ATF Announcers
All The Feelings presents: Still Adulting. This episode: Food Stuff.
Tommy Metz III
Oh my goodness, Season 11, Pete. I can’t believe it.
Pete Wright
I can’t either, Tom. We’re back.
Tommy Metz III
I won’t believe it.
Pete Wright
We are recording. You’ll have to believe it because I’m not going to stop talking at you for the next, oh, I don’t know, 45 minutes. I’m very excited to be here for All The Feelings, Season 11. It’s about time.
Tommy Metz III
Yes. We took a nice break. If you were a Feeling Friends member, you had the break with us. You had some special episodes. If you’re with the free feed, welcome back. We love you so much. And with this season we are continuing last season’s topic, which was adulting. The idea of: What did we think adulting was going to be, being an adult was going to be? How did we get it wrong? How did we get it right? How are we continually getting it wrong? And how we’re actually still four-year-olds. Is that about—
Pete Wright
That’s exactly how I would have put it. I don’t know how you got that word for word, but that’s exactly how I think about it.
Tommy Metz III
ChatGPT.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
And yeah, and so we have a whole raft of other topics that plague adult people. And as usual, we want to hear from you. If you have thoughts about episodes, if you have suggestions for future episodes, questions, concerns, anything like that, Pete, where do they go?
Pete Wright
AllTheFeelings.fun, Tom. That’s a real URL, and it’s not disgusting in any way. It’s AllTheFeelings.fun. Yes, dot fun is real. That’s a real thing. You can type into your browser and visit AllTheFeelings.fun and you’ll get to our show page. And we’d love you to be there. Go hang out there.
Tommy Metz III
Yes.
Pete Wright
Yeah. All right.
Tommy Metz III
But in the meantime, we are talking about the culinary arts.
Pete Wright
Oh, there we are.
Tommy Metz III
For this episode. Cooking, meals, cooking for one, solo cooking, cooking before you die—all of these things.
Pete Wright
Yes, right.
Tommy Metz III
And I think—do you want to go first, Pete?
Pete Wright
Yeah, I think it’s me. I think this is a me thing. I’m going to go first and then you’re going to go after me.
Tommy Metz III
Okay, deal.
Pete Wright
In order. All right.
ATF Announcers
Subset One: Grocery Shopping
Pete Wright
Tom, I do like to cook. In fact, you could say I love cooking.
Tommy Metz III
Oh good. Oh, why don’t you marry it?
Pete Wright
But when we—no. When we got married, my wife and I, Kira, we had—
Tommy Metz III
Oh, that’s why. You’re already taken. Asked and answered.
Pete Wright
When we got married, there was sort of a deal that we made. And of course when we were courting, I was doing everything I could to make a good impression. And so, you know, “Do you want to go to the grocery store?” “Yes, let’s do couples grocery storing.” And I’d go to the grocery store and secretly I really didn’t care for it. I don’t care for grocery stores. We’ll talk more about that in a minute.
Tommy Metz III
Oh, okay.
Pete Wright
And the trade-off was she notoriously hates laundry. And so for 26 years, we’ve had a division of labor that includes: I do the laundry.
Tommy Metz III
Got it.
Pete Wright
She does the grocery shopping. And in that time, I think my disdain for the grocery store experience—
Tommy Metz III
Wow.
Pete Wright
—has calcified. It’s even worse.
Tommy Metz III
Really?
Pete Wright
I don’t care for grocery stores. And I think it’s because, and I pose this as a question to you: When you cook, and you have to go to the grocery store, do you see ingredients for what you’re cooking? Like, or do you see just outcomes? Like in your head, do you have like, “I’m going to make this”—what’s going to be on my plate is what I see the ingredients for here? Or do you just see products?
Tommy Metz III
I don’t know. I’m sorry to be a roadblock for the very first question on Season 11, but—
Pete Wright
No.
Tommy Metz III
Do I see products or do I see ingredients? I don’t know if I understand the difference between what you’re asking.
Pete Wright
Well, here’s the thing. If I have a meal that I’m cooking for, right?
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
That I am cooking toward, then I can see a list of ingredients and I can go to the store and eventually find those ingredients. But—
Tommy Metz III
You’re right, yeah.
Pete Wright
If I don’t have a meal, like if I just need to go do weekly shopping, I just see a list of unrelated labels.
Tommy Metz III
Hundred percent. I get it.
Pete Wright
That don’t—and I don’t know what any of those products are best at, right?
Tommy Metz III
Right.
Pete Wright
Like it’s not that I don’t like vegetables per se. I’ll eat a good vegetable. It’s just that most of the vegetables in the vegetable area don’t have job descriptions. I don’t know what the hell—like what do I do with rutabaga and kohlrabi and bok choy? And like, they’re not food. They’re like Instagram content, right?
Tommy Metz III
Sure.
Pete Wright
Like I don’t know what to do with them.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
So I know things like apples, apples and bananas, they’ve got great PR. I know exactly what to do with those.
Tommy Metz III
Sure.
Pete Wright
I can just eat them. But once you hit that robust produce wall, it’s just culinary improv. And if I don’t know what I’m going to eat for the week, I can’t plan for the week and I’m terrible at thinking about what I’m going to eat for like next meal plus one. Like it’s almost lunchtime as we record this, and I have a pretty good idea what I’m going to eat for lunch. No idea what dinner is going to bring. So how can I plan for it?
Tommy Metz III
See, now I understand your question, and I’m definitely on one side in one part, which is: I go in with a plan. I’m never browsing.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
I’m never browsing in the shopping. Sometimes I’ll pick something up that seems like fun, but no, I’m going in with an exact plan of ingredients of what I need for what I’m getting for that thing.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
And I’m actually talking about cooking for one, cooking for just myself.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
So I’ll be talking about my experience with that. But yeah, no, I don’t—so I don’t really have that freeze-up thing of “Wait, I’m just looking at an enormous store filled with options and I don’t know what to pick.”
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Because I’ve already chosen, probably based on some TikTok I saw, honestly.
Pete Wright
Yeah, yeah, right.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Well, I think that’s really important. And I bring up my wife and my roles because she has a very different take on it. She likes to plan too, but she also has a very intimate relationship with ingredients. Like she knows what these ingredients are best at. So she can improvise in the kitchen in a way that I cannot.
Tommy Metz III
Oh, oof.
Pete Wright
She can just say, “Here’s a recipe.”
Tommy Metz III
Right.
