6 Ranch Podcast
From the Tank to the Kitchen with Chef Andrew Garrett
Meet Andrew Garrett, a chef and former army tanker. Hear his account of how 9/11 changed everything for the military—from halting training in Germany to gearing up for war. Andrew shares how this pivotal time shaped his leadership skills and set him on the path to culinary success.
We discuss the diverse flavors of American cuisine, learn the value of knowing your food’s origins, and pick up some essential tips for cooking in the outdoors. Don’t miss this fascinating journey from the battalion to the brigade.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Check out NICKS BOOTS and use code 6ranch for a free gift.
Meet Andrew Garrett, a chef and former army tanker. Hear his account of how 9/11 changed everything for the military—from halting training in Germany to gearing up for war. Andrew shares how this pivotal time shaped his leadership skills and set him on the path to culinary success.
We discuss the diverse flavors of American cuisine, learn the value of knowing your food’s origins, and pick up some essential tips for cooking in the outdoors. Don’t miss this fascinating journey from the battalion to the brigade.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Check out NICKS BOOTS and use code 6ranch for a free gift.
American cuisine, to me, is a beautiful mess of cultures and ingredients that all came from all these different places and landed in certain regions. And the people from those cultures that landed in those places shared something with someone else, they shared it with a stranger, and then that stranger said oh my God.
Speaker 2:These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands. I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch Podcast. For those of you out there that are truck guys like me. I want to talk to you about one of our newest sponsors, dect. If you don't know DECT? They make bomb-proof drawer systems to keep your gear organized and safely locked away in the back of your truck. Clothes, rifles, packs, kill kits can all get organized and at the ready so you don't get to your hunting spot and waste time trying to find stuff. We all know that guy. Don't be that guy. They also have a line of storage cases that fit perfectly in the drawers. We use them for organizing ammunition, knives, glassing equipment, extra clothing and camping stuff. You can get a two-drawer system for all dimensions of full-size truck beds or a single-drawer system that fits mid-size truck beds. And maybe best of all, they're all made in the USA. So get decked and get after it. Check them out at deckedcom. Shipping is always free. So how's Bear Camp? Oh, it's brilliant.
Speaker 1:Our Bear Camp is not like a typical bear camp, I don't think. You know we have wall tents on platforms Right, and my kitchen tent is solely for dining and kitchen. I've got a 10 foot by 12 foot cutout. That is all mine and clients know, do not cross the line. Yeah, but it creates that like nice open scenario where clients still get a chance to come in and ask questions and it's, it's brilliant. But you know we've got beds, so we have memory foam mattresses on twin beds and cowhide carpets and faux lighting and starlink and it's, it's, it's, it's a retreat it's a 21st century bear camp.
Speaker 1:It really is. And it's so much fun because you're right there on the south fork of the salmon river, uh, I get to spend most of my off time either helping carry bear baits up to the baits, uh, finding new ways to bake over propane and in those little Coleman ovens, and then fly fishing. Right there I got my kitchen tent. I just go fly fishing, catch cutthroats all day. You know, it's brilliant, it's really an awesome experience. And then the food that we're doing is restaurant quality dining in the middle of the back country. Yeah, so it's. It's taking things to a whole nother level, which is a lot of fun for me because it's finding a way to be creative. You know, I'm sure I have the amenities of like having the oven, or I have a propane grill, you know. But we also do a lot of smoking. So I smoke a whole brisket once a week and we use wild apple trees from the apple orchard that was planted up there by the settlers that settled the area in the early. You know, it must have been the mid, well, like late 1800s. Um, and yeah, you can't beat it. And our clients are great. Yeah, I love the folks that come in. We have a lot of repeat customers, so you get to know the folks and you get to know their history and you get to know their families. It just becomes a really intimate setting. It really is. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1:You spend that much time with someone in the middle of nowhere. It really helps you to connect. You wind up with a hunter that tags out early. I call them the stragglers. Even though they're tagged out, they're still just straggling around camp and you watch people that really they don't know how to let go and just be in nature and be calm. And still, because they'll walk circles around camp or they'll sit and they'll skip rocks on the river, they'll sit in a hammock and swing back and forth and then inevitably they come back into the kitchen and we're just having this conversation about like oh, why are you doing this? How are you doing that? Uh, which helps me professionally, right Cause then it forces me to actually speak, what I'm actually doing, uh, and then forces my ego to get a little bit more creative with the fun that we're having as far as, like, baked goods and everything else. So, yeah, it's a good time.
Speaker 2:Bear camp's wonderful well, introduce yourself to the audience, chef uh, yeah, so my name is andrew garrett.
Speaker 1:Uh, I am a chef, uh, I am an army tanker, which I think is how I really connected with you at first was erica told me oh, you got to meet adele and james at six ranch because grass-fed beef and I love grass-fed beef and, oh, you know, james is a marine. I didn't realize that you were a tanker. And then, when I realized you're a tanker, I'm like oh, this guy, he gets it, he gets it yeah, you know, not even a dying breed, it's a dead breed.
Speaker 2:Now it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah I just found that out. Uh, I was talking to a buddy of mine who's getting ready to retire at this point Because I think my term of service is probably 10 years before you. I was 99 to 2003. Okay, and so I was just talking to him about it because I saw the SEP3. And I'm like, wait a minute, you're giving the loader a site Like the loader gets to pick up targets. Where was that when I was in, like that would be, you know.
Speaker 1:I didn't have that. I didn't have that. No, you guys were on the M1A1s Yep, yep, so were we? Did you guys do the just typical tank gunneries for training and certifications?
Speaker 2:Yeah, our tank tables were different from the armies. Okay, it was just more involved, I guess. And uh, yeah, tank gunnery for us took 40 days dang, and it was. It was actually very interesting at camp lejeune because we had to ferry the tanks across an arm of salt water to get out to the tank gunnery place. So we had that amphibious aspect to it, which, of course, is very important for Marines, and it's sketchy, man, it's sketchy putting your tank on this. You know, like ferry, that doesn't look like it's big enough Right.
Speaker 2:And it squats down in the water and it's like all right, here we go and they motor you across and you disembark and yeah, it was really cool but definitely a very involved process, Very involved process. My platoon was wonderful. They're extremely skilled tankers and before we deployed, when we shot that tank gunnery, we had the highest gunnery score in the whole Marine Corps and I'm so proud of those guys for how they commanded their tanks and shot and and, uh, just manage their time. There's a lot of dramas that come up, you know. There's hurricanes that roll in, there's deaths in the family, there's 40 days is a long time, yeah, and it simulates, in a way, the type of stuff that happens when you're deployed and you need to figure out how to work through all that, because you can't go Like you're here and you need to focus on the task at hand and compartmentalize the rest of the world. How is tank gunnery for you guys? I?
