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And now it's my great pleasure to introduce Chris Kimball Chris Kimball was the founder publisher and editorial director of cooks magazine and now it's later incarnation and Cook's Illustrated as well as Cook's Country a frequent contributor to The Today Show and the CBS Early Show as well as publications ranging from The New Yorker to People magazine. Chris is also the author of the cook's Bible the yellow farmhouse cookbook. Charlie the dessert Bible and the kitchen detective. In addition to his extensive publishing history he is the host of both Cook's Country and America's Test Kitchen which is the most widely viewed cooking program on public television produced locally in Brookline America's Test Kitchen focuses on finding testing and presenting a wide variety of usable recipes as well as offering kitchen tips and advice for consumers on cooking equipment and ingredients. And they're about to begin their 10th season and will be talking this afternoon or this evening about the complete America's Test Kitchen TV show cookbook with every recipe from all 10 seasons. And I'll let them tell you more about it. But please join me in welcoming Chris

Kimball and the cast of America's Test. Thank you. I want to apologize for being a few minutes late. Passport Control the massive bridge from the south and they stopped me. They didn't want to let me I'm so. I know Julia lived many years here in Cambridge so now we have both sides sides covered and you do see to people I'm sure you know Adam who does your equipment testing. Jack who does our tastings also the editorial director Julie who is one of our cooks also runs all of our book division recipe development. And Bridget who eats pork three times a day is that right. Yes it is and thank you. The food editor of Cook's Country magazine beef. Before we get started I like to read. I always like to read a little bit from our viewers and our readers because you guys are so interesting it

turns out that almost everything we do is with you in mind. And what I mean is what you really do with our recipes you never follow them. Ever. And we know this because when we finish the recipe Jack sends out the recipes to a few thousand of you who've graciously allowed us to do that and you make them and then send back your comments. And so we know a great deal about how you cook at home. One of our favorite comments of all time I've repeated often is the gentleman who did not like are such a chicken breasts. And then at the end there's a space for commentary. And we were quite surprised because this had a very high rating we only publish recipes that get good ratings. And he said he really was one of the worst recipes ever made. So we read on he said well I didn't I didn't have chicken. I just I substituted shrimp.

So this is what we have to deal with all the time. I thought this is going to be easy. So here are a few comments from our recent comments from our viewers. Lobsters are living creatures and I don't want to put it in a pot of boiling water. Can you just cut off their heads first. Yeah you can. My 4 year old daughter enjoys watching videos of me and will point out which kitchen equipment is just like ours. Show often ask is this Julie or Bridget and wants to know. This is me. I get this all the time. Why is that man standing there watching. She really feels for Chris Kimball is he going to learn how to cook. I. Why doesn't he known how. Didn't his mother teach him. My mother would didn't teach me about cooking I can assure you this was I started tweeting back in March. Much the dismay of my wife Adrian who thinks it's a waste of time but I actually kind of like it now. So I had a I do polls every couple of weeks. The question is does a turkey have one breast or two. And the results were

20 people said a turkey has one breast 23 said to everyone else wasn't sure. So here are a few of the comments. This is the breasts usually mean the pair I know when I refer to my now refer to the pair. Always. That's ridiculous I have to press my wife as to press How can a turkey have only one breast. What are these people smoking. This is got to be one my all time Paris my nine year old father was sitting in my living room watching TV awaiting dinner. He called out these appetizers you made are stale. Much to our heart he was snacking from a bowl of Popery. And I'll just end this. This was a a letter I've read many times but it's just so great this is our our ultimate letter. This is a woman from. This gives you a hint from Gallatin gateway Montana shows she's rough and ready and she was talking about a recipe for roast pork. And she

said I had all the ingredients not the least of which was the pork loin which I pulled out of the freezer for going to bed early the next morning I found it right where I left it lie in the kitchen sink to frost and ready to go. Trim butterfly and pound pork loin to an even one's thickness with mallet or bottom of heavy skillet instruct the recipe still in my nightgown. It gets better but that's a hint to where it's going. I trim butterfly pounded but pound as it might I couldn't get the thing any thinner than two and a half inches determined to get a flatter. I decided to improvise which this is the problem. You improvise as she did. I put on my favorite hiking boots. I didn't do that. I'm a little rat the pork in a plastic bag a place to get you for that I jumped up and down and it slipping off once or twice damn near breaking my ankle. Nothing not even a half inch thinner still wrapped plastic bag it took the proclaimed out to the garage in place of the return of my pickup truck. This is Gallatin gateway Montana. Not to Cambridge I got behind the wheel put the truck in reverse and proceeded to back over it wouldn't you.

