ASK ADAM #2: Plastic or wooden cutting boards?

ah hello welcome to the second episode of ask Adam while I will endeavor to answer some of your questions my lovely wife Lauren is here to read the questions you've composited them right because we got so many compiled more I used some questions word-for-word okay we took questions on reddit this time our / Adam or goo SIA I think we'll probably take questions there from now on generally um bajillion came in which is lovely I'm also going to endeavor to do most of my chatting with folks there it's a really positive community it's people you know watching videos and trying to help each other cook which is really lovely and it's I didn't create it it's fan made it's fan run which is the way I think those kinds of things should be so in the future if you want to ask a question all post a post where I'll invite questions a few days before we shoot and you can try again then but for right now I'm going to endeavor to give briefer answers to a much larger number of questions and we'll see how far we get question one all right so this is the first ask Adam since you've become a full time youtuber mhm so what has life been like since you started amassing YouTube followers it's been lovely and in a few ways terrible but mostly lovely and I I would say that if you know to be very honest about it the biggest thing that has changed to simply been money you know we were things were real tight there for a few years they're expensive these are real expensive especially when they break a limb yeah yeah so you know and we haven't changed our lifestyle in any way you know I tip much more extravagantly and I used to for sure but that's like about it I mean we're really just saving money for you know for the reasons I've discussed previously which is this this is a absurdly unstable business that I'm in now right like so we're just talking money away but it's a maze amazing how much it affects your psychology to no longer be living with the constant fear of living paycheck-to-paycheck right and and that's something that is a wonderful privilege but it also makes me very cognizant of how most people in the world are living so thank you everyone who watches this every super appreciate it co-signed yes next question who eats the food you make for videos um we try to let a lot of it not go to waste but to be unfortunately very honest about it you know the food usually isn't that good after the time I shoot it because it's cold it's been sitting around for like a long time I often cook it at weird times I shoot rather I often shoot cooking at odd times of day for when it works with you know our house and you know when kids will be quiet or not here that kind of thing so I'm often cooking dinner at like 10:00 in the morning or I'm cooking it at 3:00 in the morning right and times when no one really wants to eat anyway so on for of it goes to waste then I think is is good and I will try to we will try to think of some ways to curtail food waste we have shared with neighbors before yeah yeah so like so for the next recipe video which is gonna be a rather than I think novel roast I shouldn't say that someone's gonna someone's gonna find where somebody else did this before and I'm gonna get in trouble but I don't know of anyone who's done this way of roasting a chicken before I've not seen it done before I'm sure I'm just reinventing the wheel but anyway so but I had to like test I had to test this roast chicken in like 10 times yeah so yeah so we were you know sharing chickens with neighbors what video are you most proud of or do you just like the best I don't know I mean I think I I think this is very common for people who do all kinds of creative work which is that my favorite thing is usually the thing that I've most recently created but only for like the first 24 to 48 hours right like I'll get it in the can and I'll love it and I'll feel very it's very satisfying to you know especially for something like a YouTube video that at least with my production schedule it requires kind of a spasm of incredibly intense focused work to get it over the you know I mean the the shooting and the research or whatever that might kind of be spread out in little bits and bursts over the course of weeks but then there's going to be this period where I have to sit down and edit it and that's generally you know at least a 12 hour proposition and I'll often do a lot of that or really most of it in one big sort of marathon run which is what that's kind of one of the awful parts that I was alluding to earlier I need to find some ways of making editing more sustainable especially kind of physically you just bad things start to happen to your body when you sit like that for 12 hours several times a week right so anyways where was I okay so when you get at the end of like that little marathon and you go and you look back at what you just created and it's incredibly satisfying and I will watch it many times for fun over the course of the next 24 to 48 hours and then after that point I never want to see it again like I'll hit this point and it'll it's like it's like in our relationship when you know suddenly the glow wears off and you're just like hey well I hope that's come back around again that's what makes T that's what makes an adult marriage different right is that like you learn that that's not what it's all about those fields right I'm glad you've kept me around longer than a video well yeah like once something is about 48 hours old I never want to see it again in my entire life and it's it becomes mortifying but I'll point to a couple of things that I like so I the the the one of the first kind of science II videos I did about what happens to alcohol when you cook it I was really pleased with how that came out from a production standpoint I sort of I stole it from Jeff knit bird but like the thing where you you print studies out and then you can film yourself kind of highlighting lines in them and stuff like that I haven't done that since just because it's just it's it's wasteful of paper and it's just it's not an