900 – Real Time Review

EPISODE 900 – Realtime Review

 

[START OF RECORDING]

SCOOTER: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and friends beyond the binary, and my patron peeps, we wouldn’t have got to 900 without patrons, really.  I’m not kidding.  There’s people that have been supporting the show since the beginning of the Patreon and I literally could…there would be no Sleep With Me if it wasn’t for you, so thank you so much for that and patrons, let’s get on with the show.

 

INTRO: [INTRO MUSIC] Hey, are you up all night tossing, turning, mind racing?  Trouble getting to sleep?  Trouble staying asleep?  Well, welcome.  This is Sleep With Me, the podcast that puts you to sleep.  We do it with a bedtime story.  Alls you need to do is get in bed, turn out the lights, and press play.  What I’m going to attempt to do is create a safe place where you could set aside whatever is keeping you awake; thoughts, you know, things on your mind that you’re thinking about from the past, present, or future.  Usually for me it’s thinking about stuff in the future that’s related to…that could happen in the future that’s because of the past that I need right now…like, very little present except for presently, you need to think about this stuff and really remember it in visceral detail.  So, thoughts – those are some thoughts that go through my mind – feelings, emotions could come up from those thoughts.  They could just be there from the day or they could just be there.

 

Emotions are another way to say it.  Then physical sensations that could be keeping you up.  It could be other stuff, too; changes, noises, work routine, life routine, maybe too much poutine.  You say oh boy, I had too much of that…is that how you say it, poutine?  Suddenly I’m like oh boy, did I say that incorrectly?  I don’t know.  Maybe that would probably help you fall asleep.  You say, that’s a comfort food, Scoots.  I say oh boy, it is, I think.  But so, whatever’s keeping you awake.  It could be any of those things, it could be something else.  What I’m here to do is create a safe place and take your mind off of that.  What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna smooth the safe place.  I’m gonna pat the safe place.  I’m gonna rub it down, all in enticing, inviting…you say oh boy, that looks like Scoots is putting some work in there.  Create a real nice safe place.  Then what I’ll do is I’ll send my voice across the deep, dark night.  I’ll use lulling, soothing, creaky, dulcet tones, oh-so creaky, pointless meanders, superfluous tangents.

 

I’ll go off-topic, I’ll go on tangents, and then get distracted.  Lots of filler words and stuff like that.  Let me see, if you’re new, I’m here to keep you company while you drift off is the summary of, really, my job.  My first job if you’re new, is to earn your trust or your mild…I’m gonna…I want to earn your trust in such a way that you forget I’m here.  Talk about trustworthy.  But in a way, you say well…almost like well, yeah, I don’t need to really think about you at all.  How comes there’s not more relationships like that?  You say, tell me about…that would be…what are you looking for?  Well, someone that forgets I’m around, most…except when I…of course, there’s times I would like to be remembered.  But when I say I’m your bore-friend or your bore-bae or your bore-cuz or your bore-sib or your bore-bestie, that’s really what I’m looking for in our relationship here.  You say well, just forget I’m there.  Don’t even bother acknowledging me.  That’ll make me very happy.  That would be a passive-aggressive way.

 

Usually nanas say that.  Oh, just don’t pretend I’m here at all, except when I groan in displeasure at what you’re…that you’re not acknowledging me.  Oh, and don’t pay attention to the advice I give you.  Oh no, no, no.  That’s what the nana in my mind says pretty much twenty-four hours a day but I’ve learned to prioritize other voices.  ‘Cause she doesn’t really mean that, right?  She says oh no, don’t listen to what I said about you, about first grade, second grade, third…don’t…oh no, don’t think about what I’m talking to right in your ear.  Just ignore me.  But she really means pay full attention because by going and say hello to someone could unlock total consequence for the universe.  Okay, but what was my point?  Let’s see, if you’re new, don’t pay any attention to me.  That’s the first thing about this podcast.  It’s a podcast you barely need to listen to.  You can kind of let me be background noise.  I say, I want to be your background noise.  I don’t want to be…I’m not looking for…to be the number one person.  You say, what are the podcasts you can’t forget about?

 

Then you make a list and you say oh, I forgot about Sleep With Me.  I listened to that 8,000 hours last year.  Totally forgot.  That’s when I say well, if you listened…if you forgot about me but you actually use the podcast, no problem.  Now that you remembered, spread the word, but cool.  It’s a podcast you don’t need to listen to and that’s really the best way, if you’re new.  I know there’s a temptation to pay attention or to wait for the podcast…you say, when’s it getting started?  I say well, I’m here.  I’m here keeping you company right now.  It’s a podcast that never really gets started and peters…once it gets going, it peters out right after that.  Most of the time, I’m chasing around Peter’s…I’m saying, does Peter have a cottontail?  ‘Cause I’m trying to catch up with it.  ‘Cause I saw…there goes…where goes Peter’s cottontail?  Which way is the bunny trail because I don’t know…I don’t even know what to look for in a bunny trail.  Also, that many bunnies around here that use the same…that no one else uses that trail, it’s just the bunny trail.

 

Okay, so don’t pay attention, barely listen to me.  That’s one thing.  The other thing is, there’s a lot of sleep podcasts now but this is the one sleep podcast that’s not here to put you to sleep.  I’m here to keep you company.  That’s really my job.  I’m here to keep you company and take your mind off of stuff.  Ideally, you drift off at your leisure.  I’m here to take your mind off of stuff and then if you can’t sleep, I’m gonna be here either way.  You say well, I can’t sleep.  I’m gonna say no problem; I’ll be here for you tonight.  I’ll be talking about stuff and distracted by Peter’s cottontail and my nana.  Is there any sort of plant called the Peter’s Cottontail or like a…you say oh yeah, that coral structure is known as the Peter’s Cottontail, or Peter’s Cottontail.  It’s gotta be, right?  I got Peter…you say what is that?  What was the…when they put out that new version of that game with the person with the red-light nose, Operator; they said Operator 2.0.  There was Peter’s cottontail.

