Time passes but our love for Staples and R rated tomatoes will never die. We traverse reverse Memory Lane for some reason as we discuss the explosion of wetness that is the little teeny tiny tomato before Molly recounts a strange encounter and Matthew volunteers for The Secret Skirt Steak Scenario.
Seared Skirt Steak with Blistered Cherry Tomatoes and Polenta
The laughing scene in Ramen Girl
Matthew's Now but Wow: The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:04
Music. I'm Matthew,
Molly 0:04
and I'm Molly, and
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:05
this is spilled milk, the show where we cook something delicious, eat it all, and you can't have any.
Molly 0:09
Today's episode is cherry tomatoes. Nothing says November. Like cherry tomatoes?
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:16
Yeah, at one point, we kind of tried to make our topic seasonal, but it's so hard, like, what with time passing and everything so keeps passing. Yeah. Like, I have been I have, like, this on my desk. I have this pause button that I just keep hitting, and it does not work. Oh, is
Molly 0:33
that one you get for free at Staples? Exactly, right? Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:36
I spent 50 bucks at Staples, and they gave me a pause button that allows me to stop time.
Molly 0:45
I love staples. Get everything you need.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:47
It's amazing. Yeah, no, I bought, I bought a working time machine there for 1499
Molly 0:54
sadly, this episode is not sponsored by staples. Many
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:57
years ago, like in the early days of email, like I and a couple of my friends got this, like, weird spam email that where someone was saying that they had invented time travel and would sell you a time machine for $70 we thought $70 was the funniest amount of money to be charged for a fake Time Machine. I've been thinking about it
Molly 1:17
ever since. I wonder how many people bought the $70 time machine, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:21
like, probably a bunch, and we don't see those people around anymore because they're in the future. Yeah, yeah. But now, but now we're in the future because time keeps passing, and now we're sitting in front of a bowl of cherry tomatoes.
Molly 1:31
Here we are. Today's episode is cherry tomatoes. And I don't know, do you remember these from when you were a kid? Like, I feel like these weren't as much a thing.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:41
I genuinely, genuinely don't know. I think they were a thing. I think they were a kid. You do think they existed? I think they existed. And I did the research, so I know they did, but I don't know if they've become more popular since then. I don't remember having, like, the little grape tomatoes as a kid. I feel like they were all as a kid, kind of these super sweet 100 like, perfectly round, red, one inch in diameter. Ones, yeah, yeah. And I didn't like them, and I kind of don't, still don't like them, but I think they were around.
Molly 2:10
I think that certain types, like sun gold, which we'll be tasting today, are things I never really heard about until I was a grown up. They're for grown ups only. I
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:20
definitely find them, yeah, yeah. These are, these are R rated tomatoes. I definitely find them, like, esthetically appealing, like it's nice to be sitting by a bowl of glistening cherry tomatoes. It
Molly 2:30
is, it is these first sort of entered onto my horizon in a way that, like, I remember noticing them or maybe buying them for recipes when I was maybe in college or high school,
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:43
yeah, like all of us, like, you know, you go to college, you encounter cherry tomatoes.
Molly 2:47
I remember being at my brother and sister in law's house. Must have been in the summertime or something. I remember my sister in law, it might have been November. I remember her chilling some cherry tomatoes. And I know that people feel all kinds of ways about chilling tomatoes, but I remember her chilling some, just like red cherry tomatoes, and then tossing them in a bowl with chopped cilantro and some salt and setting that out as like a snack. For a while we were cooking. That sounds pretty good, really hot outside, and they were so delicious, like it was, like, deconstructed, really simple salsa. It
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:23
was so good, yeah, that actually sounds great. Like everything's about context, right? Man,
Molly 3:27
that's true. It's true, yeah, including cherry tomatoes in November,
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:31
yep. My, my one real cherry tomato Memory Lane is that when December was little, they called them little, teeny, tiny tomatoes. Oh, that's cute, which I think my mom taught them. Ltts. Ltts, yeah, LT threes. Like BW, threes. What's it's buffalo, wild wings. Oh, okay,
Molly 3:51
God, I should know that. So, okay, well, what are these things? Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:57
so I did cherry tomato research, and basically what I found is they're like a little tomato. So they are a variety of which made them a little teeny tiny, that is what it said. I just I went to the Wikipedia page, and it just said, Did you mean little, teeny, tiny tomatoes? And I did. They are a variety of tomato that botanists have agreed is probably a hybrid between domesticated tomatoes and, quote, wild pimp or currant tomatoes. Hold
Molly 4:23
up, pimp is that, like a technical like, like an actual botany,
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:27
actual botany term, because wild tomatoes are Solanum pimpinellifolium, or this particular type of wild tomato. I also learned while I was, while I was researching, that potatoes and tomatoes diverged from a common ancestor 7.3 million years ago. So if you if you were around 7.3 million years ago, you wouldn't have found potatoes or tomatoes, but would have found the ancestor of the both.
