Food Network Magazine: October

I picked up the October issues of Food Network magazine awhile ago.  It's actually the first time that I've bought it - I'm more of a Bon Appetit, Food & Wine type of person, but I'd heard good things about it from a few friends so I decided to check it out.  It's actually not bad; there are some cute ideas and some recipes that I would try.  (There's a caramel apple cake in there that looks awesome.) I'll probably buy it again.

There was one thing that made me laugh.  One of the pages in the Table of Contents is called Star Search, and it lists all of the Food Network "stars" and which pages you can find them on in the magazine.  I noticed that Sandra Lee was only listed for one page, so of course I skipped ahead to that one to see what fabulous semi-homemade delights awaited me.

I was bitterly disappointed to discover that the page was a piece about a Food Network stars' pumpkin-carving contest.  The magazine gave out "awards" to each pumpkin, like Most Nostalgic for Aida Mollenkamp's Pac-Man ghost carving, and Best Use of Power Tools for Ted Allen's blowtorched creation.  So what was Sandra's award?  Best Update on a Classic for her pretty basic design, which made me laugh cause it seems to me like it was a case of "Best Totally Generic Looking Pumpkin That We Have To Give An Award To".

It was really funny to me that they didn't let Sandra do anything in this issue except carve a pumpkin, especially since she goes so over-the-top about Halloween on her show and surely thinks she's the Halloween Queen of the Food Network.  Like I said, I've never bought the magazine before, so I'm sure that other issues have included some of her recipes, but I thought it was pretty telling that she was almost completely left out of the October issue.