Speaker 5 1:11

Hey, good morning, mark.

Speaker 4 1:12

Hey Francis. How you doing?

Speaker 5 1:13

I'm well indeed. This morning, you know, I was over a friend's house and he invited me over for a barbecue.

Speaker 4 1:20

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5 1:20

But it wasn't really a barbecue, it was a cookout.

Speaker 4 1:24

Oh, see, just this past weekend, a friend of mine had a, barbecue and, uh, he did a, pig roast. And it was more than a cookout.

Speaker 5 1:31

Yeah.

Speaker 4 1:32

It was a, it was a true,

Speaker 5 1:33

we use the word barbecue kinda loosely around here, but we're coming in the northeast to know more about barbecue, which is a long, slow cooking process. Mm-hmm. Um, like 8, 12, 14, 20 hours over, over a. Fire over a coal fire usually, or wood fire. Um, and you're seeing more and more barbecue joints in New York. You've got Danny Meyers. Mm-hmm. Big place. Uh, blue Smoke. Uh, the New York, uh, the Big Apple Barbecue Festival is hosted outside of Blue Smoke. You've got Daisy Mays, which is a big place in New York. So you, and you can get some good barbecue around the northeast now.

Speaker 4 2:05

Yeah. You know. Way back when, when I was in college, we used to, every year we would have, we would have a pig roast.

Speaker 5 2:10

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 2:11

That's kind of where the tradition started. And we'd go to the meat market in New York City, pick out a pig. Mm-hmm. Uh, and, and roast a pig. And, and one of the guys would, would, Casey would dig a, a hole in the ground mm-hmm. And fill it with charcoal and roast a pig. He'd start at, you know, 5:00 AM roasting the pig.

Speaker 5 2:27

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 2:28

Uh, you know, we figured it'd be done, you know, six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock it'd be done when we were ready to eat. Never. It was never done. I recall those parties until about 2:00 AM and two AM's a bad time for a pig. For the pig to be done.

Speaker 5 2:42

Yeah.

Speaker 4 2:43

cause it was a little bit of a free for all. But then we started using this. Uh, it's like a little box and, and actually you and I have used this together. It's called a kachina.

Speaker 5 2:52

You can find it online if you will link to our website, Kachina, C-A-J-A-C-H-I-N-A, translate the Spanish device. Um, it was invented either in Florida or Cuba, and it's called a kachina means a Chinese box.

Speaker 4 3:05

And pretty much what it does is it flattens your pig out and evenly heats it. And, and if you don't have too big a pig, you can roast your pig in a lot less time, unless. It's raining.

Speaker 5 3:16

Mm. It rained the other day, didn't it? At your barbecue. The way the Kino works is you put the coals over the pig, so the pig goes in the box. It's got a metal grin on top, the coals go on top. It makes a beautifully well roasted pig, unless of course it rains.

Speaker 4 3:29

Unless it rains. Everything goes a lot slower, and there we were again. 2:00 AM

Speaker 5 3:35

I gotta tell you, if you wanna, if you wanna short circuit the process, there was a great article in The Times by Peter Mehan. there's, Daisy Mays is a great barbecue place in Manhattan. We've been there a number of times. We actually interviewed the owner of Daisy Mays on this program once. Um, but what they're doing now at Daisy Mays, now there's. there are a lot of different kinds of barbecue. You can barbecue, uh, different parts of the animal, but whole hog barbecue, like you've heard that expression going for the whole hog.

Speaker 2 4:01

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5 4:02

Whole hog barbecue is a very specialized kind of barbecue and, um, I. You, you, you actually roast the entire pig and then you, when you serve it, you scrape out different parts of the pig and it's amazing and it's the best barbecue you can possibly have.

Speaker 4 4:17

And what some of these people who make whole hog will do is they'll, they'll actually pick different parts of the pig for you to eat together and make almost, uh, we'll, we'll call it like a homemade. Uh, uh,

Speaker 5 4:26

sloppy

Speaker 4 4:27

pig, like sloppy pig, I guess, or, or loose sausage almost.

Speaker 5 4:30

Okay. Here's what you want to check out though. At Daisy Mays, uh, you can get a barbecued half pig he's got this whole menu of massive cuts of meat meant for large groups

Speaker 4 4:38

I'm a large group

Speaker 5 4:39

Yeah, yeah. Too much for you pal. Even for you.

Speaker 4 4:41

okay, I am going

Speaker 5 4:42

for the

Speaker 4 4:43

whole with a bunch of people. We're getting the whole pig who's in. Okay. Okay.

