Have You No Shame, Mrs. Deen?

I don't watch television (well, with the exception of HGTV with my daughter when she comes home from college and the occasional bout of CNN if and when something news worthy happens), so I'm basically ignorant of the legions of celebrity television chefs that rule the airwaves. To me, there is only one person who deserved her own television cooking show, and that person was Julia Child. She knew how to cook, and she had a personality and charm that made you want to cook. End of story.

A couple of years I found myself in the X-ray department of my local hospital (irony of ironies), and as all waiting rooms in hospitals now have televisions to convince you that you're not waiting THAT long, I found myself watching Paula Deen's cooking show. I know it's not fair to base one's opinion on one show, however, an entire fifteen minutes devoted to dumping cartons of sherbet into a punch bowl filled with 7-up and then mixing them together does NOT constitute cooking in my book. There was some other recipe on this show that had something like forty pounds of butter--I think it was mashed potatoes and the ratio of butter to Idahos was essentially one to one--and, again, not particularly noteworthy. Let's put it this way, neither her ideas nor her personality had me frantically searching my TV guide for the next installment of her show.

Then lo and behold it was announced this week that three years ago she was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. One hates to be cynical, but the fact that she has withheld this information (which is, of course, her right) until she successfully landed a sponsor to pay her for her years of promoting fat-laden, unhealthy food and her moribund lifestyle seems, uh, a little craven to me. She continued to offer her up her brand of fare for three solid years without a single mention that the very food that she was extolling you to cook was likely to make you obese, and, therefore, vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes. How lovely, folks. Just eat your way to medical intervention. Donuts? Have four. Deep-fried cheesecake? Have another piece.

Is it just me or is this insanely irresponsible? Granted, I'm surrounded by medical types on both sides of the family, so perhaps my layman's knowledge of medical stuff is a little more informed than your average Joe. Diabetes is a nasty disease. How nasty? It's like up there with cancer as far as I am concerned. It affects your entire body. As in losing toes and going blind to name a couple of  potential side effects. I've currently embarked on a regime to eat better and exercise more, and the primary reason? My sugar numbers are heading in the pre-diabetic direction, and I would rather cut out chocolate forever than get diabetes. THAT'S how bad a disease it is.

So, I have to ask Mrs. Deen, why didn't she tell her loyal fans immediately that the lifestyle that she was promoting was in fact a direct line, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, to a lifetime of being insulin's bitch? The standard line seems to be that they wanted to have a clear message about all this before making the announcement. It took THREE FRIGGING YEARS to hone a public response to this news?

I don't think so. It took three years to find a sponsor. She disgusts me. Either keep it personal because it is personal, or use your new-found knowledge to immediately revamp your show so that your old message of "every thing's better deep-fried" is now "let's find new ways to make delicious food and not kill ourselves in the process." I'm not saying that she doesn't have the right to deep-fry cheesecake. But what I am saying is that there are consequences to that type of lifestyle choice--as she has found out--and, personally, I believe she has a responsibility to let her fans know exactly the cost of such a lifestyle.

In my opinion, there's no middle ground. You have a show. You have people who follow you. Well, now they've been following you into Type 2 diabetes. Will they get a discount on their insulin if they mention your name? Hope so, because insulin is expensive.

The Baking Thing

So, in a former life I was a pastry chef. Which is how I indirectly became a writer because I quit baking when I had children, which necessitated a move to the burbs for better schools, which meant an astonishing loss of self, which meant I started writing to stop from going crazy, and here I am.

I wasn't a great cook. I was technically competent, and I could run a kitchen, but I didn't have that creative spark that separates the wheat from the chaff. I was just good at what I did but nothing more than that. It did get old at the end. Being twenty-four and working horrendous hours is not the same as thirty-two working horrendous hours. Plus when you're younger your friends tend to be your work friends and I could go out and have fun (people in the food business go out and eat and drink for fun--imagine that!) and work on two hours of sleep. As I aged, I wanted to be in bed by ten because I had to get up at five. There were a lot of things that were great about it, and a lot of things that were horrible, and yet I still miss it, even though I haven't been in a kitchen in over twenty years.

There is a commercial bakery not far from where I currently work. I think it's a Wonder Bread factory (seriously), and depending on how the wind is blowing, some mornings I get out of my car and I'm surrounded by the smell of baking bread. It's like a cape, surrounding me. And I have a wistful moment.

I haven't given up the idea of running a small place. Of course, what I would really like is some gigantic Victorian where it's an extension of my house and people just come and eat. Like they are extended friends. Because that's what I'm looking for. A sense of community and shared love of food.

I had a wild idea the other day. What if one didn't open up a business but just opened up their house. And people sat down and ate what you served (just like you would if someone came to your house for dinner). If they wanted to they could leave some money in a jar. What they thought was fair. And there was no business permits, or health inspectors, or the hoop jumping that is inevitable when you start a business. You just open up your home. Cook it and they will come concept.

::Eyes homes for sale in local paper::

Cookbooks

I have a truly disgusting number of cookbooks. I keep hoping that I will find the ULTIMATE cookbook that will address all my needs and wants. As I continue what is becoming something of a pointless search, I keep returning to the tried and true. It's a small and elite group; let me share them with you.

I have basically one thing to say about Martha Stewart: she puts on a good show. Her recipes aren't particularly innovative or unique, but, man, can she orchestrate a photo shoot. If you want ideas about presentation, she's the only game in time. Her books are worth buying solely for the photographs.

The Silver Palate people, books one and two: I use these books constantly. The recipes successfully combine both the classic and innovative (the best of both worlds).

