An X-mess Mystery from Rachael Rae?

I'm late again. Life, yannow. Man, it will mess you up sometimes. In times of great upheaval, it's very comforting to take a moment to turn to old friends and bask in comforting routines. The holidays, too, hold a similar balance of chaos and calm, peaceful and peculiar. So, with all that yinning and yanging ringing in my ears, let's dive into the December episode of Everyday.

Who the heck is that on the cover?! Because it looks like Walt Disney. Like, i'm 98% sure that's the reanimated and re-headed corpse of Uncle Walt himself looming over everything. And the blonde on the right, I'm pretty sure I went to high school with her.  Oh, wait, that's Tony Bennett. And Diana Krall? I didn't go to school with Diana Krall, but there was a gal named Dana and she was mean to me all through 8th grade. I'm sure this Diana Krall is a perfectly nice human being.

As usual, the issue starts off with a cheese cake recipe/ad from the fine folks at Philly. Just one, this time, but it looks kinda tasty in an office potluck sort of way.  I mean, peppermint bark cookies and cream - basically an Oreo crust and topped with starlight mints. There's just a little too much going on there. You know the rule; always remove one accessory before leaving the house.

Rach's letter to all of us is a testament to how much she loves the holidays. From her 13 3-hour holiday music playlists to her 30-page list of ultra-personal gifts to buy, wrap, and give, she is 100% about Christmas. She even pushes her pool table aside so that she can have room to wrap all of the gifts she gives. She's regular people, just like us! She uses regular brown paper to wrap gifts! Joy!

Next page, walnut nachos. And then an article about hours d'ouvers. I used to call them horse dovers, among other things, and people used to correct me as if I didn't know how to properly ramp up a dinner party. We all know that any gathering needs nosh - and a couple plates of tasty nibbles early on goes a long way towards breaking the ice. Especially if guests are prompted to stop in amazement and look around wide-eyed, asking each other "Was this party catered by Costco?" Because that's what will happen.

Back to Tony and Diana, now we are reading all about their fabulous dinner together that you weren't invited to. Tony's mom's lasagna looks pretty tasty, but the secret ingredient isn't a secret. It's cinnamon. And everybody does it. Facing page, Stouffer's mac and cheese. Someone in layout is disgruntled and I wish I could tip them $10 whenever I see stuff like this.

On Our Radar, the monthly round up of cool new finds: Let's see - Lucite box purses. These were hot in the 1950s. But those aren't Lucite, they are just acrylic, and they will probably fall apart soon. Cookie jars, a Ninja fryer thingy, and sequined vodka is up next. The pink velvet mules are cute, but OH MY DOG NO - a DIY witch kit. I don't wanna sound like a gatekeeper, but some quartz, an abalone ashtray and sage smudge stick is not an introduction to witchery. I mean, it can be, in the right hands and with the right intention, but this thing as it is presented here, is simply crap from my dad's 2nd wife's coffee table, boxed up and sold to Bellevue wives for $46. I'm mad and I'm tempted to skip the rest of this section. Flip, flip, flip. Skipped.

13 Fast and Fresh Ideas:  Putting mushrooms on cheeseburgers. Come on now. This isn't new. And it's not a thing you need to be told about. Tika masala flatbread - instead of dipping bread into the tika masala, you put the tika masala on the bread. Like pizza, only tika. Gouda mac and cheese. We've covered all of these things. Ok, oysters with green apple jalapeno mignonette look kinda interesting, but then it's back to things we have been doing for years, like eggnog french toast.

30 Minute Meals: Again, this is not 30 meals I can make in a minute, as the title suggests. Polenta, shrimp... veal. I'm gonna stop right here and say the thing that shouldn't need to be said at all, but evidently bears repeating - veal is for assholes.

Now on to the holiday fare with a collection of roasts - lamb, salmon, prime rib, the usual. I'm just not into any of these. Growing up, we had turkey, if anything, and it was just like Thanksgiving Dinner 2: The Regorgenating. The one and only time I had prime rib for xmess was a couple of years ago at Hattie's Hat, and it was pretty good, but I think I liked the creamed spinach and mashed up taters better.