Pete Wright
This is the thing. She’ll just—here’s a recipe with 10 ingredients. And we maybe have six of them. And she’ll make it anyway, because six is that line. She’ll take four core ingredients that we don’t have and figure out how to make it anyway. And my eyes are like star-studded when I see that. I am so impressed by that and it further highlights how far I am from it and why I get paralyzed in the grocery store.
Tommy Metz III
I love this and I was actually going to talk—I’m going to bring part of what I was going to talk about up here to talk about it with you.
Pete Wright
Okay.
Tommy Metz III
Because yeah, what she’s doing is she’s playing jazz. It’s not the ingredients, it’s what the ingredients aren’t. Whereas I, at best, am a sous chef.
Pete Wright
Okay.
Tommy Metz III
I need everything spelled out.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Like everything. I’m following exact ingredients. I have huge recipe anxiety. And so I look, I look at it and I look at it again and I look at it again because I can’t—I’m in awe of people that can just like—
Pete Wright
Interesting.
Tommy Metz III
Like, what is it? Oh, Will Smith in Six Degrees of Separation when he just opens the fridge and he’s like, “Hey, why go out? You got all this stuff.” And he has like an onion and a half of a jar of mayonnaise and he makes this beautiful dinner.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Like being able to just throw things together, I have no instinct for. And the reason I have recipe anxiety is because I look at it—I don’t have the common sense or at least the courage, not the confidence, to not know, “Well, obviously it’s not three tablespoons. It’s three teaspoons.”
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Like I just—because I don’t know what things are supposed to taste like. I know what they taste like at the very end. And I have straight up ruined recipes because I mistook something. And I also—my last—and I don’t mean to take over your segment of course—but I also can’t fix things.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Because I don’t have a general knowledge for it. So if like a sauce over-reduces and it’s a salty mess, it’s going in the sink and I’m ordering in.
Pete Wright
Yeah, yeah.
Tommy Metz III
That’s it. Because I don’t know how to do anything. Yeah. So I love that she can do that. And I’ve had meals at your place. She whipped together a beautiful poke bowl. It was actually the first poke bowl I’d ever had in my life. And it was remarkable.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
So yeah, I can’t do any of that. So I’m very impressed.
Pete Wright
Yeah. It is—that is—me too.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Me too. I am stunned. And this is actually—this is a nice little Easter egg to see if she ever listens to the podcast. I’ll bet in two years she’ll come in and give me a hug and a kiss and thank me.
Tommy Metz III
Oh. Flat. Okay.
Pete Wright
So here’s the—I think when we look at the misery that is the lenticular postcard of grocery store mapping, then you get to like how to actually find things in the grocery store. And that just levels up my anxiety. I go in and I look at—first, I usually go in and it’s like, you know, no vegetables. That’s where I lean in on vegetables. And then it’s aisles that are ostensibly labeled, but they’re all labeled so high I’m walking around with my neck craned up, and none of the things seem to relate to one another.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Right. And so to become a proficient shopper, you have to lean into this exercise of memory that is learning that store.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
And if you go to a different store, it is a new exercise because each store only appears to reward repeat customers—
Tommy Metz III
Oh, sure. Uh-huh.
Pete Wright
—while punishing outsiders.
Tommy Metz III
Yep.
Pete Wright
Right? There’s nothing I’ve said yet that feels like a lie to you, because this is my experience.
Tommy Metz III
Yep.
Pete Wright
They reorganize just often enough to keep you on your heels, to keep you unstable. And I think that’s because they want you to buy extra stuff. If they keep reorganizing, you have to pass stuff—
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
—all the time that you might not normally pass and think, “Oh, I’ll just throw that in the cart.”
Tommy Metz III
Right. Right. The rules and strategies of grocery stores remind me of rules and strategies in Vegas casinos.
Pete Wright
Yeah, yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Like they pump oxygen in and there’s no clock. And you can’t ever see a door, so you feel like you’re just locked in there.
Pete Wright
Yes.
Tommy Metz III
In this—all the most expensive stuff is right at eye level, you know, just where your head is at. All the cheap stuff is way low because they don’t want you bending over. All the most expensive children’s cereals are right at a child’s height. Milk and stuff that you need every time is at the far corner. So you have to walk through everything. I’ve got to say—and then yeah, and then the switch-’em-ups. Where I’m just like in a daze and I walk right toward the thing and all of a sudden I’m just holding, yeah, like bok choy. And I was like, “This is supposed to be Band-Aids. What’s happened?” It’s terrifying.
Pete Wright
Well, that’s because when they stock the foods, there is some strategy, but there’s also like—where my brain expects products to be organized by adjacent function, right? It’s mostly organized by adjacent vibes. And so you never quite get to that functional utility.
Tommy Metz III
Because they want you to browse.
Pete Wright
Yeah, yes.
Tommy Metz III
That’s exact—I never thought about it that way. Yeah.
Pete Wright
And—
Tommy Metz III
They want you to graze over every single aisle.
Pete Wright
Yes.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
So the meta-architecture of the grocery store, the Kroger industrial complex, is the antagonist of my shopping experience.
Tommy Metz III
Okay.
Pete Wright
It’s the—you know, Mr. Glass in my shopping experience, right?
Tommy Metz III
Right. Yep. Yeah.
Pete Wright
It’s sitting there and it’s architecting my path and the fact that I should have brought my neck brace because I’m looking up. I don’t know where anything is. And all of the people who are working at the grocery store are way too busy to help me.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
And it’s not that they wouldn’t—when I do ask for help, they’re very nice.
Tommy Metz III
Yep.
Pete Wright
And they often do that thing where they’re like, “Hey, follow me. I’ll literally lead you like the Pied Piper.” And you’re the rat in this scenario.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
And I’m going to lead you through the store, little rat, and I’m going to take you and show you where it is because I also know that we’re in a place of misery together. And we’re going to have to just agree that this is it.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
So I’m going to help you because I know how bad it is. They’re very nice, but they all look so busy all the time that I am afraid to interrupt them because—
Tommy Metz III
Right.
Pete Wright
What if my interrupting them makes it worse for everybody? They’ll put Band-Aids on the bok choy shelf again. And that screws it up for everyone. I don’t want to be that guy.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
All right. Third point. You go into the grocery store and you think, “You know what I’m really in the mood for?”
Tommy Metz III
Okay.
Pete Wright
“I’m in the mood for that one thing. That one special thing that I used to get.” And you go to where it used to be and it’s not there. Do you have—I mean you’re mmm-ing? Do you have one in your mind? Do you have a thing in your mind that you might?
