Episode 155: Breakfast

Speaker 0 (0:09): Welcome back to Wreck of My Bonnet. Today we're gonna be talking about one of my favorite meals. I mean, I would say about five years ago, if you asked me what my favorite meal of the day was, it was breakfast, hands down. And we're gonna talk about my dad's affinity for the English breakfast. He loves it.

Speaker 0 (0:25): And especially the tomatoes with the with the bean jute. Yeah. That's what we're talking about today is breakfast. I know of Metro twenty nine Diner in Arlington, spinach, feta, and bacon omelet. I ate that about seven years ago.

Speaker 0 (0:40): It was a good time. It was a good time there. Good textures. Good textures.

Unknown Speaker (0:43): Do you know why? They call it breakfast.

Unknown Speaker (0:47): Why?

Speaker 1 (0:48): Because it breaks the fast.

Speaker 0 (0:52): Interesting. I did not know that.

Speaker 1 (0:54): Never fucking knew that. I just did a like one of your little whoopee tube searches, and it's like, woah. Immediate energy and cognitive fuel required to stay focused and alert. Eating in the morning offers several key health benefits, enhanced focus, metabolic boost, metabolic boost, and nutrient intake. I don't I mean, the one you mentioned, I'll just jump to that real quick.

Speaker 1 (1:19): Quite a long time ago, your mother and I, pre you, in the nineties, we did a trip to, The UK and Amsterdam and and Paris. Paris to Amsterdam. UK, Paris, and Amsterdam. I booked the first day and the last day. And we and it was the coolest trip because it was like, you know, we were heavily into spontaneity.

Speaker 1 (1:42): And so we had, like, the first day booked. We flew to London. We stayed at a hotel there. We ended up extending a day to see London more. Then we hopped on a train, and we're going to Paris.

Speaker 1 (1:51): And on the way, the train had a stop for whatever the fuck it was. I don't know what it was. And stopped in Canterbury, and of all the things in the world, and I read Charles Chaucer. And so I was like, hey, can we see this? And she's like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (2:05): So we jumped off the train, which we had a ticket that was fungible to move, and we went into Canterbury, and we walked around, and we saw all this stuff. And so then we stayed there the night, and we get up the next morning, and we go to the place that's the place for breakfast. And so I walk in. I'm thinking, like, the place for breakfast. And it was like, it was for the big you know, they called it the big breakfast, and it was three pounds 50 or two pound it was two pounds 50 or three pounds 50, and I think a pound was like a buck 80.

Speaker 1 (2:37): So it was like 7 or $8 for breakfast, which was this is $92.93, something like that. So I'm sitting there and I'm excited because I see the picture and I don't see it was like a a you know, when you go into McDonald's and you see a or Wendy's, we should say Wendy's now because the Baconator. And you see the Baconator on the screen, you're like, my gosh. And then you see it in life and you're like, no. You're kidding me.

Speaker 1 (3:04): That's a child's ass. That's not that's not a adult ass. Anyway, I get the plate. They bring it out, and it's on a tray, and hers and mine. And she got, you know, some small thing.

Speaker 1 (3:18): I don't think she got the same super big, you know, Irish breakfast or English breakfast. And so my plate was this big. And on my plate was two blood sausages, which are black.

Unknown Speaker (3:33): Do you like blood sausage?

Speaker 1 (3:35): No. No. I tried it for the first time there. No. And then this black stuff, which was like blood pudding.

Unknown Speaker (3:44): Yeah.

Speaker 1 (3:45): And then two eggs at the bottom. The plate with the it's round, you know, at the bottom is the eggs. Pork and beans. Pork and beans that had been scooped out of a pot where half of the ladle or a quarter of the ladle was beans and a quarter of the ladle was the juice. Mhmm.

Speaker 1 (4:05): Plopped on a plate, and a and a and a and a the stuff just ran across the plate. Mushy peas, which are green smooshed peas, they were they were smooshed down on the plate in, like, a circle of about this big, and it kinda looks like if you ate a of avocado and vomited, that's what it would look like. So it was avocado vomit. That's what I was thinking of. Even though I never had an avocado at that point in my life.

Speaker 0 (4:33): That's anyway because mushy peas generally isn't on the full English.

Speaker 1 (4:37): It was there. It was there. And then here was the here was the kicker. They had cooked the two eggs, over easy. The big sunny side up.

Speaker 1 (4:50): You know, the sunnies on the top side. Right? Yeah. And they cooked them in a sea of grease. And so when they scooped them out, they dropped them on the plate with and they must have they must have cooked them with a ladle.

Speaker 1 (5:02): And the same with the, with the with the sausages. They cooked them in the sausages. One was hard and one was raw. And so they're sitting on the plate, and you have the bean pork and beans breakfast, 07:30 in the morning, congealing with the grease from the eggs. And, typically, eggs do not have grease.

Speaker 1 (5:27): So what kind of grease it was? I don't know. It's probably dog grease.

Speaker 0 (5:31): Who knows? Eating Sunnyside Up too. I don't I don't like that. I stopped

Speaker 1 (5:35): I mean, Overeeasy makes them a little tighter. Sunnyside Up makes them looser. But the whole idea that you have runny eggs with, grease and, the the syrup from pork and beans and, the grease from blood pudding, like, not the pudding, but the, and then the mushy peas were a little wet.

Unknown Speaker (5:58): That's right.

Speaker 1 (5:58): So they had the green stuff sitting down the plate. I ended up I ate half of one egg. I I ate like half of a sausage and and I mean, three pounds 50 was a lot, you know. I mean, we were not. We had, the business hadn't taken off and all that kind of stuff like that and you know, it's like, I think it was like my first real vacation or something But it was

Speaker 0 (6:20): $8 for breakfast is crazy back then. Yeah. That's Yeah.

Speaker 1 (6:24): Yeah. It was 8 or $9 or something like that, you know.

Speaker 0 (6:26): You know why the English pound is that much more? Like, why? Is it because of it's a it's a bond based economy or something like that? Is there a reason? Or is it just because

Speaker 1 (6:35): people believe one Why currency stronger than another? I mean, it used to be because, you have trade imbalances, supply and demand. More people wanna use the English pound. They wanna use something else. Really?

Speaker 1 (6:48): Also, it's not like Also, there's an economy based behind it. It says that when you have a pound, it will buy this much in England. Oh. So it has a certain amount of structure to it. You know?

Speaker 1 (7:01): I mean, if you had a pound and it would only buy a piece of candy in in London, the price would be different because it would be or you could buy a ton of stuff. You know

Speaker 0 (7:10): what I mean? Because there's less of that dollar in circulation. Is is that also? Or less Yeah.

Speaker 1 (7:14): Well, you don't see Supply and demand is absolutely fits. And there's there's there's there's probably and and I'm not an economist, and I'm not a guy that knows international. I know I don't know for finance.

Speaker 0 (7:24): At all. That's why I'm asking. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (7:25): I knew a little bit. I do not know enough to tell you with any complete confidence why. I can I can certainly make shit up and tell you? Well, you know, it's because the it rains more in London than it does in France, and that's why the currency is stronger. Because the vegetables grow faster.

Speaker 1 (7:46): What do you think? Does that sound like a good reason?

Unknown Speaker (7:48): That sounds accurate. I like that.

Unknown Speaker (7:49): That sounds good to me.

Speaker 0 (7:50): The ones that are actually making the currency there. The full English I ate was at the Princess Diana Cafe And it was actually just the normal one. It was the bacon, sausage, egg, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, bread.

Speaker 1 (8:02): Oh, I had tomatoes too. I forgot.

Speaker 0 (8:04): I think there was an addition of the hash brown as well, but the hash brown was really good. There was no blood What kind of oil? No oil. No oil at all. They said, how do you want your eggs?

Speaker 0 (8:13): I said, over easy. And they said, okay. We can do that. There wasn't just Yeah.

Speaker 1 (8:16): I always do over easy now. You've turned me onto that.

Speaker 0 (8:19): Either that, if if I'm not feeling, I'm doing over hard. You know? I I if I'm not if I'm not feeling the, the runniness that day. But the bread, you get the bread. So, I mean, that's fine.

Speaker 0 (8:28): You know? It's gonna be a final day. If you

Speaker 1 (8:31): I think we had toast too, and I think I had a piece of the white toast that was, if I remember, it was cooked, but it was like, you know how when white bread gets cooked and then it gets hard, but it's not actually cooked? Yeah. Yeah. That's what it was.

Unknown Speaker (8:46): I I remember the stale going like. Stale is what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (8:50): Yeah. No, no. Was it was warm. I assume they they tried to toast it, but they toasted it too fast, and it really wasn't brown or something. It was just like Toasted.

Speaker 1 (9:00): Everything on the plate was shit. And it's like rarely rarely have I actually gotten a dish with so many different things where not one was good. Because I I mean, I go I we travel quite frequently, and I've been to a lot of different places. And I'll order like, give me the, the Buenos Aires special. And certainly, you're gonna get seven little things, and three of them are gonna be absa fucking lutely nasty.

Speaker 1 (9:28): You know? But you're gonna have tried them because they're Hepzabar, slop and slop, or whatever the hell they are that's local. It's the pig nose. It's the goat's ass. It's, you know, the frog's balls.