Speaker 5 4:47

You can, I think you can get a whole or a half pig, but the whole 30 pound or more suckling pig is 400 bucks

Speaker 4 4:52

in.

Speaker 5 4:52

Okay. Must be ordered two days in advance.

Speaker 4 4:55

No problem.

Speaker 5 4:55

Uh, except the lamb, which can be ordered by 5:00 PM the day you wanna eat it. 'cause well, the lambs are smaller and take less time, time to cook. Um, they say that's enough for, what did he say? 15 people? Uh,

Speaker 4 5:05

he said the whole hog is 15 and the and a half. You have to have at least seven.

Speaker 5 5:08

Yeah. And a whole poke pork shoulder will feed six. Mm-hmm. Okay. Whole Pig 12 Rock of Lamb two.

Speaker 4 5:14

Okay.

Speaker 5 5:14

Okay, so check this out. You order this stuff two days in advance, you go there and they present you with the whole hog, right? He then paints the cutting board that the hog comes on with sweet and sour barbecue sauce based on chi may chili, and then he encourages you to. Take the, like, take the meat outta the pig and drag it along the,

Speaker 4 5:35

yeah.

Speaker 5 5:36

Cutting board.

Speaker 4 5:36

I'm, I'm actually salivating.

Speaker 5 5:37

Yeah, ve do not bring your vegetarian friends. Okay. Do if you And what they say is what's, yeah, it's gonna be

Speaker 4 5:44

a meat fest.

Speaker 5 5:44

If you ever wonder where like the different cuts of meat. In a pig come from, you'll know

Speaker 4 5:49

you'll be done. That's it. It's, you know, eating a whole animal like that. Eating, something where you see it, the, the whole animal. I think it, it's very educational. we talk a lot about, you know, farm to table and, and how exactly that works. Anytime you start with a whole animal and you present that whole animal and we, and you eat the whole animal there, I think there is a, a greater deal of respect that comes with that.

Speaker 5 6:13

I, I, I agree. It's, it's about real food. Chicken does not come from a package in the supermarket. Mm-hmm. It comes from an animal.

Speaker 4 6:18

There's no, yeah. There's no such thing as a boneless breast that, that hopping around the farm.

Speaker 5 6:22

It's sliming around the farm, I guess. Um, the, uh, the restaurant says,

Speaker 4 6:26

although there may be one day.

Speaker 5 6:28

You can get a half pig, or a whole pork shoulder feeds six. The whole pig feed feeds 12 and the rack lamb feeds two. You, have it presented to you and they present you with What Peter me says in the times, he says, unceremoniously presented with a box of latex gloves, and you're encouraged to triple up to insulate your fingers from the heat of the meat. And then. The pig picking begins.

Speaker 4 6:49

I'll tell you, that's, and that's something that people I think maybe don't realize. When you, when you do a pig roast, your pig's been roasting for 12, 15, 18, 20 hours, 24 hours sometimes. Okay? You know what the inside of that pig is?

Speaker 5 7:02

Delicious

Speaker 4 7:02

and hot. Okay. It's really, really hot. And so seeing a bunch of, and I, and I'll, and I'll use this term drunken fraternity guys, ripping away at a, at a, at a pig going, ow, ow, that's hot.

Speaker 5 7:17

You know what you're gonna see in a couple of weeks?

Speaker 4 7:18

Yeah.

Speaker 5 7:18

Couple of drunken 40-year-old men. Well,

Speaker 4 7:24

very much looking forward

Speaker 5 7:24

to that. 'cause you can't get a whole, you can't go to a restaurant. I'd like a pig, please. Yeah. Bring the entire pig. There's, so we're gonna get six or 10 of our friends together and go, uh, go.

Speaker 4 7:32

Do, do a pig roast,

Speaker 5 7:33

go hog picking.

Speaker 4 7:33

Can't wait. If you, if you've ever been out to dinner with me and you'd like to go, please call.

Speaker 5 7:37

Yeah. Or if you haven't and you'd like to go, you buy the want. No. We'll bang on. I don't wanna do that. Um uh, if you don't know about barbecue, now's time to learn. Especially if you're around in the northeast. There's more good barbecue than you can shake a stick at. Uh, when we come back, we'll be talking to Jay Weinstein, who's written a book called The Ethical Gourmet, which is a very interesting book about food, how it's produced, how it comes to you. Back in just a moment. You're listening to the Restaurant Guys,

Speaker 7 7:59

You're listening to The Restaurant Guys, Mark and Francis Jay Weinstein writes books. He's cooked at Le Bernardin. His articles have, have appeared in The New York Times and Travel Leisure

Speaker 5 8:07

He's the editor of the CIA, that's a Culinary Institute of America, newsletter, kitchen and Cook, and he joins us today to speak about his new book, the Ethical Gourmet.

