 Good afternoon. Welcome to Coronavirus and our mental health. I'm Ken Birtness and I'm coming to you from Haleiva on the North Shore. Today is July 6th and we're two days past our country's birthday. Our country's 246th birthday. So I hope you had a good time celebrating this weekend at a safe time. Let's talk about Coronavirus. Let's start with there an uptake of that. I get my information always from the New York Times and the Department of Health. And these are from the New York Times as of yesterday, July 5th. Now what we're seeing is the country is experiencing a little uptick. And we're experiencing a small decrease, which sounds good, but the problem is that we've been one of the most surging places in the country for the past month. So we still have a ways to go. A month ago we were number one as a matter of fact, and then we went down two weeks ago and this time, we're still above average as far as the states and our neighbors go. And the honors go to as far as being the surging as places is Puerto Rico, American Samoa at Louisiana. So if you have friends there, you should call them up or email them and wish them well, because I know they're going through a tough time. Now what we're looking at if we look back. Let's start at the beginning of the year, the beginning of the year we had that big surge from Omicron. And we're far below that. Thank goodness. Yeah, but the problem is, our lows which occurred in April. We're still significantly above that. So we're not out of the woods. This is not the end of the pandemic. Coronavirus is still alive and well, unfortunately. And the way we're treating it is, you know, we're going out and celebrating this past weekend and very few people using masks, and we're all not social distancing and we're all celebrating together. And this is very soon to do this. We still other people are worried. I'm worried. And I think the Department of Health and maybe people up at in the national and the capital are still worried as well. We still have that potential and we still don't know what new variants are out there. So we have to be really careful. Now what we've been doing on this program is after we really explored coronavirus in the first number of sessions. We've been trying to deal with the negativity that all of us are living in. Not only from the negativity not only from the coronavirus but from the war that's going on the climate change the mass shootings. Every time you turn on the news there's something real negative and something to cause you not to smile, to be honest. And smiling is hard nowadays so we're focusing on positives. So that's what we're going to continue to do and especially today. We're going to talk about how to think more positively how to feel more positively, and how to change our behavior more positively. And luckily I have my good friend Jeremy McCulloch here. He's going to take us into a positive area by talking about the joy of cooking. Welcome to the show. It's great having you here. Thanks Ken. I'm so thrilled to be invited to do this. Now during the pandemic a lot of people were turning to whether they were staying away from restaurants, and they were cooking at home. And lo and behold a lot of people were really enjoying it. So I was hoping we could start the show with you sharing some of your secrets of how to cook wonderfully at home and cook well at home. Yeah, we, you know, not just the home cooking boom but there was also people that were starting their own gardens. They were their own vegetables and, you know, we had a really big kind of surge towards sustainable, sustainable agriculture for, you know, but on a home size. So, so yeah, we really enjoyed it. Cooking at home, you know, it's, it's, you can have so much fun with it. It shouldn't be something that like, I don't consider it a chore to cook at home. I really enjoy providing, you know, yummy things for my family to eat. You know, and for me like the process is the, is the fun part is, you know, enjoy the whole thing, you know, cutting your vegetables, cutting your meat cutting, you know, chopping things and getting things prepared, having, you know, having good quality ingredients as fresh as you can afford or as fresh as you can get. Seasoning things simply, salt and pepper, you know, fresh food will will will provide its own wonderful flavor so you know if you if you want to add a little bit of this and a little bit of that. That's nice but the fresh food is going to provide you a lot of flavor that you're looking for sharp knives sharp knives very important. With cooking so in the restaurants they have a they have a thing called mise en place, which is everything in its place. And that usually means you have you have your items. Chop already to go so that when you're actually cooking, you're just focusing on the pan and the lovely sizzle of the stuff that you're that you're putting together and smells and your little glass of Chardonnay on the side if that's your thing. But it's enjoying the process and and a lot of times I think we get we get involved in like okay I have to do this and I have to cook this and I have to, you know, yeah we have to provide sustenance for our families but you know, take that extra five minutes to just kind of enjoy what you're doing, you know, savor the process if you can. That's for me that's that's my that's where I gain my joy of cooking and that's you know it's it's engrossing myself in it. Yeah. I have to share something Jeremy with the folks at home. The first time that I asked Jeremy to cook at my place when he was over there. I imposed upon him, and he took a look around my kitchen and he looked at my knives, and he said, whoa. But amazingly, he brought some sharpening tools along which I was, you know, and sharpened my knives for me which I was forever grateful for. And I now have been