foodtvandme.com is the unofficial food network fansite with news, reviews, and my attempts at those great recipes you see on tv.

Thanks to an e-mail I received from Erica Cerulo this week, I caught an interesting glimpse into the mind of the modern day man.  Erica pointed me to an article in Details Magazine entitled, Sexpots in the Kitchen by Jeff Gordinier.  Fellow food Blogger, Adam Byrd also caught the article, and was quoted in the article, no doubt due to it’s detailed homage to Giada and her “reach.” 

According to the article,  “(The Giada Reach) happens whenever Giada De Laurentiis…spies a key ingredient—extra-virgin olive oil, juicy Italian sausage, whatever—that seems to have been placed ever-so-slightly too far away from the stove. She must therefore lurch forward for the ingredient, and into the camera, leaving the viewer with no choice but to zero in on the scooped neck of her shirt.”

This is the fascination - sexy women in the kitchen.  It’s so simple, yet, so effective.  The modern day woman has forgotten this alluring trick.  We go off to jobs, earn oodles of money, go to the gym, and run errands like pros, but somewhere amongst saving the world, something had to give.  So we dropped cooking off the schedule and made it an endangered species. 

I’m all for throwing guys for a loop and doing a throwback to the hoop skirt era, but I can’t help but be reminded of an old acquaintance of mine.  I dated someone a while back who was more turned on by me in an apron than me in a low cut shirt, and I have to admit I was a bit offended.  I work so hard to look attractive, and ended up getting more attention in a huge, unflattering apron with flour on my face and nutmeg in my hair.  This guy is no longer in my life for a lot of archaic reasons such as these and other pretty stupid things, but alas, this article brought some of the inter workings of man to life.

I ask you.  Where is the article about how sexy a man is in an apron?  I would love it if a guy came over to my apartment with bags full of ingredients, threw on my pink apron and started to whip up some risotto.  I think this allurement works both ways.

In the end of the article, Gordinier redeems himself a bit by quoting fellow blogger, Adam Byrd, explaining the attraction.  “In the end, what’s alluring and subversive about the image of a cheerful lass in an apron is not that she’s playing a housewife per se, but that she appears to be . . . enjoying it. “Because of feminism,” says Byrd, “it’s kind of taboo to want that.”

That makes sense.  I can get behind that.  It’s not ok to wait around like a sad puppy expecting the woman to wait on you hand and foot.  Enjoy me in an apron, but also drool when you see me in a little black dress.  Or better yet, a white tank top and jeans. 

All in all this was a fun article to read and comment on.  Please check it out.  There is also a fun little slide show of sexy TV food women to check out.  They call Sandra Lee the “Stepford Wife” of cooking, and Nigella Lawson the “food-sex” fusion goddess.

All comments are welcome on this.  For Adam’s take, check out his blog. 

I don’t shop on eBay.  I don’t buy kitchen stuff online.  I want to see the product in person before ordering from Foodnetwork.com. If I’m going to spend $100 on a knife, I want to see it close up.  (Honestly, I probably won’t spend that much on a knife, but if I had the means, I might consider it and I’d still like to see it close up.)  Lack of opportunity has prevented me from purchasing, or looking at, those highly profiled kitchen gadgets we see everyday from our favorite chefs. 

That is about to change, my friends.  According to chron.com, we will be able to peruse those fun kitchen items at Kohl’s department stores in the fall of 2007, just in time for the holidays.  Maybe I should start making next year’s Christmas list now. 

According to the article, “Food Network’s celebrity chefs will be involved in marketing the products, which also include kitchen electronics, table linens, cutlery and pantryware.”  Maybe they’ll even have W there to help us pick out the right crock pot or frying pan for whatever our culinary dillemma may be.  Thanks, Kohl’s!

This week’s recipe was an ambitious attempt on my part.  I decided to try to make a pot roast.  Me and slow cooking don’t go together, but I saw Dave do this so easily, and inexpensivley, that I thought I could give it a whirl.  I had carrots and onions, so all I had to do was pick up some potatoes and a piece of beef, and I was set.  Fortunately for me, pot roast meat was on sale.  I forget what kind of roast it was, but it did say “Pot Roast” on the label, so I thought I couldn’t go wrong.

