Good Morning.
I find it interesting that even the shows on the food channel are competitive. This is because Americans are taught to watch scoreboards from the age of three. We like a lot of plaques and trophies we can display in the office or den so that those who gaze upon them will know we made at least one other person or an entire team absolutely miserable. I have never won an award for anything in my life and would certainly tell you if I had.
The cooking shows with competitors are, thankfully, quite civilized. One show provides a basket of ingredients, some of them rather odd, that are supposed to be made into a palatable dish by four chefs who are eliminated one by one by a panel of judges. Another has people racing around a supermarket to grab items that will hopefully get them through to the next round. A third show dares the viewer to guess which cook is a professional and which is an amateur who dabbles in the kitchen on the weekend. Still another has a guest chef who must compete against another guest chef and then compete against the host chef. On any of these shows you don't see a person hurling a blender across the room because the Hollandaise curdled up. You don't see a woman screaming at a judge because she was told the duck was overdone. You certainly never see a chef pat another one on the rear, at least not when the cameras are rolling.
The food channel also encourages people to sit down at a table when they have a meal. TV chefs - seasoned executives or just out of culinary school - send a message that it's a fine thing to enjoy food that took time to prepare rather than something consumed in a moving vehicle or a frozen item microwaved for seven minutes and finished off in less time than that. At my age I don't like anything that rushes a process.
Unless I'm at the DMV. I renewed my license about a year ago and was not pleased to observe a woman who chose to ignore the signs posted on every wall of the room. The signs asked drivers to refrain from using their cell phones and this fair lady was chattering away like there was nobody else within miles. My thought would be to ditch the phone and have a quieter face to face with someone over dinner.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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