My Food Network Pitch

30 Minute dinners are FABULOUS and all that but I feel like Rachel has those locked down tighter than the lid on the jar of those pickles that you made 4 years ago and are afraid to open but can’t bare to throw away yet.  And also, 30 minutes?  That’s a pretty unrealistic time for dinner preparation don’t you think? If I had 30 minutes to spend on dinner I would go to a restaurant and let them serve me.

So here’s my idea.  Work night dinners for busy professionals running between two jobs, families with kids in activities, etc.  

15 second dinners.

No really.  There is so much food that will technically keep you alive that can be prepared in next to no time at all.

BONUS for the network, this show is only 5 minutes long because, hello!, 15 seconds! If I had to fill a full timeslot I would have to do A LOT of talking to fill up that time, or make 100 dinners…and that’s like all the recipes I know for the ENTIRE run of the show, which I’m expecting to be at least 5 or 6 seasons.  This shit is going to be popular, just you wait and see.  So you'll be able to fit in like 23 minutes of commercials.  BIG BUCKS, amiright?

So here's my first episode, let me know what you think.

First recipe.  Stale tortilla chips and the off-brand hummus that was on sale that you took to work for the potluck lunch but no one would eat.  This one is also FREE really because you have both of these things in your house already.  Eat standing up at the counter using the chips as a spoon and you save extra time by having no dishes to wash.  A fun little twist on this is crushing the chips up and mixing them into the hummus so that you can eat them with a spoon while driving.  Throw the dirty dishes onto the passenger’s seat for when there is a full dishwasher’s load worth, or when you don’t have any dishes left in the cupboard you can do a “big clean up” and wash them all at the same time.

Second recipe.  Cheese and crackers.  Fancy ass restaurants put this on their menu as a “cheese board." If you have a board handy to eat off of then, sure, be fancy, but if you eat the crackers out of the box you minimize clean up (SAVING TIME HERE FOLKS). Some crackers even have whole wheat in them so, HEALTHY, and cheese is packed with protein and calcium and good shit like that to keep your bones from breaking when you inevitably get scurvy from lack of fresh fruits and veggies.

Third recipe.  Apples and peanut butter.  Get one of those apple cutters that cuts all the slices of apples at the same time, otherwise you will run out of preptime because cutting up an apple with a knife takes FOREVER as we all probably know.  The peanut butter can be eaten directly from the jar.  Pro-tip, when shopping for peanut butter look for jars with a large aperture to facilitate scooping with apple slices. Recipe variation.  Skip the apples and just eat the peanut butter directly out of the jar with a spoon. 

Fourth recipe. Grocery store chicken, eaten standing at the counter.  The trick here is remembering to buy one of those rotisserie chicken thingies as your are cruising passed the deli department.  Once it’s in your refrigerator you are ready to go with absolutely no preptime.  Just open up the chicken box and nosh away.  The legs even come with a handy built in grip for children who like to eat while running around the house.

Fifth recipe.  Deli sliced turkey wrapped around a cheese stick.  Talk about elegant AND convenient. If you made a bunch of them and lined them up on a tray you could pass this off as an appetizer at a fancy party. Just stick a toothpick in each one.  Don’t do that though, because that would take WAY longer than 15 seconds.

So what do you think?  Shoot a pilot? I could make some of those sped up facebook videos that show people prepping food.  If you sped these up each one would be like maybe 3 second long.  Before people even THOUGHT about stopping the video the video would be over.  You could defeat their short attention spans by being SHORTER than them. 

I am available to start production at anytime. 

Quality time with Grandma.

My parents live far away and when they are in town visiting I like to make the most of our time by filling our days with meaningful memories and once in a life time experiences. 

Just kidding.  We go grocery shopping and take the kids to the park and stuff because life goes on, even when Grandma and Grandpa are here.

So I was at the grocery store with my mother and my youngest child, who interestingly enough BEGGED to go with us to the store.  Usually when I try to drag the children to the store they act like they are dying or like I am torturing them by making them participate in something which is SOOOO BORING, especially because we all know that when they beg for cookies I will say NO. Because I’m the worst.

Curious behavior to be sure, but I’m pretty sure it was just to get me and Grandma alone so she could interrogate us because as I was pushing our laden cart through the aisles of the grocery store she comes out with this: “Grandma?  Did Mom do chores when she was growing up?”  I jumped in quickly because Grandma had inexplicably choked on something, as she sputtered I said emphatically “Yes.  Yes I did.  All the time, without being asked.” 

“Grandma is that true?”  Grandma was still coughing, although it sounded suspiciously like she was trying not to snort-laugh out of her nose. I fixed her with an evil glare to let her know that she had BETTER back me up on this one.

“Yes! True, all true,” she managed to sputter.

Shockingly Athena didn’t appear convinced.

As we pushed on through the store my mother growled “You have to prepare me for these things,” behind her palm.

How NOT to cook things.

