Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah (and it clearly isn't Rick Bayless)

So, I've been twittering or tweeting or whatever it's called lately. I have one follower. He's my friend, so he has to follow me. "Following" me isn't that interesting because it means following me around the house while I pick up all the crap that my kids should be picking up. I'm not leading a whirlwind lifestyle, flying from coast to coast, doing engagements and talk shows and food demos and magazine photo shoots. But I know someone who is: Rick Bayless. 

Rick Bayless is the boyish middle-aged chef of Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, and he's kind of a hometown hero. He's incredibly energetic and passionate about Mexican food, which he reinvented single-handedly. If the salsa industry has anyone to thank for its mind-boggling sales boom, it's him.

He's also on Twitter all the time. For every one time I go on, he's been on twelve times. I pretty much know every move he makes because he tells me, in crazy cryptic Twitter shorthand. I know what he's having for lunch today. I know what his favorite thing in the whole world is (sweet corn tamales steamed in banana leaves. At least it was yesterday). I know that he's a yogahead, his brother is a famous sportswriter, and that he actually uses the expression "super delish." 

I believe he also coined the phrase "tweetcipe." A tweetcipe is a stenographer's version of a recipe. It also happens to be the most cloyingly cutesy word I've heard in a long time. Ick. 

A tweetcipe has to be 140 characters or less, and still tell the whole story. Here's Rick Bayless' tweetcipe for Olive Oil Cake: 

5/4c sgr,2 lime zst,4 egg,beat 5mn. Fold n ordr: 3T milk,1 3/4c flour, 1 1/2t b.pwdr,2t lime,3oz ch gngr,7T mltbuttr,2/3c OO.2x9"pan. 325/30

I love Rick Bayless and I love his food, but his tweetcipes are annoying. And so are his posts. And why isn't he in the kitchen, where he belongs, instead of on his Blackberry or IPhone, running through airports, drinking Illy espresso and then tweeting about it? 

Probably because it's way more fun to tweet in the DFW airport than it is to sweat your ass off in a hot kitchen for 16 hours a day, enduring second degree burns, carpal tunnel, and varicose veins. Just a guess.