I have an odd fascination with the show "Worst Cooks in America." I know not everybody likes to cook, but how is it possible that people are so genuinely lost in the kitchen? For instance, I just saw an episode where the contestants had to learn to cook calamari. Granted, it came a little more intact then what you buy in the grocery store, but still, it was not alive and moving. One contestant had a little surprise inside her calamari (spoiler alert if you plan to watch it), which was an anchovy that had been used as bait (fairly whole, pretty recognizable). She handled finding it quite well, but then proceed to remove the fish from the cutting board, and then use the SAME board to continue her prep. Needless to say, the food tasted awful.
Common sense says, wash the board off. Most of the people I know who do not enjoy cooking tend to be on the germaphobe side and would have been bleaching the heck out of everything that fish had touched, including washing out the calamari.
Which all leads me to wonder, do some of these people subconsciously undermine their cooking skills to get out of this duty? Is it too easy to just say, "I can't cook" to justify eating out and only buying prepared foods (either fast food or takeaway). Is it too easy to blame people like Martha Stewart and other cooking and lifestyle personalities for why "it's too hard"?
With so many issues surrounding childhood and adult obesity and health concerns in the US, and the state of the economy, we would think that people would want to cook at home. I was discussing with a friend yesterday how a restaurant offered to sell them a tray of baked ziti (for 20 people) for the discounted price of $65. She and I calculated that you could feed the same number of people with 5 lbs of uncooked pasta, maybe 2 large cans of tomatoes from Costco, spices, etc, say....for a total of maybe $12?
So just like some people cheat to inflate their results, maybe I will cheat to downplay my ability to cook to get on a show like "Worst Cooks" and then amaze and stun them all with how quickly I learn from them. "Yes chef, the right equipment for the right task...."