Speaker 1:mean, I shot it at school, because we go to school together. Right, well, we were. We would do 30 days and I was stationed in vilseck, germany, which grafenwehr, germany, where the big, the training facility for tanks, all of our gunnery ranges are right there. So we were right in the back seat, back backyard of where we got. So, uh, I was third brigade, first infantry division, and we were the ready force for the us army, usura. So we were just on this constant training cycle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if we weren't in bosnia, kosovo, macedonia, we're in graph, we're in holmenfels and we were shooting, um, and it was even, though the thing that was kind of crazy about that is we would be right there, like you could see our barracks from where we were sleeping on the range. And just like you're saying, you know all this life happens and still you know that, no, we're here for a purpose, this is, this is our job right now. And you watch people like, oh my God, like I don't know how to do, and you really figure out who those people that are going to be there 100 are for you. Uh, I was really fortunate.
Speaker 1:I had absolutely brilliant leadership. Uh, I had my first. My first tank commander was a green to gold, uh, lieutenant Jacobs, and he was no BS in let's get this job done. And you know we were. I think we shot two distinguished gunneries, over 900 with that tank crew, uh. And then I wound up being a 20 year old gunner for a another green to gold LT and we shot another distinguished uh, we were very good at what we did, yeah, and it's one of those things where, like, tanking is so easy but it's also so hard, yeah it's.
Speaker 2:It's easy when you've got a good crew and a full-up system and then as they start taking those components away from you, and pretty soon you're shooting manual gunnery and your headset's quit working. It's a lot of work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's nothing like hydraulic fluid shooting you in the lap. Yeah, so much. Wait a minute. Why am I warm? Why is this happening?
Speaker 2:And for folks that don't know, in the M1A1 Abrams main battle tank there's four crew members.
Speaker 2:You've got a driver who's the junior guy, a loader who's the next most junior guy, and then you have the gunner and the tank commander, and the gunner is a very senior position in the tank. So being a gunner at age 20 is a big deal. It means you're promoted quickly and, I'm sure, meritoriously. The gunner is a very senior position in the tank. So being a gunner at age 20 is a big deal. It means you're promoted quickly and, I'm sure, meritoriously. Then if you have the platoon commander or platoon leader, if you're in the Army, that individual is a second or first lieutenant and they're going to be in charge of the tank platoon. Being four tanks and because their attention ends up getting split and talking to the other tank commanders and to their higher positions, to adjacent elements, to aircraft, et cetera, the gunner on that one tank, on the platoon leader, platoon commander's tank, has to be able to run that tank by himself. And yeah that. The fact that you're able to do that at such a young age speaks volumes.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I absolutely love what we're doing. Like I said, my leadership was high speed, no BSing until training was done, and then the BSing was to be BSed.
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Speaker 2:I'm currently wearing my Knicks Boots Game Breakers on the 6th Ranch as I work cattle, plant my garden, build fence and prepare for the upcoming hunting season. Knicks has a full assortment of men's and women's work boots to serve wildland, firefighters, ranchers, tradespeople, military personnel and anyone else who values quality footwear made in America and anyone else who values quality footwear made in America. Visit knicksbootscom today to find your next pair of quality American-made work boots. Add a pair of boots and a work belt to your cart and use the code 6RANCH no-transcript. Were you in Germany during 9-11? Yep, what was that like?
Speaker 1:It was wild. So we were in the middle of training in Hohenfels, germany, and I don't know if you've ever been a part of a training where somebody loses a piece of equipment like a 9mm or an M4 and everything stops and you start looking for it. Well, we were told immediate stop, everything's got to stop. Pack everything up, wash everything down, get to the railhead, like get to the railhead. And that to us was like hey, we've still got three weeks left of this. You know training. And so get to doing everything. Hohenfels has this like super sticky dark red clay that just sticks to every single bit of a tank everywhere the tanks train has clay.
Speaker 2:I swear to god, it's just, it's inevitable.
Speaker 1:And it's like they aren't designed for that, but that's where we train with them, right, and so you know you have to get underneath it with these giant hoses, just power washing the heck out of these tanks, because the german jägermeister will come over and if you have any mud from that region going back to your home region, you're you're redlined and go back and start over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've seen people inspect the cleanliness of tanks with q-tips.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's nuts yeah, it's absolutely nuts, uh, and if you don't have a squared away uh unit, you're just going to be in this perpetual cycle of no go-go, no go-go, no go-go. But yeah, we braille headed back down to Vilsack and we were pulling in, they had taken 1st Battalion and put tanks at the front gate, and that's when all of our buzzers are going off like, okay, what's really going on? Because we went from having essentially an open post when I got there, where any civilian could walk on, sign in, come on post. All of a sudden we've got gates and we've got tanks at the front gate. And we made it back in time and then we started watching the news and everything's happening. And it was.
Speaker 1:It was nuts because everything got real very quickly. You know, we had, we had been deployed to Macedonia, and so we we'd been around deployments, we still had a couple of Gulf war era NCOs in our unit, and so people had an idea. And because of the way we were training on a regular basis, you know, we were training for this moment and then it's real and that was, uh, it was crazy. I mean, there was no sleep. We were rotating 24 hour guard shifts at the gate. Uh, no one really knew what was going to happen. Uh, we couldn't. We had a lot of guys from New York State, new York City, who were, you know, watching and trying to get a hold of family members. And at that point, you know it's 2001,.
Speaker 1:So we're still working on landlines and you know new cell phone technology, so trying to get through to anybody on you know, skype wasn't a thing yet FaceTime wasn't a thing.
Speaker 1:So it was a lot of confusion, a lot of panic, a lot of worry and then, once everything kind of settled down, just went into okay, well, what's our next mission? And that's when we started kind of figuring out what the plan was really looking like as we moved forward. Yeah, it was surreal. It was very surreal because you don't, I guess, even though you're training for all this, you're training to go to war, you're training to be in a battle, you're doing all this real live fire activity but that moment becomes very real and everything kind of slows down and takes a while to sink in and like, okay, gather together and let's move on to the, to the next mission and 10 years later.
Speaker 2:It was a very different experience, because we'd been at war for a long time right so it wasn't.
Speaker 2:Every everyone going into the military pretty much knew, especially if they're a ground combat element. It wasn't. Am I going to deploy? Am I going to war? It's like, am I going to get the chance? Very, very different situation. I have a lot of compassion for the guys who signed up in the 90s and then were in, you know, when nine 11 happened. Or for the guys that that signed up right beforehand. You know, that's that's a different beast. I have so much love and admiration for them, but also for the guys that that stepped up to the line right afterwards. You know some of those photographs of, of recruitment offices the next day. Like that warms my heart, like that's what America is all about. But America is also about guys like you who signed up during peacetime and then all of a sudden it's like you're up to bat son.