I mean it's a natural thing to do. Well as a tire make contact to the roast I can only assume that some air had built up in the plastic bag. Because the next thing I know you up here goes it exploded under the weight of the truck and sent along flying under a minivan just parked in the bay I didn't make this up next to the truck. I couldn't reach it but not to worry here she improvises again I grabbed my favorite hiking stick the one sporting a sharp metal point in the event I encounter something walk in the woods. I poked the roast and carefully ease that out from under the van. Now here's here's the the payoff. When I stood up there standing in the garage door was the U.P.S. man looking very confused. How do you explain why you're standing in your garage wearing hiking boots in a nightgown holding a pork loin impaled on the end of a walking stick. If you think you want my job. This is the but. This is what we do every day that's going to be used test material which is true that she should not we should offer her job. She's very creative. So anyway so Jack would you have a few words.

Well Chris I left out my favorite part of that story is at the end of the letter you realize she's running a bed and breakfast and the church service is over for you. It's up to the. To the people. Yeah. So a place I don't think I really want to visit any time soon. I don't know I kind of like to meet her. And what does she want to be older now. Well I think she'd poked enough with a stick she probably is right. It's also so when they say oh hi everybody. Thank you. So yeah Chris mentioned that I like to eat pork and I do also I might try that technique of tenderizing it with my SUV. So a man that my or. But you know so I don't know if you all are familiar with Cook's Country as well as America's Test Kitchen. That's basically what I do. I get to work on a lot of fun regional recipes. And right now we're working on minute cheeseburgers. It's a tough job. See what else barbecue spice fries

really really tough. And Kansas City brisket. So yeah. But I got to get to travel the country you but you're only one meat stores of Uno and potato Yeah and anybody knows of any regional vegetable recipes were always looking for him but have yet to find a man that I think I am. I work on as Chris said the cookbook division and I'm in charge of recipe development for all cookbooks. Currently we're working on new soups and stews book which has all very excited. And it turns out we're eating lots of sodium because soup is filled with broth. So I think I've ingested more sodium than I need to for the past week about Temple's a super day roughly. And some really interesting stuff coming out. We have some classics in the book but some of the newer stuff like Korean spicy beef soup and a Spanish album they got soup with saffron and all men's. So yeah exciting book coming up.

I'd like her to enjoy her actually do something productive on a daily basis. My job is a lot like Christmas which means I just sort of observe on a regular basis and I think my Him most disturbing observation was walked in our building is cross the river is Chrisette in Brookline and we are in one of these old brick factory buildings and I was coming through the back alley way. It's probably about two months ago and there's a Tablo of three people who I'm having a hard time associating with each other. There's Lisa McManus who works on a quip meant there's Peter who is our videographer. And then there's this guy Marcus who basically is probably the biggest strongest person in the company and I'm thinking what are they doing out back to video cameras going. The grill is going there's a bucket of ice water and there's a pile of skillets. So they were doing an abuse test and the test involves what you would do of course at home which you shouldn't do which is to shock your hot pan and S.. And so they said well I could need to ramp it up a little bit so it

involved heating the skillet on the grill throwing them into a bucket of ice water and then Marcus came in here and whacked them against the side of the building. Let's see. Need to see if you could loosen the disk bottom some of the pants were clad which means that they've got several layers of conductive metal and some of them have a disk bottom and believe it or not he ended up loosening a disk bottom so that's you know my day sometimes starts with things like that you know like what are they doing in a back alley way. You're wondering I was probably outside your office banging on the building with skillets which is sort of a typical morning of America's Test Kitchen. Maybe Tiger Woods wife could use that time. I of course report all the equipment testing back in the old days I actually did all of it myself now there's a whole team of equipment testers and Chris actually gets the credit for coming up with the

