Precious Time

Her cutesy-pie catchphrases - sammies for sandwiches, stoups for soups that are as thick as stew - are so grating on certain people that they inspired a drinking game in which players take a sip when she uses one. If she creates a new and completely unnecessary abbreviation, they have to swallow the whole drink.

"This is awesome," she said as she looked over the list for the first time last week. "But man, people are going to get hammered."

To paraphrase Pat Benatar,  life is too short to hate Rachael Ray. A while back, someone had a thing in the NYer about obsessive fandom as a way of insulating the self from the world. Fair enough, but obessive dedication to Sham 69, or Dr. Who, or Strawberry Switchblade, or even the Rat Patrol seems a big step ahead of obsessive rehearsals of dislike. He who does not mug the lead restaurant critic for America's paper of record ought to cast the first stone, but still. While these folks are in front of theTVdoing shots, the Cod will be on the porch with Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, and M.F.K. Fisher. As is so often the case, the words of LL Cool J offer insight:

So get your own on your own, it'll strengthen your soul
Stop livin' off your parents like you're three years old
Instead of walkin' like you're limp and talkin' yang about me
why don't you take your monkey ass and get a college degree?
Or write a rhyme and ride a bike and try to live carefree
Hope my message reaches you before you're seventy-three
Or old man, when people ask you what you did with your life
you'll say "I hated L.L. and I carried a big knife."

 

Comments

[Rose's Lime]

Props to LL. Let's get Julie, Rachel, Jamie, Nigela and Tony all together for a U.N.I.T.Y. cookbook.

I’ve often wondered if there are British hipsters who are as charmed by Ms. Ray’s neologisms as we are by Jaimie Oliver's cockneyisms. One has to admire her simple goal to teach "people who are tired and don't have much money to cook instead of spending their paychecks and time on bad takeout or microwavable dinners." It’s not quite as activist as school lunches, but education does start at home.

The Times' observation that she's teaching people who didn't grow up in households where people cooked how to cook is insightful. The phenomenon is reminiscent of the third generation return to ethnicity... children of children of immigrants who grew up in households where ethnicity was eschewed show a strong attachment to their ethnicity but have to learn about their ethnicity from the New York Times. (My favorite food irony is Wolfgang Puck’s receipt for Gravlax in the Times’ Passover cookbook)

Cooking with children a lot as I do, I am consistently reminded that the food’s more satisfying when you made it yourself, irregardlessly of whether it’s browned, braised or burned. Go Rachel. Bring dinner to the masses and put Stoufers on their asses with your smiley stylee.

[la_depresssionada]

i'd pay to see rr and nigella make out over a pot au feu. my real dream however: giada topless over something, ANYTHING crudo.

[alizinha]

I agree with your sentiment, Cod. Personally, I never even watch the Food Network, so I only was aware of who she is within the past year or so--and mostly because of the haterade that gets thrown her way. (What's that line? "Just be sure to spell my name right"? Seems like it's working.)

But if she does indeed inspire non-cooks to learn to cook, even a little bit, then I would have to say she's an influence for good in our toxic food society.

[DoubleMan]

Yes, she may inspire non-cooks to cook, but it's still so sad. Just like how it took Harry Potter to get many non-reading adults to read. Ray is a huge proponent of pre-cut vegetables, pre-packaged salads, and using canned stuff that doesn't really need to be canned at all.

I'm not sure that the "save time at all costs" mentality does much good.

[Rose's Lime]

All costs is extreme.

I used to eschew beans in a can, but now, with a busy lifestyle, use beans in a can M-F and soak my own Sat for soup Sunday.

Recently learned you can nuke pre-washed spinach in the pre-pack bag (be sure to punch some holes first). I used to be very anti-Microwave and very anti-pre-pack. But not having time to wash and stem leaves myself, I wasn't eating spinach. Nuts to that. Gimme fresh greens!

[DoubleMan]

You're right, all costs is extreme.

To me, her philosophy is cook quickly rather than cook well. Her's is a short-cut method, and I don't like it.

I've always thought that when learning something, whether it's cooking, math, reading, or what have you, shortcuts should come later. Learn to do it the real (long) way and then figure out how to do it more quickly. Learning the shortcuts first is like just reading the Cliffs Notes.

Bad? not necessarily. Admirable? definitely not.

Maybe she shouldn't be killed, but she certainly shouldn't be encouraged, or we could have this generation's Julia Child on our hands.

[punisher]

"...or we could have this generation's Julia Child on our hands."

Or this generation's Frugal Gourmet... (What would her sex-scandal be?)

[DoubleMan]

$40 a day for a child sex slave?

[JL]

When it comes to canned, bagged, or otherwise pre-prepped ingredients, I take them on a case-by-case basis: if they're decent enough, I don't let it bother me. And like Rose's Lime, the reality of life means that I often am on the lookout for good, quick-cooking meals. Which doesn't necessarily mean bad food, though it often does mean trying to figure out new things to do with boneless skinless chicken breasts. My heart belongs to slow cooking, but in my world, that means either the weekend or the crock pot (both good things.)

So I don't have a beef with Ms. Ray on those grounds. It's the giggle that makes me dive for the remote when I see her. I can even live with hearing "delish" every thirty seconds, but that giggle: Cannot. Stand. It.