Tommy Metz III
Oh, yeah. Well, this is a big thing that happens at Trader Joe’s, of which I am weirdly surrounded, literally surrounded by Trader Joe’s where I live.
Pete Wright
Oh, forget that. Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
They built a Trader Joe’s, I think, inside of a Trader Joe’s.
Pete Wright
I can’t find friends.
Tommy Metz III
They’re following the Starbucks model. But yeah, I’ll go right where that special sauce is or that thing that only Trader Joe’s makes.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
And—huh?
Pete Wright
It’s gone.
Tommy Metz III
Yep.
Pete Wright
And they—well, Trader Joe’s, as an aside, their get-out-of-jail-free card is, “Oh, right, well, that’s seasonal.”
Tommy Metz III
Right.
Pete Wright
Why is this goddamn barbecue sauce, sriracha barbecue sauce, a seasonal product?
Tommy Metz III
What are you talking about? Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Wright
We don’t eat sauce throughout the year.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
What are you doing right now?
Tommy Metz III
Yeah. It’s seasonal.
Pete Wright
Seasonal.
Tommy Metz III
Ketchup is an all-year food.
Pete Wright
Yeah, right. They’re just jerking you around. Seasonal.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Trader Joe’s has its own subset of animosity.
Tommy Metz III
Sure.
Pete Wright
I think this is a little bit of an aside and it’s related to something I’m going to talk about later. But for me, it’s the Snackwell’s Devil’s Food, low-fat devil’s food cookie.
Tommy Metz III
I think we’ve talked about these. These sound familiar. I’ve never had them. Go ahead.
Pete Wright
It would not surprise me if we’ve talked about them because I am obsessed with this cookie.
Tommy Metz III
‘Cause you love talking.
Pete Wright
I’m obsessed with this cookie.
Tommy Metz III
Do the whole name again. I feel like I interrupted you.
Pete Wright
Snackwell’s, low-fat, devil’s food cookie.
Tommy Metz III
Devil’s food cookie. Okay, got it.
Pete Wright
So it’s like a devil’s food cake, and there’s a very thin inner layer of marshmallow around it and then a thin layer of chocolate around that.
Tommy Metz III
In a cookie.
Pete Wright
And it’s kind of squeezy. The chocolate is smooth and hard enough that when you squeeze a little bit it cracks.
Tommy Metz III
Got it.
Pete Wright
It is an extraordinary thing. And I ate these all the time in college. I loved these cookies.
Tommy Metz III
Oh.
Pete Wright
This was—I don’t know who they were targeted to. I kind of feel like it was like suburban moms after the kids go to school kind of cookie. It was like this was an alternative to bonbons when you’re watching the Price Is Right.
Tommy Metz III
Oh.
Pete Wright
I don’t know. That’s very minimizing of an entire class of human being. I regret that, but stereotypes are what they are for a reason. So I love these and I would buy them like crazy. Whenever I would go to the store I would get them. And for years I didn’t eat them. And I started—I found them once in like 2019. I found them.
Tommy Metz III
Oh, okay.
Pete Wright
And I bought them and I fell in love all over again, Tom. And then they moved them in the cookie place. I was able to follow once. I found them on a new shelf. Then I found them on a shelf after that. They moved them again. I was able to follow the trail. And then—
Tommy Metz III
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright
And they were gone. They were gone.
Tommy Metz III
Oh my God.
Pete Wright
And I asked people and they remained in the database. “Well, they’re in the database. Surely they’ll be back.” “Yeah, that just shows we’re out.” “They’re in the database, Tom.”
Tommy Metz III
Oh, it’s like the Keyser Söze of cookies.
Pete Wright
That’s what happened.
Tommy Metz III
Oh no.
Pete Wright
Tom, the Snackwell’s Corporation is no longer. The cookie went away—
Tommy Metz III
Oh no, it goes all the way to the top.
Pete Wright
The cookie went away in 2022 forever. But I am a dumbass who just kept looking and asking these people who are—
Tommy Metz III
I didn’t know that that was an option in America. Right.
Pete Wright
God love ’em, just trying to stock shelves. They don’t know the inner workings of the Snackwell Industrial Complex.
Tommy Metz III
Sure.
Pete Wright
And yet there I am looking for this one cookie and asking every time I go in, “Do you have ’em yet?”
Tommy Metz III
Oh my God.
Pete Wright
“Do you have them yet? Do you have ’em yet?” So at some point, I’m not even hungry for the cookie anymore, Tom. I’m just trying to prove I’m not losing my damn mind.
Tommy Metz III
Sure.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
You’ve been gaslit by Big Cookie.
Pete Wright
I have been gaslit by Big Cookie. What’s happened? Okay. Let’s see. Where do I go from here? I have a mind map that looks like your murder board on your wall. I could keep going with my list of grievances.
Tommy Metz III
Okay. Yeah.
Pete Wright
But mostly I worry that my problem is I can’t do favors for my family. It’s very hard for me to go to the grocery store to pick up stuff for a specific meal because the store is so adamantly against me.
Tommy Metz III
Got it.
Pete Wright
And even if I have a good list, I also have ADHD and my brain—that means I’m in a grocery store.
Tommy Metz III
Oh, sure.
Pete Wright
I’m as impaired as I sound, which is—I am that impaired. I’m also incredibly impulsive. And that impulse means I’m buying things we don’t need to an extensive degree.
Tommy Metz III
Stuff that’s like bad for you, in quotes, you know, stuff that’s like junk food or—just you’re just trying things out.
Pete Wright
It could be junk food, but Tom, do you know where I am most vulnerable?
Tommy Metz III
No, no, no.
Pete Wright
Walking down any aisle that has those hanging displays coming off the shelf that’s like, “Oh, here’s a teeny tiny broom and a broom scoop.”
Tommy Metz III
Dustpan.
Pete Wright
Like a dustpan, broom scoop. Talking about groceries brings on a little early dementia, Tom.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Wright
Dustpan, there’s a word for that.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah. Nailed it out of the park.
Pete Wright
Yeah, it’s just hanging there and I’m like, “Oh man, I totally need that.” I have it. It’s hanging by our cat litter. I don’t know if anybody uses it. I bought that.
Tommy Metz III
I see.
Pete Wright
I bought—that’s a real thing. Right. It’s just stuff that isn’t made—it’s like food-adjacent that it’s like, “Well, if you’re eating all these chips, surely you’re going to need a dustpan and tiny broom.”
