TV for the Sane

It's fairly obvious that I'm unemployed, no? Who else has time to watch Good Morning America and then write about the featured canine poo poo backpacks? I do watch my fair share of television. As you may have also gleaned from these posts, I don't have cable, so I have about nine channels to choose from--which actually yields a surprising amount of watchable TV.

One of my very favorite shows is America's Test Kitchen on PBS. Totally devoid of celebrities and ballyhooed restaurants/cookbooks and/or "lifestyles," ATK is a refreshingly simple show that finds the best ingredients, recipes, and equipment, with explanations about the science of cooking. They value great taste with a minimum of expense and time. Not to be confused with the completely unwatchable Rachel Ray, whose bubbly presence makes me want to push her head into a water bath. And though I have increased compassion for Martha Stewart since the start of her live show, an always cringe-worthy experience showcasing her awkwardness and absence of humor which unfortunately her daughter Alexis seems to have inherited, she is quite frankly, out of her gourd. On her Easter themed show yesterday she had on Lisa Rinna, the overly lip-plumped woman married to Harry Hamlin who was on Dancing with the Stars, to make chocolate eggs. In typical Martha fashion, there were no fewer than five million steps spread over the course of three days including use of a jewelry drill to open a small hole to drain the egg, and tempering chocolate to avoid the unsightly white bloom of untempered chocolate. The finished product looked great and I'm sure tasted great. If you have a long weekend looming ahead and can't think of a single other thing to do, have at it.

The folks on ATK would never suggest such a ridiculous undertaking. More likely, they would conduct a blind taste test of the top five selling chocolate eggs then tell us the results from their panel, but in the end we would go out and buy the disgusting but irresistible Cadbury egg anyway.