Thoughts on Televsion

So many people are snobs when it comes to watching television. "Oh, I never watch T.V." "It's such a waste of time." "There's never anything good on." Nonsense.

First of all, some of the best writing is on television. Gilmore Girls under Amy Sheridan-Palladino and West Wing under Aaron Sorkin were two of the best shows ever done on television. Crisp, rapid dialog along with great acting and directing made them both "must watch T.V." I've been a fan of the Law & Order franchise since it began and I do tend to watch every episode of each of them. I'll sometimes watch CSI with Len, but I rarely watch CSI: Miami and never CSI: New York.

This season's been a bit of a disappointment, but the third episode of New Amsterdam was as good as the first, with an interesting twist at the very end. I'm looking forward to next Monday. I thought that Canterbury Law has possibility (I like Juliana Margulies and Aidan Quinn), but I'm not sure I'll commit. Next week also marks the return of Big Bang Theory, a show which leaves me in stitches every time I watch it. The other two comedies I watch faithfully are Aliens in America and 30 Rock.

Now even I am a snob when it comes to "reality T.V." First of all, many of those shows are clearly written--maybe not the dialog (which would be a big improvement) but the storylines and structure clearly are. The scum-sucking weasels who are pocketing the big bucks rather than pay their writers decent wages, pension, and health should die horrible deaths and have a special place in hell reserved for them. None the less, I've mentioned before our devotion to The Amazing Race and Beauty and the Geek.

Beauty and the Geek returned last night, but the game has changed again. I'm not sure I like what they've done with it, because I really thought the pairing of the beauties with the geeks went quite well. I will say that last night's turn, where the beauties had to decide which of the geeks to send to the elimination room, worked amazingly well. The beauties decided that the guys to send were the ones who might not need the improvement skills as much as the ones they didn't pick. That was a pretty smart move on their part. I do wonder if there's some plan afoot to change things during the season though, because in the past the show eliminated a pair of contestants each week and this way they only eliminate one a week. That could add up to a 17 week season the way things appear to be structured.

I've taken a bit more of an interest in American Idol this season. I'm not sure why. Maybe I was waiting for the singers to get a chance at Lennon-McCartney tunes or maybe because it looks like they did get rid of the really marginal talents before the top 12 got down to work last night. There are more important things to me than watching the show (I slept through three of the singers on Lennon-McCartney night), but I am curious about how it works out. Although Simon Cowell doesn't need a writer, Randy and, especially, Paula could use one. Can anyone actually understand what either one of them is talking about? Last night, when asked why the songs have lasted, Randy threw in the word "copyright," but in a way that had nothing to do with what copyright means at all or what the question was. Paula couldn't express that the "risks" she was suggesting people take should have "pay-off" or "reward." She needs help with simple sentence structure. What a ditz.

I feel sorry for the girl from Oregon who sold her rodeo horse to go to the audition. She did a dreadfully rushed, country & westernized version of "Eight Days a Week" that really missed the mark. My favorite cutie with the dreds didn't do a particularly good job either. And the 16 year old favorite really fell down. Chikezie was the big surprise. I haven't been particularly impressed but he did a great job with "She's a Woman." Unlike my husband, I'm not taken with either the rocker-biker-nurse or the Irish bar maid. At least we're down to two nights a week for Idol, rather than three, from here on out.

Now for something I doubt I've mentioned before: food shows tend to be the default when nothing specific is on television (and televisions are always on in my house: my husband doesn't like quiet like I do.) Talk about reality! We get BBC America, which hooked me on Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares (and, yes, I'll probably watch Hell's Kitchen this year, which I haven't in the past) and now we're enthralled by Last Restaurant Standing.

Cooking shows are not a new thing for us to watch. We used to lay in bed on Saturday mornings watching cooking shows on PBS like the Frugal Gourmet and Yan Can Cook back before there was a Food Network. Now, my husband records every episode of Rachael Ray and buys all of her books. It's improved his kitchen repertoire beyond belief. He does resent that it takes him about 90 minutes to make one of her 30 Minute Meals, but he's resigned to it. The knife skills class I sent him and my son to last year hasn't improved his speed, just his technique.

We were watching some show one Saturday night on the topic of camenbert cheese, looked at each other, hit the record button and ran out to Trader Joe's and Whole Foods to secure a lovely arrangement of cheese, fruit, bread and crackers for dinner. We came back home and ate while we watched the rest of the show. Talk about the power of suggestion.

We started watching Iron Chef back when it was only available on the Japanese language television channel out here. Its migration to the Food Network was inspired. We really enjoy the American version (much better once they got rid of William Shatner) and I can't wait to try Michael Symon's restaurant the next time I am in Cleveland. I've been begging for dinner out at Mario Batali's Mozza since it opened last year. (Batali's partner in this venture, Nancy Silverton, is my own personal baking goddess. I worked my way through her bread book, beginning with making a sour dough starter from my home-grown grapes and doing all of the extended proofing required for her recipes. I don't have the time for this anymore, unfortunately.)

