Knorks

• someone or something downloaded all the episodes using wget
• Accessible cutlery- Knorks, Splayd
• Britt H. Young wrote “A one handed cook’s favorite tools” Wirecutter Blog Post
• @one_armed_chef on Instagram
• I’m browsing the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails which is interesting me in Creme de cacao & creme de menthe and more bad ideas

JOHN HOPPIN: Shep, washep, wushep, Oh yeah. Everything is good now. Pretty much, seems like it. Kind of hot. Yeah. I’m listening to the Liz Allbee I’m listening to this Liz Allbee CD. Came out last year on Relative Pitch Records and it’s called Rille, R I L L E. For Jeremy. This is dedicated to Jeremy recorded at Vivaldisaal, Berlin. Mixed in Berlin mastered by Weasel Walter.

What’s up, Weasel Walter? Man, cool. I got that CD in December. Weasel Walter, Jarrett Mitchell introduced me to Weasel Walter, Jarrett Mitchell, my partner in consumer packaged goods. He makes the beverage green coffee, energy beverage, Cobra Verde. It’s something called Paleo V.erde, you got to check it out. Jarrett is the thing. Speaking of the thing, let’s hear the jingle:

Hoppin Hot Sauce, it’s the best sauce in the world. The world, I’m telling you!

The jingle is the thingle.

We should get down to business, right? This is the What’s the Matter With Me podcast, thank you for tuning in. My name is John, I’m very old, I have children and a wife. And this is What’s the Matter With Me? I have multiple sclerosis and that figures into it too, I guess. You’ll see. Shoutouts to everyone.

Also shoutouts to someone or something, someone or something downloaded all the episodes of What’s the Matter With Me. No, not all of them. Just like 111 of them using wget, that’s like a Linux command, that’s advanced nerdy stuff. It’s beyond me. I feel like someone or something, it just says on my thing, it was all downloaded by wget. I’m like, “Show yourself, show yourself!” Or don’t, it’s probably a double edged sword to ask the internet to show itself. You’re like, do you really want to see? I got knorks. I got knorks!

I read the Wirecutter. I just happened to read it about accessibility. Let me get that. I read this article. It was published January 5th of this year, the headline, A One-Handed Cook’s Favorite Kitchen Tools. So I was like, hmm. And written by this woman, Britt H. Young, she’s a writer and PhD candidate in geography at UC Berkeley. So disabled writer, I’m like cool.

And a lot of subject matter here that I’m interested in. You know, I’m always thinking about being a disabled cook. This woman, Britt H. Young was born without a hand. And so she’s kind of in my boat, she’s got one hand and she’s a one handed cook. I’m interested in this. I’ve read it, and a lot of the stuff I already had, but the one thing I have been interested to learn about, one-handed utensil, where I can cut up my own piece of chicken. A one-handed utensil where I can cut up my own piece of chicken or sausage or whatever.

So she mentions this thing called a knork, and the caption on the image is just like…it’s a fork, with kind of rounded…it looks like a fork. And it says, “The knork has slim, knife-like edges and a little platform on the neck where your finger can rest making it easier to cut up food on your plate with one hand.”

So I was like, cool, I want this. I’m tired of Nami cutting up my food. I don’t really, I stopped kind of caring about it. It’s something I gave away. I was like, whatever, but I also, she has to cut up the kids’ food. It’s like, dude, how much food can you cut up? So I’m looking for ways to do it myself. And it helps that we’ve been having meatloaf and sausages, easy to cut up.

So it is kind of like…it’s a fork that’s thin, it’s not sharp. The edges are pretty thin. So, you can kind of smash the hell out of things. So it’s really, it doesn’t achieve cutting. You can’t cut your food up with it. But if your food is like ground meat, you’re in business, I think. And if it’s, it depends how it’s cooked and the neck is kind of thicker so you can put your index finger on it and push. So they work, I got them and it’s useful. And last night we had sausages, potatoes, and onions that I made in the oven and they were a little bit crispy and it was no problem. It cut right through them. Cut no problem. And I used to have to get Nami to cut up my sausage because I couldn’t cut it with the fork and it kind of sucked. I have admit, I have to sit there. Your wife has…she has enough work, dude.

Speaking of that, I had a big success this week, but I’ll get to that. Let’s see, the knork. Britt Young. The knork, I also found a thing called splayd. Okay. I somehow got, I’m like…you know what? This article by Britt Young has a lot of other interesting stuff like bowls with silicone feet so they don’t spin around so you can whisk and stuff.

I think mostly stuff I could use, but I got the knork, and I got four of them on eBay for like 20 bucks or something. Or more, I don’t know. It wasn’t outrageous.

They had a lot of portable knorks and all sort of…

So we all know the spork, right? But then I started looking at other alternative than the knork, what else is out there? And there’s a thing called a splayd. And I never knew about this, and are you guys like, “What are you dumb? You didn’t know?” No, there’s other stuff. A splayd is an eating utensil combining the functions of a spoon, knife, and fork. It was created by William MacArthur in the forties, in Sydney, Australia, the splayd, S P L A Y D. I’m sure. It makes a lot of sense why it’s called that, but it also doesn’t really make a lot of sense, you know?

