A Better Life New York
Steve "The Judge" focuses on the art of enjoying yourself through food, fun and frolic. Steve conducts live Interviews on many popular and controversial topics. Steve has candid conversations about fine dining to BBQ, cigars to cars, history making events and everything in between. Recently, we added a special monthly addition ion collecting Antique Phonographs with experts Wyatt Markus, and Collector/Dealers Joe Hough and Tracy McKinney. Sponsored by Premium Botanicals the maker of Herbal Spectrum a line of full spectrum Hemp based CBD products. http://www.mypbcbd.com
A Better Life New York
Easter Reflections, Culinary Feasts, and the Spice of Life: Embracing Health Battles and Philosophies with George, Steve and Friends
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Join us at the table for a heartfelt recount of post-Easter warmth and the bonds forged over shared meals. George and I swap stories from our holiday spreads – my peaceful Easter dinner and George's fiery dance with island-style short ribs. We'll also take you through the smoke and sizzle of my ambitious plan to cater a massive feast for 60 people with my lang offset smoker, a tale of meat, fire, and friendship. With special nods to our high-spirited chum Fred, we celebrate the rekindled connections that make these occasions unforgettable.
As we savor these moments, we also peel back the layers of life's more daunting challenges. We share the profound shifts in our worldviews after personal health battles, from gallbladder crises to cancer triumphs, and how these experiences have taught us to treasure the mundane and embrace a fresh take on life. Our conversation dances through the philosophies of Picasso and Shaw, contemplating the purpose that propels us. Rounding out our chat, we marvel at the culinary journeys of my pals Jim Henry, a newfound pizza virtuoso, and Chris Nelson, who'll be popping by to talk about his cider escapades in Vermont, all while pondering the importance of staying sharp and informed in a world bristling with misinformation.
Hello everyone. This is Steve from A Better Life. This podcast is brought to you by our sponsors, Premium Botanical. They are the makers of Herbal Spectrum, which is a full-spectrum hemp-based CBD. They make salves, liquids, and they have a great mixed berry gummy. You can check them out at wwwmypbcbdcom. Now our podcast. Hello everyone, and welcome back to A Better Life with George and Steve. Hello George.
Speaker 2:Hey Steve, welcome, welcome back everybody Post Easter, sunday.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's Easter Monday. A lot of people are off. People are trying to tell me the banks are closed, but we all know that's not true and it's just one of those Mondays. I think spring is trying to make its way in.
Speaker 2:Is this the most called out Monday or is that post-Super Bowl? Super Bowl is a big post-Monday call-out sick type of day, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of people go away. It's a hard time to go away. Between Palm Sunday and Easter. A lot of people are away. A lot of schools are closed. This week it's both things. People go away, schools rotate wherever it is. Take the week after or the week before.
Speaker 2:My kids were off the week before all week, so that was a lot of coordination amongst the houses and all that, but I survived. And then I got to enjoy this really relaxing Sunday afternoon Easter Sunday dinner that was phenomenal. Sunday afternoon, easter Sunday dinner that was phenomenal. I had lamb chops, ribeye steaks, string bean salad, roasted cauliflower, roasted Brussels sprouts, roast potatoes, ravioli, a huge antipasto spread. It was really a nice few hours in the afternoon to break away from the routine and just enjoy some very nice intimate moments with friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were over, josh's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, josh had invited me over.
Speaker 1:He knew that.
Speaker 2:I was single and flying solo this year. It's always nice having good friends to watch out for you and make sure you're not alone.
Speaker 1:Was Fred there.
Speaker 2:No, I think that side of the family was down in Florida.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was good to see him the other day.
Speaker 2:I haven't seen him in so long years actually yeah, I mean that man runs on I don't know nuclear fission. He's always so full of life and just so much energy going on, always positive.
Speaker 1:A really amazing man I know we had uh, short ribs. Sam made island style.
Speaker 2:She said the short ribs which really came out unbelievably matter of fact, I don't know anything about when people say island style. All I know is that must mean scotch bonnet peppers, so it has a little kick. I don't know anything about when people say Einstein. All I know is that must mean scotch bonnet peppers. It has a little kick.