Tommy Metz III
That’s funny. Yeah.
Pete Wright
And so I get it.
Tommy Metz III
And a beard comb.
Pete Wright
Right.
Tommy Metz III
I like that every aisle for you is an impulse aisle.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Like they have those for you by the cash register, but instead you’re like, “Dustpans, I need it.”
Pete Wright
Nope. It’s Aisle Primary Impulse.
Tommy Metz III
“Ma’am, where is your finest broom scoop?”
Pete Wright
So I think part of the challenge is that I struggle shopping for anyone other than fantasy me, right?
Tommy Metz III
Right.
Pete Wright
Like, that’s what the impulse is.
Tommy Metz III
Sure.
Pete Wright
So I have to adjust that. I’m trying to buy fewer potential meals and buy more actual meals, right, at the grocery store. And I need to stop. This may be the wildest adventure yet. I need to stop treating the grocery store as a place where I become a better person, because it will never happen. So that’s kind of where I am. How does this—I know we’re going to transition into you getting the food from the store home?
Tommy Metz III
Sure.
Pete Wright
Let’s just riff a little bit on your grocery shopping experience.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah. Yeah. Well, there is—there’s a little boutique store that I like to go to. I may have mentioned it. It’s called Ralphs. And something—I never liked grocery shopping. I didn’t mind it. And I—but okay, let me start over. I really like grocery shopping. Yet everything you just said is a thousand percent true. I don’t suffer from all of those things, but the grocery store is out to get you, and my Ralphs did just do a big remodel.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
And so things—it’s just chaos in there. And somehow they made the aisles like even smaller. So now like people are just standing in the middle of aisles constantly.
Pete Wright
Mm-hmm.
Tommy Metz III
But I think for me, and as too many of our topics do go back to, because it’s really a before times and end times, I think I really started kind of enjoying grocery stores during the—what’s your guess?
Pete Wright
Pandemic.
Tommy Metz III
The pandemic. It was a thing to do when there were not things to do. Meeting friends for awkward picnics in parks. And wearing masks and standing in line because they would let like five people in the store at a time.
Pete Wright
Yeah, I don’t know.
Tommy Metz III
And then, but I mean, and then buying so much because I didn’t want to go back to the store again.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Because we were afraid.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
And then, you know, hosing down your groceries and putting everything in a tub of vinegar. I don’t remember what I was doing. I was insane.
Pete Wright
Awful.
Tommy Metz III
Either way. But so I just sort of became like a little activity, which is terrible. But it’s still like—because I’m a very—and we’ll talk about this, I’m a very, very targeted shopper. I know exactly what I want. And I have a list on my phone and I get it and I cross it off. So it’s very—it feels adult to me. It feels like I’m just going in, getting it done, coming home, cooking it up.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
And so I like that.
Pete Wright
It sounds so mature.
Tommy Metz III
It’s—and it’s—
Pete Wright
It’s just crazy to me that that happens.
Tommy Metz III
And it’s super, it’s super near my place, my Ralphs.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Like it’s just, it couldn’t be more convenient.
Pete Wright
What was your last impulse buy?
Tommy Metz III
So it works.
Pete Wright
Last time you were at the store, you were like, “You know what, I just want that.” It wasn’t on the list, but “I saw that thing and I want it.”
Tommy Metz III
Sure, let’s see. Oh. Have you ever heard of a—I want to call it a sucker, that’s not right—like a fruit chew called Mambas?
Pete Wright
I have heard of those. Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
There was a Mamba Sours. And when I take Foster on his night walk, I like to have one piece of candy to suck on, just to like liven things up a little bit.
Pete Wright
One.
Tommy Metz III
And I love sour—I don’t like sweet things, but I love sour things. And not just like coated in citric acid. It needs to be like sour through and through, Pete. And I bought one of those and I put one in my mouth. And the next time I was at the store, I bought three more packs. Because it’s dynamite. It was—it is a win-win.
Pete Wright
Oh, oh, case closed.
Tommy Metz III
And like all candy, it did the thing where it gave me a heart attack because I finally—it looked at the back at the calories.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
And it said like 370 calories. And I was like, “But that’s for like the entire pack.”
Pete Wright
For how many?
Tommy Metz III
And there’s like 13. They’re like very small. So there’s like 13 of them. And so that’s like 370 over two weeks.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
So that’s fine. I could do that.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
But yeah, I don’t know why they—well, I guess. Maybe plenty of Americans just house an entire bag of Mambas in one sitting. For me, it’s an every-once-in-a-while treat.
Pete Wright
That is incredible restraint.
Tommy Metz III
But yeah, that was good.
Pete Wright
Incredible restraint.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Right here in arm’s reach in my closet, I bought a—I bought a couple of six-packs of these guys.
Tommy Metz III
So that was a good impulse.
Pete Wright
That’s right. Original peanut butter cup, Reese’s peanut butter cups.
Tommy Metz III
Okay.
Pete Wright
And I bought a six-pack.
Tommy Metz III
Wait, original? Do they have a bunch of those?
Pete Wright
Oh god, Tom.
Tommy Metz III
I’m not a big Reese’s guy. Okay.
Pete Wright
The legacy of Reese’s is extraordinary.
Tommy Metz III
I’m not a candy guy. Really? I know they have Reese’s Pieces.
Pete Wright
I watch YouTube videos about this. Yeah, well it started with the cup. The cup was first. The original cup was original size, and the ratio of peanut butter to chocolate is perfect. And that’s that. That is the truth. That’s canon. Then they got the minis.
Tommy Metz III
And did they Oreo Big Stuff it, I bet? I bet they went too far.
Pete Wright
There’s some Big Stuffs. There’s white chocolate. There’s—
Tommy Metz III
Ew.
Pete Wright
—the little Halloween ones that you can—the little tiny bite-sized ones. And then there’s of course the pieces, the Reese’s Pieces.
Tommy Metz III
Okay.
Pete Wright
And right now I go through phases of my candy. Right now it’s my favorite, and sometimes the impulse buy lands in the Reese’s section.
Tommy Metz III
Do you ever dress them up somehow like a Snackwell?
Pete Wright
No, I don’t—that’s—
Tommy Metz III
Like do you try to make Snackwell come back alive somehow? Like do you Frankenstein your treats trying to remake the Snackwell Mallomar or whatever it was of late devil’s food?
Pete Wright
Oh my God.
Tommy Metz III
Cake cookie.
Pete Wright
Oh my God.