So Britt H. Young here at UC Berkeley, I wonder if she’ll publish a book and I’ll go to the bookstore and coronavirus will be over and I’ll be like, yeah, I’d liked your Wirecutter blog, I guess.

Another one handed person that I’ve been into is One Handed Cook on Instagram. Yeah, okay: One Armed Chef. So One Armed Chef is this guy Giles Dulay. And is a photographer, writer and cook. And I think he’s got…His thing is about war and injury disability. Anyhow, I thought, I’m all into these cooks with one hand or one arm. So his thing is much more elevated. See, he’s not a cook, he’s a chef. His thing is more elevated, but I like it one_armed_chef. I’ve been thinking of creme de cacao, white creme de cacao recipe, cocktail recipes.

I’ve been reading about spirits. I’ve been considering… I’ve been like, “I got to go to the store and get that creme de cacao liqueur.” I’ve got a list I’m working on of liqueurs because I got this Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails. Yeah, that’s what it is: The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails. I got the new hardcover, it came out in November and David Wondrich and Noah Rothbaum are the authors, and these people collect postcards from bars since 1890. They’re just wild. It’s Oxford, so it’s like a dictionary, it’s all in order. And you’re reading about Falernum and it’s used in this cocktail and then you go to this letter, it’s a dictionary.

So I read it after dinner and I get very stimulated, very stimulating reading. One-handed cooks, one-handed chef splayd, knorks, but the other is hoppinhotsauce.com and is all down.

If you go to hoppinhotsauce.com, it redirects you to Hoppin Hot Sauce’s Amazon page, where you can buy extra hot, and hoppinhotssauce.com Is closed. And my wife…I’ve taken away the drudgery of having to fill orders at night when she’s tired. But I had to get the wordmark copyright to Hoppin Hot Sauce in order to sell on Amazon. So there was significant hoops to jump through. I had to be a lawyer again. I always get nervous when I’m impersonating a lawyer, but it’s the best thing to do if you can do it right. Lawyers cost so much, so if you can just kind of do their job for them you don’t have to pay them, if you can do it. And that’s the cool thing about being a lawyer. Most times, if you can do it on your own and you don’t need a lawyer, you don’t have to get one.

It sure helps. But sometimes when it’s just like filling out forms and stuff like that, even though you can’t really understand what they’re saying…Thing about lawyers, they all speak a different language.

Using knork is kind of like mashing up your food. But sometimes the fork goes through the food and then it’s more like you’re cutting your food, right? Sometimes it’s like mashing and tearing and grinding, or other times it’s like cutting. Like the one time I ordered kabobs and they were really not tender. It’s something you could definitely cut up or eat from the stick, no problem. But they were not very tender and I cooked steak and it was a lot more tender than that. And I cut it up. I just got a piece of steak and then cut it up. Oh dear. Good golly. So sometimes it’s like mashing and other times it’s like cutting. Knork.

Hoppinhotsauce.com is down. There’s only the Amazon store. I feel like pretty nervous about that, I don’t think it’s quite right from an internet perspective. I think I’m supposed to somehow keep a link equity or whatever. But if anyone is a super genius, just write me an email and tell me what I should have done. Love those should have done emails. I’ve often said, “Early to bed, early to rise, and the first thing you do is you read an email about what you should have done, make you healthy, wealthy and wise.”

So I read this Oxford companion to spirits and cocktails. It’s like a dictionary. There’s just entries about spirits and cocktails, like the one about Henry’s Bar. Henry’s Bar was a bar in Paris and the expatriate Americans and British people would go to in the twenties. Then it’s linked to drinks that were made there and other…

And Henry was… What was his name? Henry Pave? It had two accents in the… There was a misprint in the cocktail book, who knew? Maybe, you know, things are a little loose in the cocktail book. And it got me wanting to buy white creme de cacao to make a grasshopper, a bright green…I need to buy creme de cacao and creme de menthe just to make a grasshopper and it’s disgusting looking…it’s bright green sludge, grasshopper…it’s the kind of thing that I do after dinner now with this Oxford companion, it’s a true companion. It’s What’s the Matter With Me podcast. What are we having for dinner tonight? We’re going to have meatloaf pasta, with leftover meatloaf. I probably will use a regular fork because it’s meatloaf. You know, I don’t need the power of a knork, but I recommend knorks for trying to eat steak and chicken and other stuff that’s hard to cut up with one hand, man.

All te one handed listeners, I wonder how many, one handed listeners I have. I know that, that I met one handed people that listen to my podcast, and I never have met Brett H. Young, although I guess I’ll stay after the thing and be like, “I like the knork.” Trying not to appear creepy, but I am that kind of guy. I’ll stay after the jazz concert just to talk to the Saxophone player and be like, “Hold on I got to talk to him.” And I’ll just be like, “I enjoyed the show, it was really good.” That’s a trait that I have.

What’s the Matter With Me podcast. Thank you for tuning in, send me an email I’ll give you a shout out. Use the contact page. What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with me?

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