efficient way of working it's much easier to do that all digitally but I really liked how that looked I thought that was cool and then the hot chocolate video that is recently at our neighbor Aaron's house because she has this like you know beautiful kitchen with a lot of natural light and at mine is you know very cave like there's very little natural light gets in here you know I was able to get just really really beautiful soft natural light in a very very nice recently redone kitchen and in a way I disliked it because I consciously try very hard to avoid kind of food porn aesthetics and certainly like kitchen porn aesthetics I don't want my stuff to be to put it in the disgustingly euphemistic language of the marketing business I don't want my stuff to be aspirational right I want it to be relatable and if I want anything kind of stylized or heightened about the way that I shoot I want it to be kind of quirky and fun and funny that's why I use that that ring light that puts a really a natural glow on food I sometimes even like it when like my shots look kind of clinical like when I do those bird's-eye view shots or like vegetable prep it kind of looks like surgery or something like that I like that because what I don't want to put forth is that kind of food magazine vibe where I'm trying to razzle dazzle you with things that are going to ultimately the deceive you right make the food look better than it actually is I don't want to do that that said oh boy that kitchen was real pretty wasn't it and that light was real pretty it wasn't it it made me want to do everything like that but I I don't know should we tell them about the kitchen at this point sure so although we've not been changing our lifestyle in any meaningful way other than saving a lot of money lately we are gonna redo the kitchen we've lived in this house for eight years and when we shortly after we moved in there were parts of the kitchen that it became clear really needed to be redone but we couldn't afford it so we've just been I mean with it we've bought new appliances as things have broken yeah so it's time but we're also I mean it's it's primarily to make it more shootable the the biggest difference is that the stove is gonna be in an island which will be right in the center and so I'll have 360 degrees of shooting angles available to me around the stove which i think is gonna you know again not in the service of like dazzling you with an aspirational kitchen right but in service of actually just getting you clearer angles so that you can just see a little bit better what's happening and certainly I it'll you know I'm especially over by the stove which is right up against the wall I'm really kind of I'm really kind of trapped into doing those super tight shots all the time and I like super tight shots for food because it's important to see detail it's important to see oh that's like how the shrimp you know should look when it's about that point right but I would like to not be locked into doing the super tight angles all the time because especially like if you're doing something that involves you your whole body a cooking procedure that involves doing things with your arms like tying up knots and things like that like I think that you would it would be helpful to you to see a wider angle on that and this will help with that we're very excited but it will be some weird videos during that time yes exactly I won't be able to shoot in here for like a month and so I'm not totally sure what we're gonna do that we have we're gonna make plans visit some friends yeah okay what is your skincare routine you're glowing my skincare routine is messing off box lights here I'll show you there you go that's my skincare routine right there that's my skincare routine okay this is this is why everyone looks you know better than they actually do on television it's called softbox lighting it's just a light with a diffuser around it it makes everybody everybody looked like they're seventeen and and it's like and I only I only got them because I couldn't I couldn't shoot my my talking headshots with my ring light because I wear glasses and so I would get you know if you're talking dead into the light you're gonna get terrible reflection on the glass and I made one video like that and it was just awful so I just ordered this softbox kit it was litter I mean there's so much it's amazing the cheap filmmaking gear you can get from China nowadays I think this kit was $70 for both lights and stands and everything and yeah I kind of don't like that it's you know again I don't want things to be heightened and I don't like that if you know as silly as it may sound like I don't like that maybe you might not feel really good about your skin because you think that mine is so perfect when it's not you know I think you literally watches this face with the bar so no I don't I don't I do not wash my face I mean I just kind of like you know I've splashed water over it but like honestly come on now isn't that actually the best skin care routine like just don't mess with it don't poke it don't poison it like just let it live and breathe says the man with lovely Italian skin next question okay what's the process of making a video like so can you just give us a quick like I do it in this order sure so because I have two totally different types of videos I've got the Monday videos in the Thursday videos I'll start with the Thursday videos through the recipe videos and so that the first part of that process would be recipe development right which I increasingly do you know when I first started I was doing things that I had really practiced 10 million times and I've still got a lot of those left in the tank that I haven't shot yet but I'm increasingly trying to kind of explore new recipes or sometimes it's the things that I have cooked before but only like 5-10 times instead of 35,000 times right so I'll practice the recipe I'm very very concerned about putting recipes out there that aren't that aren't reliable you know I don't it's one thing for me to waste 10 chickens it's another thing for me to put