You’re gonna get to Yakov Smirnoff, eventually. I’m glad to have him in the first two minutes. I’m gonna Yakov Smirnoff all over this table. Please don’t Yakov on my table. To understand the food of our present, we must first understand the food of our past. That’s why we’re recreating some of the most notable meals throughout history, and today we are racing to space for one giant meal for mankind. The casserole my Aunt Diane made, it was double batch, it was for trivia night. Nope, we’re making the first meal ever eaten on the moon. Oh, wow! Okay, I guess it’s time for Meals of History! All right, today we are blasting off to July 20th, 1969 for an intergalactic moon meal enjoyed by astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins on the Apollo 11 mission that made the United States the first country to touch down on the moon. Now, do I think that the space race was a glorified pissing contest between the Soviet and American governments? Sure, but it’s still really cool and the food seems really awesome. So are we gonna make like dipping dots? You know, the ones that you get at the mall? No, we are making the day five breakfast from the mission which consisted of bacon squares, sugar cookie squares, pineapple-peach drink, and freeze-dried peaches. Though technically, the first food eaten on the moon was Buzz Aldrin’s communion wafers. However, this was the first full meal. Oh, okay, cool. This sounds really, really good. Lots of cubes! Lots of cubes. We got a lot of cubes, we got a lot of freeze-drying, we got a lot of weird chemicals going on. All right, Emily, you know the drill by now. I’ll make the food, you dress up as a- and she’s already getting changed. I just assumed you were gonna be Neil Armstrong, but what is this, Sally Ride? No, I am not Sally Ride. I am Valentina Tereshkova. Who started out as the first woman in space? No, silly American. I was first woman, I was also first woman to do it in a solo trip in space all by myself. I don’t need you. You don’t need no man! I don’t need anyone. Well, do you need some space bacon? I, the Russian thing is throwing me but I guess I’m excited to show you a big piece of American culture, which is bacon! What is space bacon? So space bacon, I’m really glad you asked. I’m obviously no scientist, I didn’t even graduate college. I imagine you probably went to some sort of Russian cosmonaut school. My god, do you always took this fast? Yes! You talk-talk-talk, you say nothing. I don’t like that, This is bacon! I don’t like that Emily’s actually dragging me. We’re making space bacon. Space bacon! Bacon is an American product. It’s pork that has been cured with sugar and salt, and then smoked, and then- Sugar and salt? You have both in your country? You have both sugar and salt. So what we’re gonna do to try and mimic what you might do to make space food is we’re gonna add sugar and salt to this ground pork, because it’s gonna be a lot leaner so there’s gonna be less fat to take up space because we needed the astronauts to actually have nutrient-rich foods. So we’re gonna get some lean pork in here. Nutrients. In Russia, you don’t have nutrients? In Russia, nutrients haves you. You’re gonna get to Yakov Smirnoff, eventually. I’m glad to have him the first two minutes. I’m gonna Yakov Smirnoff all over this table. Please don’t Yakov on my table. All right. I’m taking some of this ground pork and I’m gonna add a lot of salt to it because salt is a natural preservative, right? So we’re gonna eventually freeze dry this food and then we’re gonna vaccuseal it to try and get all the bacteria out, ’cause this stuff had to last for a long time. And then I’m gonna add a ton of sugar to this, because sugar is also a preservative. So citric acid is another- Citric acid?! Yeah, yeah, it’s gonna be a little bit sour. I feel like all the food up there is a little bit sour with citric acid, but then we got some other cool stuff. We got Xanthan gum. Okay! Hell, yeah! Hell, yeah, Xanthan gum! Is it from a gum tree with a kookaburra in it? I have no idea where Xanthan gum comes from, but I do know that it is a huge industrial thickening agent and binding agent. Okay. So the goal is to try and really bind all of the starches and fats together so that there’s no moisture leeching out of this. This is all American space food, right? We had a bunch of shrink wrapped bacon bars. Everything was made into cubes. We’re adding maltodextrin in there as well. What about Russian food? I’m not weak, I don’t need food. We have tubes. Is that how you say it with an accent? Tubes? We