Speaker 1:Guess what, here you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you're getting put in. Here you go. Yeah yeah, You're getting put in. What is the most important lesson that you learned from the military that you applied to being a professional chef today?
Speaker 1:Being 100% accountable for my own actions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of the top lessons that I was fortunate enough to learn is regardless if it's a A-plus effort or if it's I don't know where those rounds went it's your responsibility to be accountable for it.
Speaker 1:And that accountability spreads to the troops below you, right?
Speaker 1:So I was a young corporal, I was put into a position of leadership early and I had these soldiers below me, and the one time I did not allow myself to be a hundred percent accountable, my team felt the wrath and from that moment forward, I just mentally I'm never going to not be a hundred percent accountable for my actions because of the result that it's going to have on these guys. And these guys are going to see that leadership, they're going to see that example and they're going to carry that onto the next generation. The same thing, you know and I think that's why the transition to the culinary arts was so easy for me is I went from a battalion situation to a battalion kitchen where you have this very clear set of ranks or your executive chef, your chef de cuisine, your sous chef, your garmanger, your line cooks, your fish guy, your meat guy, your prep guy, your dish guy, you know, and if any one of those elements doesn't respect you or doesn't trust you, you're not going to have a good time.
Speaker 2:And that's called the French brigade. Right, the French brigade.
Speaker 1:Italian style cooking.
Speaker 2:So get into that a little bit more, because these are terms that you know a lot of people will never even go in a restaurant that has a French brigade. So kind of break it down for everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the French brigade is, like you said, pretty much done with as far as culinary arts go. There are still some restaurants that allow it to exist. But the French brigade essentially created an assignment for each position in the kitchen, starting with your executive chef, who oversaw your ordering, your menus, your recipe development and overall execution of the restaurant. Then you have your chef de cuisine, so your chef of the food, so he or she is in charge of the entire line. So something goes wrong. Executive chef doesn't go to a line cook and executive chef's going to come to the chef de cuisine and say, hey, okay, what's this? And then he reports. And then the sous chef is the under chef of the chef de cuisine, uh, typically in charge of all your prep items, making sure that inventory is correct. They'll do a lot of produce ordering, make sure things are fresh. They spend a lot of time. Uh, it's the. The epitome of middle management is you are in charge of the lowest of lows and report to the highest of highs.
Speaker 2:So the sous chef is feeling heat from everybody.
Speaker 1:All the time, yeah, all the time. No, good days no, and most of the time they're working on the line. Your executive chef will be expediting, but in a French brigade there will be an expediter position.
Speaker 2:And what does expediting mean?
Speaker 1:That word has a bunch of different meanings but a different one in this case In a restaurant situation. So everybody hears that ticket machine going off. The expediter is organizing those tickets and calling them out to your sous chef, who's on the other side. I've got two mid-well steaks, I've got two rare steaks, I've got three fish, two chicken, one pheasant, and they're all going to one table. So they all got to come together one time and go out at that same time, and these are things that take different amounts of time to cook Absolutely insane.
Speaker 1:So that's why your sous chef is watching your line, cooks like hey, you know, I need three beef down to midwell, one rare. Okay, well, great, I've got mid-well steak, I've got a rare steak. And then you've got, hey, I need fish, I need fish. Fish is going to take seconds. So you need your meat guy, who's working the grill, working the meat, to talk to your fish guy, who also needs to talk to the salad guy, because we've got salads coming up too, because you're coursed out. So the expediter is essentially gathering all these items from the sous chef who's now orchestrated the preparation of these things, to come to the middle, come to the window Expediter is going to line those plates up and hand them to a food runner. An expediter is so important because if they lose control of their line and a food runner comes in and takes that fish that was going with the midwell steaks to table three, that's a solo fish. Oh, I'll just run this myself would be helpful. It's not helpful at all, because now we need a fish and we've got two midwell steaks and a rare steak, so that rare steak is now dying and those midwells are already dead anyway, so it doesn't really matter. But now we gotta get that fish up in a hurry. He's already got two other fish coming in because more tickets have already come in, and so that vocalization and being able to read the line, see how many proteins are down, are veg down, are sauces up, are we all coming up at the same time, is a huge part. So the sous chef plays a huge role in that circus.
Speaker 1:And then from there you have different line positions Depending on the size of the brigade. You'll have a fry person, you'll have garmanger, who's essentially the garden manager, who would typically be salads and desserts, but oftentimes in a full brigade there will be pastry and then you'll have a fish, you'll have protein, you'll have veg, you'll have protein, you'll have veg. And all those people have to communicate at the same time to make sure that the dish is executed correctly and the table is served in a timely, beautiful manner. And I've had the pleasure of working in two brigade kitchens and it is absolute chaos and an absolute symphony, all at the same time, and when it runs great, it is a beautiful thing to watch.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't think that that's something that, uh, television culinary arts really gives the audience a an idea of because it is such a an intense scenario where everything just has to be perfect and that ticker, that printer does not stop ticking. And you know, I remember being a young line cook and just having nightmares of hearing that, where everything just has to be perfect and that printer does not stop ticking. And I remember being a young line cook and just having nightmares of hearing that and just wake up.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm safe here. I'm safe here.
Speaker 2:I've heard that from a lot of chefs that have worked under those types of scenarios, that they have dreams where they're waking up like trying to cook something. All of a sudden it's late. Yeah, it's fascinating From a military perspective. It reminds me of kind of the type of communication that you end up having to do, especially as a tank platoon commander or maybe as a JTAC or something like that. Uh, I think JTAC is probably a little bit, a little bit more more close to that because, um, this is a joint tactical air controller, I think is what JTAC stands for. That's what they're doing.
Speaker 2:So you've got somebody that is, you know, on a radio and they're talking to tanks and saying all right, tanks, where are you at, where's your front line position, front line trace, how long until you're on target?
Speaker 2:You need to be on target at this specific minute. At the same time, they have jets that are inbound. They might have missiles that got fired out of, you know, the Gulf of Oman that you know are going to be 27 minutes in flight, and they've got helicopters that are on station and they've got troops on the ground that are moving forward. And we need to combine this symphony of violence in a way that you know we don't have missiles running into jets, that are running into helicopters, that are shooting tanks, that are running over the top of troops. And while you're doing all that, you've got, you know, an oppositional force that's doing their best to try to, you know, kill you and prevent you from accomplishing your mission. And yeah, I see similarities between you know, trying to serve up a five top of dishes that take different amounts of time and trying to conduct an assault on a position.