Speaker 4 8:15

Jay, how are you today? Welcome to the show. I'm

Speaker 6 8:17

good. How are you? Thanks a lot for having me.

Speaker 5 8:19

Oh, it's, it's super. I love your book and it actually raises a lot of issues. I think a lot of people are, are sort of confused by the many different, constraints besides just taste, um, where people are trying to eat ethically. Can you explain why you wrote the book and, and what your mission was in writing this thing?

Speaker 6 8:36

Yeah. You know it, people are often searching for, what can they do? There are so many. Issues that are associated with food, whether it's the humane treatment of animals, sometimes people really, uh, become aware of, what the life of, livestock is. And don't want to participate in the cruelest of the practices. Uh, people are concerned about the environment and the earth and, and, uh, you know, say, well, you know, I know that there's a lot of pollution out there and I know that there's a lot of. The environmental degradation from human activity. But what can I do? I, you know, am I gonna go up to the woods and, and live in a shack like Grizzly Adams? And, I know that we can do things about those, uh, uh, about those problems and. This book is my effort to clarify what an individual can do. The small steps, sometimes large steps, whatever your comfort level is to make a difference.

Speaker 4 9:30

You know, Jay, I think the hardest thing for, for most people is knowing, you know, there's so much mixed information about there, about what's good, what's right, how things are produced. The word natural, the word organic.

Speaker 5 9:41

I go, I go to buy my organics. Fish and all of, and then so I bring it home and someone says, but that was fish farm. You ruined the environment. I'm like, I thought I was doing the right thing. You know, it's say, you know, next thing you know you're gonna McDonald's. I thought I was

Speaker 9:52

saving the wild fish.

Speaker 5 9:53

Right, right. Exactly. But then you find out that it pollutes. I mean, can you really, do you think that people can, by reading your book, really get a handle on, on, on how to behave responsibly and in or, or what? How to achieve their goals, whatever their personal goals with spending their food dollars are. Or is it just too complicated to, to really even get a handle on?

Speaker 6 10:13

I think that through, through reading this book, people will be able to make a difference. I, I, I don't claim that if everybody in the world had this book that, that all pollution from food would cease and that all. workers in the food, uh, uh, chain of production would be treated fairly, but I do believe that if somebody takes it to heart, some of the simple suggestions that I make in the book, that they will be able to make a difference in one cocoa picker's life mm-hmm. In one, farm where, animals are treated humanely, will be able to stay in business. So, yeah, I do think that it's gonna, it's very enriching to feel like there are things that you can do. It's very empowering and that is what this book is about. It's the Ethical Gourmet is about being able to make a difference of whatever size. People ask me often what is something that I can do? What is, if I was only gonna do one single thing? to be ethical and be an ethical gourmet, what would it be? And I pick one and I say, you know, get organic dairy products from now on. Just switch brands to organic dairy products.

Speaker 4 11:27

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 11:27

If you don't do anything else in the world from my whole book of suggestions, just get organic eggs on an organic milk instead of the conventional, because. the organic dairy cows are not treated in a way that you would want them treated if you were there and you saw the the factory milk production operations. You would say, oh, I don't want to play a part in this.

Speaker 5 11:54

Yeah. 'cause you're like, 'cause you'd say, and I don't want to eat anything that came out of this

Speaker 4 11:57

environment. Yeah. If we, if we were closer to our food, we would, we would understand that that's, that, that's not the way a, a farm was, was ever meant to be run in anybody's

Speaker 6 12:05

imagination. Right. That have to be, I mean, up until. These factory systems were developed within most of our lifetimes. Uh, there really wasn't such a humane issue,

Speaker 4 12:17

right,

Speaker 6 12:17

with say, hens for, for, uh, for, you know, for laying eggs. Hens were treated more or less like, okay, well you're giving me something. So here's your food, here's your nest. Make your eggs

Speaker 2 12:31

right.

Speaker 6 12:31

But now in order to ramp up production, make sure that each hen produces the maximum number of eggs per hour, per minute. They have put them under all kinds of scientific conditions with flashing lights, keeping them in darkness for huge amounts of time, feeding them diets that are unnatural and not really things that we would want to talk about in in mixed company. And all in an effort to make that hen generate another six eggs a day or another, six eggs a week

Speaker 5 13:02

or whatever, you know, it change the, the idea of food production is, I mean, I think what people like you and we are talking about all the time is realizing that there's a balance in nature and that animals are animals. And while you know, I'm not a vegetarian and I feel that it's okay to. Raise animals for food and to kill animals for food. Um, but an animal is not a meat machine.

