I like to watch HGTV when I have the chance, and I enjoy every version of House Hunters that has been created. I don’t have a lot of time to watch television, but I am also partial to the Food Network. I am not a professional chef (not at all, I have never even attended a real cooking class), but I love to cook and bake. There’s only one big problem with every show on the Food Network: they make me hungry.
The best way to watch any show on the Food Network is with a snack in one hand and the remote control in the other hand. No matter what show it is, as soon as I turn it on, I am hungry. Somehow on TV everything just looks so tasty.
It can be 11:00 at night, 9:00 am or noon, and no matter what they are cooking or baking on any show, I start to crave it. Meat and potatoes, fresh fish, vegetables or a decadent dessert, I want it.
As I write, I am watching Top Chef, a show that’s been on the Food Network for 15 seasons. It brings together some of the greatest chefs. The show is a mix of big egos, competition and great food. Sometimes the food they cook looks so good on my TV screen that I just want to reach in and grab it. I can’t get through an episode without heading to the kitchen to grab a snack, usually a big snack.
I went through a phase when I wanted to watch Chopped all the time, but I have little patience for that one anymore. Four chefs are given a basket of ingredients that they must include in a dish they are cooking for a panel of three judges. By the end of the third round, the final person is chopped and a winner is declared. Sometimes they cook scrumptious looking dishes, but they often run out of time and throw a mess onto the plate. That doesn’t make me quite as hungry.
Then there is Master Chef. This show doesn’t actually air on the Food Network, but hey, it’s a show about food so it fits in here. While I often watch Food Network shows on my own, my whole family joins me for Master Chef. And we have learned that the only way to watch this show is while we eat dinner.
When this show’s main host, Gordon Ramsay, holds a master class for the group of amateur chefs, I watch in fascination then can’t wait to cook the dishes myself. I literally can feel myself (and David) salivating as we watch the master of all master chefs himself cook anything. He could probably make stale bread taste good.
The Food Network has shown me that cooking is not just about eating, it’s also about creating incredible works of art. It’s about bringing flavours and aromas together with design and flair. Today’s professional chefs need to cook food that tastes good and looks great. Not an easy task. And if they are really talented, they have stage presence as well and can snag a TV deal.
But at its core, the Food Network is about eating. You can do all kinds of crazy things with food but at the end of the day, what we all want to do is just eat it. And the best shows on this channel make me want to eat immediately. Just writing about food makes me hungry, I need a snack. Now.