Weekly recipe attempt: Red Wine Pot Roast with Honey and Thyme

Things were going smoothly with this recipe, in the beginning, anyway.  I did a fine job at browning the meat.  I managed to set it aside while the vegtables sauteed without dropping it on the ground.  I didn’t burn the vegtables.  I put the lid on it and managed to get it into the oven without incident.  Everything was cooking.  Everything was bubbling.  I was patiently waiting for a couple of hours.  Things were going well and I was very engouraged, until, to my peril, I had a lightbulb moment.  The meat that I had bought was significantly smaller, I mean about half the size of Dave’s meat, which meant, it needed less time.  Oh no.  I had this lightbulb moment fairly late in the game.

When I took the pot out of the oven, things looked ok.  I tried a carrot.  It was cooked.  A bit sweeter than I thought it would be (more on that later) but my panic began to subside.  I then cut into the meat.  It wasn’t pot roasty at all.  It was flakey and not in a good way.  I was saddened.  This is the problem with slow cooking.  You look forward to something for two hours or more, and if it doesn’t work out, you just wasted two hours and have no food.  I, however, thought that perhaps, covering it with gravy would make things better.  Covering any food with gravy or sauce usually does a pretty good job at covering the flaws. 

I poured the gravy over the mound of food, and things, once again, seemed ok.  But (remember the carrot) when I tasted the gravy, it was sweet.  Really sweet.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what I was expecting or what I was looking forward too.  Maybe it was supposed to be that way, and I just didn’t care for it.  I tried to add salt, lots and lots of salt, but it didn’t work.  Maybe I shouldn’t have substituted red onions for white.  Maybe the sweetness was too much, but I doubt it.  But in any case, it wasn’t the deliciousness I was expecting. 

I think it will be a while before I attempt another slow cooked meal.  I give this pot roast a 5 out of 10.

I was sorry that I haven’t had a chance to catch the show, but after reading the reviews, I think I might have made the right choice, for me anyway.  The fears that I had about Rachael Ray’s new daytime talk show, which premiered this week, were that her bubbly attitude would go on for an hour.  According to many reviews, it did.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Rachael Ray, but I can only take 30 minutes of her.  I can actually only take 30 Minute Meals of here, I’ve never gotten into her other Food Network shows. 

According to viewers, Ray sticks to what she knows, quick time saving tricks and never ceasing energy.  I have to admit, this combination might work.  She doesn’t claim to be an expert on anything.  She doesn’t even claim to be a gormet cook.  She’s just trying to be everyone’s overachieving big sister, which kind of works for her.  She does say, and do, everything with a smile.  Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times News Service, agrees that this one-two cheerfulness punch might turn out to be a winner.  To read her full story on the show, click here for an article in the Chronic Herald .

For a more comprehensive run-down of the show, feel free to go to our blogging Rachael Ray guru, Madeline with her Everything Rachael Ray site.  She has many more reviews along with her own take on the show.  Feel free to let me know what you think.

Check local listings for Rachael Ray’s new daytime show.  Here in the O.C. her show is on CBS at 9am.  Set those Tivos!

In an article published today by the Chicago Sun-Times, Florence says that he writes for us common cooks, as opposed to seasoned chefs.  The “ultimate” chef is holding book signings in Chicago for his new cook book, Tyler’s Ultimate: Brilliant Simple Food to Make Anytime.  With this new book, he is trying to reach novice cooks as opposed to professional chefs.  The article states, “I don’t write for chefs, they know how to cook. I write for everyone else,” said Florence. “This cookbook will be one that people will use.”

For more information on dates and locations of the book signings, please visit the online article by clicking here.

This week’s attempt was a simple one: salad.  I always love making salads in a pinch for a meal, but I usually use dressing from a bottle.  Today, I thought I would take a que from the quick-cooking queen herself, Rachael Ray, and make one of her lovely little salad dressings for a tasty, healthy weeknight meal.

Weekly Recipe Attempt:  Iceberg Lettuce Chopped Salad with “French” Dressing

This is simply a salad.  I suggest adding whatever you want for the bed of the salad.  I added canned, sliced beets because I love them and they happened to be in my pantry.  Corn would have been delicious on this salad, but that I did not have.  Rachael had cucumber, carrots and radishes.  I didn’t have any of these things on hand, so they didn’t make the cut.  The radishes would have been a pretty addition to match the dressing.