Although I don't get to watch many shows, I find Alton Brown's Good Eats fascinating. I bought my son both of his books, since Michael is into many things science. I've been trying to catch Jamie Oliver's new series which features food from his cottage garden, but I forget to schedule the recording. There's no Italian cooking show I really like right now. Giada doesn't do it for me. She's no Marcella Hazan, whose books are my Italian cooking bibles. I find Bobby Flay annoying. Ditto Paula Dean (but I enjoyed her sons' eating on the road show.) Emeril is always entertaining, but I know that I've got a two-day tolerance for the heaviness of New Orleans cooking.

I hear Top Chef is back with a new season tonight.

In Recovery

We had another successful Thanksgiving feast on Thursday. It was a small crowd of a mere 10 people and everyone pitched in to help. We did all of the traditional stuff, including turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole (using Alton Brown's recipe from scratch, although I did burn the onions and we had to make a run to the grocery store to buy the canned fried onions), corn, butternut squash (with blue cheese and pecans, again from the Food Network website) and pumpkin and apple pie. I had a major panic when I discovered I had thrown out my old pastry cloth and not replaced it, since that's the easiest way to roll out pie crust. I managed with waxed paper, but I did go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to replace the necessary cloth and rolling pin cover on Saturday.

Len makes the stuffing, but that's really his only contribution in the kitchen. With the exception of some donations from guests (Gillian Horvath made a great oyster pie and I couldn't have gotten dinner on the table without her help in the kitchen), I cook the rest. It's a very long day on my feet and Len did not follow through with my request for kitchen mats to ease the pain in my back.

After Harlan and Susan Ellison left, the remaining guests helped pack up the food and stack dishes and I spent the next three days cleaning up and then cooking a huge pot of turkey posole to take to a party on Sunday (thus messing up the kitchen again.)

The posole recipe was from Rachael Ray's suggestions for left-overs at Thanksgiving, and it was a huge success with the other guests at Gillian Horvath's party. I had eaten posole, a traditional New Mexican stew, at a place called "The Shed" on the square in Santa Fe. What's not to like about something with that much corn (in the form of hominy)? I realized I had never cooked with fresh jalapeno peppers before and I certainly had never had tomitillos in the kitchen before either. Tomitillos look like green tomatoes, once you pull off the papery outer wrap they have and taste a bit like green pepper squirted with lemon or lime when they are raw. I've had them in a mild sauce on the wonderful fresh and green corn tamales made by Corn Maiden here in L.A. (a must-stop-by at any of the bigger farmers' markets around town) and in this dish they were chopped in the food-processor before being added to the soup. The recipe is available on the Food Network website here, and it tastes just wonderful when finished with a squeeze of lime and some tortilla chips. I've got the leftover posole in my fridge and that's going to be lunch this week.

I started to make the house look like Christmas by laying out a red tablecloth and putting flowers in a vase of Lenox's Holiday pattern, flanked by a matching tea pot and candy dish. Then I replaced the every day white Corelle dishes with Holiday pieces on the open shelves in the kitchen. It's a pretty holly pattern and matching pieces are on my Christmas list.

We won't get a tree for a few more weeks because we hold our Christmas party on Twelfth Night and we like the tree to look decent on the first weekend in January. I think we're doing our party on January 5 this year, which is actually the right night to hold it. I've even found a fine way to make King's Cake (the same thing that's served during Mardi Gras), so this will be the first time I've made one for the party (if I get around to it.)

I did not indulge in the shopping frenzy on Friday, where stores opened as early as 4 a.m. There's nothing I want that much and I sure have no love for dealing with traffic at the malls. My son, however, did go to Best Buy at 5 a.m. but came home empty handed. He couldn't bring himself to stand in a line that snaked entirely around the store.

I did do a quick drop by Macy's on Saturday to pick up the afore mentioned Holiday vase, because I got $10 off the price which was already half of list. I think that brought the price down to about 30% of the original price. I do like bargains, but not at the cost of sleep.

Dinner Party as a Status Symbol?

I love to cook. I really do. I started collecting recipes when I was in high school--I still have the note books. I used to take great pleasure in having friends over to my house for a good meal and conversation which lasted for hours. This goes back to college, where I'd go off campus to borrow my aunt's place to cook. I impressed the hell out of my first boyfriend when I researched and gathered the recipes to do a complete Greek meal, starting with the lemon-egg soup and ending with home made baklava (a sure-fire winner at parties I held for years.) My roommates at the New York apartment I where lived after Hofstra and before Columbia decided that they would clean up after me so I would cook most meals. That was an excellent arrangement, since neither one of them could cook.

Some of my more memorable parties include the chocolate party I gave for painter Michael Whelan when he was in the D.C. area for a gallery opening, the one I gave photographer Corson Hirschfeld the night after he had an exhibit of his hand-colored "Places of Power" open at the National Museum of Natural History which was mostly mezze, the dim sum brunch I did for friends on a challenge, and the night out here in L.A. when screen-writers Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, and Paul Guay wanted to have dinner with Harlan Ellison and I cooked Italian (Marcella Hazen is my kitchen goddess.) That dinner for ten is the closest thing I've had to replicate what I used to do all the time in D.C., except for cooking Thanksgiving dinner, one of my least favorite things in the world.

