Out of the Frying Pan of a Closet and Into the Fire: Bobby Flay Made My Cousin Gay!*

Without naming him, I wrote of my cousin Richard few years ago. He's a cousin on my dad's side -- the side of the family with whom I do not have especially close ties. Actually, that's not entirely true. I do have especially close ties with by dad's brother Steve and with his family, and I have, at the very least, close ties to my Uncle Michael's and his family, and to my Aunt Cristelle and her family. It can even be said that I at least have ties to my aunts Marie-Therese, Elyse, and Claudine, and to their families. To my dad's remaining three siblings and their spouses and offspring, however, I am persona non grata, which is more than OK with me.  I am perfectly happy to have my very existence denied by these people. 

I hold a very special place of antipathy in the hearts of my  Aunt Angelie and her spouse and progeny for good reasons which have been discussed elsewhere in my blog without giving names. In an infamous incident, my well-being was placed in jeopardy, which resulted in the unity of their nuclear family being likewise placed in jeopardy. Alas, all's well that ends well, at least for me. I cannot speak to the wellness of the unity or of anything else pertaining to their family.

When Aunt Angelie's son Richard returned from his  mission a couple of years ago,  the transition from living the uber-regimented life  of an LDS missionary to the life of relative freedom of civilian life was fraught with peril. One would need to qualify the term freedom as it pertains to the lives of the offspring of my Aunt Angelie and her husband, as the only child of their to have experienced bona fide freedom was their son Josh, who was literally disowned by them for having failed to remain on his LDS mission when he suffered a life-threatening intestinal ailment. 

Still, the metamorphosis from life as a twin automaton salesman for LDS, Inc., to  life as a soldier in God's army serving under my drill sergeant aunt was jarring to Richard even by the most conservative of estimates. Family members did not, at the time, grasp the magnitude of the issues with which Richard was wrestling. We were led to believe that he suffered with a mere lack of direction in his life which compelled him to spend hours at a time in front of the family's living room television, thoroughly engaged with Food Network programming. Richard's fascination with all things related to Bobby Flay did not escape the attention of his mother, who honestly believed she could change her son's true nature to what it should have been according to LDS teachings by the simple act of cancelling her family's cable TV connection.

Alas, in real life, true love, even when unrequited, is not so easily circumnavigated. Richard enrolled in one of the church's universities, where, once again, he had access to cable television and to the Food Network. Not only did he reconnect (albeit with a one-way connection) with Bobby Flay;  he found a kindred spirit in his Food Network addiction: one whose connection was not limited to mutual passion for food, but to mutual passion for each other.  The close encounter was, to the consternation of his parents, not of the heterosexual kind.

Richard is no longer enrolled in The Lord's University, nor is he, at least as far as she is concerned, enrolled in Aunt Angelie's family. Of course my parents (meaning, of course, my mother; even my dad would have had the common sense not to have touched this situation with the proverbial ten-foot pole) almost immediate involved themselves in the drama. They have offered to fund Richard's education on the condition that he take the remainder of this academic year off and work at any job he can find (they will supplement his earnings to help him meet his living expenses if necessary and will fund his health insurance for the remainder of this academic year) and give himself the better part of a year to get his head on straight (with straight not equating with heterosexual in this sense) so that he will be prepared to focus on his education when he returns to university.  Richard essentially tanked a year's education, so this request from my parents was not an altogether unreasonable one.

If the family rumor mill is to be taken seriously,  my aunt plans to sue the Food Network and the celebrity chef himself on the grounds that Bobby Flay made her son gay. Good luck with that one, Aunt Angelie.

Any way I look at it, it would seem to be a step in the direction of mental health that the current object of my cousin's affection is a person with whom he interacts in the flesh as opposed to one whose daily TV appearances dictated the schedule of his life.

* I'm being ironic. i'm not REALLY accusing you of causing my cousin to have become gay. Please don't sue me, Bobby Flay.