have tubes. Pink. Pink, your food is pink tube? That’s borscht. Is it actually a borscht tube? Sometimes, sometimes it’s little mouse you find. All right, so I’m taking- Oh, it’s sometimes brown. Is the brown your favorite or- Yeah, I think I like the brown. Are you sure the the brown isn’t the waste tube? Ooh, that’s good question. I’m gonna add a little bit of what’s called Ultratex 3, which totally sounds like a robot that would be in space, sounds like some “WALL-E” food, but this is just a modified food starch that does really well with swelling, which means that it’s going to absorb a ton of moisture and it’ll also do it at a cold temperature which I want this to get really kind of thick and gummy right now. So that way when we blend it and bake it, hopefully none of that bad- It smells like barbecue sauce in here. That’s the liquid smoke! In the American space program, they wanted to remind the astronauts of home and stuff. That’s why bacon was like a big part of it ’cause it’s such an American thing. But then now NASA doesn’t have bacon in the space program anymore. They only have sausage and we haven’t been to the moon in years! No, you have not. But really, you didn’t even go to the moon. Oh no, oh no, you’re one of them, huh? You went to a place where there’s man named Stanley. Stanley, Stanley. You’re referring to- Stanley Kubrick. Director, Stanley Kubrick? Yes. You saying the moon landing was faked? That man who made “Shining”, which is comedy in my country. So I’m gonna take this, this is looking pretty good. Hey! This looks like pink tube! So now I’m gonna take some of this cooked bacon ’cause I want that real bacon texture and flavor in there, but I want it to be bound by the pork and I especially want this to become a solid cube. So we’re just gonna massage the bacon in there. Valentina, do you wanna start getting your hands dirty with some bacon? I feel like Russian women getting their hands dirty is a big thing. That’s true, yes. How does that feel? It feels cold and satisfying. Doesn’t it? All right, that’s looking pretty good. Once that’s worked in, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna take that and we’re just gonna put it on a silicone mat and then we’re gonna cook it. And then after we cook it, we gotta freeze dry it. Okay, I’m very excited ’cause you keep saying freeze dry as if I know what it means. I asked him what it means. What freeze drying is, is a typical dehydration process, like if you’re doing it with beef jerky, you’re using heat to get the moisture out, right? With freeze-drying, you’re using cold to get moisture out, so you need to drop the food to such a low temperature that the water inside doesn’t turn to ice, but actually sublimes and turns to gas. Sublimes? Are we gonna practice Santeria? We’re gonna be every just A-hole kid from my high school who wore that T-shirt. Yeah, it was a cool T-shirt though. It’s a bummer. It’s a bummer that- Now we know that Emily was that A-hole kid from my high school. I didn’t have it, I had the many deaths of Kenny. Oh, yeah! Uh-huh, I had that shirt too. I had the Homer Simpson one with the Duff beer on it, and then I got suspended. You got suspended for that?! Not suspended, like a detention. I got almost suspended for bringing a knife. Heyo! But the thing is- Is this the Russian character, or is this just Nah, it’s just me. the Tennessee character? But the thing is I told on myself. Because I had a camping trip and then I realized I brought the knife in the backpack and then I went, “I have a knife!” And then they were like “You gotta go to the office now”, and I was like, “Ah, man!” And then I went there, my dad came to pick me up and they were like, “Because she told us, it’ll be fine, but we’re gonna have to melt your knife down.” And my dad was like, What?! “What?!”, and they were like, “Yeah, we gotta melt it down.” And he’s like, “You got a knife melter?” We’ve had the same textbooks since 1965, but you got a knife melter. Okay! Emily, this explains so much about your origin story. But I didn’t get suspended, so that’s cool. I’m gonna take the space bacon and I’m gonna put it in the oven until it’s cooked, and then we’re gonna cut it into some cubes. Space bacon, we have it. It’s here now, it’s here, it is a solid brick. This is what you would call in measurement a pud. You got a pud of space bacon in there. We need a pud of space bacon. So I’m gonna take this and I’m just gonna trim it into cubes, because that is how it was served on the Apollo 11 mission. So you see, we got like the striations of