Chew On This – Mario and Co. Replaces All My Children

I feel for the soap opera fans who are no longer able to follow their longtime “friends and neighbors” in Pine Valley every afternoon. I was never an AMC watcher, but there have been periods in my life when I watched soap operas.

Just as sons bond with their fathers over sports (and, of course, mothers and daughters and sons can do that too), mothers and daughters often have spirited conversations debating the pros and cons of the latest scandals (and coupling…and uncoupling) that played out in fictional towns all over (mostly middle) America. All My Children may come back online, but I can't help feeling that those most attached to their “stories" are not the types that would log in regularly for their online fix.

Anyway, it's a new age. The script is dead. Reality television is where it’s at, if by “at” we mean it’s where real cost savings can be found, compared to scripted dramas especially. Writers are marginalized and actors are replaced by "real" folks playing at real life, after being directed to engage in (usually controversial) behavior by producers.

The folks that come up with television programming are either really clever or sooo unimaginative that they always seem to take one reasonably good idea and spin and reimagine and transfigure it into something else that has the same basic premise. I suppose it’s like when some cooks say there are no new recipes in the world.

The history of U.S reality television IS a fascinating one, almost more interesting than the stuff itself. There were game shows and beauty pageants in the early days…and, of course, Julia! But starting with The Real World in 1992, Survivor in 2000 and The Amazing Race in 2001, the genre has really taken off. Those shows have spawned every variation of game, competition, lifestyle and food programming, which also owe a debt to the Louds on public television in 1973.

The Chew is a combination of The View - say those two together - alliteration is key in the subconscious planting of ideas - and any run-of-the-mill food segment you've ever seen on ANY talk show, with a little Rachael Ray verve thrown in and I suppose a dash of that vanity project on CBS known as The Talk, featuring the head honcho's spouse, Julie Chen. (I hate to even include that one on this list. It is so grating.)

None of the 5 hosts of the Chew is objectionable in his or her own right (actually the jury is out on the mostly unknown Daphne Oz), but did we really need a food/talk show?

Talking of Oz, I'm not sure what the daughter of a television doctor has to offer except good connections, and why Clinton Kelly, who is a fabulous style maven, is on a food show is beyond me. Wouldn't that be like having Emeril pick shoes for someone on What Not to Wear? I can’t imagine the hour will go by without a comment about Mario's crocs. Aside from those reservations, though, they have assembled a competent group.

Who doesn’t love, love, love Carla Hall? Obviously they're banking on her likability as appealing to whomever they think is watching television at this hour.

Michael Symon, Iron Chef, and fill-in on Dinner: Impossible while Robert Irvine was on his reputation-building sabbatical, has obviously been told to smile a lot and not scare the small children who are watching with their at-home caregivers.

And, of course, it will be hard to resist Mario. His food will always be good. Just one problem…where IS Mario? He was appearing by monitor from a golf course in Joisey on the very first day of his new show. Clinton, who plays the former Meredith Viera (currently Whoopi) part of the moderator, addresses that and asks Mario where he is. He’s at a charity golf tournament helping kids, so no one can be mad at him. (Speaking of playing The View parts, thankfully, there is no Elizabeth!)

Clinton starts of by saying that he and his friends always end up in the kitchen. HUH? I would have thought he would be giving seminars in his walk-in closet. But he’s a “style icon” now AND an entertaining expert helping people to be “a little bit more fabulous”.

Michael says his style of cooking is mid-Centrum. What? Is he cooking with vitamins for old people? Let me see if I heard that right. The closed captioning couldn’t get it either. I guess he means cooking from the Midwest. Or maybe he said barbecue and ribs? No clue. Maybe it was MEAT-centric? Dunno.

More introductions - Michael loves pork. (Maybe THAT’S what he said?) Carla is everyone’s friend in the kitchen. Daphne is the health and wellness guru. Clinton says that Michael is preparing the show’s first ever dish. Should I be more excited?

Michael made some ham-wrapped pork dish. I couldn’t tell if Daphne looked disapproving, but he served it on kale and beans. I DID feel uncomfortable when he served a bunch of audience members (at a beautifully crafted audience tasting station) and watched as they chewed their first bites. I felt sorry for them having to taste as he was standing RIGHT there. Luckily, no one spit it out.

Clinton introduced random food topics in the news à la The View's Hot Topics or host chat by Regis and Kelly or Katheeee Leeee and Hoda. Nothing all that riveting was discussed and there was much more gaiety and giggling than was warranted. Then Clinton spent WAY TOO MUCH TIME telling us what was coming up. (It’s like at the movies when they give you a wrap-up of the commercials you didn’t want to see in the first place.)

