Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Weird Wednesday: The Next Food Network Star

Reality TV is everywhere and the trend has infected cooking shows as much as any other genre.  One of the highest profile is Food Network's "Food Network Star" in which they put a group of star chef wannabe's through a grueling set of tasks.

It's pitched as a test of how creative these chefs are, how their style translates to Food TV and generally how good a cook they are.  Even the sting of losing is softened by the thought that all the contenders have somehow joined the Food Network family.

One of the tests of creativity, of course, is how you deal with duress when things don't go quite how you planned.  It's an important part of cooking shows, tracing back to Julia Child's famous flub while flipping some sort of pancake.  This classic scene is juxtaposed here against Meryl Streep's recreation of it which has been on Youtube for a couple years though no doubt contains material owned by media companies.


The truth is that no matter how well prepared you are, things don't always go as you planned when you are cooking.  Take the case of one cook in Holland Township, Michigan.

According to the website Mlive, a Michigan news site, a gentleman was preparing to cook a squirrel.  Like anyone would, he grabbed his propane torch to burn the fur off the carcass first.

Now, I know what you're thinking.  Oh, this is some guy silly enough to use a torch on a dead animal in his kitchen.  What about the smell?  Does he read this blog and think you can just do stuff like this and it's funny?

Certainly not.  This is a reasonable, pragmatic torch-wielding squirrel eater.  He stepped out onto the deck of his apartment building to burn the fur off his rodent.

But, you know, things happen when you're cooking, even if you're Julia Child or a Food Network dude.  In fact, things happened to 32 of the apartments as flames leaped from the deck to the roof of the building.  Luckily the only injury was a firefighter who broke a toe in the blaze.  As to how the toe was broken in this case of roasted rodent gone awry...insert your own joke here.

MEMO
Attn: Food Network
RE: The Next Food Network Star


No comments:

Post a Comment