Foodies who love to cook but are tired of the "wars" on the Food Network, give RECIPE TV a try.

[Warpy]

18. All the good stuff is on YouTube

I love the Anti Chef, his early shows brought back memories of my own adventures with "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." It might have been written for a servantless woman, but gawd I could have used some help. Yes, I had flops, too, although mine were a little more edible. I had learned more of what not to do from a mother who hated to cook than he did.

We now have multi generational non cooks in the country who have kitchen bulletin boards festooned with takeout menus and think making it fancy means taking it out of the carton and putting it onto an actual plate. They need help, everything from choosing that one good knife to how to maintain it, how to hold it, and how to cut various things with it. All we get are chefs torturing food and pretentious self styled food critics complaining about minutiae. Phooey.

Even chefs doing various techniques, from knife skills to the dozen or so ways to bake a chicken would be more interesting.

And yes, this is one area where Julia jumped the shark, baking a chicken does NOT have to be that fussy, basting every 15 minutes, cooling down the oven and turning it into an unnecessarily labor intensive production. Just brine it, butter it up, and bake it with a quartered onion and a couple of ribs of celery up its butt.