idea of the abuse tests which is certainly the most because some abuse are the most interesting part of the job I mean there's the test the Jack was just describing. And most of these tests are based on you know how we all could go how these pieces of equipment get used in everyday kitchens but we all also make mistakes and one of my favorites was the time that you came in and said well I burned the oatmeal I turned around and I had to deal with the kids and do something like that in the old Milla stuck into the pan and we couldn't get it out so that became a fabulous abuse test for nonstick cookware we just put oatmeal in there crank the flame up to high walkway for 45 minutes. Come back with fire extinguishers and and see waiting at the pan when there are all kinds of good tests like that so well we should we had one of his people worked with in the office Lisa McManus did went to Worcester to what was that was called the burning building the fire department so now you want to explain that. So she went out we were got a story in the really the current

issue of the January-February she was just saying the new stance this week on kitchen fire extinguishers and of course Lisa will do an atom do many crazy things over the years. But we try to not set the building on fire since there are many people working there so like so how are we going to test fire extinguishers. You sort of have to set things on fire. So she made friends with people at the Wister Fire Department who have this burned building where they train firemen fire women to come in and put out fires and so they came up with different ways of lighting oil cooking oil on fire lighting towels on fire and then Lisa was completely outfitted and Lisa was this about 5 foot 1. You know she's probably not what you're thinking as somebody who's going to come rescue you when she's in this outfit that probably weighed as much as she did. And her her colleague Meredith was timing her. So the trick was she wasn't allowed reading instructions because of course you have a fire extinguisher at home you haven't actually read any of the instructions so

Americans would light the fire and then put the timer on and then it was Lisa's job to figure out how to put the fire out and see how quickly she could do it accurately. The spray was of course always captured on video. Pretty interesting and pretty big differences some of them actually seem to make the fire worse. Like that's a problem and some of them are really quite good. Well the civil speaking of fire I coulda used her. This is the my staff's favorite story about me for years have been to do the Today show occasionally. Jack also does it and I've been trying to become a regular contributor because of thousands of people and you try to get a regular gig there which I've been unsuccessful doing for years. So I finally I got on in February and I had a segment with Matt Lauer on the in the 8 o'clock hour and we were and they and the producers of The Today Show they will select what they want you to do. So they wanted me to do Rice Krispie treats. I spent 30 years developing my collar a reputation I'm doing rice

krispie treats but it's you smile and say sir yes sir. So I was doing it and eat it. I've there's never been a segmentation was worse than the segment so I had marshmallows arise Krispies in a big $235 Lucrezia a Dutch oven with seven courtly. And so we were sitting there and I turned off. We're going on to the next recipe which was some version of that. And I turned off the stove top. Well actually I turned it to 20. I turned it the wrong way because it's different than my stove top and you know when you're on TV you're thinking about a lot of things. So I just try to. So you start to smoke and if you watch the segment it's probably you can get it now on YouTube. The yeah that that yeah it's all or the there's a main There's two three cameras the main cameras got the central shot with both people. Well what the guy had to do the controller was saying is cheated to lefty to the left so he wouldn't see the smoke coming in. It's every time they went back to the

wide shot you know it almost wasn't in it it was just mad because they kept moving it and it really got I mean there was black smoke now coming out of the thing. But I was focused it was totally focused on Matt and you know making jokes and being entertaining. Of course as I always am. And so. So finally Matt stopped the segment and said Don't you think we should put out the fire now. So I say OK if you say so. So I move it off and it's like lava it's black it's bubbling it's all. So OK so Matt thought that was fairly humorous so then we get to the backend of the cooking area there's a back counter remove the back and I was demonstrating a recipe I think from either was a Cook's Country the apple dumplings with. Yeah it was a it was a Bridget recipe. Well you take apples and you take some store bought you know roll dough and you wrap them together it's a quick and easy recipe. The only problem was that the prep person the shows have a full time per person. She forgot to take all the ingredients out of the

