Food for Thought

I am watching Sandra Lee work. My cheeks are flushed; my heart rate is rising - rapidly; and it's getting harder and harder to breathe.

Sandra is the host of Semi-Homemade Cooking on the Food Network and today's episode is Pagoda Passion, promising" Japanese-inspired recipes that break away from everyday menu monotony." It's not the Beef Negimaki that's got me this way, even though the thought of biting into a mouthful of the teriyaki-sauce basted, thinly sliced grilled beef and combining the tang of the green onions with the succulent tenderness of the asparagus tips within is seductive. It's not the thought of downing one of the Cucumber Saki Shots and then consuming the vessel it was served in, either, although the thought is certainly warming. It's not even the sight of Sandra herself, although she does look delectable in her snug, pink, three quarter sleeve V-neck sweater. (The look is all the rage these days among women TV food show hosts, according to Elaine Louie in her NY Times article, Frump- Free Cooking: The Look That Sizzles)

No - I am on the treadmill. Running. Uphill.

In a moment of rare clarity, it occurred to me that there is probably more than just a little irony in the fact that when I am running on the treadmill trying to lose weight, my TV viewing of choice more often than not involves food. In addition to Sandra, I am also very familiar with Rachel Ray, Giada De Laurentiis, Nigella Lawson, Sara Moulton and Ellie Krieger. Lest you think I only watch the women, let me assure you that I am equally familiar with the braggadocio of Bobby Flay, that I love the geekiness of Alton Brown, and that I vote right along with the judges on Iron Chef - both in Japan and in America (although I do think that Cat Cora is kinda cute).

Recognizing this, I thought I would change the channel the next time I was on the treadmill and watch something educational, like the Discovery Channel. I found my self watching the Deadliest Catch Marathon. This show chronicles the dangers faced by the captains and crews of 8 tiny crab-fishing boats in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska. The seas are fierce and unforgiving and the work is back-breaking and very, very dangerous. When the catch is good, they work 28 hours straight, hauling dozens and dozens of 800 pound metal crab pots aboard, counting the catch in each, and then furiously tossing the legal ones into holding tanks.

All this hard work has got to be inspirational, right? So, how come all I can think of is that the 56 crabs in the pot would probably make one hell of an all-you-can eat crab-leg dinner, especially with a vat of warm, drawn butter?

OK - so next I turned to Dirty Jobs. Every time I think I've got it rough at work, I turn in and watch Mike Rowe do something really nasty, like scraping the sludge from inside a 5,000 gallon oil tank, collecting bat dung, getting a snake to throw up (and getting bitten three times for his efforts, draining the abscess on a llama's neck or drawing a sample of a horse's bronchial mucous by sticking a tube up its nose. No need to worry about my food obsession while watching this show, right?

Wrong! - I ran through a recent episode featuring entrepreneurs, where Mike worked with a man who takes all the left-over food from a Las Vegas hotel's buffet - and we get to see a shot of the buffet, of course. Looked great! Sure, it's not too appetizing after that, since all the left-overs (I think my daughter told me they they used to call it "ort" at Camp Colby) run down a conveyor belt, where Mike picks out unwanted things like forks and napkins, before it is ground up, moved into a vat the size of a hay silo and cooked. The oil which rises to the surface during the process is collected and sold to manufacturers who use it to make - ready for this? - women's cosmetics. The resultant slop is, fittingly, fed to pigs. Makes me want to run right out and have a pork chop!

Speaking of which, I watched one more of Mike's shows while I was running on the treadmill. In this one, he had to clean the baked-on goodness from the inside of a huge commercial BBQ oven. Of course, before he could do this, he had to empty the traps which collected the melted fat, which was poured into tanks and sold to manufacturers who - you guessed it - used it to make women's cosmetics. At the end of this gig, he did get to eat some great looking ribs, and I have to say the ribs looked a lot more appetizing than the slop-eating pigs I saw on the previous episode.

The next time I'm on the treadmill maybe I should switch to CNN and watch the political coverage - that should make me lose my appetite!