Speaker 1:I don't know what it really means, because she says the only thing I've learned is that she told me all my seasonings are expired and they all need to go in a garbage. Can she told me all those kind of things, which is probably true? I'm thinking about when I bought some of them before I had my apartment and I've been here. Got to be three years in May, right, so they're probably there and they all need real new stuff.
Speaker 1:And since my smoker's coming back into action this year in a few weeks actually five or six weeks I'm going to do a big cook for a party of 60 people, which I I'm a little bit intimidated of. There's going to be other things too, but it's a big number to cater to, especially getting back on the saddle.
Speaker 1:60 is a lot so I'm going to do 15 racks of ribs. So I'm basically going to cook the day before and let everything rest overnight, which is what most big smoking places do anyway. I'm going to cook the day before and let everything rest overnight, which is what most big smoking places do. Anyway. I'm going to cook 10, and then, when I wrap the 10, I will slip in the other five while they're still cooking wrapped.
Speaker 2:Don't accidentally taste two racks, because you're going to come up short.
Speaker 1:That's what I would do.
Speaker 2:If I was there like hey chef, I need to call in control.
Speaker 1:That's what happens is people start hanging around.
Speaker 2:It's a great thing, it's a great problem to have, but you end up running out of supplies and then next thing you do, you prep for twice as much, and then now it's just back and out the next morning.
Speaker 1:I'm going to do 25. Before the lunch I'm going to do I think it starts at 1, I'm going to do 25 pounds of pork bellies, which is a heck of a lot easier. It just needs to be prepped.
Speaker 2:You're talking about transporting the grill, but what about your wood?
Speaker 1:I probably have a half a quart of wood and I have a case of pecan sitting next to me.
Speaker 1:So I have a case of pecan which would be more than enough to do the whole thing, but, and then I have hickory and cherry, so I have plenty of wood, so I'm looking forward to it. And for those of you who don't know, I have a a lang offset smoker, which is one of the better smokers out there, weighs a thousand pounds, it's got 48 inches wide with two levels of cooking space. So it really it really I could do 10 ribs. I probably could do. I've done 15 in one shot and I've created a second level kind of thing I don't really show, choose to do that. I may do it again just to save time, but I don't know it's. It does a lot of ribs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this grill is on four wheels. Right, the bicycle pump isn't cutting it. You need a commercial electric air pump to fill these tires and it's a monster.
Speaker 1:It's a monster and I said I'm glad to move it there to cook, except I'm not doing it. It's just one of those things I'm looking forward to cooking again, and hopefully more often. I've had a few offers to cook for people and hopefully George and I can do a little combo session as well. So the ribs will be ribs. I'll make my own rub, I'll prop them the night before, then the next and hopefully on the while I'm cooking. I'm going to make my own sauce again, which I don't think you've ever tasted, because I think all the times I cook for you is I use somebody else's. But I'm going to make my own homemade sauce and I think I'm going to give it a little kick at a time, I think.
Speaker 1:I'm going to take some of those dry peppers I have in there I don't know We'll talk about which one you can pick and then add that to the sauce when I cook it and then I put it in a immersion blender and just I don't put it in, I use an immersion blender and hopefully get it just the right consistency.
Speaker 2:Cool, cool. I can't wait to try. So, one other thing we should mention is so we're playing around with different softwares these days. We're running today's episode through Riverside and I'm on my laptop through Wi-Fi and I have Apple AirPods and so it's a wireless headpiece with the mic. Steve, you're running through your standardcaster mic.
Speaker 1:Correct, also with it's going through the Rodecaster Pro just for my audio, and also through a cloud, whatever these things are called.
Speaker 2:And are we? We're running through Riverside, both of us. I see our cameras are activated and we have two windows. Is this recording video as well?
Speaker 1:No, I just set it up for audio.
Speaker 2:Okay, gotcha, I sent over a couple audio. First, the lamb that we grilled yesterday. I was just wondering if it was a way for us to feed it into the video. But if we're not doing video, that's not a problem. That'll be for the second half of the year.
