Friday, June 21, 2013

Confessions of a Cooking Show Addict

Hi, my name is Tina, and I'm a cooking show addict. I watch more cooking than anything else, I get twitchy if I miss an episode of a favorite show, and you better not steal my bandwidth when I'm using the Food Network interface. It's total crap, but when you have to have your fix of Next Food Network Star, and you don't want to deal with the whining of kicking you 13 year old and all his friends off the XBOX, you put up with some annoyances.

The Food Network interface has several great features. If you pause too long, it takes you back to the beginning. It has only a few commercials, but they will play the same one three times in a row. As in back-to-back. As if we didn't JUST see it. I will never buy your pasta now, nor will I mention your name. The most annoying? It won't go full screen. It will go MOSTLY full screen, but leave the time-elapsed bar along the bottom. I hate visual distractions.

Hulu has it's issues as well, but that's where Gordon and I meet. I have a serious crush on Gordon Ramsey. Yes, he's the guy who yells at the chefs in Hell's Kitchen, but he's also the guy who goes around the country fixing restaurants, and that usually means fixing the PEOPLE who run the restaurants. The man has compassion and some serious people skills, when he chooses to use them. The bluster and cussing in HK has it's place, because it does produce top-notch quality and immediate obedience, but he also knows when to give a compliment, and the chefs know that he really means it when it happens.

Netflix and I aren't speaking right now, because they can't seem to coordinate their audio and video. Yes, pausing does make it catch up. But why should I have to pause every two minutes, for two minutes, just to get watch another two minutes? Get some more servers people. Not that Netflix has many cooking shows, so I'm surviving that annoyance.

The absolute best shows, though, are cooking COMPETITIONS. Chopped. Iron Chef. Next Iron Chef. Masterchef. Love them all. Give them weird stuff to do, an impossible time limit, and let them at it. I love watching someone make five interesting courses with a potato, or making a cohesive dish out of fish-heads, gummy worms, an exotic vegetable no one knows anything about, and graham crackers.

Here are some invaluable cooking tips I've learned from Chopped. No, peaches and cream with eel essence will not make a good soup. No, you can't skin an eel with a corkscrew. (They really had trouble in the eel episode...) Yes, durian does stink, but inside is a really delicious fruit. You can't reduce fruit leather with vinegar in ten minutes. Goldfish crusted halibut is not something yummy. In addition, one cannot make a cheese sauce out of goldfish, and even if you could, cheese doesn't go well with seafood. Bacon CAN be a dessert item, but you do need chocolate. Just because you know how to make ice-cream, doesn't mean that beet ice-cream is a good idea.


You might think that my time should be spent elsewhere, but when you've got a baby blanket to finish by June 30, you get a free pass to watch as much TV as you want. And look at all the cooking fiascoes I will now avoid ;-)

15 comments:

Andrew Leon said...

Hmm... I don't have any issues with netflix; it must be you.
Not that I watch cooking shows. Because I don't.

Jeremy [Retro] said...

i watch cooking shows too... shhhhhh. since the food network split with that other channel, i don't get... i only been watching those restaurants makeovers and triple D's adventures.

too many cupcake making shows or getting t0o excited about losing on them... come'on people they are cupcakes.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

I'm not having problems with NetFlix either.
I will avoid ever cooking an eel though.
And I'm addicted to Bar Rescue.

Brian Miller said...

ha i def like the competitions..you know the first cooking show i ever watched was iron chef....the old one....next food network star is def cool too...

JoJo said...

I've never watched a cooking show in my life but my dad was a devotee' of The Galloping Gourmet & Julia Child.

L. Diane Wolfe said...

I'm pretty sad when it comes to TV. I never watch it!

Lucy said...

I love Gordon Ramsey too. I will get sucked into a cooking show and I have no idea why, I HATE TO COOK. Oh, I think I wanted to throw up a little when I read, BEET ICE CREAM, who in the world would even think it was a good idea lol

Lucy from Lucy's Reality

P.S. whenever I watch a show online I hate when I have to watch the same commercial a gazillion times, they do know how to brainwash.

Jo said...

We used to watch cooking shows all the time but stopped doing so, not sure why. Used to enjoy Giada di Laurentis (sp) and I too loved Graham Kerr years ago before he went Tee total.

So, do you cook Tina?

Rachel said...

A few you haven't listed that my Mom is obsessed with: Master Chef, Cupcake Wars, Sweet Genius... and everything you listed, but you already know about them for sure. I'm still in awe, because last season on Master Chef, a blind woman won.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I'm addicted to cooking shows... loved them too.

Carol Kilgore said...

Chopped gives me great ideas for leftovers. I also like DDD, Food Network Star, and a few others.

A Daft Scots Lass said...

I can't watch those cooking shows at the moment, because it makes me hungry for stuff I can't have. I'm on diet at the moment.

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Tina .. sounds like life is busy recovering while you baby blanket sew and knit .. while the cooking shows - I have my moments of watching them .. not often now-a-days ... I usually watch the masterchef ones ...

Glad to see you posted - see you soon .. cheers from a very windy Eastbourne .. Hilary

Anonymous said...

My wife's a big fan of those shows, and I watched that new one on CBS last week -- the one with the amateur bakers. It held my interest!

LD Masterson said...

Oh, dear. Cooking shows. Can't watch those. Calories leak out of the screen and land on my hips.

*slinks away quietly*