Food Notwork

We canceled cable the other day, but it's taking a few days to take hold. Fine by me -- I'm jamming all the crap in I can before it's curtains.

But no love lost, really. As I've mentioned before, I have a bit of a love/hate thing going on with television and right now we're ebbing toward hate. Especially of (duh-duh-DUH) Food Network.

That's right, I think I've official burnt (pun intended) out of cooking shows. Well, more specifically, those offered by the sugar peddlers at Scripps. I've given them some of the best years of my life and what do I get in return? A growing list of people who make my skin crawl.

I remember Food Network fondly in a purer, less polished time. Mornings were spent with the flavorful cookery and mild lesbian undertones of "Too Hot Tamales." Afternoons captivated me with "Molto Mario's" implausible girth and roster of "B" celebrity guests. And evenings were ushered in by Sara Moulton, fresh off her day job with the Lollipop Guild, stumbling around her kitchen set and talking about her kids Ruthie and Sam (I didn't have to look that up) and living without a microwave. Then there was Emeril Legasse, all pudgy swagger and catchphrases, ruining a perfectly good meal with a splitting headache. Last I checked he had burned through a couple of trophy wives and was on PBS* chasing people through Whole Foods stores. Bam, indeed.

But then Food TV execs discovered telegenics, and the polarizing British humor of "Gordon Elliott" reruns were replaced with Giada DiLaurentis' leviathan tits. I was on board there for a while, shows and tits alike, and was legitimately learning things. Practical things. How to make risotto. How to carve a chicken. Why using kosher salt was preferable. And I'm talking about watching these shows on our couch in college, hungover, with the only thing of any culinary measure under our roof being deli turkey atop Reduced Fat Wheat Thins. But these were lessons I would stow away only to apply later.

Most of our current household dinner staples can be credited to Ina Garten, and June has Bobby Flay to thank when the scents of frying onions and roasted peppers waft their way through the ceiling grate in our kitchen and right into her bedroom. Tyler Florence's bloat convinced me his boeuf bourgignon was worth trying -- it was -- and Alton Brown, nerdy has he is, had me at "macaroni and cheese."

But then Paula Deen patented her phony "yeeeaaaawwwwwwwll," and Sandra Lee was greenlit to comport with earthlings, and the Neely's felt fit to pause from their Sock-It-To-Me cake assembly to make out. Ugh, get a room. And -- oh God -- Guy Fieri. They were starting to lose me.

I peaced out recently when I realized that in 14 years of devoted Food Network viewing, I had seen every recipe come to life in their two-dimensional anondized aluminum archives. I was explaining this to Trish and Dave when they were here the other night: you know that mathematical principal where you can figure out how many numeral combinations are in a given number by multiplying each of the digits in that number? Factorials I think they were called. Well, I've experienced a Food Network Factorial. I have seen every possible combination of every ingredient out there. In fact, I think they've just started over. It's 1998 again, only Rachael Ray has been charged with replacing every occurrence of "chipotle" with "pancetta."

In honor of this I've assembled a log of glossary terms that played not a small part in my defection from the brand.

Nutty: One of the more overused words in cooking television. Whether it's a "Walnut Encrusted Nutty Nut Loaf" or a fruit salad, these hosts will describe something as "nutty" in order to sound like they know what the hell they're talking about. Usually they don't. The likelihood of an ingredient actually "imparting a nutty flavor on these cake balls" is slim, and moreover I want my cake balls to taste like cake balls, not nuts. Find a new adjective.

Nice: I've got here a nice leg of lamb. Get yourself some nice blood oranges. You want the pan nice and hot. Another filler word. When you have to fill 22 minutes with step-by-step instructions on how to scramble eggs, a word like "nice" comes in handy. But I never want to hear it again.

Cut to size: This is a Sunny Anderson staple. Cut to size? Cut to what size? You're chopping an onion, not trying to fit it through a button hole. That's not the term you're looking for, Sunny.

"Go ahead and...": Having been to j-school, it was hammered home to omit unnecessary words, especially when trying to meet a length requirement (clearly that lesson didn't stick). So hearing "I'm going to go ahead and heat this pan," or "Go ahead and add the beef suet," I go ahead and flip off the TV. Really? Go ahead? This is an attempt to sound casual and it reminds me of the boss I once had who fake yawned every time he asked me to do something because he was uncomfortable giving orders and this was a way to project to his underlings that he was ok with it. He could have been confused for a narcoleptic. Come to think of it, he also abused "go ahead and..."

"Aaaaaaaaaahhhh- can you go ahead and call Ameritech and talk us out of this bill? And maybe clean the toilet? Oh, and work this weekend? - aaaaahhhhhh."

Please.

Chiffonade/mirepoix/bain marie/braise: If you're glued to "$10 Dinners With The Blonde Harpy Who Won That Contest," then chances are you've seen a cooking show or two before. So explaining to the viewing public how to operate a peppermill is likely superfluous. Just go on the assumption that they're only watching you because the "How I Met Your Mother" channel is at commercial. Somewhere James Beard is rolling over in his grave. Wait, is he dead?

Ok, so you've gotten this far and you're thinking, "Boy, she sure is whining a lot about TV," or "Wait, I thought this blog was about motherhood?" If so, I don't know what to tell you. It's actually been heavy on my mind lately, and as my mom would say, "if it's not paying rent, put it out." So out it goes.

Next one will be about June and not just co-opting her image to draw in readers. I promise. And if you're wondering, she's still pure joy.



*PBS still has the only cooking shows worth watching. Emeril's excluded.