Molly 4:48
If I go to like a museum of natural history, do you think that there's like, somewhere in a diorama, is the common ancestor? I sure
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:56
hope so. I mean, the way to find out would be to go to Staples and go. A time machine for 1499
Molly 5:01
Okay. Okay. So just as a refresher, tomatoes are a quote, unquote, new world plant,
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:09
yes. So that means they're, they're native to to the Americas, and particularly to Meso America, and have probably been eaten there for 1000s of years, and seem to have been domesticated in or around Veracruz, Mexico. And the first written description of cherry tomatoes in a European source is a 1623, book called pinax Tea, a tree botanichi, or illustrated exposition of plants by Caspar Bowen, a Swiss botanist Wow. And in the book, he described, quote, Solanum, full of clusters in the form of cherries. Yeah, there you go. Pretty good. Okay. And they have been marketed in the US since the early 20th century. I feel
Molly 5:49
like maybe one thing that has really made me think about them and eat them a lot is that they're really easy to grow. I
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:58
did kind of know this. I've never done it myself, but you have, well, yeah,
Molly 6:02
and some of them, for one thing, the plants tend to be really prolific. So I always grow at least two plants of Sungold cherry tomatoes. Are those yellow? Those are the orange ones. I've also grown some sort of red cherry tomato. I don't remember what it was, but anyway, they tend to ripen faster and sooner than, like, regular sized tomatoes. Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:28
I assume. I assume they're probably easier to grow overall. I'm not a horticulturalist, but, like, it seems like people are always talking about things that went wrong with their big tomatoes. The few big
Molly 6:37
tomato plants that I have grown, I've always wound up with tomatoes that have some sort of weird like blight on one end, or they never ripen. They take too long to ripen. I hear about
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:48
the most. I think it's like, you know that the that you know they didn't get enough sun or something, yeah.
Molly 6:53
I mean, well, it's tricky here in Washington State or Western Washington. Yeah, grow tomatoes anyway. So I love growing cherry tomatoes, because I actually, like, last summer. Do
Speaker 1 7:04
you remember the the, like, internet famous recipe that was, like, baked feta pasta with tomato or something? Yeah, one of those Tiktok recipes. Yeah, whatever those are. Remember when someone wrote in to ask our opinion on like, six different Tiktok recipes that we had heard of like, one of them. That's
Molly 7:21
right, I remember that. Anyway, you need quite a lot of cherry tomatoes for that recipe. Sure. Last summer, I made that recipe many times using only my own cherry tomatoes, and that was pretty gratifying. Yeah, yeah, that was pretty I don't think I've ever tasted that. Is
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:37
it good? Oh, it's very
Molly 7:38
good. It's very good. Yeah, it's it's really tangy and creamy. And if you put enough red pepper flakes in it, it's got a nice little Afterburn. Yeah, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:46
love, I love anything with a lot of red pepper flakes. Honestly, have we ever had, like, reverse memory lined I'm sorry, what would that be like? Okay, because I wanted to mention that when I was a kid there, there was like, a suburban, like, neighborhood pizza place that we went to a lot called the big tomato pizza, which I have fond memories of. And a big tomato is like the opposite of a cherry tomatoes. Reverse Memory Lane is a memory of the opposite of the topic of the show.