refrigerator. So I got to the back counter there's just a more piece of marble has nothing on it. So I did a pantomime of how you would make this recipe. If you actually had to have the ingredients and Matt by this time there's a fire there knowing gradients and I'm talking about something it's like you know Harvey the big rabbit. Something that wasn't in front of him and we finally finished the segment and Matt ended and said thank you for almost burning down the Today show Test Kitchen. So I go downstairs to the Green Room to you know quietly cry and go go home and they said the producer let's see you. Go like OK I finally you know Jack's going to now have to do all the Today show's like this is my last one. She can this is that was the best segment we've ever done. You know would you like to be a regular contributor. So that's how I got to be a regular contributor I was burned down to get it. So sometimes it's a good thing. Anyway we'd like to open it up to questions and. What would you guys want to know about anything. Almost anything. Not Tiger Woods.

Yeah well I know we have two recipes one sort of a fast recipe with puff pastry and I'm wondering if this is the one. This was the classic pattern of panto. Yeah we've made that recipe a lot recently and the thing we've tripped over isn't the timing of the apples but we're finding that different apples throughout the year react very differently. And we're getting different timings on that Carmel depending on the time of year and the fresh apples right now or what much to see here and really having an effect on how quickly they brown and how high the heat is. So I'm wondering if when we develop the recipe we're using fresh apples and you need the high heat to really release that moisture and reduce it down so you get some Carmel. And if you do it very low it just doesn't work. But I haven't done I haven't cooked apples for an hour and a half of you know the you mean apple sauce. Yes right. But does anybody think race mishap almost no flavor. I mean what is it with Granny Smith. I mean I don't know if there was a Granny Smith or what they from Australia originally or something or in the

1880s or something you know all about apples if there's one thing you know it's selling now you know what you mean to say there's only one thing. To think salads and apples there were yeah. Every year we try to give him at least half an hour they don't want about apples on the TV and then never gets it although it's always I don't know I forgot I'm sure you can piece together a good couple hours about apples and I get the whole pie pastry. Yes. Oh yeah I wrote an op ed in The Times about it a couple months ago and got a lot of trouble because all the food bloggers thought I was dissing them which I wasn't. Yeah I think there's a lot to be said for. The all powerful editor with enough resources to investigate anything they want to investigate. Sort of like The New Yorker. And with the right editor in the right pocket book I think that gives you the luxury of doing things that's very hard to do in a lower budget

internet setting. We just don't have the resources to do things the way you might like to do them. So we can argue about the magazine and how relevant it might be or might not be I think it had a vegetarian Thanksgiving but which probably would not be my choice. But I think the Condi Nast formula I think Sino House loves magazines. I think he he poured money into the New Yorker when he bought it was losing a lot of money I was there at the time in the 80s. I think he cared deeply about magazines he gave editors paid them on godly amounts of money and give them huge budgets. And I think that's something you're not going to see again. I think that day's over. And the good things about it bad things about it. But when done right like The New Yorker now I think is a very good magazine I mean who else could afford to do what The New Yorker does. So I'm a big fan of that it can be the results can be good or bad. But in this day and age no one's going to have the resources to do those kinds of magazines the way they used to be done. So I was

I was very sad to see it go. For that reason. So I mean anybody else Jack. Well I mean the sad part is that the whole business model was relying on luxury advertisers minit in really even have food or wine advertisers any more gourmet cause they price the pages. So that really only Tiffany and other you know our maize and other high end luxury retailers could be in the pages of the magazine could afford and of course they all decided that you know in lean times Gourmet was the first magazine they took their ads out and kept them in vogue in Vanity Fair. You know I feel like they just asked their subscribers for some more money. They were basically giving away subscriptions for 12 bucks for 12 issues and that they'd ask their wealthy readers. They probably could have gotten them to pay 2000 as much if not more for the magazine. But you know they have this very set formula about Conde Nast that's advertising driven and they ended up losing the natural advertisers which would be the food and wine companies and ending up with advertisers who weren't very loyal when

