In our never-ending quest to bring together the best people of Baltimore, let Nestor tell you how 40 years of friendship with “Uncle” Dan Rodricks connected him to legendary Chesapeake chef and Gertrude’s proprietor John Shields, who turned out to be related to the very tiny Aparicio family through Smalltimore marriage. The BMA, the holiday and what’s on the table at your tasty Christmas feast?
Nestor Aparicio, Dan Rodricks, and John Shields discuss the naming of Gertrude’s at the BMA, inspired by John’s grandmother Gertie and Gertrude Stein. They reminisce about holiday traditions, including Dan’s Italian Christmas Eve dinner of Seven Fishes and John’s Irish-German Christmas with turkey and mashed potatoes. They highlight the BMA’s cultural significance, its free admission, and its annual events like Crowfest and holiday row homes. Dan praises Gertrude’s consistent quality and specials, while John mentions upcoming events like “Thursdays with Gertie.” They also share personal anecdotes about favorite foods and seasonal cooking.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
holiday spread, Gertrude’s naming, BMA theater, Christmas dinner, Seven Fishes, sauerkraut cabasa, oyster navy, fried chicken, peppers and eggs, seasonal food, Chesapeake kitchen, culinary traditions, holiday row homes, Maryland fire chicken, crab cake tour
SPEAKERS
John Shields, Nestor Aparicio, Dan Rodricks
8
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T AM, 1570 tasks in Baltimore and Baltimore, positive. We are positively at Gertrude, celebrating the holidays all the political talks over. We’re done talking about Dan’s play. Come see it. It’s right here at the BMA. He’s working on a 1966 Orioles play. We’ll bring out the court dockets later on in life, but right now, we’re gonna talk about two of my favorite things, holidays and food and family. John shields, my cousin by marriage, is here. John, tell buddy how we’re
John Shields 00:31
related. Well, my cousin Aubrey is married to your son that we found out. Does
Nestor Aparicio 00:36
that make us family? That’s
Dan Rodricks 00:38
8family, extended family. So
Nestor Aparicio 00:40
we’re having a family conversation. And Dan’s my adopted uncle, right? And so two years ago, that out. Today, it’s like all in the family. Once you take me fishing, twice, you’re my uncle. Okay? It’s either that or courtship. Eddie’s father,
00:54
Mr. Eddie’s father.
Nestor Aparicio 00:56
Let me tell you about my best friend. There you go. John shields is my cousin Dan Rogers is my friend for the Baltimore Sun. It’s all brought to you by friends at the Maryland lottery, as well as our friends at Jiffy Lube. I’m giving away these tickets come see me next week at fadelies. So Dan knows you. You know Dan? I hit Dan to get to know you, and he said, John shields, the nicest man I know. Call him. He’ll let you set up, not during his lunch hour, because there’s a lot of people here, you’ll be able to do the show. So last year, and then I find out we’re like related. I’ve been back. We’ve had oysters together. We convened here. You left the bar open the night of your show last year for all my friends and family, our friends and family, and we had a big celebration here. But I didn’t know the depth of your relationship. So this is for I haven’t had you on together. It’s pretty deep. Well, right before I came on the air, Dan said I named Gertrude. You know that, right? I’m like, All right, we’re gonna start
8Dan Rodricks 01:47
with you. So John came back to Baltimore to be a restaurant tour, and I had him on my radio show when his first Chesapeake cookbook came out. Yep, right. And that was when I was on W, b, a, l, and we got to talking, and he’s talking about opening this restaurant in this great space here at the Baltimore Museum of Art, but it needed a name, and let’s see. So I went over a couple of things with John. His grandmother. Was Gertie, correct? And hadn’t you had a restaurant out west called gerties?