Molly 8:09
Oh, great. Okay, yeah. I'm not aware that most topics, we do have opposites, but we should start being on the lookout. Well, next
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:15
week we're doing like a sparkling water episode, and so the reverse memory lane will be canned still water, which I ordered some of this morning. We'll talk about this next week.
Molly 8:24
Okay, fine. Okay, so let's talk about all the different types, because there are, like, a lot of different types of cherry tomatoes. Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:31
so first off, speaking of the 80s or 90s, I did not realize until yesterday, years old, that cherry tomatoes are used to make sun dried tomatoes. Oh, doesn't that make sense? Now, that totally makes sense. And like, we should do a sun dried tomato episode. I don't think we have. I just
Molly 8:49
noticed that I have a jar of them in my fridge. I forgot about
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:53
Yeah. Let's start by seeing if, if, if those are still good, and what happens if we eat them. Okay, perfect. Okay, so you, when you picture a cherry tomato, I'm holding one now you're picturing the thing I'm holding. I think it's it's an inch in diameter. It's red. It's like a perfect sphere. And it is called the super sweet 100 that is by far the most popular variety in North America. Often greenhouse grown. I assume they like transport very well, because they have a very thick skin, okay,
Molly 9:23
we're just gonna wait. Are you gonna bite or are you gonna pop it whole?
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:27
I guess, pop it whole.
Molly 9:30
Yeah, so I think which? Okay, I I found this kind of thing really weird. It is weird. I've been giving them to Ames, like straight off the plant, and he enthusiastically opens his mouth for them, but then as he starts to chew them, you can see this look of sort of real confusion come over his shirt, because the skin is so tough on a cherry tomato. And then you've got this like explosion of wetness. But then this, like. Like, the skin that just he winds up spitting out the, oops, sorry, he winds up spitting out the skin. Sure, find it, like, like, next to the fridge.
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:13
So that's, that's kind of, yeah, that was fine, yeah. I'm not gonna talk out of my way to snack on that. Hold on. Let's try one of these little, these little sun golds. Yeah. So this is, this is like a smaller, also spherical, but orange tomato, completely different flavor.
Molly 10:27
Oh, that's good. Do you like that? It's very acidic.
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:31
It's so much more flavorful than the supermarket sweet 100 Well,
Molly 10:35
dude, if you ever want to try growing them, these are so easy to grow and prolific, I feel
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:41
like there's almost, there's something to them that's almost like, like something in addition to tomato flavor,
Molly 10:46
I used to not like them. I used to find them too sweet.
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:49
Now I don't know what it is. I really like those. Those are great, Aren't they
Molly 10:53
good? Yeah. So I feel like growing tomatoes, at least for me, like I've got them, like, in pots on my driveway, and they take so much water, as you can imagine. I mean, they're made of water. I'm always like, am I truly just like pouring money down the drain? Because they take so much water, and then it's delicious. I mean, isn't, isn't like, like being alive, just like pouring
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:20
water down the tree, yeah, constantly, especially if you peel
Molly 11:24
anyway. Okay, every day, I know, multiple times a day. So okay, what are grape tomatoes then? Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:31
so, so I've got one here. It's like any variety of cherry tomato that's oblong in shape and usually a little smaller than a than a super sweet 100 so I got a yellow one here that just got into, like an assortment from from QFC. So this is going to be a low acid tomato because it's yellow. Yeah, no, I don't really care for low acid tomatoes. One other variety here, that's like a black tomato. Yeah, I'm
Molly 11:56
going to just grab one out of the container, right, and I'll be right back.
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:59
That is pretty good. That's pretty sweet and sweet anesthetic.
