Latest / Tigs Bits Podcast / How Hard Times Created The Blue Collar Chef

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How Hard Times Created The Blue Collar Chef · Tigs Bits Podcast

• 0:00
  Ma'am, we have your husband and we're taking him to the trauma
• 0:02
  unit. So I just learned how to make
• 0:05
  something out of nothing. The good Lord can humble you in
• 0:08
  so many ways, and I'm telling you, it happens just like that.
• 0:11
  One phone call, one diagnosis, 1 minor accident.
• 0:16
  You never know what's going to happen.
• 0:18
  You need to be nice and be sweet and use your words.
• 0:20
  Not always swore to myself. I'm never going to date anybody
• 0:25
  at work ever. And the first time I actually
• 0:27
  spoke to Mr. Johnny, he hung up on me.
• 0:29
  Johnny kept asking me why don't you let me take you out to
• 0:31
  dinner one night and I was like, I don't date truck drivers.
• 0:33
  He kept asking and asking please let me just take you out to
• 0:36
  dinner one night. And if you don't want me, I
• 0:38
  promise I won't bother you again.
• 0:39
  I was like, you're going to bother me.
• 0:41
  I don't date truck drivers. And she's still the boss.
• 0:44
  Oh my gosh. We have Miss Ricky Simmons,
• 0:57
  better known as the Blue Collar Chef, with us tonight.
• 1:01
  She shares Tex Mex, Texas BBQ, budget meals, grocery hauls, and
• 1:06
  plenty of cast iron cooking with her audience across all of
• 1:10
  social media. Her brand is all about feeding
• 1:13
  real families with practical recipes that don't break the
• 1:17
  bank. But building a following online
• 1:21
  comes with its share of challenges.
• 1:23
  From dealing with trolls to balancing life with social
• 1:27
  media, Ricky has built a community around authenticity
• 1:32
  and real life cooking. And tonight, we're going to talk
• 1:36
  about her journey, how she met her husband, Mr. Johnny, her
• 1:39
  thoughts on cooking for everyday families, and even her dream of
• 1:45
  launching a food truck someday. Ricky, welcome to Tig's bits.
• 1:51
  Thank you. I've been looking forward to
• 1:53
  this one. I love your stuff.
• 1:55
  Just thank you for the record. I just want to get that off off
• 1:58
  my chest right now. I absolutely love your channel.
• 2:01
  I love everything that you do and I'm excited to visit with
• 2:05
  you for the next little. Bit me too, this is my first one
• 2:08
  so I'm excited. I'm so freaking honored that you
• 2:13
  would allow us to be your very first podcast.
• 2:16
  I'm honored that y'all thought about me so.
• 2:19
  Let's start at the beginning and before social media, before the
• 2:25
  Blue Collar Chef brand. Tell us a little bit about where
• 2:28
  you grew up and how cooking first became a part of your
• 2:33
  life. I started cooking when I was
• 2:35
  real little, probably about maybe four or five years old
• 2:40
  with my granny. But I grew up in Houston in
• 2:44
  Channelview. It's a little small town.
• 2:46
  I lived there for 3033 years. Warning raised right there.
• 2:53
  And then when I met my husband, we moved out here to the country
• 2:57
  out here in Central Texas, which I love it out here.
• 3:00
  It was a big change. But we we like being out here.
• 3:03
  It's rural city, but it's pretty much like out in the country.
• 3:08
  That's awesome. What kind of what kind of food
• 3:11
  did you grow up eating? Kind of the same thing that I
• 3:15
  cook right now. When I was little, my granny and
• 3:18
  pawpaw owned a pretty large cattle ranch out in Henderson,
• 3:23
  TX, Longview area. And my grandpa Paul, they raised
• 3:28
  all their own food, their own cattle.
• 3:30
  And I used to shell peas with my granny and ride on the back of
• 3:33
  the tractor with my paw paw with all my little cousins and help
• 3:36
  him pick stuff and put them in potato sacks and pillowcases.
• 3:40
  And we'd sit out there on the front porch for hours shelling
• 3:44
  peas and selling cantaloupes on the side of the road.
• 3:47
  It was like the best time of my life.
• 3:50
  But we also grew up on a lot of deer meat.
• 3:52
  My family's avid hunters, all of them.
• 3:55
  Our kids, my parents, everyone has taken 1 down except for me.
• 4:00
  Really. Is that because of your tender
• 4:03
  heart or is it okay? Okay, I figured that.
• 4:08
  Nobody ever wanted to take me in the deer stand because I would
• 4:11
  sit here and do this or I would tell my dad, you know, Daddy,
• 4:15
  please don't shoot him. And he would say, be quiet,
• 4:18
  Rick, you're going to scare the deer away.
• 4:19
  And I would get in trouble and sometimes I'd get left back at
• 4:23
  the deer camp by myself. We've haunted out in West TX
• 4:26
  because nobody wanted. Because I would cry.
• 4:27
  I would be so heartbroken. But I'd have no problem cooking
• 4:31
  it. I just didn't want to see that.
• 4:33
  Process now. Hey, I think that makes sense.
• 4:36
  It makes sense. I get it.
• 4:38
  I mean, not my wife. My wife is the same way.
• 4:41
  She's like when I don't hunt anymore, I used to hunt and
• 4:45
  she's like, I can't believe you want to kill Bambi.
• 4:47
  I'm like, I don't want to kill Bambi.
• 4:49
  I just want to eat it. No, I never.
• 4:52
  I mean my dad made us learn how to skin it.
• 4:54
  I don't have a problem doing that.
• 4:55
  Like processing mild meat skin in it and field dressing.
• 4:59
  That's not an issue. I just don't want to be the
• 5:01
  cause of it. Go into that next step.
• 5:06
  Right. I get it.
• 5:07
  You you have do have and it's guilty as a Toledo bin boy and
• 5:12
  growing up there, this explains your accent.
• 5:16
  Like that's why you were you have an accent like I do.
• 5:21
  I call it a N Louisiana southern accent.
• 5:23
  It's a good thing. It's a there's nothing wrong
• 5:25
  with it. It's an East Texas Piney woods
• 5:28
  kind of accent, which is totally a great thing and it makes sense
• 5:34
  to me now. That's where you got it from
• 5:36
  you, you grew up in that area. That's where I grew up, so I get
• 5:41
  it. Totally.
• 5:42
  I don't think I've noticed this about you before.
• 5:44
  Yeah, I mean, we just spent some.
• 5:47
  Every summer, my granny would come pick all my little cousins
• 5:50
  up and we'd ride in her station wagon in the very back, take the
• 5:53
  four hour trip from Houston out there to take them in Longview
• 5:56
  and just stay there for the whole summer.
• 5:59
  And my mom, you know, she cooked supper every night.
• 6:02
  I mean, there was hardly a time where we went out to eat that
• 6:05
  often. My mom always cooked too.
• 6:08
  She always cooked and made my daddy his plate and took it to
• 6:12
  him and that's kind of how I am with Johnny.
• 6:15
  That's what I get the most hate about is fixing his plate.
• 6:20
  It's so silly, goofy, goofy stuff.
• 6:23
  Were you always comfortable in the kitchen or did that come
• 6:28
  later in life? I was always, really, I always
• 6:31
  knew I wanted to learn how to cook.
• 6:33
  I used to watch Justin Wilson with my dad all the time when I
• 6:36
  was a kid. And Emeril Lagasse.
• 6:38
  So I always knew I wanted to cook and I was pretty
• 6:42
  comfortable cooking. I just knew that I had to have
• 6:46
  some skills because at one point my life, all I knew how to
• 6:49
  season with was garlic. And it would it, it could
• 6:52
  literally run a vampire away. And my, my parents had to say,
• 6:55
  Rick, you've got to stop using that garlic honey.
• 6:58
  The whole house smells like garlic.
• 7:00
  What do you think influenced the heavy garlic?
• 7:03
  Was it Emeril or was it Rachael Ray?
• 7:05
  Did you watch a lot of Rachael Ray?
• 7:07
  She would go heavy-handed on on garlic.
• 7:09
  I really didn't. Yeah.
• 7:12
  I really didn't watch her a lot. I don't know why.
• 7:15
  I guess that's just, I, I don't know, I just used to pour a butt
• 7:21
  ton of garlic in everything. And I felt so bad because my
• 7:24
  parents would eat it and I thought it was, you know, pretty
• 7:27
  good. And one day my dad was like,
• 7:28
  honey, you, you cannot keep putting this much garlic.
• 7:31
  And it goes, Ricky, the whole damn house smells like garlic
• 7:33
  honey. And it hurt my feelings at first
• 7:35
  because nobody wanted to eat it. But then when everybody else is
• 7:39
  like, Ricky, there's a lot of garlic in that, like too much
• 7:42
  garlic powder. So I just had to, like, learn
• 7:45
  over time. That was when I was about 14 or
• 7:48
  15 years old. I'll never forget that day,
• 7:50
  ever. I bet you won't.
• 7:53
  So is that the first thing that you remember cooking on your
• 7:57
  own? Was was something using using
• 7:59
  heavy garlic powder? That the spaghetti.
• 8:01
  That's what I made was spaghetti.
• 8:03
  But the first thing I remember cooking by myself was tin bean
• 8:06
  soup with my dad's sister. So what is that exactly?
• 8:11
  It's pretty much like it's a lentil soup bag and it comes
• 8:15
  with like a ham seasoning packet.
• 8:17
  And my aunt had four kids, so she always cooked like, I cook
• 8:22
  what we consider like, poor folks food, you know?
• 8:25
  Have you heard of that? I have, yes.
• 8:27
  Was like beans and cornbread and, you know, just true
• 8:31
  Southern stuffed fried chicken, mashed potatoes, macaroni and
• 8:34
  cheese, just simple basic southern dishes.
• 8:38
  And she always made that all the time because she worked
• 8:41
  graveyard shifted a chemical plant so she would make a huge
• 8:44
  pot of that. And anytime we were over on the
• 8:46
  weekend, we ate that for breakfast, lunch and dinner so
• 8:50
  nobody else could cook and, you know, potentially burn the house
• 8:52
  down. That's the first thing I learned
• 8:53
  how to cook. If someone wanted to understand
• 8:56
  your cooking roots, what dish would represent that the best?
• 9:00
  Is that it? Would you say that's it?
• 9:01
  No, I would probably say deer chili.
• 9:04
  OK. Deer chili and probably like
• 9:08
  tamales, I've made those a lot. My dad made that.
• 9:12
  My mom made chili all the time. And that's one thing that I'm
• 9:16
  kind of known for is my chili. Oh yes.
• 9:20
  I mean, I know it's everyone says, oh, it's just basic chili,
• 9:23
  but I mean, I've had people say that it's delicious so.
• 9:27
  What do you think makes your chili stand out?
• 9:29
  I think the fact that I know it sounds gross, but I think the
• 9:34
  fact that I used my, the tomatoes I'd use usually I use
• 9:38
  like whole tomatoes and you know, of course, washing my
• 9:40
  hands because you don't want to be nasty, boiling the tomatoes a
• 9:43
  little bit and then actually using my hands to squeeze them
• 9:47
  into the chili. Now if I'm making like a quick,
• 9:50
  real quick recipe, I'll use canned chilies with no sodium.
• 9:53
  For me, that's The thing is no sodium because when you make
• 9:56
  chili, you use the chili powder, paprika, garlic and already has
• 10:01
  salt content in there and it can make it too salty.
• 10:04
  But that's that's one thing I do do.
• 10:07
  If you're from Texas, you better know how to make a Dang good
• 10:10
  chili. Yes.
• 10:11
  Just going to go ahead and throw this out there.
• 10:13
  It's not even a part of the Tigs blitz.
• 10:16
  Let's talk about them beans. Let's talk about it.
• 10:19
  I put beans in lime and I get so much hate for it.
• 10:24
  But the reason I do that is because it feeds a lot of
• 10:28
  people. You know what I mean?
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  And one thing about me is whenever I was younger, I was
• 10:33
  always nominated by everybody to host and cook Thanksgiving and
• 10:38
  Christmas. Or if there was a birthday
• 10:41
  party, everyone would say, call Little Ricky and ask Little
• 10:43
  Ricky. You know, she can cook.
• 10:44
  And you know the text in. And it was always what?
• 10:47
  We'll come out there and we'll come help you.
• 10:48
  And I mean, I'm cooking by myself because I, it bothers me
• 10:52
  when people are in the kitchen with me when I'm trying to cook.