Speaker 1 (9:38): But then you're gonna chase something. You're gonna be like, wow. That's really good. That's really good. That's really good.

Speaker 1 (9:43): So you sorta trial and error what you do when you do that kind of stuff. It's like we had the guinea pig. Guinea pig was really, really good in, Central America.

Speaker 0 (9:52): Ecuador, Plateau Tipico. Right? Plateau Tipico was the, the pork chop, and then you got some sort of plantain on the side. And then I think you also got, like, pinto beans or something. And then you also got, like, a piece of chicken, I think, if I remember.

Speaker 0 (10:09): Yeah. Platto Tipico. Yeah. But

Unknown Speaker (10:11): Oh, wow. Different. What what has been your

Unknown Speaker (10:14): favorite breakfast for as much

Speaker 1 (10:16): as favorite breakfast by far, step. And, I went when we first moved here, there was a Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner. And I think it was your wife's or it was either our fifth anniversary, sixth anniversary, or it was, I don't think it was Mother's. It might have been Mother's Day or something like that. But I went there, and it was $75 a head for breakfast.

Speaker 1 (10:49): So that in itself was $150 for breakfast. It's just absolutely stupid.

Speaker 0 (10:54): Okay,

Speaker 1 (10:54): just that's stupid. But we went, and they had a full seafood bar. They had unlimited good champagne. They had the eggs were just woah. And they had a they made coffee in a percolator.

Speaker 1 (11:13): You love my glove, right? That's so I can't pick my nose anymore with this thing. Anyway, made it in those old timey pots, the coffee pot that had the little thing on the top and they percolate and the coffee cooks through it. I had a cup of coffee. And it was just like, oh my gosh, this is so good.

Speaker 1 (11:33): And it was just like everything I got. Had lobster, they had crab, they had oysters, they had shrimp, They had eggs. They had which is weird to eat seafood and all that. But, I mean, it was like, hey. You know, you're here.

Speaker 1 (11:51): Eggs cost $4 at Denny's. Eggs here cost

Unknown Speaker (11:56): 25.

Speaker 1 (11:57): Probably the Yeah. Probably the same, but, you know, and it was the whole

Unknown Speaker (12:01): thing with

Speaker 1 (12:02): And early early when you're skinnier, you're always thinking about value. When it's later, you're like, god. I'm fat. I don't need to eat anymore.

Speaker 0 (12:08): So Well, founding farmers, which neighbors that kind of did a copy they did a copy and paste on that. Yeah. And they undercut by $25. I think it's 50. 50 a person ahead.

Speaker 0 (12:19): But I think that that's funny because, like, yeah,

Unknown Speaker (12:21): for Is it good?

Speaker 0 (12:22): Well, it's brunch. Right? It's a brunch. It's not like

Unknown Speaker (12:25): Yeah.

Speaker 0 (12:25): Because you can't you can't you're not gonna make money if you're serving breakfast.

Unknown Speaker (12:28): Oh, this must this must have been a brunch.

Unknown Speaker (12:30): Every day.

Unknown Speaker (12:30): Brunch. It was definitely a brunch for that kind of money.

Speaker 0 (12:32): I'm gonna I'm gonna include this though in this episode because, you know, it's like, it's the same thing in my opinion. Mhmm. But yeah. The $50 and breakfast. I remember I went one time it was good, but I was like, I don't know.

Speaker 0 (12:44): I just, like, I don't like to eat until noon normally, but I guess you're

Unknown Speaker (12:47): after

Speaker 0 (12:48): eating brunch, it's like their brunch runs till, like, one, I guess. One or two. Something like that. But since I don't drink alcohol anymore, it's like, why would you even go to brunch? You know?

Unknown Speaker (12:59): There? I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (13:00): It was. Okay. I'm just wrapped back and but I'll let you finish. I'm sorry. Finish your thought.

Unknown Speaker (13:08): Oh, I I

Speaker 0 (13:08): was pretty much done. Other than the fact that I've been doing making a list of breakfast burritos in LA. I'm at, like, 25 or 30 at this point.

Speaker 1 (13:17): Roots has got one that's just wow. Really, really good. Breakfast burrito. Breakfast breakfast burrito is just yes. Yes.

Speaker 1 (13:23): Yep. Around here, I haven't I I'm not on a thing. I love the, it's silver diner. They had huevos rancheros with bison.

Speaker 0 (13:31): Oh, that's still really good. Years later after they added that to the menu. You know?

Speaker 1 (13:36): Really, really good. And I still go there. And every time I order or near breakfast, I'm like, huevos rancheros.

Unknown Speaker (13:41): When's the last time you went there?

Speaker 1 (13:44): You know, she was asking me what I wanna do for Father's Day. I'm going like, I could go there. And then we we ended up just eating ice cream from her birthday. Oh, yeah. And, I had bought her some, fruit that was chocolate dipped, you know, the edibles.

Unknown Speaker (13:58): Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:58): Whatever they are. Not not the smoking weed edibles, but the, fruit edibles that you get. And, for her birthday because her birthday was the day before. And You get the strawberries. Chocolate Strawberries, chocolate, strawberries, pineapples, chocolate dipped apples Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (14:15): Chocolate dipped bananas.

Speaker 0 (14:16): They're always amazing to say what you will about edible arrangements and how much it costs and everything like that. But, man, the quality of the fruit every single time. I don't know what they do. I don't know what they do, what the GMOs are in that fruit, but every single time, it's incredible.

Speaker 1 (14:33): Would say Yeah. That I that I that when I buy a bouquet, it's like buck and a half. Right?

Unknown Speaker (14:40): Oh, it's so expensive. Yeah. Something like that.

Speaker 1 (14:42): I bought a $99 fruit tray Mhmm. That was more than either one of us could eat in multiple days

Unknown Speaker (14:51): before it spoil.

Speaker 1 (14:53): And it had two little cheesecakes with funfetti on each one. It was just so funfetti dipped strawberries. Oh my god. They were I could not like, very, very addicting. Amazing, amazing food.

Speaker 1 (15:08): Just just really, really, really loved it. I mean, I look at that. I look at what else was I gonna talk about? Oh, another another amazing brunch that I had was used to be a used to be a restaurant in Georgetown, and it was on the if you're going down M Street towards the city, on the right hand side at 29th And M, I can't remember the name of it. I was dating somebody in '86 or '87, '86, '86 from Dallas.

Speaker 1 (15:41): And she used to come up here and visit, and I would visit her in Dallas. And she came up and visit for the weekend, and she had a flight that night. So we go at 11:00, and they and it's a champagne brunch for, like, $30. All you could drink champagne.

Unknown Speaker (15:58): Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (15:59): Oh my god. I don't remember going home. I don't remember kissing her goodbye. I don't remember how she got to the airport. I called her, not that night because I passed out, and I woke up I woke up at, like, real late, and I was worried.

Speaker 1 (16:20): And this is before you could track people on a phone.

Unknown Speaker (16:22): Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (16:22): So I called her the next morning and, worst worst worst hangover I've had in a long time.

Unknown Speaker (16:30): Hangover is top 10.

Speaker 1 (16:31): But she was she made it, and she lived in Dallas, she had to catch flight, and she went out, and I'm going like, do you how didn't you how'd you get that? And she goes, I thought it was a good idea for me to take a taxi. And I'm like, oh, okay. I I I'm a little I'm a little short on mine, dear. But that was, oh my god, it was a great time.

Speaker 1 (16:54): We had eggs Benedict and the eggs Benedict was amazing. Maybe if you drink six glasses of champagne with your eggs Benedict, then it's really, really, really good. And it was like it was a good champagne. It was not like a a a rocket Corbel, but it was a good it was a good quality, great western, I think it was. But it was and I was just, like, shocked that they would serve decent champagne.

Speaker 1 (17:19): We

Unknown Speaker (17:20): drank shocking.

Speaker 1 (17:21): Four to six bottles between us. It was just because she was a rockin' drunk, and I was a rockin' drunk. And two rockin' drunks that just ate breakfast and all weekend long and we were in our prime. I was. She was probably 105.

Speaker 1 (17:36): I remember my sister met her and goes like, she's a little old for you. I don't know about you, man, but when you're when you're when you're one of your peers, your your brother, your sister, you wouldn't have this, your friends tells you that she she a little old for you?

Speaker 0 (17:58): I think that's so being yeah. I think the champagne hangover, I said top five before. No. It's number one, actually. Yeah.

Speaker 0 (18:03): Because there's nothing worse than a champagne hangover. Even malt liquor, like, is not as bad as in, steel reserve and fortified wine, not nearly as bad as champagne.

Unknown Speaker (18:14): Give me the bull, man.

Speaker 0 (18:16): The champagne hangover. Red rumor. During during the pandemic, we drank about four or five bottles one night. And that was, I woke up, and I thought I had died.

Unknown Speaker (18:25): Somebody's just kicking you in the head.

Unknown Speaker (18:27): Just like Constant.

Speaker 1 (18:28): There's nothing you can do about it. You do aspirin. You drink water, and you and you have the you have the, the the liquor sweats.

Unknown Speaker (18:36): Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:37): Which is just and they smell, and it makes you wanna vomit, but you can't really vomit because you don't you know? And you're just

Speaker 0 (18:42): Well, the nice thing about the liquor hangover too is that it's all bile. So you're just throwing a bile, but your head doesn't really

Unknown Speaker (18:48): hurt that much. Chuck the night before.

