Today we tackle Matthew's fears, hoop houses and micro tubules as we taste these tiny format condiments. After our two musical hating hosts spontaneously burst into song, they ask when, where and why do we eat these? will it packet? and is it worth its weight? With some prudish notions and shlunks, sploots, shloops and stomps food drowning becomes inevitable.
Molly's Now but Wow! - A Burning, by Megha Majumdar
Molly 0:04
I'm Molly And I'm Matthew, and this is spilled milk, the show where we cook something delicious, eat it all and you can't have any.
Unknown Speaker 0:10
And today we're talking about condiment packets. That's
Molly 0:13
right. This episode was suggested by listener, Eleni fell. Do you think I'm saying that, right? I don't know. Anyway, Eleni fell on Reddit. Yeah, apologies if I've butchered your name. Yeah.
Speaker 1 0:23
Get in touch. Contact at spilled milk podcast.com, or Reddit. I'm a little, I'm a little scared of this episode because, like these, a lot of these packets are full of things I don't like, and I'm afraid they're going to come out and get me.
Molly 0:33
But the good news is, I don't think we have to taste anything, because we've, we've tasted these packets before, but basically, what we're talking about here are, you know, the little ketchup packets, little mayonnaise packets, also the little salt and pepper packets. Do you remember the ones that have kind of ridges and you break them? It's almost like they're, what do you call like, they're like tunnels in there.
Speaker 1 0:56
Yeah, there are, there are tunnels in there. Oh, I yeah. I forgot about those. Especially, yeah, the salt and pepper with the little tunnels. Why do you think they did that? Do you think it's so like, you can, like, distribute, like, a specific amount by just, like, cracking open one of the tunnels? I do
Molly 1:09
think it's a little bit easier to dis. We should be talking about this in a minute. But I do think that this is the show. I do think it's easier to dispense than if you just had a little paper packet of salt that you tore open, you know what I mean? It dispenses in a nicer way when you've got those. What do you call those things? They're like tubules, tubules, microtubules, microtubules. I was thinking they look like little, little hoop houses.
Speaker 1 1:36
Hoop houses. What is hoop houses? Well, no, like in that. On Sesame Street
Molly 1:44
in, like, farming or gardening, you might, you might cover a row with, like, you know, I don't structure, I think, sort Okay, sort of, I mean, I don't know anything
Speaker 1 1:57
about farming or gardening, so I'm gonna believe whatever you say. So just say it's called a hoop house. Row cover. Row cover is not nearly as good a term as hoop house.
Molly 2:07
Matthew, what's on your your condiment packet, memory lane.
Speaker 1 2:10
Okay, it's all Taco Bell, pretty much, although I thought of some more. Like as I was, as I was going through the agenda. But like, Taco Bell, mild, hot, fire, Diablo sauce, like, I wonder when I'm at the pearly gates. You know, they're gonna show, like a film of my life, like in the movie defending your life there, there's gonna be, like, a long sequence showing every time I cracked open one of those, one of those Taco Bell packets with like a tally going up. I think it might be over 1000 really.
Molly 2:39
Yeah. Do you still get Taco Bell that often?
Speaker 1 2:42
Not very often, because there isn't one very close to my house. If there was, I would be getting it very often. And then, which one do you usually get? Fire all the way fire all the fire sauce. It's a little bit sweet. It's like, just the right level hot. For me, the Diablo sauce is fine. I do like very spicy things, but it's not the flavor overall is not as good as the fire sauce for me.
Molly 3:03
And do they sell them in a larger format?
Speaker 1 3:07
That's a really good question. So there have been more and more Taco Bell products showing up, like, at the at the supermarket over, I would say, like, the last three
Molly 3:19
decades, accretion,
Speaker 1 3:20
like, like, how Molly dispense, slowly dispenses salt out of a little microtubule. So I'm gonna guess the answer is yes, but I don't know for sure.
Molly 3:29
Wow, that seems like it could be a really hot item. Like, yeah, talk about us good stocking stuffer to get somebody, like, a bottle of fire. Interesting.
Speaker 1 3:38
I gonna, I'm gonna, like, put this on the radar of my people and say, like, put a sauce in my stocking if you find one.
