Culine SexeA Story by jaskJoanna Weir Note: I just found this in my files while looking for something else entirely and thought for a brief moment that I would like to see it in its published splendor on this misbegotten site, EVEN THOUGH it is, by my counting, over 12 years old... so a lot of the statements here are, you know, dusty. I do not, for example, even watch tv anymore in any format, preferring, instead, my personal, and therefore secretive, version of tv called the iPad. I am pretty sure, therefore, that most of these personalities no longer appear on tv, but MAY IN FACT, show up as podcasts or youtube things... and probably 12 years older. -------------------------------------
The activities surrounding food and sex occupy a disproportionate amount of our time, our lives, with each environment satisfying a certain hunger, which is easily explained by naturalists but has been studied and ruminated (as cows do) to inconclusion for centuries by psychologists and artists. That these carnal cravings, then, sometimes overlap, or intersect, producing heightened senses is merely a matter of cosmic timing... a perfect storm, if you will, of Want. Of Need. Of Desire.
Among the cultural norms I have refused to participate in (except during stays in hotels) is the vast entertainment desert popularly known as cable, although cable itself is a rather archaic term, supplanted, it seems, by vibrations from outer space captured by unsightly dishes screwed to your house or by filaments of glass buried in the ground, the latter of which could, I suppose, still be called a cable. Still, gifts are nonetheless bestowed upon misfits and outcasts. My gift, upon acquiring a digital box which allowed me to continue watching tv after the demise rabbit-ear tv (the digital box produces tv programming that looks suspiciously like the evil cable but uses an antenna, liberating the tinfoil hat crowd from the tether of the arbitrary and vicious cable company) was the discovery of, lo, FIVE tv stations known as PBS, one of which was more or less devoted to shows of cooking. Look, I am not the brightest person in the room but I am also not a naïf. I KNOW there is a cable channel that is about cooking.... I have SEEN it at the aforementioned hotels and friends' homes. But I was never drawn to it because each so-called chef on that channel feels like they are trying to SELL me something, while the PBS group (with exceptions, of course) try to TEACH me something. At least, that is my take on it.
And I have to interject here that my PET PEEVE of any cooking show is when the chef describes ingredients or utensils in the possessive case: my food processor, my saute pan, my coarsely-ground kosher salt. Food Channel guys always speak that way and thus merit my disdain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The best cooking shows on PBS, sex aside, are the defunct Gourmet Magazine thing and America's Test Kitchen. Gourmet, whose show actually morphed into something queasy called Diary of a Foodie, used to be hosted by the erstwhile editor Ruth Reichl... and while Ruth is a very approachable, likable, uh, SOUL, I would not exactly put her into the sex symbol category, even disregarding the fact that she looks (and talks) exactly like the wife of my favorite and life-long professor-friend from grad school. America's Test Kitchen is hosted by this guy who looks disturbingly like my childhood friend all grown up in a red apron, but the real stars of the show are three cooks who deftly show how it is done. All three are rather stout, with Bridget leading the face time category because, in fact, she has the nicest face. And, I have to say, her no-nonsense, stern demeanor also oddly has its appeal. Get the job done and get the hell out of here... if it were pornography, there would be, I am sure, a name for her approach.
And now, a latecomer, Pati joins the hot cook group not because she is pretty (she is), but because she pronounces the English (EEngleesh) language one articulated syllable at a time and the effect is startling: Ree-mam-ber, whan yoo eeet the TAH-koh, teelt your head, not thee TAH-koh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Let me start by saying that Ms. Weir is not a slim person. She is, after all, a cook and as my friend who teaches at a culinary institute tells me, a cook has to taste. And taste. And there are no thin chefs (with the possible exception of Ms. Nordstrom, mentioned above, who, in turn, is not a very good cook). Ms. Weir is not slim, but I am suddenly enlightened by the term Reubenesque and the so-far singular example of its appeal to me. Then there is the issue of the hair. Weir has this tree crown of flaming red hair in full bloom, in various styles, but the FIRST time I saw her, it was kind of tied up in a messy bunch on top of her head (you will note that I have no knowledge of hair styles and therefore lack the nomenclature) and I was hooked. Weir is not even what I would automatically call a beautiful woman, But it is the orchestration of the body-type, the color and mass of her hair (and accompanying pale complexion), and a certain manner she has while bantering with the camera and with her single student assistant and with me, and her dress and the way that she strategically places the high counter between her and the camera such that I cannot tell what her physique below the waist really is and her voice and a funny half-smile she has at the end of each pronouncement ("This is what I like to do....") that, I am here to tell you, makes me feel all warm and gooey inside. (Postscript: I have since seen many more of Weir's shows, now titled something else, and I have to say that I guess, try as I might, I really don't like her menu choices or how she prepares them. The students and her interaction with them is plain annoying--please, lose the students.
Sarah Carey Daisy Martinez Bridget Lancaster Lucinda Scala Quinn
Tina Nordström © 2022 jask |
AuthorjaskAboutPROFILE I had a girlfriend in high school until one day senior year shortly after summer vacation she told me by letter (called 'notes', a predecessor of texting) she wasn't.....and in my shaken st.. more..Writing
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