Tanya Sichynsky

Hey, guys. Welcome back to Expense Account. This is episode three. Last week was a huge week. We launched with two episodes, one with Carla Lally, one with Molly Baz. If you haven't heard them, you should go back and give them a listen. We also threw a party for the launch at Bistro Ha, where I drank some martinis, I ate some eggs, I gave a toast. It was a fantastic party. Shout out to everybody who was there and everybody who made it possible. And this week, I was also in San Francisco for a wedding, my first time, but it will not be my last time. Amazing city. And yesterday, I just got back from D.C. for a very secret little project, which you guys will be hearing about very soon. But let's get to the dish. This episode is brought to you by Yahoo Scout. There's nothing like September in New York City. Every art gallery has an opening. It's fashion week. The models are out in full force stomping around. We love culture. And there are a million parties every single night. There are too many parties. These parties have free booze. Most have gift bags. And at most of these parties, they serve tiny little bites of food, like the smallest bites of food you've ever seen. And they don't give you a plate. You have to hold your food on a napkin and balance it on your hand. Usually, it's some kind of little crostini or a toast. I often leave these parties tipsy and starving. But I went to a party recently for the King 10-year anniversary party, and I heard that there was amazing food, and I missed it. I saw photos of the spread. It looked great. And for those of you who don't know, King is a restaurant here in New York City. It's in the West Village. It's a little-ish restaurant, but to me, it's the best-proportioned dining room in the entire city. It's a little jewel box of a restaurant. It's been open for 10 years now, and in that time, it's managed to become a bonafide New York City classic. I once said on this very podcast that King is for girls. I don't know why I said that. And I don't know quite what I meant by that. But you know what? I stand by that. King is for girls. But King is also for boys and everyone else. I'll say, though, that it does not help King's case when Annie Shee, one of the owners of King, forced me to drink a pink martini at their anniversary party, a martini that tastes like strawberry lollipops and flirtation and tickles. You know what? I have to admit, it was delicious, and I'd have another pink martini again in a heartbeat. Happy 10 years to King and to 10 more. It's list season, guys. Every season feels like list season these days, but a bunch of new lists just dropped on the timeline, including the New York Times. Restaurant list. They're calling it their 50 favorite places to eat in America right now. I love these kind of lists because it's like, literally, who even knows? They obviously haven't tried every restaurant in America. How do you even begin to make a list like this? Where do you start? How do you compare restaurants in New York to a restaurant in Kansas City? They're very different places. That's all to say that this list is just for fun, and I think that all lists should just be for fun. Some light on places that we like. Bistro Ha made the list, Friend of the Pod, and the site of our recent launch party. They seem to be on every list this season. Curiously, though, they're on every list besides the New York Times 100 Best Restaurants in New York list, but I'm sure they'll be on it next year. Besides some restaurants in New York, I've not been to most of the restaurants on this list, but now I'm feeling inspired. Now I want to go on a trip. I might finally have to get to Portland so I can try this place that serves chicken and curry. I'm going to try this place that serves chicken and curry. Speaking of the Times, our guest today is a writer and editor at the New York Times. She's also a personal friend. She's my karaoke buddy. She loves shrimp even more than I do. Our guest today is none other than Tanya Sachinsky, writer of the fantastic New York Times Veggie Newsletter, and now author of Veg Everything, Recipes for Weeknights, Parties, and the Bites in Between. Vegetables are beautiful, delicious, and bouncy. And Tanya will be the first to tell you that you don't need to be a vegetarian to cook vegetarian meals at home. We talk about Atlanta, where Tanya's from. We talk about sports. We talk about Magic City Wings. We really go in talking about Trader Joe's. We talk about Shrimpmas, which is her new favorite holiday. She's really such a delight, a treasure. Without further ado, Tanya Sachinsky. Hey, Tanya, how's it going? Hi, I'm good. How are you? I'm great. Welcome to Expense Account. This has been a long time coming. Yeah, I'm actually surprised we're finally doing it. So for those of you who don't know, we actually know each other in real life. We're friends. We hang out. But I was doing research on you for this podcast. Oh, God. I dug deep, and I learned something about you that I didn't know. What's that? You're not naturally blonde. This is crazy. It's crazy to me. I know. Oh, my God. I feel like I've kind of defined myself as a blonde in the last couple of years. But no, a brunette by birth. I've only known you as a blonde. I know. Kind of shocking. It's crazy. I was like, who is this woman? I don't know this woman. I know exactly which headshot you saw. I'm like 24 in that. I'm a baby, jet black hair. Yeah. Unrecognizable. It's a different vibe. That was a different me. I don't recognize her anymore, but I have a lot of empathy for her. So you have a new book, Tanya. I do. What's it called? Right in my lap. It's called Veg Everything. Veg Everything. It's got a busted spine because I dropped it down an escalator. Oh, no. And it's already kind of well-loved, which I think is a testament to the fact that I actually do cook from it. What's the best recipe? Oh, don't ask me