The Food Network. You’ve heard of it. You’ve probably watched it, if only long enough the change the channel.
I pick up lots of good ideas there — an unexpected combination of ingredients, a different way to season an old favorite, a new fruit to try. But that’s about it. I refuse to buy 20 ingredients for one meal, knowing most of it will go to waste. Me, myself, and I can only eat so much before fresh foods turn to science experiments and leftovers get lost forever in freezer hell. I’m also not going to buy all those fancy specialized gadgets they use. (I was given a food processor once; sure, it only took me two seconds to pulse my parsley, but it took twenty minutes to clean the damn thing afterward. And I never did have enough space to store it anywhere.)
Beyond the recipes, there are the cooks themselves and the formats of their shows. I’ll tell you right now there are two I won’t watch. Paula What’s-Her-Name, whose syrupy Southern accent makes everything she cooks nauseatingly sweet (or maybe I can’t stand being reminded that I’ve never escaped my own accent). The other is Rachel Ray, whose perkiness makes me want to puke. I hate perky. In my kitchen, only the coffee pot should perk that much.
Actually, I started this post because I had just clicked on the TV and there was Miss Perk-a-Lot, leaning over a bowl of pasta with her long dark hair falling down over her face and perilously close to the food. Blech!!!! Gag!!! No, no, no!!
Okay, rather than leave you with that image, I’ll go on to say I usually like the guys. They don’t swoon and salivate (ugh!) over their own cooking. (Shouldn’t that be left to the viewers/consumers?) They just tell you how to fix it.
I’m sure both the men and the women are very knowledgeable and whip up some great food. I just prefer the nuts-and-bolts matter-of-fact guy approach to the “I Am Woman; I Can Cook and Be Adorable (and maybe even see Alaska from my kitchen) at the Same Time” schtick.
I thought I liked miss Perk-a-Lot at first, and I love to cook. Her “30 minute meals” are my style of cooking too, but with whatever ingredients are on hand. But after a while the “Yum-O” and the “EVOO” started, well, getting to me in a way that the cuteness could not undo.
On the other hand, Emeril drives me nuts too.
I bet that Alaskan lady eats lots of pizza and cheeseburgers. 🙂
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The EVOO was only the first in a long line of turn-offs; does anyone else anywhere call it that?
I didn’t think of Emeril till after I’d posted. Then, BAM!, I wrote him off as obnoxious. I really don’t like his Emerily goodness being hurled into my food.
Pizza and cheeseburgers? Au contraire! Why would she eat junk food when her favorite is good ol’ down-home moose stew? She probably keeps a freezer full of it (Hey, maybe when she’s through failing at politics, she could do a cooking show … ).