went bye bye as well....and we've never been happier to get that time back! They are addictive (and pretty vile to tell the truth). We only catch the occasional show on PBS, but even at that, rarely.

In fact, I am watching Cook's Country right now.

Only now it's time for Julia Child, and she is baking with Martha Stewart. It's pretty entertaining.

We have the "Create" channel. But, on Saturdays, the main PBS station also has cooking shows. So, I have a choice of which I want to watch. At 2:00, one is going to have "Cooks Country", and the other is going to have "America's Test Kitchen", which is frustrating. I would like to be able to watch them separately, and maybe later, instead of the home and garden shows that come on.

Great Chefs of New Orleans,
Great Chefs of Chicago,
Great Chefs of San Francisco



I have several of the cookbooks that went with them.

Always interesting and always well narrated,

I mostly missed being able to watch them, though I can't remember why right now.

Here's a quick short from that series;

Shrimp Remoulade from Chef Warren LeRuth

I have a paid subscription with them, but I think all the episodes are available to everyone.

He's still entertainingly cynical, but I find the show very disappointing. It's another damn contest show. He is on the PBS series "The Mind of a Chef", which I think you'd enjoy. You can probably stream the episodes from the PBS web site.

tho MPT doing other stuff now.

Lydia, Julia, Jacques, and Ming available. Saturday's a GOOD cooking day!

(I agree about Man vs Food. Do like Bourdain, including travel aspects.)

Once I got the premise, I switched off and never returned.

Another one that makes me queasy is "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives." Oh, some of the food is probably pretty good, but it's all piled high enough on the plate for a family of four and it's all brown, never a good sign when you're thinking of nutrition.

Even "Iron Chef," where food is fussed over and tweaked beyond all recognition, is gag inducing from time to time.

In fact, I'm pretty much off all the cooking and interior desecration shows these days. If there's nothing on TCM, History or Science, I'm usually off in DVD land. I bought a bunch of BBC series to get me through election season last year and they're still sustaining me.

Honestly, if it weren't for TCM I'd probably have dumped the dish by now. I never had cable programming until late 2006, so it was great for a few years, turning me into a vidiot. Now I've seen nearly everything and the thrill is gone.

I'm a big fan of Marja Vonegerichten's 'Kimchi Chronicles' and Andreas Viestadt's ''New Scandanavian Cooking' both on PBS Create. I wish they would make new episodes of Marja's series, but even if not that, I'm sure we will see a lot more of her.

Especially when he's talking about food network chefs like Paula Deen and Sandra Lee. Speaking of Sandra Lee... WHY is she so popular? That is something I don't understand at all. She buys all these packaged foods, presumably to save time, and then spends a huge amount of time creating elaborate "tablescapes" and garnishes for her cocktails.

I inadvertently watched that Kelsey Nixon show, and I like her! She has a lot of interesting twists and inventions. Although I never made it, I loved her idea for an apple pie milkshake which involves blending vanilla ice cream, milk and a partially frozen piece of leftover apple pie, crust and all.

Giada is someone I thought I would dislike when I first saw her, but now her recipes are staples of mine.

And I like Laura Calder too, on the other food channel, although her show is all reruns.

Paula Deen is just gross. I first got an icky feeling about her when I saw her handling a roast and she called it "this bad boy" and then talked about putting "him" in the oven. My icky feeling was reinforced when I saw her deep frying mac and cheese and making a huge cheeseburger with Krispy Kreme doughnuts as buns.

I used to like Michael Chiarello until I saw him on Top Chef Masters. First, he was flirting so ridiculously with every woman there it made me really uncomfortable! His attitude toward men and women was so blatantly different. Then he chewed some guy out for pronouncing his name wrong. Then I made one of his broccoli soups and didn't like it much. And that was the end of Michael Chiarello in my life.

I used to watch Lydia Bastianich before I switched from cable to satellite (she's not often available to me now), and loved her show, although I got the distinct impression that she's an overbearing control freak.

And finally, I like David Rocco, and not just because he has the most gorgeous eyes I've ever seen.

i can't stand bizarre foods. gross.