Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark s Scarborough. And together with Bruce, we have written three dozen now, plus one, three dozen plus one in cookbooks. It's going to be published this summer. We'll tell you more about that in another episode of this podcast. But for now, this is our. Podcast about food and cooking the passions in our life. We've got, as is typical, a one minute cooking tip. We're gonna talk about road trip, food, food to take in the car on a road trip. We just came back from one, so perhaps we have some ideas about what to do, and we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week. Let's get started.

Our one minute cooking tip. Keep a cooler in your car when you go shopping. It keeps frozen, things frozen till you get home from the store, especially in summer. Now, mark already taught me that Southerners know this, but I'm a Yankee. I didn't know this till I met him. So yeah, you do that and while we're at it and Wait,

can I just stop? You don't have to keep a big ass cooler in your car. You can keep a little small. Mm-hmm. And so called. Beer cooler in your car. It doesn't have to be a big thing to get ice cream home from the supermarket.

Well, and all those frozen onion rings. And if you do a lot of frozen vegetables, you want a frozen. Yeah,

if you're gonna do a big box store run, you need a big cooler, but you can use a smaller one for just regular supermarket run.

And while we're at it, here's another tip. Get all your frozen food last at the store before you check out. Don't put all the frozen stuff in your cart and then spend 45 minutes going through the aisles.

And while we're at it, if you pack your own groceries, make sure you put. The frozen food in the same bag or the cold food, like milk and frozen food. Mm-hmm. In the same bag. Okay. Before we get to our next segment, uh, the podcast, the big segment about roadtrip food, let me say that it would be great if you could subscribe or like this podcast or even write a review of it on whatever platform you find this on. That would be terrific and helpful in the analytics. As you know, we are otherwise unsupported except for your help in doing just that. There's also a Facebook group Cooking with Bruce and Mark. We'd be delighted to invite you to that group. There you can find more talk from this very episode of the podcast. Plus a series of cooking and lifestyle videos that we are always posting. Okay. Up next road trip food.

Some people are road trip people and some people aren't. Road trip people. Yeah. Oh, who wasn't? And they tend to marry each other. Who

wasn't on road, road trip or

something. Tend to

marry each other. Yeah. What Texas Boy was a road trip person. And what? New Yorker wasn't a road trip person. Person. I haven't, IT been in a car

for years. Yeah. When you met me. And why didn't you like car trips? Well, I took taxis, but why didn't I like, because I get car sick if I'm sitting in the back or if I'm not driving.

What happened when you were a kid and you were sitting in the back of a car?

Oh, my mother would smoke in the car uhhuh and I would spend the entire, and this wasn't just a kid, this is up until I was in my. Thirties and I would spend the entire time in the car with my shirt over my face and opening the windows and having her yell at me to close the windows. It was disgusting.

There's nothing like smoking in a closed window car to just really, uh, give you the full experience. Mm-hmm. Okay. So we recently went on a road trip. We took a trip down to see our literary agent, and then on to see Bruce's cousins who live in Washington DC. And then we did, uh, something that I wanted to do probably for. 40 years, and that is we went to the Gettysburg Battlefield. I totally geeked out on history. I'd read a couple of giant six and 700 page histories of Gettysburg Battle. I was totally prepared for this thing.

I was just shocked that it was. As small as it was. You know, they were talking about ridges and hills and I was expecting mountains and cliffs and No, it wasn't.

Yeah. Yeah. It was really small. Anyway, and then we went on on the road trip for a while and got back home. It was a big, long, big circle trip back to New England, and of course you can imagine that our car was full. Of snacks.

Well, my sister has a theory and she's absolutely right and 'cause she does love road trips and she says snacks are essential. They're are. It's Julie's theory of road trips. Snacks are essential.

So here's the deal about snacks in a car and we've got several tips about road trip food and snacks in a car. And you probably know this one, but I just wanna reiterate it and that is snacks for a car trip. Do not. Needs silverware. You should not have to take out a fork or a knife and for, for god's sake, a knife fork and a spoon in order to eat in the car. Sometimes Bruce and I have stopped and gotten a sandwich in the car. This is always less than satisfactory because. In the end, let's say he'll be driving and I'm sitting in the passenger seat and I'm having to wrap the sandwich repeatedly in napkins. Mm-hmm. So it doesn't drip all over him as he drives. It's never completely satisfying. And it's also, I have to say, not completely safe.