Nancy Silverton's books. All of them. Yes, she's brilliant. Buy them. I don't care what the title is, bread, pastry, sandwiches, whatever; the woman knows what she is doing.

Cucina Fresca by La Place and Kleiman. Where I live it gets hot during the summer. Last summer we had weeks of unrelentingly blazing days where cooking was about as appealing as lighting one's hair on fire. Except the family insists on eating, the sods. Anyway, this is an SUPERB book for summer fare. I use it from May until September and it never disappoints.

Your basic dessert book: she is now out of fashion, but you cannot go wrong with Maida Heatter's books. The recipes are extremely detailed and yet simple; they are geared for the ambitious novice. See Nancy Silverton's dessert books as well .If you're looking for something much more challenging, Rose Levy Barenbaum has a number of books out that are exacting and foolproof. And I mean exacting.

If I had to choose a cuisine that I had to dedicate my life to it would be Italian cuisine (my love for Julia Child notwithstanding). Of course, the Italian answer to Julia is Marcella Hazan (as stern a task master as Julia). I would also recommend three additions: Biba Caggiano books are a delight, Rose Grey and Ruth Rogers' "Italian Two Easy" is good, as is James Beard's "Beard on Pasta." In the hype for the search for the latest "star," he's being eclipsed by others, which is a shame because he was a damn good cook.  His "Beard on Pasta" is a no-nonsense basic primer on pasta. The mac and cheese recipe is to die for.

So what are you waiting for? Get cooking!

What cookbooks do you return to again and again?

Julie and Julia

I should preface this by saying that I was fortunate enough to have met Julia Child and her sister, Dorothy Cousins, when I was still a student at the California Culinary Academy. This was at the beginning of the food revolution in California, and the school was hosting a benefit. The speaker list included the usual culinary stars of those days. I'm not going to list the speakers because, with a couple of important exceptions, the tone of the evening was all pretty damn snooty and snotty and elitist, and it was one of those "what in the hell am I doing in this profession" moments.

Julia and her sister were the last to arrive. The movie does a great job of emphasizing how physically imposing they were, but it can't possibly do them justice. I'm fairly tall for a woman, and yet when they entered the room, side by side, there was a little hush. Because they weren't so much as imposing as just THERE. They were large women, but not in the sense of present-day jargon. Tall and healthy, they both looked like they could probably break the neck of a five-hundred pound steer should the occasion warrant it.

And the one thing that the movie did capture so well was the connection between the two of them. Dorothy was a little taller, and she'd lean over to talk to Julia, and Julia would have this intent look on her face as she tried to hear her sister over the din of voices, and there was NO sense of this celebrity and her sister. No sense that Julia was forcing her sister down everyone's throats. It was just McWilliams girls out for the night.

I asked her to autograph a cookbook for my mother, and it wasn't whipping out the pen and a quick scrawl. She ASKED about my mother and when she'd signed the book (Julia Child and Company, by the way), she said to me, "Aren't you sweet? I do hope she likes the book." It wasn't a staged scenario. I came away from that encounter thinking, "Oh, she's tall, and, oh, thank you for saying that I'm sweet, and I know my mother will love the book."

Again, I'm not going to name names here, but the high point of the evening was when another speaker got on his/her high horse about some sort of nonsense that doesn't bear repeating; basically, people were jockeying for position and fetishizing food as a way to get there. The speakers were sitting in rocking chairs, and by the end of this insufferable speech Julia was rocking so violently that I half expected it to fly off the dais. In the nicest way possible she put this person in his/her place and basically said, oh, please. It's just food and we should enjoy it, but it's not a religion. She brought the entire tone of the evening back to earth. Which was, I think, her true gift. Yes, she could cook and had a delightful personality that television showcased so well, but in the end, she was someone who enjoyed a damn good meal with a decent glass of wine, surrounded by friends and/or family. Which is precisely why I went into cooking.

And that's why the Julie part of the move fails so miserably, and I don't even think that the director got it, and certainly the writer, Julie Powell, didn't get it. Because the cooking was never about Julia Child tooting her own horn. She loved food because food was lovable. She understood it and she undoubtedly had a phenomenal gift for it. But what the movie so lovingly portrayed was that her marriage and her relationships with people were the key, with food being an important satellite. During the numerous scenes when they are having dinner parties or eating in restaurants, the movie doesn't focus on people loving Julia Child's cooking. The movie focuses on Julia Child and her wonderful husband and their special relationship and the fact she's a funny, intelligent woman. And a damn good cook.

Cut to modern-day Julie portions of the film: the movie (and I imagine the blog) focuses on Julie and how SHE'S becoming a good cook and how her husband and everyone else are satellites. I don't know how faithful this is to the blog, but I will say from the movie that Julie Powell has a bunch of really ugly, unhappy, and obnoxious friends. I assume that this is what propels her into the kitchen in the first place, but the repeated cutting back and forth between a woman with a hell of a lot of self-respect to a woman who has none and who basically embraces her "bitch" cannot help but come off as, well, bitchy and self-serving. The modern-day dinner parties are all about the food. How good this is. It's great. Man, I love this. They might as well be at SEPARATE tables because there is no camaraderie between any of these people. I disliked them. I didn't see Julie's accomplishments as anything but a leap-frog off of Julia Child's accomplishments. Because it was always about the food and Julie Powell saying, "SEE! SEE! ME! ME! I MADE THIS!"

Which, having watched her television shows and owning every single one of her books, Julia Child never said.