Even though most of my friends have steakgasms every time we walk past Morton’s, and even though my family participates in a weekly beef-a-thon known as Sunday dinner, and even though the Internet looks at bacon the way that my great-grandparents looked at refrigeration, I’m still proud to be a non-meat eater. Although I’m uncomfortable with tacking a label on it (I’m more likely to call myself a veterinarian to get a laugh and change the subject,) I don’t eat meat, dairy, or eggs, and I haven’t for a few years. That said, when an Outback Steakhouse commercial comes on, I can guarantee I will be the only person in the room who actually has to use her sleeve to mop up the drool. And the reason for this shameful salivary response is probably due to a food stylist. Or an iron deficiency.

For the record, I have never been to an Outback Steakhouse.

Food stylists get paid to make people want to eat shit. The burgers you see on Whopper commercials, with their golden, fluffy buns and thick, dripping patties really pale in comparison to the hockey pucks on soggy bread that you get at the ‘King. And what about those chicken, er, bits that make your mouth become the set of Rescue Me and tigers jump through your eyes, the ones that are hocked by KFC? (Or KGC? They’re going through some sort of rebranding.) In all likelihood they don’t come with genuine grill marks and juicy centers. Friendly’s commercials? You know that aerosol whipped cream doesn’t look like that. Denny’s? I never saw a Grand Slam where every item didn’t look like it had been put through a washing machine filled with Astroglide. And all of those gorgeous photographs that grace the pages of fading magazines? Food stylists are the evil sorcerers who make you actually think that you can cook sweet and sour eggplant and onion stew and have it look like something that hasn’t been regurgitated by a frat boy on Saturday morning.

All of this said, it’s pretty cool how food stylists get you to gain ten pounds. And, even more appealing, once you know that those pancakes are actually slathered in motor oil, maybe the IHOP commercial won’t make you dash out in your pajamas in the dead of night and scarf down a Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘n Fruity with a side order of self-hate.

Take note that a lot of the tricks are only gross ’cause they’re combined with scarf-worthy goodies. The reason why they have to at least include some elements of real food is because the rules of advertising. After all, how can you truly be paid to sell salad dressing if your commercial only includes propylene glycol?

If you’re sitting in front of the TV and find yourself seduced by the burlesque of bacon or the temptation of turkey, keep in mind that a lot of the meat products are raw. Poultry is usually completely raw, or briefly cooked just to get the skin slightly browned. The rest is done with a blowtorch. The shrimp, lobster, and other ocean delights caught by the ever-capable fisherman Long John Silver and his cousins the Red Lobster and Mr. Sizzler are all coated in glycerin to make them look wet and succulent. The practical application of this in my own life is a sort of kinky possibility. After all, the stuff’s non-toxic.

Most of those curvy breasts you see on television are turkeys injected with mashed potatoes just below their skin. Mashed potatoes are almost like the duct tape of food styling, they’re also an option when it comes to making believable-looking ice cream that won’t turn into drippy goo like a teenage girl at a Jonas Brothers concert. Stylists scoop the starch, freeze it, and then use it in the place of French vanilla on a wafer cone. And when you think those drips of syrup would only be more perfect atop your girlfriend’s boobs, it pays to consider that there are often tiny, curled up pieces of paper towel below them, in order to make them look more drip-tacular and symmetrical. (Ever squeeze Hershey’s on ice cream? It often just runs straight off, no drips, no sensuous droplets. Paper towels apparently are a lot more forgiving than mocha chip.)

Mashed potatoes might be a good ‘scream stand-in for some, but for the real pros, they go to Trengove Studios. Based in New York, Trengove is the go-to place for everything from replica resin cherries to that super-cool crushed ice you see sliding down the barrel of a Bud, or droplets of water (brand name, Aqua Drops) weeping along the neck of a Dos Equis. Since 1985, Trengove has been providing fake food and handmade replicas of comestibles to the full spectrum of food photographers and stylists. The best from the best doesn’t come cheap, however. Most of the faux food on the site costs more than an entree at even the toniest New York City restaurant.

