Food Snuff Porn, or: Dawn of the Foodie

My girl’s into food. Not in the “I cook up a pound of bacon and then fry a a family pack of Red Razberry Zingers in the grease and eat it to fill the gaping hole in my soul that started with inappropriate touching and continued through high school AV club swirlies right up until Luke Perry didn’t reply to my fan letter and CHOMP GLURF SHORP AGAGH” sense that give us hysterical news video of trailers being sawed open with cranes and Richards Simmons standing by.

No, she’s into food not just as something that keeps you from, you know, dying, but food as a concept. Ingredients. Preparation. Watching other people’s ingredients and preparation. Besides shows that both of us like like Lost, Heroes and Bones, my TiVo has two types of shows on it:

Shows that only my girl likes, including:

• Simply Ming
• East Meets West
• Ellie Krieger
• Sara Moulton
• Iron Chef
• Iron Chef America
• Top Chef
• Hell’s Kitchen
• Boy Meets Grill
• Anthony Bourdain No Reservations
• A Cook’s Tour
• Good Eats
• Feasting on Asphalt
• Some Snooty Jew I Never Heard Of Who Drools Orgasmically At International Cuisine In Countries I Wouldn’t Be Caught Dead In Without Cipro, Quinine And An Automatic Rifle Apparently All On PBS’s Dime

And shows that only I like, including:

• Mythbusters

Since Mythbusters in only on once a week, I often find myself stuck watching this shit: all well-lit, extreme close-up examinations of carrots being chopped, and perfectly good steaks being enthusiastically opened and pounded, and onions being minced and sweated – not sautéed! Sautéed means that you’re trying to brown it, while a sweat is just gentle heat to extract moisture, and why the fuck do I know this!? Goddamned Food Network…

They call these shows “food porn”, which I guess is accurate, but only if regular porn opened with a four-minute uteroscopy. Which might appeal to some niche kink, but which would just be something vaguely disturbing to fast-forward through for people like me who don’t care about its construction mechanics and who just wants to stick their dick in it.

I’ve seen things you non-foodies wouldn’t believe. Molecular gastronomy off the shoulder of Wilie Dufresne – a grown man making drizzle-dots out of fruit gack and dipping strawberries in liquid nitrogen without the courtesy to we non-foodies to at least whip one against the wall to watch it explode. Attack chefs on fire… i.e., two professional cooks in a full-throated argument over whether a ribeye should be seasoned with kosher salt or sea salt, all while both hold six-inch gutting knives, and while neither has the common decency to brandish it menacingly to turn this show into actually, you know, entertainment.

I have learned to live with this kind of thing in my life because I am fortunate in the fact that, while my girl is a foodie, she isn’t militant about it. She’s only ever put me on my heels culinarily once (And has clearly learned that it is a bad fucking idea to do so), and is absolutely okay with the concept of tater tots covered in chicken gravy after a big day of drinking… although she usually sneers, “Go back to Saskatchewan, Heart Attack,” to which I usually reply: “CHOMP GLURF SHORP AGAGH”.

However, she is a member of no less than three online communities of food fascists who clearly think people like me are philistines who should be removed from the food chain. Which normally effects me not at all, but last night I was shoulder-surfing her on the laptop to escape the boredom of Bobby Flay trying to communicate like a big boy on my TV, when I saw the following ugly little screed:

I’m going to start this rant by saying something that people need to acknowledge, but seem instinctively unwilling to do: Pepperoni pizza is not that good… Seriously, it’s not. If you think it is, it’s time to get over it, and get over yourself. Wake your boring ass taste buds up, there are many delicious pizza options out there, and the pizza world doesn’t revolve around pepperoni… If pizza is high quality, a mere slice of cheese is delicious. If pizza is mediocre, I understand the need to add toppings… So I am here to declare: if I could have my way, the era of pepperoni pizza would be over. OVER.

I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll start with my default position: fuck you.

If you foodies want to huddle in the kitchen and crank off over your foie gras and your sweetbreads like beastial necrophiliacs, that’s your lookout. But you’re fucking with pizza, and that’s our turf. And we know that pizza only exists for two reasons: because every restaurant that makes it will bring it to us while we’re drinking, and to soak up booze so we don’t need to interrupt said drinking with a pesky hospital stay.

We know that cheeze pizza isn’t “delicious,” it’s the type of pizza you eat when there is no other pizza. Cheese pizza is nothing but toast with cheese on it, and if you think that’s some kind of snooty gourmet choice, tell your kid to describe his dinner that way to his teacher and see how quick he gets put on the free lunch program.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried “gourmet” pizza. There’s a place around the corner that served me a pie on a whole-grain cracker crust, with gruyere, parmesana reggiano, shiitake mushrooms and truffle oil. It smelled like a foot. And if you try to serve that shit to me a second time we will argue, since I am not a chef, I will cut you.

Some of us grew up loving pizza because, unlike Mom’s meals of carefully-prepared and hand-crafted preparation, pizza was junk food. We grew up to understand that, despite your scorn, the humble pepperoni infuses a slice with tasty pork grease, that is not only delicious, but which coats the stomach to prevent horking whiskey and bile through our noses, and alleviating the irritation of paramedics who otherwise would be trying to snake a stomach pump down our noses while we grand-mal seize.

Alas, I fear that I am only railing against an implacable future. It is the day of the celebrity chef; Emeril shills for Crest toothpaste, Gordon Elliot shrieks from my television from not one, but two major network prime time programs, and it appears that the Day of the Foodie is ascendent. And as it rises, there will be fewer and fewer of us who remember the simple pleasure of a greasy Domino’s deep dish, resplendent in elbow-dripping red grease, delivered in thirty minutes or less.

All those moments… will be lost in time… like… gravy… in a bowl of processed potato pellets.

[tags]Foodies, pizza, celebrity chefs, molecular gastronomy, dark humor, satire[/tags]