much more attentive to keeping them sharp so that was. We got you all hooked up. But every time I cook for Ken it's always kind of an adventure because we can can well I'm hoping eventually get back into doing his annual Thanksgiving. You know, we have a big party at his house for Thanksgiving and I get the privilege of cooking breakfast for the crew that comes and digs the emu and perhaps the, the, we do a big emu Ken does a big emu with the turkeys and the the river stones and it's just it's such it's a it's a it's a the ritual of doing that it's so much fun and I get to come and I get to cook breakfast for all of the people that come and do the hard work. It's nice we all, you know, they finish the jobs we all get together, and we all just commune around this table with this wonderful breakfast and eggs and omelets and Ken's favorite famous waffles. I'm looking forward to us doing that again can I'm really, I'm really going to enjoy, because I know we're coming towards the the sunsetting of that tradition. Yeah, for sure I had promised everybody that I would do 40 years. We started in 1982 and Hurricane Eva came through and all of a sudden I had no power no water, no anything. And luckily my neighbor had taught me how to emu turkey. Actually not turkey he moved a pig about two months before and, and I watched and learned a little bit about emu and so start in 1982 we started doing this. And so I always thought that I would probably retire after 40 years. We got to the pandemic and that was in 2020. And of course we couldn't have it and then we couldn't have it for 2021 so I'm now holding at the 39 this this year if we can hold it, which I certainly hope that we do it to be the 39th year. And then next year we can say hello hot to it but it's, it's a lot of work. And, you know, people are working hard, especially in that morning. Thanksgiving morning because they're digging the pit, and they're putting the fire rocks in and they got a dude special. And there's a lot of preparation for the turkeys itself to be put in the pit so everybody's working hard in the morning and they were used to my just sort of blah breakfasts but when Jamie joined us, Jeremy joined us. All of a sudden people's face lit up and and the breakfast was amazing. It was amazing and everybody though. I find it an honor to be able to cook for all these people because I know they're out there busting their butts, and they come up and they eat a good hearty breakfast and everybody just kind of passes out for a little while. Well, I can't thank you enough Jeremy for all that. It was just a wonderful thing that you did for everybody. So back to your preparing food because I love that idea of the joy of just cooking the cooking those ingredients and all our senses are sort of involved with cooking this sense of smell and the sense of touch and taste, as well as seeing and hearing. The question I would have on that though is a lot of people aren't used to using raw environments are naturally agreed not environments but ingredients. And they're used to prepared food preparing prepared food. Any hints that you could give them if they're unused to doing a lot of chopping and working with a lot of raw vegetables for instance our, our other ingredients. And the fun thing about cooking is you can, you can experiment and you know it's not. There's no real wrong answer. As far as you know if you're putting something together and, you know, an experimenting is how all these great fusion chefs came up with these. You know, these these Japanese Italian or these Moroccan French or you know that you had to play you had to come up with some some stinkers before you come up with the really good quality dishes so yeah experimenting and having fun with food is, you know, part of the joy that you get when you when you get involved in it. And it's always, you know, for me, if you do what you need to do to take care of your family so if you come home and you've only got something that you have to put in the microwave and cook. That's okay. And you can, you know, you can throw spins on it to make things a little bit healthier so yeah you get the microwave pizza, but you know you just put a nice salad together with that and you get your healthy along with your, your indulgence. You know, and don't be afraid to try things because you might come up with the next great culinary fusion. Yeah, and you know that's part of the coronavirus is we're sort of afraid to try things. And those words of wisdom, I think, hopefully resonate because that's a we can go out there and we can make mistakes, you know, and people will still love us even if we screw up on a couple dishes. Exactly. And if you're having fun with it, then, you know, the, you know, there's that sort of saying like, you can cook something that somebody else has cooked the exact same recipe the exact same methodology. And it's not going to taste the same because the person that's putting the person that's putting their mana or their love or their aloha into the food that they're cooking. It's tangible. Yeah, I've made dishes that my grandmother used to make, and mine don't taste nearly as good as hers, because of the love that she put into the dishes. So, you know, when you cook, put your love, put your heart, put your mana into what you're doing and the people, you know, the people that you're feeding will be just like, I used to have this before but you know it's so much better. It's a tangible thing, mana and aloha man, I'm telling you. Yeah, exact, you know, the exact same thing happened with me because my mother never considered herself a good cook, but what she did cook was terrific. And, you know, after she passed, I tried to duplicate that stuff just like you're saying with your grandmother, and I just could not, it just never tasted as good at all. I felt the same