Sometimes I gotta walk away for a bit.
You know how when you’re tired and you’re reading a book, you keep reading the same paragraph over and over and you have no idea what it actually said? It’s like that. Only with cavatappi and dairy products.
I’ve filmed the entire macaroni and cheese episode twice now and in editing, it’s just not coming together. Don’t get me wrong, the food has been good, but in the first shoot, the sound was off and one of my cameras went tit’s up. The second shoot has some salvageable footage, which I’ll probably use on MetaTubeTok, isn’t really full episode worthy.
There are just important points I wanted to slip in that, even in voiceover or intro video, won’t communicate the way I wanted to. Example. Why cavatappi instead of elbow macaroni? What about the pasta hydration rate? Why cornstarch instead of roux? The whole “Macaroni & cheese is the comfort food equivalent of mother sauce.” argument. None of it works in the context of either shoot.
So instead of rereading that paragraph again, I’m going to step back for a bit and declare the first season done. I can do that. It’s my project. In fact, I need to do that because it’s becoming forced and that’s not what this is about. Skillet and Flask is supposed to be about me playing with my food first and I’m losing that a bit. A wise man once looked to the thing he loved and said, satisfied, “That’ll do, Pig.”
Anyway, that’s’ where I am. The first season of Skillet and Flask is done. All in all, I’m very happy with it. I think “the Chalupa Cabra Episode” was my favorite, with the New Year’s episode coming at the bottom of the pile, though it was not without its technical merit.
I think where things went wrong with the Macaroni & Cheese episode is it wasn’t “seat of my pants” enough. I mean it was, particularly with the technical issues, but neither version felt “real” enough. Skillet and Flask should never be about professionalism. It should always be about real food and real cooking. There should be an element of joy and discovery in every episode, even for me.
So here’s what’s going to happen. For paid Patreon subscribers, I have suspended billing until I start producing real content again. I cannot, in good conscience, charge for nothing. I believe in “value for value” so there you go.
I'll still post some Patreon only stuff until the next season gets underway in January. Gotta do some planning and whatnot for that anyhow.
Now go cook something. I'll be back.