The Dead Bloggers' Society

Do you ever wonder what happened in real life to bloggers who have ceased to blog? Did these people develop real lives -- something I probably need to do -- which fill the voids in their lives formerly consumed by blogging? Did their blogs merely take different forms? Instagram is incredibly trendy at the moment. Or do they, the former bloggers,  occupy some mysterious and ethereal graveyard for exanimate  (at least as far as their on-line writing presence is concerned) bloggers?  For that matter, when a blogger finally does bite the dust, do we learn of it? If I met an untimely demise, I cannot imagine that it would occur to anyone in my immediate family (who no longer have passwords to my blog, anyway, so the most they could do would be to leave a notice in the comments section) to clue my my vast readership in to the fact that I am now residing in plot #11119 at Cadaveriew Meadows Cemetery. But I digress, as is my inclination, from my point of what happens to bloggers when they desert their blogs.

Out of curiosity and fueled by an extreme case of insomnia (Left-handers are more prone to insomnia than are our right-handed counterparts, I learned recently. Left-handers are prone to a whole lot of misfortune as compared to our right-handed counterparts. Extending the discussion two steps further, my own mother conducted research on the topic of left-handed red-haired males. She has found that they are rarely within the average range on any psychoeducational measures. They're more prone to learning disabilities and behavioral problems in particular, but they're also more prone to unusually high IQs and savant-like talents. Having a red-haired left-handed  male child is a bit of a roll of the dice. You could end up with a prodigy of some sort, or you could end up with a brat with a severe case of the uglies, as in Bobby-Flay-ugly. I personally would choose to hold onto the dice and roll them over something a bit safer than a red-haired left-handed male child.) In my sleeplessness and boredom,  I googled "sarcasm BYU-Idaho" hoping to read a bit of snark related to one of my least favorite places in the entire world. Reading Knotty's blog reminded me of just how much I detest BYU-Idaho and everything connected to it in any way.

My twitter search led me to the blog of a person who either is or calls herself HaileyBusath. The lack of space between the apparent given name and surname  is not a typographical error on my part. It may have been one on HaileyBusath's part, or perhaps she intended to smash her first and last names together, or even perhaps her parents did it for her and recorded her name on her birth certificate as such. Or, on the other hand, if HaileyBusath is LDS [UPDATE: I read further into her profile information, and HaileyBusath is indeed LDS], which almost everyone who has been enrolled in BYU-Idaho for more than twelve hours is,  perhaps the name was miswritten on LDS church records. It is tradition on the paternal side of my extended family, or at least it happened that way once, that if a child's name is misspelled on LDS church records,  the  parents have the child's birth certificate amended to reflect how it is spelled on LDS church records because the LDS church is always right. I must say by way of a disclaimer that I have no way of knowing if this is any sort of official LDS policy or if the relatives who changed their child's name when a ward clerk misspelled it on church records are merely raving lunatics. It is highly probable that both possibilities are true and correct.

Anyway, HaileyBusath is the author of a now-defunct blog (How We Do at BYU-Idaho) that is, if possible, even more random and senseless than is this one.  And I pride myself on being both random and senseless in this blog.  Outdoing me on these counts is a noteworthy accomplishment. In her most recent posting from September of 2012 at that blog site, HaileyBusath scorns those who play the game Monopoly while divulging the sort of games that are played at BYU-Idaho. What is played at BYU-Idaho, according to HaileyBusath, is mind games. She wrote this in all seriousness as if to imply that anyone enrolled at BYU-Idaho is honestly in possession of a functioning mind. A person -- even a high school student, and we all know what a phase of complete and utter brilliance in our lives our high school years were -- would have to be a little off-kilter even to contemplate filling out an application to the school. Once a person arrived in Rexburg and beheld both the sight and site that is BYU-Idaho, he or she, if  owning a brain that as much as registered waves on an EEG sensor, would have run screaming  -- for or away from the hills as though being pursued by a rabid mountain lion -- within the first half-hour of being there. Anyone who lasted a week at the place, even under the threat of dismemberment or disinheritance,  would have to be shy a few marbles.

