Food, Glorious!

by Christine Wells

I've been on a health kick lately, and if there's one thing you shouldn't do when you're on a health kick, it's succumb to food p*rn. Don't ask me why I read Jenny Crusie's books when I'm on a diet. She always makes me hungry.

But I love reading about food. Food is one of the great pleasures in life. Well, it is in my life, anyway, and I'm trying *really* hard to find pleasure in green vegetables rather than pastries, and yoghurt rather than cream. Really. Hard.

And then I go and read a Jenny Crusie novel and I want cookies and Krispy Kreme donuts.

What is it about food?

Not only do we love to eat it, we love to talk about it, write about it, read about it and strangest of all, we are quite content to spend an hour simply watching it be prepared.

How often have I sat before a program on the Food Channel and the demonstrating chef says something like, "I wish everyone had smell-o-vision, because the aroma of this is absolutely divine."

But we don't, do we? We can't smell the food, we can't taste it. Often, we're not even given the recipe and we have no intention of hunting it down. We probably won't even remember the name of the dish the next day. Or if we do remember it, and buy the television chef's latest cookbook, that particular recipe is never in that particular book.

And yet, every Wednesday I wait eagerly for the next instalment of an Australian cooking show called The Cook and the Chef. I marvel at Nigella Lawson's capacity to add extra calories to just about any dish with a smile and a sensuous swivel of her hips.

Aussie Bill Granger serves healthy, luscious food at his beachside house, while Mark Gardner and Ben O'Donoghue prove that cooking and surfing go hand in hand on their show, Surfing the Menu. Jamie Oliver pukkas his way through the best of British. Two Fat Ladies, Delia Smith, Hell's Kitchen, Iron Chef--all of these television shows to show us how to make food we have no intention of making.

So who is your favourite celebrity chef and why? Have you ever made something they demonstrated and how did it turn out? What is your favourite book of food p*rn?