MY OBSESSION WITH TELEVISION COOKING SHOWS

Fact #1 -----I’m obsessed with watching television chefs doing gourmet cooking

Fact #2 -----I’m not interested in doing gourmet cooking

Fact #3 -----I don’t think I’d enjoy eating most of what those gourmet chefs cook

My passion for television cooking shows began when I was a young stay at home mom. Every weekday on a Pittsburgh television station, I watched the first cooking show I can ever remember, “Kay’s Kitchen”.  Kay was an overweight young woman in her 30’s who taught viewers how to cook rather basic things. I had learned to cook watching my grandmother and mother but she broadened my horizons by showing how to prepare food in a more modern way. Her show was only 15 minutes long, but was filled with much information because there weren’t many commercials. Eventually she married and moved to Hawaii, but before she left she had taught me many things.

In the mid 1950’s television was in its infancy and striving to teach us housewives how to benefit from using new products. So they replaced my cooking lessons with a woman demonstrating how to use a mangle to iron sheets and pillow cases, with the added bonus of using the same machine to iron my husband’s shirts.

She also praised the benefits of using a portable oven which could hold up to a 30 pound turkey.

Following Kay’s departure, I was left with no cooking mentor for many years. Of course Julia Child came on the scene, but French cooking was not something I was interested in. My idea of gourmet food was dining  in a restaurant which served steak cooked rare, a baked potato with sour cream and a tossed salad with bleu cheese dressing. I no longer enjoy a rare steak.

Through the following years, with five growing children I learned to do many things with pantry staples and was quite content with my cooking until one Saturday morning I called for my husband to see this woman on television who making decadent desserts for her new audience using enourmous amounts of butter along with other fattening items. After they was baked, topped with whipping cream and beautifully displayed for the camera, she actually took a huge bite out of each one, sighing and rolling her eyes over each delectable piece and I had found a new friend.

That day was more than 25 years ago and now, besides Paula, I’ve become fascinated with many more television cooking shows.  I especially enjoy Ina who is always cheerfully using new ideas to make comfort food. Jeffrey, her husband seems to be gone most of the week, but when he comes home on Friday, Ina shows us the wonderful meal she is preparing for his return. He has such a sweet nature and appreciates everything she does for him. My husband gets upset when I say how much I like Jeffrey.

However, my favorite cooking shows are “Top Chef” and “Chopped”. I'm always fascinated by chefs preparing artistic platefuls of foods sometimes with ingredients I've never heard of and using cooking terms I don’t understand. Once in the newspaper, I saw an explanation of “duck confit”. Thank god I finally found out what that meant. Speaking of duck, how can anyone eat barely cooked duck breast and call it tasty?

I will admit I sometimes cry when someone I admire wins the final show, however I really don't like it when the same chefs are covered with tattoos and strange hairdos which seem to be the norm nowadays for both the men and women.

Although I clip many, many recipes from newspapers and magazines, I still rely on cooking the things we like best. I more or less stay in my own comfort zone.  On holidays we have the traditional meals that most people serve with very few variations.  On Christmas Eve our children and grandchildren have always come to our home for our usual Christmas dinner and gift-giving party. There are about nineteen members of the family attending and I usually prepare most of the food.

I decided last Christmas to change the menu and do boneless pork on the grill to be served with several sauces. Unfortunately boneless pork chops were going to cost about $4.00 a pound that week and frozen
turkey breasts at Target were only $.99 a pound, so I switched to the traditional turkey for about 20 people and instead of sweet potatoes with marshmallows, I cubed and oven fried them. I added a new vegetable casserole along with our usual vegetables. Then it became necessary to have cranberry sauce along with my planned Caesar salad and then add in mashed potatoes and gravy as well. So our meal became traditional with a few enjoyable twists. It was a wonderful dinner, but for next year we discussed just ordering pizza.

Oh, one other thing. My new menu also featured a sauce that I had planned to use on the pork, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find a recipe using the same ingredients suggesting that it could be paired with roast turkey.  Still, I very joyfully announced to one and all that I was serving a sauce of cherry preserves infused with a balsamic vinegar reduction.