Tommy Metz III
Could you do that?
Pete Wright
I feel like you have just offered me an entirely new thing to do when we’re done today.
Tommy Metz III
Oh no. A hobby that will also be your downfall.
Pete Wright
Because no, yeah. I thought I was—I thought you were going to allow me to leave as like confident adult Pete. And instead you’ve just reinforced I’m ferret in a flannel shirt Pete and I am going to use ChatGPT to tell me how to make Snackwell’s devil’s food cookies.
Tommy Metz III
Yep. Oh, I left.
Pete Wright
I’m going to do that today.
Tommy Metz III
Give it a try.
Pete Wright
Of course I’m going to do that today.
Tommy Metz III
Okay.
Pete Wright
Geez, Merry Christmas. How did it take so long for us to get here?
Tommy Metz III
Season 11. Leek and Potato Soup by Courtu Valentine. Prep time depends on how long it takes to ruin good produce.
Pete Wright
I don’t think you can get it.
Tommy Metz III
Ignore the recipe notes, yet follow everything. Measure with a scale, somehow still oversalt. Add enough pepper to weaponize the broth. Let it simmer, thicken until you’re questioning your methods. When its texture turns from soup to sponge, try to rescue it with store-bought cream. And 45 minutes later, hovering between Uber and Just Eat, plated it with a hint of regret and the admittance of defeat.
Pete Wright
When Klondike discontinued the Choco Taco in 2022, I took that personally. I’m not even sure that I liked the Choco Taco. I hadn’t eaten one in decades. But when it was gone, actually gone, I felt something. Something that, if I’m being honest, felt uncomfortably close to loss. This is insane, right? We’re talking about a waffle cone shaped like a taco, filled with vanilla ice cream, dipped in chocolate and nuts. It is objectively a C-plus frozen novelty item. And yet, people who study nostalgia have found it’s not just pleasant reminiscence, it’s a coping mechanism. People turn to nostalgic memories during periods of stress and uncertainty. Nostalgia functions as a psychological immune system. When the present feels threatening, we retreat to the past. Now, think about what was going on when the Choco Taco was discontinued: July of 2022, two years into the pandemic, inflation at a 40-year high. And Klondike looked at that moment and said, “You know what America needs right now? Less joy.” But the Choco Taco is just one casualty in what I’ve come to think of as the Great Snacking Extinction. Jell-O Pudding Pops, Altoids Sours, McDonald’s fried apple pies, replaced by baked ones in 1992 because people kept burning their mouths, which McDonald’s called a health decision. McDonald’s was worried about your health. Sure. Here’s what kills me. These products don’t fail. They just stop succeeding enough. The phrase “poor sales” appears in every obituary of a cancelled food, the corporate equivalent of thoughts and prayers. It absolves the company while blaming us, the consumer. “We didn’t stop making it. You stopped buying it,” they’re saying. But “poor sales” doesn’t distinguish between “nobody wants this” and “this isn’t worth our time.” Your memories are subject to quarterly earnings reports now. Your sense of comfort must justify itself in terms of market efficiency. Here’s one that’s a humdinger. The Oh Henry! Bar was discontinued in 2019, just months short of its 100th birthday. That’s the corporate equivalent of shooting a racehorse in the home stretch. Here’s the truth. We don’t actually want these products back. We want what they represent: the version of ourselves that existed when we ate them. Summer afternoons that stretched on forever. The feeling of being young enough that time still felt infinite. No reformulated pudding pop can give us that. So here’s to the fallen, to Altoids Sours and Butterfinger BBs, Snackwell’s Devil’s Food Cookies, and whatever Muggles Lunch was supposed to be. They’re gone. They’re not coming back. And we’re right to mourn them, not because they were great, but because they were ours. And in the end, isn’t that all any of us are really hungry for? Want to be a part of putting the “no” in nostalgia? Become a Feeling Friend today. You’ll get a private members-only podcast feed with extended versions of every episode, member-only extras, and our full trailer archive. Basically, more show, fewer ads, and the good weird stuff we can’t always fit in public. It’s 35 bucks a year, 25 bucks to renew, and it directly helps keep this season of All The Feelings chugging along. Head to AllTheFeelings.fun and join us today. And now, back to the show.
ATF Announcers
Subset Two: Cooking for One
Tommy Metz III
Peter, you know what I’m talking about.
Pete Wright
Oh, I’d heard rumors.
Tommy Metz III
Yep. Cooking for one.
Pete Wright
Mm-hmm.
Tommy Metz III
Cooking for one, Pete! And this is a perfectly timed topic because just last night, this is true, I made a recipe of Instant Pot pork tenderloin stew. And my apartment still smells like soup. And because I live alone, I’m currently worried that I’m walking around in the world smelling like a meat man. And no one has told me differently. So I’m just—
Pete Wright
Maybe the world just loves you as Meat Man.
Tommy Metz III
Potentially, maybe it is a good thing. I’m not exactly sure. But yes, so we are talking about cooking, and because this is Season 11, I wanted to give those OG fans—what’s that smell? Way back, it behooves me to offer up mageirocophobia: the fear of cooking.
Pete Wright
Wow.
Tommy Metz III
That’s the Greek noun mageiros, which means chef or butcher, and phobos, which is what, Pete?
Pete Wright
God of yikes.
Tommy Metz III
The Greek god of yikes. Now I’m very lucky that I do not suffer from this. That would be really weird if I just started screaming and left the podcast.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
But there are parts of cooking and mostly cooking alone for one that do plague me. First of all, and I just want to go through them step by step. This one I want to see if you—because there’s a chance I sort of created this one.
Pete Wright
Okay.
Tommy Metz III
But okay, emotionally. At some point I remember feeling, and I think it was, as all things are for me, during the pandemic—
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
—that there was an attempt to really empower cooking for one. Like people were cooking for one or cooking just for two people, you know. And I think maybe it was supposed to be about like either portion control or autonomy, but instead just the term “for one” got so big and prominent in a lot of packages. And I guess I’m mainly talking about like frozen food, you know, like all packaged meals, like “for one, for one.”
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
And it was always like—I just remember feeling like I’m seeing like Healthy Choice beef stroganoff for you and you only. And it’s like, why are we leaning into that? Pasta Alfredo for you to eat before you die alone. Does that remind you—does that sound like anything that you remember? I remembered, and maybe it was just where I was emotionally, because I was living alone during the pandemic, but I just remember being like, “Why are we hammering?” This is not doing what I think you think this is doing for me. This is making me sad.
