Foodie Friday w/ Neil Saavedra | Handel History: First Ladies

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And they're going to last longer than the United States is. That's where they're going. Okay. Now it is time for Foody Friday with Neil. Neil, let's start with a dot fruit salad. What in God's name is a dot fruit? So I've been doing the fork report for 16 years, whatever it is. And... I will tell you, it humors me, especially with the advent of social media, how everything old is new again. Like every generation thinks they've designed something. So I'm reading about different trends and virality of certain dishes. And one that pops up is dots are real big this year, actually, in desserts and all kinds of things. That's like the ice cream dots? Yeah, well, there actually is little cakes they're doing. Imagine just like a little cupcake, but they're pushing them into the little candy dots and covering the top of the frosting has become really popular. Other things like that. But this viral dot fruit salad cracks me up because growing up in the 70s and the 80s, every mom had in the drawer a melon baller. And it had two sizes. It had the larger melon ball cup and then the smaller one. Yeah, I used to know a gal who, never mind. Was a melon baller joke. Yeah, okay. Everybody has a melon baller at home, as I do, which I never use. But they have the two sides, right? You have the bigger ball ball and then you have the smaller ball. Right. So the dot fruit salad really is just. younger people finding out that you can not only use the melon baller for melon, but you can use it for other fruits as well. So it's basically a melon ball salad that they're bringing around this fruit salad, but they're using. They're using the small end of the melon baller to cut into melons and other fruits as well. And it looks slightly different because they're smaller. But, you know, and they use some mangoes, apricots, peaches, keywords. So it looks pretty nice. It looks pretty. But it's just a melon ball style. Okay. And it's like, look what we invented. Okay. Let me throw something at you because this is something I've always wondered. Making a fruit salad at home. You take fruit and just cut it up and it only takes a few minutes. Strawberries, things like that. Going to the store and buying a prepared fruit salad in those plastic containers is hideously expensive. I mean, I think it's way overpriced. And at home, you can make it for, it's not like making a major meal where, you know, you're buying something at the store that would take you forever to make at home. This is a nothing. And...

Well, do you want a melon ball a whole bunch of little fruits? Oh, you don't have to melanchol it. I mean, just cut up fruits. How long does that take? That's not what makes it viral, man. You've got to have something there. I get it, but I just want to. It's colorful. Okay, I switched. Okay, got it. I got that. I understand that. But switching over tangentially into the how expensive fruit salad is in the market prepared versus doing it at home. It seems to make no sense. When did you start going on tangents? Is that new? Yeah. Brand new. Never have done that before. So some people actually put some condensed milk in there or maybe agave syrup or different things like that. That might be a little more new. But the whole salad itself is just melon ball that we grew up with. Okay. Let me throw this one at you. And that is I, and this is, you know, my guy doing actually something by myself. Not only do I cut up fruit, but I put yogurt, vanilla-flavored yogurt in it, and it is spectacular. Well, that actually sounds pretty tasty. It is. It's very good. I don't know if you've ever tried it, but you mix that up. It's like, you know, putting in mayonnaise and tuna salad when you make that. It's really good with yogurt. Wow, that I actually share something with you that you don't know and haven't heard of and have not done. That's like a fancy ambrosia. It's an ambrosia. You remember that from the 70s? I do. I do. I remember jello with nuts and cottage cheese at the bottom. Remember that in the mold? What about the jello with the grated orange carrots at the bottom? Oh, my God. Very 50s. My mom used to make it. I love that. Very 50s and just wonderful. You go to the magazines, the women's magazines back in the day, Woman's Day or whatever, and the recipes, how good housekeeping, the recipes from the 70s and above 60s, 50s were absolutely horrid. I like that. See, I love that stuff. What can I tell you? Hot dog salads. Oh, okay. Hot dog salad is, okay, not one I'll. Okay, look some up. That sounds good. I'm sure, Amy. Okay. Neil, we're back. And something that, you know, you're right, as I think about it, 24-hour diners. just fading away. They're going away. I used to go to so many Denny's was 24 hours. Maybe they still are. Norms was 24 hours. Well, Norms basically is out of business. They're very few because they used to call, they called them steak and eggs. It was actually liver and eggs. So what's going on? Norms are, Norms is the only restaurant I know of that actually grew during the pandemic. What are you talking about? Huh.