Of course, if you can’t pay $58.00 for a scoop, you can always use another mix for ice cream trickery, Crisco mixed with powdered sugar in it, which I do believe is an actual Southern dessert.

Recently, the push for local and organic food has altered the image industry, making the emphasis on "realistic" looking munchies, versus picture-perfect ones. Another shift has come courtesy of technology. Back before digital photography was all the rage, stylists were lucky to get about five shots completed in a day’s work. Today, even though food still suffers under hot studio lights, the average day of shooting can net 15-20 twenty shots, as digital film allows photographers, stylists, and the overlords of the media to make sure that each picture entices the dumb public to scarf down White Castle. For any of you who may be foolish enough to shed a tear for the rail-thin, rail-sniffing models who grace the glossies, food really does have a rougher time on set. Noodles are pinched and swirled with tweezers, fruit is sprayed with deodorant to give it a frosty look, and cake is attacked with hair spray to make it appear fresh and moist.

If playing with your food appeals to you, and you enjoy working with photographers, perhaps becoming a food stylist is your calling. Communications and food science courses are key to have in your background, as you’ll need to be familiar with how both food and ad execs work under pressure. If your goal is to put piping-hot cotton balls beneath a plate of pasta to make it look steaming, then go and get a degree from a culinary school and learn about the chemistry of food. Many, like the Culinary Institute of America, offer concentrations or classes that lend themselves well to food styling. Once you start getting credits for your cuisine education, try to become an assistant to an already established food stylist. A piece of advice for this industry, as with many, is to work your way up. Speak to people who have worked for photographers or ad execs, suck up as much information as you can, like a Shredded Wheat square sucking up 2%. (The way food stylists prevent cereal from getting soggy on a shoot is to use white glue or hair conditioner in place of milk. Yummy.)

But when it comes to watching television or reading a magazine, and hearing your stomach give you a little paradiddle to tell you that Taco Bell is open late and Wendy’s is as real as a cholesterol problem, remember what George Orwell once said, "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." Chow down.

As a sober vegan with a history of an eating disorder, the likelihood of me having a career as a restaurant critic is on par with Britney Spears attaining a degree in neuropsychiatry or wearing actual pants.

One good thing about being the caretaker for someone suffering from cancer, if you’re an avid reader, is the amount of time you have on your hands. The sheer volume of hours spent sitting is staggering, you find your rump melding with a plastic horizon in waiting rooms, exam rooms, chemotherapy treatment rooms, and nearly any other room you can think of where white lab coats are de rigueur. And although many of these fine facilities offer reading material, most of it is more of the “Living With Cancer!” or “What Wig Is Right For You?” variety. Though I totally was a swooning fan of Scott Hamilton’s skating style and Olympic back-flips in the 80s, I really don’t want to slog through an article dedicated to his testicles and survival. So I’ve finally started reading all of those books that I’d sworn I would once I had the time, one of which is former New York Times’ food critic Ruth Reichl‘s Garlic and Sapphires.

My mother totes her James Patterson tomes to and fro, and, in no way do I mean this as anything but an insult to the author, she finds staring into space with an IV in her arm to be much more entertaining. As for Ms. Reichl’s writing, well, the chemo center could go on fire, I’d probably still have my nose in it.

I’ve loved her work with Gourmet, a publication that’s often way too pretentious for my taste (I can’t afford a loaf of Italian bread, I can’t exactly identify with a writer traipsing through Venice tongue first.) I’m also a huge fan of fellow female New Yorkers who tell it like it is, without compromising their integrity. Somewhere around the point when I got to her essay on trying to find a dim sum dining hall, it dawned on me that I could never, ever, in a million years become a restaurant critic. Even if I were not a shut-in with an MSG allergy. Who doesn’t eat any animal products. Or much of anything, really.

