I'll Have What He's Having

I've decided that I really just need to consult the Food TV program guide in order to plan my meals for the week. It would make things a lot easier.

It's no secret that I love food, probably too much. And I've come to learn that I'm highly suggestible. I'm probably a food marketer's wet dream: Show it and she will buy. The "Lobsterfest" commercials alone have sent me running for the nearest crustacean. But the tantalizing lure of the Food Network, so easily accessed day or night, is by far the greatest culprit.

The worst: Throwdown with Bobby Flay, Unwrapped and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives are perpetual troublemakers. A more recent addition is The Best Thing I Ever Ate. Any one of those can easily determine my latest food obsession. Oh, Bobby, you're challenging someone who makes the best Pad Thai? Yeah, I'll be getting to a Thai restaurant sooner rather than later. Hmm, and the best fried thing you ever ate is French fries at some restaurant in NYC that I'll never get to? Well, golly, I'll just have to go to my favorite place around here and have some! Making it worse: my mom suffers from the same affliction. If we both watch the same show and are taken with the subject, neither of us can rest until we have it. After a Throwdown on pot stickers (or dumplings as they called them) we were both jonesing for them so badly that we had them twice in one week. Good as the ones we found were, I'm quite certain they're not up to the standard of the ones on the show...so I keep searching.

The best: Iron Chef America and Chopped. As much as I enjoy Iron Chef, I wouldn't eat 90%...no, make it 95% of what they make, so those are "safe" to watch. I can be incredibly hungry and I will never crave maple-glazed veal sweetbreads, no matter how much I love maple syrup, thank you very much.

But it's not just things on TV. A picture that a friend shared today showing what she was making for dinner threw me into a tizzy of "I NEED pierogi and I need them NOW!!" I had to settle for frozen mass-produced ones from the grocery store instead of the handmade ones I feel sure she had enjoyed, but they did the job and I savored them.

However, they were followed with an hour of online research into where I can find better ones locally. For next time, you know.