times got tough. Well let me say something about that. We charge and we charge because the idea of giving your content away on the internet like you know newspapers have been doing which they won't do anymore by the way. And then you charge for it and print is just. I never understood that. We've always charged because it costs a great deal of money to run a website as you can imagine. And also I think worse than that it devalues what you're trying to do I think if you give your content away you're saying to the consumer Well it's not worth it's worth what you paid for it. So I think that's true but I think Jack's exactly right that wasn't the problem the problem was it was an advertising driven model and the luxury advertisers went away. They lost 50 percent of their advertising. I mean that's a huge hit and that's was the problem. But I don't understand free. I think if you can prove that people have something that's worthwhile you should charge for it because you're working hard to provide it. So all these all these sites with free recipes you know I

they're they're valuable. But ultimately at the end of the day I think you're going to see everybody go to a model we're going to ask people to pay for what they do which is seems reasonable to me. I mean if people don't pay for it then I guess it wasn't very valuable. I mean you can is the marketplace will determine you know which people survive and which don't depending upon what people pay but the free model the problem the free model is that's based upon getting eyeballs to a website. Unfortunately nobody's paying for eyeballs anymore. I mean for example the cost of. It was 40 hours per thousand if you wanted to have a video. For example an ad before before something on the on the web and it's dropped about $2. So the pricing because of the enormous amount of competition and there's no brand differentiation on the web there like they used to be in print. You just can't make a living off anymore. So I think it's an interesting time but I think five years from now it's going to settle out and I think newspapers now are trying to get together and do did you read that or hear that piece on NPR Sunday. They said that the top 10 newspapers in 30

days had just asked question how many times you think THEIR met their articles were appropriated quote unquote stolen by other websites in 30 days the top 10 newspapers one hundred twenty four thousand times. So here's a New York Times spending jillions of dollars credit content and then people like Huffington just take it and they just put on their sites. That's not going to last I hope. Well where recipes come from where that and where they start. We come up with ideas you know looking through cookbooks internet research all those free websites. So far thanks. And by the way I'm like Epicurious I'm also hoping that the age of paying editors a lot of money is not over. Your limousine. If you mislead miss Lancastrian right. But once we get into the kitchen wench once we determine that we want to test we start getting our research together we've done some research previous to that but we will look through we've got

an extensive library on our premises. We also have a historian that we work with to find older recipes. Chris can talk about anything from the 18th or 19th centuries and actually I was first born. Yes yes. And then we begin with what's called a five recipe test. So we will assemble a grouping of recipes that we find very interesting aspects that may be interesting something that we sticks out in a recipe and we will make them and then we compare them in a head to head tasting. We have people come in and fill out comment sheets at that particular time. We can really identify. We have a theory up that point what the problem is going to be with whatever dishes. But at that point things become very clear and then we can form our goals at that particular point. Then the test cook goes back into the kitchen again and again again and again and there's always an A and A B at the

very least. So there's always a standard that we're keeping I'm always comparing it to something else. Now that might take 20 tests that may take one hundred twenty tests. I don't know what the record of the voyage. OK let me say I was a candy making. We're still not done right. I started at three years ago so it really depends on what it is but and when we consider it done I don't know if we ever consider it perfect roast chicken probably comes to mind we never quite consider that perfect. You know we go back to the best roast chicken every you know so few years when we come across a new method but when it is our standard when we have achieved our goal and everybody has signed off on it then that's that's fine. It's very involved. There's a lot of calories. I mean you talk about abuse tests.

I mean I used to be really skinny. You want more money. What was that. Sophie I'm going on. Well the book then we send them the recipe out to a few thousand eggs. Well yeah that's apparently that's not the last weekend. Right and we do send it out to people. They make it a has to get 80 percent. I call it a survival rate as you get an 80 percent success rate come back for us to put it in the magazine. If it does not we have a couple of choices we can fix it or we can kill it depending on you know where it is. It's very rare that something is killed and doesn't make it in. But there have been a few except for the fudge that accepted those 2000 pounds of fudge. Yes. The guy had shoulder separately. He had some shoulder problem from the storing. And took six weeks and we never publish it because it was from Mickey you no longer works for us. He doesn't you know. He's happier now. Yes. He's in a better place now.