Pete Wright
Do you know what’s interesting about that? So as you may recognize, I don’t have a lot of love for grocery stores, so I don’t remember the labeling or the branding of these things, but I do remember commercials—
Tommy Metz III
Yeah.
Pete Wright
—during the pandemic that were highlighting people having dinner over Zoom. So it wouldn’t be like a bunch of people gathered together around a table.
Tommy Metz III
Interesting. Sure.
Pete Wright
It would be one plate. You’ve just made food for one and you’re like raising a glass to your parents who are on the computer screen in front of you.
Tommy Metz III
Sure.
Pete Wright
So I feel like that’s kind of leaning into the thing. We’re branding food around you making just one plate of it.
Tommy Metz III
You’re making just one plate.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Well, at least your memory has other people in it. Mine was like, if you look at the back of—if you look at the back of the box, it’s like step one.
Pete Wright
It is so sad.
Tommy Metz III
Heat up the pasta. Step two, put it in a bowl. Step three, find a jacket and fill it with as many heavy rocks as you can. And step four, just walk into the sea. It just felt very dystopian.
Pete Wright
That’s so sad.
Tommy Metz III
Okay, so I think it was really weird.
Pete Wright
I thought you were going to go like, you know, have a bowl of pasta and find the first episode of Northern Exposure to watch again, right?
Tommy Metz III
Yeah, I know.
Pete Wright
Like, geez.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah, just go watch Suits, you idiot. Like whatever people did. Okay, so that’s number one emotionally. Number two, I guess also emotionally, we already talked about it in your segment, but I need precise direction and measurements.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Any recipe, because I look through—because I get a lot of recipes from the internet. Any recipe that has too much “season to taste.” If it’s salt, I get it. But like “season to taste” or something vague like “add a dollop” or “a medium amount.”
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Kick rocks. Get out of here.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
I need you to tell me exactly so I can scream “Yes, chef!” in my echoey, all-alone kitchen.
Pete Wright
How do I know what—how do I know what enough coriander to taste is?
Tommy Metz III
Yeah, what is that?
Pete Wright
Nobody knows that.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah, no. And no one knows what coriander is.
Pete Wright
No.
Tommy Metz III
I checked.
Pete Wright
Right.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah. I looked, I Googled coriander and it said, “Huh?”
Pete Wright
Huh?
Tommy Metz III
It said, “Do you mean colander?”
Pete Wright
Zero results.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah, yeah, I broke Google. They were like, “Try Bing.” And we actually have a friend of the show that I will—just because I didn’t get permission, I will let him remain nameless. But he got a recipe from a nutritionist once, and it was for a healthy tuna salad. But there was a misprint. And so a misprint in the ingredients. And he didn’t know that the sheer amount of mayonnaise he was putting into the tuna was like—it was mayonnaise with a sprinkling of tuna.
Pete Wright
Okay.
Tommy Metz III
And that’s—I’m not making fun of it. He didn’t know that it was off until he tasted it because he never cooks. That’s the kind of mistake I can see myself making. That’s why I need precise—I just don’t have the common sense to be like, “Clearly they don’t mean.”
Pete Wright
Okay.
Tommy Metz III
Well, to wit: the pork tenderloin—the aforementioned pork tenderloin stew, it just said half a cup of—
Pete Wright
Mm, Meat Man.
Tommy Metz III
—half a cup of red wine.
Pete Wright
Meat Man.
Tommy Metz III
And I was like, “Great, I can go do that. I’ll just get one of those little boxes of like cooking wine or something.” And got home and I was super excited and I poured it into the measuring thing. This wasn’t red, it was white, because I just saw the word pinot. And assumed the next word was noir and not grigio.
Pete Wright
It was Pinot Grigio.
Tommy Metz III
It was grigio. And I was like, “Well, that’s done.” And I looked up on Google, I said, “Can you—for like a pork tenderloin stew, because everyone writes about everything now, can you substitute white for red?”
Pete Wright
Yeah. Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
And they said, “You can, but it’s going to taste way different.” And I was like, “Yeah. Thanks, Googs. Take the rest of the night off, you idiot.” Okay, I’m screaming.
Pete Wright
But sometimes those substitutions are—
Tommy Metz III
I’m—
Pete Wright
—chemically curious, right? Like, “Can I substitute baking powder for baking soda?”
Tommy Metz III
Right.
Pete Wright
“Well, yes, it’s going to include putting like just shaving off dry lye into whatever you have.” And that’ll do the same thing. Well, how would you—what do you need to add to white wine to make it red?
Tommy Metz III
How do you do that?
Pete Wright
Food coloring.
Tommy Metz III
That’s what it is. It’s the color. Yeah, because one of the things said, “Yes, you can use white wine, but you know, you’re going to have to change all the rest of the ingredients.” Full stop.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Who is this for?
Pete Wright
Oh, what?
Tommy Metz III
Why did you just—that’s not—I don’t know how to do—okay, yeah.
Pete Wright
What?
Tommy Metz III
It was just—it. That was the answer. Okay, great.
Pete Wright
Yes, you can put Grigio to bed.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah, like why is Gordon Ramsay Googling? Like, if you know how to do all these things, why is that a thing? The other thing that is very humbling for me is I can’t remember anything. When it comes to basic recipe stuff, kind of like how I use, what’s it called, Google Maps or Waze to get around Los Angeles. I think I’m losing my sense of basic direction. The sheer amount of times I’ve typed in phrases like “how long boil ear corn”—that I’m sure—into the internet. I’m sure it’s astonishing.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
I’m sure someone is just like, there’s like a dedicated page for me. Because I just can’t remember and I’m too used to just looking things up.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
So that’s not—all great.
Pete Wright
So that’s not all the time.
Tommy Metz III
That doesn’t help me become—I’m not becoming a better chef, a better cook. But I am cooking.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
You know, I like cooking and I like it in a way that it gives me anxiety, but I still like having cooked.
Pete Wright
I might be like here. I don’t know.
Tommy Metz III
I guess maybe that’s the thing. And it does feel like one of the most adult things that I do, especially because Pete, my doctor recently said that my cholesterol was a scotch high and suggested that I try eating more fish. And I never cook fish because I think fish were scary and it’s really easy to poison yourself because I think I was mixing up fish with chicken. I thought fish was like really dangerous. I don’t know if I was thinking of blowfish. Fish is incredibly easy to make.
Pete Wright
Yes, it takes seconds.
Tommy Metz III
And I forgot about sushi.