out a bad chicken recipe that causes 10,000 people to waste 10,000 chickens 10,000 semi-sentient be that perished for nothing right like so I really really try to make sure that my recipes are solid before I put them out so that's the first step and then I will shoot the recipe that is often the quickest part but certainly like the most stressful part just because it's it's a lot to juggle especially with anything that involves any kind of quick cooking it's a lot to juggle to shoot and cook at the same time and it's a lot of pressure because you know you can make one wrong mistake and then the whole one wrong mistake all the mistakes are wrong except for the ones that aren't the happy little mistakes okay happy happy accidents let's say you can make one mistake and then the whole shoot just goes down the tubes right and like the kids are about to come home and I can't like from school and I can't shoot again that day like so there's a lot of pressure to get it right and I don't always and I've had to do some some total reduce which is not awesome but I try really hard to kind of just like plow through it and you know one one and done just move the camera around a lot to get lots of different angles so I'll do that and then I will write which will involve basically looking at my footage and thinking about a script and writing writing the script as I just kind of scrub through the footage right I will write the script I will then go into my closet and record it I just do that in a coat closet where I've got a little bit of foam up on the walls I'll do my voiceover sit down edit the voice-over take out all the retakes and all of that and then I'll start cutting the video to the voice-over and that yeah generally takes about 12 hours he is a legitimate one-man band and then the thing that they're kind of like the most like cruel part of it is that like you'll do that and then you think oh I'm done I can go to bed now but no you got to do a thumbnail and then the thing that really sucks is the captions because but people are very grateful that you do the captions and accessibility is important okay and it's not that hard with those videos because there's crypted right there already the you know it's already written out I often deviate from the script slightly when I'm reading it so basically I just have to go back listen through to my video while I'm reading the written script and I just tweak it to make it right right so I'll do that it's much harder for the Monday videos where I'm doing other kinds of videos about food that are not necessarily recipes and those much more of the time that's spent in terms of research and you know going through scholarly journals etc finding someone to interview doing the interview writing for that takes longer usually and then I have to come here and shoot the talking head for that and that's that's hard because I don't I don't have any kind of like teleprompter setup and I think I think you know there are lots of sort of home teleprompter things that I could do I think they'd all be sort of more trouble than they'd be worth because it's a lot to setup and again you'll get reflections in your glasses if you're trying to talk to the camera it's a hard thing so what I do is I write a script I get on camera I look at the you know a paragraph of script or you know two three sentences of script on my phone and I will sort of commit it to memory but I try to commit more the idea of it to memory rather than the specific wording and then I will deliver that to camera from memory and again it tends to work better if I think about delivering the idea rather than the specific words and and repeat and that's a you know it takes me usually at least an hour to record all of that stuff and then I have to clean all that up and then once I clean all that up I have to start putting in b-roll and all the other imagery and everything and and so those don't take white as long to edit usually anymore as as the recipe videos mostly just because I've gotten better at all the kind of whiz-bang area that I do there this or the motion graphics type stuff that was really hard at first because I was just learning how to do that on the job but no I've got that stuff kind of down and so it still takes at least ten hours I'd say of that and then what I have to do the captions for those that takes like two hours because because I again I wasn't delivering the script as written and so I more or less have to actually hand transcribe everything that I said and that's that's a drag at the end of the night when you're just trying to go to bed but it's important and again it all beats a real job what do you listen to while you're cooking I can't I don't well not on No oh interesting Jeff podcasts yeah I I mean I you know for people who don't know I I worked in radio and podcasting for you know pretty much my entire you know post post college and grad school career and love podcasts and there's so many wonderful things out there and yeah that's really what I listen to I don't listen to music when cooking I think that's just too much too much noise if you could magically master the cuisine of one culture or region it's like you woke up tomorrow and had all the skills to be good oh man that's that's a toughy because I think you would if you were gonna request that gift of a genie you wouldn't want it to just to be something that you like right you'd want it to be something that like would be hard to get the old-fashioned way right it would have to be some kind of East Asian cuisine because this you know you're talking about like food cultures that are so technique heavy all of the knife skills and all that kind of stuff and that's the stuff that I don't want to put the time into learning so let's say sushi I guess if you could open up a restaurant what kind of food would you serve oh gosh you know I you know as much as I am I am glad to be a home cook and when people are like are you gonna get there like a real chef I'm like hey guess good thing I don't need to worry about that because I'm not a real chef and I don't have to concern