Hodge Podge Dinner Recap 6/27/11: Even Shoka thanked Kate!

Coming up on Kate Plus 8! On the one hand, we’re going to deliver baked goods to the Kidney Dialysis Center where Kate used to work. On the other, we’re going grocery shopping for “gross” foods like canned sardines for dinner. I don’t get how the two are related, other than, um, food?

As a side note, I think if you’re going to introduce a new food to a kid, the last thing you should do is give them the canned version. For instance, canned watery, salty peas with an expiration date five years from now are infinitely more gag-inducing than buying some plump sweet peas in season from the local farmer’s market, shelling them yourself and cooking them with a little butter. Yum. The same with sardines. Fresh sardines are actually pretty delicious, especially in Asian dishes. Canned sardines taste like, well, bomb shelter food. Give a kid processed food like that and they will swear off peas and sardines forever, unaware that a much better, healthier version exists out there they might actually like.

This episode is called “Hodge Podge Dinner” but notably, Kate went around for several weeks beforehand on Twitter laughingly calling it “Gross Dinner.” I guess since the kids were helping to make dinner some wise soul at TLC decided calling it “gross” was too mean?

Kate has the kids lined up at the kitchen counter and a giant black garbage bag taped to it. Several people have pointed out that it’s not safe to use a garbage bag like this because of the chemicals in the plastic. Sure enough, even the USDA has advised about the dangers of chemicals seeping from the bag into the food. Besides, isn’t that the point of that beautiful marble counter? You can easily wipe it down when you spill, good as new. I love how in her quest to save herself 30 seconds of clean up, Kate compromised the safety of the food.

“If it turns into a mess, you’re instantly done!” Master Chief Kate shouts. I half expect her to whip out a bullhorn. You know, a lot of  people cook because it’s therapy, it‘s calming. Because messes can be cleaned up and mistakes fixed. But like most everything else, Kate treats it like it’s the Navy Seals and either you suck it up and hold that boat above your head in the pouring rain for hours upon hours, or ring the bell and get out.

By the way? Chefs don’t care about making messes, they have aprons for that. Jamie Oliver actually wants you to make bread directly on your counter, by building a well with flour and pouring the water and yeast inside. I’ve done this a few times and while it’s hard work, it’s fun. And it was easy to wipe up the stray flour when I was done, no garbage bags necessary.

The kids and Kate make muffins, cookies and brownies for the patients of the local dialysis center where she used to work. She specifically says it’s for the patients, and I don’t know, with so many diabetics and people with other health problems who have to go on dialysis, baked goods seems a rather insensitive choice.

Master Chief Kate shouts: “If your sugar spills you will get down and pick up every granule, and you know that I mean that!” My good God, Mommie Dearest is not in the best mood. I hope there aren‘t any wire hangers in the kids‘ closets today.

“Yes, Drill Sergeant!” the kids shout back. Ha, I wish.

Kate is sitting on the couch with an expression rather like she’s getting a colonoscopy. For someone who claims to love their job, she sure looks terrible. She hates messes, blah blah.

Kate hand feeds the kids raw cookie dough. For a nurse and for someone so obsessive, I find this a bit baffling. Raw cookie dough has raw eggs. Increases your risk of getting salmonella. I know about salmonella. I came down with it once when I was abroad, and it was two weeks of hellish diarrhea that (brace yourselves) looked like black tar and smelled like death. There is no medicine for it. You drink Gatorade and rest. I made it through it okay because I was a healthy young adult, but it can be very dangerous for children. By the way, did you know when you get salmonella your doctor reports it to the Health Department and then the Health Department calls you and interviews you? Probably to pinpoint outbreaks. That was kind of interesting, they were really nice and genuinely concerned for me.

On the couch, Kate is griping that the kids always abandon her and she is left to finish things up, but the footage clearly shows Kate yelling at the kids to go down to the basement. So how is that abandonment when you’ve been ordered to leave the room? She is nothing if not inconsistent, and confusing. I have read that narcissists get off on this, keeping people, invariably their children, in a constant state of confusion.

Aw, sweet and helpful Collin offers to feed the chickens. He and Aaden go out there and give the chickens some scraps and play with Shoka a bit. Poor, poor Shoka, out there in the cold, wanting to be inside with the family watching them bake.

Kate talks, quite sincerely actually, about how when she worked at the dialysis center, how inspiring it was to watch what the patients went through, and how happy she was when someone got a kidney transplant. You know what? I think she had a bit of a sincere passion for nursing at some point. I think she could go back, and take her kids out of the public eye, and work a quiet job like this and give her kids their lives back. She might even find herself, I don’t know, happy. She just doesn’t want to believe that kind of life could ever make the family happy, that’s all.

As I ‘ve mentioned before, my dad once told me about a Twilight Zone episode in which a man dies and thinks he is in “heaven“. He has all the money in the world, all the girls in the world, and always wins every gambling hand. He loves it at first, but after a short time, always having everything he could ever want starts to drive him absolutely crazy. Some kind reader here alerted me about when this episode was going to be on TV, and I got to see it. Thank you! Here’s a clip, when the mans finds out that this place where you have everything just handed to you, is actually hell, not heaven:

So anyway, when Kate always says her kids deserve everything, the obvious lesson is that no, having everything does not make you happy. I can’t help but think how immature her understanding of what kids really need and deserve is. And it’s not, everything just handed to them, that’s for sure.

