My Pilgrimage to the Foodie Shrine

I received a remarkable email invitation a few weeks ago with a big bold headline reading "Meet Christopher Kimball. Take a tour of the famous Test Kitchens." I confess, I did receive the same bold invite last year at about the same time of year. I did not manage to screw up enough courage to acutally go though. I read those words on the e-card and my mind was filled with visions of a cocktail party type event with everyone circulating around the room, oozing culinary intelligence, nibbling on perfectly delicious little morsels and chatting wittily about the latest brining techniques and how their dessert souffle came out at their five course informal dinner party for 10 the night before. Very intimidating. How could someone like me, who loves to cook and eat, but has no cooking pedigree, attend such a gathering of august and celebrated cooking luminaries?

This year when that e-invite arrived, my personal coach - in the form of my work-out buddy - told me that "of course, you should go." Okay, I agreed reluctantly. you are right, but good grief, what will I talk to people about? I'll meet Christopher Kimball and I'll freeze up, my mind will go blank, I won't know what to talk about. "See," she said, "you're already putting a negative spin on it. That's a defeatist attitude. Just tell him what you love about his magazine. Flattery never fails." Okay. I had to agree again. I certainly couldn't own up to having a defeatist attitude. Now I had to go.

So I went. Perhaps you recall my visions of the cocktail party atmosphere? Well, the grim reality was all ride-on-a-Tokyo-train. People were packed in there so tight they were only letting new guests in when the appropriate number of happy shoppers left. It was all about selling the cookbooks (there was a very long line to buy those) and signing the cookbooks (there was an even longer line for that). I thought about getting in the lines, but it didn't seem worth it. I did get some nibbling in - some very delicous crystallized ginger topped holiday cookies and a slice of their perfect pound cake (practically perfect in every way). I admired the huge library of cookbooks they have on-site and the vast test kitchen with its array of extra stand mixer bowls. They had Kitchen Aid food processors, I noticed. I wonder if those are better than Cuisinart or if they just get them free from the vendor.

The doors had opened at 5:00pm and I had arrived at 5:10 to find these crowds. When I left at 5:30 there were 150 people lined up outside - almost all the way down the block waiting to get in. This was more rock concert than I had ever anticipated.

(sigh) I never did get a chance to talk about brining.