It's hibernation time again, fellow Nor'easters: the time of year when I fantasize about being a bear: cuddling up with my mate in a cozy, dry cave; sleeping through the long, cold winter; waking up intermittently to watch the snow fall outside the cave entrance; falling back asleep; maybe sneaking a paw-full of honey every now and then; ambushing the occasional hunter; making bear-love; eating my asshole-neighbor-bear's cubs. Springtime comes, and it's time for a fresh salmon feeding frenzy. What a life! Go Bears!
In lieu of all that, I have my couch, my TV, my wife, and my dog (Holy crap, I'm Denis Leary's "Asshole"). Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the programming that The Channels have offered this Fall season. Here's a list of the shows I watch regularly (in order of priority):
Mythbusters, 30 Rock, The Sarah Silverman Program, The Office, Survivor, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Boston Legal, The Simpsons, South Park
Last night, I broadened my scope a bit and tuned in to Throwdown with Bobby Flay. It was compelling, and it made me slightly uncomfortable: just what I like in my TV programming. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Adam edited the episode: "Red Velvet Cake."
Red Velvet Cake is a treat that, on the highest commercial level, resembles the left-most picture above. How is such a vivid, red color achieved? By adding 1 ounce (yes, the entire, small bottle that you would find at your local grocery store) of red food coloring. Now, if you've ever tasted straight food coloring, you'd know that it has a bitter, semi-toxic flavor. To counter-act the flavor of all that red food coloring, the master of the commercial red velvet cake, Cake Man Raven, adds cocoa to his cake mix . . . not enough cocoa to make the cake taste chocolaty, but only a teaspoon.
My question is: why does velvet cake need to be unnaturally red? As Bobby Flay said, using artificial coloring is "cheating" (Flay added artificial coloring to his Throwdown Red Velvet Cake regardless).
I really wanted to see how one might make a Red Velvet Cake using strictly naturally red ingredients (beets or red cabbage, as Flay indicated), but no, Flay needed to at least attempt to make his Red Velvet Cake compete with Raven's "on color" (more on that in a moment), so he added "a drop" of red food coloring. Jeers. If you're going to take a different approach, take a DIFFERENT approach. Use the beets or red cabbage to make the cake batter red. Artificial coloring just makes the whole thing a glorified Twinkie. For the record, Flay's cake looked more like the second cake from the left (above).
Beyond the artificial coloring, I couldn't help but feel uncomfortable with the racial overtones of the final segment of the Throwdown episode. Before the judging segment, Flay said something like, "(Raven) might beat me on color, but I'm going to beat him on flavor." Based on the context, (Flay, a white man, competing against the commercial king of Red Velvet Cake, Cake Man Raven, a black man, at a venue filled predominantly with African-Americans) I couldn't help but feel the air suck out of the venue as soon as Flay said that. Am I projecting?
Furthermore, my white guilt boiled at full force when the judges, a white man and a white woman, declared Bobby Flay the winner of the Throwdown. It felt wrong. It felt like Elvis walking into the Apollo uninvited with Simon Cowell and Antonin Scalia, performing, and then having Cowell and Scalia crown him the King of Rock n' Roll instead of, and in front of, Chuck Berry. Flay's subsequent promise to serve Raven's cakes in Flay's restaurant just sounded condescending.
"Not in my store, you don't!"
I don't know. Adam, what did you think of that finale?
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