that. That's like picking a favorite child. I would ask. Someone to pick a favorite child. That's true. And knowing me, if I were ever a mother, I think I would have one. Yeah. What is the best recipe? I am incredibly partial to the cover recipe, which is Andy Baraghani's extra green pasta salad. I think it is the exact effort to deliciousness ratio that you want in good vegetarian cooking because I think it really… It flips your expectations as far as like how much you think you need to do to get something delicious that is meatless. But I don't know. I have a lot of recipes in there that I love. I have one recipe in there that I developed that I'm quite proud of. That's great. That's a great Thanksgiving recipe. And it's a maple ginger vegan tofu pie cheesecake thing. That sounds… I don't even… I'm going to have to check this out. What's it called? You know, naming a recipe is so hard. It's vegan salted maple ginger pie. Vegan salted maple ginger pie. That's not so bad. No, it's not so bad. Okay. I don't know why I thought it was crazy. I was imagining like a Thanksgiving casserole kind of thing that was… Oh, God, no. No, this was like… This was an attempt to, one, get a vegan dessert on the table. Yep. But, two, do something that was… Do something that was a little bit more custardy, a little bit more cheesecake-y. Yum. And here, I did it with tofu and Japanese sweet potato. Yum. The best kind of sweet potato. I agree. And it's delicious. And I'm very… It was like a lot of testing, a lot of tweaking, a real labor of love. And I'm quite proud of it. I have a question for you about… I guess we're talking about naming recipes. Yeah, hit me. We're talking about like… And this has like become a meme and a trope. Like the garlicky, lemony, like everything… Sure, sure. How do we feel about this like naming convention, like everything having to be like E? The reason why those are so common is because they are… They elicit a response from readers and from people who want to cook something. You know, maybe it is a… A testament to the… To the inflexibility of the English language that we can't go beyond kind of these like adverbial structures. Maybe Germans have a better way of naming the recipes. But I think it's just like when you're looking for a recipe, especially because there's so much recipe content out there. And it's really hard to distinguish, you know, one green bean… sautéed green bean dish from another sautéed green bean dish. What you have at your disposal are the individual ingredients that deviate from maybe like a more familiar… And so you kind of have to flag that there is lemon in there or chili in there or miso in there if it deviates from people's expectations. I think if everything was just sautéed green beans, you would be less inclined to make it because you don't really know how it aligns with your tastes. I mean, I think that like people take issue with it seeming like baby talk. But I think part of the thing is that cooking is scary to a lot of people. And by making the language kind of fun and silly and quirky, that it kind of like makes it a little less scary. And like by doing like a garlicky, lemony… miso-y gochujang-y kind of thing they know they're getting a high impact flavorful dish like it's not just another sauteed green beans completely so you do the veggie your newsletter is the veggie you do a video series also called the veggie and you are you wrote a book about vegetarian cooking but you are not a vegetarian i know i really thought that that was a known thing and i had somebody dm me on instagram recently where i i must have posted something and she said oh i thought you were a vegetarian and i said no um i'm an omnivore and i think i think my own um dietary preferences are a strength not a weakness when it comes to the veggie because i think a lot of i know actually from from research that the majority of our readers are omnivores who want to cook more plant-based or um meatless or veg forward or however you want to call it uh meals and don't have the skill set don't have the comfortability don't have the recipes uh to do so so i think yeah it's a it's a fun little surprise it is the lead of the book um but i i think and i hope that there are a lot of people out there who will identify with the way that i eat which is very veg forward i would say that i am probably half of my cooking at home if not more than half as meatless um and i'm i do lean kind of a bit more pescatarian but i do eat meat yeah yeah i mean i try to eat mostly vegetarian not actually that's not true at all but like i'm definitely not making i'm never making a steak at home or something you know i i think that most of my at home cooking means vegetarian ish um and i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing um i like meatballs is kind of my thing that i like um oh i love them i i make i make meatballs at home a lot i make them too much um but that's just being said that i think that i mean i guess this is your point is that everybody can kind of should eat a little bit less meat and know how to make a delicious vegetable i think so i mean listen i i'm not going to tell you why you should eat less meat i think there are a lot of really smart people who are telling us why it's maybe not the best for the environment or for our bodies i'm not a scientist i'm just a woman with a lot of recipes in a laptop and your email address so in my research i also forgot that you're like a you're a georgia girl oh yeah you're southern you're southern girl like does do you have like a southern side that i don't even know about like oh gosh i i like to think gosh is kind of southern gosh i guess gosh i don't i have i like to think i have a very placeless affect yeah i think that about you my parents are new yorkers so growing up in the south was part of my identity and upbringing but it was modeled by other people not by my family listen