Hello everyone, and happy new year to all of ya! Hope you had a nice Christmas – I spent ages cooking loads of nice food for my family because that’s what I enjoy doing.

Let’s do the spore-related news first (keeping it relevant as always haha): within the next couple of months, I’ll be adding Panama, Red Boy, Puerto Rican, and Purple Mystic spore syringes to the selection. Labels are all printed, they’re being sent off to the lovely photographer, and I’m writing the copy, so hopefully it’ll be soon. I was planning to do this a bit sooner but Christmas sprung up unannounced or something and the time ran away with me.

Now onto the main bit: as befits a man with a head full of brainworms, I’m doing something a little bit extra this year. Not content with being the UK’s finest, handsomest, downright simian spore slinger, I’m going to be doing a YouTube channel. It’s called Orangutan Trading Co, funnily enough, but it’s not about spores though (mostly not, anyway), and here’s why:

Yeah it's got nanas on it obvs, I love a good nana

For the new people reading this, yep, Orangutan Trading Co sells a whole lot of spores, from your Golden Teachers all the way to the funkier and more difficult exotic ones like Yeti and Jack Frost. I'm 100% in on supplying everyone with the coolest spores I can lay my little mitts on. However, I also like doing other stuff as well, because like all of us, I contain multitudes. For a while, I’ve been mulling over the idea of doing a bit of video content, but couldn’t quite figure out what to do that would tie in with me and the business.

YouTube really don’t seem to like spore content much. All the bigger names that I know of (90 Second Mycology, for one) have spent a lot of time and effort putting some amazing content on YouTube, only to have their channels nuked because the rules are quite opaque, and some spore content apparently oversteps these rules. Impossible to figure out which ones, because they just won’t explain it to you properly. For example, I ran Google ads for a short period (same parent company, obvs), and one day the ad campaigns were suspended. I reached out to a representative, who assured me that I would be up and running in no time, only to later be told no, he was wrong, and I had breached part of their terms of service. I went through their terms of service, of which I had breached fucking none of, and asked them to point out which bit they thought I had broken. Their response was “refer to the terms of service”. Great.

It doesn’t seem to make much sense to be putting effort and resources into purchasing all the equipment, making loads of content, and then getting shitcanned, so, for the most part, the YouTube channel is going to be related to other things that I’m into, sort of like a “behind the scenes” vibe, I suppose. I’ve bought some nice cooking equipment for it, got a cool camera and microphone, and we’ll see how it goes.

such a handsome lad

This ties me back into my Christmas cooking marathon quite nicely: the plan at the moment is to do some cooking videos. Back in the day, I used to be a chef (more of a cook, really, I suppose). I always loved cooking from an early age, and then due to some hilariously undiagnosed-ADHD missteps ended up washing the pots in a busy seaside restaurant. Realising I had a great opportunity to learn how to cook, I begged the chef to let me do some prep work, and he told me that he would teach me a few bits, but only if I had finished all my cleaning jobs. That, my friends, is the origin story of the quickest dishpig in the southwest circa the year 2000.

After that I went to various other restaurants, now just doing the cooking, and I hoovered up as much knowledge as I could because I’d found something that gave me a nice little buzz in my head, like a meth addict with teeth all full of bees.

Spent quite a few years turning out food, but eventually, I got fed up of the whole deal and fucked it off to go and do something else entirely. The less I cooked for a living, the more I loved actual cooking. Yeah, I enjoyed cooking under pressure to someone else’s specifications and trying to nail it 100% every time (and it’s a great way to hone a skillset), but what I love more is cooking what I want, the way I want, for the people I want. When you’re turning up and knocking out a few hundred meals every day for work, then it’s still work. Doing something you love for a job sometimes (not always) turns the thing you love into your capitalist obligation, only doing it to keep the roof over your head and food in your guts.

Anyway, as a cooking man, I’m not amazing, but I’ve got a solid understanding of the basics (if I do say so myself), and I really enjoy it. I actually (yes this is a bit too sincere perhaps for a monkeyman’s blog) think one of the greatest expressions of my love for people is spending my precious time and money learning how to, and then making the best possible bit of food I can for them. It’s gone after that meal, it doesn’t hang on a wall like a painting, it’s fuckin’ ephemeral, man, but I made it for them because I love them and we got to share that experience together. And hopefully I don’t fuck it all up because then I get really mad at myself for about a week, even though I know, logically, that mistakes are the best way to learn the parameters of what actually works. Self-criticism, eh?

What’s tended to happen in my life is that I like to solve problems, and I’m a bit nerdy about food, so for example: every time I went out and there was smoked brisket on the menu, I’d order it. This gets a bit expensive, so I bought a smoker and began learning how to use it (still haven’t done a brisket yet as that’s a lot of money to waste if I fuck it up). The missus liked smoked cheese, so I figured out how to do cold smoking. I kept getting served shitty non-smashed smash burgers, so I learned how to do them properly. Don’t really like brioche with them, so learned how to make proper potato buns. Every time I think “oh I could do that better” I’ll just smash my head into the wall until I learn how to do just that, same as I did with the spore business. To be honest, I’m quite meat-orientated, but I can (and will) do other stuff just to keep it interesting (ever tried sous-vide glazed carrots? They’re the best carrots that ever carroted).

So! The general idea is “I am not tying myself into anything, but I will just film stuff I feel like filming”. At the moment, it’s going to be cooking videos: I’m currently into cold-smoking, hot-smoking, BBQ stuff, bits like that. Whole spatchcocked chicken on the BBQ? Yes mate.

I did do some vegetables too but everyone likes a good meat pic

I will also, possibly, do some chat-style stuff where I talk about the spore business. I don’t think I’m going to edge into instructional videos as that seems to be where everyone else gets their channels suspended, but I think I can poke at the sides a bit, perhaps. I think that might be interesting. Finally, I’ll also be taking more videos of any mycology events I attend (well, if they let me), as now that I’ve got a mic and camera I might as well get the use out of it all.

So, uhhhh (you’ll be hearing that a lot on YouTube, that’s for sure), that’s about that for the video stuff. Watch it if ya like, don’t if ya don’t, it honestly doesn’t really matter as I’m doing it so that I can learn something new. Don’t get me wrong, it wouldn’t hurt if it ends up bringing a quid or two in, as margins are pretty thin these days thanks to all the bills, but if it doesn’t then I’ve not really lost anything. I’ve never done anything video-related before, so I am very much going to be learning on the job, as it were – it’s never gonna have mad production values or anything, just me and a camera fucking about doing doing some cooking, but that’ll do. Unless any multi-millionaire out there wants to pay me to do fancy videos, in which case yeah I’ve always wanted to do fancy videos that’ll be a million pounds please. Once again, here’s the link: Orangutan Trading Co – if you wanna check it out, then that would be lovely. Thanks.

Cheers for now! OTC