Speaker 4 13:21

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5 13:22

You know, there is such a thing as cruelty to animals

Speaker 4 13:24

and you, and you do two things when you do that. And this is the point that Francis and I argue, and I don't care from which side you come frankly, but you do two things when, when you put these animals into this, these conditions. A you, we believe that, that you treat them in a way that, that you shouldn't be treating animals, but B, you treat them in a way that you shouldn't be treating your food.

Speaker 5 13:47

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Hey, we're gonna have to take a short break, but when we come back, we're gonna be talking more with Jay Weinstein. His wonderful book is called The Ethical Gourmet. And if you, you know, if you listen to our shows, you realize there's a lot of complicated issues out there. And here's one book. Where you can sort of get an overview of what's going on in the world and, and what you can do to find, and it's our position that this is not only food that's ethical, but it's also a way to find food that's really good, nutritious tasty. Now, Jay, we often say on this show that it's been our experience that if you were to take two guys who know a lot about food and you take one guy out and you say, listen, go find me the best tasting. Chicken, tomato, whatever it is, and you send another guy out and you say, Hey, listen, you go find me the most, uh, you know, ethically produced, uh, local farmer produced, no antibiotics, no hormones, whatever. Those two guys are gonna wind up at the same farm with the same tomato. It, it is ethically food produced food, usually better tasting.

Speaker 6 14:43

The answer is most of the time.

Speaker 5 14:45

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 14:46

you know, I don't wanna make claims in my book that. I don't really think are always provable, and there are a lot of times when you can put an organic carrot in front of me and a conventional carrot in front of me, and I'll chop into them and I'll say, eh, They both taste very delicious. Mm-hmm. Or, uh, I can't, I can't guarantee you that on a blind tasting, I would really be able to taste the difference between organic milk and, uh, conventional milk.

Speaker 4 15:18

I'm gonna tell you, Jay, just because in my, in my household, we drink a lot of organic milk and we used to not.

Speaker 6 15:24

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 15:24

And organic milk is much richer tasting than non-organic milk.

Speaker 5 15:28

Uh, I'll also throw out there that I think while it's certainly true that there's a lot of, you know, ethically produced food that's, you know, good, it's not, nothing's spectacular when you find the spectacular chicken or when you find the spectacular piece of lamb, right? That will not be a factory chicken, that will not

15:45

be

Speaker 6 15:46

a

Speaker 5 15:46

factory tomato

Speaker 6 15:47

and, and that. You know, the, the answer, most of the time it really counts mostly in things that have a higher level of production, like meat.

Speaker 5 15:57

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 15:58

Meat and, and, uh, uh, eggs, you know, like I definitely think there's a difference in eggs. Yeah. Um, I, you know, I, like I was saying, I can't really tell the difference with, with, with things that. Always comes. Yeah.

Speaker 4 16:12

Carrot, carrot's, carrot's. Not so much. I, I, I don't disagree with you,

Speaker 6 16:14

but, um, yeah, there is definitely a difference between an organic chicken and a conventional chicken, and especially when you're talking about the extremes. Mm-hmm. You're talking about the difference between a free range. Organic chicken, which is really the gold standard. And say a, a factory farm produced chicken, a Tyson or a, Purdue or, or one of the, you know, sort of mainstream, supermarket chickens.

Speaker 9 16:39

There's no comparison whatsoever. They, there is such a huge difference in

Speaker 10 16:43

terms

Speaker 9 16:44

of the texture, in terms of juiciness, et

Speaker 10 16:45

cetera We're gonna take, we're gonna take a quick break, come back after the news and listen to us more. We're gonna be talking about ethical means of production and how to get some of the best food and some recipes that you'll find in Jay Weinstein's book, The Ethical Gourmet. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys,

Speaker 5 16:57

So Jay, we were talking about, ethical means of production if you want the best quality meat. You know, one of the reasons this has come to the forefront is when you look at the best chefs or the best restaurants, they're not buying Purdue chickens and putting it on their menu, um, as much because

Speaker 6 17:11

Yeah.

Speaker 5 17:12

Huh?

Speaker 6 17:13

Oh, I'm just saying they're going out to the small farms. They're going out to Steve Ione out in, uh, long Island. They're going up to the Catskills, to the small farmers there. And

Speaker 5 17:21

they're, and they're going there because of the taste you know, because that's what they need to do out

Speaker 4 17:24

to Gregs town here in New Jersey there.