• 10:55
  I don't know why I'd rather you Santa sing and just wash dishes
• 10:58
  as I'm using them. But I had to learn eventually
• 11:01
  over time. Like golly, y'all don't need to
• 11:04
  make chili. And there's 15 of y'all and six
• 11:08
  of y'all are in the high school football team.
• 11:09
  We're going to put beans in this, you know, just make it go
• 11:13
  a little bit further. Same thing with chicken
• 11:15
  dumplings. That's another thing that I make
• 11:19
  that is really, really good was my granny, my grandma's recipe,
• 11:23
  and when I would make that, it was mostly ton of dumplings with
• 11:26
  a teeny bit of chicken because everybody wanted the dumplings
• 11:29
  instead. Well, I mean, the dumplings are
• 11:32
  the best part. The chicken is just kind.
• 11:34
  The chicken is definitely not the star of the show in chicken
• 11:37
  and dumplings, correct? Let's talk about how the Blue
• 11:41
  Collar Chef actually started. At some point you decided to hit
• 11:46
  the record button and start sharing your cooking online.
• 11:50
  Where? Where did the name Blue Collar
• 11:52
  Chef come from? You know, at first when I
• 11:55
  started it, it was Ricky's recipes and then as I said, my
• 11:59
  kids are actually the ones that told me you need to get on
• 12:03
  TikTok and start cooking on the Internet.
• 12:06
  And I was terrified. I was like, ain't no way I am
• 12:09
  not getting on the Internet. And I think what they were
• 12:13
  trying to say without saying it is my one day whenever you're
• 12:16
  not here, we need to go back and learn how to cook what you made.
• 12:20
  I think that's what they're trying to tell me.
• 12:22
  And so at first I just started filming like my pots and pans.
• 12:26
  I wouldn't really get on camera. And then my kids are like, mom,
• 12:29
  why don't you put yourself on camera so we can see?
• 12:32
  And I it start off as a hobby and then it kind of just slowly
• 12:35
  and grew and grew and grew. What made you comfortable enough
• 12:38
  to finally say, OK, I'm going, I'm going to post this first
• 12:41
  video? It was just.
• 12:43
  For my kids, yeah. For my kids, they wanted to see
• 12:48
  me and have like a memory and stuff, you know, because my dad
• 12:52
  passed away when he was 50. He passed away almost 19 years
• 12:57
  ago. And him and my kids were
• 12:59
  extremely, extremely close. And you know, we, we have
• 13:04
  pictures of him and the kids together, but they were so
• 13:06
  little when he died. They, they don't, they remember
• 13:11
  him, but they wish they had like pictures and memories and videos
• 13:14
  and they don't. And now technology has grown so
• 13:16
  much. That's what my kids are saying.
• 13:18
  Mom, we want to have videos of you cooking.
• 13:21
  And then it came into, why don't you put dad in your video so we
• 13:23
  can see you and dad and cooking with dad on camera.
• 13:28
  So that's how that kind of happened.
• 13:29
  OK, well, that's that's fun, isn't it?
• 13:32
  Crazy Kids make you do the darndest things.
• 13:35
  How many? How many children do you have?
• 13:37
  Three. Are they all grown?
• 13:39
  All of my youngest, our youngest one, just turned 18.
• 13:42
  Yes, yeah, I. Know, and she's graduated high
• 13:47
  school. Very nice, very nice.
• 13:50
  When did you start to realize that people were actually
• 13:53
  watching what you're putting out there and following along?
• 13:56
  Probably when I would have people private message me and
• 14:01
  tell me, you know, I just want to tell you, thank you for
• 14:05
  showing how to cook this. You know, like I have one
• 14:10
  follower that messaged me a lot and he's a widow and he has four
• 14:14
  boys, 12 is his oldest son, I believe.
• 14:19
  And he messaged me still all the time and says I made this for my
• 14:22
  kids last night. It was so good.
• 14:25
  Thank you for sharing this. And they I know I don't never
• 14:27
  like respond to them and tag their name because people want
• 14:30
  privacy. You know, if they wanted it to
• 14:32
  be known, they would comment on my video.
• 14:34
  But when people started reaching out and telling me, thank you so
• 14:38
  much for sharing this with me. I'm a single parent and I've had
• 14:42
  a hard time buying groceries or finding stuff to feed my kids.
• 14:45
  But I've made I've made this and I fed it to my kids and they
• 14:49
  loved it. And I had leftovers.
• 14:51
  And the next day I added this to it like you said, and my kids
• 14:55
  loved it. So when they started telling me
• 14:56
  they were saving money and they didn't have any idea, it kind of
• 15:00
  made me want to keep going and just say, you know, I can.
• 15:05
  I was given a gift from my past struggles where I can show
• 15:08
  people now how to live on hard times nowadays.
• 15:14
  You know, that was really, that was really what it was just to
• 15:16
  keep going. And as it got more comfortable
• 15:19
  and learn to like, ignore things and focus on the positive
• 15:23
  comments about it, it became just so much easier.
• 15:26
  Now I don't even care. I'm like, you know, I found this
• 15:28
  yellow sticker chicken for $2.00.
• 15:30
  We're cooking this for supper tonight.
• 15:32
  You know, they can save you money.
• 15:34
  That's what we're going to do is save money.
• 15:36
  Who doesn't like saving money? I do you know.
• 15:39
  Amen for me, especially these days.
• 15:43
  Yes, right now, if there's a rib eye steak on the left and
• 15:47
  there's rib eye steak on the right and this one's 40 bucks
• 15:50
  and this one has a yellow sticker where it's 12, I'm going
• 15:54
  to get this $12.00 one because it's just the same.
• 15:56
  And I'm going to cook it tonight.
• 15:57
  I wasn't planning on it, but now I'm going to have steak tonight.
• 16:01
  That's the things that really touched my heart.
• 16:04
  And I had an older lady that reached out to me that she was
• 16:07
  the first one that made me cry. And she had said that her
• 16:10
  husband had died. And you know, sometimes people
• 16:13
  you can develop like a relationship with them.
• 16:16
  Sincerely with your following. And she had told me that her
• 16:19
  husband had passed away. She's having a hard time on
• 16:22
  Social Security on a fixed income and she was not able to
• 16:26
  afford groceries. And she was telling me she's
• 16:28
  like, I never, ever thought to take ground chicken and replace
• 16:33
  that with beef. Because I did a video on how you
• 16:36
  can take ground chicken, which is very cheap and season it a
• 16:39
  certain way where your kids won't know that it's not
• 16:42
  hamburger meat. You know, it's all about how you
• 16:44
  season it and you can show people.
• 16:46
  And then when things like that started coming, I told my
• 16:49
  husband, I said, this is this is what I want to do.
• 16:53
  Like I don't want to cook fancy. I don't.
• 16:55
  I just want to be me and be comfortable with it and not
• 16:59
  worry about anybody else. Because if I can help someone
• 17:01
  else, especially right now I spent at this grocery store,
• 17:04
  that to me is a blessing to be able to help other people.
• 17:06
  That's what I found that your message has always been about
• 17:09
  since I started following you. You, and I mean this sincerely,
• 17:14
  and, and I don't know you well at all beyond social media, but
• 17:18
  I think you're one of the nicest people on social media that I've
• 17:21
  come across. You're just so kind.
• 17:23
  You have a big heart and it shows.
• 17:25
  It shows in everything that you do.
• 17:27
  Yes, I'm sensitive. Like I don't like mean people.
• 17:31
  I mean I was bullied all through school and it's like now I'm
• 17:34
  pushing 46 and you are still being bullies.
• 17:36
  Like stop. Let's talk about your social
• 17:39
  media growth because building an audience on line does not happen
• 17:44
  overnight. Was there like a video that
• 17:48
  really took off that kind of got you moving faster?
• 17:52
  Yes, it was a buttermilk biscuit video of all things in the
• 17:56
  world. Really.
• 17:58
  Yes. And I was drugged through the
• 18:00
  mud back and forth. Oh my God over that video.
• 18:04
  It was in. I literally woke up one day and
• 18:06
  I'm not even kidding you. I jumped from maybe 12,000
• 18:11
  followers to maybe 2829 thousand followers all in one night.
• 18:18
  And I woke up, yes, I thought there was a glitch and I texted
• 18:21
  my friend Rachel and I said Rachel.
• 18:23
  I said dude something is going on with my TikTok or my Facebook
• 18:27
  what's happening? And she was like let me go look.
• 18:29
  And she said girl, it's your buttermilk biscuit video that
• 18:32
  you did. And Oh my God there was over
• 18:34
  1000 comments on there. It was insane.
• 18:37
  What did it? What?
• 18:39
  What do you think it was? Because I didn't shake my
• 18:41
  buttermilk good enough. I swear my buttermilk was
• 18:48
  obviously spoiled. I didn't shake it good enough.
• 18:51
  It looked like water. This is not buttermilk biscuits.
• 18:57
  Anything that you can imagine. It was every sweet little
• 19:01
  elderly lady that wanted to tell me that my buttermilk was rotten
• 19:05
  or spoiled. And what happened is I prepped
• 19:07
  everything to set up take my video and I did shake it when I
• 19:10
  took it out of the refrigerator. I set it on the counter and by
• 19:14
  the time I got to it, it had done settled.
• 19:16
  Right. So when I poured it, it was
• 19:19
  liquid, thin, rotten and spoiled and they would never make
• 19:23
  anything I cooked ever. That's the video that done it.
• 19:28
  Wow. I mean it.
• 19:30
  I mean, it tells you something, though.
• 19:32
  I mean, I, I little inside secret, little inside baseball.
• 19:37
  I know that some content creators that I've talked to,
• 19:41
  when they have something like that happened, they do it over
• 19:45
  and over again. Just.
• 19:48
  You have to. Yeah.
• 19:50
  Why? Why the heck wouldn't you?
• 19:52
  Right. And at first it made me cry
• 19:54
  because some of the comments were so brutal.
• 19:57
  And I was just like, I texted my friend Amber and Rachel and I
• 20:00
  was like, I don't want to do this no more like this.
• 20:02
  And was like, girl, you better get on there and you better keep
• 20:05
  on posting. Don't let them get to you.
• 20:07
  And I was like, they're calling me all these names and they're
• 20:09
  picking apart my looks. And it was awful.
• 20:14
  People are. Horrible, I know.
• 20:17
  They can hide behind that keyboard and they awfully brave,
• 20:21
  you know good and well they would never say it to your face.
• 20:24
  Oh, not ever. None of that.
• 20:29
  Well, I mean, we might as well talk about these little trolls a
• 20:32
  little bit. What do you think is what's the
• 20:35
  funniest or the strangest comment that somebody's left on
• 20:40
  one of your videos? That I need to go by my husband
• 20:44
  some soap and he needs to take a bath.
• 20:48
  Now do they not understand what Mr. Johnny does for a living?
• 20:53
  I don't think so because he is a Superintendent for a
• 20:56
  construction company. He's and at that same company,
• 21:00
  if a driver is out, he also hauls in dump, granite, gravel
• 21:04
  or bobtail. He also is their diesel mechanic
• 21:10
  and he also like meets with the county and the city and things
• 21:13
  like that. So on days when he's working,
• 21:15
  turning wrenches, yes, his hands, they do look nasty.
• 21:19
  And I actually made a follow up video and went through my house
• 21:22
  and showed all the bottles of soap that's all over the house.
• 21:25
  I remember I saw that video. Yeah, I know.
• 21:27
  I remember it. That was probably that.
• 21:30
  There's one of them and the strangest thing I ever got.
• 21:34
  I'm trying to think. Let me see.
• 21:39
  They say that he sounds like Sam Elliott, a lot of the women, but
• 21:44
  he reminds them of Sam Elliott. That's a compliment.
• 21:47
  That's a. Compliment for sure.
• 21:50
  And a lot of the women that like I know the followers that I'm
• 21:53
  close with, they say Miss Ricky, no offense, but your husband, he
• 21:56
  reminds me of Sam Elliott and he also has colored eyes.
• 22:00
  And I'm like, that means you're zooming out my video, ma'am, to
• 22:02
  see. Calm down, lady, Calm down.
• 22:07
  Yeah. I can tell you the strangest
• 22:10
  thing, the strangest thing ever was I was doing a cooking video
• 22:15
  and somebody like screenshotted my video and zoomed in and asked
• 22:21
  me who was taking a specific type of prescription medication
• 22:25
  that was sitting on my counter. Right.
• 22:28
  Wow, babe. Yes.