Molly 3:46
I love that phrase. All the parts of it, put us, put it. Put a sauce in my stocking. If you find one,
Speaker 1 3:52
put a sauce in my stocking. If you find one,
Molly 3:55
put a sauce in my stocking, if you find one. Oh, that was pretty good. Yeah. That was pretty good.
Speaker 1 4:03
Our latest, our latest, number one hit, life of a show girl, okay, so, yeah, so, so. And other than that, like, like I said, mostly these things are filled with things that I'm still as a 50 year old man afraid of.
Molly 4:17
Tell me what this fear feels like, because so my spouse has a real aversion to most fruit. Sure, you say that so matter of factly, but really it's very perplexing. They will eat apples cooked or raw. They love raisins, and they, as a child, ate a lot of strawberry cream cheese. However, it has only been recently, like last year, they tasted a Blackberry for the first time. Couple years ago, they tasted a raspberry. They feel a like, visceral of revulsion at the thought of fruit. Yeah, I hope it's not a visceral avulsion. Do you feel like it does this make your skin crawl?
Speaker 1 4:55
It makes my skin crawl so like, like I'm holding a packet, holding an egg to main. Which is, like, it's not even, it doesn't even have, like, cream in it. It's just creamy and, like, I don't like things that are savory, creamy and cold, but relish, okay, so I don't know, like, it's a, it's a whole, I guess, like it's, it's that they feel like adulterants.
Molly 5:19
Oh, this is a, don't drown your food situation, I
Speaker 1 5:23
guess, I guess maybe that commercial, like,
Molly 5:28
really got under your skin.
Speaker 1 5:29
Like, but I love barbecue sauce, and I'll put, like, a lot of barbecue sauce on anything, and it's just like, it's like ketchup with a different label, basically, drown your food yuck. Like, so partly it's the link to that again, yeah, partly it's that, like, mayonnaise, I don't like the creaminess, like the relish and ketchup are sweet, and I don't really like a sweet sauce, except for the many examples of sweet sauces that I do like and mustard, I just don't really like the flavor of mustard very much. Okay, like, you've got, like, like, like, the four
Molly 5:59
handle salad dressing. I mean, a lot of vinaigrette.
Speaker 1 6:03
I love a vinaigrette. Like, if it came in a packet, would I be a little suspicious of it? Maybe, like, what if you What about, like, Newman's, or Newman's Own, or whatever, Newman's vinaigrette, Newman's vinaigrette, I don't even know, like bottled vinaigrette. I mean, I've had it, like, I've, you know, been to places where there was, like, a green salad, and they were obviously using some kind of bottled vinaigrette, and it's fine, like, I don't mind it. Okay, okay, ranch. No, remember, we did ranch. We did a ranch episode, and it
Molly 6:33
was tough for me. That's right. I mean, like, potato salad, you can't do that. Tuna salad. No, okay.
Speaker 1 6:39
I feel but I feel like such a such a Rube is the wrong word. What word am I looking for? Prude. Such a sauce. Prude. Sauce. Prude. But I'm looking at like, this is such an attractive, like, array of package that you've laid out here, like, there's like, blue mayo. I feel like I'm about to the Lucky Charms commercial.
Molly 6:59
Hold on. Wait, I want to say first that yesterday, I was riding, I was on a ferry. I was gonna ask, Where did you steal these from? No, I took these from the galley area of a Washington State ferry. I love going to the galley. Oh, yeah. And anyway, yeah, they had a whole bunch of condiment packets, and I just helped myself. I got some sweet relish, yellow mustard, real mayonnaise, by made by Heinz and Heinz, tomato ketchup. I should say all these are Heinz. They're all Heinz. Then they had a little packet of crushed red pepper. Yeah, you're speaking my language, grated parmesan cheese. There was also Tabasco, and that was it,
Speaker 1 7:39
yeah, I love Tabasco, yeah. But like, this, the all the Heinz over here, like, it's such a beautiful family that you've created, like, of like, sauces of different colors. Like, the packaging is so good. And, like, I, like, would rather do almost anything than eat any of them. If you give me the choice of like, do I want to, like, hit my head on a tree again, or eat all of these packets like I'd have to think about it for a while.