myself with the problems of real chefs opening a restaurant is it's a really really hard life huh and I'm glad that I don't live it but you still fantasize right like so I think it would be primarily a pizza place I think it would be like a pizza and a few other kind of Italian ish entrees and just like a really really good you know table wine you know just like House red house white get a carafe of it you know real cheap and some you know big sloppy dessert you know something really really simple and convivial and you know a place that people would really enjoy going nah not that they would feel fancy about going to do you want to stop the dryer okay Lauren's gonna stop your dryer cuz it's making a lot of noise oh my god that's okay that's right it's only a three thousand dollar camera okay what are you ready this okay what are your favorite restaurants oh gosh so many but I'll go ahead and and feature the local the local lad which is there's a place right here and they can Georgia called dovetail hats that is it's like if it was in any other city like it would be packed all the time and the prices would be three times as much and as it stands it's kind of packed all the time in Macon Georgia which is great it took a while for people around here to I think get hip to it and to understand what good no I mean like people around here know good food they do but like if they they know from like good home cooking and soul food and that kind of stuff right like they they you know but for like kind of something kind of verging on fine dining like this market wasn't really quite ready for that when it first hit and luckily like people have like gotten to understand it and it's boy dovetail in Macon Georgia you just it's worth a special trip or you're passing through on your way to Disney World yeah exactly on set high 75 that's right have a good meal have the crack pie get the deviled egg crack pie it's this dessert I hope one day maybe I can convince them to show it to me for a video but they make this dessert it's basically it's a chess pie but it it tastes like a giant golden gram and they have house-made caramel ice cream on top salty caramel but they change their menu frequently they have a lot of really local stuff and you know living in Georgia the local stuff is great yeah and again if it was in Atlanta it would be three times as expensive easily it's it's it's shockingly cheap highly highly recommend dovetail and Macon Georgia they also have really great bartenders who make great cocktails they're very pretty yes okay which food youtuber would you want to have cook a meal for you and then maybe sit down and enjoy it with you so I'm gonna I'm gonna limit my interpretation of that question to people who are celebrity chef yeah like not celebrity chefs in some other capacity like like they we know them it purely because of their cooking on YouTube and so I think it would be for me it'd be a toss-up between chef John and Helen Rennie Helen Rainey I say her name right sorry Helen love you but there honestly I mean they're both like obviously great cooks and I think they would turn out a heck of a meal but mostly I just want to sit and talk to both of them and to have them be my friend there's so lovely two incredibly lovely people you we you know I don't know I feel bad it's weird that I I'm saying it I feel bad for presuming that they're lovely right no I mean it's well it's not that's not what I feel bad about what I feel bad about is how I just presumed that I know them right and this is look let's take a second to acknowledge the late great Neil Peart past and I felt really bad that after he passed I was in a video where I wore his shirt and his only thing as I shot it like many days before we heard about Neil but you know Neil's famous most famous lyric I can't pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend that thing about Fame that like you know me and my utterly miniscule internet fame I'm just starting to get the tiniest little taste of what he was talking about there about how like when you put yourself out in media people come to know you or at least they come to know aversion of you and and then when they meet you or talk to you they often talk to you like a friend because to to them you are but like to you you know to me you're a stranger and I don't I don't know you know I don't know how to interpret what you're saying to me maybe you would it's sort of like the kind of good-natured ribbing that you would do with a friend but like I don't know if you're my friend right and so it's kind of this weird kind of one way thing and and it's yeah it's a thing yeah I shot my lens cap but all I'm trying to say is that like I feel bad Helen and John for presuming that I know you on the other hand I feel bad that I felt bad that I presumed that you're nice that was very circular it is true that you know people see a very tiny slice of your life and they're they become very sure that they know who you are based on that and that can sometimes be great and sometimes it can be hard it's definitely I don't know I I feel the effect of that from you I think there have been times when people are like oh I'm so sure I know who Lourdes yeah you don't dudes on the Internet fun times yeah I mean it's the kind of thing it's like you know because I you know my audience is primarily young men right and as much as I love you and I'm so appreciative that you are watching young men are statistically the worst people all right like they are like they're responsible for most of the like violence and awfulness in the world right like percent of the internet rules yeah yeah so you know most of you are absolutely lovely but like there's a people there's a few people who are terrible and I try to delete your comments as soon as I can see them but please do just remember that these are real human beings on the other end of your screen here anyways um it all beats working in a salt mine as well I'm gonna say okay it all beats working in a convenience store which is something I did for many years people don't know that people know that