Speaker 1:I am going to use that. The customer is the enemy.
Speaker 2:They are trying to defeat us right now.
Speaker 1:Every time they want that fish, well done. Every time they want that steak, well done, okay. I see your game. I like that. That is a perfect analogy for for what it is um, interesting.
Speaker 2:So then you, you go from a world like that, where you have, you know, so many people who are dedicated to all those different tasks, to something that's very much different like working, you know, in the backcountry, where you have to do all of those things by yourself and you know that just the logistics of backcountry cooking are very interesting, because there's still an expectation of fresh food but there is no immediate resupply, right? What does it take to get to the camp where you are working at?
Speaker 1:so for our bear camp, which is right there on the south fork, we're in paint national forest in idaho, um we're, we are four and a half hours to uh pavement and then an hour and a half to mccall, idaho, which is, you know, the local town there. So everything we pack in there, even though we have relatively quick access, is we're not going out because there's no, there's no point in wasting the resources uh fuel, time and energy to get out and replace something. So we have to be very specific. You know I'm a big checklist guy. I love checklists. I like having all my menus dialed in for the week. I know exactly what we need, how much of it, and you know we check and double check and we miss stuff. Yeah, you know, uh, this, the last week we had everything on the list except for eggs, eggs, the five dozen eggs that I always get. I just, I and there was on the list except for eggs, eggs, the five dozen eggs that I always get. I just, and there was on my list and that's a staple.
Speaker 2:It is they're in everything.
Speaker 1:Everything I do is eggs. So you know, I'm like, okay, well, I've got a dozen eggs left. But we called in a favor and we put five dozen eggs on one of the planes. So our clients fly in. Uh, to a little bush airstrip yep. And so we mccall aviation, yeah, uh, actually sawtooth, okay. Yeah, sawtooth flies for us.
Speaker 1:Uh, if you're into the history of backcountry flying in the frank church wilderness, sawtooth mike is the owner and one of the lead pilots and he is any aviation book you pick up around that area. Mike is in it in some way or another. He still runs mail up to yellow pine, out to warren and just a phenomenal history of how folks got things in and out of there. But they hooked us up, they, they did us a solid Super Cubs and jet boats Yep, it's awesome. I wish jet boats could get up the South Fork because I think it'd be a trip to see them. But our fall camp, our fall camp, is in the Frank Church Wilderness, so we are a mule pack three and a half hour ride from the trailhead Gotcha.
Speaker 2:And you forget something you forget something.
Speaker 1:You forget something. No, air strip on that one. No, oh well, we fly into big creek okay, uh, which is right there? And then we drive up about an hour and a half to the trailhead and take the mules in from there. Gotcha uh up on top of mosquito ridge and I tell you what that is unlike any country I've ever been in. Yeah, it's spectacular.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's always been. You know, a challenge and sort of a I don't know a rite of passage for mule packers to be able to pack eggs. You know, eggs are notoriously fragile and a lot can go wrong when you're packing stuff on a mule and you have to have stuff cinched down tight. So you know, it's something that people would say is like oh you know, he'll, he'll bring you five dozen eggs and not one of them will be cracked. It's like I don't know if I could pull that off getting from the grocery store to here. But yeah, I've definitely packed eggs successfully and unsuccessfully before on mules in my younger day. But yeah's a. It's a fascinating world.
Speaker 2:So you're good. You're good with your logistics. You run a lot of checklists. You've got a lot of self-accountability, uh. But when things go wrong, you've got to get creative in a hurry, right? So you know, I've been on on whitewater trips where the gearboat spends some upside down time and then a lot of your dry ingredients are no longer dry. But you've got a menu, you had a plan. It's like, oh well, that plan's gone, what can we make with what we have? And there's still that same expectation of quality, creativity, plating, all that. It's a challenge.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, especially if clients have seen what you're capable of in that first day, and then things go awry, because then you've set this expectation right, because now the bar is high and I don't know if you're like me and you know I I am ego driven. So every oh, wow, a little bell goes off in my brain and I get really excited and I'm really happy and I want to feed that, feed that, feed that, and so, yeah, when something is missing or you've got to recreate, it is very it's challenging, but it's possible as long as you stay calm. Very it's challenging, but it's it's possible as long as you stay calm. You know, I think at the end of the day, that's the. The trick to to solving any problem in a hurry is take a breath, calm down. Okay, let's fix this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, my big project lately has been cinnamon rolls. Okay, I've been trying to make the, the perfect backcountry cinnamon roll. Let's talk through it and let's get involved. It is like it's a challenge because, you know it, my first attempt was last fall, and so we have wood fired stoves in the tents, but there's nowhere to really proof anything, and when the temperature is, you know 40 degrees in the morning and 50 degrees at night, there's no way to really do it.
Speaker 1:And you can't put yeast directly on top of a wood fire stove because it's going to burn it, it's going to overcook it and you're going to wind up with a hot spot and breaks down. So I had to figure out oh well, duh, just double boil it, right? So heavy bottom pot water and double boil it. And once we started doing that, then we started seeing, like OK, these are really expanding, and my experience with yeast doughs at that time was very limited. It's like, okay, yeah, you let pizza dough rise, you push it out, you roll it, you toss it, put it in the oven, you're done. Well, I didn't realize that there's a point that the yeast stops eating and it deflates. And if you have a yeast dough that deflates, you have a rock hard roll. You don't have the fluffy deliciousness. And so it became like this delicate balance of okay, how am I going to manage my time? To like get these just right, roll them second proof, okay, great, then roll them in the dough, let them proof, put them in the oven.
Speaker 1:And I made the mistake this last spring of letting cinnamon rolls. I was so excited. I was bragging to the clients like, oh my gosh, look at, look at this proof. Like, look how big they are, they're so fluffy, like I let them sit out overnight. Overnight temperature drops below 40. It's like a helium balloon that you just pop the air out of and everything deflates. We came into the kitchen in the morning. We're getting coffee going. I'm really excited about these cinnamon rolls and I look and oh no these are very flat.
Speaker 1:So I quickly just recirculated through and it's uh, it's a delicate balance because that yeast I found that there's a very specific time frame between 105 degrees and 125 degrees of your milk, sugar and yeast being in that just absolute perfect moment to put it in the dough and then really fold it over. But what I found was that really whipping the heck out of that milk, yeast and sugar combination, like really put some good air in it, made a huge difference in the first, second and third proofing. So the first proof beautiful, pat it down, knead it, roll it out. Second proof awesome, roll it out, cut it into rolls. Third proof just these big, beautiful, fluffy cinnamon rolls and bake them right.
