Armchair Anonymous: Cooking Disaster | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

welcome welcome welcome to armchair Anonymous I'm danan sheeper and I'm joined by Monica padman we were just talking about this man cookie we used to know he he used to know we met him on a vacation he was working at the habachi grill that's right he was adorable and lovely and he wore really big funny glasses and it made you uncomfortable well he had a whole character and he did not break character yeah and it made you feel antsy yeah like some people love this and some people have a hard time with it like if you go to one of these plays and you're in the bathroom there was an episode of kirb your enthusiasm about this in fact it was Nate's cousin playing the guy oh where you're in the bathroom and an actor from the play is in the bathroom acting like a guest and then he's doing some schlot you know oh you're talking about when it's like an interactive yes before the thing starts and they're like tricking you and stuff and then the person's in character and you know they're in character and you're you're like I got to do I play along and by playing along am I does he or she think they're fooling me I don't it's too much mental mental gymnastics and cookie had such a over-the-top character the glasses he was wearing were 3 feet wide and the kids were like melting down this was a long time ago the kids were melting down so Kristen took them out and then it was just me and you there and you like have never wanted to leave a situation more in your entire life I was panicking you were yeah his glasses were 3T wide hey this is a ding ding ding this is a cooking story no I know and a cookie story well yes cookie the chef yeah yes yes yes yes okay yes so this is a tell us a crazy cooking story every warning that can be given you you know animals get hurt okay really guys for real there's a animal story that I do think a lot of you for real will not like and it's the last story and and there's a gr there's gross as hell things in here so this is not for you yeah don't listen to this don't listen at all but enjoy it I hope you like the introduction please don't enjoy cooking stories Hard Times come and go good times take them slow my life I had them both a one thing you got to know I'm keep on Shining hello how's it going can you hear me okay yes yes is this Sarah yeah nice to meet you guys this is so fun where are you Sarah you're in a closet but we're in the country I'm not in the country I'm actually in London oh my god you're an expat or are you on vacation no an expat so I've been here for 3 years and we're actually moving back to Austin in a few weeks so London is coming to an end are you sad it's coming to an end or are you excited to get home kind of both I think it's run its course but I've Loved London I met my husband here so it's obviously been a great few years but ready to get back I love Austin you're bringing a breit home though yeah you're like Megan marle oh gosh okay so you have a wild cooking story I do yeah I went to school in Boulder at CU which is a big college town I don't know if you guys have been to Boulder and I lived on the hill which is kind of the quintessential student area so it's where all the fraternities are and sorties and tons of college student houses and a lot of them are kind of old and grimy so at the time I lived with three other girls we were all students and had jobs as like servers bartenders so one of my roommates and I all call her Jen that's a good sign when you got to protect her identity that's off to a good start I didn't tell her that I'm telling this story so Jen and I worked at the same bar and on this day we were on the same shift together so we both had an hour in between classes to run home and change and make food we're in the kitchen kind of popping between the kitchen and the living room and half watching a show and kind of mindlessly cooking and chatting I was making a breakfast burrito and she was making pasta you know like pre-made ravioli that you get from the refrigerated aisle of the grocery store yeah they're kind of highend they're damp they're pre-made you boil them for like four minutes but they're still tender they're not dried out no beautiful exactly I scrambled some eggs assembled my breakfast burrito and went into the living room and a few minutes go by and I hear Jen screaming I run into the kitchen and in the pot of water and ravioli there are a bunch of maggots floating around the water there's a bunch of maggots in the water with the ravioli we immediately both launch into hysterics and are like that is disgusting we're going to sue the grocery store and become Millionaires and we're never shopping there again she dumps the maggot ravioli out in the garbage and scrubs the pot within an inch of its life and because still needs to eat grabs a box of spaghetti so like dried pasta out of the pantry and puts it in the water we in the living room Reminiscing on how gross that was and the pasta is doing its thing she goes back into the kitchen and immediately is like what the [ __ ] is going on what the hell it's like lots of expletives being thrown around this time she's really freaking out so I run back into the kitchen and in the new pasta brand new box there are more maggots and we're at a loss now we're both kind of baffled yeah I'm really confused because the first round of pasta came out of the refrigerator presumably and now this one's coming out of the cabinet didn't really make any sense Jen is really spiraling at this point so she came from a religious background I think she went to an all girls catholic school and this is obviously weird and inexplicable so her mind went straight to like this must be the end of days obviously God is situation yeah yeah it's always lurking no matter what happens the devil's popping up in your pasta devil droppings stop I hate it devil sperm my God yeah so she's like freaking out she's like head in hands I'm sure silently repenting for all the bad college student things we' been doing all year and it daunts on me they must be in the water