Dirksen Bauman: Food Memories, Overcoming Hosting Challenges and A Name Embedded in History.
Hello, and welcome to Toni’s Table where conversational gastronomy is the main course. Pull up a chair and fill up your plate as we talk our way towards building community and connection one story at a time. I'm Toni Boyette. Let's dig in. We're sitting around the dining room table shooting the breeze about about food, community, gathering, and anything else that comes up.
Toni:And just like I tell my kids about my parenting style, I'm making this shit up as I go along. And tonight, I'm joined by my dear friend, Humphrey Dirksen Lippmann Baumann. Dirksen is a professor of deaf studies at Gallaudet University, the world's only university for deaf students, located in Washington DC. Originally hired in the department of English, Dirksen was invited to join the department of deaf studies in 1999 where he has taught ever since as the department's only hearing faculty member. Dirksen, welcome to Toni’s Table.
Toni:Thanks for joining me here.
Dirksen:Absolutely. Thank you for the invite.
Toni:Oh, so glad you're here. Let's start off with your name. Please tell us the story of your long and interesting name.
Dirksen:Yeah. Well, I think it's fitting because my name is indeed a mouthful. So, we'll try to discuss it.
Toni:I see what you did
Dirksen:there. Yeah. One one one bite at a time. Apparently, I wasn't, born yet, so this is all hearsay is but, my mother was pregnant. I think they were anticipating, a talk at the time at the local, democratic caucus and, went into labor and hightailed it to the hospital.
Dirksen:And, my father then kept her company by reading, an article in Time Magazine written by Walter Lippmann, And the article was about Hubert Humphrey and Everett Dirksen, who had just signed the Civil Rights Act or just helped to, construct the Civil Rights Act of 1964. My mother had gone in, you know, now it's 18, 20 hours, 24 hours, had had enough of
Toni:Oh, sweet Jesus.
Dirksen:Yeah. Yeah. So it was, this was a a slowly baked cake, so not coming out of the oven anytime soon. And, I think my mother was pleading with him. Dear god, stop reading, this article.
Dirksen:I know it's important, but you're having I'm having a baby. So, finally, I was born, and I think she passed out of sheer exhaustion. And turned out I was a boy. And so not having any names ready, my father, as, to get his comeuppance, called the nurse over and said we're naming this child Humphrey Dirksen Lippman Baumann. Oh.
Dirksen:And, apparently, my mother woke up to a little bit of dismay at at this fact that it
Dirksen:I'm sorry. He named you while she was knocked out?
Dirksen:Yeah. As she was knocked out. Read between the lines.
Toni:I'm I'm yeah. That's that's a whole another episode right there.
Dirksen:No power issues.
Toni:Oh my gosh.
Dirksen:And, and so but they did, they sent around my birth certificate to Hubert Humphrey, who at the time that he got the birth certificate was actually vice president of the United States. Love it. Signed, they each of them signed my birth certificate and, wrote a letter back to my parents. And, the best letter was from Dirksen who said, you know, I really with a name like that, he should be, an erudite scholar, a consonant politician, and a humdinger.
Toni:So Well,
Dirksen:what what one out of 3.
Toni:Two out of Three. Well, I don't know what a humdinger is Yeah. Actually.
Dirksen:Oh, that's the one I was going for.
Toni:Oh, okay. I was thinking scholar. You
Dirksen:know? Okay. I'll I'll
Toni:do that. With the professor who and
Dirksen:all that stuff. That. Yeah. Right.
Toni:There you go. Well, you know, I mean, I've known you now for, oh god, over 20 5 years, and I've never heard the full length story. That's that's wow. That's all I can say with my own erudite self. So alright.
Toni:We're here to talk about food and community gathering, the stories that come out Yeah. Of those gatherings. So I'm gonna jump into the hardcore stuff. Tell me about a dinner party disaster that you've experienced in the past as opposed to in the future.
Dirksen:Right. Which one? Really? Okay. I got a Sam.
Toni:I'm jumping in here to say I've been to many dinner parties at your house. And let me be you know, full disclosure, Dirksen is married to my BFF, my platonic soulmate, Nicole Salimbeni. And so I've been to many, many gatherings and dinner parties that are always stellar. Even if there's something that goes wrong, which I've never noticed, you you don't notice. So I can't wait to hear this.
Dirksen:Well, one of the reasons it went wrong is probably because Nicole wasn't there. So hold holding my feet to the ground and, thinking a couple of steps ahead, which I'm I'm generally more in the moment and improvising. But
Toni:Kinda like this podcast.