But perhaps you’re a gorgonzola gormandizing guru or a pizza polishing professional, one with an acid pen, an astute tongue, and a ton of antacids. Could becoming a food writer be in your gullet’s future?

May I remind you that print is dead?

Most freelance restaurant critics average around $1.00 per word, if they’re good. (Granted, I’m getting this research from the ever-reliable Internet, where, in a single click, you can read that oysters will kill you and oysters will make you be fruitful and multiply.) If you’re hired by a publication, you can expect to rake in somewhere around 40K a year. Again, I remind you, print is dead. More dead than whatever was in that gyro that you ate for lunch.

Being a critic isn’t as easy as consuming and concluding, there are actual parameters that separate the Yelp comments from the masterfully masticated missives.

For one, you should always bring people with you, so that you can taste several different dishes in order to get a full feel for the meals served at the establishment. Take notes on everything from the carpeting to the server’s hidden tattoos. It’s best to do this after you leave, although some brazen brunch buzz mongers write during the meal. If you’re writing for a publication that’s well-respected, or just for one whose reviews are consulted by people who can actually afford to go out to eat regularly, you may want to keep a low-profile. No celebrity events. Few charity fundraisers. Possibly, like Reichl, you may want to don a disguise. Try not to have sex with Alex Rodriguez, Angelina Jolie, or anybody named John or Kate. For me, a girl whose name sounds like a bodily function, who has more tattoos than she has clean articles of clothing, with few friends and far too many food restrictions, well, my reviews would sound like…crickets. Maybe with some distant sobbing.

It’s also beneficial for food critics to know how to cook. That way they can tell what went wrong when they taste something that’s off. Also, it can make you seem like much less of an asshole, or perhaps simply a more astute asshole, if you’re able to comprehend the amount of work that goes into planning a menu and making a meal. Language skills, especially the so-called romance languages, can be useful for understanding certain items or techniques listed on a menu. It also makes asking questions a hell of a lot easier if you’re eating in a joint that’s run by people who are making cuisine native to their country. Or, if you’re having a pastrami on rye, just ask, “Hey! How ya doin’?”

As I might have mentioned, print is dying. So what’s a fledgling critic to do? Write blogs, start podcasts, judge reality shows, become a Food Network star, read, absorb, write, eat. Epicurious and Chowhound are good resources, as is the aforementioned Yelp, if you’d like to dish your dirt on local places, and read up on what the masses are saying about their culinary (mis)adventures. Mouthfuls, UrbanSpoon, and eGullet are worthy of a peek, at least to figure out where you should take your team of tractable tasters next. If you’re serious about breaking your jaw on food criticism, have a portfolio of at least forty pieces that you can shop around. Write as often as you eat. Pitch articles. Make contacts. Email critics you respect. JJ Goode‘s article in last month’s Gourmet, for me, was one of the best personal narrative pieces I have ever encountered. The man is outstanding, and received a gushy fan-mail from yours truly.

Tracy MacLeod from The Independent describes the perks of being a food critic expertly: “The whole cloak-and-dagger side is immensely alluring, like being an MI5 agent with an expense account. It panders to some of our basest instincts – gluttony, cruelty, and the desire to eat and drink free things.” Problem it isn’t always free. Starting out, critics often have to pay for their own meals, especially if they’re freelance. Of course these receipts can be looked at as a 100% tax deductible expense, but it’s a lot less glamorous than having a black card in the company’s name, which is a fairytale situation that happens a lot less frequently than you’d think.

Stacee Sledge of the Bellingham Herald pays for her own meals, and it isn’t ’cause the Herald is cheap, it’s because they need to keep editorial pieces at arm’s length, in order to protect themselves against advertising revenue loss. Sledge highlights one of the difficulties that comes with taking note of where you nosh. “Critiquing restaurants for a living means you find yourself critiquing them even when you’re off the clock. And you sometimes need a thick skin to tell the truth, when you know your words might hurt a struggling business that the owner has sunk his or her life savings into.”

If that isn’t warning enough as to why food criticism is a lot more dangerous than an errant chicken bone, I don’t know what is. But don’t look at me. Chances are I didn’t eat the food.

Here’s some more (…wait for it…) food for thought –

For further illumination on self-imposed, seemingly deranged food restrictions, check out what happened when British restaurant critic Jay Rayner went vegan for a week. The results are fucking hilarious.

Other than becoming a restaurant critic, here are 10 Jobs That Have You Sample Food.

Jason Kottke’s discovery of what is perhaps the first restaurant review to run in The New York Times.

A pretty incredible history of restaurant criticism, by John Curtas.

I smear mustard on all email. Drop me a line: AinsleyDrew at the gmail one. And than you for everyone who donates, it keeps my belly full.

Hire us. Our words rise like dough, and make you serious bread.

Yesterday I was reading a cookbook during my mother’s first session of chemo. In retrospect it might have been a bit selfish and dense of me to be reading about crostini del mare and pasta with anchovy sauce in spitting distance from people hooked up to IVs, whose hobbies would be vomiting, dry heaving, and diarrhea, if it weren’t for the anti-nausea meds dripping into their veins. My mom raised me reading cookbooks, so I hoped that the glossy photographs of appetizers, entrees, and desserts would distract her from the blood, tubes, bags, and bored stares of fellow patients.

Even though I was raised with a voracious appetite for recipe tomes, I can’t say that I have any talent behind the burners. As an attempting-vegan with a vicious impatient streak and difficulty with the maths, I have more luck following driving directions across the country than the instructions on the back of a spaghetti box.

Publishing a cookbook requires more than the basic level of originality to grab an agent’s attention. Yes, this means you need to do something more than slather your naked body in pudding outside of the offices of Scribner, and don’t even think of sending Alton Brown another bouquet of flowers. I’ve tried, he’s allergic, it doesn’t work out well for anyone involved.

Out of the 1,500 cookbooks that are published every year, how many do you remember? Although the Food Network has helped immeasurably when it comes to increasing the popularity of cuisine-related programming, materials, and books, not everyone can become a celebrity chef. Like I said, I can’t cook. I can write, but I’m too picky to become a food critic:

Um, this restaurant seems to like the color blue a lot. I don’t eat chicken and veal is really gross, but the mushrooms underneath the halibut were good. The garnish tasted like shoes. I’m glad this meal was comped by my editor.

I’m too spastic to get in front of a camera without the originally intended programming winding up on either Comedy Central or some sort of emergency fire rescue show on A&E. But I enjoy writing and researching, so maybe the idea isn’t completely off-kilter. After all, you need a niche in order to secure your place in kitchen-based glory. Guy Fiere markets to the clientele of TGIFridays and late-nineties rockabilly dads who like wings. Rachel Ray is the patron saint of EVOO annoyance to MILFs and Oprah-lovers everywhere. Mario Batali is the more profound, prolific, portly human version of this is why you’re fat. Perhaps I can write for hypoglycemic girls who avoid dairy, deep fryers, fennel, and fast food…with a food allergy to boot.

Nearly all renowned celebrity cookbook authors don’t begin writing as a result of love for the written word. For some, like Anthony Bourdain, being a renegade chef in New York City helped them to shape their career as writers; Bourdain is now known not only for his cuisine hijinks but for hard-boiled fiction, magazine articles, and a horrendously narrated show on the Travel Channel. For others, like Bobby Flay, it was a checkered past combined with a passion for a particular type of cooking, leading to a lauded restaurant that made the ink flow. (Flay is rumored to have dropped out of high-school and worked at both a pizzeria and Baskin Robbins.) My personal favorite, and the cornerstone for my current obsession, is Ina Garten, aka The Barefoot Contessa. The woman can write about Corn Flakes on the back of a paper napkin and I’d pay $50 to read it. Hell, if she only published for Amazon’s Kindle I’d buy one of the hideous devices, and if you know me, you know how I feel about the Kindle.