Speaker 1:Then you know, don't, don't let those cinnamon rolls, you know, like you know, I was really tempting fate and like okay, five more minutes, I'll go five more minutes, so they'll get bigger, they'll get bigger, you get really excited about it. And then finally I was like no, you just minutes, let's go for five more minutes. They'll get bigger, they'll get bigger, you get really excited about it. And then finally I was like no, you just got to go straight in and that was the trick. Is that really frothing the heck out of that yeast mixture. A nice fold. And then that third proof, and we made some cinnamon rolls this week. That would give Ikea a run for their money.
Speaker 2:Nice. I mean, yeah, it was phenomenal, ikea makes cinnamon rolls.
Speaker 1:Oh, you've never had an Ikea cinnamon roll. I've never been to an Ikea. Oh man. Well, when you go to Ikea, I pray you don't have to. I thought they just made furniture. No, oh, no, no, no. The Swedes are known for two things furniture and food right.
Speaker 2:Not really. I think Scandinavian food is trash. Okay, all right, I mean I like crepes, you know there's some Scandinavian stuff, but generally speaking, like when I lived in Norway, I was not impressed by the food scene.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's right You've been there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I lived there for a year I went there skinny because I was wrestling competitively. I wrestled for Norway and man, I continued to lose weight. It's like there's no red meat here, Like I ate more whale than I did beef in a year. You know it's crazy, Okay, so okay, Ikea makes cinnamon rolls.
Speaker 1:Here we go. Yeah, they make cinnamon rolls and meatballs. They're more notoriously known for their meatballs. The good news is, if you get close enough to an Ikea, you can door dash them. No kidding, oh, you can door dash Ikea meatballs.
Speaker 2:I've never door dashed anything either. These are things we don't have out here.
Speaker 1:You look around, you get things like mountains and I guess those are cool to look at. That's one thing I love about this drive-in. My original intention was to come from the north and come back down because I hadn't been through that real portion of Hell's Canyon to come down.
Speaker 1:But one of our guides needed to get back home relatively quick, in a hurry, and he was flying out of Boise, so I did the usual. But there is something I don't think people realize what an awesome drive that is. Like you hit Elgin and all of a sudden you're cruising through, you know, running through the, the rivers right there, and then you come into this beautiful, just what seems like an endless meadow and the mountains are just right there and that's almost like they just frame the sky. Yeah, it's, it's one of the more beautiful drives that I get to make.
Speaker 2:It's a special place and it's it's gorgeous coming in from any direction, uh, from the North especially. You know, you come up out of the Canyon and again get into those valleys and, uh, then suddenly those mountains are right in front of you and it's like, wow, this is, this is awesome and it is beautiful here. It really is. But you know, we're so blessed in america to have beauty all over it. Yeah, pretty incredible. I was doing a little bit of research today on the big island of hawaii and there's considered to be 14 climate zones in the world. The big island has 10 of them, really Right. So they've got alpine, they've got rainforest, they have arid desert the list goes on. But one of the most diverse landscapes in a small area anywhere in the world Wild, yeah, I did not know that about a big island.
Speaker 2:It's also the largest mountain in the world, which I think some people know, some people don't, but if measured from the seafloor it's 33,000 feet tall, that's insane.
Speaker 1:And that's Kilauea right, or is that?
Speaker 2:So Kilauea, there's five volcanoes on the island that are active, and I think that the peak is actually um, an inactive volcano, and I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but yeah, pretty, pretty amazing place um america is, and yeah, I mean there's. There's amazing places all over the world too, but you know, this one's ours yeah, we're.
Speaker 1:We are extremely fortunate. Yeah, it's. Uh, one of my favorite questions is when people ask well, what's american cuisine?
Speaker 2:that's a good question, it is, it's a great one, yeah, and you know you have to break it down into regions.
Speaker 1:I could see that in your opinion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, In my opinion, what is what is?
Speaker 1:American cuisine to you, so regionally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would break it down further into regions. So even if you take a category like pizza, um, that's very regionally specific and you know you're going to have a New York-style pizza and a Chicago-style pizza and a Detroit-style pizza, and it's going to go on and on. If you shift over to barbecue, there's two different barbecue regions in North Carolina. Right, and you want to talk about Civil War, they both think they're right. Whether you're in Eastern or Western North Carolina, it's either you know vinegar and red pepper flakes or it's like a mustard based sauce, Very, very different.
Speaker 2:You know there's two different barbecue styles in Tennessee, like wildly different from Memphis to Nashville, and you know. Then you've got, you've got Texas, you've got Kansas City, you get up into the Northwest and we've modified almost all those with our own. You know smoking traditions that come from salmon and from smoking seafood, and you get another totally different style that lended itself so well to tri-tip that that became one of the most popular cuts of meat in the country. When, if you, if you go back 20 years now, somebody in texas or, or nebraska, or you know virginia for a tri-tip, they wouldn't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, I love that. I I totally agree with you that, the region to region, because it is so specific to each place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but what's American cuisine to?
Speaker 1:you. American cuisine to me is a beautiful mess of cultures and ingredients that all came from all these different places and landed in certain regions, and the people from those cultures that landed in those places shared something with someone else. They shared it with a stranger, and then that stranger said oh my god, you know, I, uh, I know you've been out of new orleans, right?
Speaker 1:oh my gosh it's my favorite example of what american cuisine really is, because these are, these are folks that came and shared food, because, to me, food is the final place that we we really can communicate across the board without you know anything else we have a common understanding food is that bridge, and american cuisine is this, this beautiful mashup of different cultures coming together to try to find that middle ground and share something together, and then saying, oh my gosh, I'm going to take that and I'm going to go over here back to where I came from and I'm going to share it with the people that I know. And then someone there took it to the next place and they shared it with someone else and then it slowly spread. But there's the very heartlands of where these cuisines started. You know Creole cuisine. It's good when you go other places, but it's not the same as when you're in Creole country.
Speaker 2:Absolute facts. And you know, new Orleans is almost a perfect example of that, because you have the French Cajuns, who are two-time expats, right, the French Cajuns who are two-time expats, right, like, they moved from France to Canada and then they moved from Canada down to this little swamp that they thought they could get left alone. And then you blend that with, you know, with, like, the Atlantic Islander, caribbean, voodoo, creole, african influence, and you know, you put it in a pot with some fat for, you know, 12 hours, and what comes out of it is is gorgeous food.