I've never worked in the restaurant that's true I have worked in food service what which can you mean installed you work I don't think I should say should I say why not so it's a it's a much beloved mid-atlantic chain that has been spreading called sheets and I worked at a sheets for a long time and that was a hard job do you play the Nintendo switch or is it just your kids in attendance I got it for myself it was when like it was this one day when because I was still working at Mercer and doing this and I was I was absolutely running ragged and I was I was really in kind of bad shape mentally and I was like I need to do something fun for myself you know and so I loaded the kids in the car after school and I drove to a electronics retailer that I am not surprised at all now to see that they are not doing very well and I was just like please just tell me how to play Nintendo in the year 2019 on my television that's all I want to do I have money you can have it right just just tell me how to play Mario on my television and oh my gosh they were so incredibly unhelpful and basically like they told me that I actually couldn't play the classic games on the switch which was not true and this was after I got someone to help me which was like a half an hour of like child wrangling trying to wait for someone to help me and so anyways that was like so frustrating and then I got wise and went to a local game store where the dudes there set me up in like two seconds and yeah so I play I play the switch a bit I but like I've been amazed to see how quick Freddie picked it up I thought he was gonna be a little too young to play Nintendo but like you know he you know it's not just Kirby anymore like he's getting really far in Mario to the hard one you know by himself which is crazy and I like a lot of people I don't know I think a lot of people would be concerned they would think that that's like a lot of people would think that like that's bad and I kind of I'm you know I kind of feel like he's developing a lot of like really valuable skills in learning how to operate an electronic device at eye level it's concerned rolling I'm not worried okay what's your favorite cocktail beer wine etc for wine usually it's gonna be some kind of dry spicy red increasingly I almost exclusively drink stuff from South America because I just really really like the the the notes that you get there the Sabaton II they say like the tobacco in the menu it says it like has it taste like tobacco even though I think that's disgusting smell the wine is great yeah yeah love that in terms of cocktails I don't know I like a lot of things I like a lot of just basic highballs you know I you know scotch and soda or it's people might think that this is sacrilegious but like cognac and soda or coat just cognac on the rocks I really really like but I also like sort of more elaborate cocktails generally I like things that are kind of citrusy but not sweet so grapefruit juice things made with a great fruit I often really really like things are made with bitters jen-jen the joke is that whenever we go out to eat and I always order like the spiciest driest red wine in the menu and then Adam gets adventurous and orders a cocktail and no matter what it is it's always a picture always comes out pink in like a martini glass and then they always set it down in front of me but you know it's the year 20 19 and I'm okay with that it's the year 2012 Lord so it's 2020 and that's no longer okay all right know what tanks we just do a little switcheroo and you're very strong in your pink drink consumption and then for beers I don't know I mean I it's so funny I I grew up my first beer that I drank a lot of and when in Pennsylvania where I grew up is from the local brewery there called victory and they have this they have this in pure I think it's an Imperial Stout called storm king which is like motor oil like it is so heavy and bitter it's crazy and I totally drank it purely to like impress my friends or really one particular friend hi Peter but at the same time like I then became accustomed to it like you know people a lot of people probably start drinking coffee you know black just to make the people around them think they're tougher or sophisticated or something but then you start to like it right so I really did like you know very very bitter extremely hoppy beers for a long time and that you know and I came I came of age right when like the era of the micro brewed IPA dawned and so I had tons of options but gosh I've increasingly been like I don't know giving myself permission to try things that are not quite as intense and yeah I've really been liking a lot of just you know plain old loggers lately you know just nice nice simple German beer it's a lovely thing yeah why don't you use wooden cutting boards that's a whole video it'll probably be a whole video mostly because it's like I I'm not totally confident in my thinking right Polly cutting boards are are easier to sterilize because you can just throw them in the dishwasher right and as you know and lots of I mean like um doctor dr. Diaz dr. Francisco Diaz Gonzalez who's a guy professor at the University of Georgia focuses food safety whom I've used in a few videos or rather used he's been gracious enough to participate in a few videos you know he he's on the side of plastic cutting boards when it comes to safety however you know there there are things to think about beyond simply microbial life right there's you know essentially endocrine disruptors to think about how what about that what of those are getting into your food by the by the cutting board so I honestly don't know and I've done some have tooled around looking at research on this and there's not there's not much honestly exploring these questions so I'm gonna try to do a video about this at some point and maybe there's some research that I haven't seen and if you know of some please let me know about it but honestly you know until then I use plastic because I can throw in the dishwasher and you know would you can't it's that simple and I like the pull toward wood is that