Cooking with Celebrities, Or Why Tim Allen's Face Annoys Me

When I was in elementary school, I was in the "gifted" program (my IQ was [allegedly] marginally above normal).  Being in the gifted program meant that one day a week, I left my classroom and spent four hours with other "gifted" children learning how to count in Japanese and how to do the Mexican hat dance and how to "sing" in American Sign Language and that sort of crap.  I absolutely loved it.  It was the best part of school for me.

We also wrote poetry and took field trips, and at the end of every school year, we "published" a cookbook called "Cooking with the Stars."  From first grade through fourth grade, our year-end challenge was to write celebrities and ask them to mail us their favorite recipes.  Bafflingly, many of the celebrities actually wrote back.

I, personally, had three successes in my quest for celebrity cooking tips:  local news anchor Kim Hindrew, national news anchor Jane Pauley, and First Lady Barbara Bush.  (In limiting the amount of time I spent watching television, my parents conditioned in me the belief that "fame" was roughly equivalent to "being on the evening news.")   Barbara Bush sent me two pre-printed recipe cards.  Kim Hindrew hand-wrote me a note card, front and back, discussing sandwiches.  And Jane Pauley, master chef, signed the letter that her assistant typed up, telling me that she didn't cook much, but she did like to put a bit of mustard on her kids' grilled cheese sandwiches now and again.

In fifth grade, the gifted program switched to a new teacher and a new curriculum, one that required that when we left our regular classrooms, we went to the library and did research, or sat in silence and memorized other people's poetry instead of writing our own.  Suddenly, the merits of the gifted program plummeted in my eyes.  I didn't want to go to the library.  I wanted to write famous people.  In an act of rebellion, I decided that just because we didn't do fun stuff in school anymore didn't mean I couldn't do it myself.  I was going to put together my own celebrity cookbook.

Older, wiser - I was now a mature ten, after all - my standards for fame were changing.  I remember my determination as I sat at my desk in my room after school, scribbling my requests on Little Mermaid stationary.  I decided not to write up-and-coming news anchor Brian Williams, but instead the Olsen twins (a move that admittedly I have come to regret).  Then I wrote the cast of Step by Step, of Home Improvement, of Family Matters.  I wrote Andy Griffith because Matlock was a guilty pleasure of mine.  And I sat back in triumph, thinking how my cookbook was going to be so much better than any of the cookbooks we had put together as a group.  When I had it ready, I would take it to the gifted program and show the new teacher how things were supposed to be done...

A week or so later, my responses started to trickle in.  One pre-printed postcard after another.  A picture of the cast, a stamped autograph or two, and not so much as a personalized greeting on the back in return.  I didn't get a single recipe.

When Tim Allen's postcard came after the postcard featuring the entire cast of Home Improvement - even though I had only written one letter to Home Improvement, and Tim Allen's card didn't even have a stamped signature on it, as if Tim Allen knew the rest of the cast had already jilted me but he wanted to personally rub it in that I was not worthy of a real response - a new and revelatory thought emerged in my ten-year-old brain:  famous people can be assholes.  To this day, thinking about Tim Allen's smug smile on that postcard brings about feelings of resentment and of culinary dreams lost...

But this being me, I wasn't able to let it go after the first try.  For the next two years or so, I continued to periodically write the television stars I'd come to admire.

None of them ever sent me a recipe.

But the day did come when I got a real autograph.  Signed in Sharpie, on a glossy 8x10 black-and-white production photo, "To Becky," it read.  "Thanks, Tia and Tamera Mowry."

Which is why no one is ever allowed to diss Sister, Sister in my presence.  Ever.