The Positive Influences of Television: Top Chef

It's frequently said that TV has a lot of negative qualities: It sucks your brain out, it wastes your time, it's hours and hours of trash, it's a bad influence, etc. This is all true in some cases. I know I don't get anything positive from watching a Real Housewives marathon, but there is some television that has a positive influence on it's viewers. This is the first in a series on some shows that have had a positive influence on my life and first up is Top Chef.

If you read my last post, you know that Top Chef is one of my favorite shows. I started watching Top Chef on accident. There was nothing on and my ex stumbled across it. The show was well into the first season (which filmed in my current home of San Francisco), but we were interested in the location and the challenge - the palate test. We were soon hooked, finished the season, and I never stopped watching after that.

Before I became a Top Chef addict, I thought cooking meant finding a new sauce to put on the Buitoni pasta that I had just boiled or microwaving steaming Green Giant vegetables. I had no idea what molecular gastronomy, blanching, braising, brining, or julienning meant, and even though I'll probably never be as skilled as the worst contestant to ever be on that show, it got me interested in cooking. No, it taught me how to cook.

My mom had watched a lot of cooking shows when I was a kid (Two Fat Ladies, Barefoot Contessa, etc), but I found these step-by-step instruction shows boring. They made it look like cooking was just chop, stir, and wait. But Top Chef,  with its fast-paced and competitive setup, showed me that cooking could be exhilarating.

I'm lucky in that I can interpret a recipe or pick up tips from television shows. After a couple of seasons of Top Chef, I began experimenting in my own kitchen. A spice rack that my mom had given me was suddenly getting used, I stopped buying frozen vegetables and pastas, and I would emailed my mom for my favorite childhood recipes. I bought cook books while also watching vigilantly as the chefs on TV combined flavors to adapt to that week's challenge.

It didn't stop with Top Chef either. Top Chef was my gateway show, and watching it made it easier to get into Chopped and then the Top Chef Spin-Offs (Just Desserts and Masters). Eventually, I was also hooked on Worst Cooks in America because I loved the tips they gave for the novice chefs (I always pre-heat my pans now). After Around the World in 80 Plates, I realized my DVR didn't have room for any more cooking shows so I cut myself off... but when I was home visiting my parents, I found that I didn't mind watching a few step-by-step shows with my Mom.

Top Chef changed me from someone ambivalent about cooking to  a pretty good home chef. I love making dishes for parties, have a full shelf just for cookbooks, and know how to balance and mix spices to make flavors I enjoy. Now, I really identify as a "foodie" and I don't know if that would be a part of my life if I hadn't found this show. I wonder if I would have found my biggest take away - my love of wine and interest in pairing. The first season of Top Chef featured chef Stephen Aspirinio - who was also a sommelier (master wine pairer). Before the show, I didn't even know that was a thing, and now I've built a wine collection and read books on pairing.

My love for food and wine is a huge part of my life. It has propelled me to try certain restaurants, learn how to cook, go on foodie adventures, taste wines, and I might not have discovered these interests without Top Chef.

The Bowling Theory

After a recent happy hour with some co-workers, we were trying to figure out the best way to divide the check. Since I'm pretty good at mental math, I took the check and was able to very quickly figure out the tip and divide the bill. My co-worker needed me to walk her through it a few times and no matter how I explained it, the numbers worked perfectly. She then made the comment, "I bet you were able to do that so well and quickly because you've had a couple glasses of wine." Actually... that's probably right and it has to do with something I like to call "The Bowling Theory."

When I was a teenager, bowling was actually a somewhat competitive activity, and I remember being pretty terrible ("Really? we can't use bumpers this one time??"). However, after my 21st birthday, the game changed a little bit. Whether I was playing at an alley or on my Wii, a pattern started to develop. We'd order our beers, and play our first game. The first few frames would start out pretty weak but as the game progressed, the later frames would be full of strikes and spares. At first, I assumed this was just do to warming up and re-acclimating to the game since I don't bowl all that often. However, the second game was always somewhat of a disaster. If it was due to acclimation, then the second games scores should be nearing 200 and this wasn't even close to being true.

That's when I discovered the Bowling Theory.