• 22:32
  That was crazy. Insane.
• 22:35
  It was. It totally blew my mind because
• 22:37
  I was like, who does that? Like I don't do that.
• 22:39
  Like I'll see a cute decoration and I'll even comment and say
• 22:42
  please don't think I'm weird. But where did you get that
• 22:45
  little statue from? It is so cute, but not
• 22:47
  somebody's medicine. That's crazy.
• 22:49
  It would be like zooming in, like on the mail and being like,
• 22:53
  well, what were you sending to Ralph Emerson or whoever he was
• 22:57
  like, you're weird. How did that happen?
• 23:00
  Like now I have to take a permanent marker and like
• 23:02
  scribble out my name because people will comment.
• 23:05
  I did a video and someone commented and said Oh my God, my
• 23:09
  cousin or so and so lives in the same town as you do and I'm like
• 23:12
  the address label. Oh my gosh, it's weird.
• 23:15
  Yeah, that is insane. People are people are crazy out
• 23:19
  there. You have to remember all that
• 23:20
  stuff. There's a pro tip if you ever
• 23:23
  are starting to shoot content, be very aware of what all you
• 23:27
  have around you. I am very aware now, extremely
• 23:31
  aware because I don't put my kids on social media And I I
• 23:34
  mean, that's they're, they're grown and they have their own
• 23:36
  private lives, You know, we're a blended family, but I don't put
• 23:39
  any of them on social media at all.
• 23:41
  But yeah, I've learned to hide like family photos and stuff
• 23:44
  because people weird. Have you ever responded to a
• 23:49
  comment that was kind of a trolley kind of comment and it
• 23:52
  actually ended up turning into a positive interaction?
• 23:57
  I have, yes. That's good.
• 23:59
  How'd you defuse that one? Well, I had weight loss surgery
• 24:04
  almost four years ago and I've lost a pretty good amount of
• 24:07
  weight and I've had struggles and issues with maintaining
• 24:14
  healthy weight. So I was I talk about it on
• 24:18
  social media so I don't mind discussing it here.
• 24:20
  But I was diagnosed with an eating disorder in December of
• 24:23
  2024 because I got way too thin. I was malnourished and have a
• 24:29
  lot of health problems. So I had to start focusing on
• 24:34
  eating more because I was like 126 lbs and I'm 5 foot 4.
• 24:39
  And I was supposed to go in and have like, you know, a little
• 24:42
  mommy mini mommy makeover. And my doctor cancelled it and
• 24:45
  was like I there is no way, you know, you're too teeny, you're
• 24:49
  unhealthy, you're dehydrated, all these problems.
• 24:52
  So I was like, well, to keep myself focused on starting to
• 24:56
  eat better and put on weight. I'm going to start showing my
• 25:00
  like my plate for the day. And I had a lady that had the
• 25:04
  same weight loss surgery. She came out and she said there
• 25:07
  is, she said I've had weight loss surgery almost 10 years ago
• 25:10
  and there is no way I could eat that much food.
• 25:14
  You're going to get fat again. And it bothered me, but I took
• 25:18
  some time because naturally you kind of want to come back and be
• 25:22
  a little bit ugly, sure, but I. Natural reaction.
• 25:26
  Yeah, yeah. But I don't like doing that on
• 25:28
  my social media. I like to keep it positive and
• 25:31
  just happy on there as best as I can.
• 25:33
  So the only thing I did was I waited till the next day and I
• 25:36
  did like a get ready with me video and I put her little
• 25:39
  comment in the bubble, but I did, I did block out her name
• 25:42
  and her picture because I think that's mean, you know, just to
• 25:46
  me, some people deserve it, but not that one.
• 25:48
  And I just explained to her, I said, I just want to tell you
• 25:51
  thank you for saying that because I've been in recovery
• 25:55
  now for almost a year from being diagnosed with an eating
• 25:59
  disorder. I've put on 8 healthy pounds in
• 26:02
  a year and I'm better and my blood work is better.
• 26:05
  My nutrition levels are so much better.
• 26:07
  And I said, I looked at your page and I see that you're going
• 26:10
  through some things with your family and I'm going to pray for
• 26:13
  you. And that's pretty much how I
• 26:15
  left it. And she did reach out to me and
• 26:17
  apologize, but I didn't like to say her name.
• 26:19
  But she knew because she's still is out there, you know, so.
• 26:23
  What is some advice that you would give somebody that's was
• 26:26
  thinking about starting a cooking page, but they were
• 26:29
  worried about that criticism? I tell I have a lot of people
• 26:32
  that reached out to me and say I wish I could post my content
• 26:37
  like you do but I'm so scared to be on camera.
• 26:40
  Either you know their their own personal opinion they don't want
• 26:43
  to be on camera and I tell them all the time.
• 26:45
  Then just start posting and videoing your food, like make a
• 26:49
  video and do a voiceover. Just practice at it.
• 26:51
  Show your food and your pots and pans.
• 26:54
  And then eventually, you know, just come out and I'm like, do
• 26:56
  we mean to you? Like tag me, you know, tag me
• 26:59
  and I'll tag a few other people and you know, we'll stick up for
• 27:01
  you. Like just do it.
• 27:02
  And I have told them just be yourself.
• 27:05
  That's the most important thing. Don't think out a script in your
• 27:09
  head of what you're going to say and don't like, you know, that
• 27:15
  influencer voice. I'm I'm not being disrespectful.
• 27:17
  Don't do that. Like just be yourself.
• 27:21
  You know, sometimes I stutter on videos because I get nervous and
• 27:24
  you sort of clip it out and I don't care.
• 27:25
  I'm just like, and I just go on, you know?
• 27:28
  And I tell them people want to see real authentic people.
• 27:32
  And I tell them all the time. Like my friend Sylvia, I tell
• 27:36
  her all the time, Sylvia, there are more people out there in
• 27:39
  this world just like you than you think.
• 27:42
  Not everybody is this pristine fancy thing, and if you are,
• 27:48
  that's great, but there's people like us too, where you can just
• 27:51
  be yourself and people are drawn to that.
• 27:53
  The thing about food is the community that it drives.
• 27:56
  And as you know, there's no better place than Louisiana with
• 28:01
  doing it. And all of these events that are
• 28:03
  around here, they're great everywhere too, all across the
• 28:05
  country, not not just here, but I believe food is celebrated
• 28:09
  just a tinge bit more in Louisiana than the rest of the
• 28:13
  world. Like it's just, it's almost
• 28:15
  every day. I mean, if you look at Rusty's
• 28:18
  social media, it's like that dude's off cooking somewhere
• 28:21
  every single day of the week. It's not just weekends and
• 28:24
  stuff. It's it's amazing.
• 28:26
  And I think when you love cooking so much and your heart
• 28:29
  is into it, you just, it just comes.
• 28:32
  It's like a passion. Like I'm not a chef.
• 28:34
  Like I've never been to culinary school.
• 28:36
  I learned how to cook because, you know, we fell on hard times
• 28:40
  and I had to figure out how to feed a bunch of people with
• 28:43
  hardly any food for many years. And it was a rough time of my
• 28:47
  life. It was a hard, hard, hard time
• 28:52
  in 2019 with me and Johnny. I mean, it was very hard.
• 28:56
  And that's where kind of it kicked in where we have to use
• 29:00
  what we have. My husband got run over by
• 29:03
  cattle at work. He was loading up, He hauled
• 29:06
  cattle for a while. He came off the road as an over
• 29:09
  the road truck driver hauling flatbed.
• 29:11
  The kids was getting older and he was like, I'm really tired of
• 29:13
  being going over the road. I'm going to try to haul cattle
• 29:17
  and, you know, use my truck and trailer and start hauling
• 29:19
  cattle. So he did.
• 29:20
  And he was loading cattle in the chute early one morning out
• 29:23
  there and run. And when he opened up the gate,
• 29:27
  one of the cows got spooked and either 13 or 14 head just come
• 29:31
  running down the chute. And he got ran over and
• 29:34
  trampled. And he was trampled probably for
• 29:37
  about 20 minutes before the barnhand heard him screaming for
• 29:42
  help. And he ended up breaking his
• 29:44
  left leg in nine different places.
• 29:48
  And he was rushed to the trauma unit.
• 29:50
  He had surgery. He was in the hospital for a
• 29:53
  long time. And then he got sick.
• 29:56
  So they took him to the hospital.
• 29:58
  He had pneumonia. Probably about 6, maybe 6 or 8
• 30:01
  weeks after that happened. That doctor there in town looked
• 30:04
  at his leg and said, you're sick, but you've also got a
• 30:07
  horrible infection. This rod in your leg is the
• 30:11
  wrong size and your body is fighting this.
• 30:13
  So he had to go back and have that rod taken out, Oh my Lord.
• 30:18
  And a brand new one put in so he couldn't walk for almost 2
• 30:23
  years. I was working full time at the
• 30:26
  time, and it sounds so crazy to say that he could not have had
• 30:30
  that accident at a better time because it was summertime, so
• 30:34
  our two youngest kids were out of school for the summer, so
• 30:36
  they stayed home with Johnny and Johnny was going to physical
• 30:39
  therapy. We had land cattle, pigs.
• 30:43
  We lost almost everything. I mean, everything.
• 30:48
  I had just bought that car and I can't tell you how many times I
• 30:52
  drove that car to the end of our property and parked it at a deer
• 30:55
  stand because they were going to come and repossess my car.
• 30:58
  Because when school went back, he couldn't be home alone
• 31:02
  because he couldn't stand, walk, do anything.
• 31:06
  He was pretty much hooked and braced like from his kneecap all
• 31:10
  the way down to his toes. Jeez.
• 31:13
  So it was, it was horrible. And he was on Workman.
• 31:18
  I had to quit my job to take care of him and he was on
• 31:21
  Workman's comp. And you know, I'm just going to
• 31:24
  stay at Workman's Comp, Doesn't pay nothing at all.
• 31:27
  We ended up losing our land, our home.
• 31:30
  We actually lived in a hotel for a good while with our kids so
• 31:35
  they could just stay in the school district that they were
• 31:37
  in. And I'm telling you, it was such
• 31:39
  a hard, harsh time to where now we're kind of staying in this.
• 31:44
  You know, a hotel had two beds and a kitchen in there, but
• 31:46
  still you go from having 48 acres, 2 stock tanks, you're
• 31:51
  hunting off your land, you're growing your own food.
• 31:53
  And literally within a phone call and five months passed,
• 31:58
  it's, I'm sorry it's gone. And there's nothing that you can
• 32:02
  do to get it back. All that work and all that time
• 32:06
  and all that money that you've put into it, it's gone.
• 32:11
  And I think that's why I just, I'm, I'm happy with life now
• 32:15
  because we had to work our butts off to get back everything that
• 32:18
  we lost. And now it's like our
• 32:21
  refrigerator is the same refrigerator how we got married.
• 32:24
  It is 10 years old. My washer and dryer.
• 32:26
  I like my life the way it is because I have seen first hand
• 32:29
  what it feels like to be going on the road 8 weeks at a time
• 32:33
  for me to work 50-60 hours a week, have all these nice fancy
• 32:37
  things and then a phone call. Ma'am, we have your husband and
• 32:41
  we're taking him to the trauma unit.
• 32:44
  It's gone. So that's how it kind of
• 32:46
  learned. We have these kids to feed and
• 32:49
  us with very little money. What are we going to do?
• 32:52
  So I just learned how to make something out of nothing, you
• 32:56
  know, and I'm not ashamed of that.
• 32:57
  And you know, him and I, we've, we cried many, many nights about
• 33:01
  it. It was so awful because, you
• 33:04
  know, he was 45. I was in my late 30s and we felt
• 33:08
  so bad for the kids and stuff and we were like, how did this
• 33:11
  happen to us? Like what do we do wrong?
• 33:13
  Why is this keep happening to us?
• 33:15
  So the things that I went through that used to hurt me so
• 33:19
  bad make me feel bad now. I see that it's kind of a, it
• 33:23
  sounds like a cliche to say, but like it's a gift because I took
• 33:27
  that and I made it into what I'm doing now.
• 33:30
  I feel like that's a blessing and like a calling.
• 33:33
  I think that that is your calling.
• 33:35
  You know, I mean that story that's as strong a story as
• 33:37
  anybody's ever shared on here. So thank you for sharing that.
• 33:41
  Of. Course I, I didn't know the
• 33:43
  full, the full story of everything that had happened.
• 33:47
  Yes, it's resilience, it's perseverance.