way with my mom when she passed away. I'm like, ah, there's some dishes that are going to go with her because I don't remember how to cook them or I don't remember her special technique for getting the fish just right or the pork chops that she cooked just right. So, you know, I strive all the time to try and be as good a home cook as she was. Terrific. Let me ask you another question as a chef. I know you've cooked in a lot of different places, a lot of different venues and for a lot of different people. Can you share a little bit about those differences, you know, when you're the differences in experience in these varieties of setting that you've been in, and I know you've been in a lot. And, you know, with the settings come challenges, you know, if I cook in your kitchen, I'm not going to have the same things that I'm going to have in my kitchen. If I'm cooking for someone who will only eat vegan, you know, I have, you have constraints on what you can and can't do. But whatever you do end up, or whatever you do end up preparing for the first. It's always sort of been and I've got some ADHD and I think a lot of, a lot of cooks do have ADHD or I don't have the hyperactivity because I'm not, I'm not very fast but I have ADHD and it's always been the instant gratification that I get from putting something together, start to get on a plate and then presenting it to somebody and watching them put it in their mouth just going. Oh, that's so good, or that brings back a memory of my mother or my grandmother or you know what I mean it. And so and no matter who would you cook for famous people whether you cook for, you know, your family. It's a struggle because we don't get invited to people's homes all that on because nobody wants to cook for the chef because it's going to be critical or they're going to be, you know they're going to be, you know, judgmental about the food that I put. I'm thankful anytime someone cooks me a meal, because I know what it takes. I know the effort I know the love that you have to put into the dish so you could cook me beans on toast, and I will be over the moon because somebody else is cooking it and put it into it and so you know so the gratification of seeing somebody enjoying the meal that I've made for them is, you know, because chefs don't get paid very well. That a lot of times just is, is what makes me smile and go home at the end of the night with the happy feeling. Yeah. You've cooked, not only in the US but you've cooked in other countries as well. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience. Yeah, so, so I really started my my culinary time. Being seriously in a restaurant and working as a junior sushi. It was in England, and everybody kind of has a real. There's a stereotypical, everything is boiled or everything is, you know, or everything is, you know, Britain has finally, I think, understood that they're surrounded in Europe by all of this amazing cuisine, you know, Italian, French, Portuguese, you know so there's these wonderful resources for people to to try different things and a lot of the British chefs have adopted Italian cuisine or adopted French cuisine and all these wonderful things so the quality level of food in England, and the rest of Great Britain has, has, has just taken off. You have amazing Michelin star restaurants all over England now, not just not just Gordon Ramsay, there's some really quality chefs that that you wouldn't think would be hitting up a Michelin star restaurant, which you go in and the atmosphere is amazing and the food is just out of this world so you know, don't, don't count Britain out for quality food, because they're there they're stepping up. And I was lucky because I was sort of right on the cusp of when the British food revolution happened, sort of a Renaissance. And I got to work in some really amazing restaurants for some really amazing chefs, and they taught me how to do things like, you know, making, making all of my things from scratch. We made gourmet ketchup from scratch I loved it. You know, all kinds of things we made our ice cream in house we did, you know, our beef came from a ranch that solely sourced our restaurant and you know so we, we got a chance to work with some of them, some of the best ingredients. Wow. That sounds great. It was a lot of fun. You know, and I was never a great a good cook. But the advantage I had was that I was a man when I was young and men never cook. So, you know, it's a strange thing because so many of the world's great chefs are male. But if you look at the rank and file of who's cooking at home. It's usually the woman. So when I was in my 20s. And my mother had taught me about cooking, and she said I had to know all the things to be able to survive and take care of myself. Even if there was no woman around I had to do the cleaning in the ironing in the laundry and cook. And I got lots of kudos from that from women because oftentimes I was the first male that had cooked for them. So, in my early years were in Southern California and I love Mexican food. And but I stayed away from Mexican food I thought, you know, there's no way because there's so many wonderful Mexican restaurants in Southern California. So I cooked Asian food, because there was not very many good Asian food restaurants. I just cooked mostly Chinese, and that went over well and then in 1971 I came to as a young man I came to Hawaii, and I thought wow I got to give up Asian food because there's terrific Asian food here. So that's why I went in back and started cooking Mexican food so if I wanted to impress a woman in Hawaii I cooked Mexican food I stayed away from any type of trying to, you know, impress them with Asian food so. And you were right to do the Mexican food because there's the, there are a lot of Mexican restaurants but quality Mexican restaurants are few