Do you watch Food Network?

And Alton Brown was intervied by Wired magazine a couple months ago. Now that's cool.

I'll tell you who. The most utterly reprehensible personality on Food Network (and there are several to choose from): Rachael Ray. Her bio says she used to be a restaurant manager and a buyer for a gourmet market—is that all it takes to become America's Food Sweetheart? She's completely clueless, and she displays no discernible cooking skills. And she has FOUR shows! FOUR!!! There's one called "30 Minute Meals" where she chops a bell pepper and puts it on something else and it's a meal. Then there's a show where she dines with celebrities and chats with them—whew, you really feel like you know Al Roker when it's over. The episode of "Rachael Ray's Tasty Treats" where she shows off her favorite spots to eat in NYC was the most offensive thing I've ever seen. What a shocker, almost every one of her favorite places is within a few blocks of the building where Food Network tapes. She loves an authentic Italian restaurant where they sing opera during your meal! But her masterpiece is the show "$40 a Day," where she visits a city and shows you how easy it is to eat 3 meals for under $40. There are so many reasons why this premise makes me feel like my head's going to explode. Everything about this show is preposterous, with the kicker being she never tips anyone, ever. Any attempt to appear thrifty on these shows makes her look money-grubbing and crass. Ultimately, the message of this show is, "see, it's ok, you don't have to spend money or time on yourself, you're not worth 31 minutes or $41.00, of course you can just settle for less." It's a show and a "personality" aimed squarely at the post-9/11 lifestyle of fear. Four shows. What has this world come to?

Rachel Ray IS annoying but sheesh! Lighten the fuck up, James.

So, I got the 3-disc set of Julia Child's original PBS show via Netflix. We've watched 2 so far - the woman is just a crack-up!! I had no idea! I wish I'd watched it regularly when I was younger; I would have learned so much.

http://www.altonbrown.com/adventure/tarmac.html

FEASTING ON ASPHALT 2!

Whoa, fun! I am lusting over those Shun knives his website is selling. They come with bandaids!

waaah why no bit-torrent downloads of the new series of No Reservations or Feasting on Asphalt 2? no fair

I have (unreasonably) high hopes for this "Worst Cook in America" thing -- I would really like for there to be a show about the basic building blocks of food, the building blocks of foodstuffs and the physical principles involved in applying dry heat, wet heat, acid, sugar, salt, whatever. Taking horrible cooks and making them better seems like it could be a good way to sneak some education in. But so far it's just the pros laughing and gagging at the bad cooks, and then a "reproduce this" challenge with almost no education or explanation of why A + B = Great, but A + C = Barf.

Couldn't bear to watch a minute of this.

but dudes did you see the batali/lagasse vs flay/comerford iron chef amurka?
batali made these ravioli with yolk in the middle that oozed when cut open. i felt like homer simpson and my gurl had to go warm up a bowl of hoppin john cuz of this

Yeah, the ravioli with an oozing egg yolk was an instant boner. Big roffles though when Emeril overcooked/nearly burned the turkey.

yesterday i saw "food network magazine" at the checkout in the grocery store, didn't have time to flip through though. anybody know if it's decent? (of course i have recently raided my dad's cookbook shelf to fill a folder with new photocopied recipes, so it's not like i NEED it, but i'm curious....)

I heard Foodnetwork got sonned by canlevision in a contract beef!

HGTV as well . No word on when they are coming back