Speaker 1:We're going to get there. So we're going to get there with the video. Obviously, you can see this video works well. It'd work a little better. We have to both download the Riverside app. What's interesting about Riverside is not only do they record to the cloud, which we do, we also record locally. What it does is it takes a local recording on my end, a local recording on your end. That's why you have to leave your computer open when you finish for a little while. Then it compares my copy, your copy, and the cloud copy, goes through and makes the best copy of the whole thing and that becomes what we export. Wow, layers of the audio. Because if there's an issue with data on your end, say you're, we all have that issues, we've all seen. When our computers stop, our television stop and the internet drops out for a minute, it able enables that.
Speaker 1:Keep recording on your own system so that it goes in and then it times. It could tell the time and hook it all together Awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is great software.
Speaker 1:There's others, but this is the one I've been looking at for some time. I've recorded video on it myself that hopefully I destroyed, but it it works pretty well. It's highly recommended. A lot of people use it out there a lot of podcaster, video podcaster because I think you can do as many as 20 people at once.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow okay and people do it what we're doing. They just used apple headphones and their software. I can actually cut out one of our softwares that we use I don't know if I'm going to I may, just because Descript is one of our other softwares that we use besides Buzzsprout, but Descript also does, also has a service like Riverside where they do this recording. But I choose, but I'm not as familiar with that one. This one I know works. I know that it interacts with the podcaster pro, that you just have to change some settings on to do what we're doing. Of course you could do it even simply. If I had a USB mic and USB headphones, then we wouldn't have to do any of those things and that would almost. You could pretty much do it anywhere with this software. There's also cell phone and iPad versions that you could use, so you could do this from anywhere. You could do this from your phone.
Speaker 2:It's come a long way, hasn't it? Podcasting when it first came out it was a new word. Who invented the word podcast? And then, little by little, people get a little bit more savvy, businesses see opportunity and you get all these new toys. And technology certainly keeps up, and now we have all these different iterations of phone, ipad, computer gadgets and whatnot. But again, like this is just, uh, a really fun hobby for us and we're learning as we go what do you want to talk about today?
Speaker 1:a little bit about you.
Speaker 2:Were in japan last time we spoke yes, it's been a few weeks, it's been it's been a few weeks.
Speaker 1:George was busy when he first came back.
Speaker 2:You know how you are when you come back you've been on a business trip yeah, business trip catching up with the kids and then just with work. Um, with the new gig, we're finally moving into our new office this week, so it's a little whirlwind of a week ahead of me. But getting back from Japan, I've always been when you travel and you're not sleeping right, it's so easy to pack on extra weight. And my journey with weight loss and exercise and all this health scare, things like that, for the last five years I've been on this massive journey of let's just call it self-improvement. Right, went through a divorce, had to readjust with my children, my family life, all that. I had a health scare with gallstones. I had a very bad case where I ended up having two operations and I was admitted in the hospital for about six, seven days. I went septic. It was pretty scary. A lot of pain, a lot of agony and I came out still surviving.
Speaker 2:I made a pledge to myself and I said I have to change things, change my lifestyle, my eating habits, my sleeping habits, my exercise habits, just everything. A lifestyle change. And it's been five years and I last week officially lost 100 pounds 100 pounds from exercise, from diet, from taking out considerable amounts of sugar that was in my diet, from from taking out considerable amounts of sugar that was in my diet, from trying to stop eating after a certain time of day. It is so hard because, going to bed hungry or thinking about food, I go to bed pretty late. Even if I tell myself I can't eat after 6.30, 7 o'clock, it doesn't help me very much If I'm going to bed at 12 or 1. That's another six hours of night. I should be going to bed at 9, right and sleeping through. And if I do wake up at 5 or 4 or 5 o'clock, yeah, go have a yogurt or something. That'd be so much easier. But it's almost torturing myself when I don't do what should be done. But anyways, long story short, I got to a huge milestone. I was 300. At my peak I was 305 probably, and I got under 200. I weighed myself at 199 the other day and I still have a few more pounds to go to my ultimate goal. But I am so happy and so proud of myself for making this five-year commitment come to fruition. One thing I want to tell everybody is I'm probably the last person I thought could ever stick to a plan and lose this much weight.
