Posted 12:08 PM by Blah blah

Sex and Food. Cheshire Dave.

Note, guys, this woman's husband was a "famous journalist." Maybe in the future they'll say "Naomi Numbobs, wife of famous blogger Raymond Roastbeef, fries the most captivating pork cutlets on television. They are shaped like her legs..." (What vanity!)

Sex and the Kitchen (NY Times):
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If you've heard of Nigella Lawson, it is likely you know the following things about her: She is voluptuous. She licks her fingers and likes to flick her hair as she flirts with the camera. And her cooking show, Nigella Bites, has created a sensation in Britain, where it is one of the country's most popular cooking programs....

Ms. Lawson manages to deliver what so many other food shows don't. She brings to life the sensual aspects of cooking, helping you understand not only what you are after but also the pleasure of the journey, and she encourages you along the way. It is the rare example of great food television.

The show is set in her house in west London, and you see her digging spices out of plastic bags in the pantry. She prepares dishes you can imagine making after a busy day at work. She mixes salads with her hands. She uses canned chickpeas. And yet her house is just fabulous enough, her cooking just ambitious enough, to keep the bubble of fantasy intact.

Ms. Lawson, 41, became known as a food critic for The Spectator, and is now the food editor for British Vogue. In How to Eat (John Wiley & Sons, 2000), she brings you into her life and tells you how she thinks about food, how meals come together in her head, what snacks she makes for herself and how she cooks for family and friends. The premise is solid. "Although it's possible to love eating without being able to cook, I don't believe you can ever really cook unless you love eating." Rather than telling you how to cook, she encourages you to take pleasure in feeding yourself and others....

But it is on her television show that she comes into her own. It makes many current cooking shows look like vaudeville acts. Ms. Lawson's greatest feat may be that she comes across as a real person. Gourmet magazine said in its April 2001 issue that Ms. Lawson "looks like a movie star." It is a common claim, and it is where many observers get it wrong. Ms. Lawson looks like your neighbor, who would be beautiful if she had time to fix her hair, but who is preoccupied with getting her kids to school, has a job to keep and battles her weight. It's the Oprah Winfrey effect. She may have a much more glamorous life than you have (Ms. Lawson's father was Margaret Thatcher's chancellor of the exchequer, her dead husband a famous journalist), but she seems to face the same struggles you do, and so you can trust her every word.

The show in her home has a vitality that cannot be reproduced on a set. Ms. Lawson moves around the kitchen, instinctively reaching for the herbs in the corner by the stove, pulling on the door of her refrigerator, turning on the burner. It is a modern kitchen with a greenhouse-like wall and stainless steel accessories. Next to it is a cozy dining area with a worn oak table and simple white vinyl chairs. The walls are lined with books. There is no product placement in sight. And although her kitchen is minimal to the point of being cold, this works to Ms. Lawson's advantage. Hosts like Martha Stewart, who uses a warmer and fuzzier setting, can come across as ice cubes. Ms. Lawson is her kitchen's moving hearth, its focal point and soul.

There is a distinctly voyeuristic appeal as well. You find yourself wishing the camera would zoom in on the books, to see what Ms. Lawson reads, and on the refrigerator door, which is patched with photos, notes and clippings. What is on that grocery list?...

She throws in good tips left and right, like freezing leftover wine in little baggies so you don't have to open a new bottle when a recipe calls for it. She even admits taking the leftovers from her guests' glasses.

She also takes plenty of reassuring shortcuts. In one episode, she warmed water in a kettle and combined it with chicken broth, couscous and canned chickpeas. In another, she defended the use of frozen peas. There will also be the occasional amusing comment, which feels refreshingly unscripted. "My skill lies in eating," she said, after fumbling over her words.

At its best, Nigella Bites makes you want to cook.
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A cool guy on my reading list is Cheshire Dave, a cat who purrs around Berkeley. He's just written a play, "The Finest Poet," that will be performed with a host of other short plays at La Val's Subterranean Theater (remember the pizza place, guys?) every weekend this March!

He wrote me:

After a zillion years of doing posters for plays written by other people,
I'm beyond thrilled to announce I've finally moved on to doing a poster for
a play written by, well, me. That is, my play and six more plays written by
other fine folks -- it's Impact Theatre's Impact Briefs 5! It's their fifth
festival of ten-minute plays, culled from submissions from all over the
country but focusing on life here in the Bay Area.

I'm writing not so much to hype the poster, really (though we all think it's
pretty fun -- email me if you want a PDF of it), but more to encourage you
to check out the show. It's playing every weekend in March, at La Val's
Subterranean (where, if they get their remodeling done in time, you can
bring pizza and drinks into the theater), just north of the UC Berkeley
campus. It should be quite a fun show -- at the very least a far, far better
sequel than, say, Rocky 5, Star Trek 5, or perhaps even Henry V.

Way to go, Cheshire Dave!!! I will try to make it next month, probably with my astrophysicist friend Bob. I also asked Cheshire about his unusual name. He wrote back:

Yes, Cheshire is really my name, though not in the legal sense. Cheshire is
an old nickname that I adopted as my actual name in 1994. Only my family and other people who knew me before then still call me Dave. It sounds weird
when they try to say Cheshire, not that most of them have tried.

Some people have an easier time of it than others. Recently, my girlfriend's
parents asked her how to address a wedding invitation to us, specifically
how to address me. When she told them "Cheshire Beckerman," they replied,
"But this is, you know, _formal_." Fortunately, Sarah reiterated how they
should write my name on the invitation.

As a designer, I just basically go by the moniker Cheshire Dave. I still
haven't resolved what my professional name will be.

Whoa, Cheshire Dave! Rewind the tape!...Wedding??? Did I just miss something? Goes to show what happens when I don't keep up with my online friends. Many congrats, Cheshire! I wish we had this automatic service that would scan our favorite blogs and send us a note whenever anything major had happened. Like a blogger...

had a stubbed toe,
broke up,
died laughing,
had six-headed baby and started hourly breastfeedings,
tried twice to "go on hiatus" but could not handle the withdrawal symptoms and came back begging for more hits.

Bottom line: Go see him next Month! Get out of the house and get your nose out of that chip specifications data book. Go soak up some Cheshire culture!