How Unsavory

I watched The Next Iron Chef the other night. I didn't really want to, but there wasn't much else on TV and since I seem to be suffering from a serious cold on top of everything else, I couldn't just close my eyes and sleep - attempts to sleep are punished by the gods with fits of coughing that leave me trembling and light-headed.

So I watched it, and I didn't like it. I don't think much of "competitive cookings shows" in general, and I cringe when the "competitors" say things like "If someone comes after me, I'll go right back at them." It would be different if now and then the "competitors" really went at one another with Chinese cleavers, or even especially robust bunches of celery, but come on, you're making a broth here, not duking it out with Ivan Klitchko.

But the producers made the show many orders of magnitude more unappetizing by choosing insalubrious ingredients. Grasshoppers? Unlaid eggs and chicken fallopian tubes? Sea cucumbers? I know they were testing the "fearlessness" of the cooks, err, I mean, "competitors", but what's the point of cooking something that most people won't eat?

I didn't like it, and I won't watch another one. They had one chance to win me, and what did they do? They sprayed me with ingredients that as far as I'm concerned are garbage, not food. A pox upon the whole thing.