I personally have nothing against the game of Monopoly. My mom preferred that we play The Game of Life with its pro-college indoctrination agenda (last summer my Uncle Michael, upon seeing The Game of Life in my mom's game closet, asked if anyone had updated the game to allow for the long-term financial prognosis of college students who went into heavy debt to pursue impractical degrees which were useless in the job market and were then saddled with the task of paying off massive student loans on telemarketers' or fast food workers' salaries) but I've always enjoyed the cuttthroat competitive capitalistic facets of Monopoly. It is my opinion that  today's kids would do well to put away their electronic devices and play a few board games once in awhile (because we know they're not going to do anything so radical as to pick up a book and read it in their spare time). I hate to sound like some old geezer such as my dad when he complains about how tough kids had it back in his day (and my father is actually speaking the truth when he says he had a difficult childhood and youth, though not because of the era in which he grew up but because he had a half-witted-at-best troglodyte for a father; I've already been disinherited from anything I might have gotten upon death from that source, so I can say anything I wish to say about him with absolute impunity), but when I was a kid, board games were what we were allowed to do after finishing homework and extra reading (though I've always liked to read, so that part of it I would have done whether I had been told to or not), not what we did on bad-weather days when our parents finally got tired of us doing nothing but watching TV and playing electronic games. I've said enough about Monopoly, though. The Parker Brothers will have to pay me if they expect more in the way of a proper commercial endorsement for their product. And it [Monopoly] is not going to be played at BYU-Idaho regardless of the endorsement given by me or by anyone else, as the students there are too busy playing mind games with their incredibly high-functioning minds to trifle with Monopoly or any other board or card game.

I clicked on HaileyBusath's profile and found two additional blogs connected with her. One was "All the Hailey You Could Ever Want." Its most recent posting was dated November of 2011. The other linked blog was "Life Of a Student At BYU-Idaho." I received this message upon clicking on the link: Sorry, the blog you were looking for does not exist. However, the name lifeofastudentatbyui is available to register.

This is your golden opportunity! You could be the proud owner of your own site lifeofastudentatbyuI!
You could do whatever your heart desires with the site. You could turn it into an expose on how bare shoulders equate with nudity in the mind of at least one professor at BYUIdaho.  http://www.sltrib.com/home/4664710-155/bare-shoulders-earn-failing-grade-for  You could use the site as an artfully camouflaged home base to sell your contraband of choice. Unless the feds are a whole lot smarter than most of us give them credit for being, they probably would never think to look at a site with a name like LifeofaStudentAtByu-I when scouting for sites hawking illicit or otherwise unauthorized goods such as bootleg Vicodin or lactation porn artifacts (I didn't know such a thing as lactation porn existed until I just now googled "demented forms of porn." We all would do well to speak and write less and to google more. There's an entire world out there that most of us don't even know exists.), or, entirely hypothetically, Donald Trump's used condoms.  I said "hypothetically." The feds in the form of  the Secret Service or the FBI or the CIA or the IRS or whatever agencies over which Donald Trump will soon exercise some degree of  control do not need to hunt me down to interrogate me under bright lights and conditions of deprivation that fly in the face of the Geneva Convention. I know nothing about Donald Trump's used condoms or from what venue he sells them other than that, with his love of money, if there is anyone  who is sufficiently deranged to be willing to part with his or her dollars in exchange for the president elect's used condoms, Donald Trump would most likely be willing to accommodate the person.

With HaileyBusath's most recent blog sighting having been in September of 2012, she very likely has moved on to bigger and better things.  Most young people begin college at around the age of 18 give or take a year depending upon his or her state's kindergarten entrance date or whether or not he or she finished school early or late, I'm 22, so if HaileyBusath was attending BYU Idaho in the fall of 2011, she's probably at least my age. 22 is almost into official spinsterhood territory where Mormons are concerned. For those bothered by my obsession with marriage, please allow me to remind you than I am only half Mormon, and, as such, am referring to Mormons and their predilection for early marriage as opposed to alluding to any uneasiness about my own relationship and/or marriage  status or lack thereof.  Chances are that she is no longer HaileyBusath but HaileySomethingelse, likely bound to Mr. Somethingelse for time and all eternity [as opposed to the more mundane " 'til death do us part'," though, forboding as it sounds, seems these days to be no more binding than a few quick words uttered in front of a judge or magistrate] and quite possibly already having gotten a start on her Mormon prerequisite crop of crotch gnomes.