I did try to do a big Christmas dinner one year. It was our first anniversary (yes, Len and I were married on Christmas) and we had to get Michael to the airport for a trip back east to his father's late that evening. I did invite friends and, although the food was very good, it was a rushed evening and I've vowed never to do it again.

Len's idea of entertaining is to throw hot dogs on the grill and watch TV. That's not entirely fair. He's in love with Rachael Ray, so dinner (at least in winter) will often be something from 30 Minute Meals, which always take at least 90 minutes to make. It's an improvement, but his reason for having friends over is to watch television. Therefore, dinner never takes place on the dining room table, even when friends are present. Except for Thanksgiving.

I hate Thanksgiving because it involves the least imaginative cooking and no one wants to mess with the traditional turkey, stuffing, two kinds of potatoes and all other manner of starchy foods like green bean casserole. Thanksgiving's only redeeming points are baking pies and the fact that people sit around a table and talk to each other for hours. And that the television is turned off once guests arrive. In all the years Len and I have been together, I've never had fewer than 12 people at the Thanksgiving dinner table and I have had as many as 23.

So, as I said above, I used to take great pleasure in having people over for dinner or to come to my place when I make a party. The point is, I enjoy cooking for my friends who appreciate what I've done. I don't waste my time cooking for people I don't like. Cooking has always been one of my hobbies. I have deflected any suggestions that I turn to catering as a profession because I've already turned one hobby (photography) into a business. I am considering opening a bed and breakfast artists' retreat someday, though.

Today's New York Times had a terrifying article entitled "Dinner at the Foodies': Purslane and Anxiety" by Katherine Wheelock. First off: what the hell is purslane and why do I need it? (It's an herb from India, said to be Gandhi's favorite, and is used in salads raw or as a cooked vegetable. It looks a little like one of the succulents I've got potted in the garden.) The gist of the article is that dinner parties are becoming a status symbol like a good car or a great lawn, which aren't things to be had in Manhattan. Some people in New York are going nuts giving dinner parties, jumping on the latest trends and traveling hours to get just the right ingredients, or trying to avoid looking like they are responding to a trend instead of being on the cutting edge of new trends. One woman, in the midst of a divorce, talked about throwing a first birthday party for her child and ordering pizza and then having her husband go out and buy $1000 worth of food to serve. There is apparently a one-upsmanship competition going on among foodies in New York. I knew there was a good reason I didn't want to live there any more.

Very few people I know are particularly competent or interested in the kitchen. What does the well-educated woman make for dinner? Reservations. I'm good at that, but I was raised in the time when girls took home ec, not shop. I was raised in a kitchen where one grandmother made pasta by hand (when I think of her I smell flour and eggs) and the other could make a translucent strudel pastry stretched across the dining room table (I have her mother's Hoosier kitchen cabinet with an enamel top in my kitchen for a prep area.) Dining out, except for Sunday breakfast after church, was a rare occasion, reserved for The Little Venice restaurant in Binghamton (some 60 miles away) although the women in my family were excellent Italian cooks. The nearest pizza place was Molinari's in Oneonta (30 miles away), so we made pizza at home. I learned by watching and reading. I firmly believe that anyone who likes food can learn to cook if they are curious, know how to read, have a decent set of taste buds, and a sense of adventure.

I probably have four or five women friends out here who are as good or better than I am in the kitchen: Laurie, Suzenna, Karen, Gillian, and Suzanne. I've recently made friends with someone who writes about food for a living, Tory (connect to her blog on the right.) Karen's taking up baking as her third career (she was a second-career trademark attorney) and she's turning out fabulous breads. Laurie and Suzenna are phenomenal cooks and make a party's food, no matter how complicated, look totally effortless. Either one of them could be a professional caterer. Laurie works as an editor for the same company that produces Gourmet and Bon Apettite. Suzenna has a cookbook and food magazine collection which puts my considerable library to shame. (I've often said that my goal is to have as many cookbooks as Phyllis Richman had in her office at the Washington Post.) We've met many interesting people at Suzenna's house on those Sunday evenings when she does her dinner parties. While I do find Laurie and Suzenna's skills admirable, I know that I would have nothing to be embarrassed about when they come to my house, if left to my own devices.

O.K., so I do like to show off in the kitchen but remember: I only cook for people I like. I'm hoping that the remodel will make working in the kitchen easier so I spend more time there. I'd like to have people over for dinner and conversation, without the television on. If I intimidate some of the people in our circle of acquaintances, that's not really the intention (unless its a new way of counting coup, in which case I'll make notches in my new counter.)

If you don't think you can compete with me in the kitchen, you can reciprocate for dinner by taking me out to a good restaurant. I'd be happy to suggest one.