We were catching up on our Tivo’d reality shows last night when we spotted the latest “Top Chef” episode. It wasn’t just devoted to healthy family cooking, it had pint-sized chefs helping the contestants too. Top Chef uber-judge Tom Colicchio called them “the greatest group of sous-chefs in the history of this show.” Certainly the most adorable. They were all from Common Threads, a Chicago non-profit that teaches kids from some of that city’s poorest neighborhoods about cooking, nutrition and cultural diversity.  We loved that the kids actually sliced, diced, pared and cooked, and the repartee was pretty darn cute, particularly between Chef Tom and the kids. Maybe we could get them back. They were a good deal more lovable than some of the contestants.

The show repeats pretty much every night this week so there’s still time to catch the youngsters in action as they — and Dale, Antonia, faux-hawked Richard and the gang — whip up chicken paillards, pasta puttanesca and Antonia’s challenge-winning pasta stir fry. Inspired yet? Then here’s the recipe… Read the rest of this entry »

OMG: Wasn’t “The Real Housewives of New York City” SUCH a guilty pleasure??!!!! And did you see the reunion show???

Man, these ladies do not cut each other much slack at all. I loved it when Ramona, who thought nothing of embarrassing her poor tween daughter on camera by wearing revealing & tacky outfits and having a smooch-wrest fest with her girlfriend at the pool, walked off the reunion set because it was revealed that someone leaked nude (yet artsy) photos of fellow Wife Alex. Puhleeeze.

The money and high-society goings on of the Hamptons tennis court-owning crowd made those Orange County gals look like little country mice for sure.

Here are the players:

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It’s beginning to sound like a broken record. A teen idol reveals a bit too much in photographs that end up before the public eye. Quickly, they shift into damage control with an “I’m oh-so sorry” apology. They made a mistake. It was poor judgment. They will learn from this and grow. Etc. Etc.

Miley Cyrus seemed different. She said the right things and was Disney’s poster child as pop-star/TV star Hannah Montana. Until last week, she had come under fire only once, for forgetting to wear her seat belt. Her parents seemed to do an excellent job of keeping her grounded and away from the bad element of Hollywood teen-dom. Then, borderline photos of Cyrus — showing off part of a green bra in one — hit the Internet last week. Now, she’s also apologizing for a phoot shoot in Vanity Fair’s June issue in which she bares her back while holding a silk sheet over her naked chest.

All of this leads us to one question: What happened to all the teen role models? Take a moment to come up with a list of 10. You can start with… Well, maybe… OK, so it’s not as easy as it sounds. Ashley Tisdale is about the only one coming to mind, and frankly, after Cyrus’ recent stumble, I’m holding my breath on her, too. Sad, isn’t it?

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We’ve all heard how TVs and computers should be housed in the den, not children’s bedrooms, but we’ve usually heard it in the context of internet safety and television violence concerns. Now, the American Academy of Pediatrics gives us another reason: there’s a link between teens with TVs in their bedroom and unhealthy habits.

A University of Minnesota study found that teens with TVs in their rooms watched four to five hours more television per week than their young colleagues with TVs in the den. Kids with their own TVs joined in fewer family meals and ate fewer fresh fruits and vegetables. They ate more fast food and drank more sugary sodas, and they read fewer books and studied less. And the boys had lower GPAs. Yikes.

So what do you do if the TV’s already in there?
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Oh, you can pimp your ride. You can think you can dance or design on a dime. But the reality show that intrigues us is PBS’ Peabody Award-winning “Design Squad.” The show, which launches its second season this week, plucks eight design- and engineering-minded high school and college students and challenges them to design dragsters, build hockey net targets for a Boston Bruins player, and this week, create cardboard furniture for Ikea. The big prize? A $10,000 college scholarship (which covers a couple months’ tuition at any private school these days, but OK, still nice). The challenges are fun, the personalities pop off the screen and we love that half the competitors are girls who love math and science. And you don’t even have to figure out when it airs on TV because you can download the episodes online … which is a good thing, because we can’t figure out when it airs on local TV.
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TLC, the network that brought us series about little people and what not to wear, has turned its attention to stay-at-home moms. This week marks the debut of “The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom,” a reality TV series hosted by Tracey Gold. It takes women who quit high-powered careers to stay home and raise their young children, and plops them back into their high-end professions. The show’s tagline: “For anyone who has put their dreams on hold, your time has come.”

So these Mommies are sneaking out to design high fashion for a Maria Bianca Nero runway show, saute haute cuisine at a high end restaurant or vault over a high chain link fence in a considerably less glitzy police uniform.

As you might expect, the show has fanned the flames of the SAHM/Working Mom Wars, with outraged discussion board posters seeing the show as an assault on the sanctity of the home. Having done both the SAHM gig and the working mom thing, we were curious.
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Any “Reading Rainbow” fans out there? The wonderful PBS kids show about great children’s books is hosting its annual “Young Authors and Illustrators Contest.” If you’ve got a budding writer or artist at home, check it out. For information on Bay Area entries in particular, click here. Some 900 Bay Area kids entered the contest last year - each got a certificate signed by host LeVar Burton (pictured, left), and winners partied at KQED-TV. Pretty cool.

Speaking of books, don’t forget to tune in this Sunday, when the Childhood Matters radio show tackles the topic of “Reading with Your Child” - how, why and what. 9 a.m. 98.1 KISS-FM and 105.1 KOCN-FM. Listen live or download the podcast afterward.

UPDATE: A new study, released Jan. 30 by researchers at the University of Rochester, further debunks the myth that thimerosal, the mercury-tinged preservative in vaccines used in the 1990s, can be linked to autism. Read it here.
There’s been plenty of buzz about the new lawyer-and-hallucinating-prophet TV show, “Eli Stone,” which debuts on ABC Thursday night. Now there’s more. The American Academy of Pediatrics has demanded that ABC cancel the series opener (pictured at left) because the series’ first legal case argues a link between vaccines and a child’s autism. The show includes statements that science has disproved any link between autism and vaccines, but the episode’s ending implies the opposite when the fictional jury awards the mother $5.2 million. Needless to say, pediatricians are apoplectic. The president of the pediatric association, Dr. Renee Jenkins, called ABC’s perpetuation of the myth that vaccines cause autism “the height of reckless irresponsibility.”
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Check out Frontline’s Growing Up Online, which aired on KQED Channel 9 Tuesday night and repeats several times this week (TV listings). Although the program slipped into the clichéd dangers of the internet at times, it had some interesting nuggets on how this generation is different.

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Admittedly, I was one of the loudest critics of “Kid Nation” (the show that left 40 kids parent-less for 40 days in a made-up New Mexico ghost town). So when our TV critic, Chuck Barney, told me about “Baby Borrowers,” I was prepared to get my hackles up again. In February, NBC will air the reality show in which five diverse teenage couples are fast-tracked to adulthood. They’re given a house, bills and kids — as in babies, then toddlers, pre-teens, teenagers and senior citizens. Oh no, they didn’t. At least, that was my initial reaction.

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