Ranking The Best Fast Food Value Items ft. Emily Fleming

This, this, this, this is mythical. Dollar menu. I haven't heard that name in years. Listen, I'm just looking for something I can eat for a dollar. A dollar? I got some old fry scraps at the bottom of the fry later. I can dredge them up for you. I'll give it to you for a buck. You look like you're on hard times. I see pain behind those eyes Walking around the city with a dollar in your pocket Begging for food Who is this character? This is a hot dog is a sandwich Ketchup is a smoothie Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense A hot dog is a sandwich A hot dog is a sandwich What? That was amazing Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich the show. We take out the world's biggest food debates. I'm simply a hard-boiled noir fry cook. I want to see you do more of that. I want to see you do more characters. I know you're going to be improvising soon. I am. For anybody who don't know when this podcast is airing. Do you have a ticket? Is it sold out? Dude, tickets sold out in like 20 minutes. No! I didn't have a ticket for my wife. For those of you who do not know, we did a wonderful episode of Last Meals with Vic Michaelis, who is on Dropout. Huge fan. And Vic hosts Very Important People, which I still believe is the single funniest show on television. I agree. And then somebody commented, oh, we're just calling YouTube shows television now? And then somebody else said, you know that Dropout isn't even on YouTube. It's just its own app that's next to all the other TV apps. But I still consider that to be television. It is television. Because streaming services are television. All of this is television. So Dropout is television. Dropout is television. And Very Important People is the funniest show on television right now. It is. And I told Vic that it is one of my biggest fears doing improv on stage. Me too. I don't do improv. I just do it with you. I know. But it feels natural this way, right? Well, only with you. Like, I don't feel that way. That's very sweet. That means a lot. No problem. But it's true. I don't do improv. Like, I took a class or two. Yeah. But I always stand up was more natural to me because I don't have to pay attention to anyone but myself. And I struggle with, like, listening. Sure. Yeah. Sounds like you're not cut out for improv. Yeah. But when I'm with you on like Meals of History and stuff, it's just you let me just do whatever. I mean, that makes me feel more confident for where this is heading. You're going to be great. Vic said, would you do a show with me? And I said, of course. And we shook on it. And then afterwards we were chatting. I was like, hey, if you just do everything, book it. I don't want to be involved in the process, but I'll show up with a good attitude. And I'm going to read the book about how to be funny in improv. There's a book. Yes, there is. Hold on. Del Close. I'm reading it. You can read that. Apparently, Del Close is not a great guy, but whatever. Yeah. Oh, also. Anyways, the Elysian Theater. Vic just, like, booked it. And we're improv-ing with Lisa Gilroy, Angela Jaratana, Oscar Montoya, and Demi from, who's been on a bunch of dropout stuff. Dude, it's going to be killer. I'm not scared. It's going to be so fun. And I know that with that level of support, if I just go up there and, frankly, just have a positive attitude, it's going to go great. Right, but also, people know that this is your first time. Yeah. So watching you figure it out is part of the joy of watching that show. It's going to be great. I'm just tremendously excited for it. But anyways, I didn't even know when tickets were going on sale. Vic may have let me know, but I don't know. You didn't need to promote it at all. Well, yeah, but I wish I would have bought like 20 tickets from my friends. Because I had friends be like, yo, I bought plane tickets. I can just buy tickets at the door, right? And I was like, uh. So we've got to figure that out. It's a Dynasty typewriter, right? No, the Elysian. Oh, the Elysian's cool. The Elysian. I've never been, and that's happening. Cool. What are we doing today? We're talking about food. Yay! Again. No, what we are doing today is we are trying to determine the best fast food value meal that is left in the world. Because this is a dwindling art right here. Yeah. This used to be when we was growing up, the dollar menu was plentiful. Yeah, that was like— Everyone had a dollar. They had a less than a dollar menu. Yeah. That's how they hooked us. That's how they hooked us. But now they're hooking us with a bunch of different chicken sandwiches. Sure. And they really are. And that all has to do with drought. Mostly drought. What do you mean? Yeah. Drought has been dwindling cattle herds. This is, info is a couple of years old at this point. But it's the conditions that created the Popeye's chicken sandwich race. I believe this to be very true. The price of beef has just skyrocketed. Yeah. Because of general kind of climate change. And you can rush a chicken. You can slaughter a chicken after like six weeks. You can't really do that with a cow. Yeah. And also cows require a lot more resources per calorie and gram of protein, whatever. So chicken's just so much cheaper than cow right now. And so they've been doing everything possible to get us to not eat their hamburgers. That makes so much sense. I can't believe I didn't know about that. So what is a value menu? Is it dollar or what is it? No, now a value menu is sort of whatever they're calling a value menu. So this is a thing. A lot of people are writing think pieces about it on where the idea of the value menu is going because obviously inflation, some people just say it's straight up corporate greed and not inflation. I don't really know nothing about that. It could be a bunch of causations. I'm sure it is. But things are a lot more expensive right now than ever. And so having a $1 menu or a $2 menu doesn't make a ton of sense. And what fast food restaurants have been really