I hate the Food Network so much right now.

Still, nice try. And do please make the trip down, though maybe in October or November. It's lovely here that time of year.

then we took the kids to the Texas Historical Museum, which we enjoyed greatly, and returned to our car an hour later to find that our Democratic-Party-themed bumperstickers had been torn off our car and ripped to pieces and sprinkled on the parking garage floor

that incident (which probably wouldn't bother you given your political views, but worried me a bit) started me thinking about that Lift To Experience record, Lyle Lovett's "You're Not From Texas," Ray Wylie Hubbard's "Screw You We're From Texas," all the proud BBQ!!! restaurant signs we saw on our way there and on our way back.

so color me unconvinced that there is no cowboy mentality in Texas.

yeah, sure, some Food Network shows focus on stupid stuff like that. yet I saw a great episode of "$40 a Day" where the host ate great in Dallas: Tex-Mex, health food, margaritas, lovely.

we might move to Austin anyway, but it's probably too damned hot for me.

And yes, Rachael Ray does mostly do a good job with not keeping to a one-track mind when it comes to her "$40 a Day" program. It was all wonderfulness and light when I saw her in Corpus Christi showing how many different things one could do there, even in the "dead" of winter. That was a treat. Also a treat -- fully half the places she showed there were places my parents visited when they had their honeymoon there, including the place where Rachael had breakfast.

and please don't mention Rachael Ray again while I'm single because I might break down and cry. thanks.

The cowboy-fetish? Still in full-force now - lookit all the SUVs and trucks. The cowboy stores and bad country music stations (there more than a half-dozen in the Metroplex. Maybe they're 'urban cowboys' - poseurs - but it's still in force.

The barbecue? Still lots of 'em, but rivalled by the number of bad Chinese and Mexican restaurants.

The Wild West mentality? Oh, God yes.

What part of Texas do you live in Dee?

(by the way I owe Waco a huge debt of gratitude, driving south with a thunderstorm a-building, needed a boost, pulled over to a drive-thru Starbucks, got a couple of venti-ass coffees, rocked it on down to Austin in no time flat. love Waco now)

Aw. I'm single too. And hey, if you love Ms. Ray, you'd like me! Just have bigger lips than hers. It's a culture thing.

As for the title -- it leads one to believe that it will be all about the whole of the state in terms of cuisine, rather than the tiny little bit that will be spotlighted. I think it would've been nice to go around the state and sample some of the best cuisine of the varying areas. Those of us who've lived in TX for a long time know that Texas is really a state of five parts -- the northern part, the southern part, the western part, the eastern part, and the central part, all of which are distinct entities that are dissimilar more than they are similar. Even in individual communities within each of those breakdowns, there are distinctions worth mentioning. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who would tell you that Amarillo, for example, is the same as Dallas, even if the two are both located in the northern part of the state.

And I know it's a tiring schtick of mine to be the Big Crusader to Break With Stereotypes, but I feel like if I'm not the one doing it, who will? (This would be where my "innocent dreamer" handle becomes really descriptive, see.)

Most of Waco is nice, yes.

OMG

(I hate Emeril.)

...I made her chicken barbeque sandwich one night and it was KILLER. Also under 30min. Also EVERY show on the Food Network is about BBQ this time of year.

ha! my former landlords now live upstate in the same area as RR.

I, um, was passionate with the original portion of the thread, wasn't I? Well, the Food Network still makes me angry at times, but due to different reasons than the original ones. The most recent example is tonight's ep of "The Secret Life Of...", about sugar, that was breathtakingly ignorant about its stance on sugar substitutes. Like, hello, some of us don't want to develop diabetes before we're 30, thankyoueverymuch, and you sure as hell have a higher risk of developing diabetes if you suck down a lot of those high-sugar sodas. Ugh. And yeah, I did just big-up the Sugar Queen herself, i.e. Ms. Deen, but if you use sugar substitute for at least half the sugar content of the desserts and just slightly reduce the total overall sugar need in the recipes, they come out TOTALLY kickass and they're still nice and rich and sweet. Only thing I won't ever make from her is her Krispy Kreme bread pudding, which is sure to send anyone into a diabetic coma.

Anyway. Rachael's personality sucks but she's got some good recipes.

I HATE FOOD NETWORK SO MUCH RIGHT NOW! ARGGGH!

alton's self-effacing dork shtick is a little shticky but when he's just focusing on the food science and the macgyver stuff and the nutritional anthropology, he's unfuckingbelievable. i like that he's one of the few cooks in tv history who's ever bothered to explain what it is an oven DOES when you turn the gas on and put food in it.

mentioned this in some other thread but gf literally refuses to enjoy any TV that isn't the food network. praying to god they don't add cooking channel to our cable package.

