JTMacc99

This may have been the only FNS final where I watched the majority of the episode without FF through it. And it is because I was actually engaged in the contestants, mostly because of the work done here, I was interested in seeing the recaps of the season so that I could quickly see the events happen again with my new understanding of who Lenny really is. I was watching Lenny describe foods and assuming that instead of what he said on this show, he really wanted to use the comparisons like his sticky one on the Ron and Fez board. And when he was gushing on about Giada, I was assuming that he really wanted to say the same thing about her as he said about Ree Drummond. Sigh. I am sorry that America didn't have the pleasure of reading what I read. I have spoken with people here at work, mostly women in the 35-65 age range, and they all seemed to be okay with Lenny or even like him. When I tell them that his outside of FNS videos and internet discussions are very crude, they seem interested but unconvinced that it isn't just a couple of bad choices he made. I am 100% confident that if they read or saw the stuff for themselves, they would feel like I do.

That is a very nice write up by Kent Rollins. The one thing it did, and I wish it didn't, was make me less cynical. Rett Syndrome is a truly horrible thing for a little girl and for a family. Any amount of money she won was money going to a good place.

In case anybody is interested in the business side of the Food Network and the Cooking Channel, this is from CableFAX Daily: As an additional fact that may or may not ad color to this, Scripps is an unusual cable network company, in that they get about 2/3 of their total revenue from advertising and about 1/3 from subscription fees. Pretty much all of the other companies are closer to 50/50.

?

I would try that.

Hmm.. Two votes for garlic, which is something I don't do. I probably should, as I have like 30 heads of it I just pulled out of the ground three weeks ago. Also, I like the chili paste idea. I have lots of hot peppers in the garden right now, and I might use one of those to add a little kick. I've got basil on hand, but am short on Cilantro. I plant that late because I want it to be ready when I'm overwhelmed by tomatoes. Anybody ever add watermelon into the mix?

Kent Brockman: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Democracy simply doesn’t work.”

Heh. You know the desert island questions? Like, if you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring five albums with you, what would they be? BY FAR the easiest one of those to answer for me is, "What food would you bring?"

Hmm.. It is Friday night. I'll be picking the kids up from camp today at 4:00, which means I'm leaving work early, so Pizza sounds like a cop out. I can get fresh corn, I already have a boatload of cherry tomatoes and cucumbers in house. I have some chicken & sun dried tomato sausages in the refrigerator. I think I can figure something out with that group of stuff. Anybody have a suggestion for a tomato salad? I'm always looking for variations.

Not a good sign: I fell asleep during the commercial break after the final service and Curtis asking around the table who everybody thought won and before they came back to announce the winner. And when I woke up, I didn't remember what I was watching and went to bed. Hopefully this is just because I spent half of the show muttering "Shut UP Richard", and I will be more engaged in future episodes by either people I like or by people I don't know from the couple of early seasons I didn't watch. But basically, I've got a gut feeling that I won't enjoy this version because part of my enjoyment from TC comes from learning about new people, and there will be almost none of that from this show. Heck, I was more interested in the chefs around the table than I was the chefs cooking.

Couple of thoughts: I met Bob and spent some time at an event with him over a few days. He is a really smart and nice man. I honestly believe that he would be very offended by the things chat board Lenny said. I don't know whether or not the general doctrine at Food Network will be "any publicity is good publicity", but I do believe that the Bob I met would be repulsed by the same things we are. It is interesting to see how Lenny takes on various personalities. In the Youtube video, he was a pro wrestler. On the Ron and Fez chat board, he's a shock jock. On FNS he's a cowboy. He's a pretty interesting guy who very well might have some sort of future in entertainment, but I sure as heck don't think it should be on the Food Network. His tendency to go very crude in his other roles makes him unsuitable for this network. I am horribly, terribly ashamed by the fact that when I watched part of the replay last night, I found myself ending some of Lenny's sentences with [insert crude Lenny statement here.] It is the classic example of something I can't unsee. Now that I read the things he has said, I immediately associate the foul Lenny with the Gourmet Cowboy Lenny. I like the suggestion of making sure that Ree Drummond's husband gets to see it. Heh.

Furthermore, to this beer, I would also like three of your finest, cheapest cigars.

Wow. That is great stuff right there. I would like to think that there is no such thing as a person who in the same thought process would say that he always knew he was going to be a star at the same time he was leaving a trail of written words like that in a public forum. Seriously, unbelievably, inexcusably stupid. And that is just my assessment of the fact he wrote those words. I don't even know where to start with what he actually said and what it says about him.

Voting ended at something like 11:00 AM today didn't it? Seems like they wouldn't have had enough time to coordinate that cruise and immediately send out the name of the winner, especially if the e-mail went out before voting was over. I mean, yes, for sure they could have a pretty good idea who was going to win the voting before 11:00 AM, and yes, they might not really care who wins the voting and just have the winner determined a while ago, but I'm thinking that Luca was going on that cruise whether he finished in first place or third place. They've seen enough of him to decide whether or not they want him around. And I think they definitely appeared to like him enough to use him for stuff regardless of whether or not he wins. *** Of course, this is all irrelevant if that e-mail said something like "2014 FNS Winner Luca!". Which I wouldn't put it past them to do.

Heh. Just because he probably isn't a creepy weirdo didn't get in the way of me choosing to see him that way on Food Network Star.