i'm like georgia girl till i die yeah but i don't know i guess i have the i think of myself as certainly hospitable yeah i that's uh that's the truth about you i think so i think i have um i think i have a southern approach to hosting a very like all all is welcome come on in kind of vibe yeah i love mexico city everybody loves mexico city it's one of the greatest cities in the whole world i went recently with two of my good friends from chicago and we had the best time we ate so much food we went to the coolest club i've ever been to and we had so much fun and we had so much fun i don't even like clubs mexico city is one of those places that i could go back to over and over it's dense full of life amazing food and every neighborhood has its own personality when i'm in mexico city i love to stay in roma i always book a home on airbnb in roma i love sleeping in a real bed and being able to walk out the door and just start exploring i can walk to my favorite taco spot i can grab a quesadilla from the quesadilla lady if you know you know i can eat the best chicken soup in the world and then just keep walking until i end up somewhere completely unexpected and that's what i really love about traveling you get out of your head and you get to just experience a city there's also that great churro place in roma which i'd add to the list it's so good you know it's funny because we spend so much time talking about the places we love to travel to but there's also something on the other side of that which i experienced recently while we're away we're discovering new places and restaurants and finding all of these little spots that make a trip special but then your own home is sitting there when you return exactly so if you're heading out of town why not list your place on airbnb so someone else can experience your city the way you do plus the extra income could help fund your next adventure or whatever else matters to you most in jason's case that's probably a very serious taco budget maybe a new tortilla press i like the idea that while you're out exploring somewhere new your home can be doing a little work for you that's a pretty good trade atlanta classic food that i've never tried and i've always i've it's on my bucket list sure the magic city wings have you had the magic city wings the jason news i have not had the magic city wings and you can get them uber eats i know you can but listen i i would like to go to magic city to eat the wings i think maybe when i'm on book tour in atlanta i will make this happen so let me chime in here with a little context for the listeners magic city is a legendary strip club in atlanta and they serve wings they're very famous for their lemon pepper wings they're so good that people go there just eat the wings and it's not a lie that the wings are that good um and they're kind of they're as far as i've heard they're one of the essential foods of atlanta i i think a magic city type establishment is a wonderful place what i think is really interesting about the atlanta food scene is how significant a role its strip clubs kind of play in in making tastes uh the the wings are in a strict a bowl from atlanta strip clubs it's not just magic city i've heard that the strip clubs have amazing food across the board or like a lot of them yes this is kim severson's review one could argue that no other city is a wing as is as wing centric as atlanta or almost 40 of all wing orders involve some form of lemon pepper spice the best wing spot is very much up for debate but the wings at magic city hold a special place in atlanta lore because they are served at the city's most famous strip club a 40 year old institution with its own store uh own stars docuseries but there are a handful of strip clubs in atlanta that are known kind of like us yeah first uh which i think is so fun food at least equal food equal yeah so you went to school at georgia university of georgia for broadcast journalism was it broadcast journalism it was broadcast journalism wow is this on the internet can you find that on the internet i know that because you told me because i'm always like tanya's so good on video like i'm always like tanya's so good on video i'm always like tanya's so good on video i'm always like tanya's so good on video i'm always like for this i'm like how can i get better at video like tanya's so good at video and i want to ask you and then turns out you went to college to be great i did i went to i went to broadcast school because i wanted to be a sideline reporter um which is so crazy um because wow did i really deviate from the plan um yeah i wanted to do you'd be great at that it's not too late it's never too late but i don't think um you're a falcons girl i am a falcons girl go dirty birds um i don't i don't think that is the way that i want to engage with the public i think it is really hard to be a sideline reporter and to be a woman in sports yeah um it's already hard to be a woman on the internet as i've seen in the world yeah it's just not easy and i think like why make it harder for myself i have so much respect for women in sports broadly and i think it's really hard to be a woman um but also there were a lot of reasons why i ended up not pursuing sideline reporting and broadcasts broadly but it is really i was talking about this recently on set it is so funny how i kind of made a decision right after i graduated like i wanted to work in print and i wanted to to follow that path and kind of you know use some skills that i learned in school but not pursue exactly the job that i set out to have and to kind of in this very end up right back where i started where i'm like i used final cut pro when i was in college editing videos and shooting videos and whatnot and now having to kind of retrain this incredibly atrophied muscle as as far as being telegenic and and and being on camera but also doing some work behind the scenes when