I have perpetrated some seriously heinous kitchen disasters in my day. There was the time that I dropped the lid of the crock pot from the height of about 7 feet. I was on a stool getting it off a high shelf and the lid slid off backwards crashing to the floor in a shower of glass particles that looked like a rain of indoor hail. There was that one time that I was pureeing steamed mustard greens to make Saag and the bowl of the food processor slipped out of my hands spattering the front of the cabinets, the floor, the refrigerator across the room, myself and the baby who was in one of those bouncy “gym” thingies with a finely pureed mash of spiced greens.  There was the time I brilliantly decided to “cool off” two hot lasagna pans by spraying them with cold water.  Thermal shock, it’s a thing. It’s not a good thing.  My love of durable surfaces means that glassware is basically not safe in my kitchen, cast iron sinks, tile floors, let’s just say that I can estimate the blast radius of a dropped Correll plate with an uncanny accuracy.

I’m telling you this so that you know me to be an expert in kitchen disasters, so that when I tell you that I experienced the pinnacle of culinary catastrophes that you’ll understand I am not talking about a chipped wine glass, or a dropped mug of hot chocolate but an honest to Goddess, 4 alarm CRIME SCENE.

To set the mood.  I’m getting ready for a dinner party, because I like to torture myself apparently.  Actually it’s because inviting people over to my house is pretty much the only thing that will inspire me to clean my house and if I don’t host people on a semi-regular basis we would all be living in a nest of dirty socks, toys, soiled dishes and sweaty sports bras.  So I’m cleaning my house.  Also there’s a bunch of rhubarb wilting on the counter top which needs to be either cooked or discarded that day, also I’m making a tart crust, also I haven’t had my second cup of coffee yet, also my children seem to think I should feed them or something.  So basically just your every day Saturday morning at our house.

Oh wait there’s something else you need to know. I hate electric stoves.  I hate them, but that’s what I currently have because until it’s broken I can’t justify replacing it.

So I decide to blind bake a pie crust for the rhubarb pie while I’m mixing up my tart crust recipe, making coffee, loading the dishwasher, and toasting bread to feed the children.  Put toast in the toaster, separate egg for tart crust, find container for the egg white so that I don’t waste it, coffee is done, pour coffee in cup, put butter on toast, put tart dough in the fridge to firm up, put away dishes and reload the dishwasher, pie crust is done, pull pie out of the oven and place on stovetop before running upstairs to change out of pajamas.

Halfway up the stairs I hear a noise that sounds like the children have thrown a box of legos across the room, or possibly turned over a bookshelf full of board games.  It’s a crash combined with the tinkle of many small objects being flung in every direction.  

“What did you break!?!” I yell from the stairs. 

“NOTHING!!” comes the indignant response of 3 falsely accused children.  

I said something else which might have been “BULLSHIT!” but I won’t publicly admit to yelling something like that at three darling innocents who were just minding their own business.

I rush back down stairs.  There has been an explosion.  

This is after I've cleaned up quite a bit.

It takes me a few seconds to figure out what I’m looking at.  The glass pie plate has shattered, shards of glass in every direction, the pie pastry still on the stove with the parchment paper and dried beans from the blind bake starting to smoke.  There are pops as more glass shards jump from the stove top, and I realize that I left the burner on after making coffee in the stove top coffee maker.  And that means that I set the pie plate down on a hot burner that was cranked up to one notch below “hi” and that if I don’t get to the stove to turn it off my glass, pastry and bean explosion will turn into an actual on fire explosion.  So I tip-toe through the shards of pyrex while yelling at my children “DO NOT COME IN HERE! NO ONE COME IN HERE!” and I turn off the stove.  

The only recognizable things were the handles.

Basically everything in my kitchen is covered in glass glitter.  There are shards of glass wedged between the coils of the stove, there are dry beans covering my entire stove top. One handle of the pie plate is wedged under the fridge and the other one is 10 feet away from it on the counter top. I start separating the pile of smoking debris on my stove top with a pair of salad tongs since everything is too hot to touch.

The other handle bounced off this jug of vodka...which I didn't even start drinking!

I estimate it took me about two hours to return the scene of the crime to a habitable state. My kitchen has never been cleaner.  I wiped down parts of my countertops that probably haven’t seen a damp cloth since the day they were installed.  The container of utensils next to the stove dumped out so that glass bits could be rinsed from inside it.  I swept, swept again and then mopped.  I MOPPED. I had to vacuum out the inside of my stove. 

Oh nothing, just vacuuming glass dust out of my stove.  What are YOU up to?

The obvious moral of this story is that electric stoves are evil.  What are the chances that I would accidentally put a glass pie plate onto a gas burner that was cranked up to hi?  ZERO.  Because it would have FIRE shooting out of it and even my cavewoman brain is able to figure out that you shouldn’t set a glass pie plate down on something with FIRE shooting out of it.

There might be a lesson here too about trying to do too many things at once, or maybe it’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of trying to clean your house while making pie…

Nope. Just that electric stove thing.  That’s the only caution in this tale.

I am sure that this is going to start a fight with about 50 people but here goes anyway...