Budget holiday ideas. Cool, if your budget includes enough time and money to buy a crapton of yarn and make enough pom-poms to cover an entire tree. The diy menorah made from small jars of colored sand seems like pretty good idea on paper, but man, the photo makes it look like someone just crammed some birthday candles into bottles of blue nail polish. But this... THIS... the ghost of Rachael past is haunting up a storm with the go steal paint chips from the hardware store and cut them into lightbulb shapes and glue them to some yarn for a quick diy garland idea.

I skipped a lot this issue; there were meatballs and a latke bar, and some gift ideas that look straight outta the Amazon daily deals section. All of that is boring. The one thing that really caught my eye this time is tucked way in the back - the burger of the month. The subheader claims that it's Rachael's "first attempt at a Christmas burger," but that sentence sits on a throne of lies.  A quick google search brings up this recipe from last year, Turkey Cheeseburgers with Cranberry Creme Fraiche. It's a turkey burger with cranberry sauce and leaf lettuce supplying the holiday color.

Reading the recipes itself brings up another issue. There's no turkey in that turkey burger. None. Not a single molecule. She calls it a turkey burger, in fact she spells out the holiday goodness of it all as "a turkey patty with red and green fixings" but the turkey burger is, in fact, sirloin. With bleu cheese in the middle. Your holiday lie-feast is basically a fancy Juicy Lucy. The ingredient list calls for sirloin and the recipe text says "saute the beef." Not a typo.

So I checked the other recipe, the creme fraiche one, and that burger is messed up, too. Serves 4, it says.  Make 4 patties, it says. Use 3 brioche rolls or sandwich-size English muffins, it says... Wait. What? That's not a typo either; it's too egregious to be anything but deliberate.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but I'm also not going to rule out the idea that there's a DaVinci Code-style message encoded in all of Rach's weirdness and recipe mayhem. So please pardon me while I take the rest of the month off it listen to a couple seasons of Rabbits and The Leap Year Society while trying to find hidden meaning in all of this mess. I have my doubts that there's anything as sophisticated as Duchamp's hidden face hidden all up in there, but it could be the Colonel's secret bend of herbs and spices or how to do the Hapsburg napkin folds. I mean, you never know.

Thanksgibbing With Rachael Rae

I'm a couple weeks late on this, but it's with good reason. Quoth the Pixies; I been tired.

November means one thing - excess. Too much food at Thanksgiving, spending too much money on Black Friday, and recovering from the overload of elections. I'm not going to speak to the third, because I know you are there with me. And for Black Friday - eh, you know the drill. Just don't do it. Don't participate in mass consumerism. If you gotta buy something, shop handmade and local, and do it on any other day than that particular day.

Now... on to Thanksgibbing!  This episode of Everyday starts out with 3, no, 4! No, 5! Five pages of cheesecake recipes, courtesy of our friends at Philadelphia brand cream cheese. They look pretty good, too, so I'm not even mad about it.

In the new and trendy section, fruit-forward snack trays are the main feature. This year we give thanks for favorable trade and inexpensive labor with and from Central and  South American countries so that we can have fresh strawberries. Then a warning that the blue light from our screens is ruining our faces and we can buy expensive sunscreens to protect ourselves from it. Also, a reminder that cider tastes good. Noted, noted, and noted. Also, faux fur! All the kids who were too scared to go wild it in the 90s get another chance to get their inner club kid on!  In suburban-safe natural tones, even.

16 Fast and Fresh Ideas! Carrot and sunchoke soup, this one actually looks delicious. Caesar salad with endive and parm chips aren't anything new, but the pictures sure are pretty. Gochujang must be the hot new flavor, I've been seeing it all over instagram. # months ago. Chocolate-dipped potato chips? Didn't we just cover these a couple issues ago? Didn't I eat them in my teenage years?  Yeah, calling shenanigans on that one. Cooking with tea - simmer oatmeal in Earl Grey! Steep mint tea bags in heavy cream! One of these things sounds amazing, one is just gross. But it's heartening that we are now getting back into the real hatin' on territory. Back when I started this thing, RR was telling us to use leftover popcorn as breakfast cereal and giving us 10 tips on how best to reheat Taco Bell burritos and that was the Rachael Rae I loved to hate. Recent issues have been a little too much on the rails for my liking.

