Strangely, not many people come up to us and say, "Annie, old hat, what's your opinion of the Food Network?"
It's a shame, because we have many opinions on this subject, just stirred up by the recent cease-fire between the Scripps network (which produces the Food Network and House and Garden Television, or HGTV) and Cablevision, the provider to millions upon billions of households.
Our opinion is: we like the Food Network because we also like forensics show and medical dramas and hey, even lawyer shows nowadays can suddenly feature some cat in a white coat drawing a dead person's brain out through their nose, or trace the path of a bedbug's bite through seven layers of epidermis.
Have we mentioned that we like to eat in front of the TV? Well, we do. And there's nothing like having to watch one of the aforementioned scenes to really make you lose your appetite.
So we watch the Food Network while eating, just to avoid watching "Bones" or "CSI" or "Grey's Anatomy" or "Law & Order SVU" or "House".
If you've ever watched any of these fine shows, you know that, at any time, the gorgeous leading lady can say to the gorgeous leading gent, "Oh! So you mean that the allen wrench penetrated his liver, thereby causing an effusion of blood to the surrounding tissue and..." We don't like the words that much, but we really hate that allen-wrench-eye-view video of the liver, the effusion, and the surrounding tissue. After a thing like that, we almost don't even care whodunnit.
Now, say we turn on a relaxing Food Network show. Of course we have our favorites here too--we much prefer our spiritual older sister, Ina Garten, and her upper-crusty offerings in her lovely old renovated home, to Guy Fieri, whose definition of the word "food" simply doesn't jive with our own. We like Paula Deen, mostly because she's a good looking old broad and we like the way she dresses. And we like Alton Brown, because his recipes come out fabulous even in our hands.
We don't watch Chopped, which is a dreadful competition in which food professionals, all of them muttering because they aren't on Top Chef, have to buid a meal out of mystery ingredients. And that might sound like Iron Chef to you, but the fact is that the secret ingredient on that show might be, oh, I don't know, "Salmon" or "haricots vert" and, while it will be somewhat amusing to see the chefs make a dessert out of that, it is nothing like the basket of whey, Ring Dings, and Pathmark Vanilla Ice Milk with which the boys and girls have to deal on Chopped.
Also, the judges on Chopped are not happy people, because each chef can only go so far with the ingredients and how often can you say "Well, Patrizio, you really brought out the probiotic 'tang' of the whey but I think you failed to thoroughly explore the Ice Milk's unique flavors"? Very little fun here, folks. Ted Allen, the long-suffering host of the show, barely breaks a smile and, as to Aaron Sanchez, the great New York chef who almost made it to Net Iron Chef fame, he looks like he's just been told of a worlwide shortage of huitelacoche.
So we do like some of the Food Netwrk's offerings, but we must tell you that we actually watch HGTV programs a little more. We'll stop if they ever show a nail gun attack on a human thigh, but for right now we're really into seeing the nice young couple who just want a little more room for the baby (and a brand-new granite countertopped kitchen, a master bath with heated floors and a separate steam shower and soaking tub, and a two-acre yard for the dogs.)
Our favorite show is Income Property, with the flashing-grinned Scott McGilvray as host. Every show, Scott goes to the a particular hoose in which there is some kind of a problem; many times it's a moose in the wainscoting or even a loose which much be doosed with some kind of repellant. Then Sott has to tell the homeowner how much this will cost, which generally rooses him to a fury...oh, sorry. We forgot to mention that the show is taped in Canada. But you might've already figured that out.
