I have also tried to watch cooking shows, but I just can't get into them. I realize that each TV personality feels like they need to have some kind of catch phrase like "Bam!" or "Yum-O!" or the more sedate "It's a Good Thing", but I just end up getting irritated. Seriously, I want to be be watching when Rachael Ray goes to try something and screws up her face and yells "Yuck! Oh, that's awful!"
(As an aside, the only time I've ever watched Martha Stewart's show the whole way through was when my celebrity boyfriend, Clay Aiken, made an appearance, and did a cooking segment with his grandmother. They make one of Clay's favorites, called pineapple salad, and I seriously can't decide what I like more about this clip: Clay's grandmother, who is just an absolutely charming and tiny Southern lady - I just love the way she says "butter" - or the way Martha looks like she's trying to figure out which production assistant is going to be cleaning her toilet for okaying a recipe that calls for Ritz crackers. Ritz crackers! Oh the horror! Anyway, it's only about 7 minutes long.)
Wasn't that fun? I have to admit that I'm a bad fan and have never made this cheesy pineapple thing (my rear end is quite wide enough, thank you) but people who have made it say that it is quite popular at potlucks and big family dinners.
OK, where was I before I got distracted with Carolinian accents and Ritz crackers? Oh yeah, cooking shows. Although I have never made it through an entire Rachael Ray show, I am always interested in a dinner that is supposed to take 30 minutes or less. Half of the books in our cookbook graveyard contain recipes that involved 3 hours of prep work and specialty ingredients, only to turn out a very blah end result. I figure that if I've only spent 30 minutes making something and it's crappy, well, I can deal with that. And so, instead of buying this book so it can take up more space in my kitchen, I requested it from the library.
We have tried three recipes from this cookbook so far, and surprisingly, all three have gotten the "hey...this is good!" review from the critical tasters (my husband and myself). This is pretty much unheard of for any of the other cookbooks I actually spent money on. I do have to say that they are more like 45-minute meals because I do not have a production staff to chop up my onions and cube chicken, but they are still pretty fast and easy to make. I like how the recipes are written as a meal plan (entree, side dish, veggie) and her instructions are given to accomplish cooking all three in an efficient manner. She also uses ingredients that you might actually find at a normal grocery store.
My biggest gripes are that there are very few pictures of the food you are attempting to make (I like to see what something is supposed to look like), and that the recipes involve directions such as "two handfuls of cheese" "once around the pan" and "a couple of splashes". At the beginning of the book, she says "Don't measure with instruments, use your hands. You're not baking or conducting experiments for the government-just feel your way through." Obviously, Rachael has never met me, because my personality feels absolutely compelled to treat cooking like an organic chemistry lab session and I just can't get on board with this "handful of whatever" philosophy. Unfortunately, this is also probably why I will never be a truly fabulous cook.
We'll keep trying out recipes from this book until it's due back at the library. Who knows? I may actually buy it, but at least then it will have actually earned it's place in the cookbook cupboard.