i'm making oh wow reels i don't do any of the editing for the video series we have such an incredible team that handles that. But when I want to make silly, goofy little cuts from those videos i do those myself oh wow so how did you how did you pivot from how did you pivot from sports to food media like what happened there oh it was so incremental i mean the first decade of my journalism career was just really in service of trying whatever was new that a newsroom needed a person ideally a young person to become an expert in so my first job out of college was at usa today sports i was running their social media right this was very like nascent days of of having a social media editor so i was programming facebook and programming twitter and like live tweeting the super bowl things that nobody does anymore um and i worked there for a year and then i got a job at the washington post because i was in the dc area and i was again working kind of in this social media audience editor digital strategy role jumping between desks i was working on their snapchat discover platform i was doing social coverage for the 2016 election um i was doing business work and and election work and really kind of working among a broad swath of subject matters i had started to kind of move away from sports obviously and just personally at that time you know this is now 2016 2017 i had always had a deep love of food whether it was eating it or cooking it i had always had a deep love of food whether it was eating it or cooking it and more of like a hosting capacity like i loved having people over totally yeah um but i was really engaging with food via instagram and food media magazines like this was like 2016 2017 okay yeah yeah yeah that was like bon appetit heyday heyday this was also kind of like food bloggers getting really really good at food photography for instagram so everything was like beautiful and delicious but not as stylized as it is now yeah and i just remember being so inspired and wanting all of my food to look beautiful again i've always been very aesthetics minded i have a libra moon and i just started to kind of imitate that at home for fun and i was taking a lot of like food photos for instagram for my friends and my friends were like oh you're such a good cook like you should start a blog and i was like that's too much work and also i'm not a recipe developer like i can follow over and i can follow a recipe i do get i was getting getting creative in the kitchen but i was so young i was 23 24 and um but over time i was like maybe i should kind of collect these little things that i'm doing on the side for fun somewhere and i ended up starting a newsletter how prophetic um when i was 24 that was just like a little cooking newsletter for my friends i was doing i was trying to write 25 of them before i turned 20 and i was like oh my god i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do 25 it was like a little just personal project and um i was doing making some of my own recipes some of them i was kind of riffing off of recipes from from places like bon appetit from alice and roman like people who i really um admired and you know reading a lot of aina garden cookbooks like you know this was kind of first big kitchen and first big apartment kind of cooking um as a person in their in their early 20s and um i i started this newsletter it ended up be this was like i was on mailchimp i was like hand coding html to like get the colors that i wanted wow and um i had a few thousand subscribers and it caught the attention of a colleague at work so this is your own newsletter this is my own newsletter that i was doing this was just on the fun this was again like pre this pre pre pre sub stack so you invented newsletters yes me and me and i was like oh my god i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this the chimp of mailchimp invented newsletters cool um but i had some friends who were like doing tiny letters at the time so it was kind of just a way to keep in touch with my friends and do kind of micro blogging in a sense and um i was also doing little you know what's in my pantry product recommendations again really really small audience for my friends and a colleague of mine who is running newsletters at the washington post at the time was like hey do you want to write a cooking newsletter for the new vertical that we had launched at the post that was their food vertical called voraciously i was um at the time that we launched that i was now uh an audience editor for the style desk which is where food was housed and so i was working with the food team more closely in again a strategy um kind of capacity and then doing this other little thing on the side and it was just kind of a real sliding doors moment of oh i have this opportunity that kind of i generated out of nothing out of just like telling myself being kind of deluded and saying that i could do something on the side for myself yeah um i mean that's amazing yeah and and then i wrote a meal a 12-week meal planning newsletter huh uh for the post and then it was kind of just from there that's so cool yeah it was called meal plan of action you can i believe still sign up for it it is one of those serialized newsletters um so someone else is doing it no it's still it's still my writing like i it's something that i wrote eight years ago that at any point in time you can sign up for and read what i wrote eight years ago that's crazy it's like the ghost in the machine i know because i haven't worked there in six years um someday we'll all be dead and we'll still be it'll still be sending out your meal prep newsletter i saw you working you're working on a little holiday package like thanksgiving already oh my gosh yeah i guess i don't know if it's a secret but are you not a secret no it's not a secret it's okay are you doing uh are you doing a tofurky no uh so last year we did a tofu everything's