A little TLC.

I have a few goals this year, and one of them is to learn to make new dinners. It's not that we don't eat well, it's just that we eat the same things over and over and I'm bored. A few years ago we did the South Beach Diet, loosely, and from it learned to love our vegetables. Sadly I only know the dishes in that cookbook which is not very big. And so I have begun the search for new food.

I currently have two favorites. Rachel Ray. I love her simply because she's real. She doesn't look like she eats more than her guests, but she looks like she eats. And she uses ingredients I've heard of, and the majority of her recipes take 30 minutes or less to prepare. She's on my fave list.

But my new favorite as of this week, is Curtis. At first I thought to myself, 'oh great here's the Ty Pennington of the cooking world, how long till he takes off his shirt?'. But Oprah was a repeat and I was bagged so I watched. And I will ne'er divert my eyes.

In the show 'Take Home Chef' which he does on TLC he approaches a woman in a grocery store. Asks her if she's cooking dinner and if so whom for. Then offers to buy her groceries for the meal and go home with her to prepare it. Then he stops at a chef shop while the woman calls her hubby or boyfriend to make sure they know when they'll be home. The get to the lady's house and the cooking starts. This week he made a lot of vegetarian and seafood meals, but they looked so good Nick even mentioned we try one. They cook the food and he gives little tips and finds out about their lives and what makes it hard for them to cook like this everyday and offers some helpful advice, (along with a lot of charm and wit and flirting of course). Then the hubby or boyfriend arrives home and they surprise him, calm him down, assure him his woman is not having an affair and then Curtis serves them both restaurant style. It's such a neat show.

And the recipes are delectable and not too complicated. Check it out on the TLC web page or on TLC everyday at 5:00pm ET.