My Front Porch is Falling Off Because of the Galloping Gourmet

My Front Porch is Falling Off Because of the Galloping Gourmet


I use to really enjoy watching cooking shows. Inviting someone into my house that introduced me to recipes that I could only dream of from my wife. They would calmly flow through half an hour of their culinary skills and make a tantalizing dinner look so easy.
A well dressed cooking host would pour himself a glass of wine then remove his dinner jacket, sit on the couch and explains the masterpiece he's presenting to us for the next 30 min. Calm, guiding enticing television of someone in the kitchen cooking for you.
No yelling, crying, screaming or competing with another cook the next oven over in a line of ovens that disappear on the event horizon that were each manned by another frenzied cook. Just a calm well prepared meal done in a fashion that would make me want to challenge it myself.
That was then. Now we hate and want to torture the people who cook for us. We make them cook in hell and bring over English people to yell at them. We embarrass them and belittle their culinary schooled skills and turn it into prime time amusement. We make them race under timed heated conditions with the fear of being eliminated. What fun!
They race against the clock and other opponents, all fighting for the chance to do it again. Because...? Well, because of money and the pride that comes from cooking in a kitchen in hell.
It's like ancient Roman times where we place competitors in an arena till only one is left standing. What they have to fight with to complete the task, and who they go against is all televised and pressurized under a ticking clock. One half hour or if they're unlucky a full hour to experience 15 min. of fame on a little watched cable program.
Programs titled 'Hells Kitchen', 'Cuthroat Kitchen', 'Kitchen Takeover', 'Chopped', 'Dinner Party Wars', all compete for our thumbs up so they can return next season.
It's no longer about the recipe, it becomes a personal study of the cook and how he or she handles stress and time. Why should I care? They don't care the kind of day I had at work. What I had to go through before I could get back home and relax in front of the TV. And after the day I've had,...I don't want to know their problems. I want them to tease me with food! I'm old and tired, it's not pretty girls I want, it's food! Make it jiggle and bounce under soft lighting. Steam it, bake it, fry it and broil it, entice me! Then show it on the plate all warm and comforting, complete. Ahhhh warm blanket satisfaction.
Now, it's the building and renovating programs that I turn to for that warm blanket satisfaction. Handsome chiseled men that calmly help solve all my structural problems and turn my home into an income property.
A wise trustworthy giant that gives 'l' to the word homes comes in and inspects my home with its so many inherent problems from a poor renovation. A renovation that I paid too much for and was never completed. He and his young crew then move in and make it right!
My hero! All is now right with the world again. It was all wrong, unable to meet minimum code requirements, but now it's good. My comforting warm blanket is to know that no matter how bad I screw up by hiring, or doing it myself,...there is always a TV show to help my home construction.
Building experts will even stop people at the hardware store and ask me if they can come home with them and help them do their renovation. Experts help, explain and show us how to do something we thought was so complex. They help us believe that we can do it too. Just like the cooking shows of the seventies and eighties use to do. Show us how to cook great food for all the hot babes when they come over to your swinging bachelor pad. Now the only thing swinging around this here pad is the front porch off the side of the house.
It's because of the cooking shows of my youth I took an interest in cooking. I had a cooks job for a while and now I cook daily for my family. My wife, the hot babe, took an interest in me because I could cook. I certainly would not be interested in cooking if I grew up watching the cooking shows of today.
Having said that, the hot babe,...my wife, she thinks the front porch would be on the front of the house though.

Bob Niles