 

They say, you gotta get that outta there with the tweezers.  Okay, so, I thought…oh, so don’t listen to me.  I’m here to barely put you to sleep, to take your mind off of stuff, to be your bore-bud.  That’s why the shows are about an hour, to give you plenty of time to drift off.  Those are two things to know.  The other things to know…oh, structure of the show.  That’s another good thing for you to know.  It’s interesting ‘cause this is Episode 900, I think.  Probably, it’s Episode 900.  Not 100% sure about that.  This structure of the show has developed over 900 episodes since 2013.  It’s slowly evolved to this, very slowly, though if you’re new or you listen to old episodes, you say well, some people it feels the same, some people it feels like a very big difference.  This show, hopefully, is always getting…I was gonna say it’s like, microscopically getting better.  You’d say Scoots, is there something smaller than a microscopic improvement?  I’d say yeah, probably like…electron microscopically getting better.

 

Okay, that fits more.  Yes, our show’s like…we take the microscopic analogy down to the electron and the way I improve things.  One day I’ll put it together, enough electrons, that you’ll say holy cow, you got yourself some sort of…I don’t know.  You might have enough to spin around something.  I say don’t worry, there’s infinite dark matter in there, maybe.  Oh, the structure of the show; it’s slowly developed but it definitely can throw people off.  If you’re thrown off or you’re skeptical or you’re doubtful, totally normal reaction because this podcast is so different and structurally, it’s different.  Show starts off with a greeting; ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends beyond the binary.  Even that slowly developed here on the show ‘cause I want everybody to feel seen and welcome so you know [00:10:00] okay, this person’s trying to make a safe place.  That’s one.  Then there’s business.  That’s the way…so you say oh, it’s free, too.  I don’t have to pay for…it’s optional.

 

You say, this podcast actually works for millions of people and it’s optional to pay for it, versus being behind a paywall or something because of the sponsors.  So, sponsors are next.  We do the business up front.  That’s a few minutes, then there’s about a twelve to twenty-minute section I call the intro which we’re ten minutes into now.  It’s a little late to tell you that, but…where I explain what the podcast is and it takes me a long time.  It introduces you to the creaky, dulcet tones, the pointless meanders, the superfluous tangents, me.  I come with a lot of stuff.  I’m a bit different, so you can kind of get a sense…you say okay, this podcast is a bit different, yeah.  I don’t know, what’s the opposite of an electron microscope?  When you say a bit different, I think you spent too much time on your electron microscopic improvements.  Oh, but so, that’s the intro.  The intro, for a new listener, is supposed to introduce you to it but it also is…this podcast doesn’t work for everybody but it also takes a while to get used to.

 

Out of all those regular listeners, most of them said hey, it took two or three tries for me to get used to the podcast, so kinda see how it goes.  But then as you become a regular listener…like, 2% of regular listeners skip the intro.  They start the show at twenty minutes and they just go from there, but 98%, 97% of the rest of the listeners, they use the intro in different ways.  But it kind of serves the same purpose.  It’s either part of their wind-down routine or their falling-asleep routine.  Some people start it before they get into bed, some people start it while they’re at work, while they need a break, some people start it in bed but it eases you into bedtime, drifts you away from the day.  That’s the idea of the intro.  Then there’s business between the intro and the show.  That’s just how podcasts are structured.  That’s that.  Then tonight, we’ll be doing a 900 look…we’ll just look at a type of episode we’ve done, Realtime Recipes, and we’ll just take a look back at those type of shows in a fun way.

 

It’ll be real…a bedtime story based on…like, not a recap show but a lookback show.  But really, you could sleep right through it.  But if you don’t, if you can’t sleep, I’ll be here and be mildly interesting.  Then the show closes with some thank yous and goodnights because those are the people that made it possible to be here, and I appreciate that.  That’s the structure of the show.  I think that’s it for new listeners, yeah.  Like I said, I kind of grow on you.  You know, I don’t know if trees say this but they say well, that moss is pretty nice.  That’s growing on me like moss; took forever.  At first the other tree said yo, what’s that green stuff growing on you?  Did you step on a frog or something?  I say no, I’m a tree.  I’ve been here eight hundred years.  Oh, well, you got some green fur growing on you.  What, on the east side or the west side, or the north side, or the south side?  I don’t know.  I’m a tree.  Do I look like I have a compass?  I mean, I know, but I’m being humorous.

 

But yeah, I don’t know what that…you say well, I can’t see it.  Is it on my rear?  I can’t turn around.  Also, I’m a tree so I don’t really have ocular input devices or whatever those humans call those things…or birds have them, too.  But then, you know, I don’t know if trees…time passes like for elves or something.  But then you say wow, this has a lot of good properties.  One, I got a whole other biome going.  Gives me somebody to talk to; cooling, nice to touch.  Leprechauns go and take naps on it sometimes, which is interest…good to watch and listen to.  Sprites do too, and some other forest friends, so that’s cool.  It gives me some…I don’t know, it gives me some flair like from that movie.  You say wow, now I…I got moss.  I don’t know.  So, that’s a…I don’t know how we got there with moss.  I really have no idea where that came from.  Oh, I’ll eventually…for most listeners, I grow on them and their sense of taste.  That’s a metaphor.  But for some people, they just don’t like the podcast, or me.

 

You don’t have to give it a second try but I would say give it a few tries just to see if it helps because I make the show…I made the show 900 episodes so that’s probably somewhere maybe 18,000 – 20,000 hours I’ve worked just on the production side of the show.  I’m just guessing.  But that’s probably around at least 18,000 hours.  I put that effort in because I care, because I’ve been there.  I know how it feels in the deep, dark night, tossing, turning, mind racing, trouble getting to sleep, all those things.  That’s one reason.  The other reason is you deserve a good night’s sleep.  You deserve some rest, whether it’s this podcast or something else like fans, another sleep podcast, meditation.  Whatever it is, you deserve a good night’s sleep.  You deserve a place of respite and the world needs that.  We need you rested so that you can flourish and live your life more fully.  It just will be better for everybody if you get a little more space to be you.  That’s why I make this show.

