Masochism

My disdain for the current crop of television cooks has been previously documented. At the top of the list of abominations has to be Rachael Ray. No one can really be that annoying. Was she dropped on her head as a child? As an adult? Seriously, I think there's a problem there.

I will now make a confession. I watch 30 Minute Meals almost every day. Why? Why would I do that? What's wrong with me? I can't really explain it except to say that I will continue to watch until the day she makes it through a show without saying or doing something that irritates me more than the last time I watched. For example, within a 10-second span of a recent episode she pronounced two very important culinary words as moofaletta and New Orleeens and then declared that she would be making a meatless moofaletta. WTF? I can't imagine what could irritate me more than the idea of a muffuletta without salami, but I'm 100% convinced I'll find out on the next show.

Why do I call attention to this shame? One of the 9,000 shows Ray has running non-stop on Food Network is called $40-a-day. The premise? She visits a town and tries to spend less than $40 on food. I recently watched a rerun of an episode from 2003 (I think) because the magical TiVo device told me I should. She came to Memphis. Of course, I was aggravated to the point of sputtering, but imagine my astonishment when she hit Brother Juniper's for breakfast, Gus's Famous Fried Chicken for lunch and Interstate Bar-B-Que for dinner. Not Corky's, not Rendevous – Interstate! I'd be pretty happy making that rotation on any given day. I guess all that ridiculous popularity gets you a really good pre-production team. Now, I'm really pissed off.