Speaker 5 17:26

Great farm. Now I, I think that there's an, there's an interesting quandary that that comes up that is really the ethical question of all this great food and then the, the, the greatest cri criticism that's foisted against people saying, oh, sure, you latte liberals in the northeast with your fancy cars can easily afford. You know, an organic free ranging chicken and a grass fed lamb. But what is a middle class working class person who's like, you know, I gotta watch my dollars. How do, how, how does that, right?

Speaker 4 17:57

My free range chicken costs me a dollar 89 a pound. My regular chicken costs me 69 cents a pound.

Speaker 5 18:01

And, and so how does that translate? And, and one of my answers is, I think I would always rather eat. Less meat and protein in center the plate stuff, but better. And I think that, you know, people are drinking less but better. And, but what, what, how do you address that issue? The financial issue of, you know, the, I think the paradigm was once expressed, and I'll, let's see if I get this right. It was, um, the paradigm currently being

Speaker 4 18:24

50 50 is what I'm giving it.

Speaker 5 18:25

The paradigm currently being, um, that farmers struggling to stay on the family farm, produce food for the very rich, that gives them just enough money to stay poor, but stay on the farm. While poor people eat mass produced food. Is that, is that a paradigm that you, you have wanna address?

Speaker 6 18:41

you know, Francis, I'm glad you brought it up because, uh, there's no bigger red herring than, the silliness that, that Americans, the wealthiest nation on earth, cannot afford to spend a few cents more, even a few dollars more a week for, uh, for ethical. Food that's raised in a way that we are not ashamed of.

Speaker 5 19:03

I agree. Well, and also everybody out there, including me, I'm fat. Okay. I should eat a little bit less of the red meat and, uh, eat the better red meat.

Speaker 4 19:13

You have a, you have a section in your book, Jay called The Hidden Costs of Cheap Food. Let's talk a little bit about those, those hidden costs.

Speaker 6 19:20

Okay. Well, for, for one thing, uh, although we are not quite as, uh, as, um. Uh, bad at it as, as the Europeans are, we still heavily, heavily subsidize, uh, production of food, uh, that, um,

Speaker 4 19:41

of the wrong foods?

Speaker 6 19:42

Yeah, I mean, we we're subsidizing huge, huge amounts of production, uh, on a scale that the earth has never seen before. For example, corn, which is, uh, raised for, for both for human consumption and for livestock seed. Is an enormous subsidized crop. And what that's doing is it's driving down the price of things like beef, chicken, and we get this artificial sense of We have the right to get meat at, you know, a dollar 79 for ribeyes

Speaker 4 20:16

but we're feeding our cattle subsidized grain. Right. Exactly. And subsidized

Speaker 6 20:19

corn. Exactly. Taxpayer.

Speaker 4 20:21

And that you already paid for. Right.

Speaker 6 20:23

Exactly.

Speaker 4 20:23

Through your taxes.

Speaker 6 20:24

It's, it's like, it would be as if the ice cream man came, and at the beginning of the season, you gave him a hundred dollars and you said, here's a hundred dollars. So. in exchange for this a hundred dollars, I want you to keep the price at $1 a cone.

Speaker 5 20:36

Right. Right. You know, it, it's, it's interesting that I think people, a lot of people out there have the misconception that the lion's share of farm subsidies go to keep friendly farmers on the farm, when that is exactly the opposite of what's going on out there. What happens is the, the lion's share of the farm, of the agriculture subsidies

Speaker 6 20:51

the biggest. Biggest mega farms

Speaker 5 20:53

because they have the lobbyists.

Speaker 6 20:54

It's just like the fact that, that the people who, who reap the biggest rewards from tax cuts are people who have enormous, enormous incomes. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5 21:04

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 21:04

The people who are running these mega farms, they get all the breaks, and then the small farmers, they, you know, if they see, you know, a, a slight, you know, maybe they'll get $10 back at the end of the year. It's not worth it to them to have a subsidy program like that.

Speaker 4 21:19

Well, you, you know, I, I Mr. Alternative fuel source, but ethanol would not be as cheap as ethanol is if we weren't subsidizing all the corn. Right,

Speaker 6 21:28

right. And, and you know, the fuel is an important, I'm glad you brought up fuel mark, because fuel is, uh, something that even. With the $3 and 50 cents a gallon fuel that we're paying now, we are still paying less than most places around the world.

Speaker 4 21:44

And ha. And less than they were paying 25 years ago.