I don't know how but maybe they got into the pipe somehow and are coming out of the tap interesting good job we're turning on and off the to and waiting to see something weird but it's just water coming out so we're both very confused and as we're willing maggots to come out of the tap water so we have some explanation I hear a popping noise and I looked at the stove and it was a maggot sizzling on the burner oh and then I noticed a few more kind of crawling around on the stove top and then one fell from the ceiling what then there were more falling from the ceiling and it was somehow raining maggot in our kitchen this is End of Days I am starting believe her you're hitting your knees and you're recalling the prayers you've heard on TV oh that's the big reveal it was the apocalypse because we lived in an old gross College house and I'm sure the landlord hadn't cleaned the vent in the hood for last like 20 years grease had built up over time in the vent in the hood and flies I guess must have laid eggs in the grease and when the rising heat from the stove heated the metal they were jumping out and falling onto the stove oh they were just raining out of the hood this is horrific I'm delighted I was nervous that this prompt would only elicit fire stories cuz that's the most common cooking disasters but cascading raining maggots wow wow wow how many do you think there were probably 30 there were a lot there were decent amount of maggots from each pot of water and then on the stove Jes they were kind of all over do you think Annie had made it into your scam that's what I wanted to ask but I'm too afraid to ask after we' called the landlord and we're like someone needs to come clean this out right now this is disgusting by this point we're kind of like laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing was once we realized that we weren't being smited I think we're kind of at this point like rehearsing how we were going to tell everyone when we got into work in 30 minutes and then I went back into to the dining room and saw the half eaten breakfast burrito full of scrambled eggs that I had just made on the stove and wrapped in a tortilla so I couldn't really see what I was eating and realized that this entire time I had been eating a maggot burrito oh there were maggots in your eggs yeah oh wow I mean it's probably a good source of protein if you can get over the gross out Factor did you almost throw up or are you fine with this situation at the time I was pretty grossed out I think I was almost throwing up but I rebounded I still love scrambled eggs it's fine wow I would imagine though it might set some irrational fear like I feel like I'd always be checking the vent before I cooked like did I see any maggots up there I once that happens you once now that's a reality on Earth I feel like all our listeners now we've really implanted a yeah I'm going to be checking ours that's awful oh man it was gross but yeah I guess it's a PSA for everyone listening to clean the vent in the hood over your stove which wasn't something I probably would have thought about before but I definitely do know and it makes total sense you get a buildup of Grease up there what a hospitable place to lay your eggs rain rain rain Chom Chom Chom scramble scramble scramble Chom Chom Chom oh that's so gross I love it yeah that was gnarly that almost is like one of those urban legends where they get a cactus from the desert and then they hear noise and then it breaks open and there's a spider nest inside the cactus this is one of the classic urban legends or like when you're sitting on the toilet and then a snake comes up the toilet eats your but but hole Yeah Yeah it's right up there wow oh well thank you for sharing that that was disgusting and great respected and wonderful thank you guys and I was wondering if I could give a few quick shout outs yes please roll call yeah you have a strong contingency of London followers so I want to give a shout out to Taylor and Paul and Alex Andy we all are fans and always listen and compare notes and talk about armchair Anonymous ah and they're Brits Alex and Andy are Taylor and Paul are both Americans we get on pretty well don't we yeah we're all cousins yeah yeah yeah it's very similar well a delight meeting you Sarah and welcome home I wish you an easy and painless transplant back to the US thank you I appreciate it it was so nice to meet you both all right take care see you in Austin bye guys maggots that one was for you that's going to have to have a trigger warning I'm itchy I'm itchy I'm itchy maggots are gross I found that bazillion of at the bottom of my trash can outside and that you just want to set fire to whatever they've been on yeah just get rid of it have you ever had any maggots in your kitchen knock on wood no no please oh knock on wood for real yeah cuz that I think I would move out I would never go back hello this is unexpected hi hey how are you you're in the military and you seem to be crouched at work I am crouched and I am at work yes how fun where are you I'm in the state of Oregon not too far okay what branch of the service are you in United States Air Force I'm in the Oregon Air National Guard and I'm on annual training so I have a civilian job and then I'm part-time military how long have you been a reserve I started active duty right out of high school and then I joined the reserves and now I'm in the Air National Guard for the state of or oh I'm sorry so I guess I didn't know the distinction between so how does that work most of the stories that you hear are about kids who join right out of high school and they go off on active duty active duty owns you and they tell you where you're going to live and what job you're going to have so I lived all over the world and 911 happened so I went to war and then I decided I wanted to have kids and so I got out to follow an active Judy spouse who was in the Coast Guard which then meant more traveling and moving around wherever there's water with that I was able to be in the reserve component and then when we moved back here to the Pacific Northwest there aren't