Face-Off: Farm Rich vs. TGI Fridays Mozzarella Sticks with Shaun (Ep 73)

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Two cheezy titans. One clear victor.

This week: the Bros pit Farm Rich against TGI Fridays mozzarella sticks in their first-ever Face-Off with a third vote.

The story: Farm Rich is the retail brand of family business Rich Products Corporation, founded in Buffalo in 1945. TGI Friday's launched as a Manhattan singles bar in 1965, pioneered the casual-dining appetizer menu, and today outsources their frozen products to Kraft Heinz.

Plus: McCain family drama. Reddit redux. Crèmesicle liqueur and popsicle-themed butt wipes. This Old Home Fries. And what do hash browns mean to you?

In the closing segment: An exclusive interview 5,300 years in the making. Our guest talks hunting, family life, dating apps, and the real origin of the sandwich.

FROST BITES

Brass, Sass, and Broken Hearts. Brass Bonanza is arguably the greatest upbeat anthem in professional sports history. It was composed in 1968 by Belgian musician Jacques Ysaye under the pseudonym Jack Say, who titled it Evening Beat and sold it to a generic audio record library. In 1975, a Whalers executive randomly heard the track at a house party and licensed it to play at games. The rest is hockey history. Connecticut fans might have lost their NHL team, but at least they can still do celebratory finger guns to a licensed Belgian synth-brass masterpiece while weeping into their vintage merchandise.

Fry me a river. Eleanor McCain is a triple-ECMA (East Coast Music Awards)-nominated classical crossover artist who has recorded six albums and toured with Canadian orchestras. She’s also an heir to the multi-billion-dollar McCain French fry empire. While she is a genuinely accomplished musician, the massive family legal feud over her 8.72% company stake is what actually makes the news. It’s the ultimate high-society mashup: a symphonic soprano trapped in a multi-billion-dollar prison made entirely of frozen tater tots. Now we're just waiting for her to record our starch-themed rendition of Hallelujah.

Peak Performance. If you want to walk where Ötzi walked, you actually can—provided you have some serious mountaineering skills. The Ötztal Alps, which sit on the border of Austria and Italy, are a massive, heavily glaciated tourist destination boasting over 1,600 kilometers of hiking trails and 250 peaks rising above 3,000 meters. For experienced hikers, the multi-day "Ötztal Trek" features grueling vertical climbs and roped-up glacier travel that takes you right past the high-altitude spot where the famous 5,300-year-old mummy was found. Just be careful navigating the crevasses at 10,000 feet, or you might end up preserved in a glacier yourself.

Don't sweat the sauce. A listener and food scientist weighed in on a real pizza panic: tomato sauce water content. When a sauce is too watery, the dough absorbs the moisture, creating a literal layer of steam between the crust and the toppings. Alice proved that sauce engineering is a legitimate discipline; without high tomato solids and low water content, you end up with a soggy, undercooked center. It turns out "kneading to know" your sauce and dough chemistry is the only thing standing between you and a pizza catastrophe.

The Dark Truth. A deep dive into the Fridays marinara mystery reveals a sauce that is deeply red, hyper-sweet, and tastes like something Chuck E. Cheese would drop on a pizza for wall-bouncing brats. The culprit? An intense alliance of tomato paste, vinegar, sugar, and starch. Because it relies so heavily on concentrated tomato paste and sweet additives, the sauce actually caramelizes, darkening its color and amping up the sweetness. It's not a traditional marinara—it's a sugar-heavy tomato reduction engineered to hijack your brain. The kicker? Chuck E. Cheese actually improved its quality several years back. Your move, Fridays.

YOUR COLD CUTS

What’s your favorite mozzarella stick (or plank)? Is not including sauce a deal breaker for you? And are you okay with that sugared up sauce that Fridays includes?

Who wants to come on a hike through the Ötztals with us? You might have to put up with our singing.
Hit us up on the Let's Chill page and let us know!

ENJOYING THE POD?

BUY US A COLD ONE

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Fro yo' later!

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