Alton Brown's Edible Inevitable Tour

How do you judge something done by one of your all-time heroes?

Do you just gush and crow about how (undeniably) awesome he is and simply repeat the stories and describe the activities you saw, thus denying anybody else the enjoyment of seeing it all for the first time?

Do you have to point an extra-critical eye to it, determined to pick it apart so you don't simply come across as too much of a fan that you can't keep a fair, balanced look at something?

Do you read five hundred other reviews and then simply parrot the primary points each one seems to make?

I was torn between all of these, but instead I think I'll break it down to the things I'm happy I saw/took part in and the things I was disappointed I didn't see/take part in.

Cutthroat Kitchen

I am a huge Alton Brown fan.  Good Eats was the television show that really lit that spark inside me that loved to cook, and without him being able to break down the science of cooking in a way that not only showed me technique but also explained how, why, and (in a few cases) where things were happening.  When his show went off the air, I was rather depressed.  Thank heavens for reruns.  Also thank heavens for Iron Chef America, where I still get samplings of his encyclopedic knowledge base of food and how cooking works.

However, when I heard that he was going to be hosting a new game show on the Food Network...I wasn't sure.  I remembered an Ask Me Anything of his where he didn't seem too fond of cooking competitions with gimmicks, and while I do love programs like Chopped, it was starting to feel a bit silly.  Cupcake competitions, dessert competitions with bizarre ingredients, and all sorts of other shows were popping up.

But I started to learn more about it, and I became interested.  Well, slightly interested.  I was willing to give it a shot because, well, Alton Brown was hosting it.  Surely the smartest man Food Network ever hired wouldn't lead me wrong.

Ask Erik: Episode Fifty-One

To Erik:  What gives?  Where's the blog posts?

My apologies to everyone, the last few days have been rather hectic for me.  I think the highlight of my week is going to be Tuesday, when, after spending two hours out in a large, snowy field with the dog because I couldn't find the toy she was chasing (a note to the woman who tried to help me, I appreciate the effort, but you were stomping around in snowshoes, and that just flattened everything).  This was then followed up with another hour of my searching for my keys that apparently fell out of my pocket.

Today was spent with a metal detector in said snowy field attempting to locate my keys.  No luck.

So after the hours yesterday spent in the cold and today spent trying to catch up on everything I missed out on doing because of hours spent in the cold yesterday, I'm just now really getting up to speed.

Plus, since that doesn't really answer a real question, I think I'll do one more.

To Erik: What got you interested in cooking?

From Erik's Kitchen: Gazpacho

All right, I think most of the people I work with have gone to bed (not that many of them read this anyway), so it's safe to post this.

When I was little, I hated tomatoes.  I would pick them out of salads, I'd pick large ones off of pizzas, and I was always leery of homemade pasta sauces.  I wouldn't eat tomato soup, no matter how sick I got.  I wised up over time, and now I've essentially cut ketchup out of my diet completely with the thinking of "if I want something that tastes "tomatoey," I'll just put on a tomato.

Plus, they work as a great base for sauces and soups.

Like gazpacho.