John Shields 02:17
Yeah, Gertie Chesapeake Bay cafe in Berkeley, in Berkeley, yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 02:21
you told me that story last
Dan Rodricks 02:23
8year. Yeah. So Gertie is in his family, and Gertrude Stein is the famous woman who introduced Matisse and Picasso to the cone sisters, Clara Bell and who and Mike John, okay, the BMA is most famous collection is the cone sisters collection of Matisse. Here
Nestor Aparicio 02:43
I learned about that as a little boy. Yeah. I
Dan Rodricks 02:46
mean, it’s a cone sister, fantastic. So I said, Oh, Gertrude sign, you know, she’s very much connected to the the reason the Baltimore Museum art has such a great collection from the cone sisters. So how about Gertrude? Gertrude and so Gertie and Gertrude became gertrudes, and that’s why we have this restaurant name here. And John gave me a little plastic trophy about this big for naming, naming his restaurant,
Nestor Aparicio 03:10
not free, vegan crab cakes for life, nothing like that. Similar, similar. How are you? I’m great. I’m great. Tell me about Gertrude. Something about the PMA, because Dan, you decided to do your show here, and I asked you about this before, like, there’s a little theater. I had no idea the theater even existed.
8Dan Rodricks 03:26
That’s a lot of thing. A lot of people don’t know that BMA has this Meyerhoff. They call it the auditorium. It should be called a theater, yeah, comfortable seating, 360 seats.
John Shields 03:35
So nice. It really is great.
Nestor Aparicio 03:37
Well, in your show, you said that you did a show. You the train segment. Was that not filmed here? Yeah, that’s
Dan Rodricks 03:46
8John. Had just opened his restaurant. Well, what year did your restaurant open? 98 There you go. 98 when I was doing rodericks for breakfast on channel two, not from the kitchen or from the kitchen. We came here, we we did a recorded a live show, a Christmas show here, and the restaurant had just
Nestor Aparicio 04:04
opened, yep, yep, yeah, and that was the train came to you here on the same stage. Yes,
Dan Rodricks 04:08
that’s, that’s the one of the stories in the play. Well, trying to tease the play you I’ve seen that. I see that. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 04:14
I love your play. I love your crazy. So I’m doing the show on yesterday at Coco’s, and I did the show with Dara bungen, and she came out. And the reason she came out make a short story long, but two days before Thanksgiving, my wife was five days of Thanksgiving, 22 pound turkey. She does the over the weekend. She’ll do the cranberry sauce. She does the brine, like all of that. And we had all of this summer, corn that she bought from Barton Felder from the farmers market on Sunday morning, and she chops it all off and puts it in the freezer. In August, we get the fret right when it’s the best, yeah, we’re like, this is the week it’s the best. Let’s go get four dozen cut it all right? So she has all this corners. We can’t do something with the corn for Thanksgiving because, you know, some butter, salt and pepper. It’s delicious. It’s summer, corn, you start to screw it up. And Dara shared a corn pudding recipe on her Facebook, and she went over the time. No, Dara, I don’t know her at all. I mean, I just know her as a Facebook friend, and she’s like, this is so yummy. If you try it, you’ll thank me. It’s yummy. I looked at him like, looks pretty yummy. So I sent her over to my wife on Facebook, and my wife said, I’ll make that. We made it. It was the first thing that disappeared off thanks to your COVID. Thanks. Your cousin, my daughter in law, who made the corn pudding. So it was delicious. And I invited her out. So I invited her out, and we got to talking about Nancy Longo. And because I’m doing a non crab cake related crab cake tour, sue me. We’re doing the pan a rotunda with a me cheese two weeks from now. So I’m doing the show there and then have a crab cake. And Jody down there said you should get Nancy Longo to come make a crab cake for you. And I said, Well, I’m gonna call Nancy and see. I still haven’t talked to Nancy yesterday. Her name comes up with Dara. And there’s like, you know, Rogers is doing Seven Fishes with Nancy Longo. And I’m like, well, dance doing the show tomorrow. Oh, she
8Dan Rodricks 05:56
mentioned that. Yeah. So I guess I’m doing it. I want to talk
Nestor Aparicio 05:59
to you guys about Christmas dinner and our Christmas dinners. And I think you and I talked about sauerkraut and cabasa last year, and yes, John Waters in Baltimore, and all that East Baltimore stuff. We came from around here, but he’s caught on to some of the Baltimore I think so, yeah, give me a little holiday spin as a chef, and for both of you, because it’s near and dear to your heart to do like a seven, to do traditional things, right? It’s
Dan Rodricks 06:23
the Italian Christmas eve dinner of Seven Fishes. Yeah.
