Television Cooking

Confession: I like PBS TV cooking shows. There are far too many of them but I especially like to watch certain ones. More on those specifics in a bit.

Confession: I cannot think of a single instance where I actually tried a recipe I saw on a cooking show. It is the watching I like – the actual cooking – not so much.

Watching these shows is relaxing. It is fun to see an expert talk about a subject they like and make it look delightfully easy. I know that behind the scenes of every Martha Stewart baking show or Ming Tsai oriental cooking show are legions of lesser worker-chefs slicing and dicing and chopping and grinding and measuring and sifting and blending and mixing so that the stars of these shows have everything at their fingertips and can talk nonchalantly and calmly about the dish they are demonstrating.

Of course these stars do actually demonstrate tool-usage skills. Consider the knife. They always have the perfect knife. For example, the Williams Sonoma company lists such knives as chef knife, utility knife, paring knife, santoku knife, slicing knife, carving knife, boning knife, meat cleaver, vegetable cleaver, nakiri knife, honesuki knife, steak knife, and tomato knife. If you are interested you can go to their website and read lots of details on these knives and of course they’d like you to buy some. If you like to cook, I say go for it.

But those of us who are watchers rather than doers already know that our knife-wielding skills will never be much good because we are just plain lazy and food prep is not our bailiwick. Also, the knives of the pros are probably sharp enough to cut through steel girders. My knives are just OK-sharp and I when I need to cut something I just grab the first one I see – mostly based on size – and hope it will do the job without it helping me add some bits of me to the recipe. Which sometimes happens but don’t let it gross you out.

You’d never notice.

Really.

Watching a professional chef slice an onion or carrot or turnip with a knife is like watching a star quarterback throw the perfect football pass – the ball floats down the field and lands gently in the receiver’s hands for a touchdown. Watching me cut something with a knife is like watching me on my first pair of skis go ass-over-teakettle with a distinct swooshing sound as I slide down the ski slope on my butt. Head first.

One of my favorite movies scenes ever is the scene in the movie Julie and Julia where Julia Child is practicing slicing onions. The entire movie is a delicious treat and the scenes of modern-day Julie learning some really tough cooking skills with lobsters and beef bourguignon is wonderfully funny.

Cooking usually results in eating so you might wonder why I’m not into trying some recipes. I did mention laziness in an earlier paragraph. But I just don’t find eating all that interesting – never have. As a wee girl I drove my mother crazy on lots of days by getting up in the morning and announcing. “I’m not hungry today!” I was a tiny, underweight stick of a kid so you can imagine Mom’s dismay. But eating just got in the way of more interesting things like reading or drawing or roller skating or exploring the local woods.

Mom and I did have a favorite cooking show way back in those old days. We loved Graham Kerr’s cooking show. From 1969 to1971, he had a cooking show called The Galloping Gourmet and it was SO MUCH FUN to watch. Mom and I learned all about clarified butter. Mr. Kerr used it in a lot in his recipes and if you want to know what it is, go look it up! But even though we liked that show, Mom and I never tried any of those recipes. They were too complex and Mom was only into food prep because that was part of her wifely/motherly job. She didn’t like cooking either.

Way back then we also liked a TV variety show sponsored by the Kraft Foods Company. I don’t remember the name of the show any more but we called it the Hungry Show because every commercial was for some Kraft food product and how to prepare it and everything looked yummy. We snacked our way through the Hungry Show nibbling on cheese and crackers and cookies and ice cream – real American healthy nutritional foods dontcha know.

So I like Martha Stewart’s cooking shows. Like her or hate her, Martha makes everything she cooks look marvelous and tasty and easy. I also like Ming Tsai who seems like the most pleasant and likeable person. His show is called Simply Ming. Hubby even bought me one of his cookbooks titled Ming’s Master Recipes. The book is lovely to look at and read and talks about mysterious things like cranberry-teriyaki glaze and curry tea rub, hot water dough and red rendang.

Then there is America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country both hosted by Christopher Kimble who founded those shows but is now leaving them due to contract problems. One wonders how those shows will be without Chris as he is what makes them interesting – at least to me. I’ve enjoyed Jacque Pepin’s many food shows and Lydia Bastianich, host and chef of Lydia’s Italy. Of course another mainstay of PBS TV is travel shows and there’s nary a travel show that doesn’t talk about the local food. Rick Steves always dines with someone interesting somewhere interesting. And Burt Wolf also has a food-history book titled What We Eat that tells the story of foods like corn or cheese or chocolate or sugar or chili peppers.

So I often wonder what my favorite TV chefs will be cooking on any given day. But I’m hoping for some scientific genius to invent a food replicator like the ones that we’ve seen on the Star Trek TV series. Those lucky folks on the starships get to walk up to an empty opening in a bulkhead and ask for a hot fudge sundae, or a taco salad, or steak and lobster or Klingon Gagh, or Vulcan Plomeek Soup. With a whoosh and a twinkle the dish magically appears

I can’t wait.

 

 

 

 

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Birds of The Enchanted Isles

Birds are part of my earliest memories, from feeding ducks in the local park, to maintaining a winter bird-feeder and a summer bird-bath, to the pet parakeets that gave me so much pleasure. So it was with great delight and amazement that Hubby and I enjoyed some very exotic birds on our trip to The Enchanted Isles.

The very first bird we saw was a Frigate Bird – great black silhouettes against the sky. The females have white heads. The curve of their wings in flight almost makes them look like bats. They float gracefully on the air currents. They hovered over the boat we traveled on, easily keeping up as the boat was traveling from one island to the next. When one landed on the boat, twenty tourists all went bananas: from relaxed and sleepy after a long day’s activities to running and falling over each other, racing around the boat to get their cameras and take pictures. Tour guides must laugh quietly to themselves watching their guests go slightly crazy!

 

Pelicans are also everywhere in this lovely place. They look very much like miniature pterodactyls. My imagination takes me to Jurassic times when dinosaurs ruled the earth. Note the Sally Lightfoot crabs on the rocks.

Blue-footed Boobies are lovely.  They look like big seagulls and their amazing eyes and bright blue feet make them seem comical. But when they are fishing, they are the picture of grace as they rocket-dive into the ocean to catch their next meal.

Waved Albatross are also huge birds. Gorgeous. In our fall months they nest on Espanola Island. They interact in fascinating ways. They duel with their long yellow bills like they are fencing with swords. Then one makes rapid clicks while the other watches. Then the watcher clicks his/her bill once and the conversation pauses, then begins again.

 

The only flamingos I’ve ever seen were large flocks in zoos, but here they are wild and mostly solitary. We saw one flying – those long legs stick our behind their bodies. They filter feed as they wander in island lagoons.

There were lovely little birds, about the size of robins that followed the boat in the mornings.  They moved so fast that they were impossible to photograph. They looked like they walked on water as they fished. I called them Wave Dancers until our guide told us that they are called Storm Petrels. Darwin’s finches are hard to find. They are plain and dark. Little golden warblers, bits of bright sunshine about the size of sparrows, feed among lava rocks on the beaches. Mockingbirds will flock to visitors on the beach and even land on people hoping for a handout.

There are Herons and Galapagos penguins. The penguins are small and hard to spot – they blend in with the rocks but they swim at high speed. I saw one in the water from a distance. The Herons are graceful as they fish among the lava rocks.

The Galapagos Islands are well known because of Charles Darwin. Regardless of your thoughts on his scientific theories, these islands are now a National Park of Ecuador and these beautiful birds live there and they are protected and cherished. Thank you Mr. Darwin. Awesome!

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