Watching really bad television is one of my former guilty pleasures.

I say former not because I've stopped watching. I've stopped feeling guilty. 

Last night, too lazy to get up to change the channel (the remote control batteries having escaped to perform some other task just as easily done manually), I slid directly from American Idol into Hell's Kitchen.

If you haven't watched it, Idol achieves some redeeming value.

There's the whole American Dream thing. Someone cuts through your back yard, hears you singing in the shower, and is stunned by your brilliance.  Turns out he's not just your ordinary peeping Tom but a top talent agent, and presto: next thing you know, you're a star.

There's also the whole Joseph Campbell journey of the hero educational component. You start out leaving home to accomplish a big fuzzy goal, usually something macho like world domination. Along the way through the dark scary woods, you encounter monsters and dragons and have to sing songs by Neil Diamond. Someone, say Dolly Parton, comes along to help you. You finally reach your goal, which is to hear Randy Jackson say "yo, check it out. Now that's who you really are." In other words,  you've come full-circle back home, only with a really lucrative recording contract.

Hell's Kitchen has no redeeming value. You watch it for the food pornography and also to see odd people, people you wouldn't want to ever know in real life, smoke cigarettes, mess up in the kitchen, and be emotionally and possibly physically abused by master chef Gordon Ramsey before heading off to be emotionally and possibly physically abused by their team mates who are plotting to vote them off the island.

You also get to see the chef apprentice hopefuls be humiliated by nasty diners. This gives you the chance to enjoy their come-uppance while feeling smugly superior to the guests, who are as icky as the apprentices only better looking.

Especially the mother of the daughter trying out Hell's Kitchen for a Sweet Sixteen party. Now there's an idea I can get behind.

Anyway, she bristles and pouts in a way you can see she imagines is fetching, and you want to slap her even though you are a Quaker and allegedly nonviolent except, apparently, in your heart. The journey to Hell's Kitchen makes you nasty, too. It's enjoyable.

The daughter is surprisingly normal, actually sweet, perhaps. You pity her not just because of the mother but because you are certain she'd prefer McDonald's, which is where she'll go as soon as she gets the keys to the Mercedes-Benz ML320 that probably awaits her, payment for putting up with posh food and camera crews.

Liz, my companion in time-wasting, was 16 two years and four days ago. I think she has opinions about all this. But she watches quietly while I prattle on.

"Desserts," I say, as the competing teams try to come up with suitable menus. "That's how I'd go. The rest of the meal doesn't matter as long as there are big honking chocolate confections tortured into fashionable shapes or served in martini glasses. It's all about ostentatious presentation of stuff they're already familiar with." More prattling ensues.

Liz ignores me. Then she offers The Look.

The apprentice chefs present a dessert, something puddingish with a large banana garnish. We smirk in unison. "That's so wrong," we say, also in unison. 

I try to engage her in conversation again. "Well, you know 16 year olds better than I do."

"Not ones like that."

"What do you think rich California girls who have never tasted shrimp and get all excited when they see chicken wings would want to eat, then?"

"Ice cubes. And laxatives."

She has a point.

And somewhere in here, so do I.

Oh. I remember.  Have you ever noticed how often quality shows, pumped up with good messages and important values, leave you with nothing to say at the end? Just, "Wow, that was really good!"

On the other hand, trash on Fox TV leads to an examination of  the Seven Deadly Sins, culture and values, economics, mythology, eating disorders, and why it's better to live in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, where most of the people are. . . reasonable. 

Most of the time. We all get a little exercised now and then.

    I love this photo of Wauwatosa Mayor Jill Didier's swearing in.  It's so . . . lively and unconventional. And it practically cries for inventive captioning.

Judge rescues woman from attackers

Child, husband, try to stop mom

Many rush to help as woman collapses

Gang creates diversion in Tosa pickpocketing crime spree 

I'm sure you can come up with better ones. Meanwhile, I'll just congratulate Jill and wish her the best as I ponder the unintended stories in this candid tableau. One, from famous Milwaukee ex-pat politician Golda Meir, seems especially apt:

At work, you think of the children you've left at home. At home, you think of the work you've left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself, your heart is rent.

Here's to doing good work anyway, rent hearts and all!  

