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food prep porn
Monday, March 14 2011
When I was a kid, my father did most of the cooking. He usually made some sort of "supper" as he called it, and sometimes he also made a pot of beans for lunch and on some occasions pancakes for breakfast. But on nights when he didn't feel like cooking, he'd announce, "we're having a simple supper tonight." That meant we had to fend for ourselves. So we'd make ourselves some sandwiches or whatever, it was no big deal. I've never really expected anyone to prepare me dinner, and, at the same time, I don't want anyone to expect me to prepare them dinner. I don't have much interest in food except when I'm actually eating it. As a necessary and extremely temporary form of human expression, it just doesn't interest me. In that way I'm like my mother. That's why my father was the one who did most of the food preparation when I was growing up. Similarly, this is why Gretchen does most of the food preparation in our house now. There's an additional factor at play in addition to my mealtime apathy: Gretchen is such a good cook that I fear on some level that she'll find my efforts either repetitive or not sufficiently elaborate. Left to my own devices, I'd prepare myself burritos every night until I eventually moved on to preparing some other dish every blessed night of the week. Actually, though, Gretchen is delighted on the few occasions that I prepare food. She also likes it when we prepare food together, which doesn't happen very often.
Tonight, though, we make hamburgers together. I say "hamburgers," but of course I mean various kinds of vegan patties (we stock a variety). Burgers the way we like them are so elaborate that it hardly matters what the patty tastes like. (Supposedly this also true of Burger King's decidedly non-vegan patties, meaning they could convert to a completely vegetarian product line without much disruption.) Lately we've taken to putting A1 Steak Sauce (Jeffrey Dahmer's secret ingredient) on our vegan patties.
Later, after Jeopardy and the Colbert Report, Gretchen watched an episode of Cupcake Wars, having known in advance that a vegan team had won. It was compelling food prep porn, and it wasn't surprising that it perfect television for Gretchen. More surprising was that I somehow got roped in by it and couldn't tear myself away. It was such good television that it actually had me sitting there watching people preparing food.
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