The Food Junkie Channel

I have to admit that I am completely captivated by the Thanksgiving cooking shows on the Food Network. I will watch anyone cook a turkey. Sad but True. I'll even watch the annoying hosts cook a Thanksgiving meal, like Giada, who has a smile that makes me want to bitch slap her in the mouth. Must she be so happy all the time? Then theres down home with The Neeleys. Those two seriously need to get a room or something. His "he he he"-ing and her "ting-a-ling-a-ling" ing just drive me to distraction......but they're cooking holiday dishes and I must watch.

I've loved cooking shows for as long as I can remember. One of my early memories was watching Julia Child completely destroy a holiday yule log. By the time she was finished with it, it looked like a brown pile of what used to be cake with little meringue mushrooms stuffed in to it. Even as a child, I remember laughing my ass off at the vastness of her failure. It wasn't funny watching her struggling with this horrible mess of a dessert. It was funny during the parting shot where an obviously different yule log was sitting pristinely on it's bed of spun sugar. Poor Julia.....we love her so. She kept reminding us that it's a log and should look messy. We all knew the truth.

My favorite is "The Barefoot Contessa" I could watch her cook in her gazillion dollar kitchen at her little cottage in The Hamptons til the cows come home. Yes......she has a laugh that can bring on seizures.....and yes, real people don't have sparkly tables with little silver bowls of caper buds and plates of fresh figs. It's glimpse in to the good life that near as I can figure, is populated entirely by middle aged women and gay men,who all have copious amounts of free time at their disposal. I can only imagine real people helping themselves to a pre-dinner caper bud......or actually picking up one of those fresh figs to nosh. I can only smile as Ina encourages me to buy the best lobster meat I can afford. Oh Ina......you wouldn't last a day in my world.

So for those of us who can't eat butter and heavy cream, and who can't whip up a festive holiday flan, and wouldn't know where in the fuck to find a caper bud if our life depended upon it, there are our little TV friends in their perfect little TV worlds. I have to admit that I'm waiting for the moment when Rachel Ray unceremoniously drops her unholy arm load of ingredients. A girl can dream can't she?