interested in doing is getting you to sign up for their damn app. So, so many of these weird deals now are like app-based things where you log in. But we went to try and find the last true value menus that are left. And so we got stuff from Jack in the Box, Taco Bell, and McDonald's right here. And so all of these are under $3 seems to be the cutoff. But, dude, McDonald's is – how have McDonald's prices risen so far? I don't know. And also – A hamburger used to be 79 cents. You only got no play places anymore. No, man. No one can get stuck with hypodermic needles in the ball pits anymore. Yeah, I want to roll around in doo-doo balls. My sister did poop in a Burger King play place And my mom just left Dude, a hamburger A hamburger from McDonald's without cheese Is $2.99 This is Southern California prices So maybe it's cheaper elsewhere But this hamburger With a shard of ketchup and mustard Look how sad that little patty is A single pickle slice A tenth of a pound patty I do think their buns have gotten better They seem a little bit butterier and bouncier. They might have gotten butterier and bouncier. As science continues to rage on against the admonitions of God, we've gotten bouncier buns. They can't even call it bread. They can't even call American bread. Oh, you're talking about the— I'm like, shut up. Emily's talking about a court case in Ireland— Subway. —where they had to label Subway's bread as cake because of the amount of sugar in it, Which I think more has to do with Irish tariffs than it really does with the definition of what a cake is. Maybe. This is great, though. Damn. For $3? Yeah, that's too much. You'd be 79 cents. When? When I was a kid. When you were a kid. Oh, yeah. Because a double cheeseburger was a dollar. Really? When I was a kid, a double cheeseburger was a dollar. And then they took one slice of cheese out and they called it a McDouble. But my parents, it was kind of treated as a fancy thing. McDonald's. Oh, that's interesting. And it was 79 cents this whole damn time. Bullshit. I'm pissed. There's kind of like two different kinds of poor people. There's a lot. There's infinite kinds of poor people. In my mind, with my view of the world, is there's people who are like, we can eat cheap meat, rice, beans, potatoes, big staples, right? Then there's the kind of poor people that I am when I grew up that was like we're getting dollar menu calories yeah because my dad my dad wouldn't have known how to cook rice from scratch right dad's you know I found out that my dad does know how to cook but he was giving me shells and cheese and baby carrots when I was a kid he was like I came home and he was making a roux he goes I'm making a roux and I'm like you know what a roux is like I don't even know really what it is and I forget why he was So many times. I was like, dang. I know. But I was like, my dad's making it. I'm like, what happened here? We could have been having stuff with Rue? Well, yeah. My dad, like, so he eventually we, like, he was a substitute teacher. He was, like, kind of homeless. He had a career in aviation management, worked at airports and stuff. Now, he was never, like, but, you know, he worked at airports. And he, like, wore a suit and a shirt. Had a good career. And we, like, owned a house in Kansas City in the late 80s, early 90s. Missouri? Yeah, Missouri. KC Moe. You know, my whole family is Missouri people. Are they? Yes. KC? Missouri and Arkansas. No, they were, my parents went to Mizzou. I'm a nugget. Thank you. They met at, yeah, Mizzou. And, yeah, Columbia and St. Louis and Hannibal. Hannibal. Interesting. Where Mark Twain was from. Yeah, that's why I know that name. Yeah. Mark Twain Cave. You should definitely go check it out. But anyways, my dad came out to California to be with me and my brother. Aged out of his career. Ended up homeless. Divorced. Yada, yada. Classic story. Aged out of his career. What was that? He just, like, he moved out to California assuming, like, oh, I could. Because there were, like, the only places he could work were airports. That was the only place in work for airlines. It's the only thing that he knew. And he thought he could get another job, but there were cheaper, younger people to hire. Exactly. And people who were more adept to, like, whatever new systems they were using. Oh, yeah. And so he ended up just, like, kind of homeless and floating around. Always working at, like, 99 cents. I don't know why I'm giving my dad's whole employment history, but this is leading somewhere. I mean, I'm always fascinated when you talk about this because it does relate to a value menu. Oh, it really does. But there was a point, you know, he always really grinded. He became a substitute teacher because he had a college degree. He became a substitute teacher, but it's not enough to make ends meet, especially with kids. So he would, like, work at gas stations and set stores. The best job he got was as a limo driver. He put on his cheap suit from Kohl's that he probably got because my brother worked at Kohl's, probably got 50% off. Nice. Cheap suit from Kohl's. And he would just drive for hours of the night. And people would tip him $100. That meant so much to us as a family and not much to these people taking a limo. Stretch limo or just like a black car? No, it was a stretch limo. Bizarre. This woman, I think, that had a limo company won the lottery. Amazing. And decided to buy a limo company that probably drained all of the lottery money. That's so funny. But anyways, he would be driving for hours of the night. And he would just give my brother and I like a $10 bill and be like, go get dinner. and we would go to McDonald's and we would get scrounged up change for tax and we would get like two McChickens and three McDoubles each. Which is probably thousands of calories. And that would just be dinner. Just eating five sandwiches. You're growing boys. You can eat whatever. That was what the value menu meant to me. Yeah, I will say that the value menu is going up but those toys at McDonald's are