Dirksen:Yeah. There you go. But, yeah, funny enough, yeah, Nicole, was returning from, a trip to the beach with her friends. And, we had had, some friends visit whom we haven't seen in 5, 6 years. They were visiting their daughter who was going to school at Gallaudet University.
Dirksen:Okay. And she was bringing her, roommates, so 4 of them coming to dinner, dear friends of ours. And, so I was in charge of everything, and Nicole was going to be arriving about the same time they were. So it was a one person show. First time using a new oven, which, due to the size of our house, was, we downsized to a 24 inch oven, which is basically like a mini bake oven.
Dirksen:You know? Put it on the
Toni:The Easy Bake the Easy Bake oven.
Dirksen:Easy Bake. Right. Right. Right. So easy bake oven.
Dirksen:So first time I'd ever used it. Didn't understand the temperatures or it might have been broken, but I was cooking a pork tenderloin, two of them. And I would say about 10 minutes before the guests arrive, the house fills with smoke. And I mean, we're talking smoke. We're talking fire fire alarm level, fire department calling the, you know, the, you know, the alarm going off and they're they're calling.
Dirksen:Is everything okay? It's like, no. It's not okay, but we don', I don't need a fireman here. I need I need some help.
Dirksen:So, anyway, so I'm taking, the burning, pork tenderloin out, and it had basically stuck to the pan I was using. I said, well, maybe the pan is the metal pan, is part of the problem. I'm gonna switch it to a Pyrex dish. So I switch it to a Pyrex dish, put it back in the oven, and, because it wasn't done in the center but burned on the outside.
Dirksen:So just how you like it.
Toni:Right. Right.
Dirksen:And, so 10 minutes later, guests arrive and they came in and hugging and so it's like, okay. It starts smoking again. Thickest smoke as you could Get in the house. So I take the Pyrex dish out and put it in the sink because the countertops were absolutely filled. Cold water dropped on the Pyrex dish and shattered.
Dirksen:And we're not talking
Toni:I hear it in my head.
Dirksen:We're not talking, like 3 pieces, 4 pieces. We are talking shrapnel.
Toni:Oh, man. Safety glass.
Dirksen:Yeah. Safety glass. Did this penetrate everyone's skin? And out of the four people, three of well, they are all deaf. The the 2 kids are hard of hearing.
Dirksen:Okay. They all heard that pop.
Toni:Wow.
Dirksen:I mean, we are talking Oh my gosh. Yeah. We're talking explosion, Pyrex glass everywhere. So that's Pyrex glass everywhere. So that that was a little bit of a disaster.
Toni:That qualifies.
Toni:Yeah.
Dirksen:So we looked at the clock and said, okay. Now what? We had
Dirksen:five minutes before a new local butcher in town, Soko, in Takoma Park before it closed. So Danny and I hopped in the car, drove to Soko, got some New York tenderloin and or New York strip and, you know, cooked up some steak.
Toni:Did we do that on the grill or did we try the oven again?
Dirksen:Yeah. It was that was grill.
Toni:Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Dirksen:So that's that's the one. The the other one just briefly because, I know you can edit this. So no, another one that that just came to mind was a Thanksgiving dinner, and we were, cooking for at least 12 people. I had, potatoes au gratin and a few other things cooking in our neighbor's house, who are also friends of ours who also work at Gallaudet. And so we're using their oven because at that time, we did have a 2, you know, a 2 square inch, size kitchen.
Dirksen:And, the potatoes au gratin spilled over, started to burn. Their house was filled with smoke. Oh. Three cats, two dogs, fire alarms, visual fire alarms going off, and it it was it was utter pandemonium. So I finally cleaned their their stove after three times getting a good enough …….
Toni:Sweet Jesus.
Toni:I can't even remember my disasters now because those two just sort of blew me away.
Dirksen:Yeah. Well, that that they're sufficient, and I'll stop there.
Toni:Oh my gosh. And when you went to Thanksgiving, you weren't at your house one Thanksgiving. You might have been maybe you were visiting your family and Nicole and I. We were Thanksgiving widows, so I brought my kids over to your house. And, well, I'll wait till I'm talking to Nicole to talk about that that, episode.
Toni:That was fun. My kids still remember that Thanksgiving, but we won't go there. Wow. I'm just I'm just that that first story, though, the phrase that comes to mind is once burned, twice shy. So you move out to the grill.
