There were sparse pickings to be had on the food show front this week thanks to the World Cup.
And the one programmeI would have written about - Mary Queen of Shops - we covered last week (damn you Charlie, damn you). So I forced myself to watch something I really, really didn't want to just for your entertainment (and, frankly, so you don't have to).
Yes sirree, rather than wash my hair, cook tea or water the plants, I watched I Can Cook (CBeebies, 3.05pm, Tuesday), a 15-minute programme FOR KIDS I'd recorded earlier). And I kid you not, I'm still feeling traumatised.
The premise was laudable enough. Hire the most anodyne person you can find (in this case, one Katy Ashworth, who boasted the kiddie presenter's stock-in-trade attributes of fixed smile... and dead, dead eyes) and get them to teach young folk how to cook.
Not a bad idea given the UK's childhood obesity problem and the fact most parents aren't able to impart any culinary wisdom themselves. But what simple and "delicious Italian dish" do you reckon Katy helped her primary school cohorts to cook? Home-made pizza, perhaps? Spaghetti? Macaroni cheese?
No. That'd be way too simple. Katy tasked them with making that classic kids' dish: asparagus frittatas.
ASPARAGUS FRITTATAS! I can just see children across the land demanding: "Mummy, mummy, mummy, can WE make that?"
And it got worse. What Katy did next was burst into song about the importance of washing your hands (a desperate, jaunty little number). And then, having not yet told them what the green ingredient was, she subjected them to a ridiculous guessing game. Could it be... a green dinosaur? Could it... a green plastic cricket bat?
By this point the pity in the kids' eyes had turned to contempt and the revelation that the "green, thin, long" ingredient was asparagus elicited only frustrated looks of: How the f*** were we supposed to guess that? We're five years old for f*** sake (or words to that effect).
Let's just say, they weren't exactly joining in when she whipped out her guitar to warble a little ditty about the "Fri... tta.. ta".
Luckily, it wasn't long before we could all say: tta ta to Katy.
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And the one programmeI would have written about - Mary Queen of Shops - we covered last week (damn you Charlie, damn you). So I forced myself to watch something I really, really didn't want to just for your entertainment (and, frankly, so you don't have to).
Yes sirree, rather than wash my hair, cook tea or water the plants, I watched I Can Cook (CBeebies, 3.05pm, Tuesday), a 15-minute programme FOR KIDS I'd recorded earlier). And I kid you not, I'm still feeling traumatised.
The premise was laudable enough. Hire the most anodyne person you can find (in this case, one Katy Ashworth, who boasted the kiddie presenter's stock-in-trade attributes of fixed smile... and dead, dead eyes) and get them to teach young folk how to cook.
Not a bad idea given the UK's childhood obesity problem and the fact most parents aren't able to impart any culinary wisdom themselves. But what simple and "delicious Italian dish" do you reckon Katy helped her primary school cohorts to cook? Home-made pizza, perhaps? Spaghetti? Macaroni cheese?
No. That'd be way too simple. Katy tasked them with making that classic kids' dish: asparagus frittatas.
ASPARAGUS FRITTATAS! I can just see children across the land demanding: "Mummy, mummy, mummy, can WE make that?"
And it got worse. What Katy did next was burst into song about the importance of washing your hands (a desperate, jaunty little number). And then, having not yet told them what the green ingredient was, she subjected them to a ridiculous guessing game. Could it be... a green dinosaur? Could it... a green plastic cricket bat?
By this point the pity in the kids' eyes had turned to contempt and the revelation that the "green, thin, long" ingredient was asparagus elicited only frustrated looks of: How the f*** were we supposed to guess that? We're five years old for f*** sake (or words to that effect).
Let's just say, they weren't exactly joining in when she whipped out her guitar to warble a little ditty about the "Fri... tta.. ta".
Luckily, it wasn't long before we could all say: tta ta to Katy.
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