Molly 8:03
Okay, all right. Well, think about it. We'll get back to this at the end of the hour. I'll give you my answer, yeah. Okay, so for me, my memory lane is pretty much only ketchup packets, because I remember I really loved Wendy's as a kid, and I remember getting ketchup packets, I think with my Wendy's kids meal, sure. I mean, I remember in the Wendy's, they had, like, you know, a self serve, like pump, with a little paper, like pump and circle, a little paper Dixie cup. Yeah, that was pleated. It was,
Unknown Speaker 8:33
yeah, I know exactly the thing you talked
Molly 8:35
about, yes. But anyway, when we would go through the drive through, which we often did, it was always a ketchup packet. And I was a bit of a condiment phobe myself as a younger person, and so, yeah, I never would have taken I mean, if a sandwich came without mayonnaise, there was no way I was going to open a mayonnaise packet and put it on there. So I do want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1 8:57
about you didn't mind if it was on the sandwich, as long as you didn't have to, like, squirt it out yourself. Yeah, I want to,
Molly 9:04
I want to talk about this, because there is something I'm so accustomed to, squirting ketchup out of a packet. But there are other things, specifically creamy things, okay, where squirting them out of a packet feels really different from, like, scooping it out of a tub or a jar. Yeah? So the first one I'm thinking of, of course, is mayo. I just, I never want mayonnaise bad enough to squeeze it out of a packet. Yeah? See, I
Speaker 1 9:33
can't even comment on this because, like, I never want mayonnaise at all. But, like, it doesn't, it doesn't, to me feel any different than ketchup in terms of dispensing it from a packet really?
Molly 9:43
Yeah, would do you feel any different? So I'm holding up this little, you know, foil packet of mayonnaise. Do you feel any different about using this this way than using it out of a jar in your fridge? Yeah, I don't want to do either of those things. But do they feel the same? Yes, they feel the same. Huh? Okay, no, I mean
Speaker 1 10:02
not exactly the same. Because when you, when you, like, take, like, a spoonful of mayonnaise out of the jar, which I do sometimes for cooking purposes, like it does, sort of like, there's like a suction, like a schlunk, as you as you miss your etymology. Talk about the word schlunk.
Molly 10:20
Okay, but is that a good thing or a
Speaker 1 10:21
bad thing? It's bad. So in that case, it was not bad. No, it's just, it's just a thing that distinguishes it from, like, with a packet, I don't think there would be any schlunk. There'd be more, like a schloop, yeah, or kind of a, I guess, a split, yep, like that split, yeah, split.
Molly 10:40
So not that different. Okay, well, something I do feel really icked out by in packet format is cream cheese. And I first realized this when, like, I don't know, I was at the airport with ash. We were going somewhere. They went to one of the coffee shops in the airport and got, like, a cheap bagel, and it came with a couple packets of Philadelphia cream cheese. Okay? And there is something about so when you squeeze cream cheese out of a packet, like a little soft packet, it has this shine to it, which Philadelphia has, anyway, like it has, that's what that movie shine was about. That's exactly right. Also the shining, you know, some people have that shine to them exactly Philadelphia Cream Cheese being one of them anyway, and that means they're like, it's like a certain a plasticky kind of sheen that I observe more when you squeeze Philadelphia cream cheese out of a packet than I do like scooping it with A knife out of even, like a single portion cup well, and also, like
Speaker 1 11:44
when you buy Philadelphia team cheese, gym, chimney gym, chimney gym, gym, cream cheese, when you buy it at the store, it's refrigerated, yeah, but the but the packet isn't so there must be sometimes they refrigerate the packet. Yeah, yeah, no, I get what you mean? Yeah, no, I really I can't handle a cream cheese packet. Also, sometimes a little bit of the liquid separates out. Yeah, I don't even have an explanation for why I don't like relish. I like pickles on things, and it's just like chopped pickles, right?
Molly 12:15
I think, although it feels pretty darn Oh no, I do just feel a lump in here,
Speaker 1 12:19
cucumbers, corn syrup, white vinegar, salt water, gum. I mean, I guess it's probably pretty sweet, because corn syrup is the second ingredient.
Molly 12:29
Okay, Matthew, what about like soy sauce for takeout sushi? Yeah, sure. I love that. I love like
Speaker 1 12:33
a little Kiko man, soy sauce packet. Why not? What do you do if
Molly 12:37
you go out for takeout or whatever, and you have some of these packets left over. Oh, I like soy sauce packets, or a little parmesan or red pepper flake packet.