Nestor Aparicio 06:26
8What is that?
Dan Rodricks 06:27
I don’t know. I’m not sure exactly this seven symbolism, the sacraments, I guess. Does it taste good? Oh, my god, yeah. Well, that, tell me about it. I mean, well, my mother made Bucha now Bucha, or Bucha yo in the Portuguese. So I had a Portuguese grandmother, Italian grandmother, and this is the dried salted cod fish that really has no reason to exist anymore, because people used to dry and salt cod fish when there were refrigerators, yes, yes, there weren’t freezers, right? But the thing is, when you reconstitute that flank of codfish, salted, dried codfish, the flavor that remains after you’ve soaked it for I soak it for three days, is still there. It’s still a really great flavor. It’s not like the fresh codfish anyway, so you bake that, or you you can make a salad with it, and my mother would my mother would fry salt, smelts, eel, calamari, shrimp. We had shrimp. I’m trying to think, what else we have anyway. We got the count up to seven anchovies. County got no crab. He ate from Randy. No, not. I remember I grew up in the Boston, I know this. And clams, nothing, nothing like that. Yeah, she put clams. There you go. See, I guessed right. And she, she would mix a whole wheat pasta with the regular semolina pasta, and called it Palia Fiano, stray straw and hay, polio fiend, or to represent the manger. I guess there’s a little bit of symbolism. I love this. Yeah. And then my brother Eddie and I would go. We were Alta boys. We would go to midnight mass, smelling of fish and garlic and so it was wonderful. Yeah, that was a, that was a meal you had before you went to
Nestor Aparicio 08:09
church. Now, John, you’re real Baltimore guy, right? So what’s on your crew? What’s your Christmas
John Shields 08:13
What did you guys doing? Totally nothing like that. Okay, all right, so what I would do to get a kind of culinary treat is to climb over the fence out back, yeah, and and go to the franchise, to an Italian person’s house, because, like around Christmas, they
8Dan Rodricks 08:30
had just everything, raviolis,
John Shields 08:35
and they would have turkey, and they would have hand they Oh, Christmas Day, yeah. And they would make French toast, yeah? That was, like a savory it was just, I mean, like a spread, okay, you know? So I come from the Irish Catholic with a little German kind of thing. So it’s basically where you’re doing the same thing you did at Thanksgiving. So you have the turkey and you have the mashed potatoes. And we
Nestor Aparicio 08:56
were hand family. We did Turkey Thanksgiving and Christmas. That was my family, yeah, and a lot of the same, say, the mashed potatoes of green beans, the basic white bread, sort of. There was nothing weird about my Christmas or fishy or ethnic or, you know, I mean, I had a couple of drunk relatives who’d show up and, yeah, so I had to come sometimes a cop show. But like that, the sauerkraut thing happened, believe it or not, we’re in Gertrude, right? I can say Miss Gert, Miss Gert Gibson. Miss Gertrude. Gibson was my mother’s best friend up the street. And have you ever heard of Stan stock, which is a music festival they have every year here. Stan Gibson is Gert son Gert Gibson and her husband Sam, Mr. Sam Gibson, were my parents best friends growing up on Bank Street in Dundalk, and we would because we didn’t have a real big family. My parents lost their son in 1969 so it’s a very sad kind of my childhood, we would go to their house, and their house was electric. They had four kids, they had relatives, just people all over the place, but they had this crock pot in the kitchen, and. Sam would lord over it, and it was the sauerkraut and to kill Boston from Ostrowski. And that is something that might on Christmas Eve or Thanksgiving and Christmas night, Christmas night, they had it for both events. And we would spend they were like our second family. You know, we didn’t have a lot of family. We would walk, you know, from here, the other end of the two blocks away, we would go to their house and they they were Polish, or had a Polish, she was Polish, and they had a sauerkraut cabasa, and that became a part of my staple. And the more I’ve talked about it, 33 years on the radio, every time I talk about kill Boston sauerkraut, it becomes a thing. I know you’ve had to write about
Dan Rodricks 10:38
8it at various point. John has crowdfest Every year here. Well, that’s why I want to, like,
Nestor Aparicio 10:43
bring this up with you, because I come at it honest, from a woman named Gertrude, and
John Shields 10:47
so do I, because every January, yeah, every January, we have crowdfest, and we make the sauerkraut from scratch, and we have a polka band, and we have everything that we got to kill bus. I want to come out the crap. Well, come on somewhere around the 25th reservations.