Speaker 6 21:46

Exactly. And, and we got so used to the idea that food could be shipped and trucked and produced with such cheap fuel. You know, people don't realize we where chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizers come from, they are petroleum products.

Speaker 2 22:03

Yeah.

Speaker 6 22:03

We get oil very inexpensively and we are using an enormous amount. The, the amount of fuel used, the amount of oil used to make. Chemical fertilizers, nitrogen fertilizers is unfathomable. PE people knew that the scale on which petroleum is used to make chemical fertilizers, they wouldn't even realize that their food, that their carrots or petroleum product

Speaker 5 22:29

is. And that's one of the things that when you talk about organic food, you take that out of the mix. You take a lot of the petroleum outta

Speaker 6 22:34

the mix. Exactly. And, and, and if we talking about. Reducing our dependence on, on, uh, middle East Oil and on foreign sources as an ethical issue, which I think it is. That's one You asked about the cheap cost of food. About the true cost of food. That's one of the points I raised in the book, is that people don't even think about, but because they wouldn't know, why would they know that? Petroleum is an important ingredient in, in raising lettuce.

Speaker 4 23:00

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 23:01

An important ingredient in raising conventional corn.

Speaker 4 23:04

I, I think that's a great word that you use ingredient

Speaker 5 23:07

Well, you know, I, I want, I want to go back to, to one issue that I really want to touch on. We talk to a lot of small farmers all the time, and many of these small farmers would rather that there be. No agricultural subsidies to America mm-hmm. Within America, because they don't, not only don't they get the benefit of it, the huge farmers get a huge benefit from it. And, and these little farmers, more pressure is put on the small farmers. Mm-hmm. Because the huge agribusiness concerns,

Speaker 6 23:32

right. How can they compete?

Speaker 5 23:33

Right.

Speaker 6 23:33

If, if with the, with the subsidized farm and The scale of production from a large company, you know, Archer Daniels Midland can produce, uh, sweet Corn for, for, you know. 2 cents a bushel, and the local farmer can't produce it for less than 30 cents a bushel. And you know, there's no way that he can compete on the market. People are gonna go to the store, they're gonna say they, they, first of all, they might not even see his products.

Speaker 4 23:58

Mm-hmm. Right.

Speaker 6 23:59

They might even, not even, I mean, most of the time people won't even see local products because they're, they're relegated to farm stands now.

Speaker 4 24:05

Well, we're lucky because now we do have an avenue, and it's through these, through local, uh, foods and organic foods, co-ops and CSAs. There is an avenue. Yeah.

Speaker 5 24:13

And, and actually if you're listening from inside Jersey, there is a program run. It's actually one of the few government programs that I really like run from the state Jer of New Jersey called, uh, Jersey Fresh. Mm-hmm. And if you're out in the markets in Jersey and you see the Jersey Fresh banner, that means that. A lot of supermarkets around here are responding to consumer demand and providing you with local produce. So if you see that jersey fresh sign, that means that the, the produce does come from a local farm in Jersey. Jay. A lot of people now are starting to switch over and in my neighborhood in Jersey City, we've just gotten in the last couple of months, uh, fresh Direct. Well, now I can go online and I can pick out my, what I want to have delivered, and they'll deliver to my house the next day. What about. Online buying, of groceries, things like that, meats things. How, where does that, is that ethical? Does that have ethical implications?

Speaker 6 24:59

Yeah. Well, well, let me address that in two ways. First one is, uh, just like any other shopping, it's important what you choose. I don't know whether. Everybody driving their own car to the supermarket is, is less fuel efficient or more fuel efficient than, than the the fresh direct truck, uh, dieseling around town to everybody's homes. I, I really, uh, could I, I haven't done the research on that. I can't say whether it. The, from an ethical standpoint, you're doing more environmental damage by having a delivery truck, bring your food to your house. Certainly here in the city, uh, you know, I'm calling from New York and, and most people shop on foot, and so having a fresh direct delivery truck idling out front is probably a, a, you know, a bit of a environmental, uh, no-no. But, that's something that I haven't, the bridge I haven't crossed, but I wanted to go back to something that you were talking about just before the break. Okay. Uh, which was, uh, you know that you are blessed with local farms, with farm stands, with CSAs, with community, food co-ops, and. I think that listeners who are interested in finding those places, uh, and, and there may be one, like a town away from you, there may be one.

Speaker 4 26:11

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 26:11

You know, a, a, a 10 minute drive from your front door, even closer perhaps than the supermarket.

Speaker 4 26:17

Here in Central Jersey, we have Cook College, CSA, that mm-hmm. That does a CSA local CSA for us. Right. In New Brunswick.