Molly 12:04
I like that one. It kind of looked like a, like what's sometimes called, there's one, dead one in there. It's sometimes this kind of looks like a small version of what's sometimes called, like a Cherokee Purple, sure, yeah, yeah. I
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:16
got this. I got this private selection, petite medley snacking tomatoes from from QFC. I find the packaging on these really appealing. They come just like, in a little tub of like, different colored tomatoes. Do
Molly 12:28
you or anyone else in your family actually like snack on this kind of thing? Ever like? Would you ever like, serve like? So I'm amazed when people's children will just like eat these. Because I have one child, my 12 year old child, who won't go anywhere near a raw tomato, sure. And then I've got this baby who I'm pretty sure is soon gonna decide he maybe doesn't want to go anywhere
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:52
near a raw and then you also have your 49 year old child here, who is who's pretty skeeved out by raw tomatoes, yeah, for the most part. So
Molly 12:58
anyway, but I'm amazed that, like a lot of people, will just, you know, serve these to their kids, and their kids will just pop them in their mouth. Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:06
I don't know. I mean, December used to when they were little, really, yeah, I don't think they would now, okay, so would you buy them just like to put in their lunch? Or, I think so, yeah, wow. I think my mom would, would serve them pretty often. Wow. I
Molly 13:19
yeah, I've never babysitting growing up, I feel like we ate a lot of like, sliced tomatoes in the summer, like full size tomatoes, like beefsteak or something, sliced as part of dinner. And I just have never had an adulthood where I can do that with my family. Sure. I
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:35
mean, the other thing about growing tomatoes is that I've found is that if someone grows tomatoes, they'll definitely be sure to let you know that they grow tomatoes. Oh, for sure. I was reminded about this recently because I had an experience at work where I was reading an email from from a customer who who's made like a really a dad joke that really landed with me. He introduced himself as a former former fighter pilot and said, and by the way, do you know how to tell if an email that you receive is from a fighter pilot? Read on for the answer, and then, like, asked some questions, some work questions, and then, and then at the end, said, Oh, the answer the question is, don't worry, they'll let you know. Oh, it was like, good one good one guy the
Molly 14:17
other day. I'm so glad that you mentioned this about people who grow tomatoes. Because the other day, June and I were out taking a walk with the baby. We were at our neighborhood pea patch, just, you know, looking at the flowers, and there was a very friendly, gregarious older woman who was harvesting some potatoes and some beets to take home for her dinner. I should say that this story takes place in August. Yeah, yacht in November. Okay, she asked me if I have a garden at home, and I was like, Oh well, I really like growing flowers and I've got some tomatoes. And she was like, Oh, well. And she proceeded to tell me that she has this tomato sale, and it's like, super exclusive. And she sells these starts. I'm not gonna say her name.
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:02
That's a real private selection.
Molly 15:04
She made me like she was also, I mean, at this point, she became a little bit of like, I couldn't tell if we were having a friendly encounter or not. She okay. She was like, take out your cell phone, put your right hand on your cell phone and say that you solemnly swear you will tell no one about this tomato sale, wow, because I don't want people to find out. And then she's like, okay, here, now take a picture of yourself with me and send it to me at this phone number, getting scammed. But I'm not sure how I know I was like, she was like, she wanted me to, like, take a picture of us with her so she would know we were real, and then to text it to her with my phone number and my email address, and she would invite us to the super exclusive tomato sale. Okay, have
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:50
you gotten the invite yet? I
Molly 15:51
haven't, okay, and I can't decide whether this is a good thing or not. Do
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:56
you think she like looked back at the picture and it's like, Nope, I not this one.
Molly 15:59
Well, then my spouse rolled up, because this was like the end of their work day, and I told them that we were heading to the pea patch to look at flowers. And anyway, Ash rolls up and can see that June and I cannot get away from this woman. So Ash is kind of yelling to us, like, Guys, I need you over here. And I think that the woman could tell that Ash was trying to save us. So I think our exchange ended on a bad note. So I don't know that we're gonna get invited to the tomato but, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:27
mean, she has a point. Because, like, can you imagine if word got out about this tomato sale, the mob that would ensue? Oh yeah.