Pete Wright
And you forgot about sushi.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah. Like sushi’s raw.
Pete Wright
You’ve already dropped the poke ball experience, which was just raw fish.
Tommy Metz III
Like sushi’s raw. I know. And I thought that if I undercooked it—yeah, the first time I cooked fish it was a disaster. I mean, it tasted fine because it’s impossible to really ruin. I love fish now.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
And I cook it a couple times a week. But I—I was so afraid I overcooked it so much, my entire apartment. Let’s just say instead of a Meat Man, I was a Fish Boy.
Pete Wright
Fish Boy.
Tommy Metz III
For that week. But now yeah, I make pan-seared salmon with avocado oil and I have like a little sweet potato and like a little side salad.
Pete Wright
Okay.
Tommy Metz III
And stuff. And that seems like a very cool adult—it’s a grown-up-ass meal.
Pete Wright
That is a grown-up meal right there. You might say it’s like a septuagenarian meal too.
Tommy Metz III
Oh.
Pete Wright
Like the parents dig that meal.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah? Oh well I—that’s fine.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
I’m—all I keep—I was like, “Yeah, but that’s—but I’m not old.”
Pete Wright
It’s fine.
Tommy Metz III
Oh wait, I’m legitimately—
Pete Wright
Well I’m just saying you’re aging into your fish era, and that’s okay.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah. I like it.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
My fish era. Great. All right. That’s the first T-shirt. “Aging Into Our Fish Era.” That’s a sticker. The—okay, the hardest thing about cooking for one for me, other than that emotional and humbling stuff, is that all recipes are for six servings.
Pete Wright
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Tommy Metz III
People just decided that that’s the amount. Now I can cut that in half.
Pete Wright
Is it six? I guess I would have expected it to be four. Is six really—then I don’t—I’ve never looked.
Tommy Metz III
On the internet, on the internet, it’s almost all six for some reason.
Pete Wright
Okay.
Tommy Metz III
Or I just go to recipesfor6.com. I should really try to like maneuver around. But and I’ll—I really do try and practice portion control after I—I think I’ve actually told this story on the podcast, but I met with a dietitian once just because my doctor was like, “You’re fine and you’re losing weight, but dietitians are free. Do you want to just go talk to this person?” And I was like, “Yeah.”
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
And she brought out a series of different size bowls and plates to show me what the correct portion of food was. And the main one, I was like, “Oh no,” it was so small compared to what I was used to. I was like, the bowl that she had for the entire meal, I would have assumed that’s for the dipping sauces. Like that’s straight up just to dunk. And the meal is in the bucket next to it. I was so embarrassed. And so I always, and so because of this, and you know, I can cut it in half, but that’s still three servings. Luckily, I’m the kind of person that is fine to eat things a couple nights in a row.
Pete Wright
Mm-hmm.
Tommy Metz III
But I always make too much food and unfortunately I’ve—I think I get it from my father who has anxiety about things spoiling—he’s a little overworried that things spoil too fast. I don’t know if he’s maybe given himself food poisoning. But freezing and thawing stuff out, I don’t do it very much. I’m afraid somehow that I’m going to do it wrong. And I don’t know what that means.
Pete Wright
Wow, okay.
Tommy Metz III
In the same way that like fish I was going to do wrong.
Pete Wright
Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Tommy Metz III
I just sort of have this block. And so what I do instead is I make two “for six” recipes like on the same day or one and then—that lets me go back and forth and back and forth.
Pete Wright
Mm-hmm. Yeah, sure, sure.
Tommy Metz III
And so that’s my big thing because I want to use this adulting podcast also not to make like resolutions or promises, but I also want to—
Pete Wright
Like HP 2.1.
Tommy Metz III
—give myself advice in the way of hoping to give other people that might be suffering—when I’m doing advice. I know we’re not a researching podcast, but I have one thing. Because I want to feel better and get more confident about freezing and using leftovers.
Pete Wright
Okay. Excellent.
Tommy Metz III
That’s my big goal.
Pete Wright
This is it.
Tommy Metz III
I need to do that.
Pete Wright
Draw the line.
Tommy Metz III
The Food Network had three big tips, and none of them occurred—well, one of them occurred to me. The other two didn’t, and they’re so strikingly obvious that people are probably going to turn off the podcast. But if you’re me, these are going to really help. You want to hear what they are?
Pete Wright
Desperately.
Tommy Metz III
Okay. Portion your food. “Ever attempted to defrost a life-size block of frozen chili? Things can get messy, and once you—” I’m not going to read these in real time. What am I doing? What they’re saying is make your little sections ahead of time.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Don’t just put—don’t just put all of it—friend of the show Nikki Reynolds, now Nikki Small, I’m sorry, for 19,000 years, whenever she would move from apartment to apartment. This one time she thought the way to move her books was to find the biggest box and put all of her books in it at once.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
And we were like, “That just doesn’t work.”
Pete Wright
Makes total sense.
Tommy Metz III
It’s the same kind of thing with leftovers.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Because you don’t want to defrost an entire thing, make these little packages of stuff. Never occurred to me.
Pete Wright
It’s huge.
Tommy Metz III
Makes total sense. Makes total sense.
Pete Wright
Do you know what they sell? You can get these plastic—they’re like freezer-safe. Put them in the freezer. When you’re ready to make just a bowl of soup, break out one, heat it up, put the rest back in the freezer. You have perfectly portioned bowls of soup or chili.
Tommy Metz III
What?
Pete Wright
They’re incredible.
Tommy Metz III
That’s even better than this next one.
Pete Wright
Yeah. We’ve got these things everywhere.
Tommy Metz III
Okay. Well, okay, I’m definitely going to buy that, and then I’m going to team it up with number two. Use bags.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
I put everything in these giant Tupperware nonsense things. Use bags. “Freeze soup, sauces, and other leftovers in resealable bags, then lay flat until frozen.” And so you can just stack a whole bunch instead of—I have like half of a leg of—
Pete Wright
Yep.
Tommy Metz III
Leg. What was I about to say? Half of a leg of lamb? I’ve never cooked lamb. Weird. But just have all of these things stacked up.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
That sounds actually kind of really fun. And so like these small soup-sized things or these little sandwich-size bags of stuff.
Pete Wright
Yep.
Tommy Metz III
I love it. This is the only one that I do know, but I don’t do. And I’m going to start, of course: label and date.
Pete Wright
Oh, yes.
Tommy Metz III
That’s one of the things—I always assume I will remember when I made this. What am I thinking?
