The name of Melissa D’Arabian’s — recent winner of Food Network’s The Next Food Network Star — has begun popping up on cable guides. The show is named Ten Dollar Dinners with Melissa D’Arabian. According to the Food Network website:
On her daytime cooking series, season five winner of The Next Food Network Star [...]

1) The recap at the beginning clearly draws battle lines. Jeffrey is the guy with the culinary experience. He’s the technically superior guy. Melissa is the underdog — but only in the culinary education department. She’s a businesswoman who’s lived the 100-hour work weeks and had a boatload of life experience [...]

1) Emeril’s been released from Fine Living Network exile? When did this happen? Why wasn’t I informed. This week is a cross-promotion with Julie & Julia, so the contestants will go watch the movie first. After that, they’ll use that inspiration to create a three-course meal for twelve “culinary elites” on [...]

1) As we return to the predictable final four, we are still in Miami. Your guest host for the week is Next Iron Chef winner Michael Symon. The first challenge this week will put each competitor in front of a live camera to do a four-minute demo on a Miami morning show. [...]

1) This week is the Rachael Ray episode. Rachael does not show up for a half-episode. This week’s entire episode will be based around her. Rachael Ray apparently has a “Yum-O” organization that teaches people how to trick kids in to eating vegetables. In this challenge, the contestants will have to [...]

1) The first challenge is for the contestants to go to Stew Leonard’s and spend $80 to create three courses for a party of twelve. In addition, they have to record a 30-second spot in the supermarket about stretching a dollar. Another case of a surprisingly simple challenge that very few of them [...]

1) I discovered a well-spring of awesome in Bob Tuschman’s Blog on Food Network’s website. My favorite post, so far, is the post defending Aaron McCargo Jr’s win last year. From his post: We each championed a different finalist. From what I could tell from the thousands of e-mails and postings, viewers [...]

And 10 contestants — how perfect.
1) Debbie: Watch out contestants — the Food Network doesn’t have any Asian hosts. If the first week was actually based on food decisions rather than show possibility, she probably would have been kicked off. The first week’s challenge was to cater Food Network’s 16th anniversary party. [...]