Speaker 1 12:49
Okay, so the parmesan or red pepper flake packet? Oh, like, like, packets that I'm gonna use. I'll say, no, no. I mean, like, do you save them? I generally, yeah, yeah. So do you wind up with, like, a whole compartment in your fridge or a whole part of your drawer that has these stupid little packets. No, because, like, I'm never, I'm never really the recipient of that level of packet generosity. I don't think, like, usually, usually there'll be like, one or two leftover packets. But like, Okay, if my pizza comes with like, a couple of parmesan packets and a crushed red pepper packet, I'm gonna be opening all of them. Oh, okay, okay, all right. They didn't, like, send, send over, like, 50 packets, right? They sent over, just enough for you, just enough for me. Yeah, so, like, like, a soy sauce packet, like, sometimes, sometimes we will, we will have one or two of those around and lower, like, a Tabasco packet. Why not?
Molly 13:36
No, it's true. I think I used to save them, and then I think I, at a certain point, had a couple of soy sauce packets that got speared at like the back of a kitchen drawer. Sure, yeah, there is a danger. There's always a danger. There's so much danger.
Speaker 1 13:58
Do you ever get like the little transparent wasabi packets, little, tiny ones. I think I've seen them, but it's been a long time since I had takeout sushi. I love that little packet format. It's very satisfying to squeeze because there's, like, almost no actual volume of wasabi paste in there, but there's just enough that you can, like, squeeze it out. And would this be from, like, grocery store sushi? Yeah, or, I mean, I've seen it like a variety of takeout sushi contexts.
Molly 14:23
Okay, you know what's interesting to me, like thinking about this, is I even
Speaker 1 14:27
got it, like, eat in sushi, like that really a little packet, yeah? Oh, not at, like, a fancy
Molly 14:34
place, no, sure. It's interesting to me that, you know, these things like, presumably come for free. I mean, I just stole a bunch of these from a fairy. But dicks, here in Seattle, Dick's the fast food chain. You have to pay five cents for your ketchup or your tartar
Unknown Speaker 14:51
sauce. But they've like dispensed it into a little
Molly 14:53
it's dispensed into a tub. But it's not clear to me. Well, it is. Dick's branded, okay? You know it. They're definitely not dispensing it like on the line right there, but right yeah, it. I think it's kind of smart, because then it really makes you go, how many packets do I know? I think that's good. Yeah. I like it. I like it. How much would you pay for each of these packets? Oh, I think I would only ever pay for ketchup. Okay, ketchup is the only one I think I would pay for except at Ivers, another Seattle chain, or Pacific Northwest chain, fish and chips. I would also shell out for tartar sauce.
Speaker 1 15:30
Oh, speaking of fish and chips, when Watson and I were in Scotland recently, we got malt vinegar packets with fish and chips. So satisfying. I think that.
Molly 15:40
So when I was a kid, my dad and I used to go to Long John Silver's, not infrequently. Oh sure, it was either we always went out for fast food sometime on the weekend, if it was me and him, we would go either to like, Brahms and have a burger.
Speaker 1 15:53
Oh man, I think about Brahms all the time. Think about Brahms, all the toms, all
Molly 15:58
the toms, or we would go to Long John Silver's. And I remember eating in the dining room at long Johnson Long John Silver's, and using, of course, a whole bottle of malt vinegar that they would keep on the table. But I do remember also getting, like, my little kids meal take out with a packet of malt vinegar in it. Like, it's pretty great.
Speaker 1 16:17
Malt vinegar is so good. Like, I feel like, shouldn't we be putting it on more stuff?
Molly 16:21
We should? Why do we only put it on French fries and only in a certain context, right?
Speaker 1 16:26
Like only French fries that were near a piece of fish? You know what
Molly 16:30
I started thinking about when you are staying in a hotel or a motel that offers a continental breakfast, yes, and the little condiment tubs, like, there's always Smuckers jelly, sometimes there's honey and often there's JIFF peanut butter.