again it looks sexier on camera and I don't want to make decisions on that basis you know not going for food porn here I think that insults your intelligence I like that they're like the plain white Polly awk so cutting boards good grips look kind of medical almost you know I like the wooden one or the plastic ones like you said because you put him in the dishwasher and I don't want to hand wash wooden cutting boards when I'm cooking so it's true what kitchen gadget do you think is a waste of money most of them well I've certainly you know talked about crock pots in the past that I think that I think if you have if you have an electric or induction stove that there's no reason to have a crock pot like just get a Dutch oven and put it on low so that would be one I know that a lot of people have asked about pressure cookers and why I don't use them and what I feel about them and I think pressure cookers are you know they're they're lovely and they're really like essential to some of the cuisines of the world right so please don't you know the fact that I don't like pressure cookers you know there's nothing about you but like yeah I've owned a couple including one you got me that I ended up not using and it's just for the very simple reason that they stress me out you know the and I know that like modern pressure cookers are not very dangerous a lot of things have to go wrong for you to have an explosion but just the sound and kind of getting them up to pressure and getting them down to a pressure where you can open them it just kind of stresses me out and I hate that I can't just open the lid and look at my food whenever I want to you know it's just not a fun way to cook for me and you know if it were essential for me then I would get over that but it's not you know I can I can do lots of like long long stewed things on the weekend in my Dutch oven and I don't care that it it takes all day to cook you know and to a great extent that's like a phenomenon of privilege right the fact that like I'm not working a third job on a Saturday I'm at home right allows me to like babysit a pot for 12 hours and it doesn't bother me it's just a much more but because I have that privilege that's how I choose to cook it's a much more enjoyable relaxing way of cooking to me then dealing with a pressure cooker you don't do many breakfast recipes or any have you done any um so you don't do many breakfast recipes what do you like to eat for breakfast yeah I'm not a big breakfast eater I think you're a big breakfast eater only cuz I'm a huge uh I'd love to go out for breakfast I'm like so we just go to Waffle House along literally like what it is yes is that probably the most or HNH if the kids aren't there yes a change if the kids aren't there but if we have the kids Waffle House and that's probably the most southern thing about us at this point is frequently we go to the Waffle House I know how to I know my order I like my waffle dark and I wear I usually get steak and eggs with tomatoes and eggs over-easy and dry wheat so yeah I'm not a big breakfast eater I it's generally the one time of day when I'm not hungry so I don't until you are fed I just love going out I don't like to I love breakfast food I don't like to cook breakfast food I want someone to make me eggs or corned beef hash with runny eggs yeah love runny eggs absolutely adore a perfect overeasy egg and there's times in my life where I've practiced that a bit and gotten okay at it but that's the kind of thing skill you gotta like use it or lose it and I've certainly lost it at this point love runny eggs absolutely delicious make pancakes for the kids all the time dynamo colors yeah and so there will be a pancake video at some point yeah okay I always love fresh herbs in my food but when I buy some I end up you only using a little bit before the whole bunch goes bad and I have to throw it out then I feel like I just threw out money suggestions I hear that because I love fresh herbs but Lauren doesn't and so well that's not totally true I like fresh herbs cooked into things but you like to put green stuff on top and I don't care for that put it on top usually I like toss it in at the last seconds right I don't mind it so honestly here's here's I think like the best assuming that you don't live in a climate where you can grow some herbs your rounds right if you do then man just get little pots and you know trim them and you shouldn't feel bad I mean herbs will grow better if you prune them most herbs will grow better if you prune them frequently and don't feel bad about just throwing away basil just throwing it on the ground and letting it rot it doesn't matter just grow a few herbs and pots right if you have winter honestly the best thing is those hydroponic herb growing kits yeah my brother sent me one of those for Christmas years ago yeah we had in Boston he used it for use it all the time it was great I forget I think it got like lost in a movie or something and yeah those things are fantastic and really effective and a nice a pretty little thing to to have in the corner of the house just you know be aware that your neighbors might think you're going weed what injuries have you gotten from cooking oh I burned myself pretty frequently right there on your for yeah but they always think it's so frustrating because they look so much worse than they are like so my first viral cooking video my first New York style pizza video I had this like horrible burn on my hand right here it wasn't I mean it wasn't horrible it was totally you know superficial but it looked bad right and that was one of my freaking I like I said I worked in radio and stuff before I did this this I started making cooking videos to learn how to do video on total total novice and so I that was before I had came to understand an a visceral sense that cameras make very very small things very big and tiny little things that you would never really cross your mind about you know with your fingernails being a little bit long and things that don't matter in the real world all of a sudden on camera it becomes huge right and so