I have seen Rachel Ray hate something she ordered - it was some kind of sausage with curry sauce and she almost spit it out. pretty funny - we do use her 30 minute recipes and usually add a bit to them for the kids' tastes. I just tivo and fast forward thru the oohing and aaawing over each dish.

I like Rachel Ray. Her giggle can be annoying, but I have watched her show a few times..I always wondered how hard it is not to gain so much weight when cooking on tv or doing a $40 a day show..

How great that she has graduated to an Oprah cooking show, imagine how that will be advertised and pushed by Harpo Productions! She is gonna make SOOO much money!

Why do people who disagree with statements made by others, reply " Get Over It "? Would that not be a good answer for them also? If one is reading something and they don't like it, can they not skip it, ignore it, get over it? Or is the compulsion to say Get Over It , overwhelming ? LOL

I watch the first half hour of RR when I come home from work have actually cooked some of her recipes while the second half hour is going on.

I think that she does better with her 'travel' shows than many of those played on the Poker Channel

I LOVE Paula Dean but have never even considered cooking any of her recipes. Emeril is sooooo over!!!! Bobby Flay is my new favorite among the guys.

Now, could anyone provide some info regarding the wedding....Montalcino sounds so perfect!

cmeyer54,
Actually, it was Samantha Brown (Passport to Europe on the Travel Channel) who made that awful face at the Curry Wurst. Rachael would have said "Yummo!!". LOL

I hate Samantha Brown even more than Rachael Ray. She acts like she has won the lottery every time she opens the door to her hotel room.

And to defend Rachael Ray, there may be a good reason why she is always shown LOVING (Mmmmmmmmm) the food she orders in resaurants. If she does have a negative reaction to the food, it is probably edited out. Or she and her staff may investigate restaurants, trying the food out first, before Rachael is filmed. That would make more sense. Who would want to watch Rachael spit her food out onto a plate and say, "YECHHHHHH"? It would also be very embarrassing to the restaurant.

I didn't even know the Virgin Mary could cook!

My elderly parents had me worried for a bit. They scheduled their week around Rachel Ray (would say, "Have to go...Rachel Ray's on&quot. When I finally had opportunity to check out both the cooking and $40 day shows, I told the husband, "Time to start looking for old folk's homes."

Then I found out that Dad only loves the shows so that he can imitate her. He does impressions of the latest show for his breakfast buds at the coffee shop.

Pheww!

Scarlett; The reason I said "Get over it" is because I don't like to see people trashing people when the original question was about Rachel Ray's wedding. Yes people can say their peace, but I think the trashing has gone on long enough. Get on to something else. This a travel board, not a trashing board.

This thread got me thinking last night of other cooking shows no longer being shown that I loved to watch.

My all time favorite was the "Great Chefs" series - the one that focused on a particular city and showcased a chef from a different restaurant for each course.

I also enjoyed "Biba's Italian Kitchen", but that was about 10 years ago that I last saw it.

Of the current cooking shows, I enjoy the Barefoot Contessa the most.

"Who would want to watch Rachael spit her food out onto a plate and say, "YECHHHHHH" "

I would love it!

Julia set the standard.

Rachel Ray is hilarious. I sometimes watch her when I work at home. I will never forget when she made a meal of appetizers and called them "pickies." Classic.

I think this thread is hilarious - I watch many of the shows mentioned and have similar thoughts. Especially about the Semi-Homemade woman who is hyped as being the Martha Stewart alternative. I usually change the channel after a few minutes of watching - her ingredients sound repulsive, her decorating tips are tacky and she is far too skinny to be a good cook.

On the other side of skinny, Paula and Ina are my favorites. Paula for the sheer entertainment value of her voice and mannerisms and Ina because her recipes are fantastic and will turn out perfect. I have made a few of Paula's dishes and have been disappointed every time. But, if ever you are in Savannah, do eat at The Lady & Sons - it is very good.

I like Rachel's $40 A Day show. By chance and by choice I have eaten in several of the restaurants she has featured in Florence, Tuscany and Rome. I thought they were excellent.

Good for her - marrying in Montalcino - a lovely town and a great choice for a foodie.