Image from Ratterrell, Flickr CC

For Superbowl Sunday, go ahead and make some dip using Washington Highlands, Wauwatosa Village, or Austin Mansion seasoning from the Kavanaugh Hill Spice Shop. But you might want to think about new ways to deliver it. Individually is a good idea. Because it turns out George Costanza was wrong. Double dipping chips is not only gross,  but it really does spread germs.

Nine student guinea pigs in Clemson University food scientist Paul Dawson's class double dipped wheat crackers in salsa, cheese dip, chocolate syrup, or water. They found that 3-6 double dips transferred 10,000 anaerobic bacteria from the eater's mouth to the dip, according to the New York Times.

Thick dip was better because it stuck to whatever they dipped instead of falling back into the bowl. Runny acidic dips, like salsa, suffered the effects of drippage but eventually killed off some of the bacteria.

This argues for guacamole, I'm thinking, and hot fudge straight from the refrigerator as opposed to chocolate syrup for your Triscuit dipping pleasure.

Some people have the best jobs. This not-very-significant research really was inspired by Seinfeld. You can see some of Dawson's other "niche-based" work in the "Five-Second Rule Surface Contamination PowerPoint." For those who don't know, the five second rule gives you that much time to pick up something you've dropped and declare it germ-free.

On second thought, I might not want the man's job. It includes "recovery and use of underutilized poultry products including MDBM and spent fowl meat." MDBM stands for "mechanically deboned broiler meat," which isn't as nasty as I first thought. But I don't know about that "spent fowl meat."
 

 I'll admit to not watching Fox news. But tonight was American Idol, so I just hung around long enough to discover that tonight's breaking news was all about Wauwatosa.

The lead story: we're running out of road salt, and when the next storm comes, Tosa crews will only salt the intersections.

The feature story: adorable tots at Ebenezer Child Care Center on Innovation Drive are making Valentines cards for soldiers. That's a curious name for a child care center. After all, Ebenezer was the name of a battlefield where the Israelites and the Philistines duked it out a few times, somewhere "between Mizpah and Shen." But I digress.

As I write this, the news has shifted to stories about celebrity pregnancies (Britney Spears?! Can it be??!!?), Brett Favre's house, and "pulled pork" on the freeway. I jump to the Fox 6 website to find out where the spillage took place, and while I can't determine if it's a local story or just another pork story, I uncover another important story:

Medullary bone, a type of tissue present in modern birds when they are developing eggs, has been found in three dinosaur fossils, researchers report in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The dinosaurs were aged 8, 10 and 18, indicating they reached sexual maturity earlier than previously thought.

Scandalous. But at least we aren't talking about Tosa dinosaurs. These lived in the city of Milwaukee. I'm almost certain.

One of the Google Alerts I get daily on the subject “aging” offered this tasty tidbit: “The Art of Aging.” Who could resist? I clicked the link.

The article was about cheese. But might there be some lessons in aging cheese for aging people? After looking at The Nibble and Whey to Go! On The Art of Aging (Gracefully), I’m ready to say yes.

Author Stephanie Zonis writes:

“When I mentioned to a friend that I was writing an article on aged cheeses, she shuddered, adding that she couldn’t stand 'strong, stinky, old cheeses.' Hold on, there! There are some very strong, sharp, er, particularly aromatic aged cheeses, but they’re not all like that, not by any means. . .”

“Cheeses are either fresh or aged. Fresh cheeses are generally mild and soft in texture. . . creamy and somewhat bland. . .Aged cheeses are. . . multi-textured. One of the great things about (them) is their range in flavors. . . some are sweeter. . . beautifully complex.”

“The aging process is also known as ripening, maturing, or affinage.” (That’s French for “refining.”)

Here’s a point I can identify with:

“Without a good rind, a cheese will lose too much moisture during refining.” I don’t know about you, but my own refinement has involved a distinct loss of moisture.

The cheesemaker’s solution? Wash the exterior periodically with brine, oil, brand, whey, beer, cider, or wine. While the article didn't mention it, I've had some good cheeses that applied the wine internally as well.

The paths of people and cheese diverge when it comes to ripening, though. Cheeses do best in dark caves: people don’t.

One last lesson: You just can't judge a cheese by its appearance. Its beauty lies in its deeper essence.

A version of this entry appeared in my other blog, Aging Maven, as well.