Cooking TV

I love cooking shows.  I dirty love cooking shows. They are captivating. My favorite thing is to watch a cooking show while eating, which is like eating with your mouth and your brain, all at the same time. It's fantastic.

But I've noticed, in my 7+ years of cooking-show watching, that I have developed some opinions about the programming, most of which is irrelevant to anyone but me. Which is why I'm blogging about it. I'm throwing a very wide net. As my sister said, blogging is like monologging in an echo chamber. I'm monoblogging. (Monoblogging...monoblogging...monoblogging...)

We used to have to go to my mom's to watch food tv, before the advent of Netflix, Hulu and...my husband. I have spent a long and illustrious soapbox shift, proselytizing about the perils of cable television, and once even had a "KILL YOUR TELEVISION" bumper sticker on my car (I killed the car before I could get to the tv, unfortunately, so the tv remained intact). Then I met my husband, whose unapologetic and complete commitment to total tv immersion was as unequivocal as it was ardent. And I love me some husband. So, I caved. I caved big time. There's pretty much a tv in every room of my house (except the bathroom, which is the one room where it really, really makes sense to have a tv. Not on the edge of the tub, mom! Chill). And you know what? I totally love it. There is, of course, the possibility that I am more likely to purchase a Chevy or Febreeze item against my will for this decision, but I'm cool with that.

Because now, I can watch all the crappy Sci Fi I want- hour upon hour of battles between Hollow Earth and the Surface, every vampire and werewolf show my little weird heart could desire, and not just a show about quantum mechanics as a creation story, but its freaking' prequel! I can also watch hour after hour of strange, nerdy foodies prepare impossible, disgusting gustatory combinations in 30 minutes or less, or food "personalities" bat their falsies or rotate their burgeoning bellies at a crowd of millions, while they show me how to finally prepare a proper brined turkey.

It's fantastic.

Let's start with Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray makes good food. I know because I've used myriad recipes, and own two cookbooks, and the results are 100% excellent. But I can't watch her show anymore. She's got those crazy cheek implants that make her look like the Joker, and her voice is so raspy from doing so many kabillions of tv appearances that it's like taking down a recipe from my emphysemic Aunt Rattle, whose cigarettes smoked cigarettes. It makes me want to mail her cough drops. While I can indeed prepare a tasty meal in 30 minutes or less, I cannot wince for that long.

Jamie Oliver is delicious in every way. Although his recipes often overlook some important differences between UK provisions and American ones (if he tells you to use Bok Choy, he means baby Bok Choy, for example - take note, or your stir fry could rapidly become your hot, weird coleslaw), the man's got it all: a passion for real, accessible food, a genuine love of intrinsic food nutrition that extends to cleaning up school lunches around the developed world (where there are both schools and lunches, and obesity is a problem, not a daydream), and 17247025172 small children who look like little hippie angels. And he taught me to cook a leg of lamb that will make your eyes roll back in your head.  I love him. I'd watch him wash dishes, if it was a show.

Anthony Bourdain is like the food version of Mark Mothersbaugh, although he hasn't released his shtick yet so he's still sort of making edgy and snarky retorts, but he's no longer making them from the mouth below two gaunt hollows of booze-addled rheumy eyes, peering skulkily from the corner of a Philipino dive bar where he's smoking his 143rd cigarette of the...morning... and nursing a shark-blood cappuccino and a helacious hangover. Now he's on the Riviera, with the nicotine patch, some kind of champagne-thing and a special quail dinner that requires you to wear a velvet napkin on your head while you first bite its flesh to hide the gushing release of liquid fat and juice the bird emits when first pierced by epicurean canines.

Not the same.

I'm willing to learn to love him, though. I'll just need to find another food program to get drunk to.

Cooking with the Neelys is like soft-core porn. I feel embarrassed even writing about it. And their food is morbidly fascinating to me- it's makes Paula Deen's food sound like Weight Watchers. Don't get me wrong - it's freaking delicious. One time I made marinated steak with shrimp butter (which, by the way, is basically just a 1/2 pound of shrimp, chopped up in a 1/2 pound of butter), with creamed spinach, cheesy flat-bread (essentially pizza), and a cocktail. I still feel guilty about that one, and, just to put that in perspective, Totino's Party Pizzas are one of my favorite foods. Whoa. Add that to the whole, "are they gonna actually DO IT on this show?" experience, and you have an untenable culinary environment for me. Seriously. I just looked up a roast turkey recipe by them, and felt a little dirty just looking at it online. I'm running my antivirus software right now to make sure I remove anything I might have gotten from their site.

Anything Paula Deen makes is delicious, and will kill you. It may take a decade or so, but mark my words, eat the banana cream pie and seafood po' boy, and you are a goner, my friend. She jokes about her use of butter, as does Julia Child. The primary difference between them, in my estimation, is that while Paula seems to have taken a few important and buttery pages from French cuisine's book, she's missed all the nuanced delivery footnotes on the pages - for instance, that mayonaisse and beurre blanc are meant to be sauces, not soups. Nobody should eat a whole bowl of bechamel sauce. It takes like you should, but you shouldn't. Because it will kill you. I like watching her, anyway. She says y'all like it's really my name.

Bobby Flay sold his soul to the devil. He loses that "Throwdown" competition all the time, but let's be honest: those local contenders could be making ham and cardboard melts, and if they had been making them in Our Town for a decade, and Our Town could claim them as their own invention, then nothing B-Flay comes up with is going to win him any cred in Our Town. Watching that show is like watching a documentary on how cliques work. In every other situation, B-Flay calmly destroys everyone around him with his delicious, inventive, expertly-prepared and sourced food. And then he goes home and sacrifices a baby goat in his basement, rubbing the blood all over his belly button while he summons the Evil One for a quick chat about the Tex Mex possibilities of a pepperjack bearnaisse.

Out of respect for the dead, I won't even start with Emeril. Because he's a zombie. You didn't hear it from me.

From me...from me...from meeeeee....