Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies (10 page)

Even more numerically
impressive is the Cake Pops kit. That has
twenty-five
pieces, although, to be fair, eighteen
of those are the sticks you use to hold the cake pops. I’m just sayin’, the
sticks should only count as one item.

Weirdest
part of the Cake Pops ad is when they talk about not wanting to deal with “the
hassle of cake.” Yeah, because after dealing with “The Man,” cake
is
probably the biggest source of
hassle
in my life.

I
own one “As Seen On TV” product. As a birthday gift, a friend bought me a
Slap-Chop. I love how prosaic that name is. No exaggerated, mystical claims
here . . . you slap it, it chops things.

This is
great for people who feel the normal chopping experience isn’t violent enough,
and I have to say, you can release a surprising amount of aggression with just
a small amount of slap-chopping.

Just make sure, if you
want one, that you act now, because I think they said supplies are limited.

Around
the same time of night when you might see a Slap-Chop ad, there are also a huge
number of career-oriented ads, but I don’t imagine they’re very effective. I’m
pretty sure most people watching basic cable at four in the morning have
already made peace with
not
having a job.

No
matter which barely-accredited, essentially-fictional school is being pitched,
the ads are the same. It’s always perky people telling their friends about the
rewards of an exciting career at the cutting edge of tomorrow’s jobs in the
growing field of computer science. Or refrigeration and heating.

I
saw the same woman on two
different
ads. Apparently she’s taking a
double major in dental hygiene
and
motorcycle repair. Good for her.

What really caught my
attention was an ad for Le Cordon Bleu, because they have an
online
program! Really? How does that work? Unless Apple has come up with a computer
interface that allows you to taste or smell what you cooked, how would
they know if you passed?

I wouldn’t use the word
‘regret,’ but I will say that I
wish
I had discovered my inner foodie when I was younger, because I would have looked
into culinary school. I‘ve always envied people whose educational choice might
lead to an actual job.

My last major of record
was English, so clearly by that point I’d given up on the idea of ‘earning a
living.’ I constantly had to answer the question, “What are you gonna DO with
your degree?”

If I’d been in
cooking
school, it would have been so much easier. I could have said “I’m gonna
cook
,
dumbass.”

The Culinary Institute
of America is, I suppose, the Harvard of cooking schools, and their curriculum
features all the classes you might expect in food preparation, food safety,
nutrition . . .

The school also offers something
called ‘meat fabrication,’ which sounds a little too Orwellian for my tastes
(“Workers
will be given their lunches once the meat is fabricated”).

I might have seriously
considered a career at the cutting edge of tomorrow’s jobs in the growing field
of meat fabrication, until I found out how much a culinary education costs. At
the Institute, tuition is just over fifty thousand dollars.

Now
I know why duck confit is so expensive. Hell, the duck probably only costs ten
bucks . . . the other thirty goes to paying off the chef’s student loans!

At this stage of my
life, though, if I somehow came across fifty grand, I think I’d pass on
culinary school. Instead, I’d invest that money in some sort of cooking gadget
that I could sell in a half-hour show.

 All you have to do is
tell people that the way they’ve always done some kitchen task is “too much
hassle” or “throwing money down the drain.” Maybe add the phrase “space-age
technology.”

Sure, I’d have to spend
money on a B-grade celebrity spokesperson (“Now here’s TV’s Scott Baio with a
testimonial for the revolutionary new Asparagus Master!”). I’d also need to
invent something, but after that, it’s pure profit.

Maybe I’ll create a
quinoa sifter (“Tired of sifting your quinoa the old-fashioned way?”), or
specially designed broccoli tongs.

I have an idea for a
kitchen device that is just begging to be invented, but since I have no mechanical
aptitude and can’t draw, I have decided to give away my idea. All I ask is, if
you
do
something with it, let me do the following ad . . .

(voice-over intro)

“It’s the kitchen
necessity that everybody’s talking about—The Flipper!”

“Are
you spending
too much time
flipping your omelets by hand? Do you always
overcook
one side of the pancake? Tired of burgers sticking to supposedly
non-stick
pans
because you didn’t flip them in time
? How many meals have you
ruined
with flimsy spatulas?

Stop
ruining your family’s meals—you need The Flipper! Powered by the same
technology used in NASA’s advanced weather satellites, a tiny patented
mechanism activates the Turbo Food Paddles on The Flipper, so you can serve
perfectly-flipped food every time!

But
that’s not all! If you call in the next twenty seconds, we’ll throw in the
Kitchen Sorcery Wand for free, and we’re not even sure what it does! In fact,
we’ll give you
ten
of them for free, along with a stylish faux-naugahyde
carrying case!”

As the de facto menu
planner for our non-traditional quasi-family unit, I try to make sure The
Girlfriend and I eat a healthy, balanced diet. Granted, our definition of
‘balanced’ might be different than yours.

For instance, we
believe that, if you had a salad for dinner, you can, and probably
should, have a gigantic apple fritter for dessert. You know, for
balance
.

In general, we eat
healthy food, and we both had to relearn some things. For instance, I had to explain
that neither ice cream nor chocolate is
, per se
, a ‘food group.’

But what does healthy
mean, exactly? Now, I’m sure even ravenous meat-eaters would probably agree
vegetables are involved, in some way. 

 Growing up, I never
had a problem eating my vegetables, because if they were on my dinner plate, I
was
supposed
to eat them.

Of course, Mom never exactly
challenged our palates—the Great Kale Experiment of the early seventies
notwithstanding.

I was a vegetarian for
two weeks in 1987, a commitment which, in retrospect, lasted longer than a lot
of my relationships in 1987.

I might have stayed
with vegetarianism, except that in the eighties, I was on the road all the
time, and options for the aspiring herbivore were limited at your various
Perkins and Stuckey’s locations. You get really tired of iceberg lettuce and
warm ranch dressing.

I don’t imagine there
were too many vegetarian dining options in the seventeenth century, but in
1622, the first ‘health food’ cookbook was published by Tobias Venner. It was
called

“Via
Recta ad Vitam Longam, or a Plaine Philosophical Discourse of the Nature,
Faculties, and Effects of all suche things as by way of Nourishments and
Dietetical Observations made for the Preservation of Health.”

That catchy title
translates as either
The Straight Road to Long Life
or
Avoid Eating
at the Olive Garden
(my Latin is sketchy at best). His advice:

 “Cut
down on heavy sauces, meats and desserts” and “Avoid eating at places which
offer unlimited breadsticks, for they will surely lead to ill humours,”

Ellen Swallow Richards
is credited with the first American health food cookbook, called
First
Lessons in Food and Diet,
in 1904.

At the time, Miss
Richards was already known for the success of her earlier books. At the turn of
the twentieth century, the hipsters were all reading her classic,
The Effect
of Heat on the Digestibility of Gluten.

Fans of ESW raved about
her provocative book,
The Adulterations of Groceries,
which I think is also
might be the title of a Merchant-Ivory film.

I did some research on
Ms. Richards, and I’m not trying to turn my little column into a post-feminist
screed here, but I have a question . . .

WHY IS THIS
WOMAN NOT FAMOUS
?

Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911)

First american woman admitted to a school of science

First american woman to earn a degree in chemistry.

First woman admitted to MIT

First female instructor at MIT

One would think that
the history books could give us one less paragraph on, for instance, the Monroe
Doctrine to make a little room for Ms. Richards.

About a century after
Ellen Swallow Richards, the USDA introduced the first ‘food pyramid,’ but it
was doomed to failure. C’mon, people . . . Americans don’t remember their high
school geometry! For the average American, you might as well have called it a
Food Dodecahedron.