Where Have I Been And WHAT Has Happened To The Food Network?

Oh guys, I’m here, I really am, but clearly I haven’t been putting blogging at the top of my to-do list. And if you’ve been watching the Food Network lately, it’s not too hard to understand why. But there are a couple other things that have been going on to explain my absence, which, I fully admit, are probably pretty boring to anyone not living within my four walls.

First, I’m doing a relatively small renovation which has turned into a really big time sucker. And I’M not even the one knocking down the walls. My town puts many roadblocks in the way of doing things to one’s house and it’s taken a lot of nitpicky action to get things going AND we don’t even start the actual work for a couple of weeks. But, as anybody knows who’s ever done work to his or her house, lots of things, actually EVERYTHING has to be chosen and ordered in advance.

The second thing that’s taken my attention away from blogging (I really buried the lead here) is that my daughter is getting married…in the fall…in California. YAY!!!!!!!

There are a lot of details to work out since it’s an out of town wedding for many of us. The best part of the whole thing, though, is that my daughter is the least Bridezilla of any bride in the universe. She’s concerned about her family and her guests and we haven’t disagreed about anything! (Well, she DID nix the doves…) And a wonderful side effect is that we talk or IM or text many times daily and, frankly, I don’t really care what it’s about. It’s just nice to be in such close communication. I’ve asked her if after the wedding, we can still talk as much and while the answer has not been that reassuring, I’ll take what I can get for now.

But back to my first point… In the last few years, there’s been a lot less of interest to watch on the Food Network and, thus, to write about. Ina and Giada have been banished to Sunday mornings and The Kitchen, which should really be called The Chew 2, has taken a prime Saturday morning spot. And, of course, now competitions rule. I love this article, which talks about how junky the Food Network is getting...literally.

Allen Salkin, author of From Scratch: Inside the Food Network, is quoted. He “sees the junk-food cooking as a sign of decline for a channel that once minted celebrity chefs and acted as something of a middle-brow vanguard for raising America’s culinary knowledge. Now, he says, executives are just ‘regurgitating old show ideas and presenting new ways to make ourselves fatter and sicker.’ ”

Somehow when I watched Paula (remember her?) cooking unbelievably unhealthful food, I looked at it as pure entertainment and not something I would actually replicate in the kitchen. (And you always got the feeling that Paula was in on the joke.) Now, they’re serious!

Plus if the Food Network could clone Bobby Flay, they would. They’ve stretched him from straight cooking shows to competing in cooking competitions, to judging, to mentoring, to mentoring WHILE judging AND competing and every variation therein. Soon they will be happy just to put his name in the title of the show…or maybe the credits. I happen to love Bobby, so seeing him everywhere isn’t the problem. I’m just sorry they don’t think his cooking is good enough to carry an entire show, but apparently just showing his face is good enough to carry an entire network.

There IS one cooking show that I’m very excited about. I’ll tell you about it next time…and soon.

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