• 33:51
  It's an unbelievable work ethic to get to get out of that bind.
• 33:58
  And I mean, I commend you both for for doing that.
• 34:02
  Let's make this a little bit happier, though, and turn it the
• 34:06
  other way. How did you and Johnny first
• 34:09
  meet? Oh, he's over there laughing.
• 34:12
  I'm going to tell the full story on here.
• 34:15
  Oh boy, here we go. I've.
• 34:17
  Been working in construction truck in an oil field my whole
• 34:22
  life. I've only had one job where I
• 34:24
  had a dress fancy for work in high heels and that's why I
• 34:27
  worked in downtown Houston through a customs brokerage
• 34:31
  firm. I got picked from there from a
• 34:34
  trucking company making way more money and I started working in
• 34:37
  the trucking company. But before I did trucking
• 34:40
  company I worked for my parents construction company.
• 34:42
  I operated AD 12 dozer and a 690 excavator.
• 34:45
  I've always had jobs where I had to have steel toes on.
• 34:49
  I'm just not very girly. But when I started working at
• 34:53
  the trucking company I was a single mom, you know, with my
• 34:56
  kids and everything. And Johnny was working there
• 35:02
  probably for about 5 years when I first started and I was the
• 35:04
  first girl dispatcher. I had 35 drivers, all men on my
• 35:10
  fleet. Now I had done been in oilfield
• 35:12
  for a while and worked around like the oilfield men and the
• 35:16
  the welders. And, you know, and there's a
• 35:18
  different community out there of men when you work in that field,
• 35:23
  you have to have your line between being a lady and not
• 35:28
  being ladylike. Does that make sense?
• 35:31
  Because I was always acting like a lady where they knew, like,
• 35:33
  you don't disrespect Miss Ricky, you be nice to Miss Ricky, you
• 35:36
  leave Miss Ricky alone, whatever.
• 35:37
  And I'd always swore to myself, I'm never going to date anybody
• 35:42
  at work ever. And the first time I actually
• 35:45
  spoke to Mr. Johnny was my very first day at work.
• 35:49
  And my boss told me, he said all the drivers are going to call
• 35:52
  every morning, do a check call. You need to ask them where
• 35:56
  they're at, if they're empty or loaded and what their ETA is and
• 35:59
  log it on the log book. Got it.
• 36:02
  So I'm going through my list and I'm looking, I'm looking.
• 36:04
  I'm like, well, I've got every driver written down except for
• 36:07
  truck 12. And I told my my boss, I said,
• 36:10
  well, everybody called in and checked except for truck 12.
• 36:13
  And my boss looked at me and he said, well, you better get his
• 36:15
  ass now and call him. And I'm like, yeah, you got it.
• 36:19
  I'm fixing to get on him right now because he knows he's
• 36:22
  supposed to call. So I called and it was about
• 36:27
  maybe 9:00 in the morning. And I said, I'm hi, my name is
• 36:30
  Ricky and I'm your dispatcher. You didn't do your check call
• 36:33
  this morning. And he sat there for a second
• 36:37
  and I'm like, Sir, can you hear me?
• 36:39
  He said, I don't do check calls. And he hung up on me right in my
• 36:44
  face. And I, I looked at my phone for
• 36:47
  a second and I looked at Abbas and I was like, he hung up on me
• 36:50
  and everyone started laughing. And they said, that guy doesn't
• 36:54
  have to do check calls. He's been the top driver for the
• 36:57
  last six or seven years. If Johnny calls you, there's a
• 37:01
  problem. And it was a greenhorn prank
• 37:03
  basically to see if I was going to fit in.
• 37:06
  And they told me if you can deal with rookie and you can put up
• 37:09
  with rookie, you'll make it here.
• 37:10
  That's his handle. Is rookie OK?
• 37:12
  OK. And I was like, OK, So I put in
• 37:14
  my notes. Driver is rude.
• 37:16
  So I remember truck trove is rude.
• 37:19
  I mean, I put it all in the computer.
• 37:21
  Driver is rude. So a few days later, I'm sitting
• 37:24
  there at work and I'm looking on the screen, all the trucks pull
• 37:26
  in. I see this beautiful, beautiful
• 37:29
  red Peterbilt pull in the yard. And I'm like, man, that is a
• 37:32
  really pretty truck. I love that Peterbilt.
• 37:34
  Them stacks are so nice. And then it parks and I see this
• 37:38
  guy walk in and I'm looking at him like, that's a that's a
• 37:42
  really cute driver. And I'm just kind of looking,
• 37:44
  you know, And I see him walk up towards me right in front of my
• 37:48
  desk and go behind me. And don't you know, he grabs
• 37:52
  clipboard number 12. And I'm like, that's that
• 37:56
  freaking driver that hung up in my face.
• 37:59
  And he walks over to me and he says, you must be Miss Ricky.
• 38:02
  And I said, yes, I am. And he said, well, I'm Johnny.
• 38:05
  And I said, I know who you are and it was just pretty much that
• 38:08
  was in the because I was done pissed.
• 38:10
  I was like, you were rude. You don't need to talk to me.
• 38:12
  You can get your clipboard and going about your business
• 38:15
  because you are not a nice person.
• 38:18
  The next morning I'm sitting there at work, the phone rings.
• 38:20
  I'm like, hello, this is Miss Ricky and it's good morning.
• 38:24
  Miss Ricky, this is truck 12 rookie.
• 38:27
  I'm calling in to do my check call.
• 38:29
  And every day he started doing a check call every day and then.
• 38:33
  Slowly. He kept asking me, you know, in
• 38:37
  the summertime, I bring my kids there in the summertime because
• 38:40
  I, I couldn't afford daycare. So we have like this really nice
• 38:44
  big drivers lounge and the owner would let my kids come there and
• 38:47
  hang out and they have PlayStation and TV's and snacks
• 38:51
  and stuff. And all the drivers knew me for
• 38:53
  a long time. So they'd always bring my kids
• 38:56
  stuff from everywhere. I mean candy.
• 38:59
  And in Moss Bluff, there's a place that sells quail stuffed
• 39:02
  boudin. One of my drivers named Puppy
• 39:05
  would bring my son Boo Dan and all this stuff from Louisiana.
• 39:09
  And Johnny kept asking me, why don't you let me take you out to
• 39:12
  dinner one night? And I was like, I don't date
• 39:13
  truck drivers. Like it's not ever going to
• 39:15
  happen. I don't date truck drivers.
• 39:17
  I'm not going to go out on a date with you.
• 39:18
  And he kept asking and asking, please let me just take you out
• 39:21
  to dinner one night. And if you don't like me, I
• 39:23
  promise I won't bother you again.
• 39:25
  I was like, you're going to bother me.
• 39:26
  I don't date truck drivers. And I finally told him.
• 39:29
  I said, listen, I have my kids 24/7, 365.
• 39:33
  There's no break. There's no romantic date nights
• 39:36
  like they are with me 24/7. And he said I know and I know
• 39:41
  your kids and I like your kids, just please let me take you to
• 39:44
  dinner one time. I said no.
• 39:47
  So one day I had a driver that actually spit in my face.
• 39:50
  I'm true story. Yes, he got fired, I'd hope.
• 39:55
  Yes, he got fired. He got mad and he spit in my
• 39:57
  face and I was outside the yard and I was crying and Johnny
• 39:59
  pulled in. He said what's the matter?
• 40:01
  And I told him what happened. He said, will you please let me
• 40:03
  take you out on a date tonight? And I was like, you know what?
• 40:05
  Fine. Smooth Johnny.
• 40:10
  Smooth Johnny. You already said, I said where
• 40:16
  do you want me to meet you? And he goes, I got to go get
• 40:18
  unloaded, he said. What was the truck stop name?
• 40:23
  He said, when I get unloaded, I'll call you.
• 40:25
  Can you meet me at the Flying J? And I kind of sat there for a
• 40:28
  second and I said, Oh my God, I'm about to go to a truck stop
• 40:32
  and walk up across the parking lot and go eat supper with you.
• 40:37
  So I'm, I was like, OK, so after work, you know, I went home and
• 40:40
  I got dressed and I start, he was calling me.
• 40:43
  So I'm, I'm empty. I'm, I'm fixing to head to the
• 40:45
  truck stop, meet me at the Flying J.
• 40:46
  And I was like, OK, and so I called my friend a man and I
• 40:49
  said, girl, I don't think I can do this.
• 40:51
  Like this man's asking to meet him at a truck stop.
• 40:53
  Like this is the Flying J. There ain't nothing but, you
• 40:56
  know, lot lizards that come out here and I'm not going to be
• 40:59
  caught out there. And she's like, girl, you better
• 41:01
  go have dinner with that man. And I did.
• 41:03
  I got to the Flying J and he was, we were both excited, you
• 41:07
  know, and we went ate supper that night.
• 41:09
  And ever since then, we ain't never been apart.
• 41:12
  Not one time, ever. Wow, thank you for sharing that
• 41:16
  story, that's amazing. And my kids, I mean, when they
• 41:20
  met him, they were, I mean, they were really close to my dad when
• 41:23
  he was alive. So for them meeting him, he was
• 41:26
  like, you know, the cool guy, you know, they were like mom,
• 41:30
  you know, he, my son was so excited because Johnny bought,
• 41:33
  you know, the kids like boot, the cowboy boots.
• 41:36
  My son never had a pair of those.
• 41:37
  And he just came into their lives and pretty much became
• 41:41
  like that safe spot for them. And my son was probably 10 years
• 41:47
  old. And like when I was a single
• 41:49
  mom, you know, I'm by my choice. You know, I just, there is a
• 41:52
  relationship that needed to end and it ended.
• 41:55
  And I'm so grateful and thankful I'm still alive and it ended.
• 41:58
  You know, I did survive domestic violence for extremely long time
• 42:04
  and it's just, it was a blessing that I'm here and I have my kids
• 42:07
  and that is not a part of any of our lives anymore.
• 42:10
  But I remember at the time I didn't have a lot of food at
• 42:13
  home because I couldn't afford it.
• 42:14
  You know, I work a millionaire, I work 2 jobs.
• 42:18
  I clean houses on the weekends. And you know, when Johnny
• 42:22
  started coming around, he would say, why don't you let me help
• 42:24
  you pay your bills? And I'm like, I don't need
• 42:25
  people paying my bills. I want my kids to get used to
• 42:28
  you and be dependent on you. He's like, well, I'm not just
• 42:30
  people. He's like, if I come over here
• 42:32
  on the weekends, I would like to have something to eat.
• 42:34
  I'm like, I have food in there. You know, you kind of have like
• 42:37
  that defense up a little bit where you're scared, your guard
• 42:39
  is up and you're afraid to let somebody in because of the
• 42:43
  things you've been through in your past.
• 42:45
  And one day I came home and my son ran out the front door.
• 42:49
  And he said, mom, did you know that Johnny is a millionaire?
• 42:53
  And I'm like, really? And he said, come, look, come,
• 42:56
  look, come here. And so I went in the house and
• 42:59
  he was in town. We were probably dating maybe a
• 43:01
  year by then. And he was in town.
• 43:04
  I was at work. And he took the kids to Kroger's
• 43:08
  and let them pick out whatever snack they wanted.
• 43:11
  I mean, just boxes of like, you know, the family size snacks.
• 43:15
  And all the kids got their own little choice of what they
• 43:18
  wanted for snacks. There's the whole freaking
• 43:21
  pantry. And the kitchen was full of food
• 43:24
  and me and stuff in the refrigerator in the freezer.
• 43:27
  And he said, look, mom, we we got to pick out our own snacks
• 43:30
  and they had them in their bedroom.
• 43:31
  And for me, it made me cry because I knew right then and
• 43:35
  there, like, that's something that is so important.
• 43:40
  It's not that you took them out and bought them like a video
• 43:43
  game, you know, you let them pick out what they wanted.
• 43:47
  And my kids are so excited. And the fact that my kids were
• 43:50
  like hugging him, you're like holding on to his elbow and
• 43:52
  stuff and just leaning on him. That kind of made me see, OK,
• 43:55
  it's OK, Ricky, this is going to be fine.
• 43:58
  And it just, it just started. It just took off from there.
• 44:00
  And it's been the biggest, happiest blessing for all of us.
• 44:04
  I mean, most people don't even know that we're a blended
• 44:07
  family, but we are, you know, and sometimes that's how things
• 44:11
  happen, you know, sometimes bad things happen for good reasons,
• 44:15
  I believe. The good Lord puts people in
• 44:17
  places that it's just kind of unexplainable.