 

I really hope I can help you, but it doesn’t work for everybody.  Give it a few tries.  I really appreciate you checking this show out.  Then to everyone that’s been here whether you started the show on 2013, ’14, ’15, ’16, ’17, ’18, ’19, or ’20, or you’re listening in 2021 or 2022, what up?  I hope it’s sweet out there.  Thank you so much.  I’m so happy I get to help you and thank you for helping me.  I’ve grown and changed as a person a lot.  I’ve slowly…again, whatever’s less than an electron microscope improved who I am because the example you as a listener set for me with your kindness and support.  This really does feel like one of those rare two-way streets.  I guess like the tree and the moss; you could be the tree, I’ll be the moss.  Or you could be the moss, I could be the tree.  I guess if I was a tree, then my nana would live up there.  She’d be some sort of bird or something, or a squirrel.  I’m glad you’re here, again.  I appreciate your time.  I work very hard.  I yearn and I strive ‘cause I want to put you to sleep, and here’s a couple ways I’m able to do that for you twice a week.

 

Alright everybody, it’s Scoots here and this is…once again, you’re in my future.  Oh boy, are you in my future.  So good to see you there, future…you’re in the future.  I hope you’re comfortable and snuggled in.  This probably…see, I don’t know ‘cause you’re in the future; you know so much more than me.  I mean, you probably did in my present, anyway.  But I’m hoping this is Episode 900 that you’re listening to.  That’s a pretty big milestone.  You know it’s not as big as 500 or 1,000.  You say, but it’s…well, I say technically it is bigger than 500, Scoots.  I say well, yeah, but 500’s one of those numbers.  Then you’d say well, what do you celebrate after that?  I’d say well, every episode is a celebration for me.  But it’s pretty cool.  I can’t believe – I mean, to be honest – that I made 900 episodes.  For these 00 episodes, I do like to take a look back and say huh, what did we come up with?  Let’s take a journey back to the past.  I had to pause the recording, everybody; a little behind-the-scenes ‘cause I couldn’t find my list here.

 

But I wanted to take a journey into the past to something we haven’t done a review of, looking back at one style of episode that wasn’t a series or something.  I was gonna talk a little bit about…this is a very popular one…style of episode that we probably…looks like maybe do once a year, maybe twice a year.  Maybe twice a year sometimes.  Ah, maybe once a year, and that’s Realtime Recipes.  It’s been a little…let’s see, it’s been about sixty episodes or fifty-nine episodes.  It looks like the last one we did was 841.  I don’t think I’ve recorded one ‘cause I don’t necessarily record all of these episodes in the order they’re released, currently.  I wanted to talk a little bit about where Realtime Recipes came from, talk a little bit about where the status of it right now.  [00:20:00] Actually, I’m trying to connect with somebody, so that’ll be interesting.  You’re in the future; I can’t make any announcements about this, but trying to partner with somebody so that over the next few years, we still are…we still have them coming out.

 

This’ll be a little behind-the-scenes and then we’ll kind of run through and think about…some of these I’ve actually cooked recently and then some of these older episodes, I said wow, I just made that.  Kind of intentionally…not for this episode, but I said hey, it’s been a while since I made that.  I used to make that all the time and I even talked about it on the podcast.  We’ll run through ‘em and I think this will be fun.  It’ll be a nice little episode.  It’ll be a nice little lookback, very sleepy, ‘cause…plenty of room for meanders.  If you’re new, we have a style of episode we call Realtime Recipes.  Oh, actually, you know what?  Okay, I got a friend coming over that…so, let me talk to…they’re gonna listen in on me…okay, hey, so, they’re gonna listen in…hey, so…okay, so, I’m glad you’re here so I can tell you…I’m talking to you, listener.  They’re listening into my conversation though, because they wanted to be here to just listen in on me.  Okay, so…it’s my imaginary…it’s…don’t worry, it’s an imaginary friend anyway.

 

Okay, so Real…as you know, but if you’re new, you might not know that, that…so, there’s a new…so, Realtime Recipe is a style of episode which…kind of like a bit like a cooking show.  The genesis of it…back when I started the podcast, I had no idea one; that I would even make ten episodes, much less nine hundred episodes but also, one of the things about making a podcast that comes out a hundred times a year is you have to have…constantly are in a state of production, pre-production, and pre-pre-production, like brainstorming.  Also, it creates…keeps things fluid and it keeps things moving, and there’s a bit of…there’s a lot of thought that goes into that.  But also, it does create a freedom to test stuff out and say okay, I wonder if this would work on a sleep podcast.  Then, how could we really make it Sleep With Me and fun for the listener?  At some point, once upon a time, there was…I said well, there’s TV shows…there’s a couple different types of shows, so we’ll mention them all.

 

There’s late-night shows, then there’s midday shows, and then there’s morning…like, soft news shows that either come on after…like, at 9 a.m., or there’s local news shows and the soft sections of the local news.  A lot of those will have cooks on there and actually, even my cousin Matt has been on there when he…at different times…different restaurants he was running.  I saw him on his local news saying well, here’s how we make this.  But like always, it’s a four-minute segment whether it’s on a famous late-night show or a show like Ellen, where the person comes and they say well, yeah, how are you gonna make olive tapan-yadda-yadda?  You say okay, well, it’s actually…it’s a really simple recipe but they only get like six minutes to prepare something, so they have different…for the most part, they’re doing it and they say okay, first thing you do is chop up all the stuff.  This isn’t like a cooking show like Carla or something would have, where they’re showing you.

 

They’re giving you a vague sense of creation.  This went on before the internet, so now you’d say okay, well, just go to our website to learn more and get the recipe there or watch the full video.  But back then, I guess the most…newest thing would be like those videos by Tasty and stuff where there’s not even words; there’s just ingredients getting…they say oh, here’s a cup of eggs.  Drop it in there.  You’re saying okay, it makes it look so easy, which…not necessarily that it isn’t easy, but it’s just like, they’re doing more magic.  They say oh, and here’s the tapenade that’s been yadda’d.  You say, what is that?  Well, it’s yuzu…Y-U-Z-U that gives it the first yadda.  We soak it for twelve hours.  I always was struck, even as a kid, by how this was more of an…it was entertaining on an entertainment level and then having them interact…or the comedy shows.  Especially when I was a kid, it was Letterman or Conan.  They’d be goofing around and maybe they’re having fun or maybe the chef’s a big personality.