Speaker 0 (18:51): Yeah. That too. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (18:52): I mean, the beer hangover is good because Yeah. Usually, you've eaten two fucking large pizzas before you went to pet.

Speaker 0 (18:59): No. Exactly. And I I would have to agree. But breakfast wise, I'm trying to think of other famous breakfasts that I Chesapeake Bagel Bakery. Chesapeake Bagel Bakery.

Unknown Speaker (19:08): My god. Number one

Speaker 0 (19:10): in my heart and number one of all time. We gotta make merchandise for Chesapeake Bagel Bakery. That'd be awesome. They are. They

Speaker 1 (19:18): are. Yeah. The one in McLean. Why? Tried them.

Unknown Speaker (19:22): People Have you tried them anywhere else?

Speaker 0 (19:23): There's one in Chesterbrook Shopping Center, and then there's one in,

Unknown Speaker (19:26): like Chesterbrook?

Speaker 0 (19:28): Yeah. Yeah. No. We're not Chesterbrook. Where's Peter Cha?

Unknown Speaker (19:32): Peter Cha?

Speaker 0 (19:33): Where the Harris Teeter is in Arlington.

Speaker 1 (19:36): Oh, there's one there? Yeah. There's one there.

Speaker 0 (19:39): I didn't know that until I was 16, and I went over and I saw Blue Deeba. And I said, oh my god. There's a Chesapeake Bagel Bakery over here. He's like, yeah. This this is the only one.

Speaker 0 (19:49): And I'm like, no. There's one in McLean. He's like, what? There's one in McLean? And it was the weirdest thing ever.

Speaker 0 (19:55): It's like when you go through the doorway and you're going to a parallel universe. But no, that's that's the weirdest place in the world because it's in like a rundown shopping center. In the one of the richest small towns in the world. And and all schoolers go there and all the all the older people go there.

Speaker 1 (20:13): That's the Arlington one. Okay. I've got Mhmm. I've got one Old Dominion. That's ours.

Speaker 1 (20:18): There's one Yorktown. That's probably his. There's one in Burke. Your mother and I went to. They've got I see three.

Unknown Speaker (20:26): There's one in Burke, really.

Speaker 1 (20:27): So there's three. There's only three. There used to be a bunch of them when they started to expand and

Unknown Speaker (20:31): Well, was like Einstein. Right?

Speaker 1 (20:33): Family owned and operated. Well, Einstein never got the bagels were too big.

Unknown Speaker (20:38): Einstein sucks.

Speaker 1 (20:39): And they were chewy. They and and I know you peep you're supposed to want chewy, but they were they were overly chewy.

Speaker 0 (20:46): What is that with people that are always talking about, having, you know what's weird too is that at other bagel places, they ask me when I order a bagel sandwich, do you want it toasted? I'm like, no shit. I want it toasted. What do you mean?

Speaker 1 (21:00): What Why would anybody not want a bagel?

Speaker 0 (21:02): And then, like, that's 80% of other bagel places. They ask me if I want my bagel toasted.

Unknown Speaker (21:07): New York would do that all the time because they wanna get it they wanna get served fast, and you're like

Speaker 0 (21:10): Well, I want a bagel with cream cheese that's not toasted.

Speaker 1 (21:13): That makes no sense. I've seen that done, and you know why?

Speaker 0 (21:16): Why? Why? Tell me explain.

Speaker 1 (21:17): Because I don't have time. I see this all the time. In New York, I would see it a lot, and I'd just see people go, oh, bagel, bagel, cream cheese, bagel cream cheese. But then I was just like, not toasted? What what?

Speaker 0 (21:31): That's disgusting.

Speaker 1 (21:33): And you'd be like, what? And and and I'm talking like, I was our office was the Helmsley, and we and I would get there and go across the street to where, Grand Central Station is. And there's a there's a bakery, whatever the hell you call it, cookie maker sandwich, you make food by the pound deli place there that you go through. And I grab a bagel there and then go to the office and a bagel and cream cheese. It's like, you know, it's it's like $1,100.

Speaker 1 (22:04): And, you know, like everything in New York. But every single day. You wanna toast it? You wanna toast it? No.

Speaker 1 (22:14): I I want you to wipe it in your armpit and put a little hair on it and then put some cheese on it and then maybe let that guy rub it across his mustache and then wrap it up and give it to me.

Speaker 0 (22:26): You know what I will say? I will say one faster. Is that NY Bagels in Maravista is a solid competitor to Chesapeake. My god. Really?

Speaker 0 (22:36): Oh my gosh. I was shocked. In Maravista, California. Yeah. And in Los Angeles, matter of fact, it's a neighborhood in Los Angeles.

Speaker 0 (22:45): It's called NY Bagels. Yeah. It looks like there's any other bagel place, but it's not. Oh my gosh. Like, is

Unknown Speaker (22:52): Do they make them in the big kettle and they cook them in there?

Speaker 0 (22:54): So because the the bagels are that good. I was shocked. And the sandwich too, you get you get an Italian and they stack it perfectly high. Like this. It's like this high of a sandwich.

Speaker 1 (23:03): Like a Carnegie Deli sandwich.

Unknown Speaker (23:05): It's amazing. It's absolutely incredible.

Speaker 1 (23:07): I mean, the Carnegie Deli was too much. It was it was way too much. But I mean, I think of other places for, like, brunch that, I've done Jay Gilbert's brunch. It's okay.

Speaker 0 (23:16): It's I didn't even know they did brunch.

Speaker 1 (23:18): You get what you pay for. And then Family Farmers, I liked it. In the beginning. Maybe the first time or the second time, but then now it's it's it's burned it out.

Speaker 0 (23:28): It became rundown. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:30): I can eat the bagel bakery once a week and not have a problem. I can do, I can do roots once a week, the burrito, you know, the breakfast burrito, sausage is just, woah, just really, really, really. I don't know if they do Jimmy Dean or whatever it is. I would tell you, if you think about certain types of breakfast foods, the Jimmy Dean sausages or the Jimmy Dean Like the

Unknown Speaker (23:54): ground sausage?

Unknown Speaker (23:55): Or or the biscuits.

Unknown Speaker (23:56): You can buy the tube at the store. You can buy the ground sausage at the store.

Speaker 1 (24:00): Yep. That's it. That is so good. We used to have that when I was a kid when we when when my mother finally got a raise to where she was it was above a subsistence level. We would that was one of the splurges to buy Jimmy Dean sausage because we always bought Gwaltney.

Speaker 1 (24:14): Gwaltney is sausage, you know, which was I think Gwaltney was owned by Smithfield. I I don't remember. But then we moved to Jimmy Dean's, was much more expensive. Oh my god. And and what was the other one?

Unknown Speaker (24:31): There's a restaurant named after it. You know, like, I've been at Cracker Barrel.

Unknown Speaker (24:35): No. Crystal? Crystal Restaurant. Well, that's a hot sauce.

Unknown Speaker (24:38): No. No. No. Uh-uh.

Speaker 0 (24:40): That's a Louisiana hot sauce. That's a hot sauce. Well,

Speaker 1 (24:43): well, the Cracker Barrel, I'll never eat that again because of what your your meme said.

Unknown Speaker (24:47): Yeah. That was foul.

Unknown Speaker (24:48): You know? That's I never really

Unknown Speaker (24:49): liked it in the first place.

Speaker 1 (24:51): I always felt like it's it's it smells like old people, which I wouldn't know that. You know?

Speaker 0 (24:57): I went once. Yeah. And I don't think. I went to Denny's the other day. You gotta be really specific about what you order there because Yeah.

Speaker 0 (25:04): You gotta order the newer menu items because, like, the grand slam and stuff like that is all old usually. They made it hours ago.

Speaker 1 (25:12): I would say that I love Denny's when my mother had Alzheimer's because we would take her there and it was like right next door to Sunrise where they had what is it? How do I put this in a way that won't piss people off? Alzheimer's. You know, she was in the what do they call it when you're when you're

Unknown Speaker (25:34): Late stages?

Speaker 1 (25:36): Yeah. No. But they called it, something care, brain care, something like that instead of, like, pudding head care. And and, I'm looking Carnegie Deli and dinner and cafe. We went to the Carnegie's for breakfast.

Speaker 1 (25:50): It was pretty good. The cake was the best. Where is that?

Unknown Speaker (25:54): Look at him.

Speaker 1 (25:55): That's down in Vienna on the other side.

Speaker 0 (25:58): Oh, interesting.

Unknown Speaker (25:59): It's but it's not You know

Speaker 0 (26:01): what I had a, an ad for the other day that you're gonna like? You remember the the sandwich restaurant chasing the sub? Yeah. Yeah. So they actually rebranded as the sandwich shop in Vienna, which I didn't realize.

Speaker 0 (26:15): Yeah. Oh. And I thought interesting because they did a coleslaw, but it was a carrot slaw on a ribbon. Love that. And it was like, you you say, it's not gonna be good.

Speaker 0 (26:25): No. It made a lot of sense. It made a lot of sense and it tasted really good.

Unknown Speaker (26:32): Hearth, that's the Hilton answer to the other. I've eaten there and that's pretty good.