Pete Wright
Big yeah.
Tommy Metz III
I don’t remember sometimes how my tub works. Like—of course, label and date everything, and then I can just go through them. And so I’m really—it’s a little sad to be excited about something like this, but it feels like it’s going to give me a new lease on life because I love cooking. But I do—it is a drag sometimes to just eat the same one or two things for an entire week or a week and a half. So I want to try to embrace this stuff. And I think that that makes cooking for one especially make a ton of sense.
Pete Wright
I think that’s really beautiful. I have a couple of things for you. Are you ready?
Tommy Metz III
Oh, please, please, please.
Pete Wright
All right. Number one, I live by the—they’re like gummy. I don’t know what you call—silicone. Silicone. They’re silicone. Dustpan. Silicone. And you—they’re the silicone, you can get different sizes, so you can get little tiny ones, you can get big ones. Like if you happen to blend up some sort of a salsa or something you’re making and you need just smaller—ice cube, you can get the silicone ones with little tiny or great big ones for an entire bowl of soup. They’re really, really great.
Tommy Metz III
So this is another kind of ice tray-ish kind of thing.
Pete Wright
That’s one. Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Okay, got it.
Pete Wright
The other is an actual appliance that I don’t necessarily recommend, but it should be in your vernacular, and that is the FoodSaver.
Tommy Metz III
I’m going to write this down.
Pete Wright
The FoodSaver is a vacuum sealing system. So it’s like a thing that sits on your counter and it has rolls.
Tommy Metz III
Oh.
Pete Wright
It’s just a giant roll of bag. Like just a whole roll of bag. And you pull a little bit out, or you push a button, and it heat-seals one side of the bag. And you pull it out and cut it, then you fill it with whatever it is you want—liquid, meat, whatever you want in the bag.
Tommy Metz III
Leg of lamb, yep.
Pete Wright
Leg of lamb could be the whole—yeah. And then you stick just the end back in the FoodSaver machine and hold the button down. It sucks all the air out of the bag and then seals it. So you have a vacuum-sealed thing of food.
Tommy Metz III
Okay.
Pete Wright
It will last—I mean, air is the enemy of preservation, right? You want to preserve your food.
Tommy Metz III
Oh, I see. So this really—this isn’t built to last.
Pete Wright
Yeah, you get air out of the mix. And that’s why—like anytime you vacuum seal or anytime you seal something, you want to get all the air out of it. People suck on the little sealed—right, and then seal it real quick. You’ve got to get the air out of it before you put it in the freezer.
Tommy Metz III
Oh, I don’t do that. Okay.
Pete Wright
Okay.
Tommy Metz III
Good to know.
Pete Wright
The next is an app that I use that we use together in the house called Mela. M-E-L-A. It is from a developer in Italy. It is fantastic. Let me tell you why. You know, you go on the internet, you’ve heard of the internet, and you say, “Here’s a recipe I want to make.” Oh my god. There’s like a life story in here.
Tommy Metz III
Oh God, yes.
Pete Wright
It’s like, “Oh God, can you tell me—tell me more about your farmstead chickens? Before you just teach me how to make this grilled cheese. Can we do that? I would love to. Wait, don’t you have more chickens to tell me about?”
Tommy Metz III
This Caesar salad changed—saved my marriage. And it’s like, “No,” yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah, right. Which is, I mean, I get it. SEO is what it is, but people are trying to get noticed. But the point is, often the recipes are bangers. You can send that URL to Mela. Mela’s the recipe app. It gets rid of all the garbage, finds just the recipe.
Tommy Metz III
Oh.
Pete Wright
Puts the ingredients in the ingredients place, the steps in the steps place, and if there’s a picture, it’ll suck the picture in too. And you can adjust portions. So once all the ingredients are in, you can say, “I’m only making this for one.” It will do the math for you so that you can make just enough for you.
Tommy Metz III
Oh my goodness, that’s a game-changer because I’ve noticed in some of the—
Pete Wright
Yeah. It is a game-changer. It’s lovely.
Tommy Metz III
—online recipes that they are getting sneaky. Even when you press “Jump to Recipe” it doesn’t go to the recipe. It goes to a recipe for some people. Yeah, yeah. Mela. M-E-L-A. Okay. I’m going to check that out.
Pete Wright
Mm-hmm. No, it goes to more homestead chickens. Yeah. Yeah. I love Mela. We live by it. Kira’s also a big fan of New York Times Cooking. The cooking app does very similar things. It’s great. So I just like having—when I get lost for “What am I going to eat, what do I want to eat this week?”—Mela has our library of all the recipes we make and we can, you know, heart them and schedule them. It has a little calendar. You can schedule them. It’ll create a grocery list of all the things you need to make these meals.
Tommy Metz III
Wow.
Pete Wright
It’s really sweet. So there you go.
Tommy Metz III
I love it.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Learning.
Pete Wright
Live to serve.
Tommy Metz III
This is exciting. Oh, I’m so glad I didn’t get in a relationship.
Pete Wright
This is great. This is going to be a—
Tommy Metz III
I’m going to cook for one forever. Woohoo! Goodbye, heavy coat. I’m sticking around.
Pete Wright
Okay. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode, the first of our Season 11. This week’s tune: “Cake” by Ollie Joseph. Tom, what’s coming up next week?
Tommy Metz III
Next week we have a twofer. You’re taking on one adulting thing, and I’m taking on one adulting thing. I am going to be talking about Zen and the Art of Car Maintenance, except not the Zen part. I don’t know what that is, just car maintenance. How do cars work and as an adult, what do you have to do? And how do you best make the noise for your mechanic of like, “When my car makes this noise, what’s wrong with it?” So it’s going to be a real Michael Winslow. Yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah, okay, I get that, yeah.
Tommy Metz III
Yeah. How about you?
Pete Wright
I think I’ve already teased it. It is my one core skill that I bring to my relationship in my home, and that is laundry.
Tommy Metz III
Oh, that’s right. Laundry management. Laundry management, car management.
Pete Wright
We’re talking about laundry.
Tommy Metz III
Woo! Banger!
Pete Wright
I can’t believe it.
Tommy Metz III
Banger episode!
Pete Wright
It’s going to be a banger episode. What are we doing with our lives? That’s it. Until then, I’m Pete Wright.
Tommy Metz III
And I’m Tommy Metz III. Thank you so much for downloading. We will see you next episode, next week, on All The Feelings: Still Adulting.