Molly 16:33
I mean, absolute insane. Like, right? I
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:35
mean, just having heard about it now, like, I am, I'm in fury. Well,
Molly 16:39
I'm not gonna tell you. I'm not gonna tell you when it's happening. I'm not gonna tell you where, when. I'm not gonna tell you what her name was. Well, I am
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:46
the world's greatest detective. I'm gonna figure that all that out just by the clues that you've dropped so far. Also, I'm just gonna steal your fuck and find a picture. Okay, I'm not sure how that's gonna help, but
Molly 16:56
you can probably also find the text that I sent to her. Yeah, I haven't deleted it, just in case. She writes back, no, you got it? You got she said that I've got, like, that. She said that she's got like, amazing tomato varieties. Like, I won't believe it.
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:09
Oh, well, I wonder if she has any of the funny varieties that I'm about to read off a list. Oh, please tell me about Okay, so I thought about, like, do, Did I did I find enough funny cherry tomato varieties to make a quiz? I didn't, but I found four that I liked. Okay, okay, so there's micro Tom good, right? Tidy treats. Oh, wow. Okay, the pink charmer, ooh and midnight snack,
Molly 17:32
wow, these all sound like euphemisms. Yeah, they
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:34
sure do, right?
Molly 17:36
Micro Tom, micro Tom, tidy treats, yes, pink charmer,
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:43
yes, put them all together and you've got a guaranteed good time.
Molly 17:56
What do you do with these things? Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:58
I almost never buy cherry tomatoes, unless there is this one recipe from friend of the show, Kenji Lopez, all from serious eats years ago that I've made a couple of times and is really tasty. It is seared skirt steak with blistered cherry tomatoes and polenta. I like a cooked tomato a lot. I don't like a raw tomato very much. So this, this gets a little little char and roasting on the tomatoes, and they turn into sort of, like, half vegetable, half sauce, kind of and and so then they, like, juice up this steak and polenta. Really good.
Molly 18:30
Oh, wow. Okay, we'll link to that. Matthew, I've been feeling lately like I just want, I want some other adult to come over and, like, just cook meat for me every now and then, like Ryan Gosling, which, which adult, I mean, like anybody, just like, I hear this recipe, and I'm probably gonna go home and I'm gonna print it out and put it in my recipe binder. Like, make this soon, Molly, but there's never a time when I'm like, in the mood to Sierra skirt steak. Just doesn't happen for me, but I want to eat the skirt steak.
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:03
No, you're right there, and there's probably other people who feel like you. And this could be, like, a business,
Molly 19:09
that's true. It could be like, you know, house swapping for vacations like this. Could be like, let's like, sweet swapping, swap cooked meat. Yeah, maybe
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:16
there's something I don't want to cook. And, like, I could come over to your place and cook a skirt steak, and you could come over to my place and, like, ah, we should do this thing. The thing I always make my family do is peel fava beans. Oh,
Molly 19:27
I'll come do it. Okay. I just don't care about fava beans that much. Why are you even dealing with fava they're really good. That's why I think they're okay. I think that. I think they're very good. Okay, fine. The next time you need them peeled, I'll come over. You know you have to peel them twice, right? I know that. I know that. Yeah, you pop them out of the pot, and then you got to get the little thin skin off anyway. Uh, yeah, okay, I can't wait for you to come over and sear me a skirt steak. Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:53
yeah, I will do this. Like, let's, let's, let's figure out a plan. Okay, but don't tell the neighbors, because they're gonna. Flock, okay, great. This is a secret skirt steak. That's right, it's something else. I'm
Molly 20:05
gonna take a picture of the two of us and I'll text it to you, then you'll know it's really me and that we're gonna sear a skirt steak and use the steak emoji. Okay, okay, cool. What else do you do with these guys? So, like, a roasted cherry tomato, like,
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:18
if I end up with some in the house, because there was, like, a CSA, or someone gave us some or something like roasted cherry tomatoes are really good, and can be kind of a like, Yeah, sort of a sauce, sort of a side dish for things, yeah.