Speaker 1 16:46
Now, is that the same thing, or is it a different thing? I think it's kind of the same thing. But then I feel like that raises the question of whether, like, little creamer tubs are packets,
Molly 16:56
I think so interesting condiment, right? It's something you add for additional flavor, yes. So I do think that those little creamers are half and half little thimbles. I think those are condiment packets
Speaker 1 17:13
I already, I already talked on the show about the stew place in Tokyo, like when we were quarterback I was there, how the they use the little cream tubs as like in the restaurant kitchen, which I've never seen before in my life. Wait, what did they do? But you order, order your stew, they like, put it in a little ramekin and then open two little tubs of cream and pour them on top. Like, what is happening? How does
Molly 17:35
possibly be cost effective? I know now that seems so silly, but it was like, I'll never forget it. So I was teaching in Italy last fall, and the last morning I was there, I was staying in a hotel in Rome that had, like, you know, came with breakfast. And I almost took a bunch of Nutella packets and brought them home, but again, they were the tubs. Oh, yeah, no, I love those. And then I was like, Molly, what are you doing? You You can buy Nutella in the States. You do
Speaker 1 18:03
not need to take I think a lot of people say it's not the same. I don't have an opinion, but
Molly 18:06
actually, now that I think of it, this was an Italian brand that was called like, nocha. Oh, anyway, okay, so Matthew, you wrote on here stomping on condiment package. Okay? Or packets.
Speaker 1 18:21
Is this a thing that kids, and when I say kids, I mean boys in your school, ever did? Because, like, when I was a kid, this was, like a classic form of mischief, like you would put a ketchup packet on the ground and try and, like, stomp on and get it to, like, squirt against a wall, or another kid, or whatever. And would these be from, like, the cafeteria? Yeah, okay, no, or wherever you ever did your hands on him. Never did this. I haven't done it in a while, but maybe we should.
Molly 18:47
I mean, we could, we could do it on your balcony, but that would require cleaning up afterwards.
Speaker 1 18:52
Yeah, that's the that's the thing about being an adult, is you have to clean up afterwards.
Molly 18:57
Awful. I hate it. Matthew, you know one thing I found that I found that I found, when I was finding,
Unknown Speaker 19:05
can someone reboot Molly, please? She's got to do an infinite loop.
Molly 19:09
So I was doing the quote, unquote research for this episode. And I was trying to find stuff about, you know, this packaging format. And, of course, you know, on like web restaurant.com or web restaurant store, you can buy Webster on store, Webster on store, you can buy cases of condiment packets. And so you did, but I also found that there were a bunch of Reddit threads where people were posting like, Where can I get condiment packets for a backpacking trip? Sure, going on, right? And a number of people in these threads mentioned a website called minimus dot biz.
Speaker 1 19:42
That is such a great domain name, which is fabulous.
Molly 19:46
It is a website. All it sells is, like mini and travel size products. So like, you know, like travel size personal hygiene products, okay, various foods and sauces, toys. Have you ever seen like those tiny little etch. Sketches that could fit in the palm of your hand. They sell those, okay? Their slogan is minimum size, maximum convenience.
Speaker 1 20:06
So it's not if they don't just sell like travel supplies. They sell small things. They sell small things.
Molly 20:12
And I was absolutely delighted by this discovery ball bearings babies. One of my favorite parts was discovering that they are the supplier of condiments for NASA, sure for sending condiments up in space, that's amazing. And they have a little 22nd video on YouTube about it. And can we, can we play the audio? Oh, yeah, go for it. Okay, here we go.
Speaker 2 20:34
Pardon me. Do you have any great people since 2005 minimus dot biz has supplied NASA with a variety of condiment packets for the astronauts on the International Space Station. Not only do we ship to your doorstep, we ship it to orbit. Minimus dot this minimum size, maximum convenience. Wow.
Speaker 1 20:53
So did they actually do they have, like, their own rocket to take stuff up to the space station. I think
Molly 20:58
that's what we're meant to understand. Okay. What I really love is this video is called condiments in space. It's like pigs in space. That's right. And then I also loved, I even read their Frequently Asked Questions page, and I also loved that one of the questions was, can you get the large sizes of any of the items to which they replied, sorry, we only carried the small sizes.
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:18
Wow, that's I feel like, like the person who, like, wrote the fact, like, typed this out very patiently, like, you know, like, of course, that you fucking idiot, did you? Did you see what our entire store is about? Like, delete, delete, delete, delete. Sorry. We only carry the small sizes, I have to say, like these Roma brand created parmesan and crushed red pepper packets. I love the design on these. And like, you know, I feel like as much warmth toward these as I feel like, like the cold stabbings of fear toward these Heinz packets. Like, I can I have these.