When you go bowling, everyone (well at least everyone in my groups of friends) tends to get a round of drinks. You get one drink to warm you up, release some tension, and relax you a little bit. It's enough to make you not over-think what you're doing and your body reacts a bit more naturally. However, about halfway through the first game - you get to the second drink. The second drink won't hit your system right away, so you're still playing off the endorphin from the first one as your body metabolizes the second. This usually happens around the time you're finishing the first game and are setting up for the second. By now you've finished both drinks and are feeling invincible... however, your body has enough alcohol in it that now it's not responding in the way you'd like it to be.

Even though I call it the Bowling Theory, I think it applies universally. It's why I could split the check quickly and accurately at the end of my second drink. It's why Wii and Kinect games are so much better after a beer. It's why you're so good at bar trivia in the middle of the game, but you can't remember the name of your favorite band by the end.


The Bowling Theory explains everything and maybe there's a take away from this. It's easy to go out and have a drink or two. According to the Bowling Theory, it also relaxes you enough to have your strengths shine with less stress or worry. So what would happen if we stopped there? Everyone has heard the concept of the designated driver who gets plenty of entertainment from watching his or her friends act silly. Let's take the concept a bit further - next time you're at a game night or trivia or you go bowling, let's see what happens if you stop after the first or second drink (this will depend on your tolerance/size/etc.). If the Bowling Theory is correct, you'll have stopped drinking right when you've peaked in terms of ability.

The Bowling Theory has so many entertaining applications. I love Rock Band and all of my friends know this. I often invite people to come over to play Rock Band after a night out. My instruments of choice are drums and singing. Drums require hand/eye/foot coordination, precise rhythm, and great timing. They're pretty tricky and playing them well requires practice, focus, and the ability to separate the movement of your arms from your feet. It is the perfect candidate for the Bowling Theory. Even though I have quite a bit of drumming experience under my belt, I tend to pick singing when I know I'm not in prime shape. Singing  is the opposite of drumming. You can basically hum the songs and get 90% or higher. You also get to watch whoever plays drums slowly fall apart as the night goes on. One of the best aspects of the Bowling Theory is that it doesn't affect your sheer will and self-confidence. Friends who might otherwise be excellent drummers, guitarists or keytarists (oh yes, I have the keytar) will come over, set their difficulty to hard and then need this singer to constantly bail them out. This is the Bowling Theory in action.

I'd love to see if the Bowling Theory works. If you're like me and would rather win than go nuts at a bar - I challenge you to test out the Bowling Theory next chance you get and report back. Since I couldn't find any back up on this - let's do our own research! Yes, having a couple of drinks and seeing how well you bowl is research. Isn't science so fun?

Who is ready to make some science?

Note: I was going to see if there was any sort of official research on this but I wasn't exactly sure how to search for it. If anyone knows of any studies done on the effects of small amounts of drinking, I'd love to read a scientific approach to the Bowling Theory. 

The Economics of Wine

The inspiration for this post came from, where I suspect many future posts will come from, a comment fight on the Internet. I try to avoid these things, but if something I'm passionate about comes up... well, I'd need two bouncers to hold me back. I'm not going to lie, part of the idea for this blog was for me to have a place to formulate my comment debates into a well thought out essays that drives my point home.

This particular discussion started when a friend posted an article about how Charles Shaw (2 Buck Chuck) won double gold at a wine competition proving once and for all that cheap wine is as good as or better than expensive wine.

My stance?

First, the article is eight years old and discussing a ten year old wine, so I felt it to be a bit outdated (and we'll go into further detail about the significance of the years). Additionally, I feel that its possible for wine to be too cheap. That doesn't mean you need to spend a small fortune on twenty year old wines imported directly from the heart of France. There are a lot of really great wines in the $10 range and those few extra dollars can make a huge difference in the quality of the wine you end up buying.

My Background

I'm not going to say I'm some sort of wine expert. I like to refer to myself as a "wine connoisseur-in-training." I love wine, I'm a member of two wine clubs, I have a few wine books and I read several wine articles. I'm not an expert, I have never taken a class. I know what I know about wine from buying and drinking a lot of wine.

My credentials

Economics, on the other hand, is a different story. I have a Bachelor's degree in Economics from a leading university, I've worked in finance for four years, I read economics books for fun, and I constantly calculate my opportunity cost (opportunity cost is what you have to give up in order to do/buy something. For example, I think of how many hours I would need to work to pay for something I'm going to buy vs. how many hours I'll enjoy it).

So here is an Economist who loves wine, telling you a little but more about what it is you're paying for. I got a little carried away with this post so the rest is after the jump!