Speaker 0 (26:36): I remember I went there when I was a kid with you.

Unknown Speaker (26:40): Yep. And we ate in the Hilton at, Tyson's Corner because it was one of those special occasions. It's like

Speaker 0 (26:45): a bone marrow thing or something that we ate. Yeah. Remember it was it was interesting.

Unknown Speaker (26:49): Oh, wow. I'm looking at Paris Baguette. That's a place I used to eat.

Speaker 0 (26:52): That's Japanese owned, funny enough. Really?

Speaker 1 (26:55): Yep. But I was there and then on the way to work every day, stopped by and there was a place that had oatmeal And I would get oatmeal at 29th, and I would be walking up 29th Street to 5th 5th Avenue, which is where the office was. And I was on 8th, so I would go 7th, 6th, 5th. And avenues in New York are three times as long or twice as long as streets. So I get and I think it was between 6th and 7th.

Speaker 1 (27:28): You know? And I'm on 8th, so I'd go up and it was on the corner, maybe four blocks over from, Madison Square Garden, and there's a a it was one of those healthy places. It was like truish or truest or true that which is a bank, but not that. Yeah. It it kinda was like a Whole Foods whatever, but it was only you it was food by the pound, but then they also did all sorts of oatmeal breakfasts.

Speaker 1 (27:57): And people went in there for every type of weird ass coffee. You know, I want the half calf with this with, yeah, with the celery dust and the Well, I'll

Unknown Speaker (28:07): tell you. I hate oatmeal. All of that. I'm not an oatmeal guy.

Speaker 1 (28:11): I did they now now I would not eat oatmeal by itself, but they did oatmeal with pecans, and it was oatmeal with four items. I had brown sugar. I had blueberries, almonds, no, pecans, and then I would put something else in. What the fuck else would I do? There was one other thing that I put in there.

Speaker 1 (28:33): Cranberries. Cranberries.

Unknown Speaker (28:35): Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 (28:36): And I would And I would mind. And I would sometimes I would just do strawberries and blueberries. Sometimes I would do bananas and blueberries and strawberries and pecans, and it was just like and the and the tub was about this big. It was like $7 for for, like, not a lot, but it was just it was sugar, you know, fruit sugar, and it was just give me a buzz. You know?

Unknown Speaker (29:03): Just wow.

Speaker 0 (29:04): Concept of breakfast currently. Why did McDonald's end their $24.07 breakfast? I feel like they were making money hand over fist that way because the breakfast is better than most of the menu items to begin with.

Speaker 1 (29:16): Well, there's something to be said for, what do you call it, desire? Yeah. Because if if if you if you have something on all the time, I can get it anytime I want. There's not a there's not an end to it. Right?

Speaker 1 (29:33): So there's no there's no stampeding to the door to get breakfast.

Unknown Speaker (29:36): They said

Speaker 1 (29:36): that's I want. Now there's another thing that can happen too. If everybody's eating breakfast, nobody's buying higher margin items. Like, if you're eating breakfast all the time, are you always getting a Coke? Are you getting water?

Speaker 1 (29:52): Are you getting are you always if you're eating breakfast all the time, are you eating, are you getting a bag of french fries, which costs more than a hash brown, which the margin I'm sure is fatter. You know, are you getting a, if you get a hamburger, this happy meal, whatever the hell it is, crap, you would get you you can Step into my office.

Speaker 0 (30:12): We're gonna hire you on as a franchise owner. Right. Well, you know, you could

Speaker 1 (30:15): what what you wanna do is you wanna sell items that have wider margins along with ones that are sort of bring you in and give me. You know?

Unknown Speaker (30:24): Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:24): I mean, soda costs like 3¢ to make and the cup costs 4 or 5¢ or 9¢. I don't know what the fuck what it is, but they charge you a buck 99.

Unknown Speaker (30:33): And then the

Speaker 1 (30:33): So they may make nothing of food that they sell you to. Provided you get a Coke. And if you get a Coke for which now is $2.50 or

Speaker 0 (30:44): It used to be $1 any size, which is It's

Unknown Speaker (30:47): $2.99

Unknown Speaker (30:48): it's $2.99

Speaker 1 (30:49): at, five guys. You believe that?

Unknown Speaker (30:51): Crazy. Five guys is highway robbery, and the last time I had it, it

Speaker 1 (30:55): was foul. It was upsetting. I I the cheeseburger is the best after, two bottles of wine.

Unknown Speaker (31:03): What else? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:04): And a little one. I don't want the big one. I well, the thing is I'm kinda leaning towards the bigger one because I'm fatter and older. But, also, here's a weird thing. You know, they talk about breakfast and how you're the most important meal of the day, blah blah blah, and you eat this and all that.

Speaker 1 (31:16): And but, know, we've seen what our nutritional experts have done through the years and told us that everybody has to drink milk, and now nobody has drink milk.

Unknown Speaker (31:24): Oh, it's all a

Unknown Speaker (31:24): bunch of lies.

Unknown Speaker (31:25): Everybody has to do So something else. Who

Speaker 1 (31:28): well, right now, for me, when I wake up in the morning, typically, I don't want anything.

Speaker 0 (31:37): I

Speaker 1 (31:37): do. And and and it is not true that your metabolism needs to start again.

Unknown Speaker (31:45): It already does.

Speaker 1 (31:45): If it did, you would be dead. Okay? Your metabolism is always working.

Speaker 0 (31:50): Or to speed up your metabolism or to navigate it in

Speaker 1 (31:55): a different source. Bar. I mean, that's no.

Speaker 0 (31:57): No. Eat a banana. That doesn't make any sense. It's all been

Speaker 1 (31:59): all fine. I would and the only way for me to drop a little weight is to eat my two meals a day instead of three. I snack late. And if and if I eat a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner, I I'm I'm gaining weight. I don't need that many calories because I don't burn that many calories.

Speaker 1 (32:19): Even when I

Speaker 0 (32:20): Exactly.

Speaker 1 (32:20): Walk the dogs, even when I work out downstairs in the gym, I get 11,000 steps in yesterday, and my calorie count is higher if I eat breakfast. I can't I can't afford to.

Speaker 0 (32:31): Calories in, calories out. It's that easy. Everybody's like, here's this ab exercise that you need to do to build a six pack. It's like, no. Train it like any other muscle.

Unknown Speaker (32:41): I do. Train it two to three

Unknown Speaker (32:42): times a week. Do I do.

Speaker 0 (32:45): Three, four sets of four, maybe three exercises. You'll be fine.

Unknown Speaker (32:49): I'm doing sit ups.

Unknown Speaker (32:50): There you go.

Unknown Speaker (32:51): I do. What else what else should I do?

Speaker 0 (32:53): Do. I like cherry pickers. Cherry pickers are really good. You put your ankles straight up in the air and then you touch your ankles.

Unknown Speaker (33:01): Okay.

Speaker 0 (33:01): Go from a flat like that.

Speaker 1 (33:04): Oh, I can't even raise myself. I'm too fat. Let me I'm gonna try that. Anything really good. Anything that's not really

Unknown Speaker (33:10): Russian

Speaker 1 (33:10): my twist. Knee.

Unknown Speaker (33:12): Russian twist then would be good.

Unknown Speaker (33:13): Yeah. That's a good one, but I don't have any balance on my ass hurts because I don't have one.

Speaker 0 (33:16): Well, you don't have any balance. Can do it standing on a cable machine. That's a

Unknown Speaker (33:20): I am working on the I'm working on the balance every time now because I do balance.

Unknown Speaker (33:23): How about press is good?

Speaker 1 (33:25): So what about rowing again? Because I was looking at that machine saying, I haven't done that in a while.

Speaker 0 (33:29): That's a really good calorie burner. That that is probably the best calorie burner aside from the step mill or the StairMaster.

Speaker 1 (33:39): Okay. Okay. So I what I should do is when when when you exercise before you eat breakfast, do you start with the hard exercise or do you wait until the end and do it?

Unknown Speaker (33:51): I always do the hardest thing first.

Unknown Speaker (33:52): That's what

Speaker 0 (33:53): I always do. But I actually up though. Make sure there's blood in those tendons before

Unknown Speaker (33:57): I don't even doing that. Don't I don't do that. That's that's you think a lion warms up when it goes kills a deer?

Speaker 0 (34:02): Yeah. A lion, though, doesn't tear his Achilles. So, I mean, that's just what

Unknown Speaker (34:05): I'm saying. True. Horse quadriceps.

Unknown Speaker (34:08): Yep. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (34:09): Yeah. This fat bastard has done Yeah. My quadriceps. Yeah. What what are In the olden days.

Speaker 0 (34:15): What do you think about, crab omelet? What what are your opinions on a crab omelet?

Speaker 1 (34:19): Seafood seafood and breakfast is for even though I loved that

Speaker 0 (34:24): Crab cake Benedict? What do think about a crab cake Benedict?

Speaker 1 (34:27): No. That makes me wanna go, hey. Just a minute. I need to go to the bathroom because I need to boot. Okay?

Unknown Speaker (34:32): What about smoked salmon? Smoked salmon?

Speaker 1 (34:35): I think you have to go with one or the other.

Unknown Speaker (34:37): I can't Salmon on a bagel?