Roll With It - variations on the cinnamon roll. Please let there be a lemon poppyseed, please let there be a lemon poppyseed...  Well, there's a lemon cherry, an orange bacon, stromboli, herbs, and chocolate halvah.  I'm down with most of those, but the stromboli seems exceptionally uninspired - it's just olive tapenade and mozzarella cheese. Since stromboli is pretty much rolled-up pizza, why not also include a schmear of tomato paste, and some oregano and, if you are meatily inclined, diced pepperoni?

Thanksgiving Buy or DIY - how best to spend your time and hard-earned dollars when making dinner? First up, cranberry sauce. I say buy. There's absolutely no way to replicate the sweety tarty fruity aspic, so why even try? The magazine agrees with me. Because I am right.
Rolls - The magazine says buy.  I agree. Or better, skip them completely, they take up space that would be better filled by:
Mashed potatoes - I say make 'em yourself. While I have a certain special soft spot for instant taters, Thanksgiving calls for yukon golds, butter, cream, more butter, garlic, butter, pepper, butter, sour cream, and a dollop of butter.
Stuffing - I do not trust stuffing. If its cooked in the bird, it probably never got hot enough to kill any inner-bird salmonellas. You don't want to think about it, all those raw bird drippings soaking in and getting all outbreaky, but it is true. And stuffing, in or out, generally has things that I will not eat - gizzards, hearts, sausage, veal tenderloins, ortolans... So I make Trader Joe's cornbread stuffing out of the box like a god damned true American. What advice does the magazine have here? I didn't even bother to look.
Pie - tie! I will almost always bake pie from scratch, but storebought is ok too. Costco pumpkin pie is pretty good. Ezell's sweet potato pie is even better.

30 Minute Meals. The copy editor needs to be shot, because as written, I'm reading this as 30 meals that take one minute. I'm about to turn the page and I am expecting disappointment. Here goes...
Ok, yup. Here's the thing, these meals take about 30 minutes, so the title page should have read 30-minute meals. That dash changes everything. That said, I like the idea here - leftovers and soon-to-be leftovers getting together to make different, better meals. My favorite post T-day meal is a mashed potato and cranberry sauce sammich, so turkey and chorizo soft tacos, turkey stir-fry, and pumpkin mac and cheese aren't too much of a stretch. Lasagna soup, tho... not so much.

And now... (dun dun dunnnnnnnnnn) Thanksgiving. Because it hasn't already been 100% turkey and stuffing until now. First up, the bird. Rach advises against getting one that's all frozed up, and I agree. She also advises against getting a freshly butchered organically raised White Holland bird, which starts at about $7/pound, instead pushing us all to get a nice, plain organic, less expensive bird for about --$7/pound?  Oh kay.

Anyway, get your bird, dry brine it in the fridge, truss it up like a pro, and skip the in-bird stuffing. Mizz Rae even agrees, sorta. She says being elbow-deep in a bird is gross, which is close enough for me. Oh yeah, baste too. But don't use a squeezy thingy. Her term, not mine.

Side dishes! Baked parsnip/potato mash, farro stuffing, roasted shallots and grapes... This is fancier than the RR I used to know. And it actually looks pretty good. WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING HERE?  Desserts, too, are looking better than usual. Cranberry amaretti parfaits, walnut pistachio baklava pie, and pumpkin crepes all look delish. Wait - I think I know what's going on. INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGERY! Someone on staff must have raided the recipe cast-offs from the offices of Saveur, and for that I am very thankful.

Now we are back to more ideas for leftovers. The pie shake isn't a new thing, in fact, I can name a handful of diners within a 5-mile radius of my living room that have it on their menu, but it's a nice reminder that yes, you can blend that. The "super-delicious" turkey sandwich, tho... basically, make some thousand island dressing,  spread on bread, add turkey. Umm? No. Every self-respecting kitchen should already have thousand island dressing in the fridge, no need to make your own, and  you should really be using cranberry sauce as your bread spread here anyway. Once you've done that, you still need to add a healthy layer of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and/or stuffing. 