 

You say okay, this is more for entertainment and not utility.  Then I said well, when I started making Sleep With Me, I said well, wouldn’t it be interesting…like, they could never do that but they say okay, well, let’s just…it would be interesting though to say well, what do you want to talk…Ellen, what do you want to talk about while the water boils?  Say well, this is a TV show.  We only have thirty…you say okay, well, so tell me about…it would just be interesting to me because…but it wouldn’t work because you say well, we gotta…it’s just not realistic.  ‘Cause I say well, how long does that gotta be in the oven?  Forty-five minutes.  Then you say well, okay, well, tell the network we’re stretching the show out an extra thirty.  What do you want to play?  You want to play some cards?  Or we could get out a game and play while it cooks.  You say oh no, we gotta chop the green onions up, and the ginger.  Then yeah, then we can play a game.

 

But also, we have to stay by the oven ‘cause you gotta keep an eye on also the, whatever.  You’re doing that.  I became fascinated by this idea of well, could we do a cooking show in real-time?  It looks like it was within the first…it was like, towards when the podcast started to reach its first level of maturity because right around somewhere between 100 and 150 was when the podcast kind of started to say okay…like, started to become what you’re listening to now.  The first hundred, hundred and fifty episodes or even the first four or five hundred were all a part of the process, even the last five hundred after that, a process of tiny refinements and stuff like that.  I said okay, I like that idea.  That would be fun to try out.  They say okay, so how’s it gonna work?  I don’t…I have not listened to some of these episodes and a lot of these episodes just aren’t available at this time, though hopefully at some point we’ll be able to offer patrons some of these episodes which is not…it’s just some technological hurdles right now.

 

But so, what was my point?  Oh, so, I haven’t listened to them so I don’t know if they had…what the kind of sequences they are now and then how it’s changed.  One of the most important things…there’s a couple things that I think are key to the Realtime Recipe episodes that are important and I see as a cornerstone.  One is that you’re the dinner guest and you’re the most important guest.  You’ve come over and we’re gonna prepare a meal together.  I think that’s an important part of this idea of sharing meals and cooking together, and cooking as this form of socialization.  Then again, right when I’m recording this, something we’re all…saying oh, well, we gotta do this on Zoom or over the phone or whatever, or with my parents.  I signed them up for Hello Fresh at the beginning of this year and now I’m so grateful I did that because now I get to hear about their adventures in cooking.  While we can’t share a meal, I feel like I’m sharing in their meal and the creation of their meal, or hearing about it.

 

It’s still a story that we can share with one another and connect about.  That’s one of the cornerstones of the Realtime Recipe episodes is like okay, you’re coming over, you’re my guest to cook dinner.  Still, for the most part, they take place in my old apartment.  There’s a couple reasons for that.  One, that’s where they started.  Two, my old apartment didn’t have a front…my bedroom was in front of the front door so I never used the front door.  You couldn’t use the front door ‘cause actually, my dresser was where the door was.  I always used the back door which went out to the parking for the four apartments and a little grassy area.  It had good light at the dinnertime part of the day, depending on where the light was.  It was just a [00:30:00] boxy kitchen, not very big, but big enough.  I don’t know, I just always liked that kitchen.  It wasn’t…definitely not a fancy kitchen but I don’t know, I just…I guess I lived there for a long time and it was when the podcast came to life and grew while it’s matured.

 

I always picture it there versus where I live now, which even though I’ve been where I am now two years, I say wait a second…I don’t know.  That’s one thing, is the setting.  The one thing is you’re my guest, then the second thing…and I don’t know when this started, was we would go to the store together.  That was always a big part of it and it still kind of is.  It’s something that I struggle with ‘cause usually we go to TJ’s and we would give TJ’s all this free advertising.  I’m a human being; I was very spurned that TJ’s started its own podcast and invested in making its own podcast, and what won’t sponsor podcasts because I think it’d be a win-win for everybody.  So, it’s just part of my humanness, that I’m not perfect.  I said well, I’m not gonna…it’s like, another thing that tainted it for me where I said okay, can we still go to TJ’s?  ‘Cause I’m feeling like it’s a one-way relationship.  But now I miss TJ’s.  I think I’ve only been three times in six months.  That’s actually…no, it was…so, five months.

 

Three times in five months, maybe.  Maybe four.  I miss you; I do.  I miss you so much, TJ’s.  Oh, that’s for Trader Joe’s.  That’s just ‘cause of the line right now.  I say well, I don’t have quite the leeway in my schedule to wait in line and then shop.  It just pushes my shopping time.  Yeah, I’m also like well, so…but I always thought that was a really fun element, was shopping as we’re friends for the ingredients.  I really like it for a sleep podcast because it offers the opportunity to kind of float through a place that’s familiar, but everybody’s grocery store and TJ’s is different.  But when I make the show, I’m at my TJ’s for real.  I mean, in my mind.  So, it’s really…gives me a depth, immersive depth, that I can be walking in there and narrating it mentally.  I’m in the theatre…I’m creating a theatre of the mind and I’m in a theatre of the mind, I guess, at the same time.  That kind of nesting thing always works well for Sleep With Me.  It’s like you want to have this reality you’re seeing…I’m seeing through fogged-up glasses, almost, and then I’m describing it to you.

 

That was always an important element and then my…then where real life hits, like say I had a crushy-poo on someone I see there, that would be part…that became part of it just through natural development.  That was fun but then that kind of…I said well, no one…I don’t know, I kind of struggle with that.  Also, I didn’t have any crushes on anybody for a while, there.  I said, okay.  But I said, probably…I don’t know.  It was always something else, like I don’t know how comfortable I am with this.  But it was something a lot of people related to, especially the awkward…my awkwardness ‘cause I never talked to anybody I have a crush on at the store, anyway.  It didn’t really matter.  I said okay, so, that was an important part.  Then the cooking of the meal kind of morphed because I say okay, well, how long were we at the grocery store?  But I think the purchasing and gathering of ingredients…I don’t know, it makes for a nice segment and having these segments I guess makes it more…barely entertaining, where if we were just waiting for water to boil, it wouldn’t…I don’t know, it’s not as appealing for me.