thanksgiving it was this kind of you know 3 a.m idea of what if we put tofu into every single dish on on the thanksgiving table is it possible is it delicious is it disgusting was it so it was delicious that is part of that was the impetus for the tofu pie that i mentioned earlier um we did tofu we had tofu and green beans we had tofu centerpiece we had tofu and mashed potato we had tofu and dessert um we had tofu in a squash dish it was nuts that's insane but coming to this thanksgiving i was like okay no tofu tofu we will revisit it another time um but i over the years that i've been writing the veggie one of the most common questions that i get from people is about holiday centerpieces it's a centerpiece the turkey for a normal thanksgiving yeah i would say for like a for the ham yeah the average american thanksgiving i would say it's either a turkey a ham or a lasagna yeah um in a lot of culture yeah in a lot of cultures in a lot of um latin cultures and a lot of asian cultures they have kind of adopted the lasagna as a thanksgiving centerpiece which i respect the hell out of yeah any occasion if lasagna is a special occasion no exactly um but so i have been working for the last uh couple months on a thanksgiving centerpiece that we just we wrapped the shooting of yesterday um it will come out in november um but i'm really really excited about it um i mean while we're on the topic of holidays we have to talk about a very special holiday it's called shrimp miss we tell them a little bit about shrimp shrimp shrimp yes shrimp miss is the most wonderful time of year it is my now annual holiday party um that was born of a love of entertaining and a love of shrimp um so i'm sure you're very now familiar with these kind of gaudy kitschy shrimp trees that people like to make around the holidays um a few years ago i would say it was probably 2022 2023 i saw on one of those kind of vintage cookbook instagram accounts um a vintage shrimp tree and i was at a bar with um my friend gabe and my friend and colleague becky hughes and i showed it to them and i was like wait should i have a party just to do this um and that was when shrimp miss was born and the shrimp tree around that holiday season ended up becoming immensely popular um i think people are really leaning into kind of kitschy vintage totally entertaining centerpieces which i love yeah um i love camp i love i love excess these are all yeah yes so i think i think of shrimp miss as a real celebration of um a real ode to excess and to camp which is what the holidays should be about they should be joyful so i do i do a christmas party that is the centerpiece is a shrimp tree um more recently two shrimp trees because the shrimp goes real fast and i have a few dishes that i make every year and i also have some rotating things that i like to mix up but there are some heavy hitters that people are like you have to make these every year obviously the shrimp is one of them and with each year that we've done it the party has gotten a little bit bigger um the planning a little bit more intense um the the table tableau a little bit more extravagant and i'm hoping that this year's shrimp miss is even bigger i'm hoping that i can do it i'm a little worried about scheduling but um we have done shrimp miss in january once before so i'm not i'm not above doing it after the holidays well i'm here to publicly Apologize. I don't have many regrets. I'm not like the kind of person who regrets that much in my life. Most of the things I regret are like clothes I didn't buy, food I didn't eat. But one of my biggest regrets is missing shrimp mists last year. So I'm here in front of everybody saying I'm sorry. And will you please forgive me? I will publicly accept your apology with one caveat. And it's that you come this year. Well, that's the thing. So now what? I might be away. If it's in January, I can come. But I might be away in December. December is tough because I also am going to be away for most of December. But I'm trying to get a lot of beautiful, wonderful Sagittarius friends who all have birthdays at the beginning of December. So I'm trying to figure out scheduling. But rest assured, if it doesn't happen in December, it will happen probably in January. Maybe we'll do it for Ukrainian New Year. Now it's time. We're going to take a look in your fridge. I got a few thoughts on your fridge. Yeah, talk to me about my fridge. I'm scared. I actually forgot. I like don't remember taking this photo. There's a lot going on in here. It's a lot of unidentifiable products in here. Yeah, I can identify everything in this photo. I have a question, though. Did you turn around all the labels on purpose? No, I swear to God I didn't. I swear to God. In fact, sometimes we have to do that for certain things. But I. That was not even a consideration here. And I'll tell you every brand that's in here. I mean, my conspiracy theory was that you were trying to hide the fact that you love Trader Joe's. No, I name check Trader Joe's all the time. So much of this stuff is from Trader Joe's. I know, it is. It really is. No, I'm not embarrassed by my Trader Joe's love at all. Let's own our Trader Joe's love. Trader Joe's, they rock. I'm like, you're not going there for produce, really. Don't eat produce from there. But their sauces. There are a few produce items that I do like to get at Trader Joe's. Here's what they are. What are the produce items you like? Yeah. I like to get. They actually not often. Every once in a while, they will have fresh turmeric root, which is more of just kind of an access thing for me. Sometimes it's just hard for me to find even though I live in a Caribbean neighborhood. Sometimes it's tough. Yeah, that's so cool. So I love to get fresh turmeric root at Trader Joe's. They also will have very affordable. What are those oranges? The sumo oranges. Oh, yeah. Those can tend to be a little bit pricey at