After the traditional spread, we come to a technicolor dessert table. Rainbow explosion cake, candy skewers in champagne, and a bright, comfortable home with no kids in sight. This is a holiday for the liberal elite! Too bad there aren't any recipes or how-tos here, because I'm all about the unicorn gay sparkle candy tablescape I'm seeing here.

The next page is holiday horoscopes. As a Virgo, I'm supposed to avoid sweating details like keeping politics away from the table; one suggestion is to discourage conversation altogether by putting my guests to work. But you know what, you can still call out your racist uncle while washing the the e. coli off your romaine hearts, so have at it. Sagittariuses are supposed to bring the dessert, and Aries, don't yell at your mom. And after that, an ad for White Castle featuring a recipe for Slider Stuffing. And now, 759 more pages of ads.

At the very end is the secret to truly great mac and cheese. Way to bury the lede, Rach. So, start with butter and flour, to make a roux, then add milk to turn it into a bechamel. Then add cheese to make it a mornay... hold on, hold on, hold on! There's no secret here, this is just Sauce 101! And the recipe only calls for 2 cups of cheese. Heresy! Fuck this recipe.

So, this issue was a hotbed of mixed emotions. I miss the supercrappy old wackadoo recipes, but I also feel that I didn't learn anything new and good. I'm not steeping in disappointment, but I'm also profoundly uninspired. I spent 38 cents on this magazine and it was maybe worth every penny?

Ogni Giorno Odio Rachael Ray

I had mad hopes that our illustrious Mizz Ray would be doing a Halloween issue, but it seems that the October episode of Everyday is all about being the best damn Italian a person can be. Which, if one is not Italian by heritage, I guess could count as dressing up? Or would that be appropriation?

Whatever. Here we go. First up, dinner al forno. Which means baked. Hot dish! The food of MY people... wait, sponsored by Contadina tomato sauce? Baked gnocchi mac and peas, which is just mac and cheese, plus peas, minus the macaroni which the recipe title implies is there. I mean, gnocchi is pasta - but it's not macaroni - know what I mean? And there are a lot of peas in this mess. A lot. 2 cups of frozen peas. This are more peas than cheese! Insult to injury, the cheese is provolone, which may just as well be notebook paper, and I am not down with this recipe at all. The rest of the dishes don't look like anything I've ever seen at Olive Garden and are basically variations on meat + cheese + sauce. (Disclaimer: I haven't been to an olive garden since college, which was [redacted] years ago. Do they still have breadsticks?)

Cool trends: soap that smells like oversweetened cocktails. Which has been coming to you live from your local farmers market for, what, 20 years now? And a pizza museum. And chicken nuggets that look like dinosaurs. No, wait, that's an ad.

Next page, the $142 worth of beauty products you need for the no-makeup look.  Following that, a few expensive suggestions for device-free date nights and getaways. You know what you can do for free? Turn off your phone and read a book. Or turn off your phone and go for a walk. And if you really feel the urge to spend some cash to make your experience feel more real and intentional, you can donate some cash to charity, then turn off your phone, and go do whatever. You really don't need to shell out any dosh for this.

On to the real recipes: 17 Fast and Fresh Ideas. First up, Tuna and white bean crostini. Basically a bunch of small tuna melts, but the idea is solid. Artichoke hearts, fried eggs on foaccacia, the right way to chop basil, affogato, so far so good. But none of these ideas are really fresh, it's just a list of things we all know taste good. Thank you Rachael, for the confirmation that pizza is delicious.

Cannoli filling! 2 pages of really great-sounding recipes. What's missing, though, is the recipe for the shell. When was the last time your local Thriftway stocked pre-made cannoli shells. I mean, outside of a few grocers in St. Paul, Boston, and Philly, I can't think of anywhere to buy them. The closet of those places is 1200 miles away. (Note to anyone reading in Lowertown or West Seventh, wanna stop by Cosetta's and put together a care package for me?)

And now, soup! And sauce! And a bunch of ads for lunchables. Shopping for groceries with a burlesque dancer who has, gasp, a family and a non-sparkly day life. This feels exploitative, but the roast chicken with butternut squash recipe looks hella delish. So...