Then again, when the LDS church changed the minimum age for female missionaries from 21 to 19, HaileyBusath may have taken the bait. She may have served a mission in east LA and may have picked up enough Spanish that when she returned to university (assuming my nose doesn't grow half a foot for referring to BYU-Idaho as a university), she may have changed her degree emphasis from English Education to Spanish Education. Or perhaps she didn't serve a mission and chose instead to concentrate on finishing her education.  She may have become what the Mormon hierarchy fears most -- an empowered woman who can take care of herself and is not dependent upon any man for self-validation, though she will consider a relationship if and when both the time and the man are right for her.

The possibilities are endless, though. She may have discovered extreme Catholicism and perhaps became a cloistered nun who hits herself with leather cords while pleading for God's forgiveness in Latin. (If you've never seen the movie The Nun's Story, you really should.) Then again, perhaps she was the one person in ten thousand who opened the door when the Jehovah's Witnesses came knocking, and maybe she is now herself knocking on doors and handing out Watchtower pamphlets and using her newly-discovered religion to avoid jury duty. She may have become a pole dancer. Mormonism is what most of us who are not Mormons would consider to be an extreme religion. Extremists in religion (even when people are born into it) tend to go from one extreme to another. Not always is such the case, though. She may be a kindergarten teacher who volunteers at the SPCA during her free time. She may have married a Presbyterian who likes wine with dinner, and she may have discovered that she, too, likes to drink a bit of wine on occasion. She may be the Zumba instructor at your gym or at mine.

HaileyBusath, if you google yourself and come across this post, I would be very happy if you were to give a shout or leave a comment even if what you have to say to me after reading this may be ever so slightly on the hostile side.

Bobby Flay Made My Cousin Gay

My cousin sees something in Bobby Flay that I don't.

Note: Thanks to Donna for the inspiration.

I have a cousin who shall be referred to in this blog as Nathan. His mother, who is my father's sister and therefore my aunt, shall be called Therese. The names have been changed in this blog to protect both the innocent and guilty. I'll leave it to the reader to determine exactly whom falls into which category.

Nathan, bless is soul, has been gay probably since before his forced exit from the womb. (He was twelve days overdue, and labor induction was unsuccessful, so he was delivered via Caesarean section. I don't think that's particularly relevant, though my Aunt Celeste -- strongly devoted both to anti-Caesarean and anti-gay movements --would tell you otherwise.) I've known Nathan was gay since long before I even knew there was such a thing as gay. When I first heard of the concept of homosexuality, Nathan was my personification for the condition, as in, "Oh! Like Nathan!"

In the unenlightened 1990's when he was growing up, a great deal of murmuring was heard among family members regarding Nathan's rather effeminate nature. Even in the dark ages, my own parents were relatively open to the idea of one's sexuality not being a matter of choice. Still, the degree to which Nathan pinged bothered my dad a bit.  "It's not so much that he carries a purse,"  my dad would say. (Several of my mom's cast-off purses were in my stash of dress-up clothing.) "It's how he carries the purse."  My dad said he didn't really care about anyone's sexuality as long as whatever happened did so behind closed doors. Still, Nathan's overly effeminate demeanor made him a bit uncomfortable, or at least pretending not to notice it bothered my dad. He said numerous times that being around Nathan with the rest of the family and pretending there was nothing about Nathan to bother the LDS segment of the family  My dad described witnessing the young Nathan dressing in drag and painting his nails in front of the family as like being in a room with a giant flamingo and pretending not to notice it.