actual bacon in there, which I think is very, very cool. Why does it have to be cubes? Because it stacks, it stacks. The spaceship is small. It’s like living in a studio apartment in Brooklyn! Ha-ha, New Yorkers! Burgers stack and they’re circles. But it’s squares, there’s no space, but actually there probably were space burgers. This is what? Like 14 ounces of pure meat. That’s like what? You know, 80 grams of protein that can be packed into four square inches. Do you think when they eat their space food, they go like this with all their food and they go? They do, they do, I’ve seen videos. Like that? In the . Yeah! Let’s see what it does in our gravity when we’re done with this. Almost. That’s so hard. Valentina, welcome back. You sound like little girl crying for mother. Terrible, terrible accent. I’ll stop doing the Russian accent, I’m sorry. So we gotta make the sugar cookie squares, so that was a big part of this. Again, like I said, you know the astronauts, they wanted to be reminded of home and what is more comforting than a lovely sugar cookie? But we got a couple of little space tricks up our sleeve to make this safe for space. Make it safe for space? I don’t know like- What does that mean? Cookies can combust. No, we’ve got things like we want to decrease the amount of moisture in these cookies, ’cause again, we’re gonna be freeze-drying it and vaccusealing it, trying to get all that air out, and so we’re not gonna be adding egg to it. Instead, what we have is egg white powder. Okay. And we’re also gonna be adding a couple other binding agents into this that should really let that moisture just sort of dissipate out of that in the freeze drying process. So we’re just gonna add sugar to Crisco instead of using butter, because butter does have a certain amount of water content in it. I’m just gonna use Crisco which is just straight hydrolyzed fats. One of the most interesting things about the food in space is that it doesn’t taste the same that it would at normal gravity, because it experiences something called fluid shift when you’re in space. Literally your sense of balance and your entire brain chemistry gets messed with because you’re in zero gravity, and the fluids are literally shifting around differently. It affects your smell and taste. Do you want to know something else? I do! Cosmonauts, we’re called cosmonauts. I knew that one. You like to put the word “ass” Ass. in things. Astronauts. Your eyeballs change shape. What? because of the pressure in your brain, and your brain, it changes shape of eyeball. Is that true? Yeah, that’s also a random, disturbing fact that I put on the wheel for “Good Mythical Morning”, and I’m gonna have to tell them to take it off ’cause I spoiled it! Gloss over, baby, that’s what we tell the true fans. I’m gonna have to write new things. All right, so we have all that fat, cream, and the sugar, and then I’m gonna add, this is malted milk powder. Malted milk comes from fermented barley that they then put in dehydrated milk, and this was a huge thing that the British government would serve the troops, ’cause it was considered very, very nutritious, and I also think it’s really delicious in baked goods. So I’m just gonna dump that with all the flour in there. I’m gonna do half right now, actually, and then we’ll add the rest later. And then this, powdered egg whites. 2,500 calories of nutritionally balanced food is what NASA’s space program was based on. And so what’s more protein gonna do for you? I’m gonna add some salt. A little bit of vanilla extract, and then can you finger that out? This is soy lecithin, so soy lecithin is an emulsifier. Don’t be shy now. You just just gotta get it off. I finger your American food. I finger your American food! This is like, I’m gonna have to rub my finger around. Yeah, kinda get it in the goo. Do you want me to turn on while your finger’s in there? No! No, that way it’ll disperse it. I don’t want it, Josh! Come on! Josh! Valentina! What was that accent? I feel like this is the only other Russian name that I’ve heard other than Oksana. Nina, Nina Sergeevna. That’s the character from “The Americans.” I’ve watched “The Americans” three times through. Season two of “The Americans”, best season of any show on TV. My parents keep saying to watch it, which is precisely why I don’t. We’re gonna add some more flour in there. We wanna beat some air into it. Oh, vinegar! We got a little bit of vinegar as well. So one, vinegar is going to decrease the amount of moisture in this ’cause it’s gonna make air evaporate faster. But not only