Dan Rodricks 11:05
You gotta, yeah, I
811:07
gotta get in on this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dan Rodricks 11:09
They make their own crowd, yeah. So
John Shields 11:11
it’s fun. It’s like a party. And, I mean, it sells out, like, bam, and, and I don’t know how many more hokey pokeys I got in there.
Nestor Aparicio 11:21
8John shields is here. We’re Gertrude we’re at the BMA. And Dan Rodricks is, of course, hanging out. His show will be here next week. You get all the informational tickets at you have no idea.org as well. I want to talk about the BMA. I want to talk about your restaurant. What’s up? The space? You mentioned, the theater upstairs. I was here. I got here an hour early today, and Mayor Schmoke was here earlier today. So Kurt Anderson here, Rob long, a bunch of people were dining in your place, and I’m wandering through and feeling the seasonal part of this. This is one of the real treasures I think, of the city, and I want you guys talk about that, because I didn’t bring anybody from the BMA here to talk about the Cohn sisters and all that stuff. But this is a place I came as a child. I’ve been here for many events out on the outside. I’ve now done family events here with you. Last year, was part of our big Christmas celebration. This is one of those places that you live here. Every day you come here and do your show here. This is one of those places I don’t know. Everybody in Baltimore has been to the BMA. Well,
John Shields 12:13
they better get over here. I mean, it is, you know, it’s an iconic part of Baltimore and the Baltimore experience. And, you know, we are talking, we know, we always bring up the cone collection, you know, is the largest, yeah, of Matisse in the world. And all the scholarship around Matisse is now done here. There’s new, a new Matisse you’re teaching me. That’s what I want you to do, please. So that’s just an amazing thing. The museum already has just done a thing called indigenizing the museum. So it’s took a look through art, through stories, a lot of the Native American tribes around this region, and it’s a phenomenal collection of those kinds of things. So the museum’s always doing new things. They’re like, kind of pushing boundaries. Next year is going to be the year of the environment, looking at art, the environment, the turning of the season. So there’s always so much, you know, going on, and we work with them a lot, like right now we have the holiday row homes. I don’t know if you voted yet, but I want you I took that. Yeah. Okay, so this year, there’s eight houses. Five of them are from people from the BMA. There’s guards, people. They’re all lit up for the holidays. They are. And we do a whole contest around that. And literally 1000s of people come every year to see these becoming, like 34th Street. It is. It’s our It’s our little miracle. So it’s a nice collaboration again, with the museum, because we’re doing a little food, little art. And we also think of Gertrude as kind of one of the exhibit spaces. And the reason for that is because it’s called Gertrude Chesapeake kitchen. So we do recipes from, I mean, all kinds, but from all over the Chesapeake region. So when people are traveling to Baltimore and visiting they can get a taste of Maryland and the Chesapeake, even if they don’t have time to go to Southern Maryland.
Dan Rodricks 14:10
In my opinion, it’s not just because a friendship with John, but it’s consistently good menu of specials, a regular menu and specials. And you can’t. I mean, I always tell people, go to gertrudes, because you’re guaranteed to have a good meal there, that you’re not going to get a bad meal there. There’s just some of the food is really inventive, and others just a sort of staple, really good oyster stew and the fried oysters. I
Nestor Aparicio 14:38
had the fried oyster Well, I did the oyster tour. I began my oyster tour with him back here in September, and I came here we had fried oysters. And I had never had a fried oyster my life, until Amy gave me one down at fatal he’s like, two years ago, and inspired me. And then we started talking about oysters and the Bay and the oxygenation of the bay and population and just and what an oyster city. This was how like the harbor was. One giant oyster, yeah, at one point, right? How we were over harvested. And then I learned from the oyster recovery partnership that there were oyster police, and there was
8Dan Rodricks 15:09
a whole an oyster navy. Yep, they had an oyster navy. From like, there
Nestor Aparicio 15:13
was an organized crime thing around oysters, right? Yes,
John Shields 15:16
war, actually, they had a war.
