They're so judgy tho.

Food Network really ruined everything. The mantra prior to the fetishization of food was "the minimum number of necessary ingredients of the best quality available." But you can't bukkake all over that. So it was all about squeezing lemon juice through your fingers and separating eggs through your fingers and avoiding unitaskers and Dr. Science™ vignettes about maillard reactions and sous vide and scraping your goddamn teflon pans with your goddamn metal spatulas and nobody will care if you're throwing together a bagful of semi-homemade vomit if you can go whack whack whack whack whack with your serrated K-mart Rachael Ray cooking knives and turn an onion into dice like it stole your lunch money.

The groceries suck too, of course. Why teach people to buy in season if they mostly slurp down Healthy Choice frozen entrees and watch Aarti's Party while they do it so they can feel half-alive. Not that it matters much anyway because it's all ripened on a container ship between Patagonia and Peoria. When there's little difference, taste or texture, between "grapes" and "tomatoes" you might as well pimp your "grape tomatoes".

But yeah. If you have a few good ingredients on hand you can generally make any number of meals out of it. Four sauces, four proteins, two starches, all of American-style Chinese food. Don't let the secret out, though - we save that for "challenges" on Chopped and whatever the hell Gordon Ramsay is doing now. Step on the elevator have to cook on an electric range! The...Horrah

My white trash barbecue food is fresh pineapple and chopped chicken thighs soaked in Mr. Yoshida's for a few hours. Served that up and like three different people decided to try it because apparently we're so busy freaking out about the proper way to use "steak rub" that we've forgotten that less is generally more. It's fucking sad. And these are the same people who wax fucking poetic about their Instant Pot, which they will use three times, and never realize that their grandmother's pressure cooker did the exact same goddamn thing without taking up a third of a counter.

I can't buy rice crispies. Apparently the only place that has them is Target. Rice crispies treats? Yeah they're high-enough margin. But why would you make rice crispies treats, let alone just eat cereal? I can't buy Havarti. I can buy fucking Hatch Chile in eighty goddamn things but I moved a thousand miles so I wouldn't have to eat that shit ever again so fuck you, Kroger.

No I don't wanna eat your gray-ass steak. No I don't wanna eat your gray-ass steak that you "finished" on the grill so that it would be slightly less gray. No I don't care that you boiled it in a plastic bag for three hours at a hundred and thirty five degrees. Actually, that's precisely why I don't want to eat your fucking gray-ass steak. Jesus, man, you spend $200 so you can photo-lab a piece of pork and then insist we go to a fucking restaurant where I pay extra because I have to cook my own food?

And fuckin' Serious Eats is at Ten Things You Must Do To Your Burger If You Want to Date My Daughter and it just wears me the fuck out.