New York grocery stores. Affordable at Trader Joe's. I like to get the bag of the mini avocados because I do. Oh, I love the mini avocados. Listen, I'm one person and avocados, you know, I can eat a whole mini avocado, but if I were to eat the big avocado, it goes bad before I can eat the other half. Totally. What else am I getting at Trader Joe's? I see the maple syrup in here. Oh, yes. Okay, I. That's. That's funny. Two bottles of maple syrup. I was talking about this on set yesterday. Maple syrup is probably top five ingredient for me. Huh. Do you use it in place of sugar, like, all the time? Not all the time, but often. I put it in my coffee. I said yesterday, it's very Buddy the Elf coated. I put maple syrup in my coffee. I put it on my oatmeal. I put it on my yogurt. I use it as a sweetener in a lot of, you know, some baked goods depending on exactly what the kind of alchemy is required. But I love maple flavor. It's one of my favorite flavors of all time. It's a great flavor. I had a lot of maple syrup in here because I was doing. I was. I think I had this for some recipe testing development stuff. The reason then there's two bottles in here is because I was. I think I was testing something. But yeah, okay. Let me walk you through the top shelf. So we have eggs, a must. I go through so many eggs. I eat eggs crazy style. I'm impressed. So you take them out of the carton and you put them into these little plastic cute thing? I do, which makes no sense considering how absolutely horrendous the rest of my fridge looks. Like, it's ugly. I don't have an aesthetic fridge. Yeah. No one should have an aesthetic fridge. Anyone with an aesthetic fridge is sus and they don't actually cook and eat. That's so true. It's usually like drinks and beverages, which you can see here I have none of. Yeah, that was so surprising to me. I'm not a. I want to be a beverage household. But I'm not. I just don't have the. Again, living in New York City, having to tote home a case of cans, it's tough. Okay, this bowl at the top of the fridge is my detritus bowl. So this is like when I have a kind of withering jalapeno that I need to remind myself to eat. You'll see a lot of halved, wrinkled grapefruits, which are always in my fridge because I eat so much of Andy Baraghani's sticky meats. That's smart. I love sticky meat. I love sticky meat. I love sticky meat. I love salmon bowls, which call for grapefruit, but not. Sticky miso salmon bowls? Yeah, it's one of my favorite recipes. Shout out, Baraghani. Shout out, Andy. So there's like some grapefruit in here. There's a lot of kind of old lemons and lime halves or quarters. I hate food waste, so I'm throwing everything into this weird bowl. That's so smart. So this is my detritus bowl. Next to that is I am on a freakish. Golden kiwi kick. I am eating a golden kiwi a day. Can we talk about this? Because I've had a weird thing where I've just discovered that all of my friends are eating kiwis all the time, and I'm like, I have never in my life bought a kiwi. I've never had a kiwi outside of a fruit salad, ever. Oh my gosh. Or for like a kid's lunchbox or something. Yeah, I'm like, when are you eating a kiwi? What time of the day? Kiwi is a, I would say, top five fruit for me. It's probably top three. Um, I eat kiwi in the morning. I eat kiwi in the evening. I have a kiwi on my desk at the New York Times office right now. I'm positive of it. Um, I will, I eat any kind of kiwi, but I love the golden ones. And I also don't peel them. I eat them with the skin on. Wow. Does, you like eat the hairy skin? Yeah. Uh, that's like a pear. It's like a male chimp, right? Kind of like you're eating a male chimp. Exactly. The golden ones, though, are less furry and the skin is thinner. I've heard that. So it's like eating a pear. Okay. Yeah. I don't even like the fuzzy peach skin. It's too human for me. Yeah. The thing that I want to get to, though, is the door. Uh, there are two things on the door that really have me, uh, questioning everything, really. Okay, talk to me. Okay. The Baileys, first and foremost. Oh, okay. Yeah. What are you doing with the Baileys? I have to be so honest. Yeah. I don't know where it came from. I thought you were going to say you put it in your morning coffee. I was like. No. I don't know how long it's been there. Surely I bought it for, oh, you know what? Irish coffees. I think I bought them for, um, espresso martinis. Ah, yeah. Of course. I figured it was something like that. With a bit of Baileys. As you can see, right next to the Baileys are three distinct mustards. Mm. That are all from Trader Joe's. You, yeah, I mean, good thing you're not an influencer, because, uh. Uh, like, Trader Joe's, please, hit my line. Ball's officially here, which means it's time for a wardrobe refresh. Whether you're going back to school, back to work, or just want to give yourself something new, this is your warning. It's time to stop wearing shorts every single day. It's time to put on some pants. Pants, like an adult. You can literally never go wrong with a pair of Prada pants. I'm using Poshmark to buy my wife and myself a pair of Prada pants. And she works in fashion, so she keeps me honest on what's good and what's not. I love Prada nylon pants. I am so excited to start pulling out my fall clothes and shoes, and I wanted to get something new to wear because the temperature is already dropping. I really love a vintage sweater and have been searching for Ralph Lauren, but when I looked on Poshmark, I ended up finding a pair of Prada pants. I think it will be my new wardrobe staple for this season. It was rare, gorgeous, and a great price. And now it will be one of my favorite things that I own. Since ordering, additional Stone Island pieces have been showing up on my watch list. Millions of closets, infinite versions of you. Try yourself on with Poshmark. Download the Poshmark app and use Feed Me when you sign up to get $10 off your first purchase. On a random Wednesday night, it can be incredibly hard to decide where to eat, especially if you've already had a martini. There are a million amazing restaurants in New York City. Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming. This is where I love to pull out Yahoo Scout. It's an AI answer engine. It tells me exactly what I want to know in language that just makes sense. And you can see where the answers are coming from. It shows real sources, actual publisher links. It's not just another confident pair of pants. It's a paragraph from a robot. It's like a super-powered search engine that's there to help. So when I want to know where to find a great burger in Boston, or if I want some frozen yogurt, but I don't want to wait in an insane line, I ask Yahoo Scout. There are so many options, it can be hard to decide. Yahoo Scout can help you cut through that noise and choose. Try Yahoo Scout for yourself. Find what you're looking for at Scout.com. We're gonna play like a little quick game. - Oh, I love a game. - Yeah, yeah. this is like, we're going to do a little tier list, a vegetable tier list. You know how a tier list works? So there's going to be, there's S, A, B, C, D, and F tier. So S tier is for elite vegetables. A tier is for great vegetables. B tier is good vegetables. C tier is just okay vegetables. D tier is bad vegetables. And F tier is terrible vegetables. So we're going to do like a speed round, go through a few vegetables and you're going to say where they rank on this tier list. Okay. Okay. So you're going to say the vegetable and then I'm going to give it a grade. Yeah. We'll make it quick. Okay. Cucumber. S. S. Okay. Are you going to say everything is S? No, I won't. I promise. But I always buy cucumbers. This is going to be like on a grading scale. It's going to be like on a curve. So you have to consider the other, it can't just all be S. They can't all be top tier. Some things are going to have to be bottom tier. Don't worry. They won't be, but. Okay. Cucumber is S tier for me. That is a great vegetable. Uh, kale. C. Oh, interesting. You don't like kale. I do like kale, but you're telling, I'm grading on a curve. Okay. Are sweet potatoes a vegetable? I mean, in the same way that cucumber is not a vegetable, but yeah. I mean, cucumbers are fruit. Sweet potato is a vegetable. It's a root vegetable. Okay. Sweet potato. B. B. Okay. Brussels sprouts. B. B. Okay. Tomatoes. S. Yeah. Yeah. Asparagus. A good tomato though. A bad tomato. Yeah, no. A bad tomato is, a bad tomato is like C or D. A bad tomato is a D. D. At best. Yeah. Yeah. Asparagus. A. A. Zucchini. Ooh. B. Okay. But how do you feel about a, where you're ranking a green bell pepper? I'm going to give it a C, but that means I'm going to actually bump kale up to a B. Okay. We got three more. Uh, butternut squash. F tier. Okay. Finally. I think I mentioned this earlier with regard to a recipe where I'm talking about like effort to deliciousness ratios. Hmm. I shouldn't. I should not need a hacksaw for a vegetable. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I've broken a knife trying to open one. I'm just not doing all that. Yeah. When I do make a butternut squash recipe, I am buying the pre-cut squash at the grocery store. Sorry. Yeah. No, it's okay. There's also better squash. Like, excuse me, better squash. I love a kabocha squash. I love a delicata squash. Yeah. Yeah. I don't. Smoky. Butternut. Savory. Sucks. It's the most basic squash. I agree. Two more. Eggplant. Ooh. A tier. A tier. It is pretty good. I love a Japanese eggplant. Oh, I love a Japanese eggplant. I love, I love a really squishy, well-cooked eggplant. I love a baba ganoush. I love an eggplant dip. I love a pan-fried eggplant. It's spongy and delicious. I don't know. I love an eggplant. Okay. Last one. Broccoli. Okay. This is tough. I'm going to say B tier. Huh. Yeah. That sounds about right. I'm going to say any sort of like broccolini or like a rabe is A tier for me. Oh, yeah. I mean, broccolini is sick. And a broccoli. Oh, a good broccoli rabe. That might be one of my favorite green vegetables. I think that's A tier for me for sure. Yeah. And the reason why I like the other ones more. One, broccoli is like not real. Like broccoli is not a vegetable that was found in nature. Is that true? Yes. We, we, and broccoli is like fully man-made. Let me fact check that though. Basically it was like selectively bred from a bunch of brassicas. Huh. Whatever that is. It's the, it's the class of vegetables that it comes from. So cabbage, Brussels sprouts, those are all in the brassica family. Huh. So. Broccoli, the thing that I like most about it, that you get the least amount in a traditionally farmed broccoli is the stem. Ah, yeah. It's too much. It's so good. It's too much head. Yeah. But I kind of like it in that it looks like, like a thing. It looks like its own thing. It looks like a tree. Yeah. It's, it's cool. It's a cute vegetable. I like it. It is a cute. You take off the little florets and they look like little trees too. It's kind of cool. I prefer cauliflower though. That's bold. That's just, that's just me. I like a roasted cauliflower, like crispy. Roasted cauliflower is good. I do like broccoli. I love broccoli and cheese. Maybe that's the Southerner in me. Yeah. I'm never eating that, but I like it whenever I have it. It's so good. It's so good. It's very British too. Um, so now we're going to finish up this podcast with, you're going to shout out one thing that you like, and then you're going to get out one thing you don't like. It can be a person, a place, a thing, an idea, a feeling. So my shout out this week is the, I think they're Korean. It's like, um, a garlic bread flavored sun chip. They are, get them at H Mart, go to H Mart. You'll see them. They're in a green bag. They're the most delicious chip I've ever had in my entire