Food Network Challenge

The challenge has returned, but seemingly tooled for budget tastes.

in the last few months, several new (but old) faces have sprung up (martha stewart, allison hannigan, paige davis and maureen mccormick, etc) on the food network as hosts. new faces are often good, and some folks deal with it better than others. in the case of ian zierling on the revamped network challenge, eh, it's ok. i have to admit i never watched 90210 or the shark storm movies, so i wasn't aware of the "special" pronunciation of his 1st name.

the episode last night was based on "back to the future" movies, which treated us to ian in marty mcfly garb and making funny little movie jokes. it seems like it's sort of close to "worst cooks" in terms of the level of humor they're trying to inject. i don't remember this being a part of the show, and really, it's ok. it isn't scheduled viewing, but it is still fun.

Not that it was cool at the time, but I was a huge fan of the cooking channel, as it was called then, when I was a kid, but for years and years and years I completely lost interest, but have noticed recently that the Food Network is literally overflowing with surprisingly fascinating shows, one of my favorite of which is my recently discovered Food Network Challenge, which combines one of my childhood favorites, the cooking channel, with one of my other childhood favorites, the Guinness Book of World Records. Granted, not every episode is centered around an attempt, or multiple attempts, to set a new world record, but the challenges that make up the premise of each episode are almost always fascinating ideas to test the current limits of culinary capabilities by some of the best chefs around the world. Certainly, the show is not for everyone, but anyone not interested in seeing an attempt to make the tallest structure entirely out of sugar (and, incidentally, modeled after some famous American skyscraper) or the highest pizza toss is someone I would wonder about. I can't really think of a practical use of being able to cook 555 pancakes in an hour or scoop 20 ice cream cones in a minute, or even to make a massive, intricate, and extremely delicate sculpture out of various types of melted sugar (even if it was made to be eaten, which almost nothing on the Food Network Challenge is), even if they are made to look like Elvis or Gene Simmons, but it sure is fun to watch.

Nobody can tell me that Kerry Vincent, the Nurse Ratchet of cake baking shows, isn't in love with the Extremely overcast Bronwen Weber. Almost ever time this oddly named baker comes on, and it is way too often, Vincent fawns all over her finished product like a proud mother, while ditzing other contestants. My wife noticed this too. What is the criteria for being cast on these shows since Weber is cast so often and out of sync with other contestants? I mean, winners get $10,000, and Weber has been winning a lot. It's not fair to others, I mean she must have been on 40 of these shows.

Her cakes are good, but not always the best. Seems like a corrupt show to me.