30 Minute Meals; my favorite axe to grind. The mac and cheese with chard looks good, far better than that non-mac claptrap that Rachael tried to pull a couple of pages ago. Charred eggplant doesn't go nearly far enough, because nowhere in the directions does it say "burn in a fire and bury on consecrated ground. Cover with 5 pounds of salt. Walk away and never look back. Do not eat the pomegranate seeds."

In a sidebar note, Rach says that bacon, maple syrup, and pumpkin seeds have no place in an Italian kitchen. And I get it, no maples in Naples, but there are a crapton of recipes in here already that have non-trad ingredients.

Following the quickie meals is a blurb on how to add a little Italy to their lives - drink Campari, put fontina cheese in things, don't cut your pasta, buy fresh foods, share your pizza, respect your coffee.  Isn't this just how one lives anyway? I mean, maybe we all weren't born with amaro coursing through our veins, but it just seems like universal truth. But if you really wanna go overboard, following are pages on pages of purple things you can put in your kitchen to evoke wine, eggplant, and lipstick.

Finally! A shoutout to Halloween, with a couple of jack-o-lantern ideas. Remember how pumpkin seeds aren't Italian? Halloween isn't either, but Il Giorno dei Morti is, and it's kinda close? Maybe? Honestly I don't know and a quick google search won't do it justice. Anyway, the IT inspired pumpkin is pretty damn cool.

Cutting out sugar and practicing self-care round out this month's issue. The sugar article says don't rely on sugar substitutes, but the facing ad encourages us to use Stevia In The Raw when baking big, frostingey, fudgey cakes. The self-care is by and for breast cancer survivors, which is awesome and maybe shouldn't be relegated to the back pages, smashed between a tailgate party ad and some flap about Slimfast.

The burger of the month is an Oktoberfest burger, with sauerkraut and a pretzel roll, which is fine, just fine, but.. Oktoberfest is a) in September and 2) Bavarian. So maybe a better burger would be some kind of roast pork (well technically veal, but if you eat veal you are an asshole so that gets a pass), topped with a healthy dollop of some mustard that doesn't fuck around.

Honestly, I'm disappointed. Most of this magazine centers on accessible northern Italian foods, nothing that would challenge middle America, and nothing I could identify from Calabria or Sicily, no risotto, no swordfish, no squid. Italy has an amazing array of regional foods, it makes me sad to continually see just one area represented.  If a magazine claimed to be a celebration of American cuisine and only presented variations of Cincinnati chili, buckeyes, and a Wendy's Frosty with fries, you'd be pissy, too.

Everyday I ... Back to School!

September means a lot of things - Virgos, Labor Day, an end to the dreary oppression of summer. But the biggest to-do of all is Back To School. It's a time for new everything, and nothing and no-one is immune. There are back to school sales on everything from candy bars to cars. Moreso even than new years, it's a time of new beginning. Wherever one is in life, September can find you sporting shiny new plimsolls, making new friends, learning new things, and generally feeling renewed.

With that fistful of optimism, I open up the September issue of Everyday. I'm fresh-faced, caffeinated, and rarin' to go.  Rarin' to flip through pages and pages and pages of ads. And oh look! A photo spread of all 45 30-minute meals. There is a lot of green - zucchini soup, green gazpacho, cheesy zucchini, grilled zucchini... and words of advice, "even when you cook fast, try to eat slow." Ly. Eat slowly. Grr. Oh, and also check out the new line of kids' bedroom furniture, we now have daybeds.

As a Hot Trend, dyed agate is about 40 years off the mark. I remember having agate coasters when I was growing up. Those, along with the giant abalone shell used as an ashtray, gave our kitchen table a decided nature-hippie vibe. More recently, a girlfriend once gifted me a magenta-toned slice of agate that she found in a gift shop in Forks, WA. That, and a black Bic Twi-lighter. I treasure them both. But wait! These aren't actually dyed agate coasters, the photo is a close-up -- they are actually bougie candy, hand-made and rimmed with edible gold. I should have read the fine print. Mea culpa. Next page - fanny packs are back! And furniture the color of egg yolks! Bright yellow egg yolks from commercially farmed chickens, tho. Not the rich orangey yellow an egg yolk should be.