Toni:Well, this is the great thing to me about, first of all, gathering with friends, really close friends, because, you know, if something goes wrong, you know, there's always the store. There's always takeout. When we sat down to dinner tonight, you know, I've lost my taste due to medication. Like, you know, I don't know what this dish is gonna taste like, but Ledo’s pizza is right up the street. Right.
Toni:They should sponsor this. So, yeah, I mean, that's I feel like unless it's a state dinner no. Actually, there's a great story about a, another dinner party disaster, and I try to always remember this. I can't remember. I think it might have been female secretary of state.
Toni:Madeleine Albright?
Toni:Thank you. She's entertaining, you know, and this is before she was secretary [hits mic] sorry. This is before she was secretary of state. I just hit the microphone because I'm not used to talking into something so big and phallic without…… … … anyway, she's entertaining.
Toni:And one of the, you know, people attending the dinner not attending, but attending to the dinner, you know, I wanna say the butler, comes out with the roast. And, you know, it's this big presentation, And and she's actually cooked it because she likes to Cook. And he trips over something, and it falls onto the floor.
Dirksen:Damn.
Toni:And there's a reason this woman was a secretary of state, this quick thinking woman. She goes, well, don't just stand there, James. Pick it up and go in the kitchen and get the other roast.
Dirksen:Oh, That's brilliant.
Toni:And, of course, you know, there was no other roast. Right. So I feel like there's always a way to come out of it. You know, at the very least, you're gonna get a good story
Dirksen:Absolutely.
Toni:Out of having that.
Toni:And I think that's a really important element to when we gather is to not feel the world is not at stake. Yeah. You know? It's not it shouldn't be as anxiety producing as, say, it is for me right now doing this podcast, talking into this microphone. But,
Dirksen:You’re right, I mean, friends will hold you. I mean, it's Exactly. It's not about the food. It's not about perfection. I mean, it's
Toni:It's not about perfection. I'll give you yeah. And, and, you know, for me, it's all it's almost always about the food. But, again, maybe not that particular thing you intended to eat, but I just know there's gotta be some good food somewhere. I mean, I'm the woman who ordered dinner in between Pushing during my own child, child, during my daughter's birth because I was just determined to have something to eat afterwards that I really liked.
Toni:I felt like I freaking earned it. So what can I say?
Toni:So I think what we're gonna do is maybe talk more about food. And, I'll just ask you a couple questions and we'll see where the conversation goes. So the next question is, if you could travel anywhere on the planet to experience the local cuisine, where would you go?
Dirksen:Well, first thought that comes to my mind is Northern Thailand.
Toni:Yum. Oh, man. I'm thinking street food.
Dirksen:Absolutely. And I actually don't have a real strong knowledge of geography of Northern Thailand, but I do know this salad that I had at a local restaurant, Thip Khao, that salad, is close to a near death experience as As I've had. And I I mean, it I think this is a a birthday dinner with family, and, you can order off of the regular menu or the jungle menu.
Toni:I know you went jungle.
Dirksen:We went jungle. We went full in full jungle.
Toni:He's got jungle fev.. wrong one.
Dirksen:And a couple of bites into it, and, actually, even, you know, the the wait staff was like, are you sure you want this? I said, absolutely. You know? All all kinds of stupid bravado.
Dirksen:Absolutely. Bring it on. Full jungle. That's three bites into it. Unbelievably delicious.
Dirksen:Three bites into it, my vision started to collapse. What? My hearing left. Is this the heat? It was the hottest thing.
Dirksen:It was it was narcotically hot.
Toni:And I know you eat really spicy stuff. I mean, you're usually off the charts.
Dirksen:Try to push the limit. Wow. This was so far beyond my limits. Even the waitstaff was
Toni:That's scary.
Dirksen:Warned against it.
Dirksen:I my hearing was, was gone for at least 5 minutes. My vision slowly dilated back to, the
Toni:I didn't even know spice levels could do that.
Dirksen:But it was that delicious. So I'm
Toni:You just kept going.
Dirksen:And I went to the bathroom to kind of recover after a while, after I felt safe walking and then, then came back. But that flavor profile,
Toni:the How do you even detect the flavor profile through that sort of thing?
Dirksen:You know, it the heat elevated the flavor at the same time. It was really it was remarkable. So Northern Thailand is where I'm headed.
Toni:I'll take that. And I have to say, I mean, I'm such a heat wimp that yeah.
Dirksen:You're not coming with me?
Toni:I'm not no. I'm afraid not. Yeah. I'll just go to Pei Wei or something. No.