Rather than trying to pretend that Daphne's dad wasn’t instrumental in her getting this new gig, they actually bring him up in a segment of Daphne’s called Things My Dad Taught Me.

Dr. Oz even showed up to give his benediction to the new show and pronounce “what a great job they’re doing.” He’s happy they’re talking about food and “making it cool, making it hip...and making it affordable”. Barf.

But it WAS funny when he started talking about when Daphne was born and the shape of her head (WHAT?!!) and he sounded like any doting father. It was quite a humorous father/daughter moment. In a word, Dr. Oz was REALLY embarrassing and Daphne was REALLY embarrassed. It felt real and I liked both of them more because of it.

One bad thing - we’re more than halfway in and poor Carla hasn’t been given enough air time. Michael Simon had a segment about his favorite kitchen tools. He talks about the microplaner. Great information – about 5 years late….

Finally. Carla’s on. She’s talking about keeping junk around the house and her Betty Crocker recipe cards from her childhood. WHAT does that have to do with healthy, modern cooking? Oh, she is apparently remaking a Betty Crocker recipe. She’s making fried apple pancake rings and her introduction isn’t promising. She says you can use a box mix or a pancake batter from scratch.

This is a COOKING show, I thought, and the daughter of DR. OZ is sitting right there, not to mention an Iron Chef. Let’s banish all mention of pancake mixes.

Carla adds pumpkin pie spice to her pancake batter. OY! I’ve never actually addressed the pumpkin pie spice issue the entire time I’ve been blogging. Suffice it to say – DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY. Just mix up a batch in the following proportions:

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated

Carla adds lemon zest to the pancake batter (with Michael’s miraculous microplaner). Then she dips apple rings in the batter and places them in a hot pan. Not that much batter sticks to them, so it’s more like a battered cooked apple than a pancake with apple rings inside.

Clinton wants a Betty Crocker recipe box of his own and Carla exclaims loudly, “Clinton is SO coveting my box.” He gives a funny look, similar to how Andy Cohen looked when The Millionaire Matchmaker went all nutsy on him. Carla just carries on. She talks about making homemade syrup by reducing apple cider, but she does bestow a Betty Crocker recipe box on him at the end of the segment. 

In the end, the apple pancake thingies looked really good. But what about all that extra pancake batter? I think I would use these battered apple rings as a garnish on a regular serving of pancakes, but I liked the recipe (minus pancake mix). And I like her.

The last segment is Mario making pizza on the golf course (with a real live pizza oven alongside his demonstration area). I could watch Mario forming thin disks from pizza dough forever. His recipe is here. It’s strange that they don’t give you his actual method for making the dough in the website recipe. And I’m thinking there’s a mistake in the amount of salt. It says to use 2 TABLESPOONS for 3½ cups of flour. In another of his pizza recipes, it’s 1½ teaspoons of salt to 3 cups of flour. I usually use about 1 teaspoon to 3 cups of flour.

I suppose I liked The Chew more by the end than the beginning. In a way, I feel bad for all the effort that has clearly gone into producing this pretty, shiny new show, which is starting with the huge impediment of replacing All My Children. Will people heartbroken over losing their daily dose of Erica Kane really glom on to The Chew?

It’s kind of fun. Everybody is affable. Carla is her same lively self and I’m happy that she has been given a vehicle to reach a larger audience. Mario’s and Michael’s food, of course, will be stellar. But, frankly, I’d rather watch Carla on her own (half hour) show and refer to cookbooks or online recipes (or THEIR other television appearances) for M and M’s food. So in spite of the beautiful new set and this new grouping of personalities, there’s no reinventing the wheel here. And I imagine there will be many empty afternoons for Pine Valley supporters.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 

Speaking of Mario, remember when I mentioned his beautiful panini pan? Well, here it is...just a few minutes old! 

 

  

I couldn’t resist it. It’s stunning, isn’t it? One thing, though, it is seriously heavy. The box said it weighed 17 pounds! (That does include all the packaging, but still...) 

This Week’s The Next Food Network Star – Offensive Or Amusing?

Without knowing anything about this week’s challenge, I decided to do something I have never done before. I decided to watch the entire episode without writing about it at the same time. Usually, I never know the outcome AS I’m writing. It was lucky that I chose to do that last night, because I would have thrown my hands up in despair long before the end.

I am going to warn you in advance that this week’s post will probably sound more schoolmarmy than snarky.

Iron Chef Symon was on hand this week. He introduced the first challenge, which was a cooking segment on a morning Miami television show. What he didn’t tell the final four was that the greaseball host would be screwing with them in some way and fouling up their dem. The “test” was to see how they would do under that kind of pressure.