On to the recipes! First up is 16 Fast and Fresh Ideas. Pork chops, granola, stirring things into yogurt (just like all those ice cream recipes from last month). Gosh! Did you know that you can make your own croutons from simple ingredients that you have at home like bread and butter?! The blueberry and green tea punch looks good, but the zucchini soup is the color of glowsticks and, just, no.

Snacks For Dinner! Another way of saying quick meals! But seriously, there is always a time and place for snacks, dinner time and dinner table included. The basic lesson here is 1. Raid a grocery store salad bar 2. Pile it all on a fancy plate.

6-Ingredient Suppers! Without even looking, I know this is going to call for a lot of prefab store-bought stuff. And I'm right. It's not too bad tho - sesame dressing, puff pastry,  cheesecake - these are things that are honestly often better bought than made. Puff pastry especially, have you ever tried to make that stuff? However, top a storebought cheesecake with storebought lemon curd is not a recipe that one needs to be told. Is it? No, it isn't.

Back to eggs - a handy primer on decoding all the stuff on egg cartons, with a note that basically says, "if you are not buying free-range, cruelty-free, organic, vegetarian-fed eggs, you are a jerk." And I agree wholeheartedly.

Here we go - 30-Minute Meals starts off with the proclamation that if you love shrimp and grits, you will also love this melange of shrimp and creamed corn. I wonder what the over/under is on that.
Stray observations:

• Tip - make extra salad dressing and use it as a veggie dip. Duh
• The gazpacho is basically a tomatillo and cilantro sno-cone
• Fried fish tacos (again!) look like they would be better made with fish sticks
• Nachos with the chips on the side are not nachos. They are chips and dip

I was just starting to worry about where all the backing to schooling stuff was, and now I know. Tucked in the back is a veritable A-Z on how to eat the All-Day Way. Again with the snacks. And a needless reminder that breakfast st 4 pm is a thing we should have. We know this. We have always known this. We have always lived in this house. Also a reminder that food tastes best if it is also instagramable. So many non-food letters here - Millennial pink plates for everybody, Neon (pithy saying signage in cafes makes them trendier),  Presentation (remember to instagram those neon signs and millennial pink plates), Succulents because cactus, and Xoxo, again because instagram.

And now an ad for bleach.

Even further back is a page on all the newfangled gadgets that go into packing the perfect school lunch. $168 later, you will be dining in style. And no, I can't unsee the phrase "dining al desk-o." God damn it.

The back pages are filled with a mishmash of things - turmeric, hot dog spirals, how best to curl your carrots. That Rachael, always burying the lede.

Every Day I Hate Rachael Rae - July Freedom Edition

The June issue was all about the rock, and the July/August double issue theme is "This Is How We Roll." Rock... and Roll! I get it! And on the cover is a lobster sandwich! I get that too! It's a pun! WOW. And on the second page - an add for paint, with not-brushes. Rollers!  Too bad they couldn't keep it going, there was ample room for hair curlers, derby teams, and Bay City.  Already I am disappoint.

First thing we learn is that Rachael has a birthday in August. The big 5-0. And there is a picture of a piece of spumoni ice cream cake with a candle clip-arted on to it. Because that's what you get for the mogul who has everything. Turn to page 86 for the recipe.

And now a little something about BBQ. Non-southern cities like New York and Chicago have BBQ, did you know that? They do. The article also lists Los Angeles and Honolulu, which technically are in the south, but not The South. This has me feeling a bit conflicted. Like, what exactly are you saying here, Mizz Rae?

Diving into the recipe part of the zine, first up is polluck with a pitachio parsley sauce. Which seems a lot like a recipe I read in the last issue.Grilled pizza with sausage and peppers, which unlike last issue, is a savory pizza with neither marscapone nor mint. Elote and sweet corn panna cotta are up next, and some succotash. I have to say that after taking a couple years off, it's nice to see a little bit of diversity creeping in. In 2014, this would have been grilled corn, custard, and green bean salad.