life. It's like so hard to not eat the whole huge bag all by yourself. It tastes exactly like garlic bread. I need that. I need, I need like whole, like a whole box of bags of that. I know. I try not to buy them because they're just too good. I, I can't have chips in the house or else I'll go absolutely crazy. Okay. My shout out this week, this is really hard. I'm going to shout out, speaking of influencers, the smart, beautiful, and capable women of the internet who have popularized the boozy frozen cherry Coke slushy drink that is kind of going viral on Instagram right now. Wait, how do you make that? I'm so glad you asked Jason. Cause I just made one this weekend and it is crazy good. It is lime juice, frozen cherries, Coke that has been put in ice cubes, and then more Coca-Cola put in a blender. And then whatever booze you want to put. I've seen people do rum. I'm not a brown liquor girl personally. And I just don't really like rum. I put vodka. I made those for friends this weekend. That's a great shout out. I am going to do that today and report back. Please do. So my get out this week is, I'm having an issue in my life. And so my get out this week is pants. Right now I hate all of my pants that I own. I don't know. It's like a huge problem. And it's I don't really even know how to solve this problem. Is it fit? It's, it's just like for men, pants are like all we have. And I like, they, they, they tell you so much about a man is like how their pants fit, like their brand of pant. Like there's so much identity politic going on in your choice of pant. And I can't figure out who I am right now. I've been wearing shorts. Like I love to wear shorts, like, but I need to start wearing pants again. And like, I can't figure it out. And so I'm just like, get out pants. I don't, I can't deal with them right now. And they're, they're kind of ruining my life. So that's mine. You really hit the nail on the head. As far as like, you learned so much about a man from his pants. I think about this every time I'm watching love Island, because they managed to find the sweet, sometimes evil men of the UK seem to find pants that are like a second skin. And I kind of learned everything I need to know by the minute I I've seen them. Oh, that's not what I mean. Tanya. No, but it is true. No, I don't mean it like that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on. I wasn't going pervert with it. I was going like fashion sense. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. You're saying second skin. Yeah. Second skin. Like it's so the pants are so tight. Okay. Okay. Sorry. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Okay. What's your, what's your get out this week, Tanya? I was a devotee of one particular ice cream flavor from Van Leeuwen. It is the cherry chocolate chip. Delicious. Great in their stores. I love one of my favorite combinations is cherries and chocolate. And this is kind of a cherry themed segment for me because we're talking about cherry Coke too, but the, they changed the formula on the pint version of this. I think probably when the last year or two, the cherries are kind of the idea of a cherry. I don't know how much they are real cherries. The ice cream is kind of that consistency where when it melts, it gets a little bit more of a, you know, a little bit more of a, you know, a little bit more of a it's kind of like frothy. Like you feel like there's the presence of like, Yeah. Something's going on in there. You can feel the presence of like a guar gum type of ingredient. Yeah. Whatever. Whatever. Mostly I'm, I'm just really, I'm always really sad when I see a brand kind of fall off in terms of what they were delivering to consumers that got people hyped about them to the, in the first place. And I'm really sad that like my favorite ice cream is I'm getting less. It costs $9.99 at the bodega. And you know what has never fallen off? Ben and Jerry's? No, wrong. Although. I don't know. I don't eat pints like that. I love a pint of ice cream. And Ben & Jerry's I do like, but they are owned by Unilever and whatever. You know what's fallen off? Oh, you go first. What has never fallen off? Coffee Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Okay. Yeah, that's. Haagen-Dazs Goated Pint. That's a standard bearer. Or that's like a benchmark ice cream. Yes, completely agree. But what has fallen off is Talenti. We don't have to get into it, but go read online. The Talenti forums, people are mad about Talenti. We're not going to get into it. No, Wirecutter just did a whole like investigation into Talenti about this. Oh, really? Yeah, they did like a taste test and everything. Maybe that's where I saw it. Yeah. But this has been so fun. Tanya? This has been so fun. This has been really fun. We could keep doing this forever, but we got to go. Thank you so much, Tanya. This was a blast. Thank you so much for having me. Okay, I'm getting out of here. But before I do, I'm going to give my wife a quick call. Let's see what she has to say. Hello? Hey, Esther. How's it going? Hi, Dean. What did you have for lunch today? Okay, this is embarrassing. I had, I eat almost the exact same thing every single day when I'm at my studio. I had a Jennifer Aniston salad from last week. Wait, you eat a Jennifer Aniston salad every day? And I, I have no idea. I've never heard of this Jennifer Aniston salad in my life. You have no idea there are so many secrets to eating habits in the studio. This is toxic. It is. It's like quinoa, chickpeas, but, uh, it is beautifully bland. Um, I could eat it in five minutes. It's based on a meal and then in winter I switch to a lentil soup. Wow. There's so many secrets that you're keeping from me. I know, I know. Ugh. Well, I'll see you later. Thanks, B. Okay. Bye. Bye. So that was Expense Account and I will see all of you next week, same time, same place, Thursdays, wherever you get your podcasts. Bye, guys.