I'm not a chef. But I know that.

I'm kind of touched that my site meter tells me that a few folks still stop by, even though I haven't really been posting. Thanks!

I don't have a good excuse for not posting, just a little overwhelmed by the holidays and houseguests (I am NOT doing another mother-in-law post, but yeah, she was here). Do you ever feel like you have this big checklist and the whole race to Christmas is kind of like a bad scavenger hunt where you have to find everything on the checklist before Christmas comes or else your head blows up?

That's where I am.

In other news, I got sucked in to a Usborne Book party a couple weeks ago. In general, my husband and I are firmly against home sale pyramid schemes of any sort. My husband is still bitter about a zester I bought at a Pampered Chef party some years back that didn't last more than two days. But my kids lovelovelove the Usborne "That's Not My Puppy" type books, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Now, I remember my first Pampered Chef party. I was living in St. Paul, in a wonderful kind of midwestern version of the urban single girl. I could walk to bars and stagger home, and I did. But a co-worker invited me to this party in the 'burbs and I went for the cultural experience. It was a cultural experience; I was the only single guest and I think the only childless one. But the thing that struck me the most was that despite the name "Pampered Chef," no real cooking was involved. They were not selling the best in cooking products, they were selling the best in convenience products for creating the illusion of cooking. Every recipe they presented started with "first you open this Pillsbury product." I grew up in an anti-convenience food household. I've learned to appreciate some convenience foods; they're not all bad. But when I use them I don't call it being a "chef."

I was reminded of that at the Usborne book party, when the presenter gaily told us that Usborne sold books all the way up to the adult level. "I've never read the classics," she chirped, "and they have all these great abridged versions of the classics [here she waved around a copy of Jane Eyre] so I'm learning all about them." I loved how she just slid past the word abridged really fast. From a pure marketing MBA level I loved the business model too. Take a book that it is so old that it is in the public domain, one anyone can download from Project Gutenberg, trim a few thousand words, call it literature, and charge $14.99 for it. Pure profit, baby.

I admit I'm a bit of a snob, but it saddens me that the "be a model or look just like one" business model can be so effective in so many other areas. A nice multi-size measuring spoon and I'm a chef, a couple of abridged classics and I'm an English major. Is this really what everyone wants, the quick way to everything? More than "you should have a party too, you get free stuff!" it is the "you can be an expert in something with minimal effort" that gets to me at these events.

Or maybe the holidays just have me grouchy.