Nathan loved trying on the formal gowns from my mom's high school years, and only wore heels that matched, usually consulting with my mom to ensure he'd made the best choice. He was quick to criticize my shoe selection in my dress-up kit, and complained that his mommy's shoes were much prettier. (In retrospect, that's probably where all the family's money went. Nathan's father was an MD and presumably brought in a decent salary, but  parents have hit my parents up for help with mortgage payments or other expenses several time throughout the year.) Nathan likewise disparaged  my nail polish and lipstick selections as well selection. All I ever had as a kid had was what my mom threw out.  She's never been into upscale beauty products, probably because she doesn't need all that much in order to look nice. She's naturally pretty. She probably buys her makeup from Walgreen's.

Anyway, Nathan's interests were never typical for a boy his age, not that there's anything wrong with a boy not being interested in sports, outdoor pursuits, model airplanes, chemistry or anything else along those lines. My earliest recollection of Nathan would have been when I was two and he was five. He and I were both in attendance at a family reunion in some LDS-owned luxury cabin somewhere in Utah.
He brought with him in a duffel bag his rather extensive collection of Beanie Babies, and warned all the other children not to touch them.  I was a rather oppositional child, and took his warning as an invitation to grab the elephant Beanie Baby and run as fast as I could with it. Instead of chasing me, Nathan let loose with a high-pitched shriek that got the attention of everyone, including the security personnel who patrolled the property 24/7. My dad chased me down, which was a good thing, as once he finished his shriek, Nathan took a deep gulp of air, then held his breath until Peanut the Elephant was returned to him.  Therese gave me a look that would have sent me six feet under if looks could actually accomplish such a thing. She still hates me to this day, and I suspect my theft of Peanut the Elephant is the main reason, as the two of us have had little direct contact since that time.

Anyway, at some point right after he returned home from his LDS mission a year or so ago, Nathan became interested in food, or at least in the Food Network. He had finished his mission mid-semester so was not enrolled in any college courses. He essentially commandeered the family room television and watched Food Network programming nonstop during all of his waking hours. He periodically attempted to recreate a culinary masterpiece he saw while watching, but mostly he just watched. And drooled.  Bobby flay became a particular favorite, though he also watched anything he could find with either Tyler Florence or Giada de Lorentis.

Aunt Therese eventually noticed her son's fixation with the Food Network and, through some epiphany, noticed for the first time her son's effeminacy.  Therese considered it very much a cause/effect scenario. Watching Food Network programming had made her son effeminate, Therese said, ignoring twenty-one years of feminine behavior on Nathan's part. Therese immediately called my mother, who is a licensed clinical psychologist. That faction of the family seriously believes that if a person shows homosexual tendencies, consultation with a psychiatrist is in order.

My mother said she tried to be gentle in speaking with my aunt. She told my aunt that Nathan is who he is and that watching the Food network would not cause him to be a homosexual if he were not already one. This came as a relief to Therese, who assumed my mother meant Nathan couldn't possibly be gay, which she never said and certainly didn't mean to imply. My mom told Therese that it seemed as though Nathan was replacing one addiction -- his mission (or something or someone from his mission, though my mother didn't specify this) -- with another addiction, which was the Food Network. My mother's concern was not that Nathan was watching the Food Network, but that he had so much time on his hands that he could spend every waking hour watching the Food Network. My mom recommended to Therese that she insist that Nathan either get a job or do volunteer work.

Therese didn't follow my mom's advice. Instead, she called her cable provider and had all cooking channels blocked. Nathan still watches on his computer, but his mother doesn't know about it, which is a good thing, as Therese probably considers it pornography. Nathan is now carrying fifteen units at BYU, but he still finds time to feed his Bobby Flay addiction.