Molly 21:55
You can have those. Yeah, I should say that these are the kind of flat kind, and I've seen salt, and they're like paper lined with oil. And I've seen salt and pepper in these as well, not just the tubule style, sure, Matthew, you were going to say something about Japan.
Speaker 1 22:14
So in Japan, I've sometimes come across these, these packets that are like a little tub, but you sort of fold the corner over till it breaks open, and then squeeze it, like, like a couple it has, like, a couple of little nozzles, little holes, and you just, like, squeeze the stuff out of it. That seems like a much better design. It seems it seems good, like, I think there is probably a little more packaging waste involved, but like, in terms of, like, dispensing the product, it's very satisfying and seems to be very effective.
Molly 22:43
Hmm. These packets have been in use for a long time.
Speaker 1 22:48
When they started, when they introduced these, could not find anything like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna guess, like the 60s, 50s, something
Molly 22:56
like that. I don't know. I really couldn't. Maybe I was using the wrong search terms, but I really could not find information about these packets.
Speaker 1 23:02
Were you accidentally searching for information about the digital underground album, sex packets? Yes. What do you think you meant by sex packets? So one thing that I'm thinking about with these packets is, do they come as like, a big chain? Oh, they must. That's what the chain is about. That's right, you can never break the chain. I know. But I know. But I think, like, because you can see they're like, sort of perforated each and I think that's exactly what they do. And then there's probably, like a robot hand that tears them apart. And like, you have to be very careful at the factory around that tearing apart robot hand. You know, it was like those, what were they called? Like, the the smashing machine, the
Molly 23:42
kqs, or something in and, or those big, those big droids, they were like the proto.
Speaker 1 23:50
I did watch one season of this. Let's say they're called the kqs, because I don't remember
Molly 23:55
whatever Matthew, I think that that is the end of our condiment pack.
Speaker 1 23:59
We've come to the end of the packets. Yep. All right, do we have any spilled mail? No, send us some contact at spilled milk podcast.com, we're not snacking, but I hear we have it now. But wow, take it away.
Molly 24:17
This one is a book that hopefully some of our listeners have read already. It came out in 2020 it is called a burning, or a burning by Megha Majumdar. People also may be familiar with her name because her more recent book, a guardian and a thief was chosen by Oprah. So yeah, in late 2025, you may have heard megha's Name a lot in the the Oprah verse. But anyway, a burning is her first novel. She is an Indian novelist who lives in New York City. A burning has three different protagonists. One is a young woman named Jeevan, or Jeevan who is arrested for a crime. She didn't commit. Then the other is lovely, who is a trans woman who lives in the same slum sort of that jivan is from. And then there is a character named PT Sir, who is the PE teacher at the school that jivan went to. Okay. And basically, it's an incredible novel about corruption and ambition, how people get into morally dubious situations because of ambition or desire for power, and the way that the decisions we make can have horrifying reverberations within a corrupt society, especially and it is gripping. It's, I think, a very fast read. I was surprised by what a fast read it was. I think it's absolutely brilliant. So that is a burning by Megha Majumdar, awesome.
Speaker 1 25:52
All right. Our producer is Abby circuitla. We're still celebrating Abby's birthday around here, even though I think it was last week, last week. Okay? And you can rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Catch up with other listeners, at reddit.com/r/everything, spilled milk, where you can talk about, what do you like to find in a packet? Yeah.
Molly 26:11
I mean, what do you want in your stocking? One can find one. You know?
Speaker 1 26:15
What I'd like to know is, like we talked about, like, a variety of things we've seen in packets. What? What have you seen in a packet that surprised you, that they were that they like that made you say that in a packet exactly what I was gonna say?
Molly 26:29
Okay, great, yeah, tell us that at reddit.com/our/everything.
Speaker 1 26:35
Spilled Milk, and until next time, thank you for listening to spilled milk.
Molly 26:38
Put my packet in your Sackett, if you can hack it.
Unknown Speaker 26:43
I'm Matthew
Molly 26:44
Amster-Burton and I'm me.
Speaker 3 26:51
It's the bullfrog Black Friday sale. Whoops. Skip.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai