Yesterday was Stagg’s birthday. The girls and I bought him a surprise birthday gift, and let him guess what it was for over a month. He never figured it out. The girls insisted that I drive the car to the place so that he wouldn’t get a clue and offered him so many red herrings that he had no idea. In fact, we were able to get to the place, park, enter and even sit down and he STILL didn’t know what was going on. He told me he thought I had bought tickets to some kid show and was trying to pass it off as a birthday present under the heading of “family time.”
When we were in our seats, the girls thought the jig was up, and mentioned something about Good Eats. There was a huge blackboard with a slide show of pictures from Good Eats and Feasting on Asphalt. On the side, there were huge food props: corn, a Tbone steak, a kitchen set, a cow and other items that had been used on the show. Knowing what we knew, it seemed so obvious. So I showed Stagg the program, which had Alton Brown in a party hat and said something about Good Eats’ 10th birthday, and he was excited. Then after a few more minutes of listening to the band and watching the set, something happened and he looked at me with surprise and said, “This is LIVE?” He was really excited. I still can’t quite figure out what he thought the other option was. Going to a big hall to watch Good Eats on a big screen?
When we were first married, Stagg and I used to watch Good Eats whenever we could. Our brand new TiVo made it much easier, since we could watch it whenever we had the time. We loved the mix of science, anthropology and nutrition with the cooking. And his brownie recipe makes a batch of brownies that would make you weep, they’re so good. I’ve been told that they freeze really well, but I’ve never had any left over to freeze, so I don’t know about that.
After the girls came along, they noticed us watching it one time, and it became their pre-bedtime routine to watch a Good Eats before bed for over 2 years. They loved the different puppets, thought Alton was hugely funny and smart and ADORED the idea that he actually lives in the Atlanta area. They both looked for him when we went to the store because, hey, you never know. They would occasionally pick recipes they wanted to try, and though they were not always favorites, they would try them, which I considered a huge compliment to both the show and the man. But their favorite part was at the beginning, when the opening credits came on. They competed to see who could get closest to the timing of shouting “GOOD EATS” and then dissolved into giggles over who won.
The show was great. We even got to shout “GOOD EATS” with the band for the opening, which made the girls smile. Alton Brown had Ted Allen interview him on stage, and Alton explained that Julia Child, Mr. Wizard and Monty Python were the three things he thought of mixing together when he came up with the idea for the show. Which seems like a pretty perfect description to me.
There were clips from the show, the ubiquitous lawyers reading legalese and a giant pancake cake with day glow frosting. Alton even used the one uni-tasker in his kitchen, the fire extinguisher, to make frozen fruit smoothies (and dry ice) on stage. It was messy and smoky and lots of fun. There was even advice on how to get little kids to eat foods they don’t like, like peas. Alton’s advice was to put it on a dinner plate, put the plate in front of the child and say, loudly, “EAT YOUR DINNER!”
Since the show was almost 3 hours long, Katie got a little antsy, but Maggie was riveted the whole time. During one of the commercial breaks, I had her run up the stairs and do some calisthenics, and that seemed to help her ability to sit in her seat and watch the show. It was a really fun show, and getting to surprise Stagg as thoroughly as we did made it an even better gift for all of us.
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I am SOOOO jealous!