As for the dressing, it actually did taste like French dressing.  It may not have been that brilliant red color like most of the bottled stuff, but it looked real.  And I knew what was in it, which is always a plus. I think a dash or two of hot sauce woiuld have spiced up the dressing, but I thought of that after I sat down to eat.  I was too hungry to go back to the kitchen at that point to add another ingredient.

All in all, I give this recipe a 6.  I know the score is pretty low, but this recipe lacks the “wow” factor.  I do like it’s versatiltity, but let’s face it, it’s a salad.   Most salad ingredients are pretty interchangeable.  I don’t know that I’ll make this particular salad again for a while.  It was a little to boring for me.

I didn’t watch him enough and now he’s gone!  According to an article this morning in the St. Petersburg Times Online, the Food Network says that viewership numbers drive the programming.  If you don’t like the fact that they cancelled Molto Mario, in all honesty, you probably didn’t watch it as faithfully as Emeril. Or you didn’t go onto enough blogs to petition your friends to tune into the soft spoken Italian man. 

In any case, the article also states that the 5 most popular shows this month are Iron Chef America, Throwdown With Bobby Flay, Road Tasted and the new Ace of Cakes.  I looked at the list and found it strange that all of these shows have mostly male cooks (the only female is Cat Cora from Iron Chef America.)  The core audience, according to the article, is mostly women.  Maybe we like to see hot chefs cooking tasty dishes.  I don’t know. 

This was a fun article to read.  It also pokes a little fun at us bloggers who love to voice our opinions about various chefs and the way the sometimes over decorate thier tables or use too much butter.  Check it out and let me know what you think. 

And I’m not the only one!  Fellow blogger jrs agrees that Nigella will be an interesting addition to the sometimes-too-yankee station, Food Network.  Jrs also brings up an interesting point, will there be a grudge match between already established European-American chef Giada DeLaurentiis and newcommer Nigella?  I have to admit, I knew who Nigella was before I knew Giada.  I came upon Nigella’s previous show on the Style Network early one morning while channel surfing before I left for work.  I was hooked, and then it was gone.  Not long after I came upon Giada and my thirst for exotic, yet easy food was quenched once again. 

I’ll have to see the new show to see if Nigella Americanzes things too much, like using pounds of flour as opposed to kilograms, or starts saying cilantro as opposed to coriander.  I liked the English version.  It was like I accidentally hacked into an English cooking station.  She also looks like she actually eats what she cooks.  With Giada, I sometimes feel that the only bites of the food she actually eats are the ones that we see on camera.

I’ll have to wait until October before I can difinitively choose a favorite.

Please visit the food network addict site to see more on Nigella.

I’m just not one of them.  According to an article on azstarnet.com released today, September 11th, Paula Deen has mass market appeal and lots of loving fans who follow her around.  I’m not going to lie.  If I saw the “Grandma of Southern Cooking” in a supermarket, I would probably stop and look.  OK, I’d probably try to get an interview, but that goes for any T.V. star I could recognize.  I just don’t see her appeal.

Paula Deen has become a toursit magnet for Savannah, Ga, the Deep Fried Queen’s home town.  According to the article, people actually go there in hopes of getting a glimpse of the gray haired cook.    “Paula Deen is why we came to Savannah,” said Gerry Adams, 59, of Fort Myers, Fla., reports Russ Bynum of the Associated Press.

Now that’s what I really don’t get.  Going across state lines to get a glipse of the butter packing chef.  I could see trying to spot Dave Leiberman in New York, or Giada in Los Angeles, if you happen to be in the neghborhood, but Paula?  Maybe she’s easier for people to spot.  Or fans can hear her annoying voice from a couple of states away.  I guess I’m glad that I live half the country away from her.  That way there is little chance of running into her, or her equally annoying offspring.

I apologize if there are any Paula lovers out there. If you disagree, please feel free to voice your opinion.  Maybe one of you can shine some light on her appeal.

Want to see the action of food competition live and in person?  Well if you’re from Colorado, hang onto your spatulas because two tapings of Food Network Challenge are taking place in September. 

The first challenge takes place on September 21st, in Centennial, Colorado at the Comcast Media Center.  Watch the chefs construct chocolate creations with the Chocolate Runway Challenge.

The second challenge takes place the following day at the same location.  This time the chefs take on cakes in the Food Network Awards Cake Challenge. 

For more information please visit FoodNetwork.com.