Speaker 1 (34:38): I cannot eat eggs and seafood. It just

Unknown Speaker (34:42): Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:42): Like, when I did when we

Unknown Speaker (34:44): night, Baron. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:45): When we did the Ritz Carlton breakfast Yeah. Before you were born, I did not eat anything, any eggs. I could not. It was like it just seafood and eggs do not mix. It's the same thing as hot dogs and eggs.

Speaker 1 (35:00): They just don't. They're just they're just something that I cannot imagine.

Speaker 0 (35:04): Benedict, I can do. Smoked salmon, I can't do anymore. I ate too much smoked salmon in one year. Can't ever eat it ever again. They can't do it.

Speaker 1 (35:11): For lunch on a sandwich for a bagel.

Unknown Speaker (35:13): I can't do that. I can't

Speaker 1 (35:14): do much salmon. If you put smoked on a sandwich and then you put other meat or other things that went with it, I think that'd be kinda cool.

Speaker 0 (35:22): Well, that's where you get the onion. The onion and the capers and the dill. That's the only way that you can do it is that it counteracts It fogs you out. Yeah. The fishiness.

Unknown Speaker (35:29): Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:30): Yeah. Yep. And if you can smell the fish, it's it's too old.

Speaker 0 (35:34): Trying to think of another bread. You know what I think about too is when me and Sean drove from Arizona all the way through California up to Alberta, across from Alberta to Maine, we ate at a lot of Holiday Inn's. And the Holiday Inn always has the the eggs.

Unknown Speaker (35:48): Oh, the breakfast eggs. Yeah. Like Holiday Express because I I eat there for ten years.

Speaker 0 (35:52): Yep. It's not great, but it'll do, you know?

Unknown Speaker (35:55): Because they had

Unknown Speaker (35:56): bacon. You can make a breakfast sandwich. I mean, that's what I

Speaker 1 (35:58): had a biscuit. They had a biscuit. They had the they had the little round cylinder sausages or they had the links. I like the links better, but the cylinders were okay for the biscuit because the biscuits were the best. And then they had a the sausage gravy, and then they had this egg that was a omelet that they folded it.

Speaker 1 (36:17): They made it folded. They were all exactly the same. I I assume it was powder. I don't know. Nothing was ever scrambled.

Speaker 1 (36:23): It was always this folded omelet type thing. So you could put the three of them on a biscuit, you could eat it. You know? Mhmm. And there were always, on that hotel because it was cheap.

Speaker 1 (36:35): There were just it it was everybody nobody spoke English there. Everybody was, like, Hungarian or Czech or or Nordic or

Unknown Speaker (36:44): You're talking about New York?

Speaker 1 (36:45): Swedish. Yeah. So it was so interesting to go there for breakfast and sit down, and I I drink my six cups of three cups of coffee and eat my little sandwich. And I would only do that because I wanted to sit and listen to people talk because it was so interesting because you would hear them. And they would look at you waiting for you to and I would go down there, and they had little tiny tables that, you know, two people sat at it or three, but I'd go by myself and go sit.

Speaker 1 (37:12): And And I eat my little breakfast, have my briefcase and all that stuff, gonna go out the door and walk my six blocks to get to the office. And it was just the neatest thing to look around and to listen to people. And there were people there with kids and all that kind of stuff like that with little, and they're yelling at the kids in a different language, and I I always love that. I just love that.

Speaker 0 (37:30): Clifford, eat your french fries.

Speaker 1 (37:32): Yeah. That that, but also, I mean, I remember in Germany, the wife and I were at a hotel. No. It wasn't Germany. It was Paris.

Speaker 1 (37:43): We were in a in a hotel, it might have been that same trip. No. It wasn't. It was later. It was a much better hotel.

Speaker 1 (37:50): They had a they had a really nice breakfast space downstairs. And the they were eat, we were eating breakfast and we're sitting over there and we're talking and you know, being all romantic, you know, like kind of happy horseshit where you, you know, the next morning, you brush your teeth so you can kiss each other.

Unknown Speaker (38:04): Yeah, when you

Speaker 1 (38:04): fall in love and It was really early in the relationship, you know, not now where you're get away from me, you bastard. You know, no. No. It's not that. But there was this German couple and they were talk, you know, and had the weight, the short, choppy German.

Speaker 1 (38:20): I don't I I I don't know how to speak German. You know, in that real harsh tone.

Speaker 0 (38:27): He'd been Berliner Berliner was the thing.

Speaker 1 (38:30): Berliner. And then there were, like, there was a mother and a father and a little kid, and the little kid was, like, six. And they were, like, food on his plate. He was nine. Nine.

Speaker 1 (38:41): Nine. And he just kept yelling that. And they're like, and they were looking around, embarrassed parents, and this was so funny because they were like trying to put put vegetables or green shit or whatever stuff that's good for kids at the time. And I really wasn't looking too closely at the food, but the kid was like, nothing.

Speaker 0 (39:00): It's a universal experience.

Speaker 1 (39:02): And it was just like, oh my god. It happens everywhere. And it was just so it was just so, yes, I love this. This was wonderful. What a what a wonderful experience, you know?

Speaker 0 (39:12): Wonderful.

Speaker 1 (39:12): That might have been in Venice now that I think about it because we had already had a kid and we already knew that you guys were shits, you know, and that you could be shits, not that you were. Yeah. But and there was no controlling it. You know, people say, you can control your children. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (39:28): No. You can't. A cattle prod, but then that's Well, I

Speaker 0 (39:32): feel like today people are not trying nearly as hard. I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (39:36): Right. Well

Unknown Speaker (39:36): It seems like they are.

Speaker 1 (39:38): People have accepted the fact that, kids can do anything and kids are the center of the universe. And, I mean, when I was growing up, if parents met, we would leave the room.

Speaker 0 (39:52): Well, the whole thing for me, it's like, you guys had sex. Why is that my fault? Why is that my fault? Why do I have to deal with you guys having sex?

Unknown Speaker (40:02): Well, I think the reason we had sex is so you could wipe our ass when we're old.

Unknown Speaker (40:06): No. No. Not you. I'm talking about parents in public.

Unknown Speaker (40:08): That's the only reason we had sex is so you could wipe our ass when we're old.

Unknown Speaker (40:11): Exactly. But, you know, I'm just talking about parents.

Unknown Speaker (40:14): Parents do it?

Speaker 0 (40:15): In public with their kids, and they're screaming. They're like, well, like, you know, mothers and fathers should be the most appreciated people in the world. I'm like, why? But why? No.

Speaker 0 (40:25): Procreation I don't buy that. You higher on a level of, I don't know, of people. Having a kid doesn't make you more special than anybody else. No.

Speaker 1 (40:34): It doesn't. You're you're you're what to me, it's the same as telling me I should believe in your religion.

Unknown Speaker (40:40): You created a problem for yourself, and you have to deal with it. And that's I

Speaker 1 (40:44): don't see I don't see it as I see it as a I have tolerance, and I noticed that people that have children that have had children have more tolerance than people that haven't because people that haven't don't understand and don't don't don't have the same sense of what, you know, what it is to try to get a little monkey to do something for you. Not that they have to. Not that they have to be understanding. None of that has to happen. I can see it.

Speaker 1 (41:15): We were we were that way. We were we were the ones that thought that we were child free. We were not childless. And we always thought that if we ever had a kid that he would do everything that we thought and we would and he wouldn't be the guy screaming on the plane. He wouldn't be the one doing this.

Speaker 1 (41:30): He wouldn't and we were dead freaking wrong because you can't choke the out of a kid in a in a Safeway, you know, line.

Speaker 0 (41:39): Just You

Speaker 1 (41:40): can grab his hand and you can you can break all the bones in his hand but you know what happens? Then the guy's crippled and then all of a sudden, people get all freaky when you break your kid's hands and bunches of pizzas.

Unknown Speaker (41:51): I don't know why they would. You know?

Speaker 1 (41:52): And then he cries anyway and louder, you know, so then you gotta stick a sock in his mouth. And when I do that in Safeway, they really get weird. Are you doing? Well, I'm trying to make him quiet.

Speaker 0 (42:05): Well, I'll tell you a story about breakfast. Thunder Bay, Canada. I think it's in the Saskatchewan province. Uh-huh. Or territory.

Speaker 0 (42:13): Sorry. Not province.

Unknown Speaker (42:14): Okay.

Speaker 0 (42:14): And so we wake up. Me and Sean wake up. We go downstairs to the breakfast place. She's getting the breakfast ready. She's, like, seven years old or something.

Unknown Speaker (42:21): She's like,

Unknown Speaker (42:22): it will be it

Unknown Speaker (42:22): will be ready in five minutes. It's early. And I'm like, okay. Okay.

Unknown Speaker (42:25): Oh my gosh. I'm

Speaker 0 (42:26): back five minutes later. She's like, you have to pick up the spoon for the eggs like this, and you have to set it down here. You have to. You have to do it. She's giving this ten minute tutorial on how Really?

Speaker 0 (42:37): On how to put things on your plate at breakfast. And me and Sean are, like, trying not to laugh. Like, we're really trying not to laugh. We go. We sit down after we feed ourselves.

Speaker 0 (42:45): A guy comes in. A guy comes in. He picks up the spoon in the wrong way, and then he cross contaminates because he takes the egg spoon and he gets the bacon. She's like, what are you doing? What are you oh my god.