yeah like I feel bad that i grossed people out with like this big gnarly burn on my hand I didn't even think about it you know because it didn't hurt right those kinds of skin burns you get from like the you know side of the oven or the broiler array or something like that like they you know they will they don't hurt that much but they look real nasty I cut I have a I have a God can I even find the scar anymore I really badly cut my hand when I was a like a teenager cutting an orange with a knife and that's probably like the worst thing but no in general I've despite everyone's concerns in the comments with your knife skills yeah yeah you have not cut yourself knock on wood dude this is I mean I'm gonna make a whole video about this but like the the you know stop stop it with the concern trolling about my knife skills and my not using the claw technique okay he cuts very slowly so it go slow just go slow just go slow it's that easy okay you don't need to have knife skills just go slow the reason that professionals have to have knife skills is because they have to mow through a freaking 60 pound bag of onions and prep right you have to cut up one there's no economy of scale to be realized in cutting an onion in 15 seconds as opposed to one minute that's not that's forty-five seconds saved on your day is not a meaningful amount of time right those are differences that only become meaningful when they get multiplied across many many iterations right in the lentil video I dropped my onion on the ground and still got it cut in like 30 SEC it's fine let's see let's say you found a time machine and it will would allow you to see any three gigs in time what would they be it has to be one gig not an entire festival though gigs at festivals wouldn't be allowed so musical acts Queen at Live Aid not a oh no that they were so past their prime at that point but it's so iconic yeah they were they were way past their prime I would love to see Queen sort of like post haircut Freddie's haircut and you know mustache era but pre when they started bringing touring musicians out with them and having keyboard player since when it was just the four of them and no no samples no no no backstage musicians nothing like that got it you know well I mean think a lot of that I mean that's documented in the live at Montreal Queen concert film which you know run don't walk if you haven't seen that that was them right before they became a band that I wouldn't want to see live certainly would love to see Metallica before Cliff Burton had died and I would have wanted to see it after master of puppets' came out so I could hear those songs and like you know didn't he die like two two weeks after the record came out so one of those gigs you know and then for the third one it might sound like pandering to the local audience but it's honestly true to see Otis Redding at the Douglas Theatre here in Macon before he broke where he was apparently just you know pulling the roof down around people's ears with his incredible charisma what I want to what a lost that guy was speaking of losses was three three big losses well that's why I sing the would be valuable because you couldn't anyway um do you ever worry about running out of video ideas and related would you ever make videos about something other than cooking yes so not really I mean food is a pretty big topic certainly part of the reason that I started doing the Monday videos that are like about food but not a recipe is that I knew that if I just did recipes I would run out of ideas or maybe I wouldn't run out of ideas but I would get bored like I'm not that interested you know but I am super interested in all the kind of ancillary issues around food and those you know you could easily fill a lifetime exploring that kind of stuff and you could certainly fill a lifetime doing recipes as long as you're willing to go beyond your own repertoire which is something that I am increasingly doing now that I'm doing this full-time going to visit other people and bringing you their recipes which by the way I want to say something about that you know I would love it if people could bear in mind that when I go and talk to somebody about their recipe that like I think that although I will give them feedback about what kind of recipe I think would work for you ultimately it's their baby they are the author of that and they get to have their say and I at some point I need to step back and say this is yours and to preserve that authenticity and so yes sometimes people that I feature might do things in a way that is different from how I would normally do it and that's just fine you know I think I think you can handle that so I answer the question oh oh and then the other side would you do things about you know so yes I I am infamously scatterbrain in terms of my interests did you say alright heck I'll fall down a rabbit hole and you know want to just learn about like swords for three weeks and then something else I mean I think it's been longer than three weeks well swords yes sure that's a bad example yeah I I have lots of interests and I think you do too and so I would love to make videos about things that aren't food but I'm in a position right now where I really can't be adding new things right like I need to I have been dismayed at how much my lifestyle has not improved since walking away from the university I'm still working to much fewer all-nighters that's sure definitely if you were all I know is for sure so I can't be adding things if I can figure out a way to kind of streamline my food channel operation then yes I think I will start a second channel which will be about other things but that that might not be for a while what are your goals for the channel in 2020 and what do we have to look forward to so I think I've already touched on that but I'll simply reiterate my biggest goal is honestly just to kind of like find a healthy sustainable pace of working to just keep giving you what you want you apparently like which is great you know regularly and at a at a pace that isn't gonna hurt me or us or you right like you have