Still Chuckling / The Law of Diminishing Returns

These people are just too clever. One of my friends sent me these two links this morning — and had me laughing and almost falling off my chair. I must admit, I am not a Food Network fan. Nothing against these TV chefs, it’s just I’m still suffering from overload from when I was first preggers 14 years ago and watched every single cooking show that was on TV — and borrowed cooking videos from the library too… I still have a box of VHS tapes of the “oldies but goodies” — Chef Folsey, the CIA, Marianne Esposito, Jeff Smith, Mollie Katzen, etc. Not to mention the notebook after notebook of recipes and tips. I haven’t recovered, so now I can’t watch a cooking show without getting bored. The only exception — besides my one and only Julia (oh how I miss her!) is Martha — so when I see her the button doesn’t get pressed as quickly. I greatly regret selling her cookbooks in one of my purging frenzies:(. Maybe it’s the traditionalist in me that doesn’t take to these new and new-er chefs, like the Bam guy (whom I did like in his first TV appearances in the early ’90′s). Or maybe I’m just getting old….

At any rate, here are the two videos that I just *had* to blog about — they’ve probably made the rounds judging by the number of comments, but I didn’t want to forget where they were posted, so…

The Twelve Days of Christmas from Armchair Cook

A Giada Disaster from TVGasm

I think it’s a classic example of “diminishing returns” (at least in terms of cooking shows) — the more I watch, the less joy and information I derive from it.

On the other hand, cooking in a hotel room the past month, in a 4′ x 4′ kitchen, with 2 electric burners, has taught me this: a bigger kitchen means a more pleasurable cooking experience, BUT the converse is untrue. Smaller kitchens and the lack of equipment are inconvenient, but they cannot diminish the pleasure that one can get from cooking itself. Hands-on cooking is always a reward all on its own, no matter the locale or the tools you have at your disposal.