Nestor Aparicio 15:19
8They had oyster we don’t teach about that at school. John, it actually
Dan Rodricks 15:22
went on from like the 1840s until, at least is 1950 people were shooting each other over oyster beds in the Chesapeake Bay. Yeah, I guys
Nestor Aparicio 15:32
are both looking to me like, I know this, and I don’t really. People really know this.
Dan Rodricks 15:35
They actually had because the oyster men in New England and New York had pretty much scout out everything up there. They’ve sailed their boats down to the Chesapeake and they thought they just walk in and start harvesting Chesapeake oysters. Well, the Waterman in Maryland Virginia said, Well, it’s not gonna be from around here, yeah, from around here. And also, a businessman from New York came down and built, built a hotel, or either took over a hotel right on the Inner Harbor, right, right near where harbor places. And he his men, his oyster men, would live in that hotel. They would Shanghai people and put them on oyster boats and send them out there to work and dredging, dredging oysters. And then there would be shots fired. There would be, you know, people were killed over oyster beds, fighting over oyster beds, so the Maryland legislature established an oyster navy. Yeah, they had an admiral. They had a boat with a cannon on it to go around, patrolling to try to keep these guys from killing each other. And that went on for years, and the oyster Navy was the forerunner of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. I want you
8Nestor Aparicio 16:46
to be my uncle. It’s things like I
Dan Rodricks 16:48
always thought it would make a good movie for somebody like something. Daniel Day Lewis is the evil guy who’s shanghaiing Drunken Baltimoreans and putting them the
Nestor Aparicio 17:00
mayor. Jack warden. Got to be Jack warden. Yeah, play it, you know. Well, he’s, he’s
John Shields 17:04
8gonna be the head of these, and
Dan Rodricks 17:11
the first Admiral could be Tom Hanks, right? That’s who I’m crying in the oyster Navy, you
Nestor Aparicio 17:16
know. All right, so John shields is here dance here. I want to ask both of you, because you’re both foodie guys, and this is a stupid TV thing, but what’s the best thing you’ve ever eaten? Oh, what’s, I mean, seriously, like, what you’ve eaten? We all talk about meals we had this, we love that. And Gertrude says this and, but like, I don’t want to say last supper, like, what’s the last meal you would order? But like, I think about my people ask me all the time, like, what? What’s the best thing in town, and I’m like, Well, you should, you should definitely have the broccoli tempura at ecumen You know, I tell people that, you know, I tell people. I’m like, you should get the meatballs in a meat cheese you should get, you know, I just go around and I say, you should get this, or try that, or whatever. But I’m thinking, like to ask a chef if you could put something on your menu and say, This is the greatest cake I ever had, the greatest dessert I had, the greatest salad dressing, I don’t know, but that’s a question you ask yourself every day because you’re trying to, like, serve great things, right?
John Shields 18:10
I guess I don’t talk to myself a lot anymore,
8Nestor Aparicio 18:12
but you eat three times a day. I’m looking at you. I
John Shields 18:15
do, I do, but I just eat potatoes most of the time. I mean, that’s what I can live on, potato mashed up with what do you mean? I love it. That’s what you love potatoes, an apple sauce. Oh, that’s my last meal. But if I had to have a last meal, I’d have to have fried chicken with it. Fried
Nestor Aparicio 18:31
chicken, okay, all right, I like that.
Dan Rodricks 18:33
8Hey, Gertrude is fried chicken. It’s pretty damn good. Yeah. What is that? Tuesday night?
