Your best Food Network peeves

Leaving the obvious annoying personalities and the fact that most of the actual chefs are no longer around out of it, what are your peeves about FN? I’ll start with two.

  1. Miracle Whip and Cool Whip. Sandra Lee uses the latter all the time and today, on “Down Home With The Neelys” there was a jar of the former in the cabinet. Puke.

  2. Jalapeño. Absolutely no one can pronounce this properly. “Hal-a-PEE-no”. Makes me want to throw a shoe.

Emeril “the Ewok” Lagasse can’t pronounce cinnamon, and it doesn’t even have a confusingly foreign tilde.

I don’t know if she qualifies as “obviously annoying”, but I can’t stand the sight or sound of Ina Garten.

I’m much more annoyed by her spinless wuss of a husband.

Yes, of course, not to mention him.

I can’t help catching bits and pieces of that show because, for some reason, my wife watches it occasionally. Whenever Ina Garten makes coyly suggestive references to having a nice romantic evening with her husband, I shudder inside.

  1. Paula Dean is adored and has made millions of dollars by making cream of mushroom soup-based casseroles in her “down-home” fat-laden, white trash cooking.

  2. Good Eats. It started out as an informative program but it has deteriorated into four minutes of useful information and 36 minutes of painfully sophomoric skits.

  3. Giada De Laurentiis’s big melon head.

[imwithstupid.gif]

Food as competition.
Best, Jim

And T-rex stubby arms. [wow.gif]
But seriously, I hate the way she pronounces spa-gee-tee.
I’m no expert on the Italian language, but why would the e and the i be pronounced the same way?

The funny thing about Jeffrey is that he held a cabinet post in the Clinton administration and was a dean at Yale. It’s hard to reconcile his accomplishments with the hamster he appears to be on Ina’s shows. And yes, Noel, I cringe at her romance stuff too, but Paula Deen is even worse in that respect.

When my daughter was born in 1997, I spent countless hours feeding her and rocking her to sleep, and that’s when I discovered the Food Network. No matter what time it was, I could turn it on and watch someone cook something interesting. Now, the Food Network is to cooking what MTV is to music: there’s a vague idea that they used to show it, but now it’s mostly semi-related trash. I yearn for the days when their resident fat guy was Mario Batali instead of this doofus:

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Over-pronunciation of foreign words is punishable by a swift slap upside the bobblehead!

Just heard on the FN: “When making mashed potatoes, don’t use waxy potatoes. You want to use a high-starch potato like a Russet or an Idaho.” I kid you not.

Someone alert Roberto.

I have to channel Fleming here…anytime somebody throw a hunk of cow on a grill and says they are bar-b-cue’ing it.

Who notices the arms when those melons are staring you in the face?

Yep, and right now they’re showing a competition for who gets to bake Miley Cyrus’16th birthday cake at Disneyland. The judges are 12-year-old girls. Holy crap! What dreck.

Almost all of it…Oh, if I happen to catch Everyday Italian I might watch Giada depending on what she’s wearing and I used to like Good Eats but as mentioned before its not what it was. Paula Dean is just awful as is the Bigfoot Contessa. I don’t mind Sandra b/c she isn’t pretending to be anything other than someone who can help working mom’s short cut stuff. Which isn’t my cup of tea …but, come to think of it I haven’t watcher for more 15 seconds.

John

Oh god, where to start? I think the most annoying is the way they have transformed from an actual cooking network that, you know, showed people cooking to a network that is trying to get the lowest common denominator market by making reality shows, travel shows, competitions, etc. It’s really depressing. I want to pick up interesting techniques not watch a bunch of untalented jagoffs compete to be the next food network star. Ugh. The guy who won last year didn’t know what a chipotle was. Seriously. What am I going to learn from this chucklefuck? I’ve considered emailing them a million times but I know it’s pointless. Maybe a petition?

That’s a good one; gave me my first laugh of the day.

I spent a couple of weeks in Indiana (my sister’s house in McCordsville) in late December 2006 -January 2007 and had a very difficult time finding good Bdx ad Burg. Kahn’s had a few interesting bottles, but nothing really very good when I was there. Could you recommend some shops for next I go?

Thanks,

N

Which Kahn’s did you go to? The one near on Keystone is the best, I think. I don’t shop in Indy much. John Coop, a poster here, knows the Indy wine scene a lot better than I. Sorry, I can’t be of more help. Frankly, there isn’t a lot to choose in Burgs or Bdx anywhere that I know of, but, like I said, I don’t get to Indy for wine much.

John

I believe that’s the one I went to (twice). “Keystone” definitely rings a bell.

N