large Reserve units here but the National Guard is the largest serving capacity in the state so I transferred into the guard wow okay I guess that's probably where I was stupid is I thought the reserves became the National Guard when they were needed there are lots of statuses but the easiest way to explain it is that there's a federal Mission and then a state Mission so we could get called up to do a federal Mission when the President says we need your help but we can also get called up when the governor says we need your help that was the missing piece for me one's Federal one's State well thank you for your service yes yes absolutely okay so you have a crazy cooking story I do this involves an ex-husband and I conferred with him yesterday to ensure that I had the whole thing right you're still on speaking terms that's good we like that we do have children together so yes we're on speaking terms and all is good he added some really wonderful elements too so I'm excited to add them to the story what if it had rekindled the whole thing like a movie like a double me some kind of reverse that would be scary okay so we grew up here in the Pacific Northwest and fried food is not something that we do at home you go out for fried food and when we were stationed at Coast Guard Station Lakeworth Inlet in Florida we lived in military housing right usually on big installations are lots of places for military families to live the Coast Guard's a little different housing is rare because their stations are really small but in Florida there's this very fancy place called Jupiter Island where a lot of very wealthy people live and there's a historical Lighthouse have you been well I know that Bert Reynolds lived in Jupiter yeah I think Selen Deon had a house there Tiger Woods a house there the Yachts that would drive by this housing Unit were larger than the houses that we lived in that were built in the the 40s their single story so the government housing was actually on Jupiter on the island with all the Mansions we were just before we were like the gate right before you got to the mansions and the island but our little Coast Guard Beach was on the inlet where all their Yachts drove by and so we'd be on our little beach and they'd be working out in the gyms on the back of their Yachts that were bigger than the gym for the co guard families wow so important to the story we had a one-year-old daughter at the time and we lived in the single story built in the 1940s cinder block home well you're allowed to decorate and paint which I had just done lime green Florida's always wet it's always damp right nothing really dries so being new to the South my husband at the time said would you like to fry something I was like okay I'll give it a shot I'll try some deep frying so when I was in high school I worked in a restaurant and I watched the fry cooks and I thought I could recreate that in the kitchen so I took the largest chili pot we had and I filled it to the brim okay canola oil yeah problem number one yeah like eight Bott canola and I turned it on high and I thought this is great so my toddler's toddling around new to the Florida heat she's in just a diaper my husband was outside I thought he was putting together a piece of furniture but he says he was doing yard work so he was just in board shorts I strangely enough don't recall what I was wearing but I remember the two of them pretty clearly and I battered the shrimp I dressed them in panko breadcrumbs and they were waiting for the oil to do what I remember the deep fryers in the restaurant doing which was bubble and so as soon as I saw the bubble I went okay I can dump bees in yeah I kid you not the first shrimp I dropped to this chili pot the entire chili pot Flames went up in front of my face and immediately to the ceiling which only yesterday and my husband reminding me that I had just painted did it click the paint is what caught on fire W apparently I was not worried by this I became very Placid and I picked up my naked daughter and I walked outside to the carport and in the softest calmest sweetest voice which she told me it was the nicest I've ever been to him yeah I said the kitchen is on fire so he walked in thinking I had a Hot Pocket in the microwave and that little metal sleeve had caught fire because of how calm I was and meanwhile the Flames had now rolled from the ceiling and they're now coming back down the door on the opposite side where we were coming and going out to the carport oh my and so his first instinct was to go straight to it and he goes oh I can't do water well he burned his nipples in the Flames he said that was the most painful and then he remembered all military housing has a fire extinguisher so he went to pull the pin on the fire extinguisher but somebody had gotten smart and put zip ties around so he pulled hard to where he slit his finger open and ended up needing three stitches oh my Lord but the adrenaline was busting so he wasn't thinking anything about it meanwhile he's got blood dripping all the way down his arm and his chest burnt nipples exactly he picks up the pot and he runs it out outside and drops it into the Sandy driveway and I'm just standing there looking at him like what happened and he goes what happened I like I filled it up the oil was bubbling I put one piece of shrimp in there he goes wait this was a deep fry a shrimp fry he's what kind of oil is this I was like canola he had no idea what had happened I had no idea what had happened but thankfully his assignment at that time in the Coast Guard was to manage that 68 ERS and all of that housing and so he ended up getting to work at home well before Co ever allowed us to do so by uh scraping off that entire ceiling repainting putting in new sheetrock for whatever reason the fire didn't spread to either side of the stove so none of the cabinets caught fire and they were all that plasticky apartment so we really avoided true disaster or burning the place down yeah let's go over some PSAs about oil right now that's fair I think the one problem a lot of us who get into High drinks with hot oils a