If one really wanted, they could enroll in a gym membership and attend for the purpose of stealing cable television for a fraction of the cost. I guess they could lift a weight if they felt so inclined as well.
Oh, the choices. If I had been feeling very slow, I could have tuned into the USA network and watched Law & Order reruns (since this and its spin-offs seemed to be the only shows ever playing). If I decided to catch up on news, I had CNN and MSNBC with their scrolling underbars telling me of the man that just decided to sell his Lamborghini to a horse. Then there were the many stations playing reruns of sitcoms: How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Seinfeld, and Fox News.
When the circumstances were right though, as they were this day with the gym as empty as it was, I always had a first choice above all the rest: The Food Network.
I had always found it funny and ironic that I could be running on a treadmill, beads of sweat falling down my nose, as I stared at people making chocolate mousse cakes and steaks wrapped bacon wrapped in a cow. There was always constant entertainment and new recipes that I always told myself that "I would try that sometime..." which we all knew would not happen until some tragic night at 3 in the morning when the crafty bug took hold of me. Arms covered in batter, flour on my nose, I would become some sort of Martha Stewart vampire that could not rest until my thirst had been quenched...with cake.
Due to the time I usually arrived at the gym, one show in particular was on air. My dear friend and cooking mentor Ina Gartner, who hosts the show, The Barefoot Contessa.
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| If you don't know who she is, go here |
The show usually begins with the same premise: Ina is at home wondering what to cook for the dinner party she's going to have later with her friends and husband (Jeffrey) and then she decides to tell us all about it. Within five minutes, you've become part of this woman's life, literally invited into her kitchen and talk with her while she makes you food! Like all good chefs, Ina often goes out into her garden and picks her own herbs while she talks to you about how each respective plant is going to "Spice up the party!" or "make this a real season-ing greetings." (Oh, Ina, you jokester you)
Wouldn't that be the life? I think to myself as I hear the pat-pat-pat of my feet as the belts on the treadmill whir again and again. All I'd ever have to do would be to invite strangers into my home and the ingredients for the specific recipe I need would be in the fridge!
But then I start to think more about my barefooted friend. What if...what if none of this was real. I know you may be thinking to yourself, "Ryan, of course this isn't real, no one can just pull a 3-tier cake out of the oven and call it good." I'm quite aware of the magic of the show, but I was beginning to worry for Ina.
All those people she called friends are probably just actors. Each paid to pretend to love all of her home-cooking as they praise her through their clenched teeth, only waiting for their big break of playing a dead body on Law & Order.
Surely, even Jeff wasn't real! How many husbands are only seen at dinner and the other 23 hours of the day vanish into thin air? Magician husbands? Gay husbands? No, through my powers of deduction, Jeff was yet another actor paid to entertain this woman.
How must it be to wake up every day knowing that a new stranger would come over? I began to think that after awhile, our Ina must simply try and roll with the punches. Each and every day, she would psych herself up for her "new friends" to arrive. Whisking our her electric mixer and ceramic pots, she convinces and ultimately believes that these people are her friends;even dear Jeff is her own husband. "What?" she must say to herself, "I know he loves me even if I only see him 5 hours a week. It's only because he travels around the world working and he only gets time in home for dinner every day."
The night would be when the darkness would descend on our cooking heroine. After the pans had been scrubbed, and the forks put back in their proper places, does she begin to feel the slight loneliness in her heart, fluffier than her pancakes. I can see her now, enticing the camera crew with sweet goodies to stay for just one more hour until they finally pack their van and drive away.
At this point, I decided that the only parts of her house that also existed were her kitchen and her patio. I see Ina open the fridge and pull out a few pillows, then open the oven in which resides a puffy blue sleeping bag and inflatable mattress. She pulls a small air compressor out of the microwave, as she always does, and brushes her teeth in the sink while she waits for her bed to finish filling.
She soon spits out the foam, the gentle whir of the air compressor in the background, as she steps toward her patio door. Ina slides the glass doors and steps out onto the lawn, admiring her herb garden for one last time today. Barefoot under the stars...then the sprinklers come on and she's forced to run back inside.
"They'll be back tomorrow...the ingredients will be in the fridge and Jeff will come to dinner tomorrow..." she says to herself as she rocks herself to sleep on the dark, walnut-stained, floors.
Oh dear Ina, I would drink a cup of coffee and eat a scone after the cameras departed. We would sit and laugh about the magic oven where food magically became completed. She would tell me about her time at the White House and how her life hadn't been full until she started cooking. Then we'd make muffins while I told her all my woes about trying to achieve the perfect pancake.
Tap-tap-tap...
I turn down the speed on the treadmill until I come to a slow trot, my shirt sticking to my chest with a small Rorschach-like design of sweat in the middle. A few more taps of my feet and the belts come to a stop as I decide I'm warmed up enough to begin my work-out.
Would you look at that, Ina's good friend Susan is in the morgue on Law & Order. Good for her.
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