Toni:Joking. Joking. No Pei Wei. But I'm thinking about there was a pop up where we got Thai food. It was a Thai street food pop up here in DC from an LA based restaurant.
Toni:And I remember we loved it. It was just off the charts delicious. Nothing I got was spicy. And, of course, I don't remember the name of it, and I can't find the damn truck in Los Angeles. Oh, wait.
Toni:It was global it was global nomad.
Dirksen:I think
Toni:that was it! You inspired... ... ...
Dirksen:Why not?
Toni:Because it was so good. I wanna it was beyond good. It was like a little religious experience. I wanna try to find them. But Northern Thailand, that's your that's a good I wanna go to Thailand, but, you know, I wanna go to Thailand for the elephants, actually.
Toni:And the and the street food, but big into the elephants. Yeah. Wow. That's a great answer. Okay.
Toni:So any place else that you that appeals to you?
Dirksen:That controlled my every synapse that I had.
Toni:That's fair. That's fair.
Dirksen:It went into the northern.
Toni:So let's go to a question that takes you back an item. What meal, dish, or ingredient even takes you back to either your place of zen or a happy childhood memory?
Dirksen:Yeah. Cinnamon rolls. Oh, man.
Toni:Tell me about the time you like when's the first time you had a cinnamon roll? When do you have the best cinnamon roll?
Dirksen:Well, it was my grandmother's mama. Mammaw. Mammaw cinnamon rolls. And, because my, my grandparents really were very instrumental in raising me. I grew up in a single parent household because my father died when I was about four.
Dirksen:My mother was a principal of an elementary school. So Oh, my gosh. She was busy. Yeah. Of course.
Dirksen:I would be coming home and, every Wednesday, Mammaw and Papaw would be at the house. And as you would get about a 100 yards out, you could start to sniff and say, okay. Is it strawberry cupcakes? Is it cinnamon rolls?
Toni:What's the kind of grandma I wanna be?
Dirksen:What's it gonna be?
Toni:Wow. Well, let me ask you something. Wait. Mamma?
Dirksen:Mammaw.
Toni:Mammaw and Pawpaw.
Dirksen:No. No. Mammaw and Pahpaw.
Toni:Mammaw and Pahpaw. Okay. Were they born in the U. S. Or were they immigrants from somewhere else?
Dirksen:No. Born U. S.
Toni:Okay. Okay. So cinnamon rolls. So she that was
Toni:that was
Toni:what struck you.
Dirksen:I would come in and could immediately smell that that cinnamon.
Toni:That's making me I feel like I can smell them right now. Cinnamon rolls are one of my favorite. I thought favorite.
Dirksen:With a Glass of milk.
Toni:Oh my gosh. Did you dip?
Dirksen:No. But you would just it was almost like a culinary labyrinth. You know, as you start to pull out the outside, it's a little dry. It's you know, the first couple of bites are good.
Toni:Right.
Dirksen:Every bite as you make that journey to the center, you just peel it off until you get right to that that center bite.
Toni:Wow. So they're soft? They're soft. Okay. So they weren't like you know, we just had these cinnamon rolls that were more like a maybe more like a croissant crust, a little crustier.
Dirksen:Yeah.
Toni:And then they're the kind that are I hate to say the word, but Cinnabon-like that are the fluffy, softer kind what camp where these?
Dirksen:These were more doughy.
Toni:They were
Dirksen:so they weren't flaky. They they were just they were soft.
Toni:That's the comfort and the comfort on a plate. Oh, that sounds amazing.
Dirksen:I could roll my whole body up in a cinnamon roll.
Toni:Oh my gosh.
Toni:Wow. That makes... well, mine would be fried bologna sandwiches actually, which I don't think I've had in about 20 some odd years at least.
Dirksen:Because you can't get a hold of bologna or
Toni:You know, it's just sort of Yeah.
Dirksen:Why don't
Dirksen:I don't know. Why do not
Toni:to the store and get some and get some wonder bread.
Dirksen:Why deny yourself a fried baloney sandwich?
Toni:Exactly. And the one thing I you know what? It's amazing because I've actually purchased baloney in the last, like, 5 years. But instead of buying that Oscar Mayer, I discovered real baloney.
Dirksen:What's real baloney?
Toni:Game changer. Well, like Hebrew National or some there's some that are not I don't National or some there's some that are not I don't wanna speak badly of any company, but just baloney that's not well, Hebrew National is gonna be mass produced also, but you can ell. When you look at, like, an Oscar Mayer and you look at a different brand, the coloring is different, the texture, the other brand will feel like meat.
