Dear Food Show

Dear Food Show,

I don't generally watch much tv. Barely ever, really. When people ask what "shows" I watch on tv, I usually tell them that I don't watch any "shows" at all - that I just watch sports. And that's mostly true. Especially during football season. That's when I watch the most television, and it's almost entirely football (generally college, of course). And that's no different than how I was spending some relaxed tv-watching time today. Until I tried to find something to flip to during commercial breaks and found a you.

The show itself wasn't important, but if you have to know, it was "No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain." This particular show was set in Tuscany. And - oh my f-ing God - it made me drool.

Because this is the thing: I enjoy food. A lot. I like crappy food and get joy from it - yes. But those few times when I've had REALLY good food . . . I can't even begin to describe the joy that was brought to me. I am getting an excited, giddy exhilaration just THINKING about those meals. I can still see them vividly in my mind as I picture them. I know where I was sitting in the restaurant - where everybody else was. It's like playing sports at a high level - in much the same way that the game slows down when I'm in "the zone," and I'm aware of every little thing going on around me - I find my senses heightened when I eat ridiculously good food. It feels like finding my place. Like that's the state I was meant to be in.

So there's no good way to explain how excited the you I was watching made me. There's just something beautiful about Italian food. So simple. So light. So fresh. And that's just talking about the pastas. What about the meats? The cured pancetta and salamis. The pork. Sausages. On the you I got to see this beautiful seafood dish made with prawns in the shell. Sauces so beautiful and creamy. Or light (depending). There was a sequence in which the host went to a butcher's shop (a shop that had been passed down from father to son for 250 years, no less), and I almost cried at all the beautiful shots of perfect cuts of meat.

And the worst part is that my roommate was cooking something up during the show, and it smelled very distinctly of beef stroganoff - or some similar creamy, mushroom-y type meat sauce, and it put me over the edge. Granted, he wasn't actually cooking that at all (his food didn't look too wonderful), but being able to smell a creamy sauce while watching the most beautiful creamy sauces in the world . . . It was enough to make a man weep tears of blood. I didn't. But it was enough to make it happen.

You, Food Show, put me in this unnamed land of desire that goes far beyond that of most mortals. I would have punched a puppy to get just a little taste of the food I was watching on the tv screen, I was so mad with hunger (so I guess it's good that that wasn't an option because I probably would have felt pretty bad about it later). Had I not already had dinner, I probably would have jumped in my car and driven to the nearest Italian restaurant and demanded the best of everything.

Instead? I ate a bowl of cereal. Cold, crunchy cereal. While I watched a never-ending array of gorgeous dishes parade across the screen on a you. It made me really look at my life and self. Made me examine my priorities. And made me decide that I need to go out and eat me a fantabulously good meal (or try to cook one up) very very soon. The extreme joy that that represents is too much to just let it pass. It's similar to my metaphor about the Light Therapy Lamp. There's just so much to gain that it would be just plain stupid to not follow up on it.

So I will. That is a promise.

So thank you, Food Show, for reminding me of my other highest joy - my best self: me when I'm eating ridiculously fine food. I wish I made $100 an hour.

Salivating and Giddy,
CVT