Speaker 0 (42:57): And then she, like, gives him a fifteen minute tutorial on how to set his breakfast and I it's the funniest thing. And then another guy comes in. And then it's like the line starts to build because she has to give each person this tutorial. Yeah. Put breakfast on your plate.

Unknown Speaker (43:11): It was

Unknown Speaker (43:11): so Oh my gosh.

Speaker 0 (43:12): I will never forget that. I thought that that was so funny. Oh my gosh. Absolutely hilarious.

Speaker 1 (43:19): I just did a search of breakfast on my just in my photos. I have 75 pictures of breakfast.

Speaker 0 (43:31): Yep. What's the best one? What's the best one that you have?

Unknown Speaker (43:35): I sent you one. I'm like, I like I like that. I like Let's see.

Unknown Speaker (43:44): Let's see the

Speaker 1 (43:44): There's another one, BLT. I love a BLT.

Unknown Speaker (43:47): I do love a BLT as well. What the hell is this?

Speaker 1 (43:49): Did you make this? One. Oh, here's one. This is really good. This is Ocean City.

Speaker 0 (43:54): I don't even know how I really feel about honey baked ham when I think about it.

Speaker 1 (43:57): Oh, no. What about chicken and waffles for breakfast?

Speaker 0 (44:00): Not a big sweet guy. Oh my god. I Cherry tomatoes sandwich is not my thing either. I don't like cherry

Unknown Speaker (44:07): tomatoes. Really?

Speaker 0 (44:09): I like regular tomato.

Speaker 1 (44:11): I'm a chicken and waffles guy if it's got the rights. Well, if you look at that last chicken

Unknown Speaker (44:15): and waffles gravy is my my jam. I love sausage gravy.

Speaker 1 (44:18): I have a chicken and waffles there, and there's a beer.

Speaker 0 (44:21): That's funny. Sausage gravy is my thing. I like sausage gravy, over biscuits. Normally, it's good, but I gotta be in the mood for it. Yeah.

Speaker 0 (44:31): Chicken fried steak. I like a chicken fried steak

Unknown Speaker (44:34): for breakfast.

Speaker 0 (44:36): Yeah. Chicken fried steak for breakfast is great.

Speaker 1 (44:38): But I can only do that every so often. It's not something I can do.

Unknown Speaker (44:41): No. I couldn't do that on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 (44:44): These this breakfast that I'm sending you, this next two.

Unknown Speaker (44:47): What is this? Eggs Benedict? Is that from the pandemic?

Unknown Speaker (44:50): That's Cartagena.

Unknown Speaker (44:51): Oh, okay.

Unknown Speaker (44:52): Got it. That's from

Speaker 0 (44:53): We made eggs Benedict during the pandemic. Making the, what is it? Hollandaise? You can make it in a blender a lot easier than you can make it in a double boiler. Yeah.

Speaker 0 (45:02): What is this sauce on the side? It looks weird.

Unknown Speaker (45:04): Look at that stuff.

Unknown Speaker (45:05): It's like mustard and stuff. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (45:07): This is this is your breakfast, and it looks like there's a beet Filos. There's one.

Unknown Speaker (45:14): Los Filos in California.

Speaker 1 (45:17): This is so funny. You're oh, it's a burrito at that breakfast place.

Speaker 0 (45:20): I got food poisoning from that burrito that

Unknown Speaker (45:22): you took. Oh my god. This is the worst this is the worst

Speaker 0 (45:25): Man, my hair looks great there.

Speaker 1 (45:27): I just say you that right there

Speaker 0 (45:29): is the That's actually proof that my hairline isn't receding.

Speaker 1 (45:31): Remember the breakfast pizza? Breakfast pizza. That was foul. I just I sent you a picture of that. I did not realize it.

Speaker 1 (45:41): That was the worst.

Unknown Speaker (45:43): Wait. One second.

Speaker 1 (45:44): And then the the cool thing is is I sent you a bunch of pictures that I that I started looking around that we take we tend to eat together as a family when we do breakfast and also or we take pictures of making it. But we do like, it's always like that, like, your your various your your your girlfriend, the, the different places. Like, I have it from Cuba, where your mother and I had a breakfast, that we went to somebody's house and they cooked it for us. It's really, really cool. We went to, Gemini, Cartagena.

Speaker 1 (46:21): We had a breakfast there on the beach. Bogota, we had a breakfast there. Buenos Aires, we had a breakfast there. And, I mean, it's like it's so cool because it's like, of all the meals that I take pictures of, for some reason, it seems like I just looked at my pictures that I wrote and I put in breakfast. 600 photos.

Unknown Speaker (46:41): Crazy.

Speaker 1 (46:43): What the I mean, evidently, I eat breakfast a lot. You know? But all of these but these are not home photos. There's a couple that are home photos. But for the most part, they're all just, you know, on the strip with various different people, you know, that, that I'm friends with that, hey.

Speaker 1 (47:03): We meet, and we meet for breakfast because I think that that it's sort of I like breakfast to meet people because I think it's more of a a wake up. It's more of an introduction. It's more of a we can you can talk around breakfast more than you talk around lunch. Yeah. And it's one third the price of dinner.

Speaker 1 (47:24): So and also, a lot of people don't wanna stay past the end of their day to talk to somebody about, you know, friends and stuff if you like. But breakfast to me is basically I if I go to breakfast with you and then you go on to work or I go to work and we we do whatever we do, you feel like you've accomplished something before you even started your day.

Unknown Speaker (47:46): That's fair. I agree with that.

Speaker 1 (47:47): You know? And the food is like and and and part of the process is saying, does the food suck ass, or is it rotten, or is there there frogs crawling in it, or, you know, whatever. Or is it just, wow, this is something I never would have thought, and it's truly exquisite. You know, and those are the kind of things. And it's like, I I mean, as I get older, I find that breaking bread with people is a is a wonderful relationship builder, it's a great way to stay in contact with people.

Speaker 1 (48:19): I do this, I do it with a lot of my friends that would, I hope I'm their friend or whatever, but we, you know, we, I have done this process where I start scheduling people to meet them every quarter, and we will meet for breakfast. Like, I meet and and they're you know, everybody has friends and friends that they're they'd like to see more, and their first response is, you know, hey. We'll get together soon.

Unknown Speaker (48:47): Yep. Every time.

Speaker 1 (48:48): Which is basically, I'm never gonna see you again until somehow your mother dies, my mother dies, your kid gets in trouble, my kid gets in trouble, my we get divorced, whatever the hell. It's some major thing. Or maybe I get tickets and you happen to want to go to the same event. Well, was one of those random things.

Speaker 0 (49:05): Because at the wedding, I I was thinking about it. I'm like, I don't think I've seen these people since the last wedding, you know? Right. I was crazy. You

Speaker 1 (49:12): you don't well, that that was like, what, three years ago, two years ago?

Unknown Speaker (49:16): Exactly. Three three years ago. Yep.

Speaker 1 (49:18): So and I mean, and you came home and I I purposely scheduled you with a lot of people to see them when you're here because they're always, what's what's Zach? What's Zach? What's Zach? Because no one cares about me because I'm retired. I'm ready to die.

Speaker 1 (49:31): And, and they wanna see where you're going because it's like, hey. Let's latch on to the new kid and let's, let's see what he's doing. Well, no. There's good graces. There's excitement to you know, because you're you know, if you turn out to be one tenth of as good a human as I am, they will wanna be friends with you.

Speaker 1 (49:48): Right?

Unknown Speaker (49:48): They've always liked me more than you. I can always feel that.

Speaker 1 (49:52): That's really not saying much, you know. The reason the reason we have friends is because of your wife. I mean, my my wife, your mother, you know, and, that's it. That's what we do. But as far as breakfast, I was thinking to all the different times.

Speaker 1 (50:07): Remember when you were a kid, that when you were having a hard morning at home, I would I would take you to the bus and the or I would take you to the

Unknown Speaker (50:19): Middle school. Yep.

Speaker 1 (50:21): Yep. Middle school or elementary school, the last year there, we would go to McDonald's because I would just say, screw it. Because you'd be, in a way and upset about something, or I was up or whatever it was. Right. And the best thing for us to do for me was to go to McDonald's drive through and get some biscuits.

Speaker 1 (50:47): And I remember I would get, like, the what would you get?

Speaker 0 (50:50): Bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:52): Yeah. And then the hash brown. And then you would eat my hash brown, you little bastard and I don't know. I would come.

Unknown Speaker (50:58): I don't know where it went. I don't know where it went. It's like, I did do it. They didn't give it to us.

Unknown Speaker (51:02): Oh. Oh. I remember that with the teeth. Oh. Oh.

Unknown Speaker (51:07): It's your second one, you You know, And then we were playing. What was it? Centerfold. Oh, yeah. Jamming on Centerfold.

Speaker 0 (51:19): Well, that was that was elementary school.

Speaker 1 (51:21): Yeah. That was elementary school centerfold.

Speaker 0 (51:23): M and M album and then also centerfold and then sometimes the smashing pumpkins but I don't remember what smashing pumpkin songs.

Speaker 1 (51:31): Yes, smashing pump was. We're going to see them in November.