It's not, and sometimes you're lucky. Even though you have great snacks in the car, you're lucky and you find a good restaurant because even on a long road trip, a restaurant is often a nice thing to go into. We were coming home once from QVC in western Pennsylvania. We were selling one of our books and it was really bad weather. We were trying to get home, but we were hungry and it was late. It was like 10 o'clock at night. And Mark. Was driving and he said, see if you can find anything open. We're outside of Scranton.

And

I asked, get

Dun Mifflin country,

right? And I said, well, there's a Mexican restaurant that's showing up with good reviews. Now I'm thinking a Mexican restaurant outside of Scranton. I don't know. But we went. So we go and we're driving there, we're following the directions on ways, and it's taking us into this neighborhood, right? These are houses. There weren't any restaurants here. Turned out somebody was running a restaurant in their living room, and it was some of the best tamales I've ever had.

Okay, but that's finding a restaurant. You promised a section on road trips. Well, that was road trip food. No, we were on a road trip and we got lucky. I, I we're talking about eating in the car. I thought, okay, fine. There are all kinds of restaurants out there and I'm sure you know. How to find them. But it's always great to try to find the local places because let's face it, in this economy and in this world, it's great to support local and small, mm-hmm. Businesses. Mm-hmm. Rather than do the easy thing, which is to pull off from the chain. You know how to find these places, you know, all the apps and. Best to support a local business in some way, although again, you are not gonna get exactly what you know. That's the, the beauty, the attraction of the big chain places is you can get exactly what you already know you're gonna get, but maybe you should venture out a little bit. Okay, so let's talk about inside the car itself. Um, inside the car itself is really, uh, difficult in some ways to get decent snacks for it. But at the same time, there's all kinds of good things to try. And I think in our car, for Bruce particularly, jerky is just the king.

Oh, I love it. No refrigeration. There are so many varieties. This last trip we went into a little local organic market. We, and they had quite. An array of jerkies. And what did

mark

it? You got the vegan jerky made from soy. It was actually better than the Australian jerky that I bought, although mine was spicier. I liked that, but mine was

cheaper as vegan jerky. It was much cheaper, and I actually loved it. It was this maple Chipotle vegan. Jerky been formed, of course, as it processed, yes. But it was a really great treat for the car. And I should say, and you probably know this, uh, better than I do, but when you get snacks for the car, make sure you don't just get a bunch of carbonated stuff and make sure you don't get a lot of, uh, flavors. Make sure you do have water. We learned about. Carbonation on this trip, didn't we?

Well, I bought two big bottles of water in that same organic market, and I didn't know they were carbonated. Mm-hmm. I didn't read the label carefully. Mm-hmm. And so they were getting shaken around in the back of the car. Mm-hmm. And then when I carried the bag and then you were driving and I opened one uhhuh and it was. Like it was a shower. We had

a little shower in the car. We

did. It was our own mini ecosystem hurricane going on in that car. We lived in a

terrarium for the next 50 miles. We

kind of needed windshield wipers on the

inside of the car. It was really disgusting. Uh, I should also remind you that fresh fruit is always great on a car trip, and you probably know this. But, uh, let's face it, if you don't have proper refrigeration, even berries will go bad on you. Blackberries will go in a day or two in the, the car, and they get so

moldy.

Yeah, blueberries will start to get mushy, but

that doesn't mean don't buy them, right? So buy them, but eat them first. Eat the fresh fruit first. Although oranges are fresh and they last, so they will give you a good almost a week in the car. But go for dried fruit once you finish up the fresh fruit. And also know that if you're on a trip for more than two or three days. You can stop and replenish, right? Mm-hmm. Rather than looking for a restaurant, right? Look for a small, little, uh, health food store, organic market. Or even if you need to, you can go into a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe's, and sometimes that's a lot better for you than stopping at the fast food shop.

Well, you know, to be honest with you, trader Joe's. So set up for snacking. Mm-hmm. Because so much of it is packaged food in various ways. So a Trader Joe's is a great choice for our road trip. 'cause you can really stock up, and I think Bruce is right. Don't just stock up once. You should stock up over several days. Because the other thing is what you want today is not necessarily what you want in three days. Mm-hmm. And it starts to look kind of. Icky, as you stare at that box of crackers for three days, it starts to look kind of gross after a while. So it's best to to, to kind of do this repeatedly. We did this with my brother and my nephew. Uh, when, when we went to bury my mom, uh, after she died in December, we took an. Eight and a half hour drive from where my brother lives to where my mom's cemetery plot was. We went on this gigantic road trip and then eight and a half hours back the next day after her service. So it was an extensive road trip, but we bought lots and lots of snacks and my brother kept saying, snacks are key. Snacks are key. 'cause he was sitting there driving and eating, I don't know, you know, um, cinnamon coated nuts out of a bag and he. Just kept saying repeatedly, snacks are key. And I thought it was, and jerky was

key on that trip. We stopped at a truck stop in Missouri. No, no,

no, no, no. We didn't stop at a truck stop. This tells for you what a New Yorker you bar. What did we stop at? It was Bucky's. Uhhuh.

