Matt the Great

And then Paula Deen is paired up with Rachael Ray to bake a pumpkin roll cake. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh...my...god. This is what I've been waiting for all throughout 2005. This is heaven. I didn't even know what they were cooking for the first half of the vignette because I was too busy being all, "oh my god! Paula Deen with Rachael Ray!"

OK. Let's isolate the components of this one. First we have Rachael Ray. If you've ever set e-foot into www.mattthegreat.blogspot.com, you know where teaMMAtt stands on Rachael Ray. Then we have Paula Deen, and I think we all know where teaMMatt stands on Paula Deen. But then, we have a pumpkin roll cake. I just don't know what to do with this. My two favorite flavors are lime and pumpkin. They are both seasonal, and right as one goes out of season, the other comes in, and that works really great. This is big.

Paula is teaching Rachael how to bake this thing, and we all know that Rachael Ray does *not* bake. She doesn't even own a measuring cup! [giggle, giggle] It turns out that Rachael does sort of suck at baking, and Paula totally calls her on it. This, of course, does provide RR with plenty oppurtunity to explain her system of "eyeballing it," wherein a tablespoon = about a palmful, a teaspoon = about a half-palmfull, a cup = a couple turns of the pan. She "teaches" this to Paula and by extension "teaches" this to us, but y'all remember that ALoTO quote?

Well, Rachael Ray, we've all seen your proverbial bosoms. (Readers: don't take this as agitation with RR; I so totally still dig it after hearing it so many times.)

The last thing from this scene I need to discuss is a quote from Paula:

Nick--I am putting that on a tee-shirt for your birthday, dude.

Finally, everything's cooked, and they all walk into the dining room from different doors carrying their dishes. As a former film student, and as someone with a fair amount of stage management experience, all I could think about was how much planning it took to create that spontaneity. Something I didn't think about when I was taking notes on the special but just now realized: why do they all come from different rooms with their dishes in the first place? What business would risotto have coming from the living room?

But that is finally it. And this will mark the last time until late next year that I wish y'all Season's Eatings. Season's Eatings to everyone!