Good Eats

I keep mentioning Good Eats and Alton Brown over and over again, so I figured it was probably about time that I actually dedicated an entire entry to them.

Good Eats is a half-hour show on Food Network hosted by Alton Brown. I think I first saw it rather randomly -- I didn't have TV channels for the first six months or so when I moved to California because I was too stingy. But every so often, I'd head over to my then boyfriend's place and veg out while he did assorted homework stuff and obsessively watch Food Network in hopes of catching Iron Chef or Emeril. And there was this program with this totally geeky guy who thought he was cool, and he'd talk about things like proteins and gluten and why the treatment of butter makes a huge difference in how a pie crust turns out.

He also used Ken and Barbie dolls to illustrate why one should salt oatmeal after the oats have soaked up water, not before.

"Look!" I called the boy over. "Look what this crazy guy on TV is doing! He's using dolls in his cooking show!"

Soon, I was heading over to the boy's place and turning on the TV specifically for Good Eats and even (*gasp*) ignoring Iron Chef in its favor. I watched other Food Network shows as well, but nothing was quite as entertaining. Also, I found that as I watched, I got irritated with other food shows because they never explained things like he did. Sure, there were occasional reminders as to why one should chill such and such before such and such, but they were random tidbits being tossed in, instead of being the core of the show.

Good Eats isn't so much a demonstration of different recipes as it is an explanation of how to cook; I didn't realize that there was a difference between the two before I watched the show. But Alton Brown goes into specifically why a recipe is constructed the way it is, what each step does to the food and why he chooses one cooking method over another. He even goes into how to pick equipment and why. And then there are the occasional forays into food anthropology. And of course, there's the science. I now know things about the two different types of starches in rice and why short grain rice is stickier than long grain rice, why long grain rice hardens when it gets cold, what happens to the gluten in flour when mixed when water and stirred.

I'm making this sound all educational. It is, but it's also one of my favorite TV shows because it is the goofiest thing ever. I love it because Alton Brown is the biggest geek ever, and he knows this and has centered his show around the geekiness. There are even recurring characters! (W is the equipment specialist who is constantly irritated by Alton Brown, then there's the mad French Chef and Lever-Man and Paul the Hapless Assistant, and etc.) Mostly, there are crazy props and totally weird ways to illustrate the science behind the cooking.

Alton Brown's also got a very specific philosophy of cooking that I like. There are no unitaskers in his kitchen (except the fire extinguisher), so he takes the things he has and improvises to get what he needs. And while he talks about the nutritional value of certain foods, he generally goes with what tastes good and works back from there to figure out what you get from it, instead of the other way around (I approve). But the thing that I love the most about the show is that you can tell that he adores what he does; he loves figuring out how everything works and he loves coming up with goofy analogies for things like sugar crystallization (high school dances).

I love this show and Alton Brown because next to Scrubs, it's one of the funniest things I watch and always makes me laugh, because it makes me think about the whys of cooking instead of just the hows, because it makes me feel less intimidated by complicated recipes and more confident of my own abilities for improvisation and adaptation (um, possibly completely over-ambitious abilities, given that I've only been cooking for two weeks!). Go watch! I'd watch even if I didn't cook -- well, I did watch for two whole years before I started to cook just for pure entertainment value.

Westerfeld, Scott - So Yesterday

Finally, I start writing about books again after multiple posts about cooking and food and Good Eats. Apologies for those of you here mainly for the bookishness.

I've been going on a Westerfeld jag lately, largely because I really like his sort of geeky take on science and ideas and how he makes them into plot. The Westerfeld books that I've enjoyed the most are the ones in which the discovery and subsequent exploration of an idea are thoroughly followed and brought to their logical conclusions; Peeps was especially good at that.

This one is about the concept of coolness and trends, and how what's cool gets disseminated and adopted by people in society. I think Rachel mentioned that Westerfeld takes the idea from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, which I read a few years ago. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell divides people into Innovators, Trendsetters, Early Adopters, Late Adopters and Laggards (or something like that); Westerfeld simply changes Late Adopters to Consumers.

Hunter is a Trendsetter coolhunter who freelances and helps various brand name clients evaluate their newest products and ads for coolness, along with spotting trends on the street and passing them on to the mainstream. He meets Jen, an actual Innovator, spotted by her nifty shoelaces, and various hijinks ensue as they both get caught up in a kidnapping, fake brands, and something that may just affect the entire coolness pyramid.

I really liked this one for the same reasons I liked Peeps; it has a very similar feel to Peeps in terms of the way the plot and the Big Reveal are structured. And I just like how Westerfeld has just taken Gladwell's idea (I think it's not original; Gladwell probably just propagated it in his own book) and runs with it. I'm not personally interested in the concept of cool or of what makes things cool, but I just liked having infodumps on the entire system. I also like the little jabs at current consumerism and branding, on how brand names are too focused on focus groups and are trying to commercialize the entire notion of "cool," which, imho, completely undercuts the entire thing.

Of course, I'm probably up there with the Laggards or something ;).

I didn't like how Westerfeld sort of typecast Innovators -- there were a few sentences here and there about something being "typically Innovator," which strikes me as a bit of an oxymoron. If the Innovators are so special and innovate-y, wouldn't there not be a standard look at all?

Small nitpick, as this was a quick and fun read.

ETA: Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker on the coolhunt

Links:
- Emily's review
- gwyneira's review

Notes to self:

1. Do not keep three separate grocery lists in the vague hopes that all three are the same. They will not magically self-update whenever another grocery list is created. Aka, I ran to a grocery store three separate times today because I kept forgetting things. This is not counting the five runs or so that I've made over the weekend as well.

ETA: make that four times. I can't believe I actually read the recipe for gingerbread three whole times and missed the molasses every single time. *headdesk*

2. When you have to run to the grocery store three separate times because of list mishaps, just expect to get caught at every single yellow light or don't-walk signal possible.

3. Mailing out packages the Monday before Christmas weekend is not a good idea.

4. Eat more protein. Stomach is currently extremely unhappy, probably because of protein deficiency.

5. Scones =! protein

6. Satsumas =! protein

7. Polenta =! protein

8. Oatmeal =! protein

9. Ma po tofu, however, is acceptable

10. Find more recipes with beans or tofu, since you are too lazy to cook with meat.

11. Stop baking! Cook more protein!