to live with this this this nightmare all the time I mean it's hardly a trial yeah it's working at the sheet says let me tell you that I would like to see you figure out a way to make it yeah just not be so at 11:00 all the time and that may involve I mean potentially hiring someone to help would maybe be worth it but again you're such a one-man band that you'd have to kind of figure out a way to untangle things in order to do that exactly that's that's my main reason for like not hiring a video editor or something is I just I think I'm not sure would actually save me effort all of the work that it would take to coordinate with someone and then just knowing me and I it's you know it'd be hard for me to let go of that kind of control so it's trickier projects you've done you have always been so plike your music you were the one and with the podcast you had you know you worked with some people but for the most part you were thought one yeah and yeah even when you worked at GPB you know a lot of times you were the only one in there true so that's the big thing is just to kind of like find something that that is sustainable for all of us but in terms of like some specifics yes I I would like to travel more I'd like to do more field trips take you know taking people to different places is gonna be a lot of fun and featuring lots of other people just cooking is got a lot of things like that in the works a lot of people have asked one thing we will not be doing is starting any kind of like family lifestyle vlogging situation we're not into people asking this yeah no we're not this is a very small window into our life and that's enough well how do you feel when people approach you in real life have you gotten recognized have people approached you yeah what's that like yeah that's starting to happen and it's it's been really you know it's been lovely this is like this is like I mean talking about Neil I mean he he was experiencing a level of Fame that you could really be oppressive right and and he and then he was in a rush it's not like he was Michael Jackson or something right like so like real Fame I think is probably terrible in a lot of ways right this level of Fame is like perfect because like enough people know you to provide you with a livelihood and to provide you with a feeling of of frankly of just self-esteem of importance that like you matter to other people that's lovely and to people tell you that appreciate what you do and that's absolutely wonderful but I don't have to like be like Michael Jackson and put on like my my my-my-my Groucho glasses when I go to the mall like he did I'm talking about like pre thriller era Michael Jackson he actually used Groucho glasses then there's other things he did so generally yes in general it's absolutely lovely I did have for the first time someone show up at the house the other day and I god I wish I had handled it better because it was it wasn't that I was mad I was just confused because basically it was like I was out on the porch already I was not inside nobody knocked on the door I was out on the porch already trying to wrangle a child right and then I see this fella park his car and kind of get out and approach me and say hey you know I introduced himself and said I love your videos I'm like oh my god that's that's lovely but it did not occur to me that he had come to see me like I I guess I didn't think a lot about it at all but I think what my brain just sort of instinctively thought was like this is a chance encounter right like he just was walking down the street and he saw me because I was out on the porch and so he wanted to say hi and so the way I kind of handled it was I sort of said yeah oh that's awesome okay bye right and then I just sort of went back inside but like I think he was like there to see me and so I feel really I mean if you're watching I feel really bad I could handle that a lot better you know you were absolutely lovely you know that said if people are wondering probably not great to show up at the house unannounced right but that's like a basic I don't think that's like special to me right like nobody wants anyone showing up at their house unannounced even if you know their address is of public record in the phone book you know so you know what would prefer to not do that but what I'd love to do is meet ups if anybody wants to organize anything especially if it's in reasonably easy driving distance Georgia yeah I'll come to your meetup I'll come see people I'll be also yeah just Adam if you approach him on the street he's a scatterbrained frazzled person I say this with all the love no it's true okay so most of I think what it is like deer in the headlights like what if what is happening now don't he's not being rude it just is confused so just be aware but like when we did my book launch at little shop stories and you told people in the video to come and you know those kids from Decatur came yeah telling you all the guys we cursed yeah that was amazing oh so stuff like that yeah I think and you were ready for it they're like to have those conversations and that was that was really cool and then some of them stayed and about my book which was nice oh but uh yeah so those kind of things but just be aware and I think it's with anybody if you approach them on the street they're gonna be a little like I just at the Kroger what is happening yeah it's really out there I think that's it okay well this was a good one so we'll do it again sometime I think I'm gonna do this every two months that seems like a good pace for this so talk to you in two months

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 571,965

Keywords: Adam Ragusea, Ragusea, Q and A, Q+A, Q + A, audience questions, questions, cutting board, plastic cutting board, wooden cutting board, wood cutting board vs plastic, wood vs plastic boards, plastic cutting board vs wood, worst kitchen gadgets, how to grow fresh herbs indoors, how to grow fresh herbs in the house, rush, neil peart

Id: TA1UY6iw_v0

Length: 54min 13sec (3253 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 20 2020