On Healthy Living

I love the Food Network with a love that is true and will never die. I first saw the channel devoted to all things food when I spent a summer living in Oklahoma City in 1999, and I’ve been devoted ever since. It’s food porn. I can watch people make things I would never ever consider making and it’s fun to see them pull it off and to see the beautiful dishes they create.

Of course a lot of the things created on this network (and the recipes you can find on its web site) aren’t exactly healthy (though it is getting better with the addition of shows such as Calorie Commando, Cooking Thin and Low-Carb and Loving It (as well as the adorable Rachel Ray’s 30 Minute Meals, which strives for healthy food fast) it’s still great fun to watch. And, I’ve found, oddly stress-reducing.

I don’t know why I find watching other people cook calming, but I really do. I used to always go home from work and switch on Food Network (or, when I worked nights, it was on most of the day) and just veg watching lovely people make lovelier food. I will never be able to cook like that, but then I don’t have a staff of chefs behind the scenes helpign me, either.

The channel and the site are great sources of information and inspiration. I’ll watch Good Eats even when it’s about a food I’d never eat because it’s just so interesting. I love Emeril, Sara and Tyler. I love the recipe search, tips and techniques that can tell you how to make almost anything. And I love that all this great information is available to me free from my cable company and my Internet.

It’s so great that we live in an era where we can find out all we want to know about anything almost at the push of a button. So if you’re at all interested in food, cooking, science, healthy eating or learning to cook, check out Food Network and Foodtv.com. You’ll be rewarded many times over.

Sarah White wrote this on March 30th, 2005 and filed it under Healthy Living, Healthy Cooking |