Speaker 2:I've always struggled with weight my whole life, my whole career, especially in the food business. It's not easy. It's probably somewhat of an escape code, somewhat of an excuse for me to say that, but it really isn't. When you go and talk to chefs and when you jive with them and you have mutual respect and understanding of each other's knowledge and passion, you want to share meals, you want to talk about food, you want to experience some of the most delicious things coming out of kitchens here in New York, and you sometimes end up having one or two or sometimes even three dinners a night ambitious in sales and your craft, and you're going from restaurant to restaurant and those nights are long.
Speaker 2:When you go home and you're tired, you fall asleep on a full stomach. You've probably taken in 2,500 calories in the evening. Who needs that? But when you do that over and over again for almost 20 years, it catches up. Things happen to your body, your liver shuts down, the organs are very upset with you and yeah, so for me it was my gallbladder. That thing just went out. It was totally fused to my liver. My doctors, first of all. If you don't think you're lucky to be alive, think again. You should be dead. So this is all somewhat of a it's all gravy really.
Speaker 2:Every minute I live, every day. Extra for me is some extra time, and I do look at it in a whole different perspective. And nothing's easy in life, but when you have health scares like this, it really does change a lot of your perspective and your vision and how you take things in life and all the silly things that perhaps bother you. When you're in your 20s and 30s you can take a step back and road rage that doesn't happen anymore. I'm the slowest driving person on the highway. Who cares? I'm five minutes later to my destination than I would have been.
Speaker 2:I don't need that kind of silly stress and a lot of my friends, you know, feel the same and I think this is just one of those. When you get older, certain things don't really piss you off as much, and I know, steve, you have a similar story and you beat cancer. And this is again this full circle with our podcast, a Better Life with George and Steve. This is just us being so grateful for what we have, and it's not what we want, but just really appreciating what we have.
Speaker 1:I agree with you. I'm a 9-11 victim. So, as George had mentioned that, and I ended up getting sick or whatever, and it's amazing what you go through and what you learn I lost 60. I probably gained 15 or so back, but I'm on a mission to probably lose another 35 pounds or so.
Speaker 2:You know what, though? When I was yo-yoing on diets, I'd lose 10 pounds. I'd pick up 15. I'd lose 20. I'd pick up another 10. And when it happens to you over and over again, there are times where you're just so desperate You're like I'll do anything to make it stick, to make it last, but I don't know. One thing is lifestyle change. That's tremendous, and two is support, and support can also come from people sharing their own stories.
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean that you hear it once and it's going to happen to you, but if you know that, what is it that I always say? You're never alone, right? Anything that feels unique to you. For the most part, that's false. Somebody somewhere out there has experienced that same thought, that same feeling, that same emotion that you are feeling right now, and never lose hope or helplessness can easily be flipped around and just know that there are people that love you and people that care, Reach out For me. My thing is yeah, I've lost some really dear friends for some silly reasons. Right, they just felt alone. They felt no one could understand, no one could really. No one wanted to be there for them, perhaps, and that couldn't be further from the truth.
Speaker 1:I think people sometimes just can't fight the fight anymore. I think that's more likely what goes on and they can't fight the the fight and they don't realize that there are other ways to fight the fight. There's other ways than the answers in their head, because their head is not necessarily thinking clearly right. So you have to keep people on the path, and you know what I am. I do that for people all the time. It's just, it's just a shame, but that's what goes on. We pick our battles right. We pick our small ones, we pick things.
Speaker 2:We can do. Pick the ones you can manage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pick the ones you can manage. I'll manage about 500 different ones today, but that's what goes on every day of my life, and I apologize for looking at my phone, but I'm looking for an email back on an answer to something I have to deal with.
Speaker 2:For the rest, of the week.
