Because of my ankle injury, I've been spending more time on the couch watching tv than I normally would, especially on weekdays. 

I have made an important discovery:  There are a LOT of cooking shows on tv.  I want to call out two good ones and one bad from the batch I watched last week.

On the good side, there's any cooking show that stars Jamie Oliver.  Yes, it's hard to identify with him when he's cooking in his outdoor oven and his recipes are anything but low cal, but the recipes tend to be clear and relatively simple.  He explains things well and he uses tons of wonderful fresh ingredients, really focusing on using fresh vegetables. When he's done, just looking at the food makes you hungry.

Also, I caught a few episodes of Mad Hungry with Lucinda, a new program from Martha Stewart Omnimedia.  Lucinda is actually the food editor for Martha Stewart Living.  What I like about her is that, in her real life, she cooks for a family.  That means her recipes tend to be for things that families will eat.  And she has ideas of how to get the family involved in the preparation. Very practical and tasty, yet interesting twists.  She's well worth a watch.

On the bad side, there's Sandra Lee.  Why does she have a show?  In most ways, she's the worst of all possible worlds.  The things she presents are as unhealthy as most fast foods (based as they are on heavily processed products), yet they still suck up significant amounts of time.  Why would you dedicate blocs of time to preparing food and then use no fresh ingredients?  Wouldn't it just be faster to hit the drive-thru?

Any cooking shows you'd like to recommend?