Is it dullish, boring, bland? Without any true identity? Just wallpaper?

Generic really does get a bad rap, doesn’t it?

Do you find yourself skulking up to the check out counter if your cart is loaded with store branded items?

What will your neighbors, peering suspiciously into your cart, think?

Is the check out person making tsk tsk sounds? Does your check out person actually look at you? I haven’t had a checkout person acknowledge me in decades, let alone care what I have in my cart. Except when I am shopping someplace in the Midwest. The only visible response that I get in my local supermarket is a sigh of impatience when I can’t decide if I want to do debit or credit.

Anyhow, skulk no more. Feel really smug knowing that you are saving what amounts to the gross national product by buying unbranded items.

Your Key Food breadcrumbs, tin foil and frozen vegetables are no doubt 4C Foods Corp, Alcoa and Birds Eye respectively. Of course, buying frozen vegetables puts you back in the tsk tsk catergory as e v e r y o n e knows that you should only be buying organically grown fruits and veggies.

Which, by the way, are sold partially generically as well. Safeway, for example, has O Organics. Not to be confused with O Magazine, The Oprah Show, or the three hundred spin offs she is generating.

If all of this is giving you a headache, forget the Tylenol, Advils, or Motrins and get your drugstores’ own brand. The FDA requires that any product with the same active ingredients meet the same efficacy standards. Thus, your unbranded ibuprofen is Advil.

But you knew that.

You just got this stuff all mixed up with the L’Oreal messaging and spent way more than you should because you thought “I’m worth it.”

You are. It’s not.

Anderson Cooper did.

Did you see him interview celebrity Chef Jose Andres on 60 Minutes? Did you notice that I still don’t know how to put an accent over a letter?

And did you, like me, wonder how Anderson Cooper scored that particular assignment?

Have him interview a chef?  Really, he doesn’t exude a “feed me, feed me, I love food,” kinda persona. Where was Morley Safer?…I could envision him sipping, slurping and swallowing with gusto. I imagine that Morley’s comments would have being pithy and provocative. In all fairness, Anderson did manage a couple of mmm’s, yummy and a few giggles. Giggles, no doubt a result of the various and assorted liquor laced cocktails he was offered, and apparently, quickly imbibed.

Chef Andres has a unique perspective on food preparation. He was, in describing his philosophy on what and how we should eat, beyond passionate, enthusiastic and compelling. The descriptor, I think, of what he does is called deconstructing and molecular gastronomy.

I am reasonably certain I will never use those two words in a sentence again.

 But I do intend to learn how to make this.

It’s a Gin and Tonic. My two favorite food groups.

The Brooklyn Ball.

I actually could have attended this event.

If I had been on the mailing list. Or, had made a mega donation. Or knew someone who knew someone. Or paid attention to my mail… other than the please remit kind. But, then again, if I had gone, what would I have worn?

Anyway, this serve yourself, pour for yourself, guess what you might be eating and eat it anyway, is clearly setting a pretty high bar for those who cater these fetes.

After all, how many caterers have you talked to who suggested suspending cheese that melts which then dispenses it’s drippings on crackers carefully piled beneath. Really, not your run of the mill cheese whiz on a Ritz.

Performance art eating. I like it.

One could jump into a pile of peanuts, imbibe by turning the spigots on paintings dispensing a beverage of your choosing, or my very favorite, vats of powdered sugar, accompanied by long yellow gloves so one could root around to dig up buried Viennese walnut cookies.

Sounds like it was a hoot. If you went, regale me.

Can you imagine the challenge of figuring out how to seduce and beguile tourists/adventurers/those with any disposable income/where do we go next/ to pick your company for their next vacation? 

Wilderness and gourmet cooking?

Why not. 

You might have decided to go camping for the weekend, were kidnapped by a Yeti, managed to escape unscathed, and were hungry. Whip out the Dutch Oven you had conveniently packed in your backpack, caught a salmon, rooted around for some truffles, milked a wild sheep, made some butter and cheese, and since you didn't have enough time to let the unleaved bread rise, understood, first hand, how matzoh was actually made.

Works for me.