Damn you, Masterchef Australia

Yes, really. Damn you.

You’ve gotten my kids interested in cooking. Do you know how many nights I’ve contemptuously thrown the dinner plates down in front of them? I’ve gone through dusters before a cookbook has left its musty place on the shelf. Then you come along, with little bantam George Calombaris and that degustantional goliath Matt Preston, to teach them the importance of presentation, tastes and textures?

Thanks to you I recently entered a home supplies store voluntarily to purchase my first ever thermometer for non-human use. You’ve offered me what I suspect is a false sense of capability. When the saleswoman asked if the thermometer was for making jam, I said, “It just might!” I forgot in that moment that heating sugar, for me, is best left to stirring a spoonful into my coffee. Anyone who watches the show may have already guessed why I decided I needed that tool – to make the perfect hot chip. The ever bankable potato is a saviour for the parents of picky eaters, who can always count on that vegetable to add to the daily tally. Sometimes it’s the only one.

You’re a clever one, aren’t you? I thought I was over cooking shows. I really don’t want to see how many ways you can use a fennel or any other vegetable my husband will lift his nose at. My father was the same – I remember when he once turned to me and asked, “What’s a broccolini?” No, for a while I wished for a show to show me how to easily scour dried egg of the egg ring or petrified weetbix out of the breakfast bowl. Or how best to tell a tantruming three-year old that one biscuit really is enough, it really, really is.

I see you, don’t forget Masterchef. I know underneath it all you’re a creature of reality television. Your contestants are well aware of the Darwinian principles that only the strongest and best will survive. The trouble is as each person leaves, my children feel the loss more, as they become characters to a show they create parallel narratives for.

Finally, why did you have to be on in winter? The season of comfort foods and the mantra ‘just one more won’t hurt’? I guess I’ll just have to wait for The Biggest Loser to come on in the summer to lose all the weight I’ve gained.

Yes, thanks a bunch.