Macaroni and Cheese

My mother is on a quest to find the best macaroni and cheese recipe on the planet. If I didn't live in the house, she would probably cook and serve mac and cheese three nights a week for the cause. Because my low weight is  a major source of whiny complaints from every doctor who treats me for any reason including my dentist,  my mom does not routinely cook food for dinner that I refuse to eat. For this reason I am spared the ordeal of having to eat mac and cheese more than once a week, but I do have to eat it once a week. No matter what else is happening in either the real world or the culinary world, mac and cheese shows up on my plate every Thursday night

Tonight's version of macaroni and cheese came to us courtesy of a recipe created by Alton Brown, the quintessentially geeky host of Food Network's Good Eats and Iron Chef America. Mr. Brown's version of mac and cheese would rank squarely in the middle as far as go the various mac and cheese genres my mom has dug up and thrown at us. It was neither disgusting enough to be on my Donner Party List of foods that I would decline to eat even if the only other options available to me were certain death by starvation or subsisting on the late Tamsen Donner's (May She Rest In Peace) flesh, nor was it something I would choose to eat if I had a whole lot of choice in the matter. If Alton Brown's interpretation of macaroni and cheese were to appear on a plate in front of me, I would eat it if I were famished, if I didn't feel like fighting with my parents about it, or if  I were in a situation, such as being a guest in someone else's home, where it might be socially awkward not to eat it. While this may sound like a less-than-rousing endorsement of Alton Brown's mac and cheese as prepared by my mother, I should go on record as stating that I have had much worse in the three-years-and-change since my mother took up this rather peculiar obsession.

One version of macaroni and cheese that my mother culled from America's Most Vomit-Inducing Recipes  or some similarly vile compilation featured, of all things, cottage cheese. Cottage cheese is the number two entry on my Donner Part List [topped only by mayonnaise; for those of you who share my taste, no further clarification is necessary]. I will not eat cottage cheese by itself, buried in a recipe with one thousand other ingredients, in a house, with a mouse, here or there, anywhere: I DO NOT EAT COTTAGE CHEESE, SAM I AM!  My mother insisted I only thought I could taste the cottage cheese because I watched her scoop it into the pan, but it was the only freaking cheese in the recipe. She could not have honestly believed I would have mistaken the albino-barf slather for mozzarella.

Another version of macaroni and cheese forced upon us was a recipe created by Bobby Flay for the episode of his television series Throwdown, in which he ambushed mac and cheese diva Delilah Winder (named "Queen of Macaroni and Cheese" either by Oprah or by her minions). Flay's recipe might have escaped Donner Party List  status had he not included the particularly abhorrent ingredient pancetta.  My dad says that when a food product so obscure as pancetta makes its way onto one's Donner Party List, that is clear evidence in point that the person's Donner Party List has grown too expansive and too unwieldy, and that, for the list to have any relevance or utilitarianism, it needs to be limited to no more than twenty items. To this inane idea, I respond with a wholehearted POPPYCOCK! [Editorial Note: Had I waited precisely one hundred days [[ until the date of my eighteenth birthday]] to author this particular post, the wording of my response would have been more colorful.] It's MY Donner Party List. If I choose for it to contain a single item, or if I choose three hundred items to comprise my list, it is my, and solely my  prerogative.  For the record, the list presently stops after number sixty-seven. If I'm ever bored and/or desire to burden my three readers with pointless information, I'll present my list in its entirety someday:  but back to the topic at hand. Pancetta is greasy, fatty, congealed, utterly dusgusting meat (and I apply the term meat only in the most technical sense of the word) from the belly of a pig. Even regular bacon has to be almost charred in order for me to consider remaining in the same room with it. If cooked to perfection I will actually eat regular bacon. Pancetta, on the other hand.  .  .  .  I don't even know where to begin, so I won't.

Incidentally, my mom once started to prepare Paula Deen's version of macaroni and cheese. My dad threatened to have her charged with attempted murder, so she tossed the recipe instead of attempting it.

I've gone on and on about nothing, as seems to be my wont.  If anyone has a really good recipe for mac and cheese, please come to my rescue and send it to me. Perhaps it will put an end to this senseless weekly act of culinary violence.

The Food Network: My On-Again / Off-Again Relationship

I used to be addicted to the programming on Food Network. During my lengthy recovery time from my multiple fractures, related surgeries, and kidney infection a year or so ago, my television viewing time was not restricted. Normally at home my brother and I are limited to an hour a day on school days and two hours a day on non-school days, but since I couldn't even hold a book and turn the pages by myself during my recovery, the Nazis who call themselves my parents lifted a few of their draconian restrictions.