• 44:21
  You know, it's kind of like, how did that, how did that happen?
• 44:26
  God did that. That's how that happened.
• 44:28
  And I believe in things like that so much.
• 44:31
  And I'm telling you, I, I prayed for a long time for just peace
• 44:34
  and comfort and to find a way because when it was just being
• 44:38
  the kids, it was very hard. And I cleaned houses and like
• 44:42
  the very upscale neighborhoods just to cover daycare.
• 44:46
  And I had to take them with me. And, you know, I even told the
• 44:49
  people I was like, I don't have anyone watch my kids on the
• 44:51
  weekends. They will be very good.
• 44:53
  They waited like in this like a foyer Boyer thing, like a lot of
• 44:58
  some houses, like they have this really pretty entryway that's
• 45:01
  like this house in my kitchen. And they would hang out there
• 45:04
  and the kids with color and, you know, play their little video
• 45:07
  games, whatever. And I would just clean houses.
• 45:09
  I did as many as I could. And it wasn't until one day
• 45:12
  Johnny told me. He said he's like, I really
• 45:14
  don't, I really don't want you clean houses anymore.
• 45:17
  And I said, well, that's how I pay my my daycare.
• 45:19
  Like I cannot afford daycare. That's how I pay it.
• 45:21
  And he was like, I really wish you'd let me help you.
• 45:24
  And I finally was like, you know, I am tired.
• 45:27
  Like I work 60 hours at the yard every day.
• 45:30
  I'm there from 6:30 AM till 6:00 at night.
• 45:33
  And then I get up and I'm working Saturday and Sunday and
• 45:35
  I know my kids are tired between school and this weekend house
• 45:39
  cleaning. And I just eventually slowly, I
• 45:41
  didn't cut people off immediately, but over time, I
• 45:43
  just, I gave it up and I gave all my clients to a friend of
• 45:47
  mine. And I just slowly was able to
• 45:50
  relax and breathe, which is a big change.
• 45:53
  You want to say hi to tick bits? Here he is.
• 45:58
  Johnny Yes, there's the man, the myth and the legend.
• 46:03
  And she's still the boss. Oh my gosh.
• 46:06
  Yeah, she is. She, you know, she, I met her.
• 46:09
  She was my boss. And I figured, well, we just
• 46:11
  will go ahead and make it legal. So I married her and she's still
• 46:14
  the boss. As she should be, brother.
• 46:19
  As she should be. She's.
• 46:20
  The boss. But Mama says goes.
• 46:22
  Oh my. Gosh, what's your favorite thing
• 46:24
  that she cooks while I got you in here?
• 46:27
  Everything. Can't y'all tell I'm fat?
• 46:29
  Oh, you are not like. I like to eat.
• 46:32
  I got to make sure he can't run away.
• 46:34
  But it there you go. One of the one of the first
• 46:38
  meals that she fixed for me when we were dating and I was on the
• 46:42
  road was I asked her. I said what what's for supper?
• 46:46
  And she was fixing chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes and
• 46:51
  corn and. Gravy.
• 46:53
  And I said, that sounds good. I said, well, I guess I'm going
• 46:57
  to sit here at this Subway and eat, pretend I'm eating chicken
• 47:00
  fried steak and and all the rest of that.
• 47:03
  So when I come home, when I got to the house for the weekend, I
• 47:10
  don't know, it was like a week or two later.
• 47:12
  That's what she fakes for me was chicken fried steak, mashed
• 47:16
  potatoes, all the figs and gravy, everything.
• 47:20
  So heck yeah, that's always been one of my favorite is.
• 47:25
  How can you beat that? That's right.
• 47:28
  Sam Elliott, ladies and gentlemen.
• 47:33
  Everybody, everybody says that, but I don't see it but.
• 47:37
  Hey, just roll with it, Johnny. It's a compliment at the highest
• 47:41
  degree. So it's been a roller coaster
• 47:45
  rides, but we make it. Y'all good people, there's zero
• 47:49
  doubts about that. Yeah, we, we can't afford not to
• 47:52
  be good people because that's right.
• 47:54
  We always try to be good people and do good by everybody and
• 47:58
  never judge anybody for anything ever, because you never know
• 48:03
  what somebody has been through. You don't know their story and
• 48:08
  it's I, I just, I don't like it when people judge other people.
• 48:13
  I, I don't like that you just, you don't know what someone's
• 48:16
  been through Somebody, you know, and I always tell my kids, y'all
• 48:19
  need to be grateful because your littlest blessing that you have
• 48:23
  like your little Nintendo or you're this or you're that, that
• 48:27
  could be some child's biggest dream.
• 48:29
  Be grateful for what you got, you know, and just, you always
• 48:33
  need to be thankful. You don't know what somebody's
• 48:34
  been through. It's awful.
• 48:36
  Some people been through the worst of terrible things, you
• 48:38
  know, And it reminds me of Rusty so much because Rusty is such a
• 48:41
  mentor to me. And I've watched his YouTube.
• 48:44
  I'm only saying this because it is on YouTube and it's on his
• 48:48
  Facebook. But here in Rusty's life, you
• 48:51
  know, he has made something of himself that is so inspiring.
• 48:56
  You know, Rusty is such a good person.
• 48:59
  And that's, I mean, if I could have that type of heart and
• 49:04
  stuff that Rusty does, my life would be 100% complete to get up
• 49:09
  every day and feed people and be there and do these disaster
• 49:14
  reliefs. That is, that is such a humble,
• 49:17
  a humble, humble person. He doesn't have to do that.
• 49:19
  He does it because you know of his of his life, and he's a good
• 49:24
  person. He's a great person and he
• 49:27
  shared that story on on on on the show with us before.
• 49:30
  Of course, you can go to watch his YouTube stuff as well.
• 49:36
  You do have that heart that you you share something that you
• 49:40
  don't. I don't think you maybe not even
• 49:42
  maybe you don't even realize it, but y'all are cut from the same
• 49:45
  cloth in a lot of sense. And and we've just heard that
• 49:48
  story, your story, Rusty's story, yet an absolutely
• 49:53
  terrible childhood to say the least.
• 49:57
  You know, I mean, and I think that somebody can, you can go
• 50:00
  one of two ways. Whenever you come across things
• 50:04
  like that, life hits you. Whatever you want to say, you
• 50:08
  can go left or you can go right. You can get way off track and
• 50:12
  lose yourself and probably eventually lose your life and
• 50:16
  everybody around you. Or you can dig in and you can
• 50:20
  keep grinding. You can keep your head down and
• 50:22
  you are determined to get yourself out of that situation.
• 50:25
  Yeah, and I've never really gone into details about, you know,
• 50:28
  when Johnny got hurt because I remember being so terrified.
• 50:33
  I'm not even kidding, when the kids started school because we
• 50:36
  were living in a hotel. Like it was a nicer hotel.
• 50:39
  I think it was one that, I mean, it was like one of those weekly
• 50:41
  pay rate hotels. And thank the good Lord we got a
• 50:45
  good discount because he had a CDL, so we got the CDL discount
• 50:49
  on it. So I mean, thankfully the kids
• 50:53
  could go down and get free breakfast, you know, and things
• 50:56
  like that. It's the little things that
• 50:57
  mattered the most of all. I'm not even kidding you, but I
• 51:01
  was terrified to send my kids registered from school because I
• 51:04
  was like, what if they find out that we're living like in a
• 51:06
  hotel? You know, what are they going to
• 51:08
  do? It was, it was horrific, but we
• 51:11
  made it. And I've always told the kids,
• 51:13
  y'all can use things in life. Eventually bad things are going
• 51:17
  to happen. It can make you or break you.
• 51:19
  And we just, I've always, I've always refused to let things
• 51:23
  like it might break me at the moment, but I'm going to use
• 51:26
  that and it's going to make me better.
• 51:28
  You know, everybody gets broken a time or two.
• 51:30
  And that was a horrible time. I mean, I've had friends of
• 51:33
  mine, even family that said, why don't you just come back to
• 51:36
  Houston? Why don't you just let him?
• 51:38
  You know, he's a grown man. And I'm like, this is my
• 51:41
  husband, Like I prayed for a man like this for so many years,
• 51:45
  like a soft gentleman that was just like my daddy, you know,
• 51:48
  and someone that loves kids and loves me and doesn't, you know,
• 51:52
  call me names and it's not going to put their hands on me.
• 51:54
  Like I prayed for this. There is no way.
• 51:56
  He is my best friend, you know, And it takes a lot of love and
• 52:02
  stuff to go from having, you know, beautiful land and two
• 52:06
  very nice stock tanks where you don't even have to really go to
• 52:09
  the grocery store because you're growing our own food there.
• 52:12
  We're processing our own chickens, not me, them.
• 52:15
  I'm not doing that. But you know, and to be able to
• 52:18
  hunt off your own land and hunt hogs to having nothing.
• 52:22
  I mean, it was it happened so fast.
• 52:25
  And that's the thing about life. I wish that people that are ugly
• 52:30
  to other people, even ugly to content creators, you'll never
• 52:34
  know. The good Lord can humble you in
• 52:36
  so many ways and I'm telling you, it happens just like that.
• 52:39
  One phone call, one diagnosis, 1 minor accident.
• 52:44
  You never know what's going to happen.
• 52:46
  You need to be nice and be sweet and use your words.
• 52:48
  Preach. Preach.
• 52:50
  I'm serious. I know you are.
• 52:52
  Well, your bio on social media, it talks a lot about Texas
• 52:56
  cooking, of course, Tex Mex and Texas BBQ.
• 53:01
  Let's talk a little bit about the great state of Texas and
• 53:04
  what makes the food culture so unique there.
• 53:08
  We talk a lot about Louisiana on here, of course.
• 53:11
  Let's talk about Texas. What?
• 53:13
  What defines Texas cooking to you?
• 53:17
  Two things really. A lot of a lot of it is brisket,
• 53:21
  brisket and BBQ. Texas BBQ to me is some of the
• 53:26
  best barbecue there is. The brisket, the smoked sausage,
• 53:31
  the ribs. I'm more of a brisket and
• 53:32
  sausage girl. I like ribs, but if I have my
• 53:34
  choice it's brisket and smoked sausage.
• 53:37
  But then there's also that other side, like where country folks,
• 53:42
  it's the chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy.
• 53:46
  Yeah, Johnny said that's what he thinks, too.
• 53:49
  That's at. East Texas coming out right
• 53:51
  there, I love. It yes, and you know, fried
• 53:54
  catfish and coleslaw. That's one thing I like to make
• 53:57
  to haven't made that in a while. But just pretty much Texas is
• 54:01
  like deep fried stuff. It's all it it's deep fried hush
• 54:06
  puppies. I mean, anything you can deep
• 54:08
  fried, it's you're going to find it in Texas.
• 54:10
  I mean, they make fried Oreos and fried twiggies down here for
• 54:14
  the the rodeo and stuff. I mean, and a fried snicker.
• 54:16
  Who thought about frying A snicker?
• 54:18
  Somebody from Texas. You really?
• 54:21
  Did You can batter it, You can fry it.
• 54:24
  Exactly. I mean, they fry everything down
• 54:26
  here, you know. So to me, that's what Texas is.
• 54:31
  There it is. There it is.
• 54:32
  I I, I, I define Texas as brisket too.
• 54:35
  I love brisket. It's my, it's my favorite thing
• 54:37
  to cook. It's my I I am maybe frankly a
• 54:40
  little obsessive with brisket and none better in the entire
• 54:45
  world than in the great state of Texas.
• 54:47
  That's just, yeah, it's just the fact.
• 54:49
  Like Mexican food. I mean, here in Central Texas
• 54:52
  there is not, there's not any good Mexican food in Central
• 54:58
  Texas. You want good?
• 55:00
  No, Sir. If you want good Mexican food,
• 55:02
  you have to go down to Houston or West TX.
• 55:07
  I mean, that's where you're going to get that good,
• 55:08
  authentic, really, really good Mexican food.
• 55:12
  I mean, Tex Mex, yes, it's good. But even the Tex Mex here is a
• 55:15
  little bit kind of different than what I grew up with back in
• 55:19
  Houston. And that's kind of how I learned
• 55:21
  how to make a lot of Mexican food that I make that I make
• 55:25
  like my tamales and my rice and beans and Charles beans and I
• 55:29
  mean enchiladas, cow tongue, things like that is from growing
• 55:34
  up in Houston. And a lot of it came from
• 55:37
  hurricane survival to be honest, because we would lose power.