getting worse and worse. They're hollow. You can like knock on one and hear an echo. It's like The worst toys. Give us a solid, good toy, man. The good news is the snack wrap is back. I did order this the other day. Did you really? I sure did. Well, because I like to get their chicken strips, their chicken tenders, and then I use that to make a salad. This looks sadder than I remember. At home. I order a bunch of them and I reheat them in the air fryer and then get some romaine lettuce like full of them and cut them up and then just put a piece of chicken in there and eat it This is I feel like I want to start a business where people can just show up to my home This is good, though. It tastes fine. A little ranch dressing in there. It's bigger. It also feels bigger than all the other items. Like, this feels more substantive. It also feels bigger than the original snack wrap. The original snack wrap was a smaller tortilla, and I don't think they put this much cheese on it. It was little. It was a little guy. So this feels a little bit bigger. I want people to give me $3 and just show up to my house and I can just spoon like a delicious stew or guisado inside a tortilla and hand it to people and go, here's something better. I mean, you can definitely do that. I feel like it wouldn't be a money-making proposition. No, it'd be a way to pass the time though. Well, we could do that with the gym idea that we had. Remember the video game gym? Yeah. Yeah, you could have a concession stand at that gym. I'm in, man. I mean, I'm telling you. This, uh... It's good. I like it. It's simple, on the go. The snack grab, yeah. It's perfectly... And this is easily the best value menu item they have. From McDonald's, for sure. Like, this versus, like, four chicken nuggets for $3? Those chicken nuggets are a lot of batter. Mm-hmm. It's not as much chicken. I think the strips are where you go for McDonald's now. Definitely. 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There's just cheese inside a tortilla. It costs $1.29. What? That's it. It's a cheesy roll up. And this came out at a 79 cents. I love it. Love a little cheesy roll up. Not valuable, though. That's BS. We were talking a little bit about kind of weird underdog brands or whatever. Now Dr. Pepper is catching up with Pepsi. Yeah, they are. To be the number two soda company or corporation. Do you consider Taco Bell to be the little engine that could, that kind of snuck up on the McDonald's and Burger Kings of the world? I really do, yeah. And Taco Bell's been killing it with their branding and marketing for a long, long time. Well, over a decade. The whole Fourth Meal, Live Moss. I think they really pioneered a lot of branding. Man, I will say the alcoholic Baja Blast gave me a headache. It's a lot of sugar. I feel like that's on you. I know. If you're getting an alcoholic Baja Blast. I did insist on finishing the whole thing, and it was that big old, like, you know, big cup that you walk around with in Vegas. I was like, I don't want to waste a drop. Everything from Taco Bell and the Value Menu is like half the price of McDonald's. And also— Oh, that's good. This is heavy. Feel the heft in that. This is just a cheesy bean burrito. Yeah. That's right. Cheesy bean and rice burrito. For $1.59. Another thing that kept my dad going. That's crazy. $1.59? My dad used to go to El Pollo Loco and get their cheesy bean and rice burritos. Well, you got to get a whole chicken when you go there. Yeah, man, but the cheesy bean and rice was just $1. My dad used to just get those, and that would just keep him going for an entire shift. Mm. This is value. Mm-hmm. This is value. It's going to be tough to beat this. Also, bean, rice, cheese. Pretty good for you. Flour. Flour tortilla. The complete vegetarian proteins right there. Every amino acid represented, I think. I don't know how science works. Yes, you do. I do a little bit. But I think beans are a complete protein. Are they? Are they not a fat? Is there not fat? But they are considered a protein most of all. Well, beans have protein. There's a weird thing where I eat 200 grams of protein a day. My, like, medical doctor who, like, went to medical school is like, you should eat, like, 70 or 80, dude. 200 is crazy. Yeah. Like RFK says I should eat 200, you know what I mean? And that's not why I'm – no, I've been doing this. You can understand him when he talks? I've been doing this because I've been involved in strength sports since I was a 13-year-old. But people think they need more protein than they do, and that's going to be a very controversial thing to say. I don't think that's controversial. I think everyone's kind of waking up to that idea of whenever there's kind of a movement of some kind, like the paleo and all that stuff, it's we end up finding out that just like moderation is the only way to live and everyone hates moderation because it's boring and it takes discipline to do moderation more than doing the extreme i think that's also a very specifically american um thought process we want to go all the way we love fears and fads yeah we love that but also we love extremes yeah it's kind of like you know if i'm gonna work out i want to do it every day i don't like balance it out really so So it's just we are— The culture of hyperoptimization and all that. Yeah, we want stimulation even if it's suffering. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that's where we are now. Yeah. That said, beans, good source of protein. It is. Also cheap. Delicious. And probably good for digestion, I guess. I wonder why it's good for digestion. Is there fiber in it as well? Tons of fiber in beans. Ah. And that's the thing people are talking about now, fiber. They've always talked about fiber. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you remember Fiber One Bars? I do. Remember Metamucil? Metamucil? Yeah. Everyone's always been talking about all these things. Everyone's obsessed with having a good poop. Yeah. And I'm like, how are y'all not having, I've never had an issue with pooping. When I was eating very clean and so like not a lot of fat, but eating a lot of protein and creatine, I did a little bit. But now that I've just kind of, I just kind of eat normal. Really? You think that you'd have like, you'd be going. Like, no? Fat. Stops you up. Fat can help lubricate it. Really? I don't know. That's probably why I have no problem. I think most of my food intake is carbs and fat. If I could eat one food for the rest of my life, including nutritional profile, like taken into account, it would just be bean burritos. I love just a soft flour tortilla, very seasoned bean, mashed up beans, dude. It's the best thing in the world. I don't know. I think that I'm just a bread and cheese girl. Like that's all I eat. It's bad. That and cotton candy grapes. I'm on a real cotton candy grape, girl. I love it. Aldi sometimes has them. They're seasonal. I know, but they're so frigging delicious. And they last a while, too. God, who's the guy that invented cotton candy grapes? I used to know this. Same guy with ghost peppers and stuff. No, no. He's really a grape-focused guy. Okay. I think it's just called International Fruit Genetics, but the grapery is their life. You've got to have that guy on your show. I know. Dr. David Cain. David Cain. That's his name. Is he a good guy or has he done something bad? I don't know. Because if he's an okay guy, then you guys should reach out to him because I want to hear all about the process. We got to talk to the CEO of the company that makes the world's first GMO tomato that you're, like, allowed to grow in your own garden. It's just called the Purple Tomato. And it's like a miracle product. I don't like that. You don't like the cheesy potato soft taco? Uh-uh. All right, let me give it a try. This was a thing that I loved when it went on the menu initially at Taco Bell. So this right here is $1.39. A huge potato girl, I think. $1.39. Yeah, I just, I would go beans over potatoes in almost any context. A hundred percent. And I think that's the reason I don't love potatoes that much. Have you seen the lady who her snack is taking a potato and microwaving it and then putting a big chunk of white cheddar cheese in there? What if I told you we just launched that podcast episode today? No way. Emily, today you can go on a hot dog. This isn't for you. This is the day we're filming. Yeah. So you can triangulate that back if you really want to. I think that looks absolutely delicious whenever she's showing it. Okay, let's wrap up Taco Bell's value menu here. Okay. The cheesy bean and rice burrito at $1.59. I think it's going to be hard to beat that one. That might be the single best value menu. We have $1.29. Sorry, $1.59. Who cares? The cheesy roll up is $1.29. That's so stupid. You can pay 30 cents to just get a bunch of rice and beans inside that tortilla with the cheese. That's worth it. Spicy Potato Soft Taco. oh, we got a bad one. Yeah. But that's the problem though. If you have a large bat of beans, I believe the beans come in a powder to Taco Bell and they mix it with water. Which like, no reason that that shouldn't work, right? You're, it's literally just a mush of bean, you know? But that is going to be more uniform than somebody like, frying a potato to order and then maybe it sits there and yada yada. For me personally, like beans feel like a meat. Yeah. Like almost. It's a protein source in a way that potatoes aren't. Yeah, potatoes don't feel like a meat substitute the way that beans do. I just... If that makes sense. There's a way that, like, a velvety bean hugs the inside of your mouth that speaks to me very deeply. That is so poetic. Thank you. That's very beautiful. The other day, we got El Pollo Loco, which is probably still my favorite fast food in the world. Do you consider it to be fast food? It's like... It is by all accounts, but it doesn't feel like it because it's just fresh grilled chicken. It feels like a... very, like, fancy because you can get a whole chicken. Yeah, but you just... Like a whole rotisserie chicken. You walk into a place, you order it a counter, you know what I mean? It's national chain. Yeah. But anyways, we got their pinto beans recently. I have the same order. Pinto beans. I have the order saved on my phone. It's just like a 16-piece family meal. Yeah. And it's like $60, and I just feed the whole kitchen crew with it. I mean, it's smart. But anyways, we had the pinto beans, and I was eating them. I was like, these are good. But I was like, hey, Colby, you got the immersion blender out, you know, the stick blender? Yeah. And he just stuck it in and just buzzed it into a silky pinto bean puree that I enjoyed. Ooh, that sounds good. I don't really think I know the difference between what pinto beans taste like. What are black-eyed peas? Are those pinto beans? No, pinto beans are what's in the Taco Bell. Your standard Mexican refried bean is going to be a pinto bean. Oh, okay. And then a black-eyed pea. What's a baked bean usually made out of? Oh God I think maybe a navy bean or a great northern bean Wow beans are fascinating But beans are one of those weird things that are like there were a lot of beans that are indigenous to the Americas Okay I believe pinto beans and black beans both come to the Americas but then there are like beans and bean-like products that are indigenous to Europe and Asia. Yeah, where's garbanzo beans from? So those aren't beans at all. What? But you know what they call them? Chickpeas, right? Yeah, that's true. So it's like, is it a pea? Is it a bean? Is it a pulse? Is it a legume? Yeah. I don't know. I'm not a taxonomical expert on that. You should do an episode all about beans. That'd be really cool. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out why my wife's allergic to some and not others. She's allergic to some beans? Allergic to beans. What happens? She just like throws up and poops. Like in rapid succession. Oh, no. That's too bad. I know, but we think there's like one protein that's found. What is it called? Like lectins, I think, are a thing in beans that upset people. What are you allergic to? Nothing, dude. I'm allergic to bullshit. Actually, I'm not. I kind of love bullshit. I love it, too. I love it. I kind of make a career out of it. I'm allergic to penicillin. Okay. But they say, because when I was a kid, like a baby, I got a rash. But they say that you age out of it usually. And it's good to find out if you're still allergic to penicillin because it's good to have access to different antibiotics because antibiotics sometimes are resistant. It's good to have options when it comes to antibiotics. There's a stand-up who has a joke that really spoke to me that was, I don't know any men with food allergies. I just know a lot of men with severe unexplained diarrhea all the time. Yeah. I think that's probably me with a food allergies question. I know that like a ton of women with bowel stuff. My, my, uh, my, the roof of my mouth burns and blisters every time I eat bananas. Me too. Is that an allergy? I don't know. I like bananas so much that I just power through it. That's interesting. And it feels like the skin is peeling off. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I know pineapple does that because there's an enzyme in it called, I think, bromine or bromelase or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, bananas. And then I get like weird burps after eating a banana. But I was just like, I just got the banana burps. It's like you get itchy on the inside. Yeah, so I might be, I don't know. I love bananas and I refuse to stop eating them. We got to eat this, right? Jump into Jack and Box. Jump into Jack and Box. That is the slogan. We got their sourdough grilled cheese. This is the cheesy roll up of Jack and Box. This costs $2.19. How much does a damn hamburger at In-N-Out cost these days? It can't be more than like, what was like four bucks? Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to be real with you, dog. This is a pretty old guy. Shoot. I mean, we've been sitting here for a minute, but this looks aged. Okay. Sucks. And it's not because it's old. It's because it's just a grilled cheese. How much is it? It's just a grilled cheese. $2.19. Yeah, that's ridiculous. Sorry, Jack in the Box. That's a fair amount. Well, okay, let's jump into their tacos. Two tacos for $1.49. This is still, this is like the Costco $1.50 hot dog. Uh-huh. Is this the same one? Yeah. So each of these tacos, 70 cents. You know, they're sort of like fighting the good fight. What's in here? Beef, lettuce, and cheese. Okay. And I'm going to put some Taco Bell hot sauce on it. It might be a sin. How do we feel about it? It's pretty good. I like that it's like a hard shell, but it's kind of soft. Mm-hmm. Ooh, I like that. I haven't had a Jack and the Bob's taco in a long time. I've never had one. Really? Yeah, it's pretty good. Why do I feel like you get a really nice toasted corn flavor off of it? That's a crazy thing that I've never said about a Jack the Mox taco. No, I don't think so. Like eating it through the lens of a chef. Wait, did we have it in a fancy fast food? We did. We did. Because we made a fancy one. That's right. That was a fun one. Man. Oh, that's not bad. Oh. I like that a lot. How much is it? $1.49 for two. That said, do you have two of those tacos or a cheesy bean and rice? Look at this f***ing bean burrito, dude. Yeah, it's pretty good. I just said the F word on a podcast. Oh, this is tough. Okay, we got one more. It's a dark horse. This is Jack in the Box's Crispy Chicken Sandwich. This is the Junior Chicken Sandwich for $2.49. I love and miss the cheap chicken sandwiches. Carl's Jr. I thought used to have the best. Carl's Jr. There's so much black pepper in their batter. Carl's Jr. is also Hardee's, right? Yeah, same thing. That's where, you know, I went to college in a dry county. I talk about that sometimes in Arkansas. And so we would, you'd have to drive 45 minutes to buy liquor. But we would go buy liquor, then go to Sonic and get ocean waters and then put a crap ton of rum in those things and then hang out in the parking lot of the 24-hour Hardys. And that's how we discovered micro wrestling. What's that? Micro wrestling is little people wrestling. And there was like we didn't – I'd never heard of it. It dates back to like vaudeville. It's pretty cool. But yeah, and they wear a luchador mask. It's pretty amazing. But yeah, we were in the Hardee's parking lot, and there was this, like, gymnasium that I guess people rent out to do whatever. People were cheering, screaming. We're like, what the hell's going on here? And we went up there, and it was micro-wrestling. And I guess they go through the Bible Belt a lot. It's kind of this old-school thing that's existed forever in America. I did see that. And it's pretty cool, actually. And people from Arkansas had luchador masks that matched their favorite wrestlers. And I was like, this is so cool. I went and saw that in Reno, Nevada, which is kind of the Arkansas of eight hours away from Los Angeles. That's true. You know what I mean? I wrote something for, there was like an HBO sports comedy kind of show that was going to happen. And I submitted a packet for writing. and I just decided to write about weird stuff. One was NAIA. Oh, hell yeah. Because that's what my school was and I was going to play volleyball for them. But there's no rules in NAIA. Oh, I would love to see an NAIA doc. Oh, it's really cool because there's no rules. There's no age rules. Yeah, I know like 27-year-old like professional Ghanaian sprinters who were like, yeah, I'll take a free trip to LA. People from all over the world. Yeah, you were some like 30-year-old Slavic women, right? There was. So there was another team that had two women from South Africa who were like 6'5", and they were like 35 years old. Yeah. And they were killing everybody. Like they were just whooping ass. My team, when I went to go practice with the team, I didn't end up playing because they had recruited Bosnian girls. And I had never played volleyball so good I escaped a war-torn country. So I probably wasn't going to play. They're in Bosnia, and they're like, hey, this random place in the United States of America is going to let you play the sport that you love for free and just give you money for food. I think it's amazing. At the end of the day, we've eaten a lot of value menu items here. I'm very ready to confidently crown a winner of these single best value items. We haven't tried. We didn't go to Burger King. We left out a lot, but we found. These are exciting ones, though. The ones. Also, a lot of places have replaced their actual value menu with, like, weird deals that are like, buy one $6 combo and get three items for $1. and it's like, I don't want to play that. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. I'm confident enough to crown the cheesy bean and rice burrito. I think that the Jack in the Box tacos close, close second. Close second. The chicken sandwich, Jack in the Box had a pretty good showing other than the grilled cheese. That's ridiculous. Just two pieces of bread and cheese. Y'all gotta cut that out. I got a piece of cheese. Two old pieces of bread. That when you pull them apart, they kind of stretch like an old piece of leather. You want that for a dollar, huh? I got to want to join in with this character. It's kind of a nice character. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a gravelly voice. And I put a cigarette out of it. I have laryngitis. And I give it to the kids. And we don't know how to cure laryngitis yet. We haven't figured that one out yet. That's a fun word. All right, Emily. Hey. Hey, we're back. Well, we've heard what you and I have to say, and now it's a very specific time. Well, it's time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the universe. Sounds great. So it's time for a little segment that we call... Opinions are like casseroles! Hey, have we addressed the hat that I'm wearing? Not yet! Well, my hat says people who get diarrhea from Taco Bell are weak, their bloodlines are weak, and history will forget them. Because apparently that's something that I said off the cuff in an episode. and we had a lovely fan whose name we know. Who sent us that hat who also sent me a nice bottle of rum and some Skull, that Skull vodka. Dan Aykroyd vodka? Dan Aykroyd vodka. And I appreciate that person very, very much. Thank you so much. I do have like your return address of things and I'm going to send you a thank you note. I'll give Emily something to send to you in return. This is an awesome hat. It's so cool. It's a prized possession. It also kind of looks like a contemporary fashion hat in LA. This is what people are wearing to look cool. It does. And it's embroidered. It's so pretty. If I'm going out on the east side, if I'm going to like Waltz in Highland Park. You guys ever go to Waltz in Highland Park? I know. What is it? They're like a dive bar, pool hall, pinball, but they ironically serve hot dogs. How do you ironically serve hot dogs, Josh? I don't know. I think maybe they're earnestly selling hot dogs, but people are ironically buying them. It feels like a hipster thing. It's become whatever the modern, because the term hipster is kind of dead. Hipster was like. Millennial kind of. That was our thing. That was like a leather apron, beard oil, man bun, flannel shirt, skinny jeans. I know more than you. Riding a fixed-geared bicycle, you know, talking about a single origin coffee. Yeah, if you're wearing a band t-shirt, they'd force you to name like three songs. Yeah, whereas now it's like you wear like a Celine Dion fan cam kind of shirt. Yeah. But like camouflage pants. They're piercing their hats now. Ooh, that sounds fun. The kids are piercing their hats. It looks a little cool. or like putting, piercing the hats. I like that. This is literally all a snapshot from this one bar that I went to where I felt so tremendously I want to go. I love having fun. But I kind of tried to look as dumb as possible. Yeah. Do I have a booger hanging out of my nose? No, you're good. Okay, good. I tried to dress as dumb as possible. I wore like, being like ironic, I wore my Yingling like thin t-shirt material hoodie. Yingling sounds cool. Because I went to the Yingling Brewery once and I got it there and it's sick. I love Yingling. And I wore like a plaid oversized jacket on it and then a hat that just said, I heart penguins. Because I do. And I got that at a penguin exhibit in South Africa. Cool. And I looked so in like baggy cargo pants. This sounds cool as hell. I look so cool. That wasn't a cool look like five years ago. Wasn't it cool 10 years ago when I was trying to care about what I looked like? Well, right now, everything is gray. Have you noticed that? Everything's gray. Everything's earth. It's like, it's just turning into this very like bland kind of monochrome look right now. Bringing colors back. I really think, especially the young people are wearing that. And I'm like, come on, where color is it? You're in the youngest, most vibrant part of your life. Where's the vibrant colors? Dude, the athleisure in the earth tones is really bothering me, man. It's bothering me, too. It's like, what if we took purple, the world's most beautiful color, and made it gray. And made it gray. Yeah, it sucks. Well, you know, we'll figure that out. I'm not too worried about it. Great hat. Let's get to that first opinion. Thanks for that hat. Oh, my goodness. Wow, what a voicemail message. Yeah, take a cold shower, huh? But I'm having an allergic reaction to my friend's cats right now. We can't help that, dude. I'm all stuffed up. So naturally I go to make tea Okay But we are out of all the tea I like And I so desperate for tea Can you pause it real quick This is the most adorable voice I've ever heard. It should be a voiceover for like a cartoon. Something like Jenny Slate would do. So adorable. Got a great Jenny Slate voice. Yeah, yeah, totally. Okay, sorry, continue. I grabbed some blueberries and a garlic. The blueberries through the garlic