Well, maybe they just left my area and put up more. So let's talk about how they've gone away because there were a lot of this. I remember when I was practicing law. I mean, I'd be working until 2 o'clock in the morning and then let's get something to eat kind of thing. Yeah, because you're on Coke. It was easy. Well, not during that time. I mean, there were times when I was not on Coke. But it's, you know, they were there. They were great and they're not great anymore because they're for the most part not there. What's happening? Well, you know, COVID actually was a big part of it, but also people's patterns are changing. The late nights used to be more and more important. Obviously, you have the GLP ones now and people are eating differently. But people aren't spending their money as casually as they used to. And it used to be that used to. you know back in the punk rock days that was you went to a denny's or a 24 hour there's rock and roll denies uh in hollywood there's all these places that you would hang out and that seems to be dipping especially in places like california where some places in utah and the like are still doing quite well as people are getting more interested but um in 2025, rather, showed that 24-7 restaurants are experienced this kind of upheaval nationwide. The number of restaurants offering 24-hour service in the U.S. fell 11% between January of 2020 and January 2025. In Los Angeles, 29%. So knocking on the door of a third of all night restaurants closed. Okay. And that's more, I guess, than other types of restaurants? Oh, well, yeah. Actually, the percentage there were, well, the percentage of actual shutters probably. is over 30%. But when you see that, that, you know, Las Vegas had 9% disappear. And Las Vegas is 24-7. I mean, that whole city doesn't sleep. Just shows that this, I don't know, the charm, the Route 66 mentality that thought of coming across a greasy spoon. I love that. I love the thought of just pulling up to. a diner, a 24-7 diner and just being able to sit down and have breakfast any time or a cup of coffee. Diners in general, even those that don't are not open 24-7, they're open normal restaurant hours. Those have disappeared. I mean, I love going to your diner, exactly as you say, the 24-hour greasy spoon diner with the booths and the coffee with those huge heavy mugs. I mean, that was magic. And it's, I can't find one. Yeah. And it's, I mean, there's people that you expect. I mean, truckers would use them. First responders.

nursing teams, medical teams that, you know, get off at weird hours to have a place to go. There's the people that you expect there. And then there's, you know, maybe a drifter or somebody coming through town. There's foodies and things like that that love experiencing those things. But it's one of those. I don't know. I was bummed when the drive-ins went away as well. And now to see. Oh, yeah. Those, yeah, those were so good. Bob's big boy used to go to Bob's all the time on Fan Eyes Boulevard when I was a kid, well, when I was a teenager. And now there's just a couple of those left. Yeah. Remember the ones on, I never experienced the ones on where the waitress people were on roller skates. They did that during COVID. During COVID, Burbank. brought back the car hops on roller skates. So we would take Max there and you would pull up and they'd come to serve you again at the one. It was a really neat experience. Yeah, that is. It's too bad that those aren't around or they used to be hundreds of those, thousands of those. Okay, a little bit of handle history. And one of the things that I've always, actually we talked about this the other day about the story of first ladies. presidents all the time, but we really don't go into first ladies. Other than we're talking a lot about Melania Trump, who doesn't do a whole lot except buy clothes. Then there was Michelle Obama, who was very actively involved in what was going on throughout the United States. Rosalind Carter, for example, man, was she involved? She sat in on cabinet meetings, which had never been done before. So I think one of the most interesting ones is Mary Todd Lincoln. As Neil pointed out, her reputation basically is that she was nuts. That's it. Just crazy. Well, she was a lot more than that. Not to say she wasn't crazy. And by the way, it could be she wasn't crazy at all. I mean, she was in an insane asylum, but there may be reasons for that, which had nothing to do with her being crazy. Okay, who is she? Who was she? Well, she was born in Lexington, and she was highly educated at a time when women were not highly educated. She was absolutely fluent in French. which very few people know about. She took geography lessons and also history. I mean, she was well educated. And keep in mind, Abraham Lincoln was not educated at all. At least not formally, he was self-educated. He was an attorney. Yeah, he became an attorney, but those days you don't go to law school. There was no such thing as law school. What you did is apprentice to a lawyer for a number of years. And the lawyer then certified you as a practicing, quote, licensed lawyer.