• 55:41
  Like y'all know, you lose power for three or four weeks.
• 55:45
  And people down there like Texas and Louisiana just have such a a
• 55:49
  really good love relationship. When something happens in
• 55:52
  Louisiana, Texas comes out there and we come help.
• 55:55
  Same thing in Louisiana. Something happens down here.
• 55:57
  We got Cajun Navy coming to help everybody.
• 55:59
  But I'm just saying, in general, Texas and Louisiana has always
• 56:02
  been like a very good combined food culture.
• 56:06
  Brother and sister or whatever. Yes, just friends, good friends.
• 56:10
  But like y'all, when hurricanes happened, you know, y'all would
• 56:14
  just cook with what you got. And that's what we did in
• 56:17
  Houston is all the neighbors would come out and just light up
• 56:20
  their pits, light up their boilers and just make whatever
• 56:23
  we had there before, it spoiled. And it was open to everybody.
• 56:28
  It doesn't matter, you know, if you want this go down to this
• 56:31
  house, you know, just like a nice block barbecue and cookout
• 56:35
  where everyone is cooking together.
• 56:37
  And that that's what I want to do with my food truck is I want
• 56:40
  to do what Rusty does. I want to go out and help people
• 56:43
  in these hurricanes and stuff because I mean, I remember so
• 56:48
  many hurricanes. We waited on the Red Cross to
• 56:50
  come and you have hungry kids. They don't understand the truck
• 56:54
  is coming. But if you can come out there
• 56:55
  and help people and just give people a little shine of hope
• 56:59
  that you know what, I know you just lost everything, but you
• 57:01
  know, I would like to really cook for you and give you a
• 57:04
  comfort meal here. Sit down and relax.
• 57:07
  This isn't going to cost you a dime.
• 57:08
  This is this is on me. I want to do something so nice
• 57:11
  for you. What would you like?
• 57:13
  That's what I would like to do. Stuff like that as well.
• 57:16
  Let's talk about that food truck.
• 57:18
  You you've been talking about wanting to start that thing and,
• 57:22
  and what, what kind of food? Are we still too early to know
• 57:26
  exactly or do you have an idea what kind of food you want to
• 57:29
  serve? Or you got it?
• 57:30
  We want to do like different types of food.
• 57:35
  We want to do BBQ plates like once or twice a week so that we
• 57:39
  have time to like make it like brisket sandwiches, chopped
• 57:43
  brisket, potatoes, banana pudding for dessert, homemade
• 57:47
  ice cream for dessert. But I want my my platters to be
• 57:53
  named. Blue collar.
• 57:55
  Blue collar names, you know, like the greenhorn, you know.
• 58:00
  OK, OK. Yeah, yeah.
• 58:01
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would be something like that.
• 58:05
  You know, I do want to also make like chili and Frito pie, simple
• 58:08
  food that that I don't know a lot of food trucks that do like
• 58:13
  simple foods like that, you know, and if you want spicy
• 58:17
  chili, you know, we'll call it this thing.
• 58:20
  But if you are wimp like me and don't like spicy, we're going to
• 58:23
  call you. This is a safety man chili per
• 58:25
  SE, you know, because most people don't like the safety man
• 58:28
  out there on a job site. You know, so that's what we've
• 58:33
  been thinking about is like, what can we name a plate that
• 58:36
  doesn't have jalapenos like the safety man?
• 58:39
  You know, you're the greenhorn, you know, you're this and you're
• 58:42
  that. I mean just different names that
• 58:45
  people get called out there on a job site.
• 58:48
  What? What was Johnny's handle?
• 58:51
  Rookie. That has to be the spicy chili.
• 58:55
  For his whole well and the the story between my my dad and my
• 59:03
  grandparents were grandpa have always been in construction
• 59:09
  trucking something around that. That's what I grew up in and
• 59:15
  when I was little I used to go with my dad and my grandpa on
• 59:19
  the road in the summer times and stuff.
• 59:22
  My grandpa started calling me a little.
• 59:24
  This is Little Rookie. When I, when I would go with him
• 59:28
  on the road. So all the guys that old men and
• 59:32
  stuff at the coffee shops and all that, they got to start
• 59:35
  calling me Little Rookie. Nobody ever really knew my name.
• 59:38
  They knew me by Little Rookie because that's what my grandpa
• 59:42
  called me. Yeah, it's my little rookie.
• 59:44
  And then as I got older, we just dropped the little Rookie and
• 59:49
  Rookie stuck. And that I've been called that
• 59:52
  since I was probably three or four years old was little
• 59:58
  rookie. I mean, I've been out in the
• 1:00:00
  shop with my dad and my grandpa when I was my mom would go
• 1:00:05
  somewhere grandma would be busy. They would fix a pallet out in
• 1:00:10
  the shop floor and I'd lay on the pallet or sit in a car seat
• 1:00:16
  and while they was rebuilding the motor in one of the trucks
• 1:00:19
  that it went down or my. My dad would have to go work for
• 1:00:23
  the day out on one of the job sites in a dozer or a scraper or
• 1:00:28
  something. And he'd take me to work with
• 1:00:30
  him and he'd just take my car seat, leave me in my car seat
• 1:00:34
  and set me in the back corner or something in one of the dozers
• 1:00:37
  or the scrapers, whatever he was running.
• 1:00:39
  And that's why I'd sit all day long.
• 1:00:41
  And so that's, that's the stuff that I grew up in that I don't
• 1:00:46
  know anything other than that. And when I got older and got out
• 1:00:53
  of high school and decided on what I wanted to do, the deal
• 1:00:56
  was, was my dad and my grandpa was going to run pretty much the
• 1:01:00
  trucking company. And I went to school to be a
• 1:01:04
  diesel mechanic. I was going to be the mechanic.
• 1:01:07
  I was going to work in the shop, fix the trucks and all that.
• 1:01:10
  So that's I went to school to be an ASE certified diesel mechanic
• 1:01:16
  and well when I was about 141415 years old, I guess it was my one
• 1:01:26
  of the drivers had called in sick or something.
• 1:01:29
  Well I didn't have no license I was just summertime.
• 1:01:32
  My dad said I need you to take this truck and go follow this
• 1:01:37
  driver to go get it load preloaded.
• 1:01:41
  Well before all of that happened was I told my dad and grandpa
• 1:01:46
  all the time I want to learn to drive a truck.
• 1:01:47
  I want to learn to drive a truck.
• 1:01:48
  So my dad said, OK, you, you want to learn to drive a truck,
• 1:01:52
  I'll teach you great. Yes, that's what I want.
• 1:01:56
  Now I'm like 131415 years old and my dad said OK, my dad drove
• 1:02:03
  with 77359 with A5 and A4 had two sticks and that's what I
• 1:02:11
  learned to drive on. And so my dad kind of showed me
• 1:02:15
  and I spent, I bet I drove 1,000,000 miles out in the
• 1:02:18
  pasture in between cones before I ever got to get on the road.
• 1:02:22
  And when my dad said OK, we're going to learn to drive when he
• 1:02:26
  first I've backed up forever, he said anybody can drive forwards,
• 1:02:31
  not everybody can drive backwards.
• 1:02:34
  So you're going to learn to drive backwards.
• 1:02:35
  And once you learned, once you learn to drive a truck and
• 1:02:38
  trailer backwards, then we'll work on going forward.
• 1:02:41
  So that's what I've done up. I practiced back in jackknife
• 1:02:46
  and everything else through cones until I could do it
• 1:02:49
  without running over anything. And then my when my dad said,
• 1:02:53
  all right, now we're going to learn to drive.
• 1:02:55
  And I actually had to learn to shift this truck with two sticks
• 1:02:59
  and iron. I know a clue what I was doing.
• 1:03:01
  My dad said, all right, we're going to drive.
• 1:03:03
  Little old bitty coffee sleeper. My dad's always slept with his
• 1:03:06
  head with his pillow and everything behind the driver's
• 1:03:10
  seat. Well, when we started learning
• 1:03:12
  to drive, he'd take his pillow and he'd lay it on the passenger
• 1:03:16
  seat or the passenger side and he'd lay down and he'd prop his
• 1:03:20
  boot, his foot up on the back of the headrest of the truck.
• 1:03:24
  And he said, and he told me, he said, now every time you grind
• 1:03:27
  the gear, I'm going to kick you in the back of the head.
• 1:03:31
  And I thought, I ain't no way. He was not kidding.
• 1:03:35
  Every time I ground the gear, my dad would smack me in the back
• 1:03:38
  of the head with his boot. And about the second or third
• 1:03:41
  time of that I was like, man, trucking ain't for me.
• 1:03:44
  I don't want to do this in the morning.
• 1:03:45
  My dad said Nope. He said, you're in the seat now,
• 1:03:48
  you're going to learn to drive. Yes, Sir.
• 1:03:51
  So I actually got really good at it because I got.
• 1:03:54
  I guess you did, so you learned fast.
• 1:04:00
  So here I am at 1415 years old and my dad said so and so driver
• 1:04:05
  called out. I need you to follow one of the
• 1:04:08
  other drivers and go over and preload the truck.
• 1:04:10
  Yes Sir. So I start doing that just going
• 1:04:13
  over and preloading their trucks.
• 1:04:14
  Well then I learned where we was going time we was hauling grain
• 1:04:18
  and blood mill and stuff like that, anything in a hopper.
• 1:04:23
  So I started doing that and well I was doing that on the nights
• 1:04:28
  and weekends and stuff like that.
• 1:04:30
  I would go preload everybody's trailers for them so when they
• 1:04:33
  come in Sunday night to leave out, they was all pre loaded.
• 1:04:36
  All they'd do was get in the trucks and go.
• 1:04:40
  Well then somebody called in one time or whatever my they was
• 1:04:43
  hauled, had the 2 loads. It was going to Olathe, KS.
• 1:04:48
  I remember it like it was yesterday.
• 1:04:50
  And my dad said all right. He said I want to get you, you
• 1:04:54
  going to get in this truck and Jack I think was a guy's name.
• 1:04:58
  He said you're going to follow him and y'all going to take
• 1:05:01
  these loads to Olathe, KS. He's going to show you where to
• 1:05:04
  unload. Y'all going to go right down the
• 1:05:06
  street, you're going to reload and you're going to come right
• 1:05:08
  back here. OK, so we've done that for about
• 1:05:14
  four or five times I guess. And then my dad, one Sunday I
• 1:05:19
  come in and he said all right, you're going to take this load
• 1:05:21
  and you're going to go to Olathe, KS.
• 1:05:24
  And I was like OK, well who am I following?
• 1:05:27
  He said he ain't following nobody.
• 1:05:29
  You're going by yourself. He said this is how you remember
• 1:05:32
  how y'all been running. Yes Sir.
• 1:05:34
  All right, that's you. Go the same way.
• 1:05:37
  If you have any problems, find a pay phone, stop and call me.
• 1:05:41
  Yes Sir. So here I am, 15 years old and
• 1:05:44
  I'm in a truck and I'm hauling loads from Copperas Cove, TX to
• 1:05:48
  Olathe, KS. Unloading, reloading and coming
• 1:05:51
  right back. Wow.
• 1:05:53
  So you know what? You can't do that anymore.
• 1:05:55
  No. You'd be, you'd be thrown under
• 1:05:58
  the jail. Not yeah.
• 1:06:00
  It'd make the national news, that's for damn sure.
• 1:06:03
  But that was my, I mean, that was, that was how I started and
• 1:06:07
  that all started because I wanted to be a diesel mechanic.
• 1:06:10
  Well, then it got to where I'd drive truck and I'd work on the
• 1:06:14
  trucks and it just one thing I left to another and that's what
• 1:06:18
  I've done my entire life. I've either worked on them, I've
• 1:06:21
  drove them, I've operated equipment.
• 1:06:23
  They and anything that don't have wheels and tracks on it I
• 1:06:26
  can't operate or run. I mean, you've literally been a
• 1:06:30
  part of it from the day you were born.
• 1:06:34
  It is built in. That is in your DNA.
• 1:06:37
  That's all I know. I don't know anything else.
• 1:06:39
  You know, a lot of people say, well, I used to be an
• 1:06:42
  electrician or I used to be a plumber or I used to be a
• 1:06:47
  handyman or I used to work on appliances and stuff.
• 1:06:50
  I I can't say that because construction companies and
• 1:06:57
  trucks is all I've ever done out.
