COLUMN: Rachael Ray

Exciting news, all: I have a new BFF.

Sorry, Bruce. You were the first to earn the title of Shane's Best Friend, and I couldn't imagine surviving high school alongside anyone but you. Sorry, Jason. You've been my closest confidant and other-mother brother since fate assigned us adjacent dorm rooms in college. And sorry, Dianna. I know there's one only one person who would come over at 7 a.m. just to help me change the battery in a smoke detector.

You're all amazing people that I couldn't imagine my life without. But you've all been replaced. I have a new bestie... and her name is Rachael Ray.

Some might say I've fallen into a pandemic routine lately. But when you're working from home like I've been for the past few months, there's no such thing as "routine," unless your idea of routine is having to leave a conference call because a cat just vomited in your lap -- which, to the fellow attendees of my Zoom meeting, appeared as if I suddenly and spontaneously glanced down at my crotch, screamed "Ewww!! Gross!!," and disconnected. It wasn't my best moment. 

But as much as I miss my co-workers and annoying them with Belgian house music quietly pumping from my cubicle at 9 a.m., I kinda enjoy working from home. If someone were to walk in here right now, they'd have little clue I'm working. It's me sprawled across the couch like a beached whale as usual. I just have a different laptop in front of me. At 5 p.m., I'm like, "Ahh, quitting time." And all I do is close my work laptop, set it aside, open my personal laptop, and remain in the exact same position. Welcome to my pandemic life.

The only real routine I have these days is waking up an hour before I have to log in. I use this time to saunter into the living room, imbibe caffeine, and catch a few minutes of the "Today" show while my brain boots up. When it's time to work, I simply grab the laptop and hit the mute button on the TV, which stays on throughout the day as my silent work buddy and comforting proof that I'm not the last person alive on Earth. 

But when the Today show ends, it's followed by the smiling Rachael Ray, whose delicious daily dishes are tough to ignore, even when she's muted. I often find myself catching glimpses of fabulous culinary creations, which is hard to take when my fridge contains little more than Lunchables and leftover pizza.

So for the past couple months, I've been taking my lunch hour with my new buddy Rachael. She's been teaching me how to cook, or at least trying her best. Rachael Ray has the amazing ability to make every recipe seem incredibly simple to pull off. At least once a week, she whips up something that makes me think, "I could do that."

As it turns out, sometimes I actually can. I made a decent soup the other day using one of her recipes. Last weekend, I successfully braised short ribs. I recently followed a Rachael Ray Show recipe for sausage & shells that turned out to be single tastiest thing that's ever come out of my kitchen. Am I becoming competent in the kitchen?

Of course, not all attempts are winners. A few weeks back, I attempted a recipe from her website called "Rach's Stupid Good, Silly Easy Sausage and Apple Tray Bake." I opted for a slight variation on the recipe, a creation I renamed "Shane's Stupid Bad Charred Husks of Blackened Things That May or May Not Have Once Been Sausages and Apples But I'm Honestly Not Sure." One minute, things looked fine in the oven. The next, it was culinary cremation.

I'm also starting to think my new bestie isn't entirely honest with her viewing audience. For one, bok choy isn't delicious, it's slimy and gross. And no, Rachael, I can't "add a dollop of Calabrian chili paste" because no one but you has Calabrian chili paste in their pantry.

Last week, Bobby Flay was on, sharing his recipe for Bucatini all'Amatriciana, which I believe is Italian for "spaghetti topped with a buttload of bacon." What's not to love, other than maybe your next cholesterol checkup? Just like Bobby, I carefully added my ingredients to a pot and set it to simmer. Just like Bobby, I checked on it after twenty minutes and added fresh oregano (or maybe oregano from a jar I'm pretty sure I've had since the 1990s, shh!)

But I definitely don't recall any part of Bobby Flay's video where a rogue drop of boiling sauce flies directly into his left eyeball, which was MY experience. And while I was cursing and trying to rinse my eye out with cold water, MORE drops of boiling sauce started flying everywhere around my kitchen. The end result tasted amazing, but it destroyed a perfectly good t-shirt and left behind a Dateline-worthy crime scene in my kitchen. 

Overall, though, Rachael Ray makes a pretty good pandemic pal. I usually can't stomach traditional cooking shows. Nothing makes my eyes roll faster than a studio audience gasping with appreciation at someone adding onion to a pan -- and no show is usually guiltier of fake audience reactions than Rachael Ray. But these are not usual times. Since the pandemic, Rachael and her hubby have been making the show on their own from their mountain home (actually, their GUEST home, but that's a whooole other story my bestie can tell you about.) The homemade DIY format so much better than a glossy studio full of people "ooh"-ing and "ahh"-ing chicken stock as it simmers.

So for the time being, I have a new best buddy, and it's just like most friendships. Sometimes she acts like she's better than me. Sometimes she tells me I need to cut back on my salt intake. We get along great, but sometimes we disagree. A couple weeks back, I said to myself, "Okay, this weekend I'm making whatever Rachael makes today." And then she said, "Welcome to the show! Today we're going to make Onion & Brussels Sprout Pasta," at which point I decided that maybe I needed a different best friend, so I changed the channel and met some exciting new people on CBS. I don't know much about them, but they seem quite young and restless. Wish me luck.