That's what happened those days. Oh, here's an offshoot, sorry. You may, offshoot factoid you may not know about. You can still apprentice in California and not go to law school and take the bar. It is absolutely possible to do that. But if you look at the rules, it is 10 times harder than going to law school because it is several years of apprenticeship and there has to be certifications all over the place. But it can be done. Okay, so here she is, this highly educated woman. And at age 14, she had dinner with Henry Clay, who was one of the great political figures at that time. And she told him straight out, I'm going to live in Washington, D.C. one of the... And before marrying Abraham Lincoln, which we know, a lot of people don't know that she dated, she was courted by Stephen Douglas, the very man who ran against Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and who became a senator earlier on, 1856, when he and Douglas ran against each other. Now, here's another interesting fact about Mary Todd Lincoln. She came from a Southern family, although her father was hugely anti-slavery. He was an abolitionist out of Kentucky, but at the same time, he owned slaves. So an abolitionist who owned, I think it was six or seven slaves. I mean, really weird. And during the Civil War, even though Mary Todd Lincoln was an avowed northerner. I mean, she was anti-slavery. She was totally on the union side. But her family, most of her family were in the Confederacy. And so she was attacked by both sides as being a traitor. Attacked by the North in newspapers, that's where the attacks mainly came from, is where the attacks all came from publicly. And because she had a southern slave-owning family, she was there for a traitor, even though there was never evidence that she was in favor of the South. The South looked at her as a traitor. Why? Because she was married to Abraham Lincoln, lived in Washington, D.C., and she had spoken out publicly as anti-slavery. So that was a problem for her. The other thing, and this is legitimate, is that... She faced real public backlash for running up incredible, massive debts, redecorating the White House and buying expensive clothing during the Civil War for herself. I mean, she was basically a hoarder.

She was an uncontrolled shopper, much like people go on the Internet today and they can't control themselves. That's what she was about, but massive spending and spent huge amounts of money to redecorate the White House. Buying new cookware, for example, or buying new dishes and cutlery and spending, well, $20,000, $30,000 ago. And this was when a presidential salary was $25,000. So that's what Abraham Lincoln earned in those days, which is actually a very, very good salary. To give you an idea in terms of numbers, the equivalent today is over $500,000 that the president earns, or he did earn. And presidents make $400,000 salary. So Abraham Lincoln actually made more money than any other president. That's what presidents made in those days. She spent annual salaries over the course of months. that she was spending on dresses and redecorating the White House. And I'm trying something new, and that is unknown bits of history or unknown stories of history. And based on what conversation we had on the air last week, First Ladies, and sort of the untold story of First Ladies. And I thought one of the most interesting ones out there was Mary Todd Lincoln because her reputation is just being a lunatic. That's it. just a crazy woman, but she was far, far more complicated than that. And what she went through was just devastating and heart-wrenching. And as I told you, she was very highly educated. She also was, her family was Southerner, even though she was a northerner and her family had slaves. And so the South deemed her a traitor. The North dreamed her a traitor because of her connections, even though she was anti-slavery, abolitionist, and very pro-North. Okay, so that is the background. So let's talk about why she was and who she was. Also, the reason she married Abraham Lincoln is because she had ambitions, big ambitions, and knew Abraham Lincoln was going to be something very big, even before he did. So out of her four sons with Abraham Lincoln, three died before reaching adulthood. Add to that, she was there when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Her husband was shot in the head right next to her at Ford's theater. And she, at that point, the way she reacted was, well, she became hysterical, as you would think. And as Lincoln was across the street at the Peterson House, the boarding house.

