Live Blogging the Food Network: Ina Garten

The Food Network is a lot like Holland: Mostly boring, self-consciously bourgois, but with some undeniably valuable cultural contributions. Actually, some of the Food Network celebrities are pretty odious-- that Flay, yikes, what an angry edge that man has, and let's not speak of Rachel Ray's one-woman crusade to retard American home cooks.

But Ina Garten is a goddess. If I could be any FN personality, it would be Ms. Garten-- always smirking a bit, entertaining the local gays, nipping at the sherry. If the world of "domestic doyennes" (cringe) were a highschool, Garten would be the effortlessly hot, pot-smoking writer and Martha Stewart would be the psycho valedictorian who secretly wants the school to blow up. Paula Deen would be everyone's learning-disabled best friend.


What a beauty.

Garten's food never cuts corners, or pretends to change the world. It's just classy and full of good stuff. She makes me want a certain type of classiness I thought I could live without, a wealthy Hamptonsiness that she makes benevolent, not snooty.

Case in point: her monikier as a cook/fine foods purveyor? The Barefoot Contessa.

WORK.