On one of Rachel's recent travel shows she recommended a restaurant that is right on the beach in Malibu. Of course she did her typical yummo. Well, my girlfriend and I went to check it out. Great location but the food was definitely not a yummo moment. I ordered a crab cake sandwich. The tiniest crab cake you have ever seen on this huge hamburger bun with wilted lettuce. My friend ordered a steak sandwich that was on white bread with a piece of cheese melted on top of the bread. Both were less than desirable. I'm sure they went all out for her because of who she is and the publicity it would generate. She has done quite well for herself even with her yummos and EVOO. I still enjoy her $40 a Day. Loved, of course, the Paris episode.

Barefoot Contessa and Paula Deen as I have said before are tops in my book. You have to watch when Paula has her cooking school. She is so funny. Throws biscuits to people in the audience.

Annabell - Yes I saw the episode (for the 2nd time) with the carpenters. I have all of Ina's cookbooks. Scarlett you would enjoy her Barefoot in Paris cookbook.

Paula has an accent? What accent?

I watch cooking shows all the time while I'm getting dinner ready, folding laundry, paying bills, whatever. RR's recipes are actually great for weekday dinners, except that she's already had everything washed and chopped up before the 30 minutes begins, and I don't! Her perkiness does make me cringe, but I admire her for having gotten where she's gotten. And her $40 Meals show was fun to watch (though the dollar-euro exchange change has made the dollars and cents of it useless for today's traveler).

Barefoot Contessa makes delicious things and is the most professional of them all, IMO, though looking at her I have to say I wouldn't want to follow her diet. She's very sweet and genuine, though. As is Paula Deen, though every time she fries something in "ole" I LOL.

I really like Michael whatshisname, who does mostly Italian cooking from Napa Valley. I want that house! He seems very genuine, too, the kind of guy you'd really like to have as a neighbor. And his recipes are usually exactly the kind of food I'm interested in cooking and eating.

Giadda's ok, but her cooking doesn't inspire me. It was fun to see her vespa-ing around Rome, though.

And I absolutely adore Lydia B..... on PBS, the first generation Italo-American cook. Her dishes are simple and incredibly delicious and I love it when she says "tutti a tavolo!"

That Sandra Lee must be sleeping with someone. She and her meals are absolutely disgusting.

Last night on Entertainment Tonight or one of those shows they showed The Divine Ms MMMMMMMMM and her new hubby in their wedding clothes. I almost choked on my salad - they look like brother and sister grinning at the camera. He looks equally perky and a little like Mike Myers but then so does she.

Rachael Ray was on David Letterman awhile back. They were talking about the $40 a Day show, and he asked her something to the effect of "is the food always really that good?" She laughed and said absolutely not, and that if you pay attention she has a code: if she talks about the great ambience or food portions, that means the food sucks.

I laughed my behind off when Samantha Brown yechhhhh-ed the curry wurst. Poor thing, she was so looking forward to it, too!

Have you noticed the trailers for the movie Elizabethtown? Paula Deen is in the film. I am a Southerner and usually find that Southern accents are a bit too extreme in movies. However, I don't think it's possible for PD's to be any more exaggerated.

Does anyone else think Sandra Lee has an eating disorder??? Of course, she probably cannot stand to eat her own cooking ... (But, really, look at her arms, and the camera adds pounds!)

I have Rachel's and Paula's cookbooks - (her recipes are rich but GREAT!) and I enjoy their shows now and then, but not on a daily basis. Emeril is the one who's getting on my nerves big-time with his repeated "sayings!" He's a very nice man though. Years ago, I stood in line hours to get cookbooks autographed by him, and he was lovely to us, so apologetic about the lines!

Rachael can grate on the nerves, but I don't mind her in small doses. What drives me nuts, though, is how she claims her recipes are so healthy. Yes, some of them may have some nutritional value, but piling four pounds of cheese on everything you cook doesn't seem too healthy to me! And when she says, "This is healthy, so you can eat twice as much of it without feeling guilty," I want to gag.

That being said, I've made several of her recipes and found most of them to be pretty good - especially her cioppino recipe, which is excellent. If I could bring myself to say "yummo" out loud, then I'd probably say it while eating her cioppino...