As with most things everything basically having to do with the magazine we're working for you all. You know that is the beauty of no advertising model as editors and readers so we ask our readers. We survey readers on story ideas which are really just recipe titles we probably survey three for 5000 story ideas a year. Bridget spends a lot of her time doing this as do a couple of other people coming up with ideas and we put together lineups based on highly rated stories within certain categories. I mean if we only took the highest rated it would be all pork potatoes and chicken. That would basically be a pit so that you know as editors we said what we need to have a balance of project recipes weeknight recipes you want a balance of some international recipes as well so the classic American fare and so we sort of look through those survey results argue because basically everything gets accomplished by tremendous amounts of arguing in whoever is the loudest or speaks the last generally rans as you might imagine it's usually Chris.

And you know gave us rancheros you know we said they were interested and then that's part also circling back to sending the Read the recipe out. I mean a lot of times readers say they were interested and then we send the recipe out and they're like oh not so much. You know they were they were interested in the concept of it but not necessarily our version and the usual issues because they were hoping for a simpler recipe. I mean that's the number one complaint when Bridget was talking about the 80 percent success rate. It's really the question we're asking is are you would you make it again and the number one complaint isn't so much of the recipe didn't work is that they like that recipe but they wish it were simpler and they don't want to make it again until we can figure out how to make it simpler. So that's often we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how can we keep what it is that we're doing but make it seem more approachable. I think one of the questions is was it worth the effort. Yeah which is the Bible that we of all we have thousands of stories we've surveyed for many years that topped we have the top 10 list. And I think the first recipe this just tells you how much home cookies change over the years. The number one recipe we've surveyed are five or

6000 is green bean casserole is the right. Method I think green bean casserole comes up twice in the top 10 doesn't it. With or without mushroom soup. Now you does change but it changes slower than restaurants. Well we don't have time. Don't do what I do. Well give a couple everybody else and I mean first of all you don't put enough salt in food you're scared of salt but the amount of salt you get from home cooking is you know negligible compared to processed foods. So before you serve things you like soups stews always taste a three or four times you can get a lot of things at the end you're fixing things just before his servant assuming it's that type of dish makes all the difference and if you see Julie or Bridget cooking there go he's tasting right at the end so that that's a point secondly you know use enough heat because you you're such a pan just not hot enough to support a little bit of oil in the pan a couple teaspoons of vegetable oil heated up and when it starts just to smoke them the pans about 450 degrees which is where you want to be most people at

home are scared of heat and the third thing is you don't have a sharp knife. I know this because I've been in your kitchen when you were asleep like a.. And you wondered why the door was open. When I first got married I went to my in-laws in thanksgiving and they gave me a butter knife about this long. So by the chef's choice model 130 I don't have stock in the company and that'll actually sharp not sharpening skills only tune up a sharp knife. Reason with sharp knives they don't read crime than edge as Adam could talk about for hours. So those be my three anybody else don't tend to learn too many things at once make a few dishes that make them well. You know your grandmother probably was like my grandmother she made twenty things well but she didn't make 200 different dishes and I think a lot of new cooks don't you know they think oh I want to make a different dishes every night of the week for a year and that's not really a great plan. You know learn learnt learn five dishes then learn five more and when you get to 20 you know then you're an accomplished

cook. The thing that comes to mind for me is give yourself enough room. I'm go to a friend's house and the person the male to the side the person computer giving stuff you know like a 1 foot square area to do all their shopping and you really just need a couple feet of space to get your prep done before you start and that a little room and keeping it clean food to states better to do with the days put out a clean kitchen. I'd say this. Follow the recipe the first time at least and please just just that one time really. Yeah after that and you see how it works for you then you can make some adjustments and then the other part is it would be really valuable as a new cook to subscribe to all of our magazines with the wit I'm going to throw in one one more thing. Chris already hit the knife sharpener very important to sharpen your knives. Oven thermometer good investment there because nobody's oven is the temperature that the Dial says they're