you're used to boiling water and water starts boiling and water can only get to 212° and then it turns into steam so it's never above 212 that oil you think it's going to Bubble it doesn't bubble it's the [ __ ] you put in there that causes the bubbles exactly it's getting hotter and hotter and that [ __ ] can get [ __ ] thousands of degre I mean not really but it can get so hot yeah I've put things in they just explode there's like any water in there well that's what my just asked me he goes that shrimp had to still be wet the water in the shrimp is what had to have caused that explosion cuz to this day I've never fried again I've never tried again and when I was retelling the story to make sure I had all the details right he even asked what kind of oil would you use now I was like I have no idea he was like not canola I don't think that's the issue I think you can fry in canola but part of it is the amount you want to fry in like a small amount of oil and then you flip your piece of shrimp versus submerging as you do in the professional environment correct I had a um tradition of doing a lot of deep frying for Super Bowl that was my thing back when we were broke we would get the breaded prawns from Costco really go all out and I had a big like you're talking chili pot and I go a third deep so it could still be in there bubbling around it will bubble you just don't have to do it like that and I would recommend people don't don't do a couple gallons of 700 do a thin layer where like it can at least get half of your meat and then you flip it okay well that's our PSA and then also as everyone should already know you don't ever add water to a grease fire that's important to remind people yeah cuz if your husband want to come in and start spraying water from the kitchen all over itoo well what's really funny about this whole story is that one of my first jobs in the military was within the food service industry in the Air Force it's called Services we do food Fitness lodging more uary and fatality search and Recovery that's a wide net those last items you know what the connecting factor is meat Refrigeration Refrigeration so we've got the equipment packages already built and associated with the career field so you have to learn and know all the things so that when you deploy you could Bounce from any one of those we call them functional area codes wow were you ever at cutter or bogum I think that I was probably deployed the same time you were on your USO tour I was in an when you were there okay we went there I did 07 and 09 and I feel like we did two different zones on both those trips I got Robin Williams on my Uso oh hell yeah that's great awesome that's a big one it was big yeah this is going to say a lot about the career field we manage any morale welfare and Recreation events in a deployed environment so when you set up a bear base and there's nothing there you have minimal things to keep you occupied so we play a lot of bingo we do different comp competitions that don't require a lot of physical stuff and so when Robin Williams came through I was running the Bingo tournaments and so we asked him to call Bingo and he did it for us so he played the last round of bingo with us and then he went on and did his HBO special which was that's so cool what year was that 2003 hold on wait 911 was 2001 so this was 2002 911 is confusing I often trip up on what the data that was because of the 11 yeah but even though that should help us because one yeah September 1st 2001 or was it September 11 11 20 see here's my confusion you're seeing it oh boy well wow I'm glad you made it me too this also goes to say like the most dangerous thing in the military is generally not the fighting yeah oh so true the accidents that are not at all related to combat significant one last piece of the story is that years later after my husband got out of the military he went to culinary school in Portland and then he was teaching and he uses this story to remind people so he does your PSA regularly for those who are just starting their culinary life oh good for him cuz he's got a personal antidote but you're the Fall Guy he's not culpable at all he just gets a detail of poorly managed he he should be telling us what oil to use what he'd like to tell you is that he's lost sensitivity forever in his nipple region I don't know how he's exist I bet he's deriving so much pleasure from that arous zone oh man that would suck though I hate when just I wear the wrong shirt and my nipples get raw I'm sure you ladies know all about this I can't imagine having burnt nipples and then wearing a shirt it must be agonizing I'm now on his side you poor guy oh boy well thank you so much for sharing that great meeting you thank you for the opportunity there are a lot of arm cherries here in the International Guard it's a thing that comes up all the time people get really when they learn that we went to the live show or you know we've got t-shirts that we've made I think 90% of my communication these days is related to one of the shows on armchair umbrella that makes us so happy so sweet and what a great representative you are of us as people thank you all right take care that was my first impulse ever to salute someone I always wave goodbye now cuz you've got me waving but I felt like I was supposed to maybe salute at the end of that did you get that urge no oh okay I didn't that's fair um I have some oil burn came out or a maggot bite maggot from the ceiling stop okay maybe that's a positive for this no maggots are going to drop out cuz they could have they they were ruined and we did have a barrage of weird insects on that tape I know some of them might have even been maggots Sean sperm no Satan's sperm Devil's sperm is what you said Satan sperm probably works better cuz the alliteration [Music] okay hello it's a ghost oh there you are oh it's a handsome ghost hi hi oh my God this is surreal for us too a handsome ghost just popped up on our screen we heard the ghost and then we saw the ghost Brian where are you I am in a clothing filed Closet in Madison Wisconsin oh Madison Wisconsin are