Scripps made a wise choice to scrap Fine Living and use the distribution it had already established to build the Cooking Channel. And the Cooking Channel is a really nice combination of good new shows and older, but still good, Food Network shows. I personally had to dump my older Time Warner cable package (with some nicely discounted rates grandfathered in) to get into the correct digital package to get the Cooking Channel. It was totally worth dumping Showtime to pick it up. But Scripps definitely sees it as a compliment to the Food Network and not its equal. When they come to the cable and satellite companies, they demand that the Food Network be carried in the basic packages the same way that Disney demands that Disney and ESPN are carried that way and VIacom demands that Nickelodeon and MTV are carried that way. Scripps would like for the Cooking Channel to be part of the deal, but are okay with it being in a digital tier and will even sell Food Network without any agreement at all to also include the Cooking Channel. Viacom would never offer up MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central without also insisting that MTV2, Nick JR, Nick Teen, Nick Toons, and so on are also part of the deal to be offered in a tier that has some sort of minimum number of subscribers. So Scripps has developed a nice product with the Cooking Channel, but I don't think they see it as the equal to the Food Network.

Heh. Does it count as hyperbole if I meant it? I used Pie Style as the extreme example to make my point, but I really think I would have preferred him to Jeffrey Saad. I had him pegged as a creepy weirdo who would steal your girlfriend, make your dog growl whenever he came in the room and make your children say, "mommy, I don't like that man", and there was no getting that thought out of my head.

Jeffrey Saad is by far my least favorite person who was generally well liked. I have no idea why, but I disliked the cut of his jib. I didn't like the way he described things. I didn't care for style of food he made. If I were at an event with my kids and he was there, I would have made sure to keep them far away from that guy. That was a rough season for me, because I was left with Melissa as the alternative. Hell, I would have rooted for Pie Style over Jeffrey.

I guess I'm rooting for Luca to win. I don't like the fact that Lenny is play acting his POV. I do understand that sometimes on TV you need to turn your personality up to 11, but Lenny's turning somebody else's personality up to 11, so I would have a hard time believing anything he says. So I would prefer that Luca gets the regular gig and the "honor" of winning the contest. He does have a shot at becoming decent and likeable on TV. And I don't want Nicole to win because I am sure that I would watch her on TV, but she needs to dropped into a role where she can grow and succeed. Putting her into the standing around in the kitchen Saturday morning format will not the be best use of her to start. You either need a schtick, or a lot of life experience with lots of stories to pull off the 30 minute straight cooking show. Farming her out to the Cooking Channel and giving her something to grow into, on the other hand, would probably work out very well.

Heh. I am pretty sure he's playing a role, but I'm not so sure about Jethro. Looking back on it, he was a very good Food Network Star contestant. He was up for anything. He made a lot well received food. He had a hook. But I fail to see how pretending to be somebody you aren't can have a long life outside of this show. Maybe he can keep it up for a year or two, but after that? Then what? I think we've seen the Paul Reubens to his Pee Wee Herman. I imagine that eventually Cowboy Lenny is going to take off his belt buckle and hat and go out in public that way.

That's all it costs? I would definitely pony up that money if I didn't have access to the complimentary issues. It's interesting how I've changed my methods for accumulating cooking knowledge. First it was books and magazines. Then it was TV. Now it's back to magazines and internet. I think the TV was an important part, as I got to actually see a bunch of people do things in front of me. For example, I saw ten different ways to cut up a bell pepper and eventually found one guy who showed a way I like. And for sure, TV tips can stick with me more than written tips, because I can see them working, like hot pan, cold oil and not cold pan, cold oil. But now that I've got the gist of it, I tend to watch food TV to be entertained and not to learn a whole heck of a lot these days. And I think that is why I was surprised by how much I liked the Food Network Magazine. I associate Food Network with being entertained, and then I flipped through the magazine and learned some stuff and got inspired to cook stuff.

Wow. I wish I could be there.

The show worked very hard this year to make the contestants look foolish. I generally assume that a majority of the people they roll through this show are, in fact, reality show clowns and would look foolish regardless of the challenges. But I also assume that there are a few who genuinely love to cook and teach and really want to do it for a living on TV. But this year, with the Youtube and the create and package your own product, but pretend you are on the Eiffel Tower when you do it, and so on...

Has anybody here ever picked up a copy of the Food Network Magazine? Scripps has been sending them to us here at work, and I have to say, the magazine is really nice. Classic food porn, with tons of pictures and recipes. The last couple of months have a little pull-out booklet with 50 recipes on some sort of theme. Last time I grabbed the 50 salads and have made three of them already. Not that it would be hard for me to find a recipe for black bean and corn salad, but just seeing it in the booklet made me try it with great success. I also made the Mediterranean chick pea salad (with feta and kalamata olives) and now am on the third version of it. The original was great, but I've taken to adding in some of the fresh stuff from my garden. And to be fair, that's what I do with most recipes for things like salads. I like the ideas I got from the magazine and for sure the dressing ratios, but after that I'm on my own. This month showed up yesterday and I grabbed two inserts out of it: 50 Pasta Dinners (gonna try the artichoke-zucchini), and the special Food Network Magazine Kids. I think I can get on board with Meatball Monday. I know that I have two little people in my house who might be willing to participate to make that happen.

But Lenny invented it when a can of coffee fell off of the shelf and onto the grill! How could that story not be true??? Sigh. It's funny. When you are so full of shit that people have set their meters to the appropriate level, you can totally get away with making up stories like that. People not only don't question the stories, but they find them endearing. Maybe Nicole should have proclaimed herself the mistress of cured meats and walked around in dresses with pictures of deli meats on them for a year before deciding that it didn't matter if she used prosciutto instead of Serrano ham.