Foodtv

I admit it. I'm a Food Network watcher. And have been for a long, long time. As one who watches, not avidly as in every day, but enough to distinguish shows, I've amassed some observations about the 'chefs', or rather, personalities on the shows.

First let me start by stating I'm not a Rachel Ray devotee. I find her cutesy, 'Rachelisms": EVOO, YumO, Sammy, Delish--annoying rather than endearing. I understand why the network found her appealing, and why more than half the nation finds her appealing. She is the average, girl next door, simpleton, who can whip up half hour meals, apparently all the time we have in our days to put a meal on the table from start to finish. My dislike of her stems not only from these annoying personality ticks now part of her schtick, but rather from the fact that none of her dishes look all that delicious. It's like she's incorporated all the ideas of good food for the fast food life. You can see the complete juxtaposition of such a good idea. There are some things that shouldn't be rushed because in the rushing you miss the true elements and beauty of the process of what you create.

Another chef, who is no longer on the network as they move away from chefs to personalities, is Mario Batali, the antithesis of Rachel Ray. For this man, no time is too long to create a delicacy that will be as memorable as that first kiss. His recipes were as complex as the most complex algorithm. And the beauty of it was his absolute ardor for all things culinary. His rotund figure speaks to a life spent satiating those very basic needs to the maximum. One can imagine how much fun he'd be late night with plates of delicacies and bottles of wine.

One of those sad replacements for Batali is a woman named, Sandra Lee. Where does one start with this Barbie doll looking woman? She is part trailer trash, part Stepford wife, and obviously some powerful executive's wife since it's hard to fathom how she got this show. Her only redeeming quality and the only thing I find endlessly amusing about her show is how every show ends with her "Tablescape," and potent cocktails. I wouldn't eat anything coming out of her kitchen even if it was the only food left, but I would certainly drink her hefty cocktails.

Then there's folksy Paula Deen, whose personal story is compelling. Her folksyness is, much like Ray's, bordering on the kitsch since it is such a schtick of what the network has told her they want from her. She seems to become more Southern, more bellicose, bigger in personality with more air time. Even her sons now have a show of their own where they drive around the country looking for food, of course.

The one chef, whose personality is nearly nonexistent, is the Jewish Housewife with Good Taste, The Barefoot Contessa. This one woman has done more to demolish the stereotype that Jewish women can't cook but make excellent reservations. This woman cooks. And with lots of butter. It is as if she never really got over Julia Child's eponymous: The Art of French Cooking. But everything she makes looks delicious, and a recipe I would be happy to attempt in my own kitchen. Unlike the other chefs, whose outsize personalities, seem to distract from the fact that they are cooking crap, she is as scintillating as a librarian discussing the Dewey Decimal System.

It is her personal life, those bits of her life revealed once camera lights are turned off, I find fascinating. First, there is the nebbish husband, whose job is far enough away to warrant he stays away Monday through Friday, so that she has endless shows devoted to meals for his return. Hmmm. Then there is the fact she is childless. Again, very interesting. Yes, the reasons why she may not have had children may be something that saddens them both. But it does give me endless speculation about, not only the why, but how come. However, the thing about her life that trumps all these others is the fact she seems to only have gay male friends. Every party for which she is preparing, including a Bridge party, ends with her surrounded by three or four gay men, all of them raising their glasses in a toast. Most straight women have a handful of gay male friends, particularly those women with personalities that border on the drag queen mode--I am one of them. Does this mean, off camera, she's a hard-swigging, foul mouthed, hilarious woman, who keep all of those gay men in stitches? It is a fascinating thought.

It is now the time of year when each chef devotes a show to the holiday meal. Again, all great stuff. I don't know why I find watching these shows endlessly entertaining. I just do. If I need a quiet moment in the day, a time to retreat, I turn on the Food Network to, hoping to catch any one of these new celebrities turning the preparation of food into entertainment. No one, other than the Two Fat Ladies, was, or is as entertaining as the originator--Julia Child. But that's a rather high bar for one to surpass.