There is the cliche love-hate relationship with Emeril and me. (Mostly hate.) He creates such orgasmicly scrumptious food. Oh so scrumptious. However, this chef makes his recipes with ingredients so ridiculously expensive or obscure the layman is just befuddled with what to do. Veal reductor? Shittake mushrooms? Adouille sausage? By the time I get to celery, 1 cup of my hate tears has been added to the recipe.

Emeril, and many TV food show hosts, need to simplify. His food may be godly, but useless to us poor people with only butter, beer, and pizza in our forlorn pantry. Is he going to make simpler meals, so we can enjoy them at home? Probably not. Does this mean I am going to stop watching him? Heck no. I am going to probably buy his products. I’ll gorge myself in his expensive restaurants, too. Why? He is evil geniuses of marketing. (Did you know he has his own brand of tomatoes?) He figured out if you make really juicy looking food on TV while all us fat slobs watch, when we go to our sad refrigerator and a puff of mold comes out, the first thing we are going to think is “Man, that Au Jus Burger with cactus and sugar dumplings sure sounds really good right about now.” Bam-Ching!

Once the Emeril stops caring about money (ha ha) and starts caring that everyone does learn to cook will, I will give him my full affections. Until then, he holds on by a string to my heart. The string is called salsa. His is just too damn heavenly.

Credits: Andrea Strang