 

You say well, I’m not sure if that structurally works for a sleep podcast because then if we would have to create another structure…’cause believe it or not, to do this there has to be a lot…there has to be structure for me to operate meanders in-between.  Again, it offers…like I say, okay, and that’s a segment that could be anywhere from five minutes to twenty-five or thirty minutes, the shopping segment.  Then there’s the prep segment.  The prep segment has always been well, let’s see how it goes.  Then there was the delivery segment, or the…we never really ate at all.  But at some point, pretty early on, there became…where I was like…guests would come, particularly guests…80’s movie and TV stars would show up.  Not exactly sure. I know we had a John Hughes tribute dinner when John Hughes went to the big farm.  I think Christopher Lloyd and Justin McElroy came one time.  Cassa Young, young…water spray.  Never had the cast of Hairspray.

 

Holy cow, can you imagine if John Waters was in…?  That would be pretty dreamy.  President Gooseberry, I don’t know ‘cause I didn’t write that down, so I don’t even know other than those ones.  I think Bo Bacon probably showed up or some of the Bacon brothers, maybe.  That’s a short segment, the arrival of the mystery guest, and then the last interaction while the meal is finalized and served.  Those are always the segments and it’s always been something I really like doing, but it does bring up a couple things that are interesting about producing a sleep podcast and doing it for…since 2013 and trying to keep it going, and trying to keep the material going but also being respectful and organized.  All of these things have all of these little parts, right?  ‘Cause one thing I get is…and this is a perfectly normal and natural thing, is people have their favorite episodes and they say well jeez, why can’t every episode be like that or why can’t every…a lot of episodes be like that?

 

I’m the same way; I like stuff and I have the same tendency.  But from the producing side…you say, why can’t there be twelve Realtime Recipes episodes?  This is like, an imaginary thing, but I’m gonna present it in that way.  You say, why can’t there be twelve Realtime Recipe episodes or six Realtime Recipe episodes a year?  I say well, there’s a couple reasons.  One, is there is a sweet spot where what your favorite is, is not necessarily everybody’s favorite.  Realtime Recipe episodes are very popular but there’s some people, they don’t enjoy them.  My duty is to keep a…my duty, yeah, yeah, keep it away from dinnertime, Scoots.  I’ll keep my duty away from dinnertime.  I just won’t mention it again.  But, is it’s to make sure to make the best sleep podcast I can at the time, and then keep it coming in varietals so I can say okay, and adjust as needed.  I say okay, well, we can’t have…there’s a couple reasons we can’t have…that repeating stuff too often creates two things; one, the people it doesn’t work for, it doesn’t work for.

 

I have to be respectful of that.  But also, I have to make a hundred podcast episodes a year.  People say Scoots, you really need to do that.  I say well, one thing listeners might not know is the newest episode every time pretty much is what covers…does the lifting for all of the other episodes that are out there for free.  Let’s just say right now how digital creation works, depending on where you are, it’s like, the newest episode ideally helps cover the cost of all of the other…distribution of all the other episodes or whatever.  A lot of times when they say oh, well, why…?  I say well, it’s just part of making the…it’s just part of keeping the show going.  I don’t know, I like the challenge of making a hundred episodes a year or ninety episodes or whatever we’re at right now.  But now I forgot…oh, so it’s like, I don’t know what…how many…it’s like, I gotta keep things spread out for me because otherwise I would get burned out and I’d say, I can’t do anymore Realtime Recipe episodes.

 

I think I had to take a period where I just took a…I needed a break from my relationship with TJ’s.  I said well, I just need a break now.  I’ve been paying for dinner every single time I come here and you never offer even to pay the bill.  They say well, we’re a grocery store, sir.  They say, we gave you a bunch of free…you used our grocery store for free material and you enjoy our groceries.  I say okay, I just need a break then, anyway.  I see what you’re saying.  You have a valid point but I need a break for a little while.  I think we did [00:40:00] take a break in there; maybe permanent.  I don’t even know ‘cause I haven’t listened to any of these episodes.  That’s one thing.  The other thing is…so, there’s just like, keeping things from being repetitive for me or for the listeners is something I factor in.  Then it’s just like planning and pre-production and those kind of things.  Some things are planned out.  Like, Tuesday episodes are the least sketched out, where I have to do a lot more planning for the written episodes and the TV show episodes.

 

I have to do more forecasting for, so it’s like oh, I’m forecasting oh, how many episodes?  What months are those falling in?  The Tuesday episodes gives me a little bit of a breather where some weeks I say okay, let’s just record our Tuesday episode.  What’s it gonna be?  I don’t know, let’s just…what are we gonna do?  Well, let’s record in a half-hour.  Well, let’s do a Carole…okay, we’ll do a Carole King episode.  Because otherwise, I don’t know, it’s just part of the production process and that gives me a little bit of a breather where a lot of the other stuff has to be…it’s siloed in a different way.  The other thing is that I’ve only done recipes that I’ve cooked on my own, not that I’ve invented but I’ve made my own, so they aren’t recipes that I’ve taken from someone else that may be their property.  That’s important to me because I say well, even if it’s a vague ownership, I don’t want to repurpose someone’s recipe unless I’ve been cooking it for years and I say well, it doesn’t even resemble what the recipe was.

 

Now, maybe we’ll change that in the future.  I don’t know, but we’ll see.  That also limits me because I say okay, I’m only gonna do Realtime Recipe episodes about food I cook…I eat a few times a year that I really enjoy that I’m excited to share of recipes I’ve made my own.  Again, this isn’t a call for recipes ‘cause I can’t…that’s…again, goes back to the…I just don’t have the workflow to take inbound recipes ‘cause I’d say well, I’d have to ask my lawyer about it.  Then I’d have to…or I just don’t have the inbound capacity to do that, though I appreciate it.  If you want, you say well, I give…I’ll give you recipes.  I say yeah, thank you, but it’s not that I wouldn’t want them, it’s just that there’s not…I don’t have…just not possible.  That’s another limitation.  Also, it’s a limitation ‘cause it’s only possible for me to create a bedtime story sleepy thing if I’m…I have it deep within my mind, like the pathways of that recipe are really well-established.