Part of my obsession with Ina stems from the fact that she’s a Long Islander by choice, originally opting to purchase a specialty goods and gourmet shop near Montauk. Other contributing factors to my fascination include her vocal and exuberant adoration of her husband Jeffrey, and her penchant for intuitively organized shows, recipes, and books. She’s also a damn good writer with a story that doesn’t start with food. She used to work for the State Department.

Ina’s ability to wax poetic about floral arrangements, France, and – most importantly – fucking up in the kitchen, is what makes me read and reread her books. Although I can’t figure out the proper way to roast a piece of tofu, Ms. Garten makes me wish I were able to do more than purchase a can of soup and heat it over medium. (Once someone helps me to pop the top.) If you’ve seen her show on the Food Network, you know that her voice, humor, and personality are all sublime. It’s no wonder she can craft domestic goddessery out of everyday items, her television show alone would be the perfect accompaniment to any meal, even the kind you heat on HIGH for five minutes.

As of late, my interest in pots, pans, and procuring produce has come from a different, more desperate location in my body, somewhere slightly above my stomach. My mother, a long-time dieter and skinny-mini, weighing in at a whopping 83 pounds — three of which she gained since the diagnosis — has had to loosen her grip on fat-free food and portion control. She’s had to super-size and snack instead of skipping meals. As a wannabe vegan with a history of eating disorders, among other mental problems, I feel bad for my mom. I know that it must be a struggle to eat three bowls of ice cream a day when really all she “wants” is a salad with a side of tennis. She’s always been active, and the cancer has slowed her down. Now it’s insisting that she fatten herself up, just as the nausea and midsection distention rob her of the appetite she’s been fighting for years. I want to do something. I want to write a recipe for anorexics, cancer patients, vegans, crazy people. I want to study nutrition and figure out what the hell I can feed my maternal unit to make her healthy enough to withstand eight weeks of chemo. I want to cure cancer with a cookbook. Okay, okay, I want to cure cancer and watch Good Eats.

So you want to become a cookbook author? Good luck. Some of the best resources I could find are a website with irritating blinking text, an old article about compiling family recipes, and a semi-convoluted link to some cookbook-writing software. I also found the Institute of Culinary Education’s list of $75 cookbook writing courses, which are probably pretty useful to the fledgling tongue-to-pen sustenance scribe.

And, in case you missed it, here’s Simon’s recipe for Brussels sprouts that I bogarted. Though you’ll have gas for days, trust me, it’s worth it, especially if you hate anything that even remotely resembles cabbage:

From Like It – September 30^th, 2008

The original version of this includes Parmesan cheese and pine nuts, the former we avoided because it comes from cow, and the later we skipped over ‘cause the only ones in the house, alas, did not belong to me. But feel free to add a bit of both or either to your go.

You’ll need: a bag of Brussels sprouts, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, a baking sheet, spatula, oven, large knife.  Be careful.

First, preheat the oven to 450.

Rinse and cut the Brussels sprouts into halves or quarters, depending on how much gas you want to have. (Kidding. You are going to be flatulent regardless. Deal with it.)

Mix the cut up sprouts with 2/3 cup of good olive oil and a 1/2 cup of balsamic vinegar. Also, a teaspoon of salt.

[Confession: we didn’t measure. Two splashes from a medium sized bottle of oil, three splashes of balsamic, a hefty shake or two of salt. Baking is a science, cooking is an experiment.]

Put the greased, grapey sprouts on a baking sheet, spread ‘em out evenly, pop the whole thing in the oven for twenty (20) minutes. Mix them once while cooking with a spatula. They’re done either after twenty minutes or when they’re browned.

Take them out, eat them, vacate any unventilated spaces.

But, really, once your done playing the butt-trumpet, you’ll be back for seconds.

Drop me a line: AinsleyDrew at gmail dot com

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