that, acetic acid is also a preservative. All right, so this is looking good. Yeah, unhook it. That’s my next career move, right? Revamping the space food program. I already know all the science, none of it’s real. I don’t want anyone from NASA to watch this episode at all, and just be like . I hope that no Russians watch this episode. No! We’re gonna lose all of our Russian fans! I like all of you! I’m sorry! How do you say, someone look up “I love you” in Russian! What?! Nicole just pulled that out? Nicole just knew it. Hey Nicole, I’m gonna move my mouth, and then you say it again, hang on. Love that. All right, so I have a sugar cookie dough. We need to mound this into a square. You wanna do that? Everything gotta be square, y’all. Everything has to be square because it all has to stack. Would it be great if I just came out here and I was like, “What up? I’m from Russia, y’all!” I dig on Russian food. I didn’t understand vodka until I went to my first Russian restaurant and then I was like, “Oh, you gotta drink nine shots of it, but then it’s good.” If you ever watched the movie “Eastern Promises”, it’s like they, oh, so good, Viggo Mortenson. They drink a lot of vodka and the accents plus the visual of, it just looks like vodka tastes better with a Russian accent. All right, so we got this patted out. This is gonna spread a little bit. We still want some height on it ’cause we want it to be about the same size of the bacon bars. Finger the hole. There’s a hole in the bottom of the spaceship. We’re gonna pop that in. I feel like every time we do something successfully, we should be like a Russian gymnast and just be like. Smile, big teeth, big teeth. Valentina, now we got to start the freeze drying process. As you see, this is not as high tech as NASA would probably do it. What we’re doing, I feel like Emily can speak to this one on the kinda hillbilly-fication of, not that I’m getting, you know what I’m saying? I know, it’s okay. You can’t offend me about stuff like that. It’s like people who fill up a trashcan with oil and then just put a propane burner underneath and deep fry a turkey. You can do that, don’t do that at home! That is new information for me. It’s fun, so this is our low budget method of freeze drying. So freeze drying is typically done in a big machine for cryo desiccation or whatever, but you can achieve the same results according to the internet at large. We’ll see what actually happens. Using dry ice, what’s gonna happen is we’re gonna layer this food til it’s completely packed in dry ice and dry is so cold that it’s gonna turn the water that’s inside the food directly into gas that’s going to sublimate instead of freeze out of food. And then we unpack it and we vaccuseal it and then we eat it and then we go to space or Stanley Kubrick directs a film. And all I’m saying is there’s ice walls around. So the food’s gonna fart in there? The food’s gonna fart in there, yes. That’s what I call it, I’m like, “I didn’t fart, I sublimed. I’m gonna sublime out of my anus.” Okay, so peaches! Okay. Millions of peaches, peaches for free or whatever. I don’t know that song, Nicole was playing it. So, we’re gonna take these peaches and kind of place them around dry ice. Don’t touch dry ice, because dry ice can burn you or something? My eighth grade science teacher told me that. You remember eighth grade science? Yeah, Mrs. Baton, she was cool. She lit her desk on fire with a fire chemical the first day. Oh, it’s already smoking! Whoa! All right, so now we got that there, I’m gonna throw some more dry ice on it. So the American space program, we were freeze-drying a lot of stuff, we were vaccusealing a lot of stuff. It sounds like the Russian space program just went for the tubifying method. We don’t need much. And this is why we got there first. But we got to the moon first and that’s the important part. Ooh, we got to the moon! Yeah, that was the whole thing, right? What’d you find there? Did you find anything good? Yeah! Did you find dirt? Yeah, there was moon dirt, we played golf on it. Oh, oh! You can’t play ice hockey on the moon. You played a sport that you did not even originate. You played sport that other people made. Yeah. You made so many sports. We had John Daly, Arnold Palmer, you know? They invented iced tea and lemonade, and he’s a golfer, that’s important. What a genius. All right, Valentina, throw some space bacon in there. So that’s the ones that just now look like blondies but I can assure you are bacon. The idea is we’re just gonna layer all this stuff. Do a noise like it’s