John Shields 18:38
It was Tuesday night. Remember when we had Tuesdays where it’s coming back? Oh, next year it’s, it’s not on the menu. It’s going to be Thursdays with Gertie, because the museum is open late, yeah, until nine o’clock, until nine o’clock. So next year, in January, we’re going to take that and move it to Thursdays with Gertie, Maryland fire chicken with a old, well, you
Nestor Aparicio 18:59
know, the only royal farm sponsor, so it’s got it. That’s where my bar is. Come in there. That’s
John Shields 19:04
a good bar to be up with, because that’s, that’s, that’s one of my go tos
8Nestor Aparicio 19:09
not English is chicken. I’m going old school here, absolutely. What about you, Dan, I mean, you mentioned these Seven Fishes. You had this big smile on your face about your family. I
Dan Rodricks 19:17
like that meal a lot, but my favorite thing to eat would be, people don’t like to hear about veal anymore, but my mother’s veal cutlets were like, really good, really good. That’s
Nestor Aparicio 19:27
it. That was that a marinara.
Dan Rodricks 19:31
8Oh, shredded fries, sort of like a chicken, like chicken parmesan, but they were veal sliced very thin. She’d put them with bread, Crus not politically correct. Dan, I know it’s, I don’t eat veal anymore, so anyway, but that was, that was one of her things. Also, like a good lamb stew. I
John Shields 19:50
like the good, yeah, that’s always good. It’s not,
Dan Rodricks 19:53
not that easy to cook it at home. Yeah, I don’t see it in
John Shields 19:56
restaurants. Every year. You do the
8Nestor Aparicio 19:58
pepper and eggs thing, and then. Have to go make so
Dan Rodricks 20:01
pepper and eggs. Is, was something I grew up with. Eating is a cheap sandwich to make, but it was really good. You know, you just take a good green bell peppers or Cubanas and saute those, and then you add, you beat up some eggs and throw it in there, and it all gets all smelly and good. No cheese. You can put a sprinkle a little Parmesan in there. Some people put a slice of prevolone in the sub. Then you make a sub with it. And the important thing is to seal the slug the sub. You fill this sub with the peppers and eggs, which is really oily and smells great, right? And you seal it with aluminum foil. And you got to leave it for like 10 minutes,
Nestor Aparicio 20:40
and let’s soften up a little bit. Yeah, all right, so you like a little softer bread becomes
Dan Rodricks 20:43
8infused with all the aromas of the eggs and the peppers. When do you do this? Every year you do this. This is I declared it the official sandwich of Labor Day. Labor Day.
John Shields 20:52
That’s a good nobody.
Dan Rodricks 20:54
I didn’t get a Congressional resolution or anything. I just announced it, and I repeat that every year, hoping that other people will try it, and other people have tried it. And I get lots of mail from people say, Thank you for introducing me to the to the peppers and eggs. Up those peppers,
John Shields 21:09
those peppers and things are good, like the peppers and sausage. Misses our Tory, who lived behind us, she would always do every Saturday, she would do the peppers and sausage. Now this was a reason to do it is she wouldn’t let you have it till you came home from confession. And so everybody go to confession, then you come home and you would get the peppers. And it was just so good. It
8Nestor Aparicio 21:34
feels like forgiveness to you. Yes, it was forgiveness. It was absolution.
John Shields 21:37
For God’s sake,
Dan Rodricks 21:39
I would go fishing with my father, and it would be a long trip. It would be, we go to Plymouth, Massachusetts, and then on a boat, two hours out into the Atlantic there, way out there, where you could see the Russian fishing trawlers, and you could see whales, and my mother’s peppers and egg sandwich would be in a brown bag, you know, waiting for you, and you could smell it the whole time. I said, Can we eat now? Can we eat now, when can we eat? That’s all that was the best part of the fishing trip. So I’ve gotten
Nestor Aparicio 22:07
8more like, you do that Labor Day, right? And you talk about things we do for Christmas, or go Boston sauerkraut, or the whole world has a turkey on Thanksgiving, or whatever. As I’ve gotten older and I my palate, and the more I eat, and the more I talk to people who eat, and the more my wife cooks good soups and things like that, I start to think about the things that become cyclical for us, like the things because we’ll get a giant ham, even though there’s just four of us, your cousin, my son and my wife. That’s it. That’s my Christmas, right? We get this giant ham, and my wife gets the ham leftover, so she will make ham and bean soup, right? So the soups that come after these things, and then we eat that January, February, March, pull it, freeze it, pull it out. Do whatever. But peaches in this city in the summer, summer, corn, heirloom, seasonal, tomatoes, anything that’s seasonal that moves along. And even crab cakes. And I know I’ve talked to you about this, you get a crab cake going eastern shore in August, and it’s got that orange row in it because they the female crab, and just the sweetness and the brackishness, because it comes out of the chopped tank or whatever, doesn’t taste like that in February, right? I mean, just, and I think the freshness of the seasons and loving food in season, oh yeah, that’s a beautiful part of being 56 that when I was 36 tomatoes, tomato, lettuce is lettuce? No, it’s not. There’s a huge difference in the flavors of all of these things seasonally.