Dirksen:Okay.
Toni:You know? Yeah. And the flavor talk about a flavor profile. It is night and freaking day. But the Oscar Mayer one, though, it's got enough, I guess, fat in it that when you fry it, it's yeah.
Toni:It's intoxicating. And that was probably the first thing I ever cooked was a fried baloney sandwich. The first thing I ever cooked successfully. I once tried to make cheese toast in the toaster not toaster oven. Just the the toaster that
Dirksen:yeah. I
Toni:don't even know what
Toni:the thing is called.
Dirksen:Back to the smoke. There's a A bit of a disaster.
Toni:That was a little bit of a dinner party for one and a disaster at 5 in the morning. But, yeah, the baloney fried baloney sandwich is my one of my go-to's.
Dirksen:So what's the technique on the fried baloney sandwich?
Toni:Well,
Toni:the first technique was I would the first one I ever made because I had no idea what I was doing. I was maybe 9. I put a little oil in the pan. Doesn't need that.
Dirksen:No. comes with...
Toni:But got the oil nice and hot and, slap the baloney in there. And what you do though k. You got your toast done. You have to toast your toast your bread first because you need that waiting for you. You get your pan hot.
Toni:You really don't need oil, but I had put oil in it. And you slap that bologna in the pan, and you know it's ready to flip because it will begin to rise up and form a little bubble Yeah. In the middle. So you flip that over. And the first time I ever made it, I was waiting for for it to do the same thing to sort of rise up, but that didn't happen.
Toni:So the edge the center got a little burnt, but it was, you know, a good crispy burn.
Dirksen:Yeah.
Toni:The next several times I made it, I realized it didn't need oil, and you just put it in a pan. And I don't think my family no, there's no way we had cast iron pans back then. The the the level of culinary practices in my home as a child, I hated food because, no disrespect to my dearly departed mother. She actually was a very good cook, but she was from the West Indies.
Toni:And this is the seventies, and I wanted what other American kids had. And so her expertise in cooking American food really wasn't there. So and my father, when she passed, he had no idea what he was doing. So we just had Sh**ty pots and pans and things like that. So I would use whatever thin metal, probably, what's the thing we're not supposed to use anymore?
Toni:I guess aluminum pan. Mhmm. Throw the baloney in there. Notice how much grease it produced on its own, and that's what I did for at least two or three years. I ate that almost every day.
Toni:I'm sorry. And then on the bread, though, on the toasted bread, not mayonnaise, but miracle whip. Always miracle. I used to eat miracle whip sandwiches.
Dirksen:What do you know, like, what is miracle whip?
Toni:Got no damn idea. Just like a McDonald's milkshake, no idea what's in it.
Dirksen:Okay.
Toni:But it's got, it's sweeter than mayonnaise, though. I so Oh, man. I love Miracle Whip
Dirksen:So nothing else? No. Lettuce?
Toni:Lettuce? We didn't hear about lettuce back in No.
Dirksen:They didn't have lettuce back in
Toni:the No. No. Not in my neighborhood. Yeah. Back then, like, I thought all vegetables came in cans.
Dirksen:Right.
Toni:It wasn't until I moved to California that I realized, oh, shit. Peas are really good when they're not out of a can. You know? Oh, corn comes on a cob? Okay.
Toni:No. We knew that that happened. But, yeah
Dirksen:So you hated food. You didn't like to eat much as a kid. So when did the, the magic transformation? When did you see the light?
Toni:Moving to San Francisco. After my father, he was diagnosed with cancer. He didn't tell anybody, but suggested that my sister, who's 20 years my senior, take me you know, become my guardian. I go live with her. And I was such a silly not silly.
Toni:Well, I was silly. But I was also a pretty naive kid. So I was most kids would say, oh, I have to leave my home. I'm like, oh, great. A new adventure.
Toni:I'm going to San Francisco. And that is where I learned about real food, as did she. And, you know, getting custody of me, you know, she had to learn to cook or at least guide me in some way. So because I ended up doing a lot of the cooking. She worked for this rowdy, very creative group of architects.
Toni:And these guys just you know, they're creative thinkers. So all these people, stoned as they may have been, thought it was a great idea to just call the 11 year old and tell me what I was gonna make for dinner that night. Toni, it's in the fridge. Tonight, you're gonna do duck a l'orange. We're gonna talk you through it step by step.
Toni:So, you know, that's where I learned about, like, things like artichokes. And the rule was I had to try everything. If I didn't like it, I didn't have to eat it, but I had to try it. So that's where I learned to appreciate food. And, you know, that's where I had my first real Chinese meal.