Speaker 6 26:23

And one of the resources in this book, everybody should pick up a pencil right now and write down. Local harvest.org.

Speaker 5 26:31

Oh yeah. We feature them on our, we've had them on the show before. They're amazing.

Speaker 6 26:34

And they have a website that's got a clickable map. You can find any, you just point to a place in the United States of America and it will tell you where the farm stands are, where the farmer's markets are, where, where the, the CSAs are all

Speaker 4 26:47

CSA again, for people who are just, uh, tuning in, community supported agriculture, that's where you buy a little share of the farm and then you get a box of produce every week.

Speaker 6 26:55

That's right. The farmer will, will. Harvest and, and split up the harvest among the members, and they get direct from the farm food. And it's a great way, especially if you have a family, it's a great way to get, uh, the super, the absolute, super freshest of foods. I mean, they, there's no middle man goes right to your door, uh, or, or, or right into your, your, into your refrigerator from the, from the fields, you know.

Speaker 5 27:20

One of the things that, that people may not realize about buying locally, and one of the reasons that buying locally will always get you better produce is if I'm, if you are buying a tomato from Guatemala, that tomato, forget the ethics for a moment. That tomato had to be picked before it was ripe. 'cause if you picked a ripe tomato in Guatemala and it took a week to ship it to me, it would be rotten by the time we got it.

Speaker 2 27:41

Yeah.

Speaker 5 27:41

If you are buying a tomato from a local farmer, he picked it when it was. Ripe 'cause he, if you're pick buying it in a store, he picked it a couple of days before it was ripe, uh, optimally ripe. And if you're buying it at a farm sand, he probably picked it exactly at the ripe moment to get you the best. Tomato and tomatoes that ripen on the vine are better than tomatoes that ripen in a, in a brown bag or ripen cel or gas to,

Speaker 4 28:03

to, uh,

Speaker 6 28:04

absolute France. And, uh, I mean, in the summertime when local stuff, I mean the idea of getting a, a tomato from outside of Jersey when. Jersey tomatoes are in season. I think there couldn't be anything more culinarily absurd than that. Uh, but I think that what, what flummoxes a lot of people is what do I do during the rest of the year? What do I do in October? What do I do in in February when. You know, I'm not gonna make a Kare salad, but I want to, I wanna make, uh, you know, a, a little relish or a little, uh, salsa or something.

Speaker 5 28:38

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 28:38

And I need a tomato. I mean, I'm not gonna stop eating. I'm not gonna go back to ancient times and stop eating tomatoes, except for when they're in season. Within my. You know, walking distance from my door.

Speaker 5 28:48

Right.

Speaker 6 28:48

And, you know, I understand that, and I, I, I feel the same way.

Speaker 5 28:52

But, but when it's available locally, you're crazy

Speaker 6 28:54

not to drink. When you're, when it's available locally, get local and when it's not available locally. Know which one to buy. that's gonna be the best tomato, and it's gonna be doing the best thing from the earth

Speaker 5 29:04

now. Now

Speaker 4 29:06

I just wanna add just one tiny little thing to that. Also, don't be afraid when it's cherry season to put some cherries up for this season. Mm-hmm. I mean, our, our grandparents did that for their entire lives during cherry season.

Speaker 6 29:18

And sometimes they're even better when they're put up.

Speaker 4 29:19

Exactly. You put the cherries up during straw seed. You put strawberries up during tomato season, you put tomatoes up. Here's, we made tomatoes,

Speaker 6 29:26

peaches in the middle of. Fall are so good. Yeah. And if you didn't put them up when they were in the height of season, you missed the opportunity.

Speaker 5 29:33

You know it, it's funny. At our one restaurant, Catherine Lombardi, what we've decided to do is, um, and we, we didn't make it all the way through the year. We only put up 2000 pounds of tomatoes last year. But we buy tomatoes locally when they're, when they're at the height of the season, we pick our own and we borrow a huge kitchen from a country club who's friends of ours. And we go and we make. Thousands of pounds of sauce. So that at Catherine Lombardi, we have local tomatoes, right? Last year it was for nine months. This year, hopefully it'll be for 12 months, but you cannot imitate that sauce. It's just,

Speaker 4 30:04

and I'll tell you, and, and this is, and it's not

Speaker 5 30:06

that hard.

