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Good news for Emeril Lagasse fans!  Come March, he will be hosting a brand new prime-time show, to be called The Emeril Lagasse Show.

It won’t just be a cooking show; it sounds like it will be a combination cooking and variety show, as it will feature celebrity guests and musical acts.  As with his former Food Network cooking show, Emeril Live, there will be a house band.

Hopefully, it will be entertaining, and not have too many lame segments on stuff such as maxoderm reviews.  It’s being put out by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, which of course puts out Martha’s own excellent show, so I’m expecting a lot from this!

And yes…cable-less me is going to be able to watch this!  It won’t be on Food Network or any other cable channel.  It will be on ION Television, which is available as a digital TV channel in most markets.  This is one of the great advantages of last year’s switchover to digital TV…more channels available!  Kudos to Emeril and MSLO for realizing that not all have or want cable, and putting this show on a channel where nearly everyone can see it for free!

Emeril’s new show will air on Sunday nights from 8-9PM Eastern time.  It will make its debut on March 28.  Can’t wait!

Yep…it’s the EZCracker.  (WARNING:  website has annoyingly loud auto-play audio/video which I saw no way of turning off)  All it does is crack eggs.  Seriously, how hard is it to crack eggs?  So, it comes with an egg separator attachment.  Big whoop-di-do.  I have an egg separator gadget.  The only reason I even have that is that it came with a set of measuring cups I bought; I doubt I’d have gone out of my way to buy an egg separator.

And a free bonus of an “egg scrambler” that is allegedly a $20 value?  Give me a break!  For one thing, this thing is probably made of 10 cents worth of cheap plastic, and for another, whatever happened to just using a whisk or a fork to scramble eggs?  Sheesh!

I had posted a couple of weeks ago about dumb kitchen stuff.  But when I heard of this egg cracking gizmo, I knew it warranted a post of its own, it’s so stupid.  I had not seen the commercial for this, but @homebrewchef did, and he Tweeted it:

Just saw a commercial for a egg cracker for $20. Really? Www.ezcracker.com. Hands don’t work anymore. Alton Brown would die if he saw this!

Alton Brown would have been the first person to come to mind if I had seen that commercial, too.  Alton, as you may know, is a leader in the war against kitchen unitaskers, and this gadget is right up there with the worst of them.  I’d rather sit through hours of commercials for colon cleansers, acne treatments, and the best night cream, than look at dumb crap like this.

Who buys this stuff, anyway?  I guess somebody must, otherwise, they’d not be selling it.

By the way, if you are interested in beer and food, both cooking with beer, and what beer to drink with your food, please check out The Homebrew Chef’s website.  Lots of great recipes and info there!

We tried this recipe last night, it is from the new book, Lidia Cooks From The Heart Of Italy.  This is the companion book to the new season of the PBS cooking series, Lidia’s Italy.  If you do not have the book yet, you can see the recipe on Lidia’s Facebook page.  I think you should be able to see it, even if you are not a member of Facebook.  But if you are, and you love good Italian food, you should become a fan.  She posts a lot of other recipes, as well.  Once you try a few, I think you will want to buy the book!

This is not *diet food*, but hey, you only live once.  You can always reach for the fat burners later.

Anyhoo, this sausage recipe is very simple, not too many ingredients, and all are very easy to find.  It may sound like an unusual combination, sausages cooked with grapes, but give it a try!  The grapes will break down and release their juices, which gives th sausages a nice sweet & sour type glaze.

I served it with plain buttered noodles and Italian green beans.  YUMMIE!

With all of these dollar menus and such at McDonald’s, Burger King, etc., some low-income people think that eating this stuff is cheaper than cooking at home.  Weellll…it all depends on what you buy!

Bill Cosby talked with Dr. Daniel G. Amen about this issue.  Dr. Amen consulted with his friend, nutrition expert and author Jeff Fortuna, and together, they came up with an article that is posted on Dr. Cosby’s website:  10 Steps To Brain-Healthy Eating For The Poor.

One of the mistakes that many poor people make is to go wild on food stamp day, buying expensive luxury foods, like steak and lobster.  I wish I were joking, but I have actually been in line at the supermarket on several occasions, where I’ve seen people doing just that.  Then I see them wheeling it all out to cars that are more expensive than ours. I know enough about car prices to know that a Cadillac Escalade is much more expensive than a Ford Focus! (we have a Ford Focus, I personally would not buy a Caddy or other pricey gas guzzler, even if I could afford one)

These people and their kids are often grossly overweight, because they eat mostly junk.  When they blow their food stamp allotment so quickly by not shopping carefully, buying expensive foods, they turn to those dollar menus!  I’m not saying that no one should eat at McDonald’s or Burger king ever, once in a while won’t kill anyone.  But to make it a regular part of your diet is only asking for trouble.  Obesity leads to heart problems, diabetes…need I say more?

Not all poor people do this, mind you, most probably do not.  Most of them have to walk or take the bus to the store; I just get angry when I see people who have stuff more expensive than I do who are on the government dole.  I know that most low-income people would love some tips as to how to eat better and make their food stamps/money go further each month.  So here they are!