press. Whoa. So, yes. I love you. I love you, too. I love you, too. Smart. So, garlic. Smart. What she's doing is very smart. Blueberry through a garlic press. So, I think she's trying to kind of, like, express some more blueberry-ness. As opposed, if you were to just boil a blueberry in some water, you wouldn't get any of the juices, any of the good stuff. Okay. But the instinct to say, I have no tea, I bet I can make tea out of stuff in my house. That's awesome. Yeah. Because the tea, it's like an actual plant, right, called tea. It's Camellia sinensis. I didn't know that. Yeah. Well, like if you look at like green tea, black tea, white tea, like all of these things, they come from a common plant, Camellia sinensis, I believe. I could be messing this up. I don't know anything. But it has like caffeine in it, right? And that's why tea became a thing because it's like tea and coffee, both caffeinated beverages. Yeah, I guess I thought it was a bunch of leaves. Well, it is, but it's the plant. They dry the leaves. I see. The tea leaves, and then they do it. But you'll have people say stuff like, oh, I love fresh mint tea or herbal tea. Yeah. Which has nothing to do with the tea plant. Right. It's just other leaves and herbs that are steeped in water. You know what I mean? So if you want a hot beverage that has some differentiating factors to it but you ain't got tea, look for herbs. You got freaking old basil in your fridge. You got some blueberries. Hey, that's smart. And I like the garlic press. Boil some orange rind with a cinnamon. If you boiled orange rind in a cinnamon stick and water and drink that, that'd be a lovely time. I thought she was going to say that she was doing blueberry and garlic tea. Because that does sound like a weird old country remedy. It does. It sounds like I'm allergic to my friend's cat. I'm going to drink some garlic blueberry mess. I mean, I don't know. That sounds like it would work. Tony in our kitchen made a batch of homemade medicine. He did? Yeah. It's honey with a bunch of ginger, garlic, and turmeric suspended in it. Oh. It sounds like a tonic kind of thing. Kind of like a tonic, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I ruined it because I think I double dipped my spoon in it, and I think that contaminated it. So that's my bad, Tony. Well, they say that it's good to wake up in the morning and the first thing you have warm water with lemon in it. They say it's good for you. I don't know. I don't. The warm water thing is something I can never get down with. Yeah. I understand that it's better for you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, people are like, don't drink cold water. I'm like, don't. Stop it. I'm so tired of people's opinions. Not too many things. Sorry. That is the name of this segment, and I'm saying I hate opinions. I'm a man. I'm 33 years old, and I use a three-in-one body wash shampoo conditioner. Is it the— That's fine. Is that Dr. What's his— Just fine. Bronner? It's like Old Spice. It's giant. It's giant. It's a magnum. How do you not get itchy? I'm a dove sensitive skin. I just don't think about how my body feels. You don't? No, unless I'm lifting weights. Oh, I see. Then I'm trying to like really like isolate like, you know, rear delt and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. But otherwise, no, it's itchy. What do you mean itchy? Well, I just get sensitive skin things. If I have like a tag on my shirt, I rip it off, you know? Oh, for sure. But yeah. That's very smart. Yeah. Also, sorry about your friend's cat, but it's cool that you're still their friend and you're just toughing it out. Voice all gets me every time. You really got to call. I have an opinion that is based in fact. So is it really an opinion? The sourdough that is sold in the grocery stores is not real. Oh, yeah. Americans are being lied to every day. Boom. If you are seeking an external form of joy, learn how to make sourdough bread. Yes, this is a message from the Sourdough Cult. Also, my name is Lily. I'm based in Clearwater, Florida, Dunedin, Clearwater area. And yes, I'm obsessed with making sourdough. It's changed my life forever. Have a fabulous day. These people are cool. So I believe what they're referring to. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Wait, no, talk for a second. Talk, talk, talk. All right. I don't, sourdough is not one of my favorite breads anyway. But if I'm at a deli and I'm getting like pastrami or something, you got to get it on sourdough. But I don't even know if that's the real sourdough. If you get it at Cantor's Deli or something like that. But yeah, most of the time I'm a chunky white bread kind of girl. I'll have a Dave's Killer Bread if I want to lie to myself and say I'm healthy. Okay, so what she's referring to, it's called the Chorleywood process. That's what I'm trying to remember. They call it sour foe. So you get like – Sour pho. There's a – God, there's a brand of sourdough they used to sell at Costco. They still do. It's like a kind of round oblong loaf that's pre-sliced. Everyone's had it. I think it's got like sand something or other. It's just like delightful or even I think – I don't know about boudin or boudin from San Francisco. But anyways, it's like very, very sour. You go to a diner, you get that sourdough toast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's quite sour. Where that sourness typically comes from, it's like acidification that is a by-process of fermentation. So I think, would it be lactic acid from lactobacillus? But anyways, the point is, when people are making sourdough during a pandemic, the way you make that dough sour is you just let the starter ferment and then you add it to dough. And so this chemical process is changing. That takes time and it takes effort to figure it out. So if you're a bakery, like a commercial bakery, a factory bakery. Yeah, you haven't got time for that. You haven't got time for that. So what they do is, I was Googling this. Which I don't even know what the starter thing