my drunk kitchen
A few months ago, a friend of mine posted a video on Facebook.
It might have been on my wall (oh, I’m sorry, Timeline). It might have just been in my newsfeed. I can’t remember anymore.
But I watched it.
This friend, and my sister, where raving about how awesome this video was. How hilarious this lady was. How it was totally brilliant. How she captured, well, I don’t know. Something. About our generation. About foodies (or foodites, or foodists). About culture. She was just… COOL.
I, however, totally disagreed.
(As did my brilliant partner in crime, The Culinary Ethnographer. )
We were offended, you see.
Because:
we hadn’t thought of it first;
it was, in a way, what I was trying to do at the time, but with time-lapse;
we thought she was faking it;
she was totally a hipster – we make fun of hipsters;
the list goes on, I’m sure, but that’s all for now.
But this lady slowly (or maybe quickly and I just didn’t take notice) became an absolute YouTube sensation. No, an internet sensation. She was everywhere. People kept talking about her.
And I kept saying, ‘MEH.’
Fast forward months later.
I am now a Harto.
[Hangs head in shame.]
‘A Harto,’ you might ask, ‘WHAT IS THAT?!’
It’s someone obsessed with Hannah Hart, and her awesome YouTube show, ‘My Drunk Kitchen.’
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| My Drunk Kitchen Ep. 6: Brunch? |
I’ve watched enough episodes now to realize that no, in fact, she is not faking being drunk. That woman is totally, unbelievably, obnoxiously plastered.
Her food never turns out. It’s awful, really. I kind of wonder if she even knows how to cook. But at the same time, I don’t care. She tries random shit. It fails.
She did make a pancake once. That was the first episode I ever saw, #6: Brunch.
This is Hannah sober:
(Or at least, we think this is Hannah sober.)
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| Sober Hannah says, ‘FACT: Secrets make you cooler.’ |
And this is Hannah DRUNK:
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| Whoa lady, slow down there. |
One thing that really bothered me about her at the beginning: she wears glasses. People who wear glasses do not get drunk and then take off their glasses. Because, well, that is just a recipe for disaster. This still confuses me.
But I let it slide. Because she is uber hilarious.
Also, in my opinion, this ‘show’ speaks VOLUMES about our culture.
We are the internet generation.
We make stupid videos and post them to YouTube.
We know how to edit video, even if it’s not that well.
(I actually love the editing in her show, it’s very choppy and in-your-face. It’s, well… it’s drunk.)
We (well, some) are (though we might deny it) hipsters.
We are foodies. We love to cook. We love to eat. We love to drink. And we really love to do all these things at the same time.
Maybe we actually don’t know how to cook. I wonder if Hannah does. We (again, some, this is a generalization, which is also meant to be reflexive) grew up on fast food, prepared meals, restaurants. Our parents didn’t really cook. They didn’t teach us how to cook.
But now we shop at Whole Foods (my family actually did for a long time, back when Whole Foods was still Fresh Fields – how’s that for hipster). We shop at farmers markets. We want fresh, local ingredients.
We are a generation of food movements. Pro slow food. Anti fast food. School lunches that serve nutritional situations (though pizza is apparently a vegetable… wtf is up with that).
Foreign diets are praised, and foreign cuisine can be found everywhere. Towson has like eight sushi restaurants in a half-mile radius. There’s Thai, Nepalese, Ethiopian, Indian. (There’s more, but those are just my favorites.) Someone I know (Protein Pancakes, in fact) went to the middle of nowhere Massachusetts for vacation last summer and found a South African restaurant. She of course brought me back a menu. I was ecstatic. And jealous. Because I don’t live in the middle of nowhere Massachusetts.
We are no longer restricted to pesticidal produce, frozen food isles, and Italian take-out.
Except… some of us are.
Some of us don’t have access to good food. Some have to eat school lunches with a serving of fried potatoes. Some live in food deserts. Some have to ‘grocery’ shop at the corner store, filled with canned Chef Boyardee, Doritos, and maybe a Hungary Man frozen dinner here or there. Some have meals come from the fried chicken and lake trout place down the street. Some have to eat the McDonalds dollar menu to still be able to afford diabetes medicine (see Food Inc.).
Food matters.
In conclusion, the whole reason I even started talking about ‘My Drunk Kitchen,’ was so that I could do a quick post with a video and be done with it for the evening. Well, that didn’t happen. But I like where I ended up.
Also, here’s my new favorite Hannah Hart video:
Tomorrow, we might dissect this for a post…