• 1:06:59
  It's all I've ever been around. It's all I know.
• 1:07:02
  I don't know how to do anything else.
• 1:07:04
  Right, right. Well, I mean, and then to tie
• 1:07:08
  all that back into the to the food truck, you've been around
• 1:07:11
  these industries, blue, truly blue collar industries that have
• 1:07:16
  all of these names. I've worked in some blue collar
• 1:07:18
  industry stuff in in my life. I think having a dish called the
• 1:07:22
  greenhorn, that's brilliant and just whatever else.
• 1:07:27
  Our dishes and stuff, we want to name them towards stuff like
• 1:07:30
  that, that folks like me that work in the blue collar
• 1:07:34
  industry, they'll can relate to it and kind of give them a
• 1:07:38
  chuckle. You know, you're going in there
• 1:07:40
  at lunch and you're giggling saying we know what you're going
• 1:07:42
  to get. You can.
• 1:07:43
  You're going to get the greenhorn because you ain't
• 1:07:45
  worked nothing or. Oh yeah, you know they're going
• 1:07:47
  to be chirping at each other while they're ordering.
• 1:07:52
  While they're ordering, bicker back and forth and that's all
• 1:07:55
  just fun, you know, it's all fun.
• 1:07:58
  Yeah, she thought about doing something called the Sissy
• 1:08:00
  platter where it's just like a plain little kids meal size
• 1:08:03
  hamburger and like the D12 is like a triple hamburger, you
• 1:08:07
  know, And it's like if you're you know, it's just blue collar
• 1:08:11
  humor, like if you're what they consider like manly, you're
• 1:08:14
  going to go up there and order the D12 hamburger.
• 1:08:16
  If you're not that hungry, you're going to say, can I get
• 1:08:17
  the Sissy platter in front of all your blue collar buddies?
• 1:08:21
  It's just a humorous thing. And people, people love that
• 1:08:25
  type of stuff, you know, because working blue collar, it
• 1:08:29
  honestly, at the end of the day, it, it is like a family unit
• 1:08:34
  because you're doing a job that is dangerous.
• 1:08:37
  You're looking out for each other.
• 1:08:38
  Nobody's going to come on this job site and mess with you.
• 1:08:41
  You might get on my nerves, but at the end of the day, I would
• 1:08:44
  give you my last dollar to buy you something to eat.
• 1:08:47
  You need a ride, I will take you home.
• 1:08:48
  It's like a brotherhood that forms between the crews, you
• 1:08:53
  know, And it's, it's a very special thing that people don't
• 1:08:56
  under don't really understand unless they've worked in it for
• 1:08:59
  so long, you know, and that's, that's all we've both ever done.
• 1:09:02
  I've never, I've never ever, ever had a job but one where I
• 1:09:06
  had to wear high heels to work. Every job I've ever had, I've
• 1:09:10
  had to have steel toes. And that's just me.
• 1:09:12
  That's how I was raised. I mean, since I was a kid, you
• 1:09:15
  know, I ran construction equipment for my dad and I was a
• 1:09:20
  escalator operator for the longest time.
• 1:09:22
  And it was just, I don't know how to do, I don't know how to
• 1:09:26
  be girly. I don't know how to do fancy and
• 1:09:29
  on the. Side note that she is the boss
• 1:09:33
  but I actually got to play the boss for two days because I had
• 1:09:36
  was short handed and it took her to work with me and she was
• 1:09:39
  running equipment for me on my job site.
• 1:09:44
  Payback. That had been building for a
• 1:09:46
  while, wasn't it, Johnny? Yeah, I got to be the boss for
• 1:09:48
  two days while I was taking her to work with me.
• 1:09:51
  And matter of fact, he's done that to me twice because I used
• 1:09:55
  to dispatch 18 Wheelers and a lot of them would go up to
• 1:09:59
  Spokane, WA. And it's so hard to find a load
• 1:10:03
  from Washington to Texas that pays well.
• 1:10:06
  It is so hard you. Didn't talk about my.
• 1:10:09
  Onions, yes. So I would always, I would look
• 1:10:12
  the best I could, but everybody knows if you go to Washington,
• 1:10:15
  you're going to come back hauling onions.
• 1:10:17
  And onions are the crappiest load you can ever imagine
• 1:10:20
  because you have to stop every so often, lift that heavy ass
• 1:10:25
  tarp up, check the onions, and then keep on trucking.
• 1:10:28
  You have to monitor the temperature and stuff.
• 1:10:30
  And you know, I was like, oh, we'll pay you 25 bucks to tarp
• 1:10:33
  the load. It's no big deal.
• 1:10:34
  Just tarp the load and come on back.
• 1:10:37
  The drivers are to say, Oh yes, ma'am, I'm coming back.
• 1:10:40
  One summer we went trucking together for the whole summer,
• 1:10:44
  me and him, and he got a load from where was we at?
• 1:10:48
  It was hot California. We was in California and he got
• 1:10:53
  a tarp load and I'm like oh this isn't going to be too bad.
• 1:10:55
  You know it pays. This company pays 20 bucks a
• 1:10:57
  TARPA load. That freaking tarp was a
• 1:11:01
  nightmare. It is so heavy and it is so it's
• 1:11:05
  not like a swimming pool little dainty tarp.
• 1:11:09
  This tarp probably weighed about 80 lbs.
• 1:11:13
  And you have to lift it up and shake it out and walk, yes, and
• 1:11:17
  kick it and roll it. And then you have to toss it on
• 1:11:20
  top of this loaded pipe on the back of a flatbed trailer and
• 1:11:24
  it's hot as crap. Then you have to chain it down.
• 1:11:27
  Then you have to put your binders on there.
• 1:11:29
  I swear to God I looked at Johnny and I said look, I said I
• 1:11:33
  will never in my life ever dispatch another tarp load to a
• 1:11:36
  driver ever again. I actually went back to work and
• 1:11:39
  I told the guys like I will never give you all tarp load
• 1:11:41
  ever again. My fat self is out there about
• 1:11:43
  to die trying to tarp that load never again and he still laughs
• 1:11:48
  about it to this day. But yeah, that was a funny 1.
• 1:11:51
  I had no idea that onions would that, of all things, that onions
• 1:11:55
  would be such a pain in the ass to haul across this country.
• 1:11:59
  Wild. And hay bales.
• 1:12:00
  The reason why is is they stack them in 50 LB bags.
• 1:12:04
  Yes, OK. And in a flatbed.
• 1:12:07
  On a flatbed, they're paying. Yes.
• 1:12:09
  Because you can't tarp them all the way because they have to
• 1:12:12
  breathe. But but you don't want them to
• 1:12:14
  get wet at the same time, right? But a lot of people have not
• 1:12:18
  understood why. Why do you hate hauling onions
• 1:12:20
  so bad? Why do you hate onions so bad?
• 1:12:23
  I said, well, imagine a pallet that's what, 4 by 4 and you got
• 1:12:29
  50 LB bags and they're stacked on there and they're usually
• 1:12:32
  stacked about 8 to 10 high, all right?
• 1:12:36
  Now imagine if you're driving a flatbed truck and you got bags
• 1:12:40
  of marbles on there, and you're trying to tie that down and make
• 1:12:44
  it stay still on your trailer while you're pulling it down the
• 1:12:48
  road. That's the best way to explain.
• 1:12:50
  It is. Imagine that's a good analogy.
• 1:12:53
  Imagine you've got your 16 foot utility trailer behind your
• 1:12:57
  pickup and you've got bags of marbles on there and you're
• 1:13:00
  throwing straps over them and you're going down the road,
• 1:13:03
  bumpy roads and all that, and you're trying to make that load
• 1:13:06
  stay still. It don't happen.
• 1:13:09
  They shift, they move, they roll, they walk.
• 1:13:12
  There's been many of times we'd be coming back from Washington
• 1:13:15
  and you'd have to stop somewheres at a Lowe's or a Home
• 1:13:18
  Depot and buy you a couple of sheets of plywood and put on the
• 1:13:22
  back end of your trailer against the stacks and then strap around
• 1:13:27
  it. Because as you're going down the
• 1:13:29
  road, that back pallets are trying to lay down and fall off
• 1:13:33
  your trailer. And you use them to kind of help
• 1:13:35
  hold the hold the onions up and keep them up.
• 1:13:39
  But that's just imagine going down the road trying to tie down
• 1:13:43
  marbles and make them stay still while you're going down the
• 1:13:46
  road. That's the best to explain.
• 1:13:48
  No, thank you. I understand.
• 1:13:50
  I understand now. It's terrible.
• 1:13:54
  Wow. Wow.
• 1:13:57
  Well, man, I didn't, I didn't think we would get to have a
• 1:14:00
  full on Mr. Johnny interview tonight.
• 1:14:02
  Unbelievable. Thank you for joining.
• 1:14:05
  It's amazing. Thank you all for having me.
• 1:14:07
  I kind of intruded on your. Deal.
• 1:14:09
  Not one bit. About her, not me.
• 1:14:12
  No, you're a part of this and I wanted to hear.
• 1:14:15
  I had to hear that story. That was amazing.
• 1:14:17
  Thank you. Yeah, and that's how like I
• 1:14:20
  noticed, I forgot that you asked.
• 1:14:22
  That's how Blue Collar Shift came around, because he's blue
• 1:14:25
  collar and I'm a chef. That's how that came about, just
• 1:14:28
  making him food. He likes sandwiches, so it's
• 1:14:30
  just simple. Well, I was going to ask
• 1:14:33
  earlier, what is his fate? What's what is his favorite food
• 1:14:37
  period that you that you make. I know the chicken fried steak
• 1:14:40
  and all, but like that you that you give him when he's going to
• 1:14:44
  work. You know something that's that
• 1:14:45
  you can have for lunch? Sandwiches, sandwiches, and his
• 1:14:48
  favorite sandwich would probably be a BLT or a tomato sandwich.
• 1:14:52
  Tough to beat. It's tough to beat, but if it's.
• 1:14:55
  Well, they're easy to eat one handed.
• 1:14:57
  You don't have to fix nothing and you can just eat it.
• 1:15:01
  Rather you're going down the road or you're operating a piece
• 1:15:04
  of equipment or whatever. It is just easy, convenient.
• 1:15:07
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:15:09
  And he also likes peanut butter and Jelly with Cheetos.
• 1:15:12
  Wow, I saw this viral food video.
• 1:15:17
  You may have seen it too. It's his name, Jeff Daniels that
• 1:15:23
  was in Dumb and Dumber and and and got it.
• 1:15:25
  Jeff Daniels been in a lot of stuff, but he takes like a piece
• 1:15:29
  of pita bread. He puts 1/4 inch thick layer of
• 1:15:34
  mayonnaise. I mean, not me, I'm sorry.
• 1:15:36
  Peanut butter, peanut butter on it.
• 1:15:37
  I don't know why mayonnaise came from peanut butter.
• 1:15:40
  And then he takes, I think there's sour cream and something
• 1:15:45
  like Lay's potato chips. He crunches them up and then
• 1:15:49
  puts that on top of it and folds it in half and eats it.
• 1:15:54
  There may be one thing that I'm forgetting, but I don't know if
• 1:15:57
  you've seen that video I. Haven't seen that one.
• 1:16:00
  But I've watched a bunch of people like they it's one of
• 1:16:03
  those that's just going around, you know what I mean?
• 1:16:05
  And, and it it looks disgusting and it doesn't look like it
• 1:16:11
  would mix, but they say by God it does mix and it is fantastic.
• 1:16:17
  So. That's the same way with my
• 1:16:19
  vanilla ice cream and Fritos. OK, that is a first.
• 1:16:25
  That is a first. I ain't judging it.
• 1:16:29
  Everybody thinks I'm so crazy, but I won't.
• 1:16:32
  The homemade style vanilla ice cream and Fritos.
• 1:16:36
  And then I crunch. I get my Fritos and I crunch
• 1:16:38
  them all up and sprinkle them on the top of my ice cream, make it
• 1:16:42
  in and that's how I eat it. You get the sweet of the ice
• 1:16:47
  cream and then you get the salty of the Fritos.
• 1:16:51
  It's the absolute best. I'm not going to knock it.
• 1:16:55
  I ain't going to knock it at all.
• 1:16:57
  I haven't tried it, but I'm I'm willing to try that.
• 1:17:01
  It is very That's how I love my ice cream.
• 1:17:04
  It's the best ice cream there is right there.
• 1:17:07
  That leads me into what is my favorite segment of the show.
• 1:17:12
  I always like to close with this Johnny.
• 1:17:14
  You're more than welcome to be a part of it if you want to.
• 1:17:17
  It's Tigs Blitz. Just quick rapid fire.
• 1:17:19
  I'm just going to name something.
• 1:17:21
  Don't think too hard, just give me an answer this question.
• 1:17:25
  These questions will be for both of you.
• 1:17:27
  What's the most overrated food trend?
• 1:17:30
  I think maybe I'm going to get hate for this.
• 1:17:33
  The sweet potato and the melted cheese thing.
• 1:17:35
  What is that? I'm not.
• 1:17:37
  I don't know if I don't know if I've seen it.
• 1:17:40
  It's very viral on Facebook. It's like a baked sweet potato
• 1:17:45
  and you take it and you puncture like a hole in the part and you
• 1:17:48
  stuff it with a big old block of cheese and you eat it and it's
• 1:17:51
  supposed to be really, really good.
• 1:17:55
  I will say that. Is it the viral pickle dip?
• 1:17:59
  That's that's yuck. Yeah, I think that is one of the
• 1:18:03
  overrated things ever. And I'm so glad you actually,
• 1:18:06
  that's what I want to say, the pickle dip, because my friend
• 1:18:09
  Kelly went and bought those expensive fancy Pickles and she
• 1:18:14
  made it and she made a post that she, and she said y'all lied
• 1:18:17
  about this pickle dip, it was mediocre and how she wasted her
• 1:18:20
  money on the Pickles. And I had bought that because I
• 1:18:22
  love Pickles. But I'm taking Kelly Cook's word
• 1:18:24
  for it that it was not good. I think that is one of the most
• 1:18:28
  overrated things because if she says it ain't good, then I know
• 1:18:30
  it's not good. Yeah, I believe her too.
• 1:18:33
  I follow her too. She's fantastic.
• 1:18:35
  I love her. Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:37
  So. Pickle dip is my answer, and
• 1:18:39
  probably his too. He yeah.
• 1:18:41
  Pickles. Same brother, same.
• 1:18:44
  I'm not a pickle. Fan.
• 1:18:45
  Me neither, I don't like them. Yuck.
• 1:18:48
  Yeah, Amen. What is this is more I guess for
• 1:18:53
  you Ricky? What's 1 ingredient that you
• 1:18:55
  always cook with? Parsley.
• 1:18:57
  OK, Parsley. Wow.
• 1:18:58
  OK. Yes, because my whole thing is
• 1:19:01
  and maybe this can be. Thank you Fancy.
• 1:19:05
  Yeah, like I always tell people, just because we're cooking cheap
• 1:19:08
  food doesn't mean we can't make it look pretty.
• 1:19:11
  So I always say my video is like, you know, here's my plate
• 1:19:15
  of food. And I'll, you know, say, all
• 1:19:17
  right, now we're going to top it with parsley.
• 1:19:19
  Now we're going to make it fancy top with parsley because it
• 1:19:22
  makes it pretty. Why not?
• 1:19:25
  You know, and it just adds a lip.
• 1:19:27
  You they say eat with your eyes. And you know, parsley doesn't
• 1:19:30
  really have a taste to it like dried parsley.
• 1:19:32
  The great value one is 1. I use and I mean, I don't care
• 1:19:34
  if you want to grind up your own organic fresh parsley, you go
• 1:19:38
  right ahead. But for $0.88, I'll make it
• 1:19:40
  fancy great value parsley. But yeah, I always that, I mean,
• 1:19:45
  it's not really a seasoning, but I do love garlic.
• 1:19:47
  I mean, I love garlic a lot, so yeah, those for sure.
• 1:19:52
  Apparently, from what we learned earlier tonight, maybe too much
• 1:19:55
  at one point. A little bit too much and you
• 1:19:57
  would think as much garlic as I eat, you know, I wouldn't have
• 1:20:00
  mosquitoes out here. But we do have mosquitoes.
• 1:20:03
  I don't. Think I can't get away from
• 1:20:04
  them. No.
• 1:20:07
  What is What's 1 ingredient that you hate cooking with?
• 1:20:12
  Rosemary. Rosemary.
• 1:20:14
  Why Rosemary? Thank you.
• 1:20:16
  It is, listen, no offense to anybody, but it is just an
• 1:20:20
  awful, awful, awful taste. It is like OL.
• 1:20:25
  It is like there's no way you can cover up Rosemary.
• 1:20:30
  It stinks. You touch it and your fingers
• 1:20:32
  smell like Rosemary for a day or two.
• 1:20:34
  You can just cannot wash it off. It is not good at all.
• 1:20:38
  I do not like Rosemary. I'm glad that someone actually
• 1:20:42
  said that because I I tend to agree with you.
• 1:20:45
  I don't ever cook with it, but the I don't understand why you
• 1:20:48
  put that on a good steak. Like why are you going to ruin
• 1:20:51
  the steak with some damn Rosemary?
• 1:20:54
  Most of that comes stems for her deal is because of me.
• 1:20:59
  If you cook with Rosemary or you put Rosemary in some I'm not eat
• 1:21:03
  it. I will not eat it.
• 1:21:04
  It doesn't matter what it is you just as well throw it to the
• 1:21:06
  trash or feed it to the dogs. Throw it in the long grass.
• 1:21:09
  This whole says yes, that's yes because Rosemary to me is nasty.
• 1:21:15
  I can't even stand the smell of. It what's What's 1 food that you
• 1:21:19
  refuse to cook? Lima beans.
• 1:21:22
  What? Why the Lima bean hate?
• 1:21:24
  Oh my God, listen, my mom, my mom used to make Lima beans all
• 1:21:30
  the time as kids, when we were kids, a big old pot of Lima
• 1:21:33
  beans. And you know, back then, just
• 1:21:36
  the way that my mom was raised, her parents were raised in very
• 1:21:41
  hard times. They did not waste food
• 1:21:42
  whatsoever. They were born in the 191919 and
• 1:21:45
  1920, my grand paw paw. So they went through a lot.
• 1:21:49
  They never wasted food. My mom was just raised that way.
• 1:21:52
  And to me, a bowl of Lima beans looks like boogers.
• 1:21:56
  I'm so sorry. I have horrible texture.
• 1:22:00
  I have horrible texture issues and a Lima bean now it's weird
• 1:22:03
  because I can eat steamed oysters just fine now raw
• 1:22:07
  oysters I really can't. They have to be cooked.
• 1:22:10
  But looking at a bowl of Lima beans, it looks like someone
• 1:22:13
  blew their nose and said, here's supper, I hope you like it.
• 1:22:17
  I cannot do it. And when I was a little kid, I
• 1:22:21
  would not eat them. And I remember very clearly
• 1:22:24
  sitting at the supper table with this bowl of Amma beans and I'm
• 1:22:27
  crying. I'm like, I don't like these.
• 1:22:30
  I don't want to eat these. I cannot stand to swallow these
• 1:22:33
  because if I would try to swallow, I would get sick.
• 1:22:36
  And like, you know, it would start coming up because I could
• 1:22:38
  not handle it. And to this day, I don't make my
• 1:22:41
  kids eat anything they don't like.
• 1:22:43
  I mean, that was so traumatizing to me.
• 1:22:45
  And I even told my mom to him was like, I cannot stand Lima
• 1:22:47
  beans. I don't even buy them.
• 1:22:50
  I would probably as humble as I am, I would starve if I tried a
• 1:22:54
  Lima bean again. I can't do it.
• 1:22:56
  That is how bad I and that's him with green beans.
• 1:22:58
  He won't eat a green bean to save his life.
• 1:23:00
  I will not eat a Lima bean. And people say all the time we
• 1:23:04
  just haven't had good Lima beans.
• 1:23:05
  There is no good Lima bean. Well, last question, tomorrow is
• 1:23:10
  311 Day. I'm a big fan of the band.
• 1:23:15
  Do you have a favorite 311 song or do you even?
• 1:23:18
  Have you ever even heard of 311? I have heard of them in high
• 1:23:21
  school, but I kind of listen to country music like the old
• 1:23:26
  classic Hank Williams and all that.
• 1:23:28
  You know, I mean, I listen to gangster rap too because I'm a
• 1:23:31
  90s kid, but I probably I do listen to gangster rap.
• 1:23:35
  Ask him and people, Oh my gosh, I'm not a good rat.
• 1:23:38
  I just grew up in Houston and that's just the lifestyle and
• 1:23:41
  that's what people are so shocked to me by.
• 1:23:43
  They're like, I've seen you repost Dr. Dre, you listen to
• 1:23:46
  that. Yes, ma'am.
• 1:23:47
  I know every word to any big ear Tupac song like Don't Let.
• 1:23:50
  Yes. This fool y'all morning.
• 1:23:53
  Things tonight so you what it what is your favorite cooking
• 1:23:57
  music? I do have one more question.
• 1:23:59
  What's your favorite cooking music?
• 1:24:01
  You know, I really enjoy listening to Marty Robbins.
• 1:24:05
  And Alan Jackson, they keep you kind of nice and calm with their
• 1:24:11
  very. Smooth voices and keep you level
• 1:24:13
  headed when you're in the kitchen.
• 1:24:16
  Yeah, I like Marty Robbins because my dad loved him and I
• 1:24:19
  was extremely close to my. Dad, I got my name Ricky because
• 1:24:22
  I was named after him. He was Big Ricky and I've always
• 1:24:24
  been Little Ricky. Did they think that they were
• 1:24:27
  going to have a boy? And it was just like, we're
• 1:24:29
  going to. Name we're we're naming him
• 1:24:31
  Ricky, no matter what. My name was literally almost
• 1:24:36
  Darla. My mom actually, yes, my mom
• 1:24:39
  actually named me Darla when I was born.
• 1:24:41
  My dad wanted a boy so bad. And when I came out, I was a big
• 1:24:46
  baby. I was 11 lbs and 6 oz.
• 1:24:48
  And my mom said we're going to name her Darla.
• 1:24:50
  And my dad said you can name her Darla, but I'm going to call her
• 1:24:54
  Ricky. Her name is going to be Little
• 1:24:55
  Ricky. So they end up naming me Ricky.
• 1:24:57
  And I thank the Lord because Darla just does not suit me and
• 1:25:01
  my middle not at all. No, no, I'm so.
• 1:25:06
  My middle name is Jolene, so everybody, every time anyone
• 1:25:09
  hears Dolly Parton. Jolene.
• 1:25:11
  It's Ricky Jolene, so that's my middle name.
• 1:25:15
  But it's kind of a cool middle name because my grandpa, my
• 1:25:18
  dad's parents, my dad's dad passed away whenever my dad was
• 1:25:22
  14 and my grandma passed away 8 days before I was born.
• 1:25:27
  So I never got to meet any of them.
• 1:25:29
  But his name was Joseph and her name was Pauline.
• 1:25:33
  So what they've done was they took Joseph and Pauline and put
• 1:25:36
  together and I became Ricky Joline.
• 1:25:38
  So it's kind of a cool, a cool name.
• 1:25:41
  Super cool, Super cool. Different.
• 1:25:44
  Very different. Well.
• 1:25:45
  Ricky Jolene, This has been a. Great.
• 1:25:48
  Conversation, I mean, it really has been, but before we before
• 1:25:53
  we let you go tell everyone where they can follow you and
• 1:25:57
  how to keep up with everything that you're doing.
• 1:25:59
  I'm on Facebook. I'm more active on Facebook.
• 1:26:02
  Blue collar Chef. And I'm on TikTok as blue collar
• 1:26:05
  chef. There's only two platforms that
• 1:26:08
  I have right now, and I do have a recipe website called Trust
• 1:26:12
  me, try it under Blue Collar Chef.
• 1:26:14
  It's a pretty neat website. You can go in and print out
• 1:26:16
  recipes and things like that. It's pretty cool.
• 1:26:18
  Well, Ricky and Johnny, thank you both for joining Tigs Bits.
• 1:26:23
  Tonight the blue collar chef y'all go follow her go to all of
• 1:26:28
  her socials. I really appreciate you coming
• 1:26:30
  on sharing your story, both of you.
• 1:26:33
  We said at the top of this show we're going to learn a lot
• 1:26:36
  tonight about everything. And and I think that we
• 1:26:41
  delivered everybody. It was very fun.
• 1:26:43
  Thank you so, so much for thinking with us.
• 1:26:45
  Yeah, thank you. I'm very.
• 1:26:47
  Humble, so I do. Thank you so much.