It's a truck stop. No, it's not. It happens to have 200 gas bump. It's a lifestyle.

Bucky's is a complete lifestyle. So we get

into this thing that's the size of four football fields at least. And. One entire wall is the jerky bar.

Yep.

And they had dried meat from every animal that walked or swam or human flew. Human,

human.

Human. Okay. Go on. Interesting. That didn't even ask for that. Yeah. That would've been,

I'm sure they sell it at Bucky's. They sell everything.

They sell everything at Bucky's and we stocked up. They had the fudge factory there. I, I just

wish you could have been at Bucky's with me and watched my New York Jewish husband walk into Bucky's and it was. We were bearing mom on Christmas Eve, so it was the day before Christmas Eve and the whole place is Christmas trees and Christmas sweaters and people buying Christmas presents, going to Bucky's to do Christmas shopping and pick up the stocking stuffers and all that. It was packed, and I wish you could have seen my New York Jewish husband walk in there. I wish you could have seen the look on his dumbfounded face. And there was this look of. Utter, um, astonishment and contempt and revulsion and attraction. Mm-hmm. All at one second.

There were probably 10,000 people in there, and I bet I could not have gotten a minion together if I wanted to. I

bet you most people don't know what a minion is, but okay, so it goes Google it.

Google

it. Yeah. Um, again, let's go back to shopping around for snack food. We often find that really great snacks come from, let's say the Korean food market chain. Mm. H Mart. Oh gosh. Which is across the country, everywhere. Mm-hmm. And we find that the H Mart has great. Choices of interesting soy flavored chips. And I mean, listen, you don't have to get those shrimp crisps.

Oh, what about the just the dried fried whole fish. They're so fabulous. Or just like eating potato chips, but they're actually fish.

Yeah.

And they're wonderful. You get eel that way. It's like there's some amazing stuff you could try, but you have to be open to it. You'll also maybe find fruit that you hadn't seen before.

It's true.

Cut up. Beautiful hammy melons and other fruits that you may not be familiar with, that you should try on your road trip. And

you know, we took a road trip in September to Quebec and we went out to the Gaspe Peninsula. And I don't want to tell you about the Gaspe Peninsula because I don't want you to go there because I don't want anybody else to know about the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec because it was so incredibly overwhelming and gorgeous. It was sticking. Out like a thumb into the Gulf of St. Lawrence with giant mountains in the center of the chocks, and then these beautiful beaches along the St. Lawrence. Just, it's an amazing place. But we took this road trip from our house in New England around the Gas Bay Peninsula. What, for 15, 16 days? Yeah, we were

gone a little over two weeks. Right.

And we were Googling and doing a lot of searching for various places along the way to pick up. Picnic and car food snacks. And we ended up at a ton of small fish mies. They were

everywhere in that part of the world. And they had standard smoked salmon, which everybody knows about, and smoked trout. But we smoked

mackerel.

Ah. We found things we've never tried before. Like marinated welks?

Yeah.

Oh, they were just,

they called it snail salad is what they call it. C, yes. C

snail. They were so delicious and chewy and vinegary and beautiful. We had smoked scallops. We had, uh, smoked cod cheeks. We did. They were amazing. We did. And

because smoked cod cheeks in olive oil, it was really kind of astounding. Now,

those were things that we had at a. Picnic, not, we did not eat those in the car. They would've required,

that's messy. A

fork. And they would've required paper towels. And let me say this about eating in the car, you're eating with your hands, right? You're also stopping every now and then to fill the tank up with gas. Your hands are touching things. Yes. Keep a lot of hand sanitizer in the car. Because you're in stores, you're in gas stations, and because you're eating with your hands, it's a good idea just to make sure your hands are always sanitized because it's a road trip. You don't want to get sick.

Oh, God. Um, yes, it's always a good idea that your hands are sanitized. Consider that bait and marriage advice too. It's good advice to have your hands sanitized. Make sure, as Bruce says, don't

limit it to your hands.

