Crazy About Food

Network that is.

I cannot believe how addicted I am to this channel. I mean there is actual drama in some of these shows.

Take "Chopped" for instance. You have four chefs that are pitted against one another in preparing an appetizer. Sounds easy, right? I mean throw together some stuffed mushrooms and you're done, right? Nope. You have no idea what they are going to give you to use as ingredients for your appetizer.

Like sea urchin and fennel. Oh, and you also have a time limit of, I think it was twenty minutes. It's interesting to find out what these chefs come up with. For instance, some of these chefs had no idea what to do with sea urchin, or even how to prepare it. After the time is up they have their appetizers go before three judges that are also chefs and owners of restaurants, and are critical of everything. Even if you have an extra spot on your plate.

After getting critiqued, the chefs are brought out and one dish is "chopped." After that three chefs work on an entree, then it's down to two for a desert. With the winner getting, I think, $10,000. Not bad.

My other favorite show is just called the Food Channel Challenge. This is all about cakes, not just any kind of cake either, we're talking three foot tall cakes with very cool designs, well some are train wrecks, but most are AWESOME! In this show they have four bakers(?) that compete against one another to impress a "client" and win $10,000 as well. There are also three judges, but I don't think the client gets a vote, just the cake.

First there is the introduction of the clients. Next the cake makers are given five minutes to interview the client and get some ideas (yeah right). Then they have thirty minutes to come up with a design, and finally eight hours to put it all together. Like I said, some of these cakes are simply amazing, whereas the one we saw tonight was a train wreck. It was so bad that she tried a gimmick of lighting candles, made up of rum and sugar cubes. Didn't go quite the way she intended, as a stage hand hand to extinguish the fire, which included the cake. Funny thing though, the cake looked better after being extinguished. I'm serious.

The final step of the contest is to carry your creating from your counter where you prepared the cake, to another table, I 'd say about five or six feet away. Yes, some of the cakes have fallen. It's actually quite tragic, especially when you realize how much time and effort were put into making this cake. The cakes are then scrutinized by some very important people in the cake making world, again they see things that I would be like, dude it's a three foot cake, I cannot complain about some minor little thing like the incorrect piping being used. Whatever the heck that even is.

So, here I am, trying to lose some weight, watching the Food Channel.

Isn't America great!

God Bless!

Roger