At the beginning of the year, we mentioned that a special celebrity chef episode of Iron Chef America would be airing in fall and it looks like the week has finally arrived! This Sunday's episode of Iron Chef America will feature both Rachael Ray and Giada de Laurentiis, pairing Rachael with Mario Batali and Giada with Bobby Flay, in what is sure to be an interesting showdown, to say the least.

Who will win the battle of food network personalities? Rachael is primarily self taught and most of her cooking experience comes from actually teaching others to cook, aside from a stint as the chef at Cowan & Lobel market in Albany, New York. Giada, on the other hand, studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and worked at several well-known restaurants, including Spago in Los Angeles, before starting a catering company. This isn't to say that all professionally trained chefs will do better than home schooled ones, but it is the really high-end, innovative dishes that "wow" the judges on ICA and it seems like Giada would be more likely to turn them out than Rachael. Bobby and Mario will have a big part in this two, of course, so based on previous episodes and the personalities of all four "Food Network All-Star" participants, I'm rooting for Bobby's team.

Most chefs are very proud of what they do. They are used to working under a lot of pressure and the best chefs are the ones who thrive under it. Pressure and pride make a fiercely competitive person, whether they're competing to prove to themselves that they can do better or they're trying to prove it to others. We've seen aspects of this on Top Chef, but these elements are what make the Food Network's new show, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, work.

The premise is this: Bobby Flay goes around and finds someone who is the best (or one of the best) at what they do. He challenges them to "throw down" and compete in a one-on-one culinary competition to see who can make the best product. The competitions are judged by different "experts" in each show.

In all honesty, I didn't expect the show to be any good. But it was.

Last night was the final episode of Season Two of the Next Food Network Star in which viewers votes that were called in, emailed in, or text -messaged in were tabulated to determine the winner.

I didn't watch the series, and in fact, I'm not embarrassed to say I didn't watch one full episode, but I did watch the finale, as I had a little bit of California pride. Both finalists, who were announced last week, Guy Fieri and Reggie Southerland are from California. Guy owns several restaurants in Santa Rosa (northern California), and Reggie lives and works in Silverlake in Los Angeles. Either way, West Coast would represent.

Congratulations to Guy for becoming the Next Food Network Star. His series will premiere in late June.

I don't love the Food Network's choices in programming. However, the network recently announced a line-up of new daytime and prime-time shows that have some promise.

Alton Brown will have a new show, Feasting on Asphalt, with a travel bent, and we already know that Paula Deen's sons, Jamie and Bobby Deen, will also have a travel-type food show called Two for the Road. Paula Deen herself will venture into live tv with Paula's Cooking Party in which she will be in front of an audience in a studio.

The biggest news is that Nigella Lawson will joining Food Network celebrity-dom. Her show, Nigella Feasts, will be a show about food, family and holidays.

A couple of shows about which I am skeptical are Throwdown With Bobby Flay, and of course whatever spin-off show that the winner of the currently running The Next Food Network Star will host.

Statistically, the most targeted group in marketing is 15-35 year old males.They often have a large chunk of disposable income and they are considered to be more likely to spend it than to save it. It makes sense that advertisers and television networks would want to have a portion of that income reach them. It does not make sense, however, to do with utter disregard for the population that is actually likely to watch your network or your programming.

According to Sara Moulton, when the new president of the Food Network came in she wanted to make the network appeal to that new target demographic with young, entertaining shows – not cooking programs. The obvious disconnect here is the fact that the network is called the Food Network; cooking shows are a logical component of the programming. Sara even said that a producer friend of hers was told "No chefs please, and nobody with training" when they were pitching show ideas.

As much as I love the Food Network, sometimes they just don't quite hit right the mark. Holidays are guaranteed to turn out many interesting recipes, as all the chefs work on recipes designed to fit a particular theme. Recipes like Sarah Moulton's Chocolate Stuffed Heart Shaped French Toast and Michael Chiarello's Butternut Squash Ravioli with Sage Brown Butter and Bittersweet Chocolate are truly excellent recipes and fit the delicious, romantic standards of the holiday wonderfully. The recipes below, however, you might want to avoid serving on Valentine's Day, assuming that you want to keep your Valentine around until next year.