Speaker 2:Um, for whatever reason and this is mind blowing to my friends and especially to my sister but uh, I don't, I don't like spicy food. I, I sweat like crazy. You know, if the ketchup hits wrong, it's, it's embarrassing for everybody around me, but uh, but the food in orleans doesn't do it to me. Um, so I think binding that heat with fat rather than with acid makes all the difference. But I loved it. It was the first time in my life that I got to enjoy spicy food you, you know it's like 37 years old, like this is awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I loved it. I loved it, yeah, and and you know, the food is a reflection of the people and a place and then it gets. It gets changed a little bit by the ingredients that are available in that area and by the climate in that area. I had a cool experience a couple of weeks ago and by the climate in that area. I had a cool experience a couple weeks ago. I was at a dive school that was based in Oregon City, but for the open water portion of it. We drove up into the Olympic Peninsula and we dove in the Hood Canal and I'd never been up there before Gorgeous.
Speaker 2:On my way in you know I'm driving in the morning and I'm just mentally preparing myself for these dives and for everything I have to do to pass the class and I saw a sign for a river and you know I read it in my subconscious but I kept on driving past it and then we suited up and went to get in the water and I splashed water over my face uh, because that helps my mask seal a little bit better and gonna tasted some of the water and I was like, wait, I've tasted this before this tastes like hamahama oysters.
Speaker 2:And then I remembered I just crossed the hamahama river and it had probably been two years since the local uh seafood importer here, pier 303, had um, had had hamahama oysters and I'd bought some and eaten them. They're sweet and salty and delicious and just really really good oysters. But that, that connection of taste from that water to those oysters, you know, two years earlier it happened in an instant and that's something that's really powerful about about food is is the way that it can transport us through our own memories oh yeah, absolutely it's.
Speaker 1:Food is is an amazing part of every culture in the world and I think every single place that an ingredient comes from has a very specific taste. You know, and I think that that's one of the things that you that kind of separates it as things get further and further away from their core. Is that memory? One of my favorite culinary movies of all times is Ratatouille Love that movie, the greatest scene of any culinary film, is watching that critic eat the ratatouille and have that flashback, right, because it takes them to that place.
Speaker 1:It takes them to that moment where his mom is making this ratatouille is something that was this labor of love that he had, and it takes him back to that moment and all of a sudden, his grimace melts and he's this childish, you know, persona returns and he's just at ease and calm, and I think that's what food does. Uh, you know, persona returns and he's just at ease and calm, and I think that's what food does. Uh, you know the way food is raised. I don't think we really, I don't think as a as a whole, we've really lost contact with how, how our ingredients get to our table. You know, we were getting into a generation now where kids think that meat comes from the supermarket. And that to me is frightening, right, because I'm fortunate enough to, on my way up here, stop in and get a whole bunch of great grass-fed cattle from places. I can see them walking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, from the pasture that's, you know, 10 yards away from the studio right now.
Speaker 1:And that is a flavor that is irreplaceable. It's not repeatable. That's not something you're going to find in the middle of I-5 at a cattle compound. That's not the experience that these cattle have had and that's not the experience that I'm going to have when I eat that cattle.
Speaker 1:This is going to be something that is the time and effort that's been put into tilling the ground to make sure that cattle is. This is going to be something that is, you know, the time and effort that's been put into tilling the ground to make sure that this is the right kind of feed so that these cattle can actually eat healthy, so they live this really healthy life cycle. They're well cared for when they go to the kill. They're well cared for when they go to the butcher and the wrap and then when I get them, I'm going to take sure that I take care of them when I cook them. And there's something that exists in that moment that we're slowly losing in America. I really think and I really fear that, because I think that's kind of the downfall of our culture as a whole is losing connection to where our food really comes from losing connection to where our food really comes from.
Speaker 2:You know, we have to fight tooth and nail and still have not won this just to get the country of origin on the label of beef, and there are beef producers in the United States that resist that on the national level. So, not even just like. I would love it if there was a barcode on the package that you could you know, or a QR code and you could scan that and you could tell what ranch that animal came from. I think that would be great, but yeah, we can't even get it so that it's mandated to say whether that beef is from America or from some other country.
Speaker 1:Well, the majority of our beef is. It's coming from other places and it's coming in freight containers and it's getting repackaged and relabeled and put on the shelves.
Speaker 2:And I also want to make clear that I think that that's okay too. Right, but I want people to be able to tell if they're buying American beef or Brazilian beef. That's all I think, that's fair Brazilian beef is good. Yeah, there is some phenomenal Brazilian beef.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're good at cooking meat, they really are yeah.
Speaker 2:And they consume a lot of it. I think Brazil and Argentina are the largest consumers of beef per person in the world.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Argentina's over 200 pounds per person per year. Wow, and I think America is like 70 something crazy, yeah, I did not know that yeah, and uh, I don't know, seem seems to be treating them pretty well, yeah, yeah well, one of my favorite condiments to make to accompany beef is a chimichurri oh yeah so good, and you know, again speaking, you know regionally.
Speaker 1:One area to another chimichurri. Oh yeah, so good, and you know, again speaking you know regionally one area to another, chimichurri is just that way. So I prefer a red chimichurri and most folks are used to seeing like a green chimichurri. My red chimichurri is marjoram, fresh oregano, fresh, fresh garlic, smoked paprika, a little bit of cayenne, olive oil and sherry vinegar, and then freshly cut parsley and that that to me is chimichurri over the top of a grilled ribeye yeah new york strip just money and it brightens it up.
Speaker 2:Oh it's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, chimichurri is awesome it's, yeah, it's so good and I think that it's a an underutilized condiment. So anybody listening, make chimichurri, find a recipe, do it yeah, and it's not that hard no, it's really easy. You'll thank us later it's not that hard.
Speaker 2:uh, yeah, man, fresh garlic like we we're. We're glossing over that. If you're actually getting fresh garlic, like that was previously in a in a bulb, um, your chef loves you Because it's a pain.
Speaker 1:I don't care how many tricks you see on TikTok, it's a pain You've got to put it between the two metal bowls and you shake it real hard and they all come off. It's magic.
Speaker 2:It just works like that perfectly every time.
Speaker 1:Or you get the Chinese finger trap tool. Have you seen that one? It's silicone, it looks like a Chinese finger trap, and you put the garlic clove in there and you're supposed to roll.
Speaker 2:It okay, so you do each clove individually, one at a time.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of work. Yep, yeah, that's, that's another good one. Uh, what's your trick to to peeling garlic? Do you? Do you have a time saver for peeling garlic?
