Has anyone seen Giada De Laurentiis’ new show on Food Network, Giada in Paradise?

As far as I can tell from the listings it is a special only. So far she has been to Santorini, which is my ultimate dream trip and Capri, which is not too far behind! When we watch this show at my house, it must sound like we are watching sports. We make all the same noises that sports fans make when their team scores a point, falls down or takes a hit to the stomach with a flying ball. We love this show, but we also are tortured by it because we want to be there more than anything else! When Giada takes a bite of something delicious you hear groans from our couch, when she steps foot somewhere we’d like to be, you will often hear a “yes!” as she starts describing a dream spot. This show is really giving me the travel bug big time, which is a great motivational tool to get me fired up to continue with all my projects and find more!

I have been dreaming about going to Greece for years now. My ultimate plan is to follow the voyage of Odysseus as I have loved the Iliad and the Odyssey for as long as I can remember. I have also been a big fan of all the theories surrounding the lost city of Atlantis. Many scholars believe that the destructive Minoan eruption on Santorini is the most likely candidate for the lost city itself. I have always believed that anything is possible and with my Anthropology background, I am always searching for the truth behind the ancient mysteries. I guess this is something else that Giada and I have in common, as she graduated in undergrad with a degree in Anthropology before she went to culinary school in Paris. So I am guessing that she loves this new assignment which takes her to ancient places, where she can get the lay of the land, eat the food and just soak up that Mediterranean sun! What a life, huh?!

Last night the show about Capri aired and since her family has been “hanging out” there for a long time, as her Aunt Raffi says, Giada knows all the ins and outs of the place. This show was like a big family reunion for her. We got to see her go jewelry shopping and have drinks with her aunt and a friend. We got to watch her make Ravioli Caprese with the chef at the restaurant her grandfather Dino De Laurentiis eats whenever he goes to Capri. We got to watch her prepare shellfish for her family in the kitchen of another well known Caprese restaurant, in her bathing suit cover-up! So it is obvious that she is well-known there and very comfortable!

I do hope they keep airing these specials. I think Giada is much more suited to these international voyages in comparison to her Weekend Getaways which are mostly US based. But in both cases, these are not trips, getaways or otherwise that the average person is likely to go on, which is why I need to get my own food travel show! However, in the meantime, it is entertaining to see how the other half lives!

As everyone knows I love Anthony Bourdain. Sure he can sometimes be a little gruff and opinionated, but who isn’t? I respect him for the way he travels about the world with an open mind, sense of adventure and appetite for anything that hits a plate. To me, that is the be all – end all, the height of achievement, something I look to be doing in the future. Perhaps not on National TV as he does, but just for myself. Tony is not only an accomplished chef, the star of a travel TV show and a cookbook author; he is also a fiction writer as well! What can this man not do?

Often when watching his shows or sometimes just sitting on a beach wishing it could be that way forever, I dream of “going bamboo”. Just going off to some beautiful island somewhere, changing my name and falling off the grid. So I was not surprised that one of Tony’s fiction pieces is thus named .

So for all of us who dream about getting away and living the good life somewhere un-noticed, this book is for you…or is it?? You know with Tony at the helm, things are never what they seem!

My girl Rachael Ray has been getting a lot of flack lately, and I may get a lot of flack for writing this, but o’well, I am going to say it anyway! Seems that yet another talented, tough, hard working girl just got too famous for where some say she is supposed to be – she’s in the top of the cooking industry and she’s not even a real trained chef at that – blasphemy! Well I can admit that sometimes she is too hyper for my taste and perhaps she is a bit gruff and speaks her own language of abbreviations and short cuts which can annoy and confuse, but honestly, when I think about it, those personality quirks are outweighed by the many things I like about her.

1) She is Sicilian

2) She learned to cook from her Grandfather

3) She makes mistakes all the time, like real people do in the kitchen, and they don’t edit it out

4) She has brought cooking to the mainstream like no one before her (except for maybe Emeril Lagasse and he gets the same sort of flack that she does)

5) She, unlike many of my other favorite celebrity chefs like Giada De Laurentiis, Nigella Lawson and Mario Batali never had any connections to help her get where she has gone

6) She is a cook, not a trained chef and still she has made it to the top of the cooking industry – something we could all strive to do

7) She has that blue-collar working girl ethic, which I really admire

Rachael Ray is the real deal, she is self made, self taught and she is not afraid to be herself. Her personality, the very thing she is critiqued for the most, is totally real. With her, you get what you see. No one can say anything better about a person.

In honor of Rachael Ray and her easy way of cooking, it is only natural that this week’s Product Of The Week is her very first cookbook,
the cookbook she started while teaching people how to cook in grocery stores all around upstate New York. Check it out, then you can make your own opinions!