Taste of Home Cooking School Sucks

Taste of Home is a folksy food magazine with 3 million subscribers and I have been one for about 10 years now, and wondered what their traveling "cooking school," always held in small towns, was like. It came to a town about 15 miles from here. Tickets ranged from $20 to "VIP" $150. They advertise a bag of goodies for everybody, but for the $20 it was lame: a cheap hand-held plastic fan without a battery (the bigger your ticket, the more you got), a packet of sugar-stevia and a screwy-louie. A cheaply catered lunch was available: two tablespoons of chicken salad on a mini-croissant, chips and pickle and soda, $6. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. vendors of overpriced bakery, jewelry, paintings, cards, cosmetics, Taste of Home cookbooks and $900 electric skillets, filled the hallway trying to get everyone's email address. Then came the 3-hour show. I was nonplused to hear the "chef" -- he had lots of acolytes but no co-chef --introduced as having a degree in performing arts and an MBA and then singing ("Cherry Cherry") his opener. Neil Diamond he wasn't. Big screens let the cheap seats see what he was doing onstage: stuffing mushrooms with sausage, dumping cream cheese in most everything, telling us to cheer each time he said "cheese," and to put vodka in piecrust. Then he told us the Pillsbury Doughboy "died of a yeast infection." Tee-hee (audience of about 300, all female).

Don't take my word for it: See the finale for yourself.
Only two recipes came from Taste of Home sources: cinnamon rolls and the upside-down apple pie. The Pork Council, Johnsonville Sausage, Gallo wines, and so on, contributed the others, and we heard all about those products. Maybe 35 door prizes, which is a lot: cookbooks, massages, Scentsy. Glad I went to see what it was like. A few good hints were given, like freeze your Glad Wrap so it won't get all stuck on itself. Very little taught in the way of cooking skills and no mention of nutrition or calorie counts.

Summer on the Counter

Fresh-picked arugula, fresh-made pesto with olive oil and a touch of lemon juice, cheese sauce, fabulous heirloom tomato. Smells as good as it looks. It will taste even better.

Barbecued Chicken Salad

Down where Highway 109 meets the baseball field, the Knights of Columbus set up for summer weekends barbecuing for charity, selling half a barbecued chicken for $5, either "wet" (with sauce) or dry. I like mine wet. If it needs to be shared, stretch it by making a lettuce salad dressed with the barbecue sauce, toss in good-sized chicken chunks so men will eat it, and some bell pepper strips for pretty, then serve in pasta-sized bowls alongside homemade sourdough bread. When you think you're ready to eat it, 'cuz we don't stand on ceremony here, there's also a cup of carrot soup with cilantro, which is good hot or at room temperature. You don't need cream for a good carrot soup. Just toss 3 tablespoons of white rice into your carrot-soup pot, cook it all for 20 minutes, and puree.

Welcome to Piehole Midwest

"Piehole" in Midwestern means "mouth," as in "Shut your piehole." Preferably we shut it on some tasty home cooking. Sometimes we eat healthy, sometimes not, but we love to grow, market, buy, cook, bake, grill and serve stuff to fill our pieholes, feed our faces, chow down, pig out, scarf & whatnot. I'm a hard-core born Midwestern home cook in Missouri, and I'll be posting foods and meals that show up in front of me, because like all Midwesterners I eat what's put in front of me. Like this bowl o' blueberries here. They got piled on French toast with maple syrup for breakfast. Coffee was our drink.