Speaker 2:a lot of smashing, yeah, a lot of smashing. Yep and uh, what did I just make the other day? Oh, I brought back some of those oysters after the dive school and I wanted to. We ate a bunch of raw oysters the first night, and then the second night I wanted to grill the rest of them, so I threw them on the trigger at 500 degrees and then, as soon as they popped open, I had taken like some like a three cheese hard cheese mix, like parmesan or whatever else, and I had a bunch of, uh, smashed up horseradish and, um, and fresh garlic in there, and I I'd done that all in a mortar. Mortar and pestle just kind of made this paste and then I just put that in each of them and then closed the lid until it melted. They were fantastic. They were fantastic. I don't know if that's a recipe, I don't know if I was trying to imitate something, but they tasted so good.
Speaker 1:It's similar to Oyster's Rockefeller. Yeah, instead of going into a broiler or a salamander, you're just closing the heat. Yeah, so you can eat horseradish. Horseradish doesn't get you.
Speaker 2:Horseradish wasabi. Those things come in piece. They're like ha-ha, I'm here, All right, I'm gone, moving on with our lives.
Speaker 1:It's one of those things I think people get the burn, the spicy burn of a pepper, the capsaicin in those, confused with the nasally spiciness of horseradish or wasabi. It sounds like you were using fresh horseradish, which, again, if you like horseradish, buy a root. It lasts, you take care of it, it'll last and you just grate off what you need and it is so good.
Speaker 2:I want to try and grow some too. I think it'll grow here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've never grown horseradish. I haven't either. I imagine because it's just a tuber Right. I imagine because it's just a tuber right, and you all do pretty well with potatoes over here, Dude.
Speaker 2:I have potato trees growing out here right now. The first potatoes we planted. I've mounted them three times already. I'm out of dirt to mount them any taller and they've come up like two feet. Beyond that They've got these big coarse stalks. I think I'm going to be potato rich this fall. Fantastic Potatoes are doing well, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was a potato shortage last year. It was a tough year on potatoes.
Speaker 2:I was just talking with a friend about this yesterday. Did you know that up until the early 1900s that the potato was an entree? It was the main course really. That's why the irish potato famine was such a big deal. They didn't lose a side, they lost the, the star of the show. It was the entree as I.
Speaker 1:So I I envisioned envisioning a potato as an entree. I've I've seen, I envision envisioning a potato as an entree. I've I've seen baked potatoes with bacon and sour cream and cheese and green onions and caramelized onions and crispy onions served as like a appetizer or shared. Yeah, I could imagine that as a as an entree, especially if you think about the early 1900s and what portion sizes were then versus what the assumed portion size is now.
Speaker 2:And we're not necessarily trying to elevate food. I'm not talking about restaurants here, I'm talking about whole projects, just a straight up. So that was the star of the meal. Was this big calorie, dense, fiber rich, had all the vitamins? Yeah, that was the star of the show. Awesome, yeah, I like that. And then, uh, then, along came meat. I'm taking over, sorry, potato, sorry potato I met someone new. It's not you, it's. It's not you, it's it's beef it's.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're wonderful, I love that. You're great, but beef.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, meat was and continues to be a luxury and you know I think humans have such an interesting history with meat. You know we used knives for a couple million years before we used fire, right. You know we used knives for a couple million years before we used fire, right. And the knife was about meat, about trying to get that stuff cut off of an animal so that we could escape with it before other scavengers and predators showed up. And those early humans spent a huge amount of their day chewing and just chewing and chewing and chewing, and that's why their facial structures were so different from ours today.
Speaker 2:Uh, there's, there's a lot of research that says that the reason that people have tooth problems today and that we have to have our, our wisdom teeth removed is because we eat soft foods, so we don't have to use our, our foods, so we don't have to use our, our the bones in our face as much. Um, so we have more teeth and we have space for it because you know it doesn't broaden out as as it would if you were chewing on, you know, hides to make leather and chewing on on meat that was, was cooked very well done, because you're concerned about parasites and things like that. We're always trending towards stuff that's tender. You know that's one of the most important things about a steak. A quality of steak to people is how tender it is, whereas from a health perspective we should be chewing on rubber. Interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it makes in my mind, it makes total sense. I just I can't personally imagine a well-done steak and chewing it that long.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's definitely less pleasant, right For sure, and we figured it out We'd go and get our wisdom teeth yarded out and party on. But it's very fascinating when we did start using fire and we didn't have to spend as much time chewing. That's when brains started getting really big and we're able to consume a lot more of that protein. But you know, these these times, late 1800s, early 1900s uh, industrial revolution type stuff, we, we really got into a place where meat was hard to come by in cities. And then, if you're in a rural area, uh, you had to spend your time farming because you needed that, that food insurance, which meant that maybe you were trying to raise some hogs or something like that for me.
Speaker 2:But you know, your cow was probably a milk cow, you weren't running herds of cattle and uh, then you had, you know, hunters who are still nomadic, because if you live in one place and you hunt for very long, especially commercially, there's nothing left. Yeah, it's interesting times for wildlife because, coming out of that commercial hunting time period, we'd really shot a lot of stuff. You know, white-tailed deer were almost gone, mule deer were almost gone, elk, you know, were gone from large areas, moose, bighorn sheep, turkeys. So the stuff that we hunt today are all comeback stories, but now they're on hard times again just because you know we're. We're reintroducing predators during a time where they've lost a lot of habitat and things aren't the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. Uh, it it's definitely. I had not thought about wildlife in a comeback story. Uh, sense, even though I I've looked at the history of how elk got to places like the frank church wilderness, you know I I understand that they're. They weren't really there and they had been hunted out of these other plains regions and they started taking these elk from yellowstone and, you know, pushing them out, and even you know pennsylvania is a fun example of what elk populations are doing.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, penn, pennsylvania, michigan, north Carolina, even Kentucky, kentucky. Yeah, I think there's a good chance the next world record bull comes out of Kentucky.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I've seen some pictures of the elk that they have down there. They're making monsters down there in.
Speaker 2:Harlan County. It's spectacular, those coal country bulls are getting big son.
Speaker 1:They're so cool, yeah. But yeah, again, working in the Frank Church, I've seen the impact of what you know introduction of predators like wolves to that area has done to the elk population. Because I talk to you know the folks that live in places like Yellow Pine and Warren who tell these stories. They got their pictures on the wall from you know, just 20, 30 years ago. These just absolutely monster trophy elk and you know you start to see these harsh winters and compile that with shrinking environment and then you know you put an apex predator in there and these animals just don't, they don't stand a chance. You know the mule deer that we see up there slowly disappearing and you know mule deer are one of the coolest, coolest animals. Yeah, in my opinion they live in the craziest of places. They'll go all over, they'll find a way to survive and live, but they're just getting pressured and pushed higher and higher into these places that they just, even though they are a survivor, they, they just can't live well, we talked about it this spring a little bit.