Unknown Speaker (51:33): I'm going there a

Speaker 1 (51:34): great way. We're going go see them and we're going to throw rocks at Billy Corgan and see if if his head is hard as we think it is. But that's another story altogether. We don't wanna go to jail, but No. If we're gonna send somebody to jail, it's me because I'm not gonna live that long.

Speaker 1 (51:47): And so if I go to jail, it's gonna be like, hey, you're dead soon. Who cares? Give me a hundred years. Anyway, thinking about other different types of place. Remember, you used to love to go to and it just closed recently.

Speaker 1 (52:02): What's the 291?

Unknown Speaker (52:04): Metro twenty nine closed. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:07): Really? I was the son. Skateboard kid. Yeah. The skateboard I

Speaker 0 (52:11): not Sean Gregoire. It was something like that. Funny enough, Sean Gregoire was my skateboard instructor. When I was like six, I don't know how I remember that. Yeah.

Speaker 0 (52:22): But I remember yeah. Oh gosh. What was his name? I could see his face. But we knew that guy.

Speaker 0 (52:28): I knew that guy from Freedom Plaza. He was the son of the Metro twenty nine Diner. But I guess the dad died and he was like, well, I don't want to. The property value must be crazy. I mean, the property value's gotta be fine.

Speaker 1 (52:41): Well, caught on fire. Oh, we got rebuilt. And then it got rebuilt somewhat. And then people were saying, well, there was always just old cars and trucks in the driveway, like and you were thinking, like, for sale. Like, they had a Wiley they had a Wiley Jeep.

Unknown Speaker (52:55): They had a I saw that stuff all the time, and I

Unknown Speaker (52:58): went there. Saw those. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:59): I ate I thought they were okay.

Speaker 0 (53:04): There's one omelet that was really good. It was the spinach bacon, fed omelet I talked about at the beginning. Other than

Unknown Speaker (53:11): that, how stoned did you have to be to eat that?

Speaker 0 (53:13): I was actually sober when I would eat those. Really? Surprisingly, yeah. But the it's funny because the spinach wasn't wet. It was dry.

Speaker 0 (53:19): It was not really dry but it was like, it wasn't like, you know what I'm talking about. The spinach water kinda deal when you bite into it, you get the water. No. It wasn't like that. No.

Speaker 0 (53:27): That omelet was really good texture, full of texture, rich texture. What do you think is going in there now at McDonald's or something?

Speaker 1 (53:34): I don't know. That's such a weird area, isn't it? It's very weird over there. But remember, there was a there used to be a Fuddruckers over there, but you were talking about the Metro 29.

Speaker 0 (53:42): It's almost cherry there. That's kind of cherry down.

Unknown Speaker (53:45): We used to go what was it? I had it on the tip of my tongue. The the some of the best breakfast I've had.

Speaker 0 (53:51): Arrow wine and cheese is across the street from that, which is kinda cool. Uh-huh. I remember going there once.

Speaker 1 (53:58): We went to the one in Arlington. What 29 Drive what was that? That was on the corner of Columbia Pike and the other. Not Columbia Pike, Glebe Road, and it had the best cake. And then your mother and I went to a place called Bob and Evis, which was on Columbia Pike when we we were we used to live in, what the hell is that place?

Unknown Speaker (54:20): There's two

Speaker 0 (54:21): locations for that now.

Speaker 1 (54:22): Yeah. Well, that one location had the best pie. And, I mean, the breakfasts were okay, but, you know, I mean, it's it's hard to make eggs really good, but it's easy and it's and it's I don't think it's that hard to, it shocks me when people fuck them up.

Speaker 0 (54:44): It is interesting to talk about diner culture and how that's kind of like the last, I don't know, example of something before corporate minimalism. You know? Like these

Unknown Speaker (54:55): When I look at diner.

Speaker 0 (54:56): Businesses are definitely contrasting to these cube buildings that are brown or oak kind of on the outside and very chic on the inside, very minimal ist, you know, and the the last example of what American culture, I guess, used to be. I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (55:16): And Silver Diner is sort of a scoop up of all that, right?

Speaker 0 (55:19): That's like a throwback. That's kind of like a I would say gentrified version of a diner.

Speaker 1 (55:24): Exactly. Because they did that, and then they, what did they do? They,

Speaker 0 (55:31): there's a chain. It's a chain too. It's only in Virginia, isn't it?

Speaker 1 (55:35): Well, it was good for a while, and it peaked. And then then the quality went down and then they redid the whole thing and they became all natural and normal and all that.

Unknown Speaker (55:45): Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:45): And now it's really good and that's where when we were talking in the beginning, I would talk about the ranchos, whatever the hell it was.

Speaker 0 (55:50): Bison. Buebos Rancheros.

Unknown Speaker (55:51): Oh my god.

Speaker 0 (55:52): Number one menu item. Banana waffles are really good. Yeah. Banana waffles are, I'm not

Speaker 1 (55:57): a sweet guy for breakfast. I am. I'm a sweet guy. I am thinking, man. You know, I am I'm really thinking I need I sent you that one from Marrakesh, that breakfast.

Speaker 1 (56:07): That was really wild. It's sort of off the cuff. It's actually a video and it's from Marrakesh. I mean, that's what's so interesting is when I look at all the different pictures and stuff, and I'm going through them as I'm talking that this is from, like, four years ago, and it was just, you know, tons of items. And we stayed at this hotel, Gemini did, when you walked down and the breakfast table for the self serve plus they had an omelet guy, and the the the breakfast table was probably 30 yards long just with every type of pastry.

Speaker 1 (56:58): Vegas. They had a section of pastry. They had, like, 30 different pastries, and then they had they had they had two or three egg guys, and then they had, like, all the cheeses and meats and stuff like that you make little sandwiches with. Because they do that in in Europe or and they also do it in, of course, this is where the hell is Marrakesh? Morocco.

Speaker 1 (57:21): They did it there, and it was just like an amazing, amazing breakfast. I was shocked by how many it was it was similar in some respects to the Ritz Carlton, but it didn't have the same number of, like, seafood things. It didn't have crab and stuff like that. They had fresh bass and or whatever the hell they pulled out of the ocean right there. You know?

Speaker 1 (57:42): So it was more than that.

Speaker 0 (57:44): Lisbon. Yeah. There was a what was this? Like $25 or Portuguese dollars per person.

Unknown Speaker (57:52): Yeah.

Speaker 0 (57:52): And it was mainly pastries. A lot of pastries. You could do an omelet. Yeah. But majoritally pastries and I found that interesting.

Unknown Speaker (58:00): But I am not a

Speaker 0 (58:01): I'm not a big guy, you know? Maybe a Danish in the middle of the day but not at the beginning. I don't I I like cheese Danish sometimes. Not a lot though.

Speaker 1 (58:10): It's something that I've eaten a thousand times.

Unknown Speaker (58:15): Cheese Danish?

Unknown Speaker (58:16): Yeah. And I've eaten a thousand.

Speaker 0 (58:17): The plastic bags are nasty.

Unknown Speaker (58:19): And I've eaten a thousand

Unknown Speaker (58:20): of those ones. Oh my god.

Unknown Speaker (58:22): We used to buy those. That was our. That was a foul. No. In the olden days.

Unknown Speaker (58:26): The sticky buns and all that

Unknown Speaker (58:28): kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (58:28): Honey buns. Yeah. Honey buns. Donuts, different types of donuts. I mean, everything under the sun and then, one thing you have to realize though is you get older.

Speaker 1 (58:38): If you eat like that in the morning, you can't eat the rest of the day. Otherwise, your turkey neck is going to be drooping down to your boobs. You know? It's like You

Speaker 0 (58:48): can't grow accustomed to that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:49): Right. You don't wanna be one of those what are those what are those frogs that have the big where their their necks are so big that they can blow up and they can they can hold a small child in there. You know? And you're like, no.

Unknown Speaker (59:00): Not problem. Don't frogs they call it.

Speaker 1 (59:02): Yeah. Right. I don't I do not wanna be that, you know, and it's like frogs. There's a point where you feel that we don't need that. We just we just we don't wanna be there, you know?

Unknown Speaker (59:14): I completely

Unknown Speaker (59:15): Well, I'm looking at all these

Speaker 0 (59:16): all You're a Chili Chiles fan. Chili Chiles. Yes. The the chips for breakfast with the sauce, Chili Chiles.

Unknown Speaker (59:27): No. I don't know what that is.

Speaker 0 (59:28): You ate it at the diner that one time in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1995?

Speaker 1 (59:34): Oh, here's a good one.

Unknown Speaker (59:35): I remember that. I remember that story.

Unknown Speaker (59:37): Do you remember

Unknown Speaker (59:38): remember it and you don't.

Speaker 1 (59:39): Do you remember, at Rehoboth Beach?

Unknown Speaker (59:44): The drag brunch?

Unknown Speaker (59:46): Drag brunch. Yeah. That was That was That was amazing.

Unknown Speaker (59:49): That was a

Unknown Speaker (59:49): good time. Amazing.

Unknown Speaker (59:51): Yep. That was Oh, the Robin Hood too? I remember the Robin Hood.

Unknown Speaker (59:54): Yeah. The Robin Hood was a big was a very, very we we went there every year. There was the Greek

Speaker 0 (59:58): place too. The Greek place is really good. Yep. The hash brown was like a hash brown pie of some sort. It And was like

Unknown Speaker (1:00:04): Oh, yeah. Two and a half those, and you were like, woah.