I have probably hurt some feelings lately with my rantings about so called “work from home” business opportunities.  Another name for these types of companies is “Mulit-level Marketing,” which is a fancy way of describing a pyramid scheme. Broadly, these are companies that offer an “exclusive” line of products which can only be bought by someone who has agreed to be a distributor.  Usually these distributor agreements come with a minimum purchase, and usually the distributors are encouraged to sign up additional distributors which they will then get some sort of credit for.

If you aren’t currently living in a off grid cabin somewhere out in the bush you probably know what I’m talking about.  A huge number of these companies are diet and health related (see my rant about the diet industry here), and then there’s a jumble of household goods, fashion, etc that make up the rest of them.  I, like most other social media users, am completely fed up with being invited to “parties” where a friend of a friend will then pitch me on their exclusive line of branded products.  Here’s the thing though…I like having the opportunity to support my friends.  I shop at my friend’s stores, I get my hair cut by them, I buy their artwork…nothing makes me happier than shelling out my hard earned cash to someone who I know will get more advantage from it than if I bought a similar item in the store.  I’m even happy to pay a higher price for these things because I understand that being a small business person comes with a higher operating cost than a large corporation.

So why do I immediately delete these party requests without even looking at the product line?  Because what I absolutely cannot support is my friends being taken advantage of by large pushy corporations.

Taken advantage of?  Well that seems harsh. 

Here’s why I think that.  My work background is in purchasing and inventory management so I am familiar with how wholesale is supposed to work.  Most businesses fall into one of three categories (this is an obvious over simplification but just stay with me). You can have a Franchise, you can have a Dealership and you can have what I think of as a “Managed Inventory” store. 

When you buy a Franchise the main thing that you are buying is a brand.  The parent company has done ALL of the product development for you, they do the advertising campaigns, they do the packaging, absolutely every detail is taken care of for you.  A franchisee is successful when someone from a different town can walk into the new store and find that it is completely indistinguishable from the one down the block in their home town.  The parent company usually offers the franchisee a guarantee that they will not sell additional franchise agreements within a certain area based on geographic distance or population density.   Part of the value in being a franchise owner is knowing that people will seek you out and you will be the only option in the area.  Back in 2005 Krispy Kreme donut company got in big trouble for over inflating their sales numbers and over selling franchise agreements….fraud in other words.  Not good.

A dealership has some similarities with a franchise but it’s not so rigid.  Some stores act as dealerships for multiple brands, and frequently stock other items that are not branded the same.   Many fabric stores are also sewing machine dealerships, for instance.  The parent company wants to place their products into successful stores and the store owners want people to seek them out because of the reputation of the brands that they sell.  It’s a cooperative agreement where both sides work to prop up the other.  When a parent company and a store owner reach an agreement part of that agreement is that the parent company will not sell their products to any other stores within a certain geographic area.  This increases the value of the brand for the store owner because, again, they know that they have an exclusive product which customers will travel to purchase.

There’s a theme developing here.  Exclusivity.  Brand value.  Geographic isolation. 

And then there’s what I call “managed inventory” stores.  These are stores where the owner or purchaser chooses unique items for their stock based on their customers’ interests, rate of sales, season etc.  Most dealerships also have supporting inventory that works on this system.  In this case the exclusivity comes from the unique mix of items that the store owner has decided to stock.  Sure, you can get some of the items at different stores but then you’d have to make multiple trips.  As a purchaser one of the questions that I want to know when I add a new product line is “who else has this?”  Some companies will agree to a geographic exclusivity clause, and some won’t.  It’s up to me as the inventory manager to know what my competitors are selling, and to keep my inventory fresh and interesting so that when customers come to my store they’re excited to buy.

So here’s my main problem with these work from home “opportunities.”  For the ones that give kick-backs for people who sign up additional distributors, they are literally paying you to weaken your brand.  You may be a very conscientious, respectful marketer but if you sell “XYZ” brand diet shakes then every time some other distributor mass invites everyone in their social media address book to an “XYZ” party, your brand is tarnished.  Maybe all of these companies are not guilty of pyramid style marketing but they are ALL guilty of over oversaturation.  

In my opinion it is unethical for a company to sell you on a batch of products and then set up another distributor in the same market to compete with you.  If I agree to open a Burger Bizzaro restaurant and then the company tells me “hey, sell another franchise agreement to your friend from High School and then we can set him up right across the street from you, but don’t worry we’ll give you 10% of everything he sells!” that is NOT a good deal for me.  Basically all the customers traveling south will go to his store because it’s an easier right hand turn and all the customers going north will come to my store.  I’ve lost HALF my customers for a 10% kickback.  Plus there’s another Burger Bizzaro going in a block away from us because some other guy I don’t even know bought a franchise and he’s paying college kids in free Burgers to stand on the street in a clown costume and wave people into the parking lot.  Pretty soon there are so many Burger Bizzaros in town that people are so sick of hearing the jingle and smelling stale French fry grease that they all stay home and eat Turkey Sandwiches instead.

In summary.  These companies are TAKING ADVANTAGE OF YOU, and that makes me mad.

The End.