Pen-Elayne on the Web

If You Can't Stand The Heat

Continuing on yesterday's television theme - I love cooking shows. One of the best things about visiting Robin's family is that British TV seems to tons of cooking shows. Here in the US, there's pretty much public TV and The Food Network, and some cable systems (like mine) don't carry the latter (*sob*). One of the things that always amazes me about the shows (to continue on another theme I raised this week) is how magical they seem, the way all the ingredients are in their nice little bowls all measured and chopped and waiting for the master. It's like the cobbler elves, little to no effort is expended on the part of the on-air personality. The old "here's one we prepared earlier!" ploy.

So what I want to do is a cooking show for people who cook like I do. Folks who aren't necessarily telegenic (and I'm more or less as presentable as Lidia so it wouldn't be all that bad) and who live in an apartment with a tiny kitchen and who can follow recipes just fine but don't have sous chef elves. Folks who like to pretend they're doing a cooking show anyway during the few noise-free evenings they're able to prepare a meal from scratch rather than hide in the bedroom with earplugs in while the TV dinners are in the microwave, because it makes it more like a game and less like a process that needs five tedious steps done before the one fun on-air step (here's the ingredients all laid out, now put them together like this) can take place. And I like to include the "afterward" in the cooking show in my head - how I wash the preparation dishes and utensils and put stuff away while the food's cooking so I don't have to do it afterwards. Because you know, most kitchens don't have these secret compartments under the televised surface where you can leave the detritus for the crew to handle.

Through this awful cold snap the apartment heat's been a blessing, but a mixed one as it turns out. The building's boiler apparently kicked in full-blast yesterday, and about 5 PM, just when the super went off-duty for the weekend, we developed a major leak in a corner of the living room. Robin's theory is that the increased pressure on the steam and the already-weakened pipes in this place, combined with the cold weather, caused the leakage. Good thing the window sill there is big enough to accommodate the bucket.