Toni:But it's because in in long well, in New York, we had great Chinese restaurants, but on Long Island, not so much. Yeah. Yeah. But San Francisco really opened up my eyes, my palate, my mind. Dim sum, I became addicted to dim sum.
Toni:I could talk about this forever because there's this thing I'll I'll stop with this. There's, you may have heard of this, a a snack, a dessert, a delicacy called It's It.
Dirksen:Nope. What is It's It?
Toni:It's It is a, ice cream sandwich. Vanilla ice cream between 2 oatmeal cookies
Dirksen:Yeah.
Toni:Dipped in chocolate.
Dirksen:Okay.
Toni:And it's a San Francisco centric treat. And I didn't have them every day, but it was yeah. That's the other thing that would take me back to that. I think in my childhood, I've got sections. Right?
Toni:I've got the Long Island section, which is the baloney sandwich, the fried baloney sandwich. The San Francisco has a few things. It's It and then dim sum. After school in 9th grade, I would go down to the to Fishman's Wharf, and there was simply a gazebo, and all he sold was pork bao, the, the steamed dumplings.
Dirksen:Yeah.
Toni:Yeah. That was every day after school. That was every freaking day after school. And then I'll save more for later episodes. But coming out here, you know, and then as a teen and then in college, there was always some episodes.
Toni:So there was always some there was always some dish that represented an era. So what other dish or meal or ingredient speaks to another part of your life? Maybe when you were a young parent or in college?
Dirksen:Well, college would be, top ramen and not actually thinking fondly of it. And, so not much to say about the top ramen, but I would say after that, the the defining dish, I would say, that, you know, sort of encapsulates our family's favorite food, and Nicole can talk about this more, but it's her red sauce.
Toni:Oh my god. So but
Dirksen:I'm not gonna say
Toni:anything else. Okay. Yeah. We got a we got a table of red sauce for Nicole. Definitely.
Toni:Oh, man. You just made me hungry. We just ate, but now I'm hungry for her red sauce. Well, I didn't I said I wasn't gonna do this. And but I'm gonna do a version of what I said I wasn't going to do.
Toni:What I'm not going to do is ask you, who are the 3 people you'd want to invite for dinner? Instead, I want to know and take your time thinking about this. If you could name 1 or 2 elements that you feel make a great gathering, a gathering around a meal, obviously. But what are 1 or 2 elements that you would say you
Toni:need to have? Where and I don't wanna feed you suggestions because I don't wanna lead you.
Toni:what do you think?
Dirksen:Well, the first would be time. And I know Toni, in full disclosure, is the person who relishes and makes the most out of time while eating. And, can, you know, turn
Toni:oh, just...just... .... Stretch a meal.
Dirksen:Three bites into half an hour. No. But when there's, I I think that the most enjoyable meals are that when you when you have course, you have plenty of time to talk in between the courses, and, you know, this is something that when Nicole and I host, we love to be able to make a multi course meal where it's a progression and people can sit around the table and it's three hours later and you're not stuffed. You you are eating. You have just the right amount.
Toni:You feel sated Yeah. And in every way. Right? You're sated physically, spiritually, socially. I mean, a good gathering feeds us in so many ways.
Toni:Absolutely. That is great.
Dirksen:So that aligns with the others is is abundance, you know, where you're not operating from a position of scarcity, but there there is, an abundance of love and flow between the people sitting around.
Toni:You know?
Dirksen:You can just wallow in it, wallow in the time.
Toni:Amen. Amen. Even and I feel like even if there's scarcity on the food level, if you've got an abundance of everything else, you'd almost don't, you know, that's okay because you're fed in other ways. Thank you, Dirksen! Thank you so much for doing this experiment with me.
Toni:I really appreciate it.
Dirksen:It's an honor, Toni. Really.
Toni:Wow. I'm so grateful to have you on.
Dirksen:Wish you best of luck.
Dirksen:And every other podcast to come, just doing what your heart does.
Toni:I really appreciate that. Well, when this takes off, I'll have my people call your people and we'll have you back. Thanks so much. And I don't know if I'm supposed to say something in closing, but thanks for joining us. And, we'll be back soon.
Toni:Take care and bon appetit.
Steve:Toni’s Table is written by Toni Boyette and produced and edited by Steve Devoney. If you'd like more information or would like to send a message to Toni or make a comment or just gab about great restaurant towns, please visit us at tonistable.com. That's tonistable.com. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.
