Out of the Frying Pan and into the Frozen Food Section

(I’m a food nut, always have been, with nuts being a special favorite. Here is something I wrote for a local cuisine publication that went belly up before I could get the stamps on my SASE.)

I'm a big fan of the Food Network. Watch it every chance I get. The only programming that takes precedence is sports, and only certain sports, like a really good bowling match-up. But since bowling must be seasonal, or has gone over to the Bowling Network, a channel I don't have in my basic cable package, I have been totally freed up to focus on food.

So there I sit, watching on a Saturday morning. I'm hunched over my little breakfast of fried eggs with the yolks all broken and hard, those toaster hash browns that never really seem to heat all the way through, and a few strips of burnt turkey bacon, all doused with ketchup. (I eat turkey bacon because, on the shows, they always use gobs of butter and cream and oil, so much so that it must ooze out the screen and into my veins by osmosis. So I have to cut back on fat somewhere).

I observe these master chefs preparing delicacies like Southwestern honey/cumin/anchovy chicken breasts; radicchio-wrapped, saffron-dusted medallions of squid; fried, julienned leeks in a turnip vinaigrette; and white chocolate/jalapeno/halibut quesadillas. I observe this with an eye toward one day concocting such savory delights myself.

And I have tried, lord knows I have. I've bought, at great damage to my weekly budget, all sorts of fine ingredients. But ... I have failed ... and I fear that the love affair has sadly begun to wane. After an adult life spent trying to emulate my culinary betters and their deceptively smooth ways, I’m throwing in the potholders. It’s too heartbreaking to realize that, countless failures and life-threatening mishaps later, I can’t match their effortlessness. What’s more, I can’t afford to waste so much food.

Like any good student, I tried to pick up the tricks and the tips. Even the simplest, unfortunately, evade me.

For instance, when placing food into a pan of hot oil, the hip cookers instruct time and time again to lay said vittles in a sweeping motion toward the back of the pan to avoid painful splatters. Don't just drop them in the sizzling fat. I can show you, sad to say, a series of disfiguring scars all over my wrists from haphazard implementation.

It has become unbearable to observe the kitchen whizzes wielding their sharp, shiny knives on the cutting board. Like the artists they are, their movements are balletic. With me, mournfully . . . well, any more efforts at quick dicing and slicing and I’ll be eligible for disability. I am not, I have learned, a handy utensil man.

Far less dangerous, but equally humiliating ... I have never been able to master the simple art of “drizzling” – I inevitably “splash,” “spill” or “slop.”

There are embarrassments galore.

My pinches of salt become ungainly fistfuls of sorrow.

I can never seem to sear, only scorch.

And I blanche when I think of my crudeness at . . . well, blanching.

I gave up on the grilling shows, where they barbecue everything from sauerkraut to salads. I don’t believe my outdoor appliance was ever as clean as theirs, even out of the box. In its current state, let’s just say I wouldn’t dare fix lamp chops almandine (which looked so tasty the other day) for fear their flavor would be polluted by the decade’s worth of hamburger carbon coating my grille.

A major emotion, in my understaffed kitchen, damming my enthusiasm for the gourmet life, is worry. Do you know how many pots and pans and processors it takes to put together one of these meals? I mean, Emeril doesn’t have to clean up afterwards. By the time I’ve plated the dishes I’m a nervous wreck over how long it will to take to scrub up. Puts a wet rag on dinner parties when I’m fretting over Brillo pads.

Perhaps the last straw occurred the other evening. In a test of ingenuity and creativity, I decided to go for broke and devise an exotic combination of disparate tastes and textures, a bold experiment that the stars would be proud of. The result – Yak Zucchini Gumbo Surprise . . . oh, god, I can’t even bring myself to recall it.

So I am saying good-bye to good friends like Bobby and Rachel and Mario. But there are no regrets. Actually, it’s a good thing. I’ve always been a fiend for Hungry Man dinners. And I just had the finger holes in my bowling ball enlarged, too.