'chefs have to make something and there's a time limit and then the judges say mostly good things but a few mean things'
vs.
'let's look at places that make food'

Yeah, Cooking Channel is blessedly absent of all competition shows near as I can tell, except for the original Iron Chef.

oh good...she won't want to watch it anyway. though the food network has been pimping cooking channel out soooo hard.

also, at least bourdain / travel channel go cool places - food network basically pretends like food isn't made outside of america.

more than that, the nyc-focus is really tiring. seems like every sous chef in the city has been on the food network by now.

food network daytime programming is my shit

"The Next Food Network Star" is possibly the worst piece of crap ever to air on television. It seems like such a brand-killing peek behind the curtain for them, and yet they promote the crap out of it.

"Ch3fs vs. C1ty" is also embarrassing, esp. since Chri$ Co$ent1no is a friend...

aaron and chris are hilarious on that show.

did you go to his wedding where he sabered?

No, but he taught me how to saber at a BBQ one time. My wife hired him at Incanto, and was his sous chef for a few years.

I like Chris, but the OTT product-placement of that show is obnoxious, and promotes a bunch of bad food and restaurants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAn8zclX3Po&feature=player_embedded#!

Cooking Channel is 10000x better than Food Network has ever been, btw. It's pretty close to what I always hoped Food Network would be.

my cable system doesn't carry it yet but i saw a few hours of it at my folks' place. it does seem like an improvement (more of a global focus, thank god) but it still comes across as a little peppy and superficial. i hope their ratings do well and they don't worry too much about what the market research gurus tell them.

and if i never see "easy" or "simple" in the name of a cooking show again it'll be too soon. give me a complicated, multi-step project!

"The Next Food Network Star" is possibly the worst piece of crap ever to air on television. It seems like such a brand-killing peek behind the curtain for them, and yet they promote the crap out of it.

I watch FN on the ex machine at my gym and this show (reruns?) is always on - the two network people/judges are such stereotypical NYC media biz creeps

All the judging on lame meta-criteria (their backstory, how well they "work" on camera, what their "hook" is, etc.) is cringeworthy, and strangely straightforward in its condescension towards and disrespect for FN viewers.

I dunno, at least it's honest!

I guess; it's more that I'm surprised that they think all this inside-baseball talk is good for the FN...

the ace of cakes dude is secretly worse than guy fieri

YES

guy fieri is also secretly AMAZING

the ace of cakes dude actually thinks he's really cool and that cakes are really cool

whereas guy fieri exists in a world without cool or uncool

http://foodnetworkhumor.com/wp-content/uploads//eat-ray-love.jpg

put a lil EVOO on her and now we're talkin

dee got really mad in the original post

Ok, moment over. But I still could MURDER these people.

alex guarnaschelli seems like the most miserable person. at least she doesn't have a freaky giada smile pasted on her face though.

were you watching chopped? she was particularly overwrought on that episode.

i watch food net on the gym machine (takes my mind off the pain) and yesterday giada made superbowl snacks for the hunky hub and his buds. adorable little hors d'oeuvres/finger food! yagottabekiddinme.com

[img]http://fatkidatcamp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Guy-Fieri.jpg[img]

I'll try again
http://i.imgur.com/g5Yg7.jpg

Dynamite! Rock star! Outta bounds!

she's talented, but i can definitely do without her "rock star" shtick.

BROWN BREAD IN A CAN. WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

Dude that has been a thing since forever.

a terrible hideous thing.

No it's not! You just haven't had good brown bread, for realsies. Brown bread steamed in a faintly-scented Café Bustelo tin, made with graham flour and stone ground cornmeal, molasses, dried blueberries....

I use an adapted version of my great granfmother's recipe; last year I made a savory brown bread with chilies, blue cornmeal and rendered suet.

Lies: suet doesn't really render, so it was just kind of whipped into the batter.

http://i339.photobucket.com/albums/n469/dabeast3c/Random2b.jpg

*annoyed by food network*

wonder whatever happened to dee the lurker

i get the feeling dee is just lurking now? i dunno why, just a feeling

haw

Please tell me that is a shop.

this bbq episode of "chopped":

"i make guy food. i'm all about MEAT and FIRE."
"i'm gonna SMOKE the competition."

the first challenge is yak steak.

"vegetables, that's kryptonite for me"

"i'm gonna make a peanut butter cookie mayonnaise."

Everytime Dr BBQ referred to himself as Dr BBQ my gf and I drank.

this is filming in my neighborhood today:

http://blog.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/2013/09/robert-irvines-restaurant-express/