always off by you know anywhere from 5 degrees to we had one we tested a bunch of people's ovens at homes and they were off as much as 90 degrees so that kind of makes it hard to brag about it so it's. Not a lot really great. There's a little box here and there. Here's the video right. Is there any chance of it. But it really talks about the character of the U.S. how many people here would buy that book. OK well do it as you're as you just did market research. But I'm not. But would you by now and how much would you pay for come with it. And do you have your credit cards ready right now. No he wanted it for free it's the internet it should be

on that I mean if she. Yeah I mean we talk about it I think you're There are two issues I mean the one is how you use it which I think does make a really great book. The other issue issue is about that you know which models which in many ways the web is better for me for that than books because obviously you can continually retest which is what we're doing and continually update. But it's interesting idea to talk really more about the sort of basics and techniques behind using those equipment carrying them. Or even a even more advanced step this is once to go back focus on the Lord and he may have been forgotten when I used to look at the men and the use of it you know because there's a lot of there's a lot of skill to be developed in that also. Oh I love the moment more and I love the little things that come out of this and that's something that I really like to see a like scene talking about the movie just you but really bad at that and to

really get you know it's only mediocre but a really good night of really how much do you get that this person is you know everybody. Because she wasn't my butter knife but it was so. I think it was a test of actually having before I got married I suspect it was a test to see how it would react I didn't react well but just a couple more questions went to show a sizzle reel. The only time we ever sued was a piece Adam did with Consumer Reports we did grills guess girls and this was a fifteen hundred hour Spurs special girl from South Carolina and we actually got sued because Consumer Reports came up with a different rating than we did. And Adam discovered that Consumer Reports never cooked any food on the grills they were measuring heat output and they do very scientific things but they don't actually do anything that's subjective. So you grilled salmon and eggplant all sorts of us stuff anyway. We got sued and it was like a John Grisham novels a little town in South Carolina and

some of her office went down and the plaintive knew the judge who everyone on the jury was shaking hands everybody a little courthouse right out of Hollywood. And it was thrown out in about 20 minutes. So we were fine. But I we've heard some from a couple angry tomato people over the years. But usually shield that's a part of my job description is to talk to the great lawyers manufacturers. Somehow or other they think I have a calming influence on them when I speak with them. Really. 9 times out of 10 we have that conversation and we explain that we don't take advertising and then we didn't. Usually they want to have their company can get good editorial treatment and when I explain that the winner didn't win by giving us money that winner won the taste test or the equipment or you because their product was better in the tests that we subject it to. They usually say Oh OK. And they hang up and it sort of ends there. But we keep all the testing and what is there and Adam doesn't know what Jack does we have huge file cabinets full of all of our notes because some day we will get the phone call from the lawyers so

we're very careful a lot of records kept Yeah all the testing results in the procedures. Mine's a third of Penn $95 incredibly expensive digital ins to read the monitor that's we use them. That's what we use in the kitchen. I couldn't cook without it anymore. I use it for bread for custard meat for everything so. Right. It's got out of my six inch probe it registers instantly which most of them don't has a huge readout. It's waterproof the new model and it's it's traffic and it really is helpful while cooking a turkey it's invaluable to have one microplane zester based on a woodworking store. Rats. Yes Esther you are ever going to find and this one sounds incredibly lame but I will never slice another mushroom using a knife ever again I use the egg slicer for the bit with the wire tines there are great mushroom strawberries Monsoreau I really get my OXO 12 inch tongs both regular and one with the nylon tips for the nonstick pans I use my

tongs for everything to the grid if you're short you can reach the top shelf I would like. To get people over the head and I'm going to downgrade German about the cane kitchen but a tall stack of white scare towels which I you know I disassemble constantly wiping down the kitchen and every night I do a load of laundry. The talent the magic but I tells a gadget. Now after that lay a Lamhaa on the battery operated top. Sure sure they told you I would have to agree with Adam the microplane has changed my Margarita's. In my life so. And Bridget does a mean Marguerite. Yeah you know that with the whoever's wrench Aarons That's right.