She was in and out of the room and hysterical that Edwin Stanton, who was the Secretary of War, threw her out of the room. Literally threw her out of the room. She was so hysterical. And she was not in the room when her husband died the next morning. And so totally overwhelmed by grief with the trauma. and her erratic behavior starting at that point. Her son, her survivor son, Robert, had her committed to a psychiatric court-ordered care facility. And in those days, you had to go to trial. Like today, you had to have a judge order someone to go into one of those facilities. It was a totally trumped-up trial. It took the jury all men 10 minutes to decide she was nuts. That's it. because the 17 witnesses that were brought in, and some of them just made the stuff up. So the erratic behavior, the compulsive shopping, even after Abraham Lincoln died, she had some money, and she actually was going through it very quickly as a hoarder. She was buying stuff that she didn't need. She had clothes that she never wore. And then she had that ambush trial. So she was taken to Bellevue Hospital, which is still there, by the way. And thinking that she's in just a little cell, she wasn't. She was actually given her own quarters, allowed freedom, a degree of freedom. even though she was a prisoner. By the way, today modern historians and psychologists believe she wasn't mad but just had severe post-traumatic stress disorder. No kidding with everything she went through. And she was able to successfully fight her imprisonment in the psychiatric hospital. She had a best friend who started a campaign with her to overturn her sentencing and bring in a new trial. And she was able to do it. She was able to pull that off, which was unheard of. Very smart lady. And then after she was released, she went to Germany. She lived in Germany for a period of time. She went to France for a period of time, moved, ended up back in Springfield. And then, as you know, she obviously ended up dying. But she ended up dying with some money. She ended up dying, even grief-stricken after the assassination of her husband. All she wore was black clothing in mourning, even though she was buying other clothes. And she was attacked a lot because one of the things she did is not only spend a fortune on redoing the White House and buying clothes, she threw this massive banquet right in the middle of the Civil War that she was attacked for vehemently. So a lady that's a lot more complicated, not just completely nuts and may have not been at all.

Okay, a little bit of handle history. I wanted to share with you. And that's it, guys. We're done. Tomorrow morning is handle on the law from 8 to 11. Will is waving to me because I generally ignore him for a very good reason. And he's back on Monday with Amy, wake up call. And after that... Neil and I come aboard and we do it and Kono and Ann make it all happen. And tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock, it's handle on the law. Marginal legal advice. Gary and Shannon up next. Have a good weekend, everybody. This is KFI AM 640. You've been listening to the Bill Handel Show, catch my show Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and anytime on demand on the IHeart Radio app. Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas-style games on my phone at the same time. Drink in one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at SpinQuest. Over a thousand games including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10 at SpinQuest.com. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit spendquest.com for more details. If you run a business, you know the value of trust. It's what keeps your customers coming back. And it's what you get when you advertise with IHart. More than 75% of listeners consider IHart hosts their friends and trust their recommendations. Now take that trusted influence and combine it with IHart's massive reach and scale, and you've got the formula for growing your business. Learn how easy it is to tell your story through our voices. Call 844-844-I-Hart today. That's 844-Eyheart. What's up, everybody? It's Bretzky, and America is turning 250. And I can't think of a better way to celebrate that than playing on an American-owned social casino, SpinQuest.com. With all of your favorite games, live craps, bubble craps, live blackjack, there's no better place to play for free and win real cash prizes. SpinQuest.com. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. When it comes to your business, great promotions should do more than just get your name out there. They should drive action. And that's exactly what your business will get from a partnership with iHeart media. Imagine your business connecting with music fans and future customers through sweepstakes, ticket giveaways, listener contesting, and local media. Attach your business to high energy music moments built to help grow awareness, engagement, and leads. Get started today. Call 844-844-I-Hart. That's 844-Ehart. Oh, I've had no luck lately. Wait, lady luck? Brett Ski, I got you. I've had so much luck on SpinQuest.com. They have all of my favorite games, slot games, live blackjack craps, and bubble craps. You can even get a $30 coin pack for just $10 bucks. $10 for $30. I'm headed over to SpinQuest.com right now. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit spendquest.com for more details.

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