 

That limits the releases or why it’s been released the way it has, though it looks like in the past, well, yeah, it’s…I don’t know, at some point we started putting out a hundred episodes versus a hundred and fifty episodes.  Also, when I first did this, I had plenty of recipes.  I say okay, those are all the recipes that I cook on a regular basis that I don’t…that aren’t somebody else’s recipe.  I think that’s it, more or less.  Let’s run through some of these and just take a look at, and see how it goes.  The first one I think we did was Episode 118, so a real blast from the past, and that was Flatbread Pizza.  This is a recipe that I’ve had in 2020 but not recently.  Probably somewhere January, February, maybe March, but I’m thinking February 2020 because I was helping take care of somebody and I think I made it at their house in February or January.  It’s flatbread pizza.

 

It’s a very simple, very effective, very tasty one.  Basically, you’re taking Trader Joe’s lavash, either whole wheat or non-whole wheat but I say go with the whole wheat, some sort of pizza sauce or spaghetti sauce, even, and if you’re doing Trader Joe’s, Trader Joe’s has pizza sauce and they also have the vodka sauce spaghetti…or, what do you call it?  Pasta sauce.  Both those are really good.  Then usually what you’ll do is you’ll put garlic powder, not garlic salt, and though now I’ll put garlic powder and some of their onion salt on there, but just don’t use any other salt.  I’ll use those two things.  Then you take a sheet pan.  The first thing you do – I’m already ahead of it – is you take a sheet pan and you get some olive oil on the sheet pan and you use a brush to spread it around.  Then you put the lavash on there.  I like to put some more olive oil on the lavash on the other side, then I put the sauce on.  Again, you could go no sauce, cream sauce; this is very flexible.  Then you put the sauce on.

 

Then, if you are doing a traditional tomato-based pizza, then you want to put on…you want to put some garlic powder and some of the onion salt on there, or onion powder and then your own salt.  Just trust me, those sauces just aren’t gonna do it.  Having some garlic powder on there…I’m just saying a sprinkling to taste.  If you’ve never worked with garlic powder or onion salt or onion powder, just a light dusting at first until you develop…’til you get…this is a recipe you could have every week or every other week, or every month.  I’ve just been doing a lot of my own dough and stuff, so I don’t like pizza dough.  I don’t do this recipe very often anymore.  Also, between twenty…probably like, 2008 when I came up with it.  In 2016, ’17 I had it a lot, so I did get a little burned out.  Then also, Trader Joe’s has their own…they have this new pre-cooked pizza.  What do they call it?  Pizza crust that’s in their bread section that is also very good.  It’s a thicker one, but this is a flatbread pizza.

 

Okay, then you put the cheese on and then any toppings, and then you put it in a blistering oven that’s been preheated at like, 500 for twenty or thirty minutes.  It’ll cook and ideally, you’re going for a…almost a char on the edges, but it’ll cook pretty fast.  But you’d be surprised how much heat that lavash can handle, especially when it’s soaking in the oil.  That is something I’ve had this year.  The next one was 161 and it says, Pasta and Tacos.  I’m guessing this one is one of my ode to meatball ones, but I’m not…that’s what I think it is.  So, I don’t know what the pasta was for this.  Maybe it was two different…two meals.  That’s probably what it was because I probably didn’t think I would be making this podcast.  If I would have known that, I would have only done one.  I would have split this into two episodes.  I’m guessing that 161 was a cream pasta with a…a heavy cream parmesan and bacon sauce with a tortellini pasta.  I think that’s what it is.  If it isn’t, I’ll do that as an episode.

 

Basically, you have tortellini; cook the tortellini.  You undercook it by two minutes or a minute based on the instructions, and rinse it in cold water so it’s not cooking anymore.  I guess I’ll just do a couple of these ‘cause I’m not gonna get through all of these.  Then what you do is you take bacon which is already cooked, or you could cook it.  You’d have to drain the…but then you cook…you take olive oil, a couple table…a tablespoon or two of garlic, fresh garlic, chopped.  Oh no, you don’t do the garlic first.  You do some basil and…some fresh basil and fresh parsley, chopped, and the olive oil.  Just quickly put it in there, then add the garlic.  This is just a warning that I gave on the show; do not overcook the garlic.  Be very careful on that.  Then, I don’t know the…off the top of my head, but then you put in heavy cream and parmesan.  I think that’s it.  You put some hot pepper in there, then you add the bacon, though.  Then you kind of…the parmesan, you don’t actually even have to reduce it very much ‘cause then you put the pasta back in and because the pasta still needs two minutes, it’ll soak up enough of the cream to where it’ll become a thicker sauce.

 

That’s that one.  Then the tacos one is something I just had two weeks ago or a week ago, which is…so, there’s very…I think it’s a very American recipe which is ground beef tacos.  You get the mix for $0.99 and then you brown your ground beef, you add the mix, you add some water or maybe some tomatoes or something.  You simmer it and then you serve it in taco…hard tacos or whatever.  That’s a meal…a staple from my childhood.  [00:50:00] But one thing you can do, and then you can do this on the grill in the summertime, is instead…so, let’s say you’re gonna do a pound.  You say okay, so you take your pound of ground beef.  You take your taco seasoning.  You could even just do that; you just put the taco seasoning in and then knead it in with your hands, and then make meatballs and either fry or grill those meatballs.  But you could also add in some breadcrumbs or some eggs as a binder.  Or this time, I added tomatoes.

 

Now, I did two pounds of two different kinds of ground with different fats to kind of spread it out, two things…two different…low-sodium and then a spicy taco seasoning, and then a can of fire tomatoes with a little bit of extra seasoning in there.  Then I kneaded all that together and then I formed those into…this time I formed them into more logs ‘cause it was an experiment.  But when I did that recipe, it was just meatballs.  Again, you could grill those indoors or outdoors.  I think for that recipe, I was growing them indoors on a cast iron grill on the stove which makes the whole apartment stink.  But yeah, and then you serve it just like you would a ground beef taco but instead of being simmered in water, it’s…everything’s in there.  Sometimes you gotta make sure…’cause it is ground beef so you say okay, you could…you don’t have to cook it…you can cook it more where you’re getting a crisp on the outside and then the inside…you don’t have to do it well-done.

