Nancy Grace serves justice with a side of banana sushi
Just another cooking show, but this one has a helping of righteous indignation
Nancy Grace is tough on crime. Now she’s getting tough on cooking.
Baked spaghetti, chicken teriyaki, mini quiches, these are some of the “no fuss, no frills” recipes she is eager to share with other busy parents. That’s the target demo for Cooking with Nancy Grace, a new HLN digital series that was uploaded on Monday and by Saturday could lead to a mass outbreak of children running away from home if they are forced to eat this slop.
Does the world need another cooking show? That’s debatable, even before you watch the first episode. Is Nancy Grace someone you want to see dumping frozen vegetables into a saucepan while scowling at the camera with the same rabid intensity she brings to murder trials? That is less debatable, especially after you’ve watched every episode.
Before she preheats the oven, Grace is at a disadvantage due to a persona that is scorched and half-baked. We know her as a former prosecutor turned “legal analyst.” She hosts an HLN show that is one quart scolding, three cups of righteous indignation and a thousand pounds of haranguing.
This might be delicious for crime TV. But it is a doomed recipe for the culinary arts. And while Grace is trying to soften her image by floating into the kitchen in a blue sweater, she is overshadowed by a decade of premeditated anger.
Even when she’s professing a love of honey, she looks like she’s just itching to beat someone with a wooden spoon. Her eyes are as dead as a zombie. Her nostrils are constantly flaring, like an irate bull.
Then there is her voice, a strident sonic boom that is not particularly well suited to frozen yogurt tips but is exactly what you might expect to hear thundering outside the gates of hell: “PREPARE TO BURN, SCUMBAG.”
Eternal damnation is more appealing than her recipes.
Watching Grace mix together her “Breakfast Cups” — eggs, shredded cheese, turkey sausage, milk — is to question the very act of eating. The “Kickin’ Chicken Teriyaki” looks like it was left outside during a monsoon and then kicked by a man in filthy boots. A plate of “Banana Sushi” — rolled in peanut butter and coated with Rice Krispies — would trigger a gag reflex in a famished hobo.
“I’m pretty sure the Queen of England has this and feeds it to her corgis,” says Grace, unwittingly but accurately suggesting this ghastly sushi is best served to dogs.
Some of her recipes don’t even seem like recipes. She pours ranch dressing into a glass and jams in a few carrot and celery sticks. At another point in the “Snack Hacks” episode, she suggests feeding your kids deli meat rolled in Swiss cheese that is impaled with a pretzel.
Is this for busy parents or parents who’ve just given up? Why not just tell your child to hold still, crank open her mouth and throw crackers at her face?
Grace’s shopping list often sounds like it was stolen from a fridge door in a college dorm: pre-grated cheese, cans of soup, pre-made pastry shells, preminced garlic. But even with an emphasis on convenience and saving time, some recipes sound suspicious.
The “Chicken Pot Pie Squares” allegedly can be made in 15 minutes. But a glance at the printed instructions includes: baking the pastry rectangles for 10 minutes; cooling for 10 minutes; peeling, cubing and boiling potatoes for five minutes (which doesn’t seem nearly long enough); chopping and cooking onions for five minutes; heating another broth for five minutes and so forth.
So not including prep, you’re already at 35 minutes and now the kids have slipped out the back door en route to stick up the nearest McDonald’s.
Grace turns her own children — “the twins,” as they’re called — into props. They make two taste-test cameos. On both occasions, they appear to be following a script. Yet when they say stuff like “Can I have five more bites of this?” or mumble “Yummy” it is with the detached inflection of prisoners of war.
“The first thing I ask the twins is, ‘Did anybody burn down the school?’ ” says Grace. “And once they say ‘No,’ they have snacks.”
She’s worried about arson? Interesting. Of course, if the twins are forced to choke down apple cookies that are not even cookies but just slices of apples topped with granola, I fear the answer to the first question may soon becom,e “Yes. We burned down the school. The strawberry kebabs made us do it.” vmenon@thestar.ca