This is my weekly column for Sunday, March 16, 2008 published in the Hibbing Daily Tribune. I archive my columns at my writing page.
I am a cooking fraud (and almost got away with it)
By Aaron J. BrownIf you missed it, I recently appeared on “WDSE Cooks” on Channel 8, northern Minnesota’s public television station. For a lot of people, the image of me in an apron on the TV came as a shock. An encore of the show, titled “C is for Comfort Food” will run again today. I baked fudge bars. More specifically I baked Beatty Zimmerman’s fudge bars, which were dubbed “Bob Dylan fudge bars” on the show in honor of the late Hibbing woman’s famous son.
It was a strange, winding road that brought me to the world of televised cooking. See, I’m involved with Dylan Days in Hibbing, an annual event celebrating Dylan and the arts community of northern Minnesota. (Disclosure: Dylan Days will be held May 22-25, with more information available at www.dylandays.com.) (Disclosure Disclosure: That last disclosure was an inappropriate excuse to plug Dylan Days … May 22-25 … d’oh!).
So when I was e-mailing a producer at Channel 8, “The Ocho” as the kids call it, I told her that the Dylan Days group had some of Bob Dylan’s mom’s old recipes. Maybe the cooking show would want them? (Har-har-har, small talk, is what I was thinking). Well, not only did she want Beatty’s fudge bar recipe, she wanted me to bake it … on TV. Apparently, they wanted to fight two widely held stereotypes: 1) that only women can cook well and, 2) that you have to know something about cooking to appear on a television program devoted to cooking.
Since the marketing department of Dylan Days can’t afford to buy a used Kia, much less air time in Duluth, I figured I’d do the show to mention the event. (Oh, is that too honest? Does that break the PR code of silence? OK, then I did it because I love to try new things).
The show went well, and my thanks and kudos go out to host Juli Kellner, all the good people at Channel 8, and the many skilled “real” cooks who shared their recipes. In the week that followed the original airing of the show dozens of folks told me they saw the show and even tried making the bars themselves. Hey, the bars were pretty good.
If the crushing fame of appearing on a local TV cooking show wasn’t enough, I also ended up in the “Taste” section of the Duluth News-Tribune. (Disclosure: The Duluth News-Tribune is a competitor of this newspaper and thus, you should never ever read it. Not even as a joke. Not even if an old copy gets stuck to your leg on a windy day and the front page story is about your long lost father. Not even then). The story featured several of the cooks who appeared on the program talking about their comfort foods. Now, remember, I was there to bake something that we presumed to be Bob Dylan’s comfort food. I had only learned the recipe a few weeks before the show. So when I was asked about MY comfort food, here is what was quoted in the Duluth story by Candace Renalls:
“For Aaron Brown of Bovey, comfort food is Kraft macaroni and cheese, just like he had with hot dogs as a boy. ‘Not the good homemade stuff,’ he said of his preferred macaroni and cheese, ‘but the cheap stuff from the store.’”
I have to imagine that real cooks and bakers – and I know there are thousands of you reading this right now – see a quote like that and shudder. Hibbing Daily Tribune publisher Wanda Moeller shook her head when I stopped by the office afterward. She said something, too. I don’t remember the words she used. I think “travesty” was one. “Assault on justice” may have in there, too.
Anyway, I’ve fessed up now. I am a cooking fraud. I do enjoy fudge bars though, and it feels good to bring more of them into the world.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.
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