Bobby Flay was one of the featured stars of Food Network whose programming I watched. He was, and presumably still is, on "Grill It," which usually showed him cooking some food on the grill or watching an inferior amateur do the cooking. When the amateur cooks, he or she usually breaks at least one of Bobby Flay's cardinal rules of grilling, i.e. "put it on the grill and don't mess with it" or "don't ever use lighter fluid unless you want your food to taste like lighter fluid." Flay is gracious and keeps his mouth shut when his guests massacre food. On "Throwdown," Flay travels to compete against professionals or gifted amateurs who specialize in a particular food. Surprisingly, the competitors are often even more obnoxious than Bobby Flay. My suspicion is that the real purpose of "Throwdown" is to show the viewing public that there are people on the planet who are less likable than Bobby Flay. Flay also competes on Iron Chef America, helps to manage the competition on "The Next Food network Star," and appears on repeat episodes of "Boy Meets Grill." Grilling is Bobby Flay's signature method of cooking. If he were asked to prepare a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he would grill it, but only after liberally spicing it up with cilantro and chipotle, which he would pronounce chip - POH- tuh - lay; he always adds an extra schwa syllable when saying the word chipotle.

The show I probably enjoyed watching the most, primarily because of the sheer horror masquerading as food on a daily basis, was "Semi-Homemade." Its star, Sandra Lee, had a great rags-to-riches story, and is truly a shining example of self-sufficiency . . . that is, until it comes to cooking. Yet she hosted a cooking show on Food Network. I find the irony most uncanny. The premise of her show is cooking with seventy percent pre-packaged ingredients and thirty percent ingredients fresh or from scratch. The color scheme in Sandra Lee's set kitchen changes for each episode, and she dresses to match the kitchen. I've known some vapid individuals in my lifetime (my brother has dated approximately twenty-three cheerleaders, only two of whom could string a sentence together if two million dollars were wagered on it) but dressing to match one's kitchen out-vapids the most vapid cheerleader (even the one who worked part-time at a bank and gave away travelers cheques without requiring the customer to pay the face value of the traveler's cheques because the customer had a premium account that offered "free" traveler's cheques; this was a couple of years ago; I don't think traveler's cheques exist anymore) ever dated by my brother. Sandra Lee hasn't been on when I've channel-surfed to the Food Network lately. I heard she's in a semi-serious relationship with the governor of New York. I hope he has his own chef that comes with his position so that he doesn't have to eat semi-homemade cooking. If Sandra Lee had to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from scratch, I don't think she could manage it. Either the peanut butter and the jelly would have to be purchased mixed together in the jar, or the bread would need to be pre-sliced diagonally, or perhaps a knife would have to be pre-coated with the peanut butter/jelly mixture.

Another Food Network star is Paula Deen. Paula Deen is the reigning southern belle of the Food Network. If Scarlett O'Hara had been a real person and not a fictional character, her accent could not have come close to Paula Deen's in terms the intensity of her drawl. Paula Deen uses LOTS of butter in everything she cooks. I've heard rumors that her low-density-lipid levels, and those of her second husband, Michael Groover, are virtually off the charts. There was another husband -- Mr. Deen -- who is supposedly divorced from Paula and living elsewhere. I don't believe what they say about Mr. Deen. I think he's six feet under. Paula killed him off with a heart attack by serving him butter as a main course for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. If Paula Deen made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, she would add so much actual butter to the sandwich that one would be able to taste neither the peanut butter nor the jelly.

Almost evertime I surf past Food Network now, I see Guy Fieri's face prominently displayed. Fieri was the winner of (I think) season two of "The Next Food Network Star." It seems like his orignial show was "Guy Fieri's Big Bite." It may or may not still be on, but he seems to be on a host of other programs as well, most notably "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives." Fieri is a somewhat sloppy and larger-than-life guy with bleached spiky hair. If Guy Fieri made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it would probably be a perfectly normal sandwich, but I'd be scared to take a bite because I would suspect he forgot to wash his hands before he made it.

