Uh Oh Rach

I caught 30 Minute Meals today at lunchtime. I don't get to do that very often, but DS isn't feeling well and DD was busy torturing him with her five-year-old gnat dance, so my lunch and my laptop and I parked ourselves in the living room and flipped on Food Network.

First of all, holy tight painted-on jeans on television, Batman! Wow, girlfriend. All that money you're bringing in? The word is "stylist." Please. Shell out for one. Or visit the personal shopper at Nordy's next time you're in the big city. Or, I don't know, invest in a full-length mirror. Buy a size up. I sympathize--I have big thighs too--but really. One more number would work miracles. As things stand now, in the words of my late father, a fart is going to blow your head off.

I should say right here that I'm pretty well over Rachael Ray. I loved her for a long time, but dude, she is everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Hawking coffee. Hamming it up on a really terrible daytime talk show. Magazines. Books written at Danielle Steele-like speed. Several cooking-related shows. 

I like that she's not a trained cook. I really do. But can we stop calling her a chef? Because...she's not one. Just like me, see? I love to cook and I love playing with (and eating) food, but I ain't no chef. Neither's our little girl from the mountains. So stop it. 

Back to the show today.

Tight jeans aside...her fly was open. I swear. They filmed an entire stinkin' show with her fly down, and then they aired it. Gaping open with a brass-like zipper flailing about. I have never seen that before and hope to never see it again. 

And second...the great thing about her show back in the day was that it was real. She really did film it in 30 minutes and she really did show you how. Warts and all. She spilled stuff. She burned stuff a little bit. She forgot ingredients. She was like you and me and everybody else who's raced around to get dinner on the table after a long day. Believable. Real.

Today, she threw pine nuts in a pan. She did throw in too many and scoop some back out, so that was cool. But then she talked about toasting the nuts and not leaving them...and she left them.

But that was fine, seeing as how there was no flame under the pan!

Close up to the pan...no flame. No heat. No actual toasting of nuts going on.

Dude. 

You can tell most of the shows are using faux ovens when the hosts open them. I've seen Giada touch supposedly hot oven racks more than once with her bare fingers and not flinch. And Alton Brown is more than candid about the fact that the kitchen he's used the past two seasons is a fake, with nary a thermometer that's real in it. But a gas stove with no juice?? Come on! Spare me that one! 

That's my rant for the day. I got a whole half-hour to myself, I popped on Food Network, it sucked, and Sandra Lee wasn't even around to make it suckey. Sloppy reality TV blows, dudes. 

And yes, I need a life.