Speaker 2:I find a lot of inspiration even from silly Instagram feeds. I know it's sometimes considered poison in our society today to look too much into Instagram, but there are some very interesting quotes that pop up once in a while, and this one I actually took a screenshot because I thought it was so beautiful. It's a picture of Pablo Picasso black and white, and it's one of his quotes the meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away, and that really just resonated with me quite deeply. And yeah, age old question right, what's the purpose, what's your meaning in life? And all this and this certainly had a good perspective and I thought that was something I wanted to share with on our next podcast. So there you have it, folks A little bit of life philosophy from George and Steve A little bit of life philosophy from George and Steve.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I sent, if we're doing this, I sent something to George and others the other day and it's a quote from George Bernard Shaw and it says this is the true joy in life being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining about. The world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
Speaker 2:Legacy stuff.
Speaker 1:Right. So I think that's lost in this world. I think, if we're really talking about this, I think what's lost in this world is we have all, or the majority of people have become in us, them society you don't believe what I believe. Instead of listening to what you say and maybe trying to understand what you believe so I could figure out what about what you believe I don't agree with, or maybe I could figure out what I'm really wrong about, I think now just we all say and I use this term often the other side sucks, that somehow just being on the other side alienates people.
Speaker 2:It's not just politics, right, it's also in relationships. I think Just being back in the dating pool and I found someone very dear to my heart, but the times that we this what's the word I'm looking for that we don't see eye to eye. It's a different. It's a different feeling of man. I'm lacking the words, but when I was, let's say, in school, like in grade school, when people had different opinions, it wasn't so passionate or passionately fought over. I think when we have just a different idea today, perhaps it's because we're taught by watching the news or by listening to the leaders of our society how they handle it. We mimic it and it's just a very different sensation I get.
Speaker 1:It's funny because I am always reminded, when you talk about the news, of something I think it was Justice Blackmun said in his decision when talking about the Pentagon Papers and where they should be suppressed was a study made by the Rand Corporation at the request of the Department of Defense regarding the Vietnam War, and what it did is just documented how the government whether it was Truman, kennedy, eisenhower, johnson, nixon all lied to us about what was really going on in Vietnam. And when these Pan-Chinan papers came out, it proved that they were all their own documents, proved that they were lying to us the whole time. They were lying to the people, and Justice Bachman said that it's an informed electorate that's charged with deciding who runs our country. The thought of informed goes back to Madison. I mean an informed public. We need an informed electorate, and some of that has been quashed, if not all of it. There is not.
Speaker 1:I beg anyone out there to tell me that they believe wholeheartedly what any news agency they're watching, whether you're on the right or the left, do you believe either one of them? I don't watch the news, so now we're uninformed. We don't read the paper. What do we get? We get whatever we see on social media, or maybe something we see on the Internet, but we don't know if that's true or not, so everything's taken with a grain of salt. Certainly, our politicians all lie to us. They're all telling us a different story, because we all know that both things can't be true at the same time. Right, we don't know what anybody's motivation is or what anything. Until we get back to an informed electorate, our government's going to be a disaster, and I think that goes with everything else. I think people and somewhat we've created whole groups of people who don't want to be informed. They want to believe what they want to believe. They don't want to know If they're wrong. They don't want to know the truth.
Speaker 1:That selective hearing is really cancerous and I don't care if you're from the right or the left, both sides do it because we know nobody's really accurate, nobody really knows. Everybody's guessing Come on, everybody's just as my father used to say everybody we see on television is just as my father used to say everybody we see on television is just as much dumb schmuck as we are.
Speaker 1:So they just fake it better yeah, it's an interesting thing, and I and I and that's I. I think that's part of our disillusionment, because, back to what you're saying is people are don't know what they should believe anymore or what they should believe in when we used to believe in everything. So what do we do? We pull back into ourselves and our little worlds. We try to protect them. We don't know the right thing to do for our families, for our children, for the environment. We don't know what the truth is anymore.
Speaker 2:And that is so hard Because we have so much information. It's almost okay then we're really going to hide the truth. We're really going to take extra precaution in manipulating the masses. But you know what One thing I can tell is the truth is the national pizza competition that happened in Las Vegas a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1:And with that said- Back to why we're really here to talk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we are going to have a guest speaker next week, jim Henry. He's been a buddy of mine for quite some time now. We have a mutual friend. I went to high school with my friend, dave, and he's neighbors with Jim and whenever I go to visit Dave, jim's around Excellent pizza man, actually just a foodie.