you in Academia I was previously in Academia I was a badger previously and then made my way back here as the family started to grow okay Brian you have a cooking story I have a cooking story actually I was in Madison and then I moved back to New York City which is where I'm sort of I'm from Long Island originally but I moved back to New York City to pursue a culinary career there this was in 2012 I was sort of a young aspiring chef and I moved back to New York City to work at a restaurant called 11 Madison Park yes very fancy very fancy yeah Rob might be familiar with it Rob do you know it I do great I'm the only one here that doesn't know it so it's a very very fancy restaurant we'd be cooking for celebrities quite often I got to do a private dinner for Jay-Z and Beyonce like we got top top celebrities on a nightly basis but we also got people who saved up for a year for their wedding anniversary to come so it was a special place to work cuz people were putting out a lot of money for a three-hour experience that they really never wanted to forget so the stakes are just very high yeah yeah it's kind of like Disneyland they've gone with the intention of having the best day of their life that's a good place to start yeah all that to say very very high intensity environment big kitchen lots of cooks and I don't know if you're familiar with like the French Brigade system so most fine dining restaurants are based off like the French military oh it's very regimented and all of the new cooks kind of come in at the bottom so you start at the cold appetizer station garm and then you work your way up to hot appetizers and then you start cooking the vegetables and then maybe one day you start to touch meat you work your way up all along these stations sort of build building up the experience and I had been there at that point about a year and a half and I was what was called the torant so we were open seven nights a week if you're really really busy restaurant you're obviously trying to maximize profits and you need to be open all the time so you need someone to give the cooks who work the stations every night a day off so you need someone who goes around each day to work a different station you're sort of like a jack of all trades master of none you've done everything in the kitchen right so I've worked all the stations and now I need to just help people get days off so it's very stressful because you never really know what you're walking into you're not necessarily as good as the person who does it every day but you sort of have this Wy experience of working each station you kind of know how to work smarter not harder all the tricks to get sort of get you through the day and this story takes place on a night where I was working the meat roast station so some people might be thinking 11 Madison Park is a vegan restaurant and that is true they are now a 100% vegan plant-based restaurant but in 2012 we served meat up through I think 2018 or something like that oh I didn't even know this well I didn't even know about the restaurant but wow they switched that seems like a crazy Rebrand it was a crazy Rebrand I remember hearing about it and it was a very very bold Choice especially if you're spending $300 a person then that's drinking tap water and that's not including tax and tip it's a very expensive experience and to not get meat I think for some people rubs them whatever but this takes place at a time where we're cooking a lot of meat and the most famous dish at the restaurant was this whole roasted duck and it was a honey glazed duck we got these ducks from New York we would dry age them in a refrigerator for two weeks and then we would glaze them in honey and lavender and roast it people would like fly across the world for this duck very crispy skin on the outside almost like a Cracklin oh I want this it's a shame that this doesn't exist in the world anymore so basically the ticket comes in and I'm working the meat roow station and again I had worked the meat Ro station very comfortably for a long time actually it was probably the station I was most comfortable and in the whole kitchen probably too comfortable which is like why I'm getting to talk to you today ticket comes in I you know take the duck out it's a very sensual experience you dump honey all over the duck and then you rub the honey all over the duck into all the crevices and into the skin you cover it in lavender and coriander and salt all the great stuff you roast it 25 minutes later duck comes out of the oven and it's sitting there beautiful golden brown whole roasted duck so at this point the suf who's kind of like running the line it's their job to sort of plate all the dishes and then they go out into the dining room they ask the vegetable cook who's on the meat side hey okay we're bringing up two duck fire two sides so they start to get all the vegetables ready so that the S Chef can plate all the vegetables on the plate and then when everything's ready bring the duck so I hear all right Brian bring the duck bring the duck so I grab the duck I pick up my knife and I think I'm shoving my knife into the duck and immediately I shove the knife into my wrist [Music] oh the amount of blood oh that shot out of my wrist honestly it was comical there was a wall about 5T away from me and it painted the wall explosively with the blood that shot out of my wrist it's like cartoonish it was cartoonish right you're in the middle of dinner service your heart is pumping you're hot you're tired so you're almost like a throbbing vein in your wrist I see the wall just covered in blood I immediately dropped my knife grabbed my wrist with my hand and there was a prep cook in the back of the kitchen I make eye contact he was staring at me like dear in the headlights like what do I do I say go to the office call 911 so he immediately runs into the office calls for an ambulance now of course because it's been 30 seconds since the Sue Chef called for the duck he comes back because God forbid we're a minute late on a plate and he's like where the [ __ ] is the duck this world it's a lot so he sees finally