ATK also has hilarious moments, such as the one where one of them was talking to Kimball about where to store potatos or mushrooms or somesuch:
“Store them in a cool, dark place…” turns to eye Kimball “like your soul.”
Hee.
Friend Labrador Deceiver,
You are right here, and I shouldn’t be so hard on her. She just grates on my nerves.
I agree with all the negative comments made about what TFN has become. I much prefer Jacques Pepin, America’s Test Kitchen, Rick Bayless, Daisy Martinez and Lydia Bastianich on public television.
That said, TFN recently showed Jamie Oliver’s latest series called Jamie At Home. Why, I don’t know, as it’s too good of a show for them. It actually showed excellent recipes in my favorite style of cooking (Mediterranean veg-heavy), and how to prepare them. And the production values were excellent. Jamie lives in the English countryside (nicely filmed) and has a big organic garden on his land, and he’s shown bringing in produce out of his raised beds and tossing it up into various yummy dishes. And he dresses like he picked out his clothes from the remnant table at REI! He doesn’t care about selling crap to the 18-35 year old demographic group, as far as I can see. It’s the antithesis to the overhyped, overdressed, yappy cutesy crap which constitutes the rest of TFN’s programming.
Hey, I’m right there with you. If I hear my Aunt use the word “sammy” or “stoup” one more time, I may lose it.
I saw that Jamie Oliver show as well. Note that the credits include one for a gardener. So it’s not like he’s growing all that produce on his own.
Another cooking show I like is Gordon Ramsay’s The F Word, shown on BBC America. (Those who hate his personality on Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen on Fox should really watch him on The F Word or the British version of Kitchen Nightmares. He’s much more calm on the British shows. I think that the obscene angry persona is an act he puts on at the behest of Fox.) What I like on The F Word is his emphasis on the origins of foodstuffs, particularly meats. In three subsequent years he raised turkeys, pigs and lambs in his back garden with his children and then had the animals slaughtered and butchered (with the slaughtering being broadcast) so that they could be served in the restaurant on the show. What he said was that he wants his children and the audience to understand that the origins of food. He also tries to demonstrate recipes that can be prepared in the home.
I like Bourdain’s comparison of Julia Child and Wretched Ray the Human Muppet. It went something like, “You watch Julia Child and you think, ‘That’s great food right there, and I can make it myself.’ Watching Julia made you want to cook. Watching Ray makes you want to open another bag of Cheetos.”
I’m kind of indifferent to Guy Fieri, but I think he has a fun job. I just have to say he looks like your gumbah Cousin Guido who left NY for LA in the late 80’s and came home for Thanksgiving and shocked Aunt Theresa and Uncle Vinnie.
I like the Unwrapped shows strictly for their soothing mindlessness, very relaxing after a certain kind of day.
I can live with the non-cooking food shows because not every show can, or should, feature a chef cooking. It’s the Food Channel, which covers a wide range of … food. I wish Mark Bittman had a show, I would be inspired to get up off my ass and start cooking something tasty yet simple. I mean, I HAVE his cookbook.
I suppose it’s only logical to assume sometime soon we’re going to see a show on how to whip up a gourmet meal using groceries from a food pantry. And where to find them in our areas.
Unwrapped reminds me of PM Magazine too much. Maybe its the way dude half-shouts everything he says.
I’m never soothed by a 30-minute-long commercial for the most fake and processed comestibles in the world. Okay, someof them are my favourite junk foods. That doesn’t mean I want to watch a commercial narrated by an oily 50s-deejay-voiced dude.
But it’s Mark Summers! He hosted Double Dare! 
The poor guy looks and sounds like he doesn’t want to be there. His mouth is smiling, but his eyes scream for release.
It is, unfortunately, a boring as hell show. Instead of talking so much about the food, they cover the process, which 90% of the time is a standardized assembly line done exactly the same way. If I wanted to see that, I’d watch How It’s Made.
Paula Deen is to southerners as Flavor Flav is to black people. (Discuss.)
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I’ve belted you and flayed you,
By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
They could at least dump slime on him every now and then, or let him dig around a gigantic slice of pizza, just to spice things up.
Back when I lived in the UK, there were three relatively young food writers I used to read about: Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, and Nigel Slater.
Most of us in the US will recognize two of those names. The third was by far the best. But even though he did TV shows with Jamie and Nigella, poor ol’ Nigel Slater never did seem to hit the right tone. A shame, really, as Nigel’s books are better than cookbooks have a right to be: you can’t read them without wanting to knock down a wall to get to the kitchen. But without Jamie’s nous or Nigella’s um, assets, Nigel won’t be seen on the Food Network or anywhere else on US television any day soon.
Or how about a round on that big roller coaster that goes through the pies?
For anyone who may not know:
Paula Deen frightens me. It has something to do with her face. I’m not sure if maybe she’s had too much Botox, or maybe died several years ago and was revivified by a particularly unscrupulous voodoo priest.
So…an embarrassing self-made caricature that you fervently hope is not used as a basis of judgment for your demographic as a whole?
Exactly. They’ve also both made arguably valid contributions to their respective cultures that make the embarrassing caricature that much more painful.
I’m a non-cook who for some reason loves cooking shows. It’s like watching sports, I guess – I may never play a game of basketball in my life, but I enjoy the process and admire the talent involved.
I don’t have Food Network anymore, but when I did, my favorites were Alton Brown (natch), Mario Batali, Giada (although she kinda bugged if I watched her too often, she’s just so earnest). Ming Tsai, and Tyler Florence (sooo cute and charming). I didn’t mind Racheal Ray the way many others do, but then I didn’t watch her that often. Ina had her moments but there’s something offputting about her expensive, perfect-for-that-East Hampton-beach-house recipes.
For low-rent stuff I rather like Unwrapped and Top Five, and to a much lesser degree Diners, Drive-ins and Dives or whatever it’s called. Guy Fieri is acceptable in very very small doses. Sandra Lee, OTOH, is fun to watch merely for mocking purposes. I’m no gourmand by any stretch, but her food just looks awful. I’ve gotten into the Challenges shows for the ‘sport’ of it. And the whole thing that got me into FN in the first place was the original Iron Chef. Take it, Fukui-san!
For non-FN cooking shows, my all-time favorite is of course Julia. I also enjoyed Jeff Smith, especially his focus on historical American dishes; Caprial (her older show, Caprial’s Cafe, was a lot of fun); Marcel Desaulniers’s BurgerMeister and Death By Chocolate – I’d never heard of ganache before him!; America’s Test Kitchen; Food by Floyd, a British export that used to be shown on, uh, E! I think? And The Galloping Gourmet, which I remember watching as a kid after school. He was British, you see, and I had a bit of a crush on his accent.