means, and I don't want to know. It's just a big collection of bacteria that are just constantly, basically bacteria, they eat and they fart, and the fart creates bubbles. That's like kind of actually what it is. Wouldn't that be crazy? That's a great character, like, what is it, Marcel with the shoes on or whatever, but there's like a sourdough starter that is a character and it talks and stuff. Just a globular mass. Yeah, yeah. It's got glasses. It's got a scenario thing. But anyways, they basically artificially acidify the bread. And then also this is saying that they add water and carbon dioxide to create bubbles in the crumb that would normally be produced during the actual fermentation stage. So, yeah, you're totally right. And it's kind of a product of American English that we just call that sourdough when we make it like at home sourdough. Yeah. Whereas like in France, they would call it pain au levain, which means you're naturally creating, like you're not using commercial yeast. You're getting like actually like wild yeast basically in a French pain au levain. Wow. Which is really cool. So yeah, that's a really funny distinction that I don't think we've ever talked about in the show. Very cool. Chorleywood process. Chorleywood process. Invented in 1961. I want to know what this message is that you guys leave that they have to listen to. 1-833-DOG-BOD-1. Okay, yeah, I'll call you. Hey, it's Peter from the Chicago Burbs, and I just want to take a minute and say how much I love McCormick Montreal steak seasoning. Yes. I tried it side by side with salt and pepper on steak, and frankly, I prefer that. Yeah. And also, if you do a cursory little bit of research, you find that the Willoughby McCormick, who founded the McCormick Spice Company, is much more on the Little Caesars end of the Little Caesars to Ralston food billionaire degeneracy scale. Wait, wait, wait. I highly recommend continuing to use McCormick Montreal Steak Seasoning for all of your meat seasoning needs. Brought to you by Big McCormick. Utterly. It's so fun. One of the funny byproducts of being online and creating content, which fosters community for five, six years, is you start communicating in a language with the people in that community that other people would have no idea what you're talking about. So when you say, like, the Little Caesars to Ralston continuum or something. Highway or whatever. So Little Caesars, the founder of Little Caesars, I can't remember his name right now, but he, like, famously, like, paid Rosa Parks' rent until the day she died. Just kind of like an all-around good dude, it seems. versus Ralston, who the Ralstonites were a, they founded like Chex and a lot of other, in Purina brands that still are going today. But I think it goes by the name Ralkorp now. But Ralstonites were a weird white supremacist cult that believed that through a certain purity of diet and also sunlight, I think Ralston was an acronym. Oh yeah, was that like the sanitarium? There was like a guy that... This is like three levels deeper than that. Whoa. That they believed that white people, if they ate a vegetarian diet, could achieve mind control. Like, seriously, it's insane. So when you're talking about that continuum, I hate that it means something to me. And I love that. That's interesting. I know nothing about Willow B. McCormick. He's the founder of McCormick, and I'm going to do some research on it. Who owns McCormick, or do they own themselves? I think McCormick, I don't know. There's so many large food corporations now. They might be their own. When did they start? Early 1900s, right? looks 1889 found in Baltimore that's crazy it looks like McCormick is the parent company very cool which is pretty cool Montreal steak seasoning I grew up eating their spicy Montreal steak seasoning and it was it was like that and Tony Sachery's were like the only seasonings we had in our house we had some Lowry's you don't really need much else like ah man people just want a powder that makes your food taste good yeah I think that the steak seasoning thing I never tried the McCormick I think I just try whatever is the cheapest Dude, find the Montreal steak seasoning. I do not know what association it has to do with the city of Montreal, but it's just like chunky salt and garlic and onion. Nice. And it is divine. I haven't, I'm going to go pick up a thing of spicy Montreal. We used to put it on burgers, dude. It was great. Oh, I got that. But do you think that there's going to be some kind of a gourmet movement where people make their own steak seasoning and dry a bunch of things and put it in a little jar? I think some people do that. I think that was more a millennial hipster thing. That was like our cool thing. That feels like a millennial hipster thing. Yeah, yeah. We've done some stuff like that in the kitchen. We've made our own dried allium powders, and they're like, this is so much work. It's too much, but I think it's a funny thing to imagine someone with a handlebar mustache doing. Yeah, and they certainly were. Yeah. Well, hey, thank you so much for stopping by. Hot dog is a sandwich. Really enjoyed watching you watch me eat a bunch of dollar food today. And thanks for having me. This is always fun to stop by. I love when you stop by, you know. Thanks. And if you want us to stop by more podcast, I don't know where that was going. More podcast stopping by Listen, yes? Check us out. We are on the Hot Dog is a Sandwich YouTube channel. It's its own channel now. If you haven't figured that out over on YouTube and also wherever you get your audio, we publish episodes on Wednesdays. Call 1-833-DOG-POD-1 if you want your voice to be featured on the show. You got to call the number after this. I know. We'll see you all next time. Bye. Hey, this is Emily Fleming. I was just on your show. I'm actually sitting right next to you right now. I want you to talk about beans, and I just want to know where does garbanzo beans come from? And I love you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.