what's happening and thankfully he gets another manager over and they're like okay we have three walk-in refrigerators in the kitchen we very quickly and I think cleverly go into the walk-in refrigerator to try and slow my heart rate down and cool my body off to slow the blood has anyone done a tourni kit yet we have kitchen towels wrapping around and and someone is holding my wrist above my heart so I'll never forget it because one of the dining room managers came in and he said Okay ambulance is coming why don't I get your stuff out of your locker for the life of me I could not remember the three numbers that I've been using for this Locker for almost two years my brain was like you know I was not there they're like okay forget that get in the ambulance in the ambulance they start to sort of wrap me up more professionally and at this point I get to a local New York City hospital and I remember at the time and this might not be true but if you're less than 25 years old in New York you go into the Pediatric unit oh wow I was like two or 23 at the time so I am sitting in the waiting room of the ER you know in my [ __ ] like Chef whites I look like an idiot I have blood on me and there's kids and parents and books and toys so they take me back and now at this point like I know I'm going to be okay so now I start to calculate how many stitches do I need so I don't get [ __ ] when I go back to work you want a lot right I can't go back to the kitchen with less than 10 agreed agreed yeah at this point I'm hoping like do they need to take the hand yeah prosthetic would be the best return there is nothing worse than going back to the kitchen after them being forced to do work for you luckily it was probably like eight nine or 10 stitches I don't know if we got the double digit Mark I had just sort of nicked the artery in my wrist so like it didn't require any extra surgery I had basically just put the tip of my knife through and I'm not as vascular as you are Dax well don't sell your yourself short yeah we don't know yeah I have some pretty thick veins and I obviously just hit those and creating that sort of explosion of blood so I have to go back to get all my [ __ ] from the kitchen I Scurry back tail between my legs and it's probably like midnight 1:00 a.m. at this point all the other chefs are cleaning up I walk into the kitchen and it's just an immediate onslaught of like you [ __ ] idiot how did you do that French Brigade style exactly like we had to cook an entire new Duck because of you like you put us and the weeds all this kind of stuff so of course with love well that answers my question and I hate to admit this but the whole time from the second you said you stabbed yourself I've been dying to know if the duck had gotten blood on it or was salvageable were you wonder it's kind of like when I've had motorcycle accidents my first thought is is the bike total not what is my body and Shout Out Dimitri he was the chef to Cuisine that night I asked him when I came back and he was like no we had to throw the duck out so that duck did not make it to the pl I mean you can't do it no you can't serve it to a customer but I think they should have saved it for you because who gives a [ __ ] if some of your blood's on it like you should have been able to eat that dock yeah I agree and you should have ate it with great Prejudice they should have sat me down at a table being like this is your punishment eat this whole duck right now by yourself this is your $100 [ __ ] up it was one of those nights that you simultaneously appreciate the chaos and I miss the chaos of the kitchen but also like I'm so happy I ended up working there for another 6 months a year but that ended up being just like my last job in Hospitality working in a kitchen yeah you got to be built for it certain breed yeah my body sort of started to shut down I had like health issues and everything and and I just had to walk away well let me ask you did you even feel it or did you notice you were bleeding I didn't feel it I knew immediately that my knife didn't go through the skin of the duck the skin is this crispy I knew right away I saw it happen it slid off the surface of the duck and just straight into my wrist and then you saw the blood immediately you know that you've done something terribly wrong do you watch the bear I watch the bear some people in the industry don't love the bear I I think for the most part the bear does as good of a portrayal of the hospitality industry as anything has ever done and I think the bear is pretty accurate a lot of the people who write on the show and act on the show are in the industry so I think that just gives it that feel that you're really in the kitchen and had you read Kitchen Confidential at any point before you started of course I was like the idiot young cook who's like oh this is [ __ ] sick doing blow and staying up all night and boozing it it's this romanticization of the lifestyle I feel like every young cook either watches top chef or something had to get you to want to do it and definitely like Tony bord and stuff made a generation of young cooks for sure yeah I read that book with zero interest in ever being a cook and I was like oh I would have loved that world and I was already sober when I read it but I was like that would have been great for me you would have been great because is you talk about like motorcycle racing and how it distracts you from everything else and that's what it's like working in the middle of like a dinner service you can't think of anything else it's order after order after order and it's precision and it's doing everything perfectly each time you don't have time to think about any other problems and then it's the nights it's the weekends it's not getting paid any money which I think is a little better now but at my time I was getting paid nothing barely enough to get high that was a great Peak behind the curtain yeah I really enjoyed that that was kind of like an education on the uh the whole Chef system oh I'm sorry that happened but glad we got to talk to you glad we got to talk me too if I could