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

I’ve given you guys a couple of weeks to catch this show.  What do you think of it?  Does she live up to her “Easy Gourmet” hype?

In case you haven’t seen one of the million promos for her show The Gourmet Next Door, Amy Finley, the winner of last season’s Next Food Network Star, is trying to lead us all down the path of easy fancy food.

Her recipes are a little intimidating when you hear them, but I don’t know if she stands out enough to make it.  I’m on the fence.

Will she be the next Guy Fieri?  Or the next Hearty Boys?

Southern California is on fire, so naturally soup came to mind?  Here in Orange County, I’m surrounded by fires, and while I’m safe where I am right now, my heart and prayers go out to those who are losing their loved ones or homes to the out of control fires in So Cal. 

Onto lighter things.  It’s hot and I needed a distraction, so I decided to watch 30 Minute Meals and make soup.  I know that soup doesn’t traditionally go along with 85 degree weather, but I needed a little soul filling soup.

Weekly Recipe Attempt: Mini Meatball Soup

Right away you can probably see the biggest accidental alteration I made to this soup.  My meatballs aren’t “mini.”  I didn’t listen to Rachael when she told me that these little suckers plump up when they poach.  Oh well.  My bad.  So it took a little longer to cook and I had to break them apart to eat them.  No harm.  No foul.  It tasted just as good to me.

This soup was tasty.  It was easy, too!  Don’t let the long ingredient list fool you.  Most of these things you probably have on hand.  If I had them on hand, you have them on hand.

I give this recipe a 9 out of ten.  It loses a point because it just didn’t knock my socks off.  It was delicious, but not delicious enought to be a ten.

Want to know more about the dashing Dinner Impossible chef, Robert Irvine?  Now you can thanks to the Wall Street Journal’s YouTube posting.  He’s cooked for everyone from royalty to presidents.  Check this out.  It’s pretty interesting.

Simply BORING!

According to 69% of the people who voted, Ingrid Hoffman doesn’t show us the spice she claims to have.  Last weekend I saw her make a bunch of side dish looking things and put all the different gunks into bowls.  The bowls were squares, rectangles, and Ls and they all added up to one big square.  She had enough big squares for each person at a picnic. 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to lug around that much stuff when I’m at the beach.  There’s just nothing “simple” about that.

Here are the official results:

• 59 people said she was simply boring (69% of the votes.)
• 31 people said she was simply delicioso (31% of the votes.)

If you like her, by all means you are entitled to your opinion.  I’m just glad more people agree with me.