Yes, the old PBS cooking shows were great. With what I learned from Yan Can Cook, with my trusty carbon steel wok and $20, I could eat for a week in good ol' Los Angeles. I'd go to the ethnic grocery stores because everything there is half the price what you'd pay at the supermarkets. Usually better stuff, too.
Food Network used to be good, but then, as I said, it degenerated into a personality cult. Now all those food celebrities have their own lines of foods, spices, and cookware. Even barbeque utensils are not safe. The hilarious thing is, all that crap comes from the same places as the supermarket-brand generic stuff at half the price.
The last cooking show I saw that had any merit whatsoever was on Al-Jazeera Network. Now, wait, I know what people are thinking. But, seriously, go on You Tube and look up the show "Street Food" on Al-Jazeera. They went all over the planet and just looked into what vendors are cooking and selling on street corners stands. What everyday folks are eating there. It was very enlightening. For example, in Egypt, a fava bean dish is what's a traditional breakfast fare. Who knew?
I recently saw this movie that was made in India called "The Lunchbox". It was cool. It's a romance film, but it revolved around this system they've got in India where housewives prepare a lunch that goes into this multi-tiered lunchpail called a Tiffin Box. It stacks together so you can have a few courses, plus rice and roti in their own sections. The wife does this thing and a guy comes and collects the lunchpails from each home and they go by bicycle, train, and bicycle again to the husband's workplace. Each lunchpail has this coded tag these dudes understand so they know where each lunchpail goes. Then the dude picks up the empty lunchpail and delivers it back to the housewife using the same bicycle-train-bicycle transport. They have this thing down to a science! Unmarried people can contract with a restaurant to get this service. The movie is worth seeing. At least I dug it, anyway.
It's interesting that in Mumbai, where the movie takes place, they can do a system like this with just coded tags and everyone gets a home-cooked meal for lunch or one cooked from a restaurant if they don't have anyone to make them one. Delivered right to their desk and the empty pail picked up in return afterwards. Now, if they tried that here in America, you just know they'd fumble the whole thing by making it too complicated. Then someone would whine about the smell of the food on commuter trains. "Ewwww, I smell meat and I'm a vegan! I am therefore offended!" Then the government would get involved, "We need to regulate this. We need to make sure these are all balanced meals. We need a special tax on this service and also the food itself. There will need to be a fuel surcharge tax for delivery. Every lunchbox carrier will need a special foodhandler's license, background checks, blah, blah, blah..." The restaurants doing it would require you to go online to order each day: "Click here for your lunch options." Click! "Click here for vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, nut-allergy sensitive." Click! "What color lunchpail do you want?" Oh, to heck with it, I'll just go to a burger joint!
And as far as street vendors, many other countries, they don't care. A lot of people just set up a stand in the street and start selling falafel or kebabs or what not. No one cares. Their government just goes, "Yeah, well, whatever. But, hey, that guy has some pretty tasty falafel! We can't rock the boat and tax the guy. He'll take his falafel elsewhere and then where will we be come lunchtime?" I heard of one country where they tried to tax the street vendors and they ended up with a riot where troops had to be called out. In the end, the government had to back down and concede defeat. Evidently, in some countries, street food vendors can make a great deal of cash just selling falafel or kebabs. They just buy a cart and supplies, have a family recipe that kicks butt, and bada bing, they're in business. Can't beat that. Over here, you have to get all these permits and licenses and crap. A kid can't even set up a lemonade stand anymore without some official coming around to shut him down because he hasn't got a foodhandler's permit. I heard school bake sales are now coming under scrutiny. "What?! These people are making and selling pies?! Why, this is an outrage! How dare they do this without a license! Aren't they aware of the Meringue Pie Regulation Act?!" Some other countries, they would just throw a pie in the official's face.