falling into a forever abyss. Aah! That sucked! I didn’t know what noise we were talking about! Hang on. I did it. Whoo! All right, do it again. If I was falling into a forever abyss, that’s what it would be. I don’t wanna bury these cookies completely. I’m gonna be gentle. Be very gentle, place them so they don’t break. Be gentle like a dainty American woman, not like the big, tough Russian women. No, I didn’t mean you’re big. I just, I wasn’t trying to insult you. Valentina… I can be very, very delicate. Very delicate? Very delicate. Flower? I’m being very delicate now. It’s a delicate face you got there. It’s a delicate little grunt! Move! I’m so sorry, yeah, I’m just gonna be over here, chilling. If you need my help- Delicate, delicate, shush! I’m doing real delicate. You guys, I am inhaling so much of this, it’s bad. I think it’s fine, right? We have our protective gear on. We sure do! All right, this is pretty good. Ha! Give me 10 or I crush you. Okay, so we have everything packed in dry ice. We’re just gonna pop a lid on this and keep it cracked because we don’t wanna seal it ’cause that, in theory, is how you make a bomb because all these gases are gonna pressurize. And then we’re gonna leave this for a couple of days until all the dry ice is pretty much gone or mostly gone. Then we’re gonna take it out and we’re gonna vaccuseal it, and then we get to eat it. And it’s probably gonna, it’s gonna be something. American make bomb. Real original, hey? Make little bomb, America? Aw. We did that first too. Really? Traditional Russian dance. Are we rolling? We’re rolling! Oh my god! Oh no! Oh god, no, no, no! Go back, go back! Tina, can I call you Tina? Absolutely not. Okay, so we gotta vaccuseal this food. It’s freeze dried and you can see it. There’s a peach, ah! Thought it was actually gonna shatter. We gotta vaccuseal and take all of the air out of that. Like every American when they walk into a room. Just suck the air out of anything. A lot of anti-American sentiment, hey? Yeah, we have fun. How did you end up being chosen to be the first woman in space? It’s a heck of an honor. As a child, I wanted adventure and travel. And I wanted to be train driver. She said train driver in every interview. D’you wanna be a train driver? I’m like, “That’s a conductor, okay.” Anyways, I wanted to travel, but now I drive train in space. I guess it’s kinda like a train in space. I also love skydiving. Did you skydive back in the day? Yes. I feel like it was dangerous then. At night I train, I do sneak around, did not tell my family. Now, what is this? So this is a vaccusealer, so this is taking all of the air out. So air is what can cause bacteria to come in, so we’re gonna seal this off and then that should be good to go in space. Should be freeze dried, feeling pretty hard. The noise sound like cow out for slaughter. Yeah, I feel like there’s a lot of Russian cows being slaughtered. One of my favorite sounds. Did you serve in the army? Do you have that background? Well, I, yes, in the- Did you kill a man? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t ask. No, no, we don’t talk about that. No, no, no, no, no. Let me tell you something. I hid things from my family. They did not know I was going into space. How did you hide going into space from your family? It was simple, I did not talk to them. I just, you know, we’re not like Americans. We don’t need to say, “I love you.” I love you! I’m American, I love you! We don’t say it like that! We don’t sound like that. You sound like a cartoon. You sound like this: I love you! That’s pretty good though, I like that one. I love you! I’m American, I’m Mandy Moore! I love you! Was that “Walk to Remember”? Da. Da. Da “Walk to Remember”. Classic movie. I’m vaccusealing up these cookies. Did you get American films and TV shows in Russia? Some. Which ones? What are your faves? “A Walk to Remember.” That was the one? I just said French, I said Remem-ber. Remem-ber! It’s hard sometimes to keep remembering how to do this accent. Oh, “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.” Kevin James, Paul Blart. That’s Russian humor? Fat man, silly mustache. Now that’s something we can all agree on. Yes. Would you go skydiving, Josh? No, no, no, no, absolutely not. Me neither. No point! What’s up there that you can’t find down here? No, no, no, get me out of that. All right, one more, one more vaccusealed up. Look at it, this looks like space- So cool! This is space food, this is pretty cool! I’m pretty excited about this. The space bacon’s looking a little frosty right