Cleavage in the Kitchen

I've become a food network fan, because it's such a veg-out place, watching someone else work, concocting all these yummy looking dishes. None of the cooks ever discovers, whoops, out of parmesan, or any of those real life disasters.

I have noticed that most of the young women don't wear aprons, possibly the better to exhibit a greater or lesser amount of cleavage, something I had never thought to exhibit in the kitchen. The sexy cook. Well, only some of them. The rather hefty ones, the ones you'd tend to trust in the kitchen, are covered up and they do wear aprons, and some of them even appear with kids and grandkids.

Today I watched a cook saute salt pork in bacon grease and add great gobs of butter when the dish was done. Did it look good? You bet! Would we eat that at home? I don't think so, for arterial and weight management reasons. Three hunks of butter, each the size of an egg. I feel guilt if I use a tablespoon.

Ah well. Tonight I did make a pretty good salad. Base was red leaf lettuce. I thinly sliced some apple, and toasted a few pecans. Cut up some slab bacon very finely and sauteed that--not in butter, either. Tossed the salad with a nice homemade poppyseed dressing. We ate pork chops and carrots for the rest of the meal. The pork chops were rubbed with Penzey's Ozark Seasoning spices rub, and the carrots had some homegrown parsely as a garnish. Tasted good and the salad was very fine. www.penzeys.com I love Penzeys.

I have a friend who won't eat fruit in vegetable salads, and she doesn't like cooked blueberries. What a waste! No pie, no muffins, no pancakes. She freaked out when I put a few raisins into the red cabbage. I had a colleague once who wouldn't eat "cooked fruit," which included jelly donuts and apple sauce. There are plenty of things worse than cleavage in the kitchen and picky eaters would be at the top of the list.

Grapeshot, who wears a big generous apron and still manages to splatter her (modest) tee-shirts.

One of the best things about living south of Boston is Ward's Berry Farm. The produce is fantastic now, and the tomatoes and corn are lucious. We always eat our veggies.