding a work thing or an email i might iron pillowcases but i don't even own an iron so i would have to go buy one yeah speaking of which have you seen any episodes of the testaments yet no i haven't about this so i did not realize this was coming and then i just stumbled upon an ad for it and it is the tv show adaptation of the testaments which is the sequel to the handmaid's tale so it's based on a novel and it's about like the prep school for for what for future wives and it captured something so this is something really interesting i'm i kind of like lost patience with the handmaid's tale eventually i kind of felt like i just went on for too many seasons and i was tired of like sort of as most tv does unless it goes on for only two seasons because it's on Netflix yeah exactly but um there is something that i i'm now realizing margaret atwood was very prescient in capturing which is that the gilead worldview is on the one hand sort of evangelical authoritarian and kind of you know extremely normative in terms of gender hierarchy and it's also like beef tallow people like there's no plastic like because gilead is green right so because there's this obsession with fertility and i i remember kind of first encountering that novel at some point you know maybe 20 years ago and thinking oh that's weird because that those two things never go together and here we are and in 2026 and they go together you know and here and we made it like she predicted ballerina farm like 40 years before it happened i always knew margaret atwood had it in her she really did yeah no she's really impressive yeah yeah and it does feel like this sort of i don't know maybe the conclusion that i'm coming to talking about food with you and this is just i mean these are just sort of you know some things that we find interesting it's by no means attempting to be at all comprehensive but give us enough time we'll get there but i think that what what i'm seeing in this is that we try to use food to define ourselves and yet it defines us more and in more ways than we're not aware of at the time than then we can ever write over you know the things that we're trying to do intentionally and i think that that's kind of great because it's this this form of history that is there waiting to be understood and you also get to eat it and what what do you think about i mean and of course everything is political but just in like i don't know the smaller food trends of today have you are there any that you're like oh i'm doing a trend so there are times when i've been kind of leaning more into plant-based stuff like i've kind of gotten as i have matured because of the depression it's because it's because we're living through the great depression well it's because it's partially because i'm sort of re-evaluating my relationship with dairy and i am a i'm like a yogurt freak like if i had one food to eat the rest of my life like i'm like a yogurt like fanatic and so i've discovered lactose-free yogurt if you are a person of 40 something experience this may also be for you but and i kind of i've kind of gotten into like like yogurt fruit smoothies and stuff so i think i don't like thinking of them as meal substitutes this is more something that i kind of when i want like a frozen treat i have like a frozen fruit and lactose-free yogurt smoothie which sounds like desperation food but it's actually great but that's the thing a lot of us have desperation foods that are just like amazing they're incredibly and you can put like frozen bananas in it's like almost tropical you know there's endless infinite variations on it so if you think of like the blender as an organizing principle the same way that you do a sandwich then like the possibilities are truly endless so it's fruit it's you know you can do like like a different substrate and so i don't know if i would say that's a true trend i'm not really like quite cool enough to be on trend i wouldn't i don't know if i would make videos about these but maybe i should you know i find whenever i feel myself on a trend i feel a little bit embarrassed because i feel like i'm trying to emulate the cool kids you know but okay so speaking of yogurt i have this figure this is from an old npr piece so the average american in the 70s consumed about five pounds of cottage cheese and about two pounds of yogurt and then those numbers flipped that's so interesting and in 2010 the average american was eating like two pounds of cottage cheese and do you want to guess how many pounds of yogurt per year like 10 14 pounds of yogurt per year wow i believe it that's a lot of that is me that's a lot of that's that data is me and so the and this article is from 2013 yeah i think a lot of that is you yeah you're and you're canceling out some other people but you know and i don't have have figures for the cottage cheese versus yogurt numbers at present but cottage cheese has made a huge comeback because it has protein in it and oh it's so good it's you know god and it's very good and it's also cheaper than meat but it's also it's just funny to me too that any that a food can be a trend in a way because it's like it's cottage cheese it's just kind of there it's waiting for its moment and then the moment comes and passes and it just waits for it to come back like right share like it's such a kind of basic thing it's like saying that like getting up in the morning and doing stuff is a trend like it's just like reality it's like have you heard a new thing about like living life yeah cottage cheese is just this glowing monolith you know just like yeah we were just waiting to discover it doesn't matter whether you acknowledge it or not yeah and i also kind of think like you know when you get to a certain age like you like what you like it is and also just we get to we don't have to justify our taste to anybody you know and that's a really nice thing too you know who is super into food trends are cats oh or this i don't think they think of it as a trend i don't think they think of it as a trend i don't think they think of it as trends, but my experience of cats is, so we have like, so three different kinds of dry food and two different kinds of wet food because there are different like health concerns in the in the household and every time you think like oh they like the one who needs like kidney diet really likes this particular kind so we're going to order like a multi-pack and save money and time the minute you're like you know month's supply arrives they don't like it anymore yep the minute that it's like it's excessive it's like oh i had that i had that's that's that's nobody's doing that anymore which to be fair you know it is the same food every day but that's like you i think they are more trend aware than i am i would argue that's who should be driving our trends is the cats the cats yeah yeah that's fair well in conclusion just you know keep keep your body going and find some joy and whatever tastes good is probably gonna work out that's what i think you gotta feel good because like life is hard enough so you gotta you gotta like feel good and have you know and take care of yourself and rest and eat good things and just do like do what you think somebody who cares about you would want you to do uh right yeah and they would want you to have cake totally yeah you have to have cake sometimes do you what are you cooking next do you have anything on your agenda that you're going to cook i gotta make that mock apple pie you're gonna do it you're gonna do it do you want to both make it and compare we should both do it yeah do you feel enticed yeah i okay let's do it and that is our episode thank you so much for being here thank you for listening we also have a new bonus episode for you with the wonderful princess weeks about the case of rhinelander v rhinelander a sensational trial of 1925 and you can listen to it right now on patreon and apple plus subscriptions plus i'll see you next time a lot of other bonuses we've also got a nice show about orcas if you like that kind of thing thank you to the people who make this show miranda zickler is our producer and editor nicole ortiz is our administrative assistant thank you to sarah archer for being our guest you can find her website and links to her books in the show notes plus links to the videos we watched while we made this episode if you want to make the wacky cake or cockeyed cake as peg bracken calls it here is the link to the show notes and the show notes in the show notes and the show notes in the recipe from the i hate to cook book one and a half cups sifted flour three tablespoons cocoa one teaspoon baking soda one cup sugar one half teaspoon salt five tablespoons cooking oil one tablespoon vinegar one teaspoon vanilla one cup cold water and good old confectioner sugar frosting the frosting is two cups of confectioner sugar with a dash of salt a teaspoon of vanilla and enough cream beaten in to make it spreadable and here's the cake recipe put your sifted flour back in the sifter add to it cocoa baking soda sugar and salt and sift this right into a greased cake pan about nine by nine by two inches now you make three grooves or holes in this dry mixture into one groove pour the oil into the next vinegar into the next the vanilla now pour the cold water over it all you'll feel like you're making mud pies now but beat it with a spoon until it's nearly smooth and you can't see the flour bake it at 350 degrees for half an hour if you make it or any of the treats we mentioned in this episode let us know how it turns out you can email us at sloppy and alive at gmail.com and we're also taking submissions still for our listener special for june we're asking you to tell us in about a three minute voice memo what you love and why you love it we're listening to them through april we are having the best time listening to everyone that we get and we'll see you in the next episode and we can't wait to hear yours that's all thank you for listening thank you for being here we'll see you in two weeks