Lobster is actually good for you.  But let’s get real here, it’s expensive and not practical.  I do not cook lobster at home, I save it for when we go up to Maine, where I’ll indulge in a tasty lobster roll.  We can easily afford this, but still, it’s a special treat.  As it should be.

Canned tuna, which is on the list in the article, is not only cheap, but has the same nutritional value as lobster.  There are plenty of cheap yet tasty ways to use tuna…I recommend checking out Mr. Food’s site, where he has several tuna recipes.  This tuna pasta salad is especially good.  And here is a way to take that cheap blue-box mac & cheese, and make it healthier and more substantial with tuna and frozen veggies (another item recommended in the article on the Cosby site).  Stovetop Tuna Mac.

I used to rely a lot on Mr. Food recipes when we barely had two nickels to run together, they were good then, and they are still good now.  I have a bunch of his older cookbooks, most are no longer available on Amazon or anywhere else, unless you can find them used someplace.  But he has some newer ones that can be bought from his website.  There are also tons more free recipes on the site, and he also does a lot of diabetic-friendly recipes, for those who need them.

The beans – dried beans in bulk are far cheaper than canned, and better for you.  You can substitute cooked dried beans for canned when called for in recipes.  You just need to plan ahead, as dried beans take hours to cook.  An excellent investment for your kitchen is a slow cooker, it is the ideal beanpot!  Sure, they make all sorts of fancy ones with all sorts of gadgets and gizmos attached, but you do not really need all that.  I paid about $30 for a basic 5 quart one, at that fancy French department store, Tar-jhay.  In addition to making cooking beans a breeze, it is also great for taking those cheap, tough cuts of meat, and making them nice and tender and tasty.  It is a must-have in a frugal kitchen!

Spices – yep, buy in bulk at a health food store if you can.  The little jars in the supermarket are a rip-off.  If you can’t get to a health food store, stores like CVS, Walgreen’s, and various dollar/discount stores often have large jars of various herbs and spices for a buck each…way cheaper than the expensive supermarket brands.  If your supermarket has a Latin American/Spanish food aisle, look for an inexpensive brand of spices called Badia.  These will not be with the regular spices, only in the ethnic section.

I just can’t get into cottage cheese.  I’m sorry, but to me, that stuff looks like barf.  So does oatmeal.  Memories of too much badly cooked oatmeal as a kid has turned me off the stuff forever.  Strangely enough, I do like oatmeal cookies, oatmeal bread, and I often use raw oats instead of bread crumbs in meat loaf.  However, Mike likes both cottage cheese and oatmeal, so I just try not to look while he is eating them!

Anyhoo, I hope all of this advice will help you and your family eat healthier, and save some money as well!

At least I think so. Makes me all the gladder that we don’t have cable. The only time we get to see it is when we stay at a hotel, which is where I am right now, as I type this. We are at the Hampton Inn in Mystic, CT, we spent the day at the Mystic Seaport Museum.

Anyhoo, I’m getting some work done on my netbook (yay for free wireless!), and I have Food Network on in the background. I swear, it seems that every time I turn it on, I see either Guy Fieri or Ted Allan on one show or another Nothing against either one of these guys, but soetimes it seems like overkill, that Food Network is very much into making their popular hosts be on so many shows. Can’t we see someone else for a change? Do we have to see back-to-back episodes of “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives” almost every night? Or back-to-back “Chopped” and “Iron Chef America” (Ted hosts the former, is a frequent judge on the latter)?

I also think they are going overboard with too many *reality* competition type shows. I like “Chopped” and “ICA”, but they are now coming up with some really dumb concepts. I’ve been seeing promos for some show about the “Worst Cook”. I think it’s a dumb idea, because it’s much MORE of a challenge to compete to make the BEST dishes. But anyone can screw up a dish on purpose, and that leads to otherwise perfectly good food being thrown away, because not even the camera crew would want to eat it.

And don’t even get me going on Sandra Lee! At least she doesn’t get as much screen time as Guy, Ted, Rachael or Giada. But I still wonder what FN exec she boinks in order to stay on the air. All of her processed food is just nasty, and those *tablescapes* are ludicrous. I haven’t seen her new show “Money-Saving Meals” yet, but I hear it is almost as bad as “Semi-Homemade”

She makes me want to throw something at the TV and destroy perfectly good electronics. I can’t shut her off fast enough shen she comes on.

Anyhoo, as I type this, we are on the third consecutive eppy of DD&D, with the promise of another one coming up next.  Guy is very entertaining, i’ll give him that, but why so many eppies in a row almost every weekend?

Also, looking at all of the stuff he eats on that show, Guy is going to make some cardiologist very rich someday!

All in all, I prefer PBS cooking shows, even if they only come on once a week.  I wish they had the Create channel in this hotel, but they don’t.  They have a block of cooking shows on every day, useful ones, that have good info and stuff that I would actually want to make.

I guess FN wants to be more into entertainment than education, because that’s what most people want to see.  But it won’t make me pony up for cable!