John Shields 23:28
Yeah, of course it is. And I mean, one of the things I always liked about that aspect of it, it really taught everybody some delayed gratification. Yeah, that peach cake. Now gotta wait, because you waited till the asparagus came in the spring. You waited for the peaches to come. You would wait it. And it was just this marvelous time. The anticipation was such a great part of that, as well as it just so good.
Nestor Aparicio 23:52
Yeah, I went to the pepper mill on day two of my oyster tour. After it was you did. You didn’t have any oysters. They’re like, not ready yet. The good ones aren’t in. Come back next week. So I had to wait until like day 20 to go do my pepper mill. Yeah. And I was, you know, I was the youngest guy in there, but it felt good. Felt good young guy. John shields is here. He’s a young guy, Dan Rogers, a young old timer, Baltimore Sun. And of course, at Gertrude, the BMA, just a great place to come. And you get bored, and you have a day in the winter and it’s cold, you know, what am I gonna do today park over here? Walk in. Oh yeah. And this isn’t, this is a Disney World on a cold day. It really is. I
John Shields 24:26
got a good idea for you. You’re too cold. You don’t know what to do. You don’t want to go out walking. It’s a little too cold. Walk around, do your mall walking right here at the museum, and you can take in the art, get in your steps, and you’re gonna be great and
8Nestor Aparicio 24:39
warm. Lot of admission here too, at the BMA, right? Zero. How many things and we say in life are free? Yeah, we all know the best things in life
Dan Rodricks 24:49
could be for free. Well, yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 24:52
I agree with that. Seven Fishes. The show is Baltimore officials. The show begins next. Week, five days, 11 through the 15th, you can find it all at, you have no idea.org, John, of course, you can find everybody’s Chesapeake kitchen. Promote your book, your podcast. You get all this stuff. You’d hear, God,
John Shields 25:10
8yeah, I do a podcast and a thing called Chesapeake bites. We travel all around the Chesapeake Bay, and we put a spotlight on the watermen, the farmers, the artisan food makers, little places that you can go to do all of this. And it also, we have a scholarship program through our common table for culinary scholarship. So we have like, about nine or 10 students. There’s
Nestor Aparicio 25:35
my next career. That’s it right there. I was wondering what I’m gonna do when this is over with. That’s it right
John Shields 25:39
there. So we, you know, there’s always something going on. Always have my hands and this, that or the other thing, and it makes life exciting. And he
Nestor Aparicio 25:46
has beautiful food. Come on over to Gertrude and enjoy all that that we have here in Baltimore. The BMA Dan Rodricks show is there. His column is still here at the Baltimore Sun. And you can find both these fine gentlemen whom I call family and family by choice at on social media as well. Good luck with your play. All right, thank you. Invited me to come and see it for the third time, and he’s, he’s, he’s roping me in. He’s, like, we got new scenes. We got new
8John Shields 26:13
I’m going, I’ll be there Thursday. Now you’re gonna come through.
Nestor Aparicio 26:16
I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna come see the play next week. Dan Rodgers, John shields, we are at the BMA. Stacy moncell is going to join us next. Talk about some ladies doing some networking around town. It is the holidays. We got real houses over here. I had nick the Greek on yesterday, Cocos. And he said, The most essential Baltimore word that I can think of properly. He said, I feel like I’m home and I feel like I’m home anytime I’m over here, back for more here, we’re home. We’re positive. Stay with us. You.