Next, they wrap up the treats and head out to a rental van because the big blue bus is in the shop. Screaming and yelling, squabbling, Kate yanking Collin back by his jacket (I hate when adults pull kids around like plow horses, is that how you would treat an adult?), everything that makes charity work seem so appealing. The reason Kate quit her job at the dialysis center, she explains, is she couldn’t do the 16 hour Saturday shifts anymore. I like how she and her fans always make it seem like any “real job” she could ever go back to would require 16 hour shifts on Saturdays. I know half a dozen people in the medical field who don’t work hours like that, not all jobs are like that. And there are many other careers you could take up where you’d never have to work a weekend or holiday, ever. Though come to think of it, if Jon has the kids every other weekend, wouldn’t that be a perfect time for her to pick up a weekend shift? The bottom line is of course she can go back to a private career, just like Jon did. She just won’t.

Kate hugs some former co-workers, and even sees some former patients, everyone is very polite to her and act excited to see her. Oh, Kate really is such a tool. “My dialysis patients were my first audience,” she says. “Cause, they were strapped down, they couldn’t get away from me!”

So in other words, she always wanted a captive audience. It was never about the kids or college funds or just getting by. It was about Kate getting her audience. I’m not surprised, of course it always was. I’m just surprised that Kate let that one slip. This picture I have of Kate putting on some kind of bad vaudeville act with a top hat and cane in front of some poor sick patient is laughable, but sad.

You know what? Kate’s co-workers make her seem like she was really good at this. She made the patients happy, by whistling, remembers one. Kate whistling. Well, at least if she’s whistling she can’t be lying, right?  In all honesty, as Kate would say, it sounds like this was a really good career for her. Why not go back?

Kate fumbles around with a dialysis machine trying to show it to the kids. And after a few missteps, remarkably, she gets it. On the couch, Leah explains how the machine works, and she is adorable. I think it’s good for kids to see things like this, and it sounds like they learned something.

Back at home, I can’t really tell if this is the same day, a second later I realize I don’t care what day it is, but Kate says they are going to do a “Hodge Podge Dinner” and they will each get to pick pieces of paper out of a hat listing one thing to buy at the grocery store. This dinner was all her idea, Kate makes certain to add. Ha. If this is such an unscripted reality show, why wouldn’t it be her idea? This is mildly fun, I suppose. But invariably there is a lot of bickering.

They arrive at the grocery store, and oh, I have so grown to love these hypocritical Kate moments. “First of all, we’re not making a scene,” Kate snaps at the kids, “so be quiet and move quietly!”

Kate? By virtue of the fact that you are carting in a production crew and filming this entire trek through the store while everyone else is just trying to do their weekly shopping and mind their own business and look after their children in private, you are making a scene. It is Kate causing the scene here with her crew, not the kids.

The kids basically pick out whatever they want, and they seem to be enjoying themselves. Ew, Kate is one of those people who gets a bagel with her bare hands without using the little pieces of tissue paper or tongs they always provide you. I know most people think that she is not actually a germaphobe at all. I agree, she just wants attention is all it is.

Kate demands that the grocery cashier, a woman she apparently recognizes from past shopping trips, look at all the food they bought. Kate? I don’t think she cares. She’s just trying to scan your items and get to the next customer and take care of her family like every other working woman. Kate keeps making a big deal about how hard it is to take all the kids grocery shopping and this is why she never does it. I don’t know, the kids seem behaved enough to me. They’re standing beside the carts, helping to push carts and helping to load bags. I don’t get why she acts like taking the kids here is like moving a piano down a maze. I think she never does this because she’s lazy. She’ll only do it if they’re filming. How Kate perceives what’s happening in any given situation is often vastly different than what an objective person sees.

Commercials. Uh oh, new show called I Kid With Brad Garrett. Seems kind of like a rip off of Kids Say the Darndest Things. Looks like some awfully cute kids there. Wonder if Kate feels threatened by all these new shows on TLC’s lineup. Some new show about a medium with a bunch of kids sounds like typical TLC fare that will of course do well for some odd reason. Next thing we know Kate will claim she can communicate with the dead too, she just never mentioned it before. Another season of Extreme Couponing, sweet, what will happen next, will another register crash from the 1500 coupons scanned into it? A hundreds bucks Kate’ll be back to talking about cutting coupons before the year is up.

Back at the house, they start cooking up the dinner. Kate keeps saying how gross it is, but I really don’t see what’s so gross about foods like bagels, burritos, carrots and pizza. Most kids like all those things. Surprisingly, the kids picked out mostly normal kid foods. But I guess since gross is the theme, Kate feels she must really sell it.

A lot of the kids are open to trying sardines. I don’t find this surprising, I’m not sure why. Maybe because they’re just, overall, pretty agreeable kids, from everything I’ve seen. Joel is so cute, laughing as he says he doesn’t like them. Collin loves them. Naturally Kate is one of the few who refuses to try them. I love when adults try to lecture kids about things like trying new foods, but then they won’t even try themselves. Whatever.

Shoka loved the sardines, says Kate, although I don‘t see Shoka anywhere around. :-( Maybe Kate carried a plate of them out to him in his outdoor doghouse in the cold after all the fun was over? “He said thank you for my hodge podge dinner,” Kate says. Ha, just like the kids always thank her, right?

The kids like this fun dinner, but as far as show ideas go, I see why TLC won’t make Kate a producer. The entire second half of the episode, the part that was all her idea, was excruciatingly mundane.

As the episode comes to a close, Kate gripes, “If you throw up tonight, you’re on your own!” I don’t get it, why would this be any different than before?