Speaker 2:But what advice do you have for people who want to go out and say they're they're going to go on a rafting trip or they're going to go, um, you know, say they're they're overlanding, they're going to go do some car camping someplace where they've got enough infrastructure where they can bring, you know, a few cooking surfaces maybe. Um, what advice do you have to them for, like, how to build a menu?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a great question. Um, for folks that are looking to get out, be on the side of a river, camping out of the car, getting on a boat, uh, the first thing to do is is to make a plan, right Is, know what your plan is and pack it and find ways to you know if you can do something. One of my favorite things to do is to braise meat at home, vacuum, seal it and pack it so I can heat it ready to go with like tortillas, and then chop up, you know, some fresh Topico de Gallo, some avocados, something that's simple to carry, so you're not carrying like a whole chunk of a roast out there with you and then chop up some fresh Topico de Gallo, some avocados, something that's simple to carry, so you're not carrying a whole chunk of a roast out there with you and then making fresh tacos right there. Figuring out what your equipment is the most impactful pieces of equipment for me is a single propane burner. If you have the room to take two, take two. One of those Coleman stoves that has the dual burner. They're perfect.
Speaker 1:What I found recently is a Coleman oven. Is there a collapsible oven? They fold up oven out. They sit right on top of a burner and you can bake like crazy, and that, for me, was a total game changer, uh, especially when it comes to, like, space that's limited and the ability to. You know, you can bake brownies, you can bake cookies, you make cinnamon rolls, you could roast anything, uh, and that's a fantastic tool to have, um, but really it's just figuring out what your, your menu is.
Speaker 1:Is the the key part? And then, you know, then putting together an equipment list that's not going to weigh you down and be mindful of your resources. That's one of the things I think a lot of overland campers kind of miss is they take for granted how much propane a propane burner uses or how much coal they really need to, like, get a dutch oven hot and they just throw it all in there, they burn all their fuel and all of a sudden they're really stressing to manage that, that fuel load. Because that's one of the things, uh, you know, if you're carrying propane that could get real heavy, real quick yeah, and charcoal takes up a lot of weight and space.
Speaker 2:so much, if you're going to be like, if I'm going to do like four meals in Dutch ovens and like three meals, you know, in a little charcoal grill, I'm probably going to need to bring like 50 or 60 pounds of charcoal. That takes up a huge amount of space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a ton. It it's uh, it's one of those things that's just easily mismanaged. You know it's, you know trial and error. Until you're really, really good at it, you don't know exactly how much you need and in some places you can make your own, your own coals.
Speaker 2:You know you can burn stuff down, but you kind of want a harder wood for that type of deal. You're not necessarily going to have a good time if you're burning conifers and then you've also got, you know, the fire risk and some places don't want you to pick up sticks to burn and all that jazz. I also really like ingredients that I can use for multiple food items. Try to find multiple jobs for everything that you're going to bring. So something that uh that I've used a little bit actually is uh, is ai to help develop menus. So go to you know, chat, gpt and you can put in your cooking surfaces a bunch of ingredients that you're planning on bringing in and say, hey, you know, generate me, uh, you know, six meals based on these ingredients and like that's, that's an easy button for sure. Like we need to get smart and make the most of our time, use tools that are available.
Speaker 1:It's crazy with chat, gp key, all those ais, uh, what they're capable of doing. It's kind of fun to play with. I typed in, just I asked it what's the ideal menu for bear camp? Yeah, it came back with just bear stew, bear sausage, all these different bear items, and then you refine it from there.
Speaker 2:You're like well, not bear.
Speaker 1:But we're hunting bear and then it refines it from there Well, not bear, but we're hunting bear and then it refines it from there it is. It's a really cool tool to utilize and that's something that again just in my brain. When I say we've got to plan a menu, that's part of the menu planning that I forget to verbalize Restaurants in every restaurant you go to, if you look at a restaurant's breakfast menu, their brunch, lunch, dinner menus, a good restaurant is going to have cross-utilization across the board, because you don't want to chop something three different times, three different ingredients, swap them out from shift to shift. You want to keep it completely seamless. So one person comes in they might swap out diced tomatoes for whole roasted tomatoes.
Speaker 2:Something of that nature. I also don't want to use a million cutting boards. Dude drives me crazy and I bring the little plastic sheet um cutting boards so they don't take up a lot of space. But if you've got 29 things that you need to chop up, it's like oh my goodness, you know I'm stopping to do dishes four times in the middle of this thing and I haven't even turned a burner on yet.
Speaker 1:That's one of the things by the last week of Bear Camp. I'm so tired of doing dishes.
Speaker 2:I'm just like I don't want to see another dish, I just get rid of them.
Speaker 1:I'm done, I'm tired, I'm tired of them. Rid of them. Yeah, I'm done, I'm tired, I'm tired of them. But yeah, that's, that's one of those things. You know, you're contaminating your cutting board and that's one of those things. That's, if you don't manage your prep right, you wind up cutting something like raw chicken on there and you've got to go through the whole process. You know. I mean, you know, I'm a hot water guy. I like hot water to clean things. That's just my own uh germaphobe in me is I have to have hot water like burn my hands hot, and that means I have to heat up all that water just to wash that cutting board, just to go back to chop something to wash it again and no, yeah, no, it's miserable.
Speaker 2:Where can people follow along in your chefing adventures?
Speaker 1:I mostly exist on Instagram at Chef Garrett. I also have a website, chefandrewgarrettcom, and those are the two places. I'm not really active on the rest of the social medias.
Speaker 2:And if they're not going to Bear Camp, are you working any place this summer?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I work as a personal chef. I am a gun for hire. Yeah, so I work as a personal chef, I am a gun for hire. I love to get emails from folks that have an event idea that some other chef said no, I can't really do that. I love people telling me I don't think you can do that. I thrive in those situations where it's like cool, let's figure out what this problem is, let's create a solution and let's kick its ass and make something fun. Nice, I like it when people do have crazy ideas that we get to execute. That's the fun stuff, cool.
Speaker 2:So if folks want to hire, you reach out through the website or through Instagram. Yeah, absolutely Sick. All right, man. Well, thank you so much for your service to our country. Thanks for the wonderful discussion about food, your service to our country. Thanks for the wonderful discussion about food. Um, I think it's pretty fun to talk about. Talk about food and warfare and hunting, you know, all in the same context. I like that oh, it's brilliant.
Speaker 1:Thank you. An absolute pleasure to be here and you know it's excited to see what what y'all come up with in the future and moving forward and look forward to our next collaboration. Do some cooking and eating absolutely all right, brother.
Speaker 2:Bye everybody. I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who sent emails, who sent messages. Your support is incredible and I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting. I think that that's fantastic. I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can. Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander. Original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch Podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media. Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.