There's a cooler, oh God, there's a, a cooler and the car is important. As Bruce says, A big wide range of choices are imp. Or for road trip snacks. All these things make a road trip much more enjoyable. And of course, don't forget your playlist. Okay. That's our road trip section of this podcast episode. We hope that you enjoyed it and we hope actually that you'll tell us what's making your road trips better. You can do that in the Facebook group cooking with Bruce and Mark. We'd love for you to join us there or find us on Instagram under Cooking with Bruce and Mark up next, as is typical, the last segment. Our podcast, what's making us happy in food this week? Okay, so I'm gonna start. Okay. I never go first, but I'm gonna start. And what's making me happy in food this week is a loaded, baked potato. And I know this really is funny and downscale, and it doesn't sound like the typical nine course dinner party that Bruce makes, but I love a loaded baked potato and I. Ask for them for dinner every once in a while, and we had them last night, in fact, and it was so great to sit there with the bacon scallion cheese, sour cream butter, baked potato. I notice the dairy emphasis here, baked potato and have that for my dinner. I love loaded baked potatoes. In fact, my sister-in-law's mother. What do you call your sister-in-law's mother?

Your sister-in-law's mother? I, I guess so. You call, call my brother's mother-in-law.

Yeah, I call her Suzanne anyway, um, so my sister-in-law's mother made a baked potato bar one Christmas when we arrived in St. Louis, where they all are. And it was a really nice thing to get off the plane and have just. Tons of big baked potatoes and then a billion toppings strewn out. Mm-hmm. Across the counter, things you wouldn't even really imagine necessarily. Normally, like salsa and beans, salsa and all this stuff to put on baked potatoes. It was a spectacular way to start the Christmas holiday.

Well, my favorite topping from those, uh, toppings yesterday, I cooked my own little red beans, and then I sauteed them with scallions and I put in pickled red onions. And, uh, is this what's making you happy and food this week? No, I'm just adding that, that was really delicious. That's what made me happy on the baked potatoes last night. Oh, okay. But what's making me happy in food this week is something that I'm going to eat tonight.

Oh.

And we are having people over for dinner and I'm making, I know that's

making you happy yet, but do go. Well, it's making me

happy making it, 'cause I've already made parts of it. It's a dessert, and I decided to make a trifle. Now, we've talked in the past about how Mark and I come up with. Recipe ideas and concepts, and this is sort of how it worked here. I wanted to make a trifle for dessert, and because I'm doing a lamb curry for dinner, I wanted to give East Indian flavors to this trifle. So I made the cake layers are a genis sponge, and I put a little garam masala in with the flour to give it just a little bit of exotic flavor. And then. I poached pears in a chai tea syrup.

Yum.

And so the pears are gonna be layered with a little bit of that syrup. I made a coconut milk creme pat that's gonna go on top of that. What's it?

Creme pat

creme patisserie. It's just pastry cream. It's the French way of saying pastry cream. Okay. I made candied cashews that I'm gonna chop up and sprinkle in the layers. So crazy. And I'm going to put an Italian meringue. On top of the whole thing, this,

this is so depressing. Next to loaded baked potato. But go on dude. Go on. So that is

making me happy. And I also bought a new ingredient I'd never seen before and it was called for in my lamb curry recipe. And it's iris water. There's an Indian name for it and I'm not gonna remember what that is, but just like you can get rose water or orange flower water. This is. Iris water. And what I've read is that you can flavor desserts with it. So I may put a few drops in the Italian meringue. Oh, to give a little floral scent to the top of that.

There may be a veto coming on that one. Uh, I don't know that I want my, my Italian meringue adulterated. Oh, Iris Water. Uh, we'll see. But this is part of the negotiation of food in our house. Okay. That's our podcast for this week. Lemme say that we do have a newsletter. You can sign up for it on our website, bruce mark.com. Scroll down the. Opening page, you'll see a way to subscribe to the newsletter. Unfortunately, you cannot subscribe to the newsletter via Facebook or via Instagram, and I can't capture you there in order to bring you to the newsletter. And it's best in any event that you not put your email address on social media. So you can find that on our website, bruce and mark.com or clicking bruce and mark.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter there, which is. Sometimes connected to this podcast, but often not.

Let me just say, you should never put any personal information on social media at all. No. And but you should. Go to our Facebook group Cooking with Bruce and Mark where you can tell us what is making you happy in food this week, just like we do every week. 'cause we want to know what is making you happy here on cooking with.