the chef at 11 Madison Park the chef to Cuisine for most of my time there was Chef James Kent he uh passed away on June 15th very suddenly of a heart attack and he was an unbelievable Mentor he impacted so many lives in the restaurant Community he was like a father to me he really was an amazing influence on that restaurant 11 Madison Park and so many different restaurants and cooks and I just wanted to dedicate that story to him so this one's for Chef James so yeah I really appreciate you guys being able to let me tell it are you married I have a girlfriend she offered to buy more clothes to help with the sound quality but I politely declined yeah cuz I think Brian you're such a catch you are you are a catch you don't understand the only thing I wanted was validation from you if you would just comment on me oh you're gorgeous and Charming yeah oh you're incredible you guys best thank you all right take care brother bye yeah what a babe yeah I was going to say after we got off that he was a babe that he was a catch oh yeah yeah were you going to use that exact word that's the right word for him cuz he's like adventurous and fun and he's got this cooking history you love chefs second to magicians if you had your pick between being married to a magician or a chef what would you Chef obviously just cuz of the dayto day yeah or what if he did Magic for you though every day no okay we solve that hi hello is this Tanya I'm Tanya Tanya help me out Tanya conventionally with an o or no no always with an a I think off how do I know if someone's T Tanya Tucker so my parents they fought over it and my mom won cuz I was born during the nd500 and my dad wanted Tanya with a o and my mom wanted Tanya with an A and he didn't get to go to the race oh my god oh so he lost on both fronts it sounds like yeah so there is a decision to be made Monica you can spell Tanya with an O I've never seen it I've only seen it that way wow what do you think is more common Tanya I get Tanya all the time but I like being original so my husband's from Hungary and my daughter spells Ava with a e so we kind of have that in common spell Ava for me with an E Eva and it's Ava yeah oh God there's a lot going on over there where are you at I'm in Grand Rapids Michigan oh wonderful I love Grand Rapids Michigan you've got a picture over your left shoulder of the Mona Lisa and I think Mona's holding a cat in the photo I do a lot of pet art and I love it when they're kind of Derpy and silly so we're in my art room right now oh fun did you paint that Mona Lisa with a cat picture no I painted the banana the derivative of the comedian and I did these magnets and I have like a kitty Derpy thing right here you're fun thank you I can already imagine that you [ __ ] up something in the kitchen I just want to say that and that's a compliment oh thanks do you get a lot going at once I do because I'm a Gemini so I have to kind of multitask but in this story it was actually my mother who was cooking oh okay set the stage for us what year where are we at all right so we are in early 90s and we're in whand Michigan that's where I used to live where's whand Michigan it's 30 minutes south of Grand Rapids oh okay it's just me and my mom and my sister and my brothers are at my granny and Grandpa was for the weekend my mom recipes weren't available so she really loved Chinese food and she loved to eat something and kind of figure out what the ingredients are she's like an armchair Camas yeah so on this day she wanted to try sweet and sour pork she's in the kitchen and she's doing her thing and then I'm about 6 years old and we have this bird named Homer we're in the den and I decide while my mom's cooking that I'm going to get Homer out and Homer is a cockatil and it's my brother's bird he's really beloved he's named after The Simpsons cuz we love The Simpsons and he can like do the Bartman when you go like this oh he can like dance oh wow are these the type of birds too that live for a really long time how long do these birds live they usually live I don't know maybe 20 years I'm just guessing okay I've heard about people who have these birds that live like 50 years and then they die and someone's got to take them over have you heard about this Monica yeah it's the larger ones the parrots I think okay so Homer I decided to get him out and his wings aren't clipped so my mom's cooking and then I'm trying to get Homer and I'm being like a good little girl my mom said never to force him to be on your hand I know this is a cooking story but it'll so I'm trying to get him to go on my hand and then he like flies off and he lands on the ground now we live in a ranch style house and it's kind of like a horseshoe so we're in the den and then there's the living room the dining room and then the kitchen Homer jumps down and then I'm following him and I'm trying to pick him up trying get him to go on my hand and he jumps up and he flies a little bit more and I try to get him to go on my hand again and Meanwhile my mom's in the kitchen sweet and sour pork and she's cutting up the vegetables heating up the oil uh oh and she's cutting up the meat and she's getting it ready oh God we're going to need a big trigger warning yeah this one's going to definitely require a trigger warning I know I'm trying to get Homer and then he finally gets sick of me and he books it and he's like head height flying through the house and I'm trying to go after him and he goes from the den to the living room through to the dining room and then he makes a right-hand turn and my mom's just doing her thing she's about to take the pork meat and put it in the 10in diameter pot that's half filled with oil and she's about to and then she hears the fluttering of the Wings behind her and she turns around she goes Homer no and Homer he flew and then he missed her shoulder and then he landed in the pot of oil no hom all the places you couldn't fly to there was only one 8 in area in the whole my God this is awful you're in so much trouble this your Big Brother's bird you're [ __ ] both of my brothers and I'm the little one and he's in there and it's