The Food Network Made Me Do It

I’ve long contended that the Food Network is the single biggest contributor to my weekend productivity. See, I like television. I like to cook. But I LOATHE the Food Network. Rachael Ray’s voice goes right through me. The Everyday Italian chick is so skinny she looks like a bobble-head doll. In general, I think cooking shows are about as interesting as watching paint dry.
So on Saturdays, I get up early and catch up on my DVR’ed shows for a couple of hours. When my roommate gets up, I share the remote out of a basic sense of fairness. She inevitably puts on the Food Network, and I can’t get out of the living room quickly enough. So the main drive behind my Saturday cleaning and cooking? Not responsibility. Getting away from the television.
Jodie was away this weekend, and my theory was proven without a doubt. An object at rest stays at rest, particularly when that object is me on my couch. The only thing I had to do that was pressing was some cooking for the week, and making a pie for a party I was going to on Sunday. I did those things. But not until 10 pm, when I had been on my couch for 13 hours.
The bad news? I’m disgustingly lazy. The good news? I watched the entire Band of Brothers miniseries on demand, and it was the best television I’ve ever seen. At points I was sobbing out loud.
I also had my book club this weekend, and we discussed Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. It’s that kind of great narrative nonfiction that even I can enjoy, which is saying a lot since it’s nonfiction. It’s about the working poor in the United States, and the author went “undercover” working at a number of low-paying jobs—working at Wal-Mart, as a maid, as a waitress, and serving food in a nursing home. It was really interesting, really well-written, and also really uncomfortable to read in a lot of ways, since social class is something Americans just don’t talk about. I loved it, and would recommend it.