Another article about grilling! Carne asada, salsa, something called a mockarita? I mean, it looks good, but it's iced hibiscus tea with grilled pineapple. How does that bring it near the margarita family? The only similarity is that it is a beverage served in a glass. That said, it's an article focusing on how great it is to teach kids to cook, and I am down with that. But? There is an ad for dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets right there and I think someone in layout is very very disgruntled right now.

Speaking of ads, a few pages back was a recipe for raspberry breakfast bites on dainty rounds of puff pastries. The page I'm looking at now is an ad for Ritz crackers, showing a plate of crackers schmeared with cream cheese and topped with berries. Basically the same thing.

More grilling! This time it's veggies. "They will take your summer from good to grate." See what they did there? Put lettuce on a grill. Cook til done. Voila, hot salad.

Next page: Sun's Out Buns Out. Not butts, unfortunately. Bacon-wrapped hot dogs and chicken salad and the like, as well as a sidebar telling which potato chips go best with what. Did you know that the best potato chips taste like potatoes and that the ripples on ripple chips help pick up dip? Did you?

Want help figuring out the farmers market? The next article will tell you all the insider tips and tricks. In order to know what's at the market, you should first do a lap to see everything. Then go back and buy things. The author would someday like to get chickens so she can make her own eggs and not have to go buy them, but that's not possible in her 2-bedroom apartment. Not with that attitude, it's not.  Sidebar is an ad for pre-packaged snacks.

30-Minute Mealtime! Salad with fried egg and cheese, pesto pizza, pasta with creamed corn, shrimp stuff, crab stuff, sandwich fillings from prior recipes re-purposed as main dishes... I'm not finding anything to mock or laud here, it's just all so meh.

But now I'm gonna learn 50 ways to awesome up my ice cream. Basically the first 10 are "add things that taste good" and "spend 12 hours making your own sprinkles."  Eleven through 14 are recipes for magic shell, which I may indeed use at some point, and then there's just a list of brands to try and a bunch of Instagram pix. Don't wanna use a cone? Try a hollowed-out pineapple instead!  Traveling in India? Try Kulfi!  Oh, and by the way, here is that recipe for spumoni...

Summer cocktail party tips. Astute readers will remember the last time I bitched about party tips (use your shy friends as servers, they love it!), and I'm already dreading what tidbits this article holds.
1: Pour cocktails into ice trays, then put the cubes in a glass and top with sparkling wine. Thing is, booze doesn't freeze. Remember high school science?
2. Crostini is an easy app. Yup, we know that.
3. Pre-grill meat and then just heat it on the grill later. Yes, do that. It will be nice and dry and overcooked.
4. Did you know beets taste good? They do. Next.
5. Aaaaaaand here it is - Put your guests to work! But actually you are just setting up a make-your-own- Arnold Palmer bar. Which is essentially just one pitcher of iced tea and one pitcher of lemonade.
6. In case you forgot from just a few pages ago, buy vanilla ice cream and mix things into it. It's so easy, even kids can do it!

Are our attention spans really that short? It would seem so.

Every Day I Hate Rachael Rae - Rebootening: The Sequel

A number of years ago, I had a job that gave me access to a million billion periodicals. While Modifications Monthly and American Songwriter were fun, I gravitated towards the eaty and drinky side of things. Imbibe, Vegetarian Times, and Cooks Country soon became my favorites, and I would look forward to them with glee. Actual glee! Saveur and Food And Wine were also high in the ranks, albeit a bit too meaty for me (I was a longtime vegetarian then and am only now eating the occasional chicken breast or piece of fish). Martha Stewart tried hard, but never really grabbed me.

Everyday with Rachael Ray was also in the stack, and at first I just ignored it. Then I flipped through an issue. Then I flipped that issue off my desk and across the room. A lifetime frenemy was made that day! Assuming, of course, that Everyday stays in publication as long as I am alive. It’s possible.

When I left the ‘zine-filled job, I thought about continuing the column I’d started, but I had some serious moral quandaries about spending actual cash out of my own pockets for the magazine that caused me so much grief. I just couldn’t do it. Until today. Today I came across a publisher special + coupon combo that brought my price-per-issue down to 37 cents. That’s doable.

So, here we are.