Rachael Ray is a hard-working and enterprising woman who somehow manages to be both likable and annoying at the same time. Ms. Ray has moved beyond the Food Network to a daytime talk show but, as far as I know, continues to film episodes of "30-Minute Meals." Unfortunately, the food usually looks like it was thrown together in three minutes or less. It might actually be fairly tasty for all I know, but it usually looks too mixed-together for my tastes. Call me OCD if you wish, but I don't like my food to touch. Rachael Ray's food always touches. If Rachael Ray made a peanut butter sandwich, she would probably liberally douse the bread with extra-virgin olive oil, which she would (DUH!) call EVOO. The sandwich, which Ms. Ray would refer to as a "sammy," would be prepared in one minute so that she could spend her remaining twenty-nine minutes concocting some meaty hash or something which she would serve on the same plate -- actually touching -- the otherwise edible peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Giada DeLourentis is a talented if slightly "precious" (thank you, Stephanie March, for the apt description, even though you would never in a million years admit that it was she to whom you made reference on Rachael Ray's talk show) chef who was born in Italy but has spent most of her life in the U. S. Nevertheless, she clings to the accent, particularly when pronouncing foods with Italian names. I don't expect her to speak in the manner of a ditch bank Okie, but the way she stretches out "parmigiano reggiano" is just a little too, well, precious. Based on observations, I would conclude that, Cordon Bleu-trained or not, Ms. DeLourentis is incapable of cooking without simultaneously displaying cleavage. If Ms. DeLourentis made a peanut butter sandwich, which would, I'm fairly certain, be made on ciabatta bread, every hormonal heterosexual male on the planet would want to watch her as she made it.

Alton Brown wouldn't actually make the sandwich, but he'd tell you all sorts of interesting scientific facts about peanut butter, jelly, and sandwiches in general. Alton Brown is my favorite on Food Network. Ina Garten, AKA "The Barefoot Contessa," would make lots of little sandwiches, PBJ or otherwise, for one of her little hoity-toity fake dinner parties, but she'd have to think long and hard before making one or doing anything else for a child through the "Make a Wish" Foundation. The Neeleys might manage to get a sandwich on a plate in the midst of their televised verbal love-making session.

The opinions expressed in this review of Food Network programming are just that -- opinions -- and as such are unimpeachable, or at least I think they are. Please don't sue me, Food Network. I'm not half as brutal as are the people who post on the "Television Without Pity" message boards. If you want to read some real snark about the Food Network, go there.

Tsunami

I've seen a bit of the California coast in the past two days (I believe that's within the limits of specificity I'm allowed in divulging my whereabouts) but haven't observed anything all that impressive. The devastation in Japan is terribly sad. I'll ask my parents if they can take money from my account and donate it to the Red Cross or a similar charity. PseudoUncle wouldn't allow me anywhere near the waves today when we were walking on the beach because he didn't want to explain to my parents how a tsunami wave swept me away. Silly PseudoUncle!

We had really greasy hamburgers for dinner. I could only finish half of mine. My PseudoUncle kept giving me the evil eye, but my stomach will contain only so much LDL-producing animal fat at a given time.

I think earthquakes should be given names, similar to the way hurricanes are named. Maybe an earthquake should have to reach a given Richter Scale point -- perhaps 6.0 or even 7.0. If the problem is that no one concerned with tracking seismic activity has time to waste on such trivialities as naming earthquakes, I volunteer for the task. My cyber-friend Rebecca would probably even be willing to help.

Bobby Flay's tour of Ireland was aired on Food Network tonight. No one here wanted to watch it, but it's being recorded at my hospital. I suspect it's totally bogus and probably not worth watching, but I'll watch it anyway to ascertain that I'm not missing anything worthwhile. On his last special filmed in Ireland many years ago, Bobby Flay said he would like to take his mother to Ireland. I wonder if he has done so. If not, I would suggest that he get a move on. His mother's certainly not getting any younger.