Watching • Video Digest: June 15, 2007

My favorite breakfast as a kid was iHOP’s chocolate-chip pancakes. The kind with the whipped-cream smile? Blech. These days, I’d just as soon pour Nutella in my morning coffee. Wait, that sounds delicious. How about: I’d just as soon eat pancakes made from human blood? Argh. Well, you get the point. As an adult, I crave savory breakfasts—eggs and bacon and melted cheese and tortillas. In Austin, where I used to live, all of these ingredients live happily together in a brilliant concotion known as the breakfast taco. Try one. You will believe.

Sadly, if you don’t live in Texas, you probably can’t try a breakfast taco. Lucky for you, director Robert Rodriguez is teaching the world how to make breakfast tacos. I am making these at my place next week. You are invited.



If you can’t come to my place for breakfast tacos, don’t worry. Because chances are, they will suck. I’m a terrible cook with no attention to detail, and I do horrible things like use flour when I was supposed to use sugar and smoke a cigarette when I was supposed to roll the dough. I don’t have the patience. But I am trying to learn. And the problem with the Food Network is that it seems so simple and easy while I’m watching it, and then I get in the kitchen and sear off my eyebrows. So I do sometimes rely on Video Jug. I’m pretty sure this is not an authentic recipe, but the soothing narrative voice makes me feel like I’m cooking for Masterpiece Theater.



The Food Network actually has their own collection of online video clips, but I wanted to go to Ye Olde YouTube and see what cooking shows the kids were watching. First up? Hard Gay, the lovable, over-the-top, groin-shaking Japanese character beloved by our friends in the East. I also love Hard Gay. But I would sooo not let him in spitting distance of my toddler.



Mmm, green pepper sushi roll with peanut butter! Sounds delish. Taste really isn’t the point in this next video, either. It’s part of the “Cooking With Marijuana” series, in which two dudes in chef whites and doctors’ masks teach you how to fry up your home stash. If you are watching these guys, you must already be stoned.



An incredible resource for wine—in fact, just an incredible resource for entertainment—is Wine Library TV. Our esteemed Morning News editor Rosecrans Baldwin turned me on to this site a while ago. Gary Vaynerchuk just wants to talk with you about wine. Don’t resist him. Newbies will have it all explained here.

 —Sarah Hepola, Jun. 15, 2007

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