core memory like this is my earliest memory do you remember Terminator 2 when like the bad guy goes in the L uhhuh all the lava is just going like this and spraying everywhere that was the bird and then my mom she gets a lid and my sister comes out and she's like Mom get Homer and she goes no it's too cruel to take him out we have to let him die he's done and so we just sat there while he finished I know no one can listen to this I know I know but listen Peta sometimes there's accidents it was a horrible tragic accident I'm not an animal person so I don't know what anyone's supposed to do in that situation I don't fully disagree with your mom like what he's just going to be burning well yeah additionally I'd say the bird flapping its wings in the hot oil potentially spattering hot oil all over the place like there's many motivations at that point to get a lid over that pot oh how did he taste stop my dad when I called him yesterday to tell him oh I'm going to be on my favorite podcast and I'm going to tell the Homer story and he goes when your mom cooked it had no meat what was she doing it had no meat on it so I remember that and then I remember like going in the refrigerator I don't know what my mom was thinking but she put Homer in a box afterwards few follow questions so she puts the lid on that's got to be horrific while everyone's waiting for that to end and then she turns off the heat obviously and then she pulls him out in what shape was in do we know did you see I don't remember that part my poor child brain blocked out the rest of it but I remember looking at the shoe box but my brothers were coming home that Sunday like the next day and so my mom was frantic they didn't have internet so she was like in the phone book calling pet stores like I don't know she was just trying to like soften the blow of my brother's bird dying and then we tried to go to a few Meyers when they had a good pet store back then yeah good in quotes I remember too no luck to get it her goal to pretend it was the same or just go but we got you a backup Homer couldn't be replaced like R right Homer yeah he knew tricks and stuff oh my gosh my brother Chris he would record himself saying like pretty bird pretty bird on repeat and then playing it all day this sucks it's just very dramatic this is perfect timing because that happened to my mom and my mom loved that bird last month my mom she Babys seted my sister's house and she brought her Chihuahua Lily and then when she went in the garage to park the car and she let Lily out the chahua she hit the garage door opener and then the garage door she guillotined Lily I'm not joking I'm not joking I'm not joking like I told my siblings she has the worst Lu oh my God but she's kind of like one of these husbands that somehow has lost three wives at some point you got to start getting suspicious like well what happened she fell down stairs oh that one did too also the last time we had well one of the last times we had a really upsetting animal incident story it was the woman with the bunnies yes strove over the bunnies and people were upset by that obviously obviously she was the most upset by it but then she had some other bad luck remember the dog had fallen off the I feel like these things happen to people specifically they happen I love these pets and accidents happen and it's unfortunate but it does happen like we love these pets but it's just a fact of life so I know it's a cooking prompt like it was cooking it was cooking she was cooking she was cooking so she deep fried Homer you'd think a bird of all animals would be able to just fly back up before falling in well it's when she turned her hands he always would fly and land on her shoulder and then it's when he turned that he just like missed the landing and just boom jeez blind land right in the grease oh man that's gruesome how mad were your brothers did they let it out on you or were they kind about it they were fine I don't remember that but they have made up for it over the years like everything I loved like something they killed no no no just to like mess with me we went camping last weekend and we did bring up durble gate I thought my derble squeakers died of starvation like that's my mom said while I was at my dad's for the weekend but then like everyone was laughing around the campfire and I'm like what happened like there's always these secrets with everyone cuz they don't want to tell others wow but we had a good time you guys have lost a lot of pets you have you've been you've been through a lot of animals feel like we kept talking there'd be more I know I know I think we might need to well yeah we raised our own meat here you're in it y wow that was quite a story poor Homer poor Homer rip Homer poor Brothers po littley care more about you as a six-year-old my girls would try to be grown up you know and you're you're trying you're being extra careful but it gets away from you CU it is too big of a task for you well Tanya what a horrific story horrific story thank you so much it was very nice to meet you yeah really fun meeting you Tanya I'm so happy for all your success I'm such a fan and you guys deserve it and you guys are what the world needs I love you guys so much so thank you thank you we love you all right all my love to Western Michigan all right byebye yeah that's a michigander right thereesome can you feel the spirit well that was great I knew cooking would deliver as I said earlier I was nervous they'd all be fire stories but that wasn't the case the fire in our home growing up was uh do you guys ever have a kitchen fire Monica no I wonder how common they are it's always oil or the occasional gets left next to a burner that's scary well now I'm scared okay we'll be extra careful in your kitchen I will when you go home tonight okay okay all right love you bye do you want to sing a tune or something we have a theme song oh okay great we don't have a song for this new show so here I go go go we're going to ask some random questions and with the help of arm cherries we'll get some suggestions on the Fly rhy dish on the Fly rhy dish enjoy