and far between. I only know of a couple that I would trust to go and have have some Mexican food. Yeah, and that's the whole interesting thing about it so yeah, I'm really impressed and so talking about Asian food you know and Pacific Island food. What are your favorites along those lines what are things that you like to do in that area. Well cooking cooking something Asian. It's a it's quite a it's a much more precise cooking technique. There's a lot of tradition and a lot of a lot of procedure that goes into, you know, you've heard the adage that the sushi chefs. They're first like three years they're not even allowed to touch the rice. The cooked rice they're they're only allowed to wash the rice and you have to learn how to wash the certain way and so like for me going out to eat fresh quality sushi I love. I like to cook. I like my tempura. I like, you know, a good fish or a vegetable tempura. And I make. I used to do this in England age this Asian dish. It's called okonomiyaki. And it's a lot of Julian vegetables you know carrots and zucchini and squash and all kinds of other stuff and onions and you mix it in with some flour and some egg and then you cook them like little frittatas on the on a frying pan. And then you put like a mango chutney or something like that and it was just it was it was healthy because it was all vegetables. It was yummy because you had that egg and flour and kind of like a like a croquette like a croquette and it just you know it was good it was it was quick food and it was easy to make and you like you could eat it and be knowing that you're getting your vegetables for the day. I cook it for my son I sorry trick him into eating vegetables. That's the way to do it. They can find a way to make vegetables taste like candy. Kids would be healthy. That's great. Jeremy we're running short on time we're getting toward the end of the show. I told Jeremy at the beginning I thought that I would ask him about. If he was cooking for famous people today if there was he had a chance to cook for some famous people what would he what would he cook for them. And who would he cook for what famous food would you like to cook for and he gave me a very honest straightforward answer which I love so maybe you can explain that to the audience. Yeah. The first name that came to mind was Anthony Bourday obviously because I mean I had so much respect and you know he was in the trenches he was he wasn't one of these Hollywood chefs he was in the trenches with the with the boys and cooking and so so I he's one of the ones I would have liked to invite but I'll be totally honest with you. I can my wife, you know close friends. Those are the ones I like cooking for because I know that there's that that love that I share with my with my friends and I know that it comes back to me through the through the reactions to the food that I present present to them. But if I was going to cook something like my absolute favorite dish in the world to cook is duck breast. It's really nice. And when we're in England. They have a Gresham ducks, which are just beautiful. Duck breasts and I sear it. I, I finish it in the oven with some honey. I put it on a bed of Savoy cabbage with bacon and onions and and drizzle the honey over the the whole thing and it's just on it's really lovely. And the other thing I really love it's a nice. It's a local dish something that I learned from a from a friend here in Hawaii, and it's called potty I need low. So you have I which is your, which is your color that's been pounded and doesn't have as much of the moisture as boy does. So it's thicker, and it's a little bit more viscous and what I do is I put it in the fridge. And it gets nice and solid. I cut it into cubes, and I mix it in with the turkey meatloaf so you just to Turkey and a whole mess by about two pounds of just chopped up vegetables and this potty I and you mix it in, and you bake it and the potty I liquidize inside of the meatloaf. So when you cut into it, it produces its own potty I gravy it's just unreal. So those are the two things that like are my favorite things to cook and they, it's such a great reaction from the people eating it because they don't expect like you don't cut into your meatloaf and go like oh my gosh there's gravy in the meatloaf. I love that potty I and so it's healthy for you. It's, you know so so trying to transition from really rich lush foods to things that are more simple things that are healthier for you that actually tastes good and make you want to eat these healthier options. Wow. That's terrific. In a time like this, when there's so much negativity. And one of the great one of the things that's been tragic about the coronavirus is that we are less healthy because of that because we go to the doctor's list often. We are not treating things as we should. And during this time we desperately need to eat more healthy. And that's just wonderful that you've, you've sort of turned us on to that because, you know, a lot of people you say healthy food they say oh, you know, I just really appreciate all that and all your sharing Jeremy it's a, it's been a wonderful session I can see from my think tech Hawaii clock that we're out of time, but I want to thank you again for coming out and I hope that we can see you sometime in the future again it's been wonderful. What an absolute pleasure can thank you so much for the invitation. I want to thank of course all of all of you who are out there looking and I hope that you've enjoyed this session with Jeremy. And I also want to thank the think tech Hawaii staff. I want to thank Jay and Haley and Michael and everybody for supporting us and hope to see you in two weeks. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching our program Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us a think tech Hawaii.com Mahalo.