Speaker 2:He's really a genuine foodie and he found his calling in pizza and little by little he started making pizzas for his family, then his neighbors, then the neighborhood and he's come to a level of pizza uh, I don't know, perhaps it's some higher calling, but he really has elevated his game and created a style.
Speaker 2:He's a detroit style pizza guy who loves putting on that frico, that crisped up cheese wall on the side of a Detroit style, and we oftentimes share text messages about dough. I was in the noodle business for quite some time and just understanding fermentation and hydration, water source, how hard or soft the water is, and then finally the yeast and just geeking out with Jim on that is nostalgic for me, but I digress. The reason I wanted to bring this up is because he competed the second year in a row in Las Vegas and just that experience alone being timed, being scrutinized, being just videoed and watched by all these sets of eyes and then judged on your product as an amateur. That's really something, and it's gotten to the point where he's now sponsored by a variety of suppliers.
Speaker 2:He's an ambassador for a few different equipment manufacturers and ingredients manufacturers and when we have him online, he will proudly explain his journey and all these little tidbits about pizza and just meeting all his pizza gurus and heroes, if you will, throughout the United States. They'll gather in Vegas for that week and, yeah, so I can't wait to have him on later and we'll have that up in a week or so.
Speaker 1:And then you have another friend you spoke to that was going to come on right.
Speaker 2:And then our other celebrity guest, if you will, is my buddy Chris.
Speaker 1:Nelson.
Speaker 2:And he was one of the founding partners of Citizen Cider up in Vermont, burlington, vermont. Vermont was one of the plots of land with massive apple orchards dating back to George Washington period and I think President Washington did have some orchards in Vermont if not just across the water from Lake Champlain on the New York side, but I know that he was a big cider and, yeah, when Chris comes on he'll talk a little bit more about that. But he's done so many cool things before and after. I actually know Chris from my sake days when I was with New York Mutual Trading and our distributor in Vermont was the company he was with Vermont Wine Merchants, and so we became colleagues. And when you work with guys that are just oozing with passion for food and wine, it's only natural that we get together. And, yeah, just having Chris on will be a really interesting outlook into the beverage side of things for our podcast.
Speaker 1:I look forward to them both. This is probably just a recap of where we've been for a few weeks and we're going to be back into our pretty much regular podcast within, probably at the end of this week, this one will probably be out tomorrow.
Speaker 2:And the software is just. It's going to help significantly.
Speaker 1:It's going to make it easier to do yeah, yeah and then one day. We're going to have to, we're going to have to move into the video yeah, oh yeah video. We have another forum.
Speaker 2:We're going to bring these wireless mics to restaurants and and on-site locations where we'll get to taste right, Especially your buddy's place at Casalettos.
Speaker 1:And then we also want to try the new deli in Ardsley that came up from Riverdale you said if they have pastrami. Homemade pastrami. Yeah, say no more, it's kosher, so they have homemade bacon made out of beef. Everything's kosher, so they have homemade bacon made out of beef. I will travel some distance for good pastrami yeah, it's supposedly really good, and I love pastrami.
Speaker 2:I'm not against going later tonight. Leibman's in the Bronx, deli since 1953 and now a new location in Westchester. Here we go see they close at 8.
Speaker 1:Oh, looks good they had the good stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm dying to go so, all right, I think that's pretty good for today. We had a little recap trying to segue ourselves back into the swing of things.
Speaker 1:See how it processes, see how it sounds and hopefully we can use the software more often.
Speaker 2:Sounds good, all right. Well, let's call it a day. And again, thank you all for staying tuned in and listening to us. We are about to get some really cool episodes in the next few weeks, so hang on tight, appreciate your support and if you haven't subscribed or hit like on any of the forums, please do so. We are just a handful of clicks away from hitting a thousand downloads. Guys, help us get there.
Speaker 1:I'm excited about that.
Speaker 2:And we're so happy to have this thing. Keep on going. Yeah, on this, this note, thanks for listening and stay tuned, guys.