Agnostic of your preference for men or women, the hot chefs on the Food Network, well, they know they're hot. They're entirely crush-worthy and would make ideal fantasy Valentine's dates - they're personable, they have great taste in wine, and best of all, they can cook. If marital status weren't an issue, my top Valentine's Day picks would be:

• Bobby Flay: I've had a crush on Bobby ever since I first wished I was his giggly sidekick on Hot Off the Grill. I saw him, in person, at Bolo five or six years ago and my face got all warm, I felt like I was in the presence of royalty. He's the ultimate in hunky Food Network chefs. On my dream date, he'd grill shrimp and portabello mushrooms with some sort of green garlic sauce and we'd wash it all down with a gigantic pitcher of sangria.
• Giada de Laurentiis: She's so obvious it almost feels wrong picking her. Giada just drips sex appeal from the camera angles to the cleavage. Boys, she is one hot cookin' mama. We'd eat lobster fra diavolo and warm chocolate cakes with berries and drink cocktails of Prosecco with raspberry puree.

Just in time for the Golden Globes, the Food Network aired a special on their work behind the scenes of Queen Latifah's movie, Last Holiday. The special, creatively entitled Food Network Goes to Hollywood, was a fun behind-the-scenes expose of how food is styled for the silver screen.

In Last Holiday (which, Cinematical tells us, receives raves from all the critics), Queen Latifah plays a housewares saleswoman with a heart of gold and a love for Emeril, whose dishes she cooks up for the kid next door. But the plot's not so important here: we care more about how many chickens they had to be purchased so the Queen could make Chicken Tchoupitoulas along with Emeril (on TV in her kitchen). They never actually said, but it was clearly dozens. We care that the actors usually don't get to eat the food in restaurants scenes, but in this movie? They did, and ate cassoulet and roasted quail with brioche and chorizo stuffing and spiced lamb shanks with blood orange relish. Oh my.

The funniest part of the whole show, though, was one of the chef consultants explaining that, because Queen Latifah's character ate Lean Cuisines for dinner, she was making a red wine sauce to go over the frozen entree: "so it will taste better for Queen Latifah." That's so sweet.

It's that time of year, the time to look back on the stories that made 2005 great. Our countdown began with God and moves on to - what else? - TV.

It all began in 1998. My obsession with the Food Network. I was hanging out in New York awaiting the beginning of business school. I'd quit my job and, other than boning up on the calculus, I had absolutely nothing to do. I scheduled my life around Too Hot Tamales, Ready Set Cook! and Cooking Live with Sara Moulton. In those days, the Food Network was all about cooking, especially cooking at home. I mean, Cooking Live - Sara would list the ingredients the day before so you could be prepared to cook along with her. People called in and they were actually in front of their stoves, yes, cooking live.

It was gradual, but the channel has changed over the past seven years. A couple of major things happened this year that indicate a turn away from the original core audience - people who liked to cook - to a new and (for whatever it's worth) bigger audience. People who eat.

The Food Network, it seems, is divesting itself of the foodies and embracing food, of the edible and eye candy variety. And this is such a shame. Some of the big changes that spell doom for the home chef:

In an interview with Pop Candy this week, Paula revealed a few secrets about her life as a celebrity chef, now that she is the most watched personality on the Food Network. For example, with two restaurants to run in addition to her busy TV, book-writing, magazine-editing schedule, she and her family rarely eat at home, preferring to eat at one of her restaurants. She says she spends approximately $100,000 on food for both restaurants, one of which seats over 300 diners at a time. That is not stopping her from cooking Christmas dinner, though. Her table will be spread with a standing rib roast, green bean bundles, shrimp-stuffed twice-baked potatoes, salad and “everything that goes along with [those]”. The best meal she ate this year was not one of her own, but a romantic dinner with her husband in Paris’ George V at the Four Seasons.  Paula also has a new line of cookware in the works for 2006, along with a new biographical book.