Well, I've Done Nothing with My Life

One of my favorite shows on TV is Food Network's Chopped, in which four competing chefs must cook professional dishes for a panel of judges using the items in their mystery baskets. Tonight I watched an episode featuring teen chefs--young culinary masters eager to prove that kids can make more than pizza and care just as much as adults about cooking with fresh, healthy ingredients.

To which I say, of course, damn you. Damn you, teen chefs, for being in high school and knowing how to sear a salmon fillet to perfection. Damn you for having a better vocabulary than me, a 25-year-old aspiring writer with a college degree in English. And lastly, damn you for accomplishing more in your 13 and 16 and 17 years than I will accomplish in another 13 and 16 and 17.

Why so much venom? Why am I so angry at these staggeringly impressive young people and their contributions to the culinary world? Please consider the following:

1. The youngest competitor, a 13-year-old girl, got into cooking because while "growing up" (really? You're 13 effing years old), all her family ate was microwaveable meals and takeout food. So you wanted to make your own food, kid. I respect that. What I have a harder time letting slide is the fact that you are half my age and you've already studied in France at Le Cordon Bleu. You want to know my proudest accomplishment in a foreign country? Scrounging up enough Italian to ask a store owner directions to the ferry ticket booth, only to realize moments later, to my utter disconsolation, that my laughable vocabulary did not include any of the words in his response.

2. My favorite teen chef, and the one who went on to win the competition, had suffered the loss of her older brother to leukemia and was appearing on Chopped to honor to his memory. She was calm, composed,  extremely intelligent, and spoke beautifully about how she and her brother had cooked and watched Chopped together and that she hoped she could do enough to make him proud. If you don't hate yourself yet, readers, you're about to. During the entree round the chefs had to incorporate cotton candy into some component of their dish. Immediately this girl thought to make a vinaigrette using cotton candy and merlot. "Merlot is a very tart red wine," she explained as she emptied the contents of an entire bottle into her saucepan. "And the acidity will work nicely to counter the cloying sweetness of the cotton candy." First of all, you can't even legally drink yet--how do you know how to pair wine with food? I don't even know that about merlot and my brother makes wine. And did you seriously just use the word "cloying"? You are the youngest 45-year-old I have ever seen. Oh, and, if that weren't enough, for the dessert round she made a crepe using chocolate cake mix (a basket ingredient) and one of the judges said it was the best crepe she'd ever had on the show. Oh yeah, teen chef? I made crepes the other morning for breakfast that my cat sniffed not once, but twice, before recoiling in disgust and--I kid you not--sprinting out of the kitchen.

3. As an appetizer, one of the chefs served blackened salmon topped with a wedge of goat cheese. The judges agreed that it was one of the most expertly prepared cuts of salmon they'd ever had on Chopped, and one remarked that the goat cheese on top "added a touch of whimsy." Really? Whimsy? Culinary whimsy to me is sculpting a face out of a pile of mashed potatoes. And what 16-year-old has developed their palate to the point of loving goat cheese and, as we later learn, Brussels sprouts? I still find goat cheese icky and think that Brussels sprouts, while cooking, release a putrid aroma not unlike that of a decomposing rodent.

For these reasons I am bitter. Me, I can hardly bake anything without a recipe. The cuisine de Olivia is essentially a pile of sauteed veggies drenched in soy sauce and topped with a veritable down comforter of ground chipotle. I call my salads "transcendent" in attempts to make myself feel better about the fact that the crowning jewel of my culinary skills--my piece de resistance, if you will--is a perfectly dry-fried slice of tofu.

How dare you, teen chefs, make my own life endeavors appear so very insignificant by comparison? How. Dare. You.

And please, for the love of all that is good and holy in this world, go back to the distant planet of baby culinary geniuses from whence you came and leave us fallible mortals to eat our mac and cheese in peace.