I blame shows like Chopped, Iron Chef, Iron Chef America, Top Chef, MasterChef, Hell's Kitchen, Dinner:Impossible, Barefoot Contessa…and the KFC Double Down sandwich commercial.
Who can live up to this pressure? Layperson means I don't really know how to cook, and I just want to eat a decent dinner and lay down my tired personage.
And what's this Michelin thing? Aren't they concerned that gourmet, fine cooked food is used in the same sentence with a tire company? Is that the best name they could think of? How about "Grill". Like Michelin, you find a grill on a car, and you also cook with it. This is not hard, people.
When I cook dinner for my family, I always feel like I'm on an episode of Chopped. My wife and daughter are the judges and I'm on a tight deadline, only because I remembered I have to cook dinner a half hour before they got home.
You didn't transform the ingredients, Paul.
What? It's ketchup. It's already been transformed from tomatoes…into ketchup. I find too much transformation is hard on the belly.
Often I'll add the magic ingredient that makes everyone like food – bacon.
Christmas cake? No thanks.
I added bacon.
I guess I'll try it. Mmmmmm.
Cooking with bacon is almost not fair. It's cheating, really.
Aren't I a good cook?
Ah, ya, you know what to do with a pound of bacon, that's for sure.
The problem with adding bacon to everything is you put so much effort into eating "just" the bacon. Yesterday I had kale salad (yuk) but it had bacon in it. Finding the bacon became like playing a game of Operation with my food.
Buzzer goes off – sorry, you took out some kale. What a lousy surgeon you are.
Back to culinary medical school.
