Cooking with Cable

Ahhhhhhh…The Food Network… instantaneous gratification! Need to see food being cooked/eaten/served/mutilated/masturbated...just contact your local cable provider and it’s all yours, baby!

Before The Food Network, the pickings were slim.

The only cooking shows pre-cable were either locally produced or on PBS. I grew up worshipping Julia Child. I still watch Julia every chance I get. I would shell out a handsome sum of filthy luchre to have all of her shows on DVD. (There is one 3 disc set called “The French Chef with Julia Child” but it is only 18 episodes. Not nearly enough for this Julia-phile.)

You can still get cooking on PBS, but most of it is pretty dull stuff. The last time I watched something non-Julia, it was some show with a man and a woman on it…blech. I turned the channel after 5 secs. Sorry PBS.

The Fine Living network has some stuff..pretty shallow. And Discovery Home…I wasn’t that impressed.

So that leaves the Food Network in all its stinkin’ glory.

As Sturgeon’s Law states “90% of everything is crap.” (Some people will say that Sturgeon was an optimist.) Food Network is no exception to the rule.

If Rachel Ray fell off the face of the Earth this very moment, I would not morn. Damn, I dislike her. She comes across as a pretty face with nothing behind it. She is a sloppy worker on her cooking shows. I don’t give a fig about watching her eat places on $40 a day. (Example: She recently did a show on Vegas. My husband loves Vegas. He used to live there. We have friends who still do. One, you can eat a lot better than she did for a lot less. Two, if she were a real tourist she would have spent $120 in cab fare to eat that $40 in food. Three, my hubby says “I don’t like her! Being the scabby lil ho she is, she stuck to the Strip.” After my next trip to Vegas, we’ll do up Vegas right with a good eats column. Promise.)

Bobby Flay…Therein lies a tale. We have a good friend who we have known for 20+ years now. His whole family cooks. His aunt used to work for Martha. His grandmother is a cooking goddess. He is the only one of his siblings who is not in the food industry. I think it’s just to be stubborn, because he is definitely a foodie. Also, our buddy wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful…that is part of what makes this so delicious…

One day, he stopped by our house and we had the Food Network blaring away. Bobby Flay was on. (You know..the original show of his with all these beautiful people sitting around eating his food…very meterosexual.) Our friend took one look and says “Oh, that faggot show.”

I think that pretty much sums up how we feel about Bobby. There was a surmise that the girlfriend he produced during the first iron chef fiasco was really a he/she, but we have no real proof either way.

I like Emeril, but I HATE “bam!”. I had to stop watching it. That and the fact he would coat every dessert with powdered sugar while screaming it. Blegh. I know, I know. The great unwashed love catch phrases…but I bathe on a regular basis, thank you. It’s Bam that stinks.

“What do you like?” I hear you asking.

Well, I used to be a huge Good Eats fan. Alton rocked pretty hard his first 3 or 4 seasons, when he was in his old kitchen. It looked like my kitchen (or the one I would have if I didn’t live in a crappy apartment). The skits were funny, the food was good, it was hip without straining itself. My hubby had a thing for his food anthropologist. He still talks about the episode where she is stretched out on a bag of onions.

That’s why Good Eats really lit my fire when it first appeared; it was all about learning to cook from the ground up. Every dish taught you something about food. It was edu-tainment at its best.

Then, he got well known. New kitchen, more appeal to the great unwashed. Gas grill!!??? Gasp! His food is still good. I guess I just liked it more when it seemed like he was one of us.

Food Network seems more about selling The Food Network than it does celebrating food, or educating the public. . It is food as entertainment, and a lot of their recipes are aimed at people who cook as entertainment. Nothing wrong with fancy food, let’s just learn to cook the basics first…

Me..I’ll stick to cookbooks I guess. I want substance, not personality or gimmicks. A good solid recipe speaks volumes.