 

You could do it medium-well or you could cook it all the way…the pink out of it.  Yeah, I had that and actually, it really is flexible so I had it…we had it for dinner, then we had it for lunch, and then we had it with a daily harvest bowl for…I had it for two lunches where I just cooked…put the ground beef in and then some beans and then the daily harvest bowl.  Those were great, then two…episode…that was Episode 161.  Then Episode 202, it looks like, was olive breadcrumb pasta.  This is a really good one.  Everybody…a lot of people have had breadcrumb pasta.  I think it was popular in 2014, but what I’ll do is I’ll cook some chicken thighs ahead of time either on the grill or whatever.  You could poach them or bake them or fry them, panfry them.  But you want them cooked to finish and then you also prep your pasta like your spaghetti, and again, drain that, make sure it’s not cooking.  Then you just take your bowl…you want to hold some…I think in this one, you do want to hold a little bit of…reserve some pasta water.

 

But basically, again, you take some olive oil, sauté some garlic.  This is just from what I can remember.  I don’t know if you do anything else.  Then you put breadcrumbs…you toast the breadcrumbs for a minute, then I toss the chicken in there, chopped up.  Oh, then I put in a ton of olives, like really good olives, like Kalmacata or whatever, however you say that, chopped up, too.  Then you put the pasta in, maybe some pasta water or olive oil, and that’s it.  Then that’s a delicious meal too, and I had that this year within the last few months.  Grilling with Gooseberry, I’m assuming we made…this is before I went back east one time in the summer, so we probably made Italian sausage and salt potatoes.  Salt potatoes are like a…Italian sausage was a staple of my childhood ‘cause I don’t know, where I grew up in central New York, there was just a lot of different…just…I don’t know, it was just quality.  We would get them…there was a German place that had good Italian sausage and then an Italian place that had good Italian sausage.

 

Then, salt potatoes are a kind of potato that’s from central New York that we grew up on which is a small…one of those small potatoes.  I don’t know what you call them, and then you basically are boiling them in salt, salt water, homemade salt water, and then you have them with drawn butter.  Not exactly healthy but very delicious, very, very delicious.  Then Worcestershire sauce with cheddar bacon soup.  This is actually…is based on a recipe but I think I changed it around enough that I think they make it in Disneyworld.  They serve it at their Canada restaurant, Canada steak…but now they even…you could get it on fries, poutine, with this.  But it’s just like a creamy soup with cheddar, bacon, roux.  I think you start with…make a roux, I would presume.  Like, roux, roux, roux, sing roux.  That’s a song that my daughter loved when she was a kid.  So, you make a roux which is like…I think this is it; your aromatics or whatever, so you have carrot and celery maybe, and then butter and flour.

 

Then you add the cream in and then it thickens.  Then you add the bacon, cooked bacon, in.  I think this one had beer, so you could use NA beer.  Then you probably reduce it or maybe…and then you add the cheese in.  The cheese thickens it after you lower the heat.  That’s another one, then Stuffing and Mashed Potatoes.  This might have been a recalling of when I deep…we had a deep-fried Thanksgiving one time.  This was before I…in 2012 or 2013, before I stopped drinking.  But we deep-fried stuffing, mashed potatoes, and turkey, and probably cran…I think we put cranberry sauce inside.  I don’t think…I think this one was just talking about how I make stuffing and mashed potatoes.  Then right after it…so, this is interesting where I didn’t spread it out because I probably was like oh, we did the Lich which was a sandwich.  This was my own recipe but influenced by I think panini sandwiches or Giordano Bros. in San Francisco, I think was what it was called, maybe.

 

They would have these big corned beef sandwiches with…or you could get a pastrami.  You could get anything but it would have fries and coleslaw and an egg.  It was my take on that.  This was for Superbowl Sunday one year.  I did the recipe.  For me it was like, I love rye bread, so rye bread, either pastrami or corned beef not fresh, like, from the butcher or whatever, an egg.  I would use a hashbrown patty ‘cause it just makes it easier if you’re doing it at home.  Coleslaw, but you don’t…you need a coleslaw that has a low moisture, so either just the coleslaw without the mayo or a light, barely-mayo’d coleslaw.  I think those were all the ingredients.  Oh, and cheese, of course, of course.  Probably, if I’m having pastrami, I want a nice Swiss.  That sounds delightful.  Then we switched to 5…so, that was 489.  Then 537, we did Salad.  I have no idea about that one but I do consider salad pretty important.  Just chopping up…I do like…I haven’t been good about it lately but I think this is probably my…it’s wild that it was like, four hundred episodes ago.

 

But I think it’s probably when I developed my salad style from TJ’s which again, now that I’ve been scorned or now that the world kind of changed, I don’t go there as often.  But I would buy…I did buy their bagged salads but I would buy the Cruciferous Crunch and then a regular…or, not regular, but you know, more of a different leafed salad.  Those would be my bases.  You mix maybe two of the lettuce…base with the Cruciferous Crunch and then add in other stuff.  Since then, I’ve become a big proponent of…Trader Joe’s has two different sundried tomatoes; they have one in a bag and then they also have one in oil.  Either one or both, I love sundried tomatoes with salad.  Yeah, they’re just having a salad.  I don’t know how I stretched that one out, though.  Then it was 652.  It was Realtime Under Pressure, so again, that was one I must’ve…I think this was when I first got my Instapot but maybe I’d had it for a while.  That was probably…I think we made corned beef for dinner in [01:00:00] that and I don’t know…it’s been a while since I made corned beef in the Instapot.

 

I don’t know if I ever got that recipe to where I liked it, or maybe that one was it.  I don’t know.  That’s a question I just don’t have the answer to.  Okay, then 736 was Patak’s, Realtime Patak’s, but I don’t think I had Patak’s, so that was a…must’ve been a curry-based recipe.  I don’t know what we were making.  ‘Cause I’m trying to picture it in my head, because I don’t think I had Patak’s which is a kind of curry paste.  They also make simmering sauces.  I did find a couple local places that have it.  I think you can also order it online.  I got into Patak’s because back when I had a job…I think…who was that guy?  Jamie Oliver, he’s big into it.  Maybe he was the one that introduced me to it and then for a very brief time when I worked for the county…it wasn’t my job to go to restaurants that imported a lot of ingredients to do this one kind of check, but I did do it once and I remember I bought a ton of Patak’s while I was there.  It’s just a good…really well-made curry paste that’s easy…you could make your own.