Unknown Speaker (1:00:07): It was like a latke, but it was like a latke pie or something.

Unknown Speaker (1:00:11): Mhmm. Yeah. I remember that. Well, that's the problem is is you would get something like that, and you would eat that, and then you couldn't eat anything else or or you become a swole gutted pig, and you have to go back and take a nap at, you know, 10:00 in the morning after you've eaten for an hour and a half. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (1:00:24): You can't plan a full day. And if you're in a and if you're in in a country that you're gonna be in for ten days as opposed to six weeks or something, you you you don't want to focus on eating until later in the day because then you're you're gonna, like, tire yourself out, and I can't. That's why for me, lunch is usually a bigger meal than dinner. You know? I mean, then breakfast at which breakfast now is almost nonexistent.

Speaker 1 (1:00:54): And a lot of times what I like to do is just eat a big meal at lunch and then nibble at dinner. But the problem with that is that then all sudden, yeah. Then all of a sudden, I'm, you know evil. I'm having a cheddar burger at 09:30 at 07:11, you know, and you're like, woah. And I don't and and, know, if I ate a truck burger at 07:11?

Unknown Speaker (1:01:14): Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (1:01:15): Really? How was it?

Unknown Speaker (1:01:16): Cheddar burgers used to be great. Truck stoppers are the things that make

Unknown Speaker (1:01:19): never.

Unknown Speaker (1:01:19): Truck stoppers make puke in the parking lot. That's what I used to

Unknown Speaker (1:01:22): always do. Hot dogs were good. The big bite. I like the big bite. Yeah.

Speaker 0 (1:01:25): The picante big bite. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (1:01:27): When my brother was in college, the the dead one, the in mayor Washington, we would I would go down and stay at his place on the weekends, and I would drive down there in the Pinto because he had a girlfriend at the time in Richmond, and he would take the car and do it, and they would come back on Sundays. And usually, I was hungover Sundays, and we would Saturday nights, I would go out with one of his roommates, friends, or somebody, like, come. We're going to a party. And I'd have an ID and go get I get drunk, and everybody went to seven Eleven because everything closed at midnight. And you go to seven Eleven at 01:00 in the morning, and you get a truck stopper, and you just boot in the parking lot, you know, just patches of it everywhere.

Speaker 1 (1:02:12): And this was the college life, and I was, you know, 16 and getting getting me ready to be an alcoholic. You know? Maybe I already was at that point. Who knows? Anyway, I was just I don't know why I just thought about the cheeseburger because those are the cheeseburgers.

Speaker 1 (1:02:28): That's where I learned how to eat cheddar burgers. That's where I had the truck stopper.

Unknown Speaker (1:02:32): You have to learn how to eat your cheddar burger.

Speaker 1 (1:02:34): Well, you you had to cook it the right amount, and this is microwave. This is in the early days of having I I remember my neighbor had a microwave in, like, the late seventies, and this is early eighties. No, this would have been late seventies too. Mid seventies. So microwave was just was not around.

Speaker 1 (1:02:56): And then all of a sudden, they had this thing that you could take something out of something and put it in a machine and it comes out and it's blistering hot in the center and the outside's cold. Or, no, if you cooked it on the right time, it was usually pretty good. The Cheddarburgers are really good. The Truck stoppers, sometimes you look at them and they were supposed to have turkey and the turkey was a little grain, which just for all you people out there, if if you get a sandwich and the meat is not a color that it should be, you're a it's a key piece of advice. You should not eat it.

Unknown Speaker (1:03:34): Completely agree.

Speaker 1 (1:03:35): Completely will you will regret it, and I can tell you this from you know? And the thing is is I didn't learn it the first time. The the first couple times I booted after he the trucks truck stopper, I thought it was The first couple times. Yeah. I thought it was the, the booze.

Speaker 1 (1:03:56): And then I realized that it was the green turkey. So the key is is that when you go to seven eleven, if they still I don't even know if they still have truck stoppers, you know, the the kinda soft sandwiches. Mhmm. They would have them lined up. And I think people weren't eating truck stoppers because they were a new thing.

Speaker 1 (1:04:15): And, you know, and this is in this is the mid seventies, and I would go in there, you know, and you're hammered. And usually people get an oversized bag of potato chips and a couple candy bars, and then they'd leave. Whereas I would eat that food food and come out and paint the parking lot. You know? The good old days.

Unknown Speaker (1:04:35): That's what we used to do when we were little kids. Oh my gosh. I think Ben, what other would you if you could, if you could only have this is tough. If you could only have one thing for the rest of your life for breakfast, what would it be?

Speaker 0 (1:04:55): Some sort of variation of a bagel sandwich, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. I would have. Because I'm not a big omelet guy.

Speaker 0 (1:05:00): I don't know. No. I love omelet guy. Too much egg.

Speaker 1 (1:05:04): I I had somebody. Where the heck? I don't remember where it was. But it's in one of my recent house.

Speaker 0 (1:05:10): What am I talking about? Some sort of variation of a breakfast burrito.

Speaker 1 (1:05:13): With I had a, yeah. I think a breakfast burrito or a, a breakfast burrito on a bagel. No. You couldn't do that. Anyway, I would, I'm trying to think, but, yeah, yeah, I think I could I could probably eat breakfast burritos from now until I died.

Unknown Speaker (1:05:31): Yeah. Right?

Speaker 1 (1:05:31): And just as long as you can mix the ingredients up inside because I always like the black beans and I don't I feel like I don't

Unknown Speaker (1:05:38): eat black beans. Normally. No beans. Really? Nope.

Speaker 0 (1:05:42): But tater tots instead.

Speaker 1 (1:05:43): You don't mix the two? What are you kidding me?

Unknown Speaker (1:05:46): I don't think I don't think I've had beans in there.

Unknown Speaker (1:05:48): Oh my god.

Unknown Speaker (1:05:49): It's been a while since I've

Unknown Speaker (1:05:50): had You can't get maximum gas with just tater tots. You know? You gotta throw an egg.

Speaker 0 (1:05:56): Gotta You throw that. I can't remember the last time beans have been in

Unknown Speaker (1:05:59): Black bean or rice? I really

Unknown Speaker (1:06:00): don't remember.

Unknown Speaker (1:06:01): You just rice?

Unknown Speaker (1:06:02): Nope. No rice.

Speaker 1 (1:06:04): Usually, there's filler, man. There there's gotta be filler in there.

Unknown Speaker (1:06:07): Shocked that, yeah, now that you talk about it, I I don't remember the last time that I had beans or rice in a breakfast burrito. I can't really. I just had them heavy.

Unknown Speaker (1:06:15): Yesterday, I had black beans, sausage, no rice. That's not that's important. Instead of rice, sausage, salsa, what the hell else? Cheddar cheese, what else was in there?

Speaker 0 (1:06:34): Well, I'll tell you something very serious about the older I get. I'm no longer a black bean man. I'm a pinto bean man. I'll tell you. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (1:06:41): Really? Confidence. Yes. Oh my god. The transition.

Unknown Speaker (1:06:44): I'm gonna

Unknown Speaker (1:06:44): have to throw some braces at you on that.

Speaker 0 (1:06:46): Two years ago and pinto bean all the way. Oh my god. Really? So much better. Tastes better.

Unknown Speaker (1:06:52): Is that because you wanna drive a smaller car?

Unknown Speaker (1:06:54): I don't know what that means.

Unknown Speaker (1:06:55): A Pinto.

Unknown Speaker (1:06:56): Oh, that's funny. That's a

Unknown Speaker (1:06:58): good one. Okay. Or or they were you

Unknown Speaker (1:07:00): We're at

Speaker 1 (1:07:00): Whether you wanna burn you wanna burn to death.

Speaker 0 (1:07:02): I think we're at time here. So I'm gonna say thank you guys for listening. As always, check out our website and every Friday. Every Friday, we're coming out with these episodes. So

Unknown Speaker (1:07:14): I love it.

Speaker 0 (1:07:15): You got anything else?

Speaker 1 (1:07:17): I was gonna say Eggs Benedict too. Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Eggs Benedict and unlimited champagne will make the breakfast in the day the most fun you'll ever have had.

Speaker 1 (1:07:29): The problem is is that the next day really sucks and your memory doesn't really work that well. That's a good note to go out

Unknown Speaker (1:07:37): on.

Speaker 1 (1:07:38): So if you have dementia, drink all the champagne you want. Right?

Unknown Speaker (1:07:41): All of it.

Speaker 1 (1:07:42): I wonder if you get your memory back if you drink champagne.

Unknown Speaker (1:07:46): That's actually a good question.

Unknown Speaker (1:07:47): Wow. It's

Unknown Speaker (1:07:48): a very good question.

Speaker 1 (1:07:50): We'll have to do that. Next time you're here, we'll go to the Alzheimer's facility, and we will get everybody shit faced, and then we'll see if there no more.

Unknown Speaker (1:07:56): What do you think?

Unknown Speaker (1:07:57): I think that's

Unknown Speaker (1:07:57): great good experiment.

Unknown Speaker (1:07:59): Yes. That's a good one.

Unknown Speaker (1:08:00): Bye bye.

Unknown Speaker (1:08:01): Party on, man.