The Next Food Network Star

Ok, I'm a little insane about Food Network, if you haven't noticed. It's pretty much my favorite channel. When I'm home alone, I always just turn it on in the background, unless I'm playing my ipod. We all know I'm nuts about Alton, Ina and a few others. But I also love The Next Food Network Star. Not so much for the "star" it turns out, with the notable exception of Guy Fieri, who is pretty darn likable, even if he is a little nuts! But I love the competition. I love seeing what crazy challenges they put these folks through. But mostly because I would totally LOVE to be on the show someday, though I'd have to seriously increase my fish/seafood knowledge in order to do so (and learn some culinary techniques usually taught in culinary school). I'm always asking my mom and sisters to help me define "my culinary point of view," which is the hot phrase tossed around on the show as the end all and be all to if this chef/cook is going to make it. (We're still working on it, but a couple options were "Turf" since I don't cook seafood, we'd have to leave out the "Surf" part, "Local Ingredients," some variation on home cooking, and many others that just didn't make the cut!)

So, I was excited when the new season premiered this last Sunday. Twelve new finalists battling it out in Los Angeles this season, while living in a nice house in the Hollywood Hills. Rough, right? The first episode was filled with foibles and goof-ups the network seems to love to highlight, but some notable stand outs for me were Aria, who won both competitions on the first episode, Aarti, who was born and raised in India and who is cute as can be and is bringing some fantastic spices and flavors to her dishes and Brad, who is from TEXAS!!!, and though he struggled on camera, his cooking looks impressive and tasty. My least favorites were Alexis, who was eliminated first (poor guy just did not know what to do with himself on camera), DAS, who just seems like he maybe tried out for the wrong show (casting for "I'm awesome!!" is on SPIKE TV, not Food Network) and Paul, who just seems completely lost. The rest of the finalists didn't seem to stand out much to me, other than Dzintra, who had to go to the emergency room for her eye and was ostracized by a few of her fellow finalists who would've rather lost an eye than leave the show for the night.

We'll see how it pans out, but right now, my money is on Aria! We'll see!