 

They have a selection so you say okay, this is the kind of flavor I’m looking for.  That was some sort of curry, then 756 was Realtime Broth.  That’s probably where I was talking about bone broth but not making my own, but different things you could use bone broth for that you would have been making anyway.  It’s so funny that I remember the older episodes way better.  That’s what I mean; these are when I was saying okay, what am I gonna do a Realtime Recipe episode about?  Yeah, I don’t know.  I guess I’m trying to think…I guess, yeah, noodles, anything.  I guess I’m always picturing my Instapot but maybe I was used to talking about just using broth for…I’m sure there was something I had that was a go-to broth recipe.  I said oh yeah, use bone broth in this, even using it in ramen, so maybe it was a ramen recipe.  I don’t know.  That’s a good question.  It was only a hundred and fifty episodes ago and I don’t remember.  Also, a shoutout to Episode 433 which was Realtime Wall Bed Assembly, so that wasn’t a recipe.

 

But that was when I bought a Murphy bed for my daughter, which we no longer have.  I think I probably talked about that.  I mean, we haven’t had it for a few years.  But so, 433, so that was…I don’t know what year that was.  Probably 20…I don’t know, 2016, 2017, 2015…let’s see, 2014 would be 150…2015…2016, I guess.  I bought her a wall bed, a Murphy bed, because at the time we were living in this one-bedroom apartment, so she had a bedroom and then I slept in the living room with a divider up.  This is when I was…this was most of the time I was making the podcast.  Her bedroom wasn’t huge and I said okay, well, how are we gonna have room to play and do stuff?  Well, maybe I’ll buy a wall bed.  Then if we moved somewhere else, we could use it.  It ended up not working out as well as I would have thought because of a couple things.  If you’re ever in the market for a wall bed, one; there’s not a lot of companies that make them.

 

I mean, other than if you’re in a position of sky’s the limit, you’re in great shape ‘cause you probably buy a bespoke one or there probably are really high-quality ones.  But beyond that, for regular people it’s like oh, there’s not really that many options.  Then even the options, they’re just not…for the price and then the quality of materials, it just doesn’t match up.  That was one thing.  Then it looked good when it was closed but it wasn’t…you could never close it fully.  If the bed was fully made and the pillows were in it…so, if you’re already in a…if you’re buying ’cause you’re in a small apartment, the one thing we would have to do is take all the pillows out and then stuff all the blankets, and then we could get it closed.  I don’t know, we just didn’t end up closing it as much as we would have wanted just because we just didn’t have the space.  I don’t know.  Then when we moved, we measured…we moved…the place we moved to, the bedrooms were in the basement.

 

I don’t know, it was just a weird thing.  It’s kind of part of a hill or something, so there’s a basement with just two rooms and those are the bedrooms, but the ceilings are really low.  They’re not normal-sized ceilings.  When I measured it…I mean, they’re not super-low.  We don’t have to duck down, but I could touch the ceiling no problem.  The wall bed was too tall; wouldn’t have fit in, or just wasn’t the clearance for it.  It would have been taller than the ceilings in our current place.  Then I had to sell it on Craigslist and that was like, literally…I was trying to sell it for like, 50% of what I paid for it ‘cause it wasn’t that old.  Then the person didn’t bring any tools.  I tried to sell it as-is and then…so, it ended up…I said oh, I thought they would take it apart.  They said no, no, you gotta take it apart with us.  So, it was like a three- or four-hour ordeal.  All that aside, it was a great memory, having a wall bed.  The dream’s still alive.  One day I dream of having a wall bed with all the fixings where you just pull it down and the pillow…I mean, I guess there’s no way to keep the pillows there, realistically, anyway.

 

Then I was always worried; I said, this thing is…I put it together, I was pretty confident in my putting it together but I said, I don’t know if this thing is…and then I wondered if I was gonna get…’cause you have to secure it to the wall pretty good.  I don’t know.  But the episode came out really good.  That was another one people loved, is putting something together in Realtime.  I’ve always dreamed about doing more of those but I just haven’t bought a lot of stuff.  I think the last few things I’ve bought…yeah, where I was like oh, I could do that as I put together…most of the stuff I get is from IKEA and even then, I haven’t bought anything since…probably since then, other than a couple plant stands.  One day, we’ll do more Realtime Assembly ‘cause those are one…and then the last episode we did was 841, so sixty…fifty-nine episodes ago; Red Curry and Jasmine Rice.  I guess that was with my old Instapot which I could talk about for a second.  Yeah, I love making rice in the Instapot and curries are really good.  Anything you’re gonna make with liquid is gonna come out really good in the Instapot; just delicious.  That was another one that I really enjoyed.

 

But yeah, my Instapot passed onto the big farm.  I guess I got it in, whatever, 20-whatever.  It was kind of my fault.  I was trying to do this technique.  I had been using it all day and I know what happened was it overheated, because I was like…I did multiple sautés after pressure-cooking something.  When I say multiple sautés, I was trying to reduce something.  I probably did thirty…for thirty minutes to an hour when I should have just reduced it afterwards on the stove.  Then it just shut down, and then…so, I just overloaded the circuits.  I did have a great interaction with Instapot but it was out of warranty and they were like yeah, it’s not really fixable.  I did manage to get a used…one that was returned out of the box, so it all worked out.  I still have that Instapot and then now I have two tops and two inserts, so that’s nice.  Yeah, so that’s a little bit about Realtime Recipe.  Hopefully we’ll have one coming out soon in the…it might be 940’s to 960’s again.  I appreciate you so much coming by and listening to me tell you about…yeah, and to celebrate Episode 900.  I totally forgot that’s why you were here.  Thanks for coming over and let’s cook something together soon, alright?  Goodnight.

 

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