The cover of the June issue features Rachael standing in front of a graffiti wall, wearing a t-shirt with the symbol of the Independent Order of Oddfellows on it. Because she is edgy AF. But wait! It’s not graffiti, it’s the magazine contents. And it's not a brick wall that’s been painted white, it’s photoshop. We are off to a great start!

Oh, according to the intro, it’s a music issue. Because cooking, like building playlists, can be considered an act of love.  As a mix-tape master and a person of the kitchen, I have to agree with that sentiment. But then there is a photo of Rachael’s husband, rockin’ a Flying V at SXSW, and… yup, now I’m off my feed.

The first recipe is for grilled pineapple pizza. As a fan of pineapple on everything and a fan of pizza, I’m down! But wait. This isn’t pizza. It’s prefab pizza dough, grilled, and then topped with sweetened mascarpone and grilled pineapple and mint. It could actually be tasty, but pizza it is not. The article continues on with grilled avocados and potatoes and chicken and whatnot, and pretty much most of it seems harmless enough, but I cannot get over the fact that the grill marks in every photo are at different widths. These are not grilled foods that have been grilled on a grill, these are foods that have been branded for appearance's sake. Poorly.

Did you know that you can make sangria by mixing Fresca and some melon and a bottle of rose in a pitcher and topping it off with vodka? Well you can. I will probably stick to spooning frozen orange juice concentrate into a plastic bottle of Phillips vodka, but at least now I have a fun way to branch out should I so choose.

Fashion! There is fashion now. Turn to the left. Turn to the right. Buy a Rebel Rebel t-shirt for $68. (Don’t do that, get a different better Bowie shirt from his online shop, or your friendly neighborhood ebay.)

Ok, back to food. The Peach and Prosciutto Crostini looks an awful lot like the grilled pineapple not-pizza. Because it is. Change the cheese, add ham, and there ya go. And there’s a pineapple punch that looks a lot like the sangria, only different fruit and white wine instead of rose. And a different potato salad that’s basically the same, (cue Troy Barnes uptalk) and yet not?

And now there is a tropical chicken with mint and… surprise! … pineapple. So take that not-pizza and swap the prefab crust for some chicken breasts. Add white rice, because mediocrity. Advertisers have their brandmark on recipes featuring their ingredients; I’m not sure if this is new to the magazine, but it’s new to me and I kinda hate it.  Use Royal brand basmati rice or your head will explode.

A couple more pages in and we are learning the new way to rose. Evidently it involves drinking #millenialpink out of a can. And none of the cans (or bottles) actually contain rose. There are 4 ciders, one ale, and a grapefruit wine spritzer.

Sideblurb about the effects of upbeat music while shopping completely misses the point of the Musak-era mood experiments performed in myriad office buildings across the country. Look it up.

Now we are diving into the real bread and butter - what Rachael Rae is known best for: 30 Minute Meals. These are "foods to cook while listening to music that's way too loud."  That is exactly what she said right there. First up, Baja beer-battered fish tacos. Pretty basic, but looks tasty. It could have called for fish sticks but didn't, so I'm giving it a +1. Spinach pasta with chile, preserved lemons, and pistachios, also nothing bad there. Chicken and chile fried rice, I'm down with that culinary mash-up. ok, now wait... red eye tacos. This... could be a thing. Caffeinated tacos! But the recipe only calls for 1/2 cup coffee (leftover from breakfast or strongly brewed, dealers choice evidently), and since the recipe makes 8 tacos, that's, what, one tablespoon coffee per taco? I'm suddenly no longer impressed. I'm just gonna skip over the rest of this.

Back to music. Overpriced festivals! The Foo Fighters like Cornish game hens! Action Bronson likes seasonal fruit! John Bon Jovi's wine tastes good but has awful labels! A recipe for Zac Brown's Heavenly Creamed Corn.  Can't we be done yet?

Nope, because now comes popsicle recipes. These actually look ok, especially the double-melon mint and the tangerine vanilla bean.

What else... stuff about oysters, some great gifts for dad (assuming he likes ugly shoes and $150 copper growlers), dog stuff, and a Slimfast ad.

It's good to be back.