Molly 20:30
I mean, that's basically what I do with that baked feta pasta, is turn them into a pasta sauce. And they work so beautiful because they're so bright and the flavors more concentrated, yeah, especially
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:41
like in the off season, like a supermarket cherry tomato is probably going to be more flavorful than a big supermarket tomato. Absolutely,
Molly 20:49
absolutely. Strangely, I don't tend to cook with them in any other way. No,
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:54
me neither. The The one other way, like this isn't cooking but, but like raw is pounded into a Thai salad, especially like a sold Tom, like that I really enjoy, yeah, like, just for, like, just that hit of acidity, like, hits differently than the lime juice that's in there. So good.
Molly 21:11
I think the majority of the cherry tomatoes that I consume each year go into Caprese once the tomato plants really start cranking it out, or, like, once we start getting tomatoes in our CSA box, I start eating a lot of tomatoes and mozzarella and basil. Yeah, those laissez Caprese days. Yeah? Laissez Caprese, yep. Wow. Anything else that we should say about cherry tomatoes?
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:35
I don't think so. I did not expect to like your homemade cherry tomatoes as much as I do that you called them homemade? Yeah, that you that you constructed from from scratch.
Molly 21:46
Yeah, listen, if I wind up with a great abundance of them, I will bring some more to you. Do you know that
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:51
homegrown tomatoes song? It's like a novelty song, probably from like, the 40s or something. No, I loved this song when I was a little kid. I don't remember. The punchline is, there's only two things that money can't buy, and that's true love and homegrown tomatoes. Wow, that's so true. Isn't that wholesome?
Molly 22:08
That is so wholesome, they just don't make songs like that anymore. No, and that's okay, all right, Matthew, we've got some spilled mail. You
so this one is from listener Zohar. Hey, hosts, I have a question that could probably be an episode, foods in movies. What are your favorite movie depictions of food or cooking in movies? My thoughts instantly go to Ghibli movies. Sophie's picnic of bread and hunks of cheese as she's leaving her town at the beginning of Howell's Moving Castle was always really charming to me. Has a food in a movie ever led you to try cooking something at home? Best? Zohar, okay, we've
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:53
gotten this question in one way, form or another, many times. I think we have even done it before, and I have, like, pushed back against doing it, because all of the examples that come to mind seem to be from, like, the 80s and 90s, and you've heard them all before, yeah, and so Zohar and I decided on after discussing was food in movies and TV since 2000 which makes it a lot
Molly 23:19
harder. Oh, shoot. Okay, okay. Well, gosh, mine are sorry I skipped over that part of the letter.
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:25
Go ahead. Go ahead. All right. So I came up with four, and I was pretty pleased with myself, because, I mean, I haven't even seen that many movies since my child was born, in 2003 Okay, so the barbecue scenes in The Fast and Furious movies, and also in fast one, where Brian keeps coming back for to get the tuna sandwich and says it's the best tuna sandwich in town, but it's just because he wants to see Mia. Okay, that's very sweet. Yeah, you put big night, which is from the 90s, but I'll accept it. What
Molly 23:51
I wanted to say about it is not that, like it's so memorable to me, but that my ex husband, last year for Christmas, actually made a Timpano, wow. And it was so good, really? Yeah, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:04
always, never eaten so good. Like, it looks amazing. But I was wondering, like, would that actually be tasty? It
Molly 24:09
was he? It was his first time making it. He's the kind of person who will happily wing it for the first time. On Christmas night, with many people around, made the pasta from scratch, the pasta that encases it. It was so
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:23
good, awesome. Okay, yeah, I've got, I've got, like, three others I'll go through real quick. Okay, on the first episode of reservation dogs, they steal a truck full of potato chips, and then, like, keep, you keep seeing them eating bags of those chips, like, pretty much throughout the rest of the series. And it's funny every time delight. It's great. Probably the food scene that is, like, the most moving and memorable, memorable to me ever. Was a scene in, like, what is absolutely not a good movie. You know, I don't think anyone considers this a good movie, really, the movie ramen girl with Brittany Murphy. It has this scene where, like. Her boyfriend has, like, ditched her and left her on her own in Tokyo. She goes to this ramen shop, and she is eating ramen, and sees this, like sad businessman eating ramen, and they, like both start to laugh as they're eating. And this one like 32nd scene, which we could link to on YouTube, you feel like, oh yes, that is how it feels when you eat ramen, like when you really need it, like this, this one, this one, you know, very brief scene in this bad movie, like, captured something like, very true. Oh,
Molly 25:31
that's so lovely. Yeah, I wanted to add one other thing again. This is, like, way before 2000 but this really sticks with me, the way that the slice of mushroom that Alice eats in Alice in Wonderland,
Matthew Amster-Burton 25:49
oh yeah,
Molly 25:50
when she's talking to the caterpillar, she cuts a wedge of mushroom. I really want you the like sponginess of it in the animation. It looks very marshmallowy, and I think about it a lot. It's just one of the weird things my brain goes towards
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:05
30 years, 25 years, at least, and I can picture exactly what you're talking about.