Debbie was okay. She didn’t care that she had to use a microplaner to beat her egg or that they swapped out her catfish for chicken. But none of that was personal. It was in the category of “stuff happens”.

Plus, the other reason that Debbie, the faker, did fine, was because nothing about her is true, including her reactions to the situation being put in front of her. She lies when she has to, says what she needs to, to get and stay ahead…so this was all good to her.

With Melissa, the jerky host kept getting her name wrong on purpose and then he sabotaged her tapenade by adding tons of hot sauce and anything he wanted, while Bob and Susie giggled furiously. Melissa got nervous and talked kinda fast and crazy. Yeah, that was really funny, watching Melissa’s hopes and dreams get messed up by a putz.

They told Jeffrey his microphone had malfunctioned and that he had to talk into a big overhead one. Then he had to actually HOLD the microphone at the same time as he cooked, often with a big knife in his hand. Wow, how clever a cooking challenge! Yeah, that’ll show what he’s made of. NO and NOT!

Jamika’s persecution started off with the crew person giving her the wrong signals for time. They told her she had too little time and then too much time. She actually was ok, but they said she looked at bit too serious even before they started screwing with her. Whatever.

This entire episode continued with them tricking the contestants. It wasn’t about testing their skills or seeing how they are on camera. It was the equivalent of sticking a foot out as they walked by and then laughing when they tripped. Not funny and not a test of much of anything except the nastiness of human nature…the part that loves to laugh at people when they’re down. I hate Punk'd. I hate practical jokes.

In the larger challenge of the week, they had to cook seafood on a grill. AFTER they got all their stuff and had actually started cooking, the Powers That Be thought it would be amusing to take away ingredients that were integral to the dishes and substitute others.

Did I mind when they made fun of Jeffrey’s “cooking without borders”, because it really is all bull and he uses the same things over and over again? No, I didn’t mind, because they were appealing to my basest instincts, that being mean is fun and that it’s entertaining to watch people squirm.

Except that it isn’t. It’s mean and mean-spirited. And baby-faced Bob should be ashamed of himself that he participated. Chef Symon looked as if he had not only participated fully, but actually THOUGHT UP the whole thing in the first place. He was completely delighted with it.

Bobby wasn’t quite as gleeful as he suggested taking away Debbie’s Asian stuff. That’s fine to make them cook different things and not rely on their same old, same olds, but NOT AFTER the challenge had already begun. That’s just nasty.

Jamika did not initially handle the situation well, when they took away her island ingredients and gave her celeriac. When Bob peppered her with questions as she was trying to decide what the heck to do, she couldn’t hide her irritation. Where did this irritation come from? NOT from her being an unpleasant and difficult person! It came from trying to perform a task well and having a wrench thrown in it AND having Bob yack at her for no good reason.

Jamika sounded fed up and I don’t blame her. I was too.

They definitely seemed to aim the most jabs at poor Jamika. In the first challenge, there was a big difference between not having the right utensil and having a camera jab you in the face. They weren’t nice to Jeffrey or Melissa either, but that didn’t bother me so much. I was obviously succumbing to the brutality of the school yard in not caring if someone I didn’t like got hurt. Who would have thought that The Food Network would be teaching the lesson of survival of the toughest?

Jeffrey won the challenge and got his dish, whatever it ended up being, on the menu at Red Lobster. There was so much other stuff going on that the food got lost.

The judges claimed they had a hard decision, but they sent Jamika home. The only thing I could think of was that she was probably grateful to go home after all of that.

My major regret – that Jamika hadn’t been eliminated the week before, so she wouldn’t have had to go through this. But I like Michael too much to wish that he had either.

This entire episode made no sense. One week they’re blasting Debbie for her lack of ethics and the next week they’re HAZING their contestants. I’d turn on the Sotomayor hearings, if I wanted to see that.

The main point is that this nonsense didn’t prove even a tiny bit what the four of them can or can’t do in the kitchen OR in front of the camera. It reminded me of Oprah’s ghastly practical joke shows. She thought it was incredibly funny to give someone a makeover and make it intentionally awful and then watch the target squirm when she sees it. There’s no other word but mean for that. I really, really hate it. I don’t like bullying on the playground; I don’t like it in my neighborhood; I don’t like it in Congress; I don’t like it anywhere in the world. And I certainly don’t like or even remotely EXPECT it on the Food Network.

Note:

Just DARE to disagree with me on this! Actually, PLEASE do! Am I SO off base here? Did ANYONE find this episode fun or entertaining?