now. You feel that? I mean, it is absolutely rock hard. We’re gonna let this defrost, ’cause again, there’s gonna be like a multiple day trip in space. So I guess we’re just gonna let it hang out in a Burbank Burger King parking lot for a couple of days. Valentina. What? I’m gonna take you on a trip. Oh, what? I’m gonna take you on a trip to the moon. I usually fly solo, but for this, I guess I will eat with you. Thank you in Russian, I don’t know how to say it. Prego. Valentina, thank you so much for joining me on the moon. Oh, this is not moon. This is movie set, look at the, Stanley! There is Stanley here! Stanley Kubrick’s not here. Show yourself, Stanley! Calm down, calm down! Let’s just, you know what, fine, let’s just get into the space bacon. I’m really excited about it. Are you excited about this? As excited as I can get about anything. This is my level of excitement. Here’s me not excited. Yeah? Here’s me medium. Similar? Here’s me very excited. A woman of very complex emotions, so take the space bacon. I mean, feel it out, it’s definitely lost a lot of moisture. It smells like bacon. Yes. Let’s see if it tastes like bacon. Nostrovia! Si. I like it! It tastes like a pre-fab bacon jerky product that you would get. Yeah. Can you see how dense the meat is? I like it. It’s packed thick, but it reeks of bacon essence. It’s spongy. So spongy, that’s all the lecithin, and all that Ultratex 3, maltodextrin food sharks. I’m impressed with what we did! Yeah! All right, well, hey, we got some coffee too. Oh cool, is it hot? This was commonly served. They just served a lot of instant coffee in space. You need to keep your energy up in space, you know? It’s boredom there, not a lot to do. Ah, tastes like space coffee. It’s like watery, but also sharp. I love instant espresso. It’s actually been sitting in our drawer for the last two and a half years. We’ve had powdered milk this whole time, we didn’t wanna use any of it in the coffee. No, drinking it black. This is the pineapple-peach drink. Valentina would drink it black. She’s a bitter woman, likes her bitter coffee. And why is this hot? That’s confusing, Nicole. Why is this so hot? It’s just been sitting under the lights. Ooh! That is like somebody Oh, yeah! melted a sweet tart. It’s a pop in the mouth. Dang! Was this in any way good for you? They just needed calories, right? They needed calories in small packages which is how you end up with dense space bacon, and then just the sugariest drinks in the world. There’s electrolytes in there too and all that. Have a cookie, this is very cool. The shrink wrapping- I’m most excited about this. Wow! I mean, that’s a good sign that all the moisture’s out of it from the freeze dryer. Josh just became a wood chipper. I mean, this freeze dried really well, ’cause it’s just so crumbly when all the moisture’s out of it. It’s a little dusty. It’s a little, I’m gonna choke on it! Drink some Tang, dude! Ew! No, Josh! Gross! No, no, it’s a space Arnold Palmer. Oh gosh! That’s actually pretty good. Really? Yeah, the bitter of the coffee cup, try it. Try the space Palmer. I really hate this idea. No, Arnie Palmy, Astro Palmy. Arnie Palmy. This is the driest cookie in the world. What are we gonna call this? This is an official cocktail that we’ve just covered. Like, the Valentina. The Valentina, to Valentina! Valentanga! The Valentanga ! Wow! Why does my tongue feel numb? That’s the fluid shift. That happens every time. Your brain’s all jumbled around; you live in space a long time, you’ll go crazy! The fluid confusion happens the morning after a night of drinking, like all the time. In there. Is it gonna be? I wanna get hammered in space. All right, should we dig into these peaches? No. You don’t like fruit, Valentina? You don’t deserve fruit. I don’t deserve fruit? Valentina take peaches home. It’s a nice treat for Valentina. I’m gonna keep eating my meat. I feed it to my dog. Thank you. I’ll take that I’m weaker than your dogs, apparently. Well, Valentina, thank you so much for joining me and best of luck on your journey and thank all of you for joining us here in the Mythical Kitchen. We’ve got new episodes out for you every week, we got new episodes of our podcast, “A Hot Dog is a Sandwich”, every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Hit us up on Instagram @mythicalkitchen with pictures of your mythical dishes under #dreamsbecomefood. We’ll see you all next time. My god, madam! You are an impressive woman. You can cook up your own feast while wearing the Mythical Kitchen apron, available now at mythical.com.