Speaker 4 30:06

This is shot on my own restaurant. So, so, uh, here, here, here you go. Okay. The, the tomato sauce that we were making last year in, in December, uh, January, February, when we're still using those put up tomatoes was simply better than the tomato sauce that we're using right now. Now we're about to, we're only a couple of weeks away mm-hmm. From, from getting back into, into tomatoes, but I will tell you that there is a discernible difference. Every single person in my organization knows that that tomato sauce just simply is, is not as good as it was, uh, a few months ago.

Speaker 6 30:40

Well, you know, they, they're, I don't think you're gonna get an argument. I mean, your listeners, uh, uh, if they're listening to your show, then they know food and they, uh, I'm sure know that feeling of picking up that tomato and smelling it when they, when they, when the local tomatoes come into the market, you walk into the produce section and you can smell that fresh.

Speaker 5 31:00

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 31:00

Flavor. You can feel the texture on them.

Speaker 5 31:02

Hey, you know what,

Speaker 6 31:03

we, it's a completely different experience.

Speaker 5 31:04

Jay, we have to take a short break. We'll come back again in just a moment. Uh, our guest is Jay Weinstein. His book is The Ethical Gourmet. You're listening to the Restaurant Guys,

Speaker 8 31:10

Hey, you're back with The Restaurant Guys, Mark and Francis of Stage Left and Catherine Lombardi Restaurants in downtown New Brunswick. Our guest today is Jay Weinstein. His book is called "The Ethical Gourmet." Uh, you can find out more about "The Ethical Gourmet" and, and maybe pick up a

Speaker 5 31:21

copy even if you go to our website and restaurant guys radio.com. Jay, thanks for writing the book and thanks for coming on the show. It's been great to have you.

Speaker 6 31:28

Thanks for having me. And, uh, you know, all the suggestions that we talked about, all the subjects, they're, they're solutions. Just pick 'em up. They're write in the, in the book and, and make a difference in your own life and in, in the life of the world.

Speaker 5 31:40

Superman. Thanks.

Speaker 6 31:42

Thank you. Take

Speaker 5 31:42

care. Thanks very

Speaker 4 31:42

much, Jay.

Speaker 6 31:43

Bye-bye.

Speaker 5 31:43

the book and the book is a fun read. It's not like, it's not a preachy tome, it's a great book. You know, it's really enjoyable to read.

Speaker 4 31:50

We were talking earlier about how, we put up strawberries, we put up tomatoes, we, you know, everybody's grandmother, if you go down and if you went down into their seller, in the forties and fifties, had those, those things in their cell. And

Speaker 5 32:03

it's not that hard to do. You could pick up a book like, and it's a great family thing to do. I mean, I know people are pressed for time, and if you're pressed for time, it's. Not, it's, it takes some time.

Speaker 4 32:10

It does take

Speaker 5 32:11

some time, but if you have an afternoon to to, to put up stuff, it's, it's a great family way to, to put up stuff that you can eat all year long,

Speaker 4 32:20

you know? But we've lost at the same time some of that being excited when strawberry season comes in. I mean, I remember in, in my family, mid-July we would go, my aunt had has a house, uh, near the beach on Long Island. And I will never forget the memories of going in mid-July to my aunt's house, my grandmother standing in the kitchen, and I knew what it meant. If my grandmother was standing in the kitchen in mid-July, she was frying zucchini flowers. Right, right, right. Okay. Making the fry zucchini flour. You know, I could tell, I could smell it from the driveway when grandma was frying the zucchini flowers. You know, I love that. And I, I'll tell you, I really like doing the, the restaurant for my grandmother. 'cause I get a lot of those same sensations. Brings back a lot of memories. You know, mid-July, the restaurant's gonna do fried zucchini flowers, the restaurant's gonna do all those things. And for me, it's been really fun to do that.

Speaker 5 33:09

And here's a summer tip for, for you guys for when tomatoes come in in the summertime. Um, do not. Refrigerate your tomatoes, and I'm surprised at how many good cooks don't know this. Mm-hmm. When you refrigerate a tomato, it loses a lot of its flavor and it never comes back.

Speaker 4 33:25

Right.

Speaker 5 33:25

Don't. Refrigerate your tomatoes. You can put, how do

Speaker 4 33:29

you feel about that?

Speaker 5 33:29

You don't refrigerate because I see that all the time people, and I see the refrigerated tomato. I'm like, oh, you went to the farmer's market, but then you didn't do it that well. Don't refrigerate your tomatoes. They'll be fine.

Speaker 11 33:38

You gotta buy them every... once or twice a week. Mm-hmm. Eat them. They're delicious. Don't refrigerate them. Hope you've enjoyed the hour listening to The Restaurant Guys. I'm Francis Schaaf. And I'm Mark Paschal. We are The Restaurant Guys.