Molly 26:10
Yeah. Isn't that interesting, right? There's something about the animation of it. It's just it's perfect.
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:15
I also have one more which why for the show Laurie and I periodically will go on a real Bender of watching like, holiday romance movies off. It does not have to be like around Christmas time. It could be any time of year, but we'll like, you know, get a, get a, like, a one month subscription to Hallmark Channel. It just binge some, some absolute garbage romance movies. Okay? And there was one called Pumpkin Pie wars, where, like, this woman who I think, like, is like the daughter of like the town Baker, like comes back to town from the city and decides to to enter the town pumpkin pie contest, going up against like a like a hunky Baker that she's gonna fall in love with. And the thing is, like, she's never made a pumpkin pie, and doesn't seem to be in any hurry to learn how. And it makes zero sense. Eddie, I think about it all the time. It's
Molly 27:03
delightful. Delightful. Yeah. All right. Matthew, do you have a now? But wow,
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:08
I sure do.
I put this on the agenda yesterday, and then almost immediately thereafter, got an email from listener Shelby recommending the same book. And I was like, I'm gonna give listener Shelby credit for recommending the kamagawa food detectives by Hisashi kashuai. And the premise of this book, this is a Japanese book that recently was published in English translation. Is it a peak pick at Seattle Public Library. I wouldn't be surprised if it was. I think it's been a popular book. Yeah. And the premise is kind of, have you ever had a lost dish, like a dish made by a family member who died, or a restaurant that went out of business and you can still remember the exact flavor, and you just want to taste it again? Then what you do is you go to the kamagawa food detectives, which is a detective food detective agency run out of the back of a tiny, little family restaurant in Kyoto, and for an unspecified but it implies quite high price, they will like, do the detective work, figure it out, figure out what made this version of the dish special, and recreate it for you so you can taste it again. Oh, I love that. Very cute. And what's, what's great about it is that it is done, like all of the cases. It's just like, little short vignettes. They're all kind of done in the style of, like, short mystery stories. So there's a lot of like, you know, Detective Story tropes, but it's all about like, you know, can you recreate, like, grandma's old ice or something lovely? So
Molly 28:36
what's it called? Again,
Matthew Amster-Burton 28:37
it's called the kamagawa food detectives. And there's a there have been many sequels to it in Japanese, very successful series. And the second one in English, which I think is called the restaurant of lost recipes, is coming out, probably by the time you hear this. Okay,
Molly 28:50
maybe too awesome. Well, our producer is Abby sercatella
Matthew Amster-Burton 28:55
Molly's got a newsletter called I've got a feeling that you can read@mollywisenberg.substack.com one of her recent installments was one of my favorites ever, and if you subscribe, you will get all of the past newsletters.
Molly 29:07
Oh, thanks, dude. Matthew makes music under the name I almost said everything but the girl not right. Matthew makes music with his band early to the airport. You can find them everywhere that music is available,
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:27
yes, and you can rate and review us everywhere that podcasts is available.
Molly 29:32
That's right. You can also chat with other spilled milk listeners on Reddit at everything spilled milk.reddit.com.
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:39
And until next time, thank you for listening to spill milk. I'm micro Tom and
Molly 29:43
I'm pink charmer.
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:52
I'm Matthew
Molly 29:54
oops, and I'm the you start over.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai