- This Gumbands Podcast is made possible by the Buhl Foundation, serving Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927, and by listeners like you.

Thank you.

So, this is a Gumbands video.

We always put out the audio, but we also capture the video, and sometimes we like to share it.

This is our talk with Sarah McAlee, the brothmonger who makes wonderful soups and who is also a funeral director in Mount Lebanon, and this is a Gumbands video.

I just realized it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

- Oh, it's so nice, yeah.

I didn't know what I was gonna wear, but I just ended up wearing a trench coat, and it's not cold out at all.

- No, it's nice.

It's a beautiful blue sky.

- Yeah.

- Yesterday was Mr.

Roger's birthday.

- Oh, I didn't know that.

- Yes, he would've been 95.

- Happy Birthday, wow.

- Happy birthday to Fred.

- He was young.

I mean to me, 95 is like, I mean it's old, it's old enough to die, I say.

When you're past.

- Yeah, but he died in his 70s.

- I know, that's what I mean.

- It's 20 years since he passed away.

- I'm saying he was young when he died.

Past 88 is old enough to die, to me.

- [Host] Oh, interesting that you've made that delineation.

- Yeah.

- I wanted to start with your name, because how do we say, McAlee?

- Yeah, that's exactly right.

- Sarah McAlee, cool.

I think I knew you for a while before I ever knew your name was Sarah McAlee, because you are the brothmonger.

The brothmonger at Brothmonger.

I don't know.

- Most people do call me the brothmonger, which is fine.

- And that's from Seinfeld.

You have a picture of the little Seinfeld guy.

- Yeah, like the Soup Nazi.

- Soup Nazi, yes.

I met you I remember at the Vintage Mixer, the Pittsburgh Vintage Mixer at Nova Place, the old Allegheny Center Mall, repurposed.

I think it was the first time they did the Vintage Mixer there, and Anthony Badamo was making pizza, and I think you were his.

- I was his counter girl.

I had worked for him at the pizza shop for a while, but at that point I hadn't been working for him and he just needed somebody to do the counter, so he asked me if I could.

I think that somebody was supposed to do it and couldn't.

He needed someone to fill in.

He asked me if I was available, and then I was there.

- Well, anytime I have an opportunity to get Badamo's pizza, I want to do it, and I think I ordered from you.

I was recently out of the hospital I think at that point, and I said, "Can I come sit in that chair while I wait?"

- Yeah, you sat next to me, and it was really funny because people kept seeing, you were behind the table where I was, and people kept seeing you and asking to take their pictures with you, and you were very much separated from the crowd.

Obviously you were very gracious and took pictures with people.

- But then at some point you said, "Do you know I make soup?"

- Oh yeah, I said exactly, "Do you know I make soup?"

And you were like, "I love soup."

And then you gave me $12 and came to my house the next day.

- I don't remember that part, but okay.

That's how it was at that time.

I picked it up in the courtyard or the yard next to your house.

You had a gate that you opened up and you went in, and it was on the north side, and it was a great ritual, I thought.

- Yeah, it was great.

I really miss having it be like that, because it was like that for two and a half, three years, but has not been like that since the beginning of 2021, and I miss it a lot, but it's also really nice to have it not at my house anymore.

- So you're not even cooking it at home?

- No.

- At the beginning you cooked everything at home and you put it out for people to pick up in your yard.

- Right, well, at the beginning it was a very small operation.

Up until the time that you had it and then posted about it, I only had maybe 200 followers and probably, I don't know, 10 customers each week.

Then it grew to, when you posted about it, I got like 600 followers, and then it just blew up.

I never knew that it was gonna happen like that.

I never really intended for it to happen like that.

Obviously I'm very happy that it happened like that.

But yeah, it was a very small operation, so it was very doable to do it at my house.

It very quickly outgrew my apartment, but I still kept it in my apartment for a very long time.

- So, can you talk about why?

What was it about soup?

Was it the entrepreneurial spirit that got you to say, "I'm gonna make this for other people?"

- Yeah, kind of all of that.

I started, soup has always been a big thing with me and my mom.

My mom and I are very close.

She was pretty much a single mother my whole life, and she worked a lot, so there was pretty much always soup of some kind.

I have very distinct memories of being small and standing next to her while she was ripping apart chicken and stuff like that, so I didn't ever want to learn how to cook when I was a kid.

Then in my early twenties, I was dating a line cook and we lived together, and he didn't want to cook at home, and he was like, "It's time for you to learn how to cook."

So he started teaching me some things, and then I made soup, and he was like, "This is what you're good at.

This is actually really good and you can do this well."

So I just always could make soup, and kind of taught myself here and there more and more about cooking.

I have like a portion issue where I can't make food for one or two people.

Every time I make something, it's for six or eight people, so I would always have soup and be giving it out to all my friends.

Then when I started working at Badamo's, I mentioned to Anthony quite a few times that I was interested in selling soup, and I wanted to sell it at the pizza shop and make it for him.

And he was like, "Yeah, that's fine, I would do that, but you should just start doing it."

And he was like, "You should do it on Instagram.

You don't have to worry about getting in trouble because it's probably not gonna go crazy."

I was like, "Okay."

- But it went crazy.

- Yeah, but that's what happened.

So that's kind of how, and then someone posted on Facebook like, "I'm really sick, where do I get soup in Pittsburgh?"

That was like the final straw.

I was like, there's really not anywhere that specializes in it that you can go and get good soup, so I made her soup, took it to her at work, and then from that moment it was like, now I'm doing it.

- Do you remember what kind you made for her?

- Yeah, it was sausage tortellini, because that was the soup that I would make for all my friends when they were sick, because it has a lot of red pepper and garlic and kale, so it's good for you, but also a little spicy and garlicky so it kind of kicks your sickness out of you.

- I think you're pretty wide ranging in your soups.

- [Sarah] Yeah, definitely.

- Is there any soup you don't make?

- Um, no.

People ask me for a menu all the time, and people ask me what I make, and I always just say, just tell me what you want.

I can make anything you want.

- All right, so it starts in your house and you put it in your side yard and people pick it up, but then it grows.

Now I think the first time I remember maybe you were doing it out of Badamo.

I remember a line.

I think I drove by thinking, "Maybe I'll pick up some soup," but the line was so long, I couldn't even imagine getting in that line.

- Yeah, that was probably about a year into it.

I did a popup at Badamo's, and that was the first time I ever did a popup, but that was the only time I ever actually sold soup out of there.

- Oh, just one time?

- Yep.

- Okay, I remember seeing that line and it was scary.

- Yeah, it was ridiculous.

- Did Anthony mind that?

That must have helped his business, too.

- Well, it was actually on a Sunday when he was closed, but Anthony has always been very, when he started Badamo's, there wasn't really anybody that he could look, anybody in the industry that he could ask advice.

He kind of was very self-made and has always been really willing to help out people who are trying to break into the industry.

He helped out Pigeon Bagel.

They cooked out of Badamo's for years before they started their space, and he and I have always been, since I worked there, he and I have always been very close.

He helped me out a lot, but no, he didn't mind at all.

He was very willing to help me at any opportunity that he could, and I've always been very grateful for him.

- For a while you were at Mayfly.

Is that right after Badamo's?

Is that the next place you go?

- In March of 2021, I got a cease and desist from the health department because I was making soup and selling it out of my home, and you are not allowed to do that, especially in Allegheny County.

Allegheny County doesn't really have any easy way to get what they call a cottage license where you can actually cook and sell things out of your home.

So I got a cease and desist, and I had to stop production, and then was kind of just waiting for the next opportunity.

Anne, the woman who owns Mayfly, got ahold of me and said that her chef was leaving and they had a popular soup program, so she was looking for somebody to come make soup there.

We worked out a deal where I made and sold soup there and kind of ran my business through Mayfly.

- Mayfly is kind of like, I always called it a hipster grocery store in the Mexican War Streets on the north side.

And you're there for a year?

- Yeah, one year.

In 2021, I was working full-time at the funeral home.

I made soup at Mayfly twice a week, and I was also working out with a trainer three times a week, so I was like, it was just the amount of work that I was doing in that year was outrageous, and then by December I had burned myself out so much that I couldn't do anything, so I ended up taking off Brothmonger for three months, and then by that time it was like, okay, we're not doing this anymore.

Then Anne had other people in Mayfly who picked up the soup, so that arrangement just kind of dissolved.

From then I've just been taking opportunities as they come, but haven't really had a good home for Brothmonger until now.

I'm selling out of Time Machine.

- Time Machine, which is, I always call it the luncheonette or the little sandwich shop on Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield.

It's a separate little stone building, which is really cute.

- [Sarah] Yeah, oh, it's so cute.

- You now cook there and distribute out of there.

At first it was popups.

Again, a long line.

- [Sarah] Yeah, yes.

- And then I think you went only pre-order.

- Yeah, that's been wonderful.

I did a popup with Ryan who owns Time Machine called Broth Machine, and it was outrageous.

There was 200 people in the line, so we haven't tried that again, but then I started doing my own solo popups out of there and they were on pre-order, which was really nice.

Now Time Machine opened.

He's a seasonal business, so he opened for the season on Thursday, this past Thursday.

This past weekend was the first weekend where I had soup available to people when they came there.

- [Host] Did it sell out?

- Yeah.

- That's what I assumed, because it always sells out, right?

- Yeah, luckily.

It sold out, and then I'll be doing it again this coming weekend.

- Okay, so how do you decide what's next?

- What soup to make next?

I don't know (laughing).

- That's good, so it's just like whim.

- Yeah, it's total whim.

- Okay.

- I try to keep it, I just had a chicken soup, so now I'll do a beef soup.

I haven't done a seafood soup in a while, stuff like that.

- All right.

Now in the process of explaining all that, you made one casual reference to the funeral home.

That's another aspect of your life that I think people find fascinating.

You make soup, but you are a funeral director.

- [Sarah] That's right.

- How did that happen?

- How did I become a funeral director?

- Why did you become a funeral director?

- Well, I grew up in a very small town, Elk County, Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania, which is two and a half hours north.

I have a very large family.

I have 50 first cousins.

My mom is one of seven, my dad is one of eight.

From the time I was a young child, people were dying because I have a huge family.

I just kind of always had a more realistic view about death.

I kind of noticed that it really negatively affected people, like people who are left behind.

My family specifically, before I was born, one of my mom's brothers died in a motorcycle accident.

When I was growing up, my mom had a really hard time talking about him, so I never really knew anything about him.

Then we had, when I was like 12, my cousin died in a dirt bike accident, so we just had a lot of tragic experiences with death when I was growing up, and I was saying, I just noticed that it really tore people up, and I thought that it didn't have to be that way.

There's this sense of avoidance and vagueness around death, and people don't really think about it or talk about it until it happens, and then they don't know how to deal with it and they're torn up about it.

So I thought it shouldn't be that way.

People need to be educated on this, and there shouldn't be this stigma about talking about it before it happens or after it happens.

- You're thinking of this in high school?

- Yeah, and I've also always been a morbid weirdo.

When I was three or four, we were driving past the funeral home in my hometown and my mom and my brothers were in the car and I said, "I'm gonna live there someday."

I didn't know it was a funeral home.

It was just a big Victorian, beautiful Victorian home.

They laughed at me and always made fun of me for saying that, but it was kind of like an omen.

I used to like hang my Barbie dolls by my brother's bunk beds, and my parents thought I was gonna be a murderer.

Anyway, when I decided I wanted to be a funeral director, everyone was like, "Oh yeah, that totally makes sense."

I went to mortuary school when I was 18.

I moved from from Johnsburg, St.

Mary's area to Pittsburgh fresh out of high school and went to mortuary school, and I loved it.

I've always felt very lucky that I knew what I wanted to do in high school and did it, and I'm still doing it.

I think that that's very rare for young people to know what they want to do and do it.

- And there's really no relationship between the soup and the funeral direction.

- The relationship is that I have always been a natural nurturer and I like to care for people.

That's the relationship in my eyes, that I like helping people and feeding people, caring for people in any way that I can.

- But both businesses involve a lot of work.

- [Sarah] Oh yeah, absolutely.

- You're doing a lot.

- [Sarah] Yeah, yeah.

- You have to know how to process both of these things.

- [Sarah] Definitely.

- And you still love them both.

- Yeah.

I love them both in very different ways.

The funeral home is very, very rewarding, but also very emotionally taxing.

As I get older, it affects me more and makes me sad.

The soup business is physically taxing, but it never makes me sad.

- Huh, and actually, I know in preparation for this, I read what Damon Young wrote about you in the Washington Post.

- [Sarah] Wasn't that so nice?

- It is, but he talks about the fact that soup is love.

Our family connections, all of that seems to blend together.

- [Sarah] Yeah, definitely.

- I don't want you to stop either one.

- Yeah, I don't think I will.

Even if I end up stepping away from the funeral home to put more energy into the soup business, I'll still be involved in that industry in some way.

I'm never gonna let my funeral director license lapse.

- Is there a dream that you would like to have happen?

Do you want a soup place?

- I don't want a brick and mortar.

I'm not a naturally anxious person, but if I had a brick and mortar business, I would just be worried about it all the time.

It seems like just so, so much stress to me.

I've never really wanted to own my own business.

I guess my dream for Brothmonger would be to do wholesale and have it in a location in every neighborhood, like South Hills, east end.

- But you don't have any real desire to have somebody can your soup or something like that?

- Oh, no, no, no.

One of the more important things about it now and going forward is that I maintain control of the product.

I don't want it to get so big that I have to have two or three people doing it.

I would be okay with one other person doing it, but it would have to be a person that I could control.

- And do you have rules, like this has to be done this way, I have to make my own broth, I have to make my own meatballs or pasta?

Do you have rules like that?

- Yeah, I make my own broth as often as I can.

I am fine with using like chicken paste or something like that.

Whatever will make the soup taste good, I'm fine with, but I won't use, I would never use frozen meatballs.

I would never use rotisserie chicken.

- So you cook all of that yourself, and then you make the chicken broth from scratch.

Is there some secret that you have that makes it taste the way you want it to?

- I use all chicken wings.

Most of the time when I make chicken broth, I get 10 chickens, whole chickens, and I cut the wings off and I cut the backbone out, and that's what I use for the broth.

I let it go pretty much until it turns yellow, like until I can see fat in it and it's reduced a bit.

I think that the cartilage and fat content in the chicken wings and the backbone are what make the chicken broth good to me, I think.

- No, it's funny, my memories of soup often involve my grandmother, my father's mother.

She was famous for her chicken noodle soup, but I always hated those little bubbles of fat on top.

- [Sarah] Oh no, that's the good stuff.

- That's what I realize now, but I think as we grow older, our tastes change.

I would love to now taste my grandmother's chicken noodle soup.

- Yeah, I bet.

One of my customers, she ordered a small batch of chicken soup from me and said to me, "Don't worry, I will skim the fat off of it."

And I said, "Don't do that."

I was like, "Don't do that.

Just heat it up and eat that part."

And she was like, "Okay, I'm sorry."

- Do you have a favorite kind of soup to make?

- Not really.

I have less favorite kinds of soup to make that I don't really enjoy making, but I don't really have a favorite kind to make.

I have favorite kinds to eat, but I kind of enjoy all of it.

- All right, and what about spices?

Do you like to make it spicier?

I find that in general, I think when you make something for a lot of people it has to be sort of safe.

- Yeah.

I really enjoy making things spicier, but then I have to be very forthright with the spiciness.

Just like, just so you know, this is going to be spicy.

Maybe it will be spicier than you can handle, but I don't shy away from doing that.

- And you don't mind that.

I love Trinidad Scorpion salt from the Steel City Salt Company.

I often shake that on just to intensify.

- [Sarah] I don't mind that at all.

- Another thing that I've always loved about getting soup from you was there's often accoutrements that come with it.

- [Sarah] Crackers, herbs.

- Herbs, yes.

Parsley, oyster crackers with the clam chowder.

I always think it just makes them more special, because when you buy a can of soup, you don't get anything to put on top.

- Yeah, I think that a large part of soup that maybe sometimes gets overlooked is the fact that toppings or whatever make it better and fun to eat.

I usually try to tell people to put olive oil or red pepper flakes or parsley or Parmesan cheese or something like that if I'm not including it, like, this is what you should eat it with.

But I really like giving those things to people and forcing them to eat it the way that I want it to be served.

- Right, and you still do that, like with the Time Machine where you now distribute, you sometimes give little extras on top.

- Yeah.

I definitely always do oyster crackers for clam chowder or crab bisque, because I make seasoned oyster crackers, which you've had.

- Yes, and so you actually add the seasonings and then re-bake them.

- [Sarah] Yes.

- You do a second generation of oyster crackers.

- Yes, but I try to include toppings as much as I can.

Sometimes it's just not possible with the amount of work that I have to do.

I don't have time to parse out those things.

- All right, can we talk quantity for just a little bit?

How much soup do you make at one time?

How many quarts do you get out of a batch now?

- Out of a batch, I probably get 40 quarts per flavor of soup, but sometimes I'll do a double batch.

For a popup, I usually try to make between 150 and 200 quarts of soup.

Yeah, it's a lot.

- Now you do that at Time Machine, which is like a commercial kitchen, although it's sort of right out in the open.

It always has been there, I think.

- Right.

I don't really know what defines a commercial kitchen, but it's a production kitchen.

He runs his business out of there, and I have kind of gotten into a groove there and it's easy to work out of there, so it's working out well.

- Is there a time during the week when you do that?

Like on Wednesdays I do this or something like that to get ready for the weekend?

It seems to be a weekend thing.

- Yeah, he's open Thursday through Sunday, so last week I made soup on Wednesday and then had it ready for Friday so that he didn't have to deal with it on his first day.

I'm probably going to end up doing it Tuesday or Wednesday for it to be ready on Thursday.

Because he's open Thursday to Sunday, he's usually not in the restaurant Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

- How does the funeral business affect that?

I think the funeral business, you can't always predict when you're gonna need to be there.

- Yeah.

Luckily, my schedule at the funeral home is pretty lenient these days.

I've been in the industry for 14 years, so I feel like I've put in my dues to now where I can have a better schedule.

I usually end up only being on call less than 10 nights a month.

I don't really have to work nights a lot.

Now it's a little easier for me to plan my nights and plan my schedule.

But yeah, sometimes if someone dies, there's nothing I can do about that, and then I just have to drop everything to handle the more important task.

- Can you tell us where you do this work?

- The funeral home?

I work at Laughlan Funeral Home in Mount Lebanon.

It's right on Washington Road, and I've been there since 2017.

- Wow, that's a while.

- Yeah.

Before that I worked at Freyvogles for five years.

- It's funny, I grew up knowing the Henneys.

I don't know if you, Henney Funeral Homes.

There's two of them now in Bethel Park.

- Paul Henney owns my funeral home, and you are familiar with Dave, his brother.

- I'm familiar with both of them, because we grew up, our fathers hunted and fished together.

- Oh, isn't that funny?

The Paul Henney Funeral Home on Library Road, that's his funeral home, and then he also owns the funeral home, so he's my big boss.

- Oh, I didn't realize that.

Okay, but that's Pittsburgh.

- [Sarah] Yeah, absolutely.

- Everybody knows everybody.

- [Sarah] Yes.

- I knew those guys, but then Susan, their sister, was my age in school.

I knew her first, but then when our dads started hunting and stuff together.

- You grew up in the South Hills and then left and came back.

- I was gone for 16 years, yes.

- Mostly in the south.

- Mostly in North Carolina and South Carolina.

All right, I do have some of your clam chowder.

- Okay.

- I just thought we'd have some.

- [Sarah] Okay, let's do it.

- All right.

Actually, I didn't plan this.

- Oh, you didn't?

- No.

- It seemed very planned to me.

- But you know, I just called you and said were you available next week, and I had this.

- You just so happened to have the soup.

- [Host] I just so happened.

- [Sarah] Because you are a customer.

- [Host] I am a customer, and a happy customer.

- [Sarah] This is the first time this has ever happened to me.

- [Host] Really?

- [Sarah] Yeah.

- [Host] You mean, someone served you your own soup?

But how much fun?

- I know.

It smells good.

- I worry that I didn't give you enough clams.

Let me get some of these goodies.

Okay?

I do have some of your special oyster crackers, and you can shake or pull, and you happy?

- [Sarah] Yeah, it looks lovely.

- Is there any rule about how many oyster crackers?

- No, there's no rule.

It's up to you.

- And they add a little spice.

- Yeah, there's spice on them.

- Your grandfather's recipe, is that what you said?

- Yes, my grandpa Jack was a cook in the army and was a really good cook, and was the main cook in the household.

My grandma didn't cook, but this is his recipe, which my uncle Sean started making after my grandpa got really old, and then my uncle Sean would never give me the recipe.

I asked him for it all the time, especially after I started Brothmonger.

He would never give it to me.

And then after my grandpa died, he gave it to me.

- And is that the maternal line?

So is it your mother?

- No, that's on my dad's side.

- Both sides of your family have had an influence on you as a soup maker.

- Yeah.

- When you taste it, what do you think is like most distinctive, do you know?

What makes it the Sarah or Brothmonger clam chowder?

- I don't know.

- [Host] What makes it creamy, cream?

- Yeah, cream.

There's a rue involved, sometimes a slurry if it's not creamy enough.

- Slurry, what makes a slurry?

- Cornstarch and water.

- [Host] Okay, and that makes it a little thicker?

- Yeah.

- All right.

There are a couple questions that I always like to ask people on this podcast, and the first is, why do you live in Pittsburgh?

- Growing up where I grew up.

- [Host] In north central Pennsylvania.

- Right.

Pittsburgh was kind of the closest big city, so when we had to go to a concert or go to a baseball game or shopping, we were coming here, and it's close enough that it's doable.

I always wanted, my whole life I wanted to move here and I wanted to go to school here, so it just really worked out when I decided to go to PIMS, the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science.

I moved here when I was 18, and when I moved here to go to PIMS, my mom was very supportive and helped me a lot.

I didn't know anybody here.

I was very much alone, but it was kind of the first time in my life that I felt like that feeling of this is exactly where I should be at this time, and I'm doing the right thing.

I had a very profound epiphany of being in the right place at the right time, so I stayed and I started becoming a funeral director, and then at one point I used to go home every weekend while I was in college, and then at one point I remember thinking I need to make my life here and I need to stop going home, so I started staying here on the weekends and meeting more and more people, and then after about four or five years, I had this realization that I had met everyone in the city.

I started meeting new people, but they weren't really new because they knew everyone that I knew, and I was like, okay, I've closed the circle.

I know so many people here and I feel very much at home here.

I haven't lived in any other cities, but I don't really think that Brothmonger would have been able to be as successful anywhere else, just because I have such a support system here already.

Everyone in the city is just so nice and welcoming and supportive.

I can't really say it's not like any other place, because I don't really know what any other place is like, but yeah, it's just wonderful.

I love Pittsburgh a lot.

- And still do.

- Yes.

- Okay.

- Sometimes I hate it, but it's just like, that's a natural feeling of knowing something.

- Right, that's the way life is.

The whole idea of being here is okay.

- [Sarah] What do you mean?

- I mean, you don't mind being in Pittsburgh?

- No, no.

I choose to be here (laughing).

- Because we call this podcast Gumbands, did you know the word gumbands when you were a kid growing up?

Do you know it now?

- No, there's a number of those Pittsburgh-ese things that I did not know until I lived here and continue to learn.

But no, I've never heard of gumbands until I lived here.

I know it now and I'm fond of it.

- Do you use gumbands at all?

- Constantly.

- In both jobs?

- No.

Well, no, not really.

I use them pretty rarely at the funeral home, but I use them constantly at Brothmonger and at home.

I eat a lot of produce, and you know, you get those purple or blue rubber bands.

I have a little teapot on top of my microwave, which is right next to my prep area that I always save those and put them on the arm of the teapot.

I have a little rubber band collection, and I use them constantly for food and closing containers and stuff like that.

- All right.

I always like to ask people about family history.

I know this weird story about my grandmother, my great-grandmother, I'm sorry, who came from Ireland.

She stole her sister's money in order to come to America.

But we loved that story as a kid.

And so I always like to, is there a story in your ancestral history that you've always liked that could be not necessarily great, but fun?

- I have probably 10 stories that are not appropriate for the general public, and it's funny because I called my mom and talked to her about this this morning, and she kept being like, well, you could, no, don't say that, but I want to talk a little bit about my grandmother, my great-grandmother.

Her name was Bertha, Grandma Bert.

She lived to be 98, and up until she was 92, she was driving and in a weekly bowling league.

She was just an amazing woman.

I was very lucky to have her in my life until I was 18.

And then after she was like 93 or 95, she lived by herself as well and then she had a stroke and ended up going into a nursing home, but she spoke German and she was just really cool.

She had a full head of hair, but she always wore a wig my whole life.

But after she died, my mom and my brothers and I actually moved into her house, and when we were cleaning out her house, she had all over the house railroad spikes.

It would be like three railroad spikes tied together with a piece of ripped lace, and it was so that she could beat up an intruder with them.

There was like one next to the front door, one next to the back door, one in the bedroom, one in the bathroom.

It was so weird.

We were like, what is going on?

She also had a lot of gaudy stuff and she would always, for the last 10 years of her life, if you went to her house, she would try to give you her stuff.

I have all of her China now.

I have a set of Tiffany lamps that were hers, but she was just like a really cool lady.

Her father actually came here from Austria, but he was a logger, and a tree fell on him and he cut his own leg off, so he had an amputated leg right above the knee.

He lived, then he just only had one leg.

- Wow, good stories.

- Thank you.

- But you did say that both sides of the family were big.

- Yeah, I don't really have any inappropriate or weird stories about my dad's side of the family.

- Which is McAlee?

- McAlee.

- Is that Irish or Scottish?

- It's Irish.

My mom's side of the family is Italian and German.

My dad's side of the family is Irish.

But I actually, that's my biological father.

My last name actually was recently changed to Coppolo, not to get into this whole other aspect of my life, but my mom's husband, my stepdad, who's been in my life since I was 13, actually adopted me last year, so now my last name is not Tosone or McAlee.

It's supposed to be Coppolo.

I just haven't gotten into the whole rigamarole of actually changing it.

- How nice.

- Yeah, lovely.

You actually met him last time you came to Time Machine.

- Oh yes, okay.

- Yeah.

- Wow.

- Yeah, and he's Italian, obviously.

- Well, I feel like every time I see you or meet you, I learn things.

- Well, I feel the same way about you.

- Well, and here we are with delicious clam chowder, and I thank you for being part of Gumbands.

- Yeah, thank you so much.

I was overjoyed when you asked me to come on, and it's been a blast as usual.

- Thank you.

- Yeah, my pleasure.

- Hey, it was really great talking to Sarah, but you know, nothing is forever, and shortly after we did this interview, in her newsletter called The Broth Mailer, she revealed that she decided to become a full-time soup maker, and she quit her job as a funeral director.

Also know that she's selling her soups now Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays out of the business called Time Machine on Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield.

You might want to try them.

This Gumbands Podcast is made possible by the Buhl Foundation, serving Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927, and by listeners like you.

Thank you.