My Favorite: Food Network Shows

I have to tell you guys something, I love food. I'm what you would consider a foodie, and enjoy eating and looking at delicious food. I also love television. So I'm lucky that the Food Network exists to appeal to two of my loves. Now one would think that Food Network would have a limited selection of programs, but you would be wrong. Food Network has your basic how-to-cook shows, but there are so many other shows that Food Network offers and I'm going to list some of my favorites to you:

Food Network Challenge- The big grand daddy of the competition shows. This is a food competition show that deals with a variety of different competitions, from BBQ to Sugar, but they often focus on my favorite the Cake battles. This show often revels in the drama that is created, sometimes a little too much (like how it makes the moving the finished cake to the judging table an event, even though dropping a cake very rarely happens). But it is so amazing to see all the cakes that are created in the limited amount of time they have.

Ace of Cakes- Duff Goldman is a pastry chef who made a few appearances on Food Network Challenge. He never won, but amazed everyone with his extreme cake designs often featuring movement and other elements. The executives then came up with an idea, a docu soap show that follows the day-to-day dealings of Duff and his employees at Charm City Cakes and the cakes made. It is so much fun to watch Duff and crew create these amazing cakes and having fun. This is a show that makes you want to hang out with them and order a cake. The employees are larger than life and add life to the show. This is a personal favorite of mine, and I was really upset to see it end.

Cupcake Wars- This show has become a new favorite of mine. This is a competition show based around cupcakes that is as light and fluffy as the cupcakes the show revolves around. This show doesn't have the heavy drama and overall polish of Challenge, but is a fun little dish that revolves around creating unique displays and cupcakes with unusual ingredients. It's definitely formulaic and sometimes predictable, but it's often a fun romp that enjoyable like a favorite romantic comedy.

The Best Thing I Ever Ate- This show is probably the best example of food porn, it's a show entirely devoted to Food Network personalties and chefs describe food from restaurants that they think is the best of a certain topic (like BBQ or breakfast). Now I imagine this sounds like a boring show, but it's really amazing. The people on this show describe these meals like how you would describe an amazing meal to a friend, and they often go into the making of this delectable dishes, to a certain extent (it's a pretty safe bet that every meal has at least one secret ingredient, especially if it's a specialty dish). It reveals in amazing food, often with humor and exemplifies what Food Network is about.

Now this is a short list of what I like, if there's a Food Network show you really enjoy: mention it in the comments, I'm really curious what other television foodies think. But before I end this, I would be remiss if I didn't mention another show I liked. That show is Dinner:Impossible, and I like it for three reasons:

CHEF ROBERT IRVINE. "What do you mean by that?" Just look:

Yum, yum. <3

It's a Family Guy!

Last night I was able to watch the Adult Swim premiere of the third Family Guy Star Wars episode "It's a Trap!". This was my first time watching this episode and I wanted to write out some thoughts on it.


First some background info, Family Guy had a large amount of Star Wars jokes that were being used in the show. Eventually everyone realized that they could do a parody of the first Star Wars movie (A New Hope) with all the Family Guy characters taking on the roles of the various Star Wars characters: Chris became Luke, Peter was Han, etc... This episode was "Blue Harvest" and it was a huge success. It was created during a time when Family Guy was stagnating in quality and was one of the best episodes the series had ever produced.
An example of the awesomeness of Blue Harvest:


Well, due to success of "Blue Harvest", Family Guy produced another episode based on The Empire Strikes Back ("Something, Something, Something Dark Side"), many people I knew thought this episode was considerably weaker to "Blue Harvest", I personally found "Dark Side" okay, they're definitely was some unusually character casting choices: Mort Goldman as Lando and Carter (whom played Uncle Owen in the previous episode) playing the Emperor. Both work really well so I can't argue, the episode just didn't have the same wonder and amazing newness of "Blue Harvest".


Eventually it seemed mandatory that Family Guy needed to make an episode based on Return of the Jedi, and they did just that. If "Dark Side" had some questionable casting choices, then "Trap" was even worse: because they ventured outside the characters of Family Guy and included characters from Seth Mcfarlene's other shows, American Dad and Cleveland Show. I feel like this was kind of lazy, the other episodes never featured these other characters in nothing more than a cameo (Roger from American Dad can be seen in the background at the Catina), I feel like they just put these characters in just because they were really popular. But, the jokes were pretty good, better than "Dark Side". In fact there was actually a Consuela joke I really liked. I never appreciated Family Guy shoving her in the show as much as possible, but the scene she was in was hilarious, it made the episode for me.
I couldn't find the joke but here's a different scene from "It's a Trap!"



So should you see this episode? I say yes, all the Star Wars Family Guy episodes are of a reliably good quality, much more reliable than the normal episodes. "It's a Trap!" is available right now for free, so I would recommend checking it out.


A final note, Family Guy has said in the show that they wouldn't do the Star Wars prequels. But I would love it, if Family Guy did a Indiana Jones episode like they do with the Star Wars episodes. They use so many Indiana Jones jokes (as many or maybe even more than Star Wars jokes) I think it would be really fun. What do you guys think?

The Buffet Opens and E3 Awaits...

So welcome to the Pop Culture Buffet, I here to serve you opinions on various topics in media. And I wanted to start this blog off with some initial thoughts on E3.


-First, I'm excited to see the new console Nintendo has coming out. I'm pretty sure it's going HD, but other than that I'm not expecting anything too revolutionary, the Motion-Plus is supposed to be the ultimate motion control experience from Nintendo, so it's either going to include Motion-Plus out of the box or no motion control at all. I personally would love it if Nintendo had a separate console from the Wii that catered to non-casual gamers. I love Nintendo and I love the Wii, but it would be nice to have some of the games that are on the Xbox 360 and PS3 (Like Soul Calibur 4, Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, Mass Effect, etc...). We'll see though...


-Second, I really don't know what else could be announced, but I'm waiting for some big surprises: I'm pretty sure Sony and Microsoft have something big up their sleeves to combat Nintendo's big console announcement. They better have some big hardware announcements or Nintendo may overshadow them.


-Finally, I'm kind of hoping I don't get dulled and annoyed by all the E3 news. G4 already is endlessly covering it and they are going to have hours of live coverage next week. I'm going to try and tune in for as much as I can, or can stand. >__<


Remember that this is all opinion and this should be taken with a shaker of salt. ; D