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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!

So I’m in Portland, Maine right now, at the Inn at St. John. We’re here for the Maine Brewers Festival, which takes place tomorrow. Right now, we’re just chilling out, and resting up for the festivities tomorrow. We were too tired to go out to eat, so we went to the Pizza Villa joint across the street from the hotel, and got some pizza to take back to our room. Mike is asleep now, and I’ve been watching TV and playing around on my netbook. Free WiFi rocks!

We don’t have cable TV at home, so I mostly just get to see the Food Network when we’re staying in hotels. After Mike got to watch his Friday night PBS news shows, I flipped over to the Food Network to see what was on.

Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives was on. I’m telling you, if host Guy Fieri always eats the kind of stuff he eats on that show, he’s gonna make some cardiologist very rich someday! Tonight he went to these places that served ginormous burgers…I could almost feel my arteries hardening just looking at them! You could almost gain weight by just looking at this food, as well…made me want to search the web for the best weight loss pills out there!

Then some other show came from, I forget what it was called, as I wasn’t paying much attention.  My ears perked up when I heard somone talk about cooking and eating bugs.  I looked at the TV, and sure enough, they were showing someone cooking what looked like breaded, deep-fried crickets or grasshoppers.  EEEEEUUUUUWWW!

Now, I realize that some cultures eat bugs regularly, and once, in a bookstore, I saw a bug cookbook written by some guy who taught bug cuisine as a college course.  But I think I’ll pass…I get squicked out when my cats catch flies and spiders and then eat them.  I appreciate them doing this, but that doesn’t mean I have to look at them while they are doing it.

I changed the channel super fast, before it got any more disgusting.  I was just glasd I’d long since finished eating when that show came on!

No, not cats appearing on TV!  I mean that I am tired of kittehs sitting on top of the TV, dangling their tails over the screen, so I can’t see anything!

Someday, when our old TV dies, we’ll have to buy a new, flat-screen plasma TV.  I am tempted to toss the old one out the window,  just as an excuse to buy a new one.

Then, we can just mount it on the wall, with one of those plasma mounts, so that no cat can sit on it ever!

I want a flat-screen computer monitor, too, for the same reason.

I am such a bad catmommy!

Mystic, Connecticut, that is…the home of the famous Mystic Pizza restaurant (pictured here).  Yes, the same one that had a movie made about it…an early role for Julia Roberts.

No, we’re not going there to primarily visit this restaurant.  We had wanted to go there to visit the Mystic Seaport for a long time now, but never got around to it.

But then I saw on Facebook that the Shipyard Brewing Company is sponsoring a beer tasting and talk, featuring author Gregg Smith, who wrote a book called Beer in America: The Early Years – 1587 – 1840.   I actually already have this book, Mike bought it for me a couple of years ago at the bookstore at Old Sturbridge Village…I just never got around to reading it.  Well, I will now, and bring it to Mystic to get the author to sign it for me.

Mike is in favor of going, so I booked a hotel room and bought tickets to the event.  It’s one week from today.

Not sure if I should research restaurants and stuff before we leave, or hope that the free WiFi that our hotel advertised actually works, and do it from there.  I have one of those little netbooks, and it works just fine in hotels where the WiFi works as advertised. But some places advertise it, and it doesn’t work.  I hope the place we are going to is not one of them!

So maybe a little advance research wouldn’t hurt, just in case.  And yes, I think we will check out this Mystic Pizza joint…I know it’s a tourist trap, but why not?  I’ll try almost anything once!

Have you seen this movie yet?  If not, what are you waiting for?  It is wonderful, and I want to see it again.

The story is actually based on two separate books.  This first one is Julie & Julia.  It’s a memoir by Julie Powell, who was looking for some sort of meaning to her life.  She deiced to take on the project of cooking her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  And blog about her adventures along the way.  The blog turned into the book.

Julie managed all of this in a tiny, New York City kitchen, with no fancy kitchen gear, no copper sinks, or anything like that. It was quite frustrating for her at times!

Julie’s story in the 2000′s  is interspersed with Julia’s story in the 1940′s, based on Mrs. Child’s memoir, My Life In France.  Julia was newly married to Paul Child, and they lived in Paris for several years.  Julia was not much of a cook at first, but Paul loved good food, good wine, all the finer things in life.  So she spent her time in Paris studying food and cooking, even going to the Cordon Bleu cooking school.  She just wanted to cook well to please her husband, who knew that it would turn into a legendary career?

If you only need one reason to see this movie, it’s Meryl Streep as Julia Child.  Meryl has always been known for her various accents in movies, and she doesn’t fail here, she has Julia’s distinctive voice down pat.  In the movie, they had Julie (Amy Adams) and her husband watching old “French Chef” shows in their apartment.  Rather than just showing the original clips, they re-created them with Meryl as Julia.  I’ve seen most of these shows, I even have the collections on DVD, and if you weren’t looking closely enough, you’d swear that WAS Julia!

I also adored the love story between Julia and Paul Child.  Of course, I’d read about this before, in a couple of different books, but I loved seeing it played out on the screen.  Stanley Tucci was awesome as Paul, the loving and always supportive hubby.

See this ASAP!  I can’t wait until the DVD comes out, so I can buy it!