Globex Corporation Newsletter

Depending on how you look at it, it makes a lot of sense or it's very odd how much TV I actually watch. I pretty much watch 8 hours of TV at work, though my attention to any given program is pretty much based on when program starts, when it ends and if there's any ridiculous amount of black in the middle of it that isn't supposed to be there.

The TV I watch on my own time tends to be informational. I'm a bit of a news junkie so if the TV is on during the day it's CNN, MSNBC or ocasionally Fox News. I do tend to watch a bit of The History Channel and National Geographic as they tend to have information based programs.

For entertainment purposes, I watch Jeopardy! as much as my schedule allows and I still really like The Simpsons and Family Guy. I enjoy Conan O'Brien when I get off work and whatever Cartoon Network is running before I go to bed.

That's about the extent of the TV I religiously watch. There is one more show, though. It combines the information I crave and just enough silliness to keep me interested. It's a little program called Good Eats on Food TV.

One of my hobbies is cooking. I like to cook and I grew up in a household where we ate out very seldom. My mom is a good cook and a good teacher so I picked up a lot of knowledge from her. The bulk of the rest of my culinary knowledge comes from Good Eats host Alton Brown.

Think of Good Eats as a cross between a traditional cooking show and Bill Nye the Science Guy The show is just damn entertaining with a cast of returning characters (W, the operator of a kitchen supply store is my favorite) and running gags. Alton Brown's training was in Theater, cooking was simply a hobby. The show is well paced an logically well done in a very entertaining way.

But my favorite thing about Good Eats is the massive amount of information contained in every show. As a cooking show it's not particularly recipe based, but more informationally based. Every episode has a theme, one show will be about Strawberries, the next will be about Artichokes, Alton Brown even did a show about homebrewing (I had some issues with some of his techniques, but the information was all sound). The history of the food stuff will be discussed, basic cooking techniques will be given. Strange visual aids and vignettes will be shown to help exlain techniques and the whys of some pretty advanced food science. Yeah, he cooks, but that tends to be a bit secondary to the show. I do make AB's Macaroni & Cheese recipe though. It's a real basic recipe that I can sort of do my own thing with, and no, it does not require me to open that blue box from Kraft containing the "Hunter Safety Orange" powder. You know, hunters wear that color because it doesn't occur in nature......

Good Eats presents pretty advanced food science and what could be dry cooking segments with a fantastic degree of humor and ingenuity. If The Onion had a Food section, it would be very much like Good Eats. And like The Onion, I urge you to check it out.

BOJ