Rachel Ray – Look + Cook

A few weeks before Christmas, Borders had Rachel Ray in for a signing to promote her book Look + Cook.

I used to have a crush on Rachel Ray so it was a natural for me to want this autograph.

Borders handed out wrist bands the morning of the event. I got there about 20 minutes after they opened and waited in line with a bunch of soccer moms.  I was only the second guy in line. The other man was silver haired and about 70. From the hints of the conversations I caught, it seemed I got there at the perfect time. There was a line outside before the store opened.  So if I got out of bed any earlier I would have just been wasting time.

The other guy was stuck with the crowd before the store opened. He was there to do his last minute Christmas shopping. All he wanted was a Sandra Dee cookbook. As he purchased it, the cashier asked if he wanted a Rachel Ray book too as she would be signing that night. He gave her a look of – don’t bother me with such foolishness.  I had to smile. It’s a hard look to master and he did it well.

My books were bought and I left.

When I returned later that day, I was only an hour early or so. The wrist band reserved my place in line so there wasn’t much need to arrive earlier. Having just finished a soda I was hopped up on caffeine and sugar.  If you know me, this isn’t necessarily a good thing.  Not a bad thing but not exactly good.

The people around me were nice. That was their first mistake. They even smiled at my silly comments. That was their second mistake.  Nothing encourages my silly behavior more than laughing at my lame jokes. I had a glorious 30 minutes entertaining the people around and asking odd ball questions and actually getting answers.

Then my wife arrived. Feeling somewhat guilty about entertaining several very pretty women, I toned down my personality. Not that I was flirting but of course the wife will not believe you.  When she wandered off to look at some other books, I started talking again. 

Rachel arrived and did a TV interview. She then came over to the signing table and quickly worked through the crowd. She had her technique down pat. If you had a stack of books, she wrote with her right hand and pushed the top book off the stack with her left and she immediately attacked the next book. She was a machine. Even as fast as she was, she still talked with the people as they came to the table.

I told her about my mom and wife’s trip to NYC and seeing her show. She asked if they enjoyed it and I said the loved it. She smiled big and said ‘Awesome!’ in that classic way of hers.

After I turned away from the able, my wife and I left to go eat.  We decided to have a hearty meal at McDonald’s.   We spent the next 20 minutes pawing through the recipes in the new Rachel Ray book as we gobbled Big Macs and French Fries.

AH