case you just landed from another planet, I'm Lagasse. So begin many episodes of Food Network's number one show, Emeril Live. The vivacious, boisterous chef yells and waves his arms, talks back to his studio audience, and engages at-- home viewers with his humorous and sarcastic remarks. How did this Massachusetts born, Louisiana restauranteur become a celebrity-chef? What does his quick rise to fame and increasing popularity of food television reveal about contemporary American culture? This article considers role of food television in American popular culture. After tracing growth of television industry, I explore growth of food television in United States, growth which, during late 1990s, progressed from simmering to a rolling boil with success of Food Network.1 Food Network is first and only channel to date completely devoted to food and entertaining. Consideration of Lagasse, one of network's most well-known personalities, reveals ambiguities in food television's message about food and cooking. This article contends that food television incorporates vicarious pleasures of watching someone else cook and eat; emulsion of entertainment and cooking; jumbling of traditional gender roles; and ambivalence toward cultural standards of body, consumption, and health. Food television also addresses and simultaneously perpetuates stresses of social expectations, and sprinkles sexual innuendoes in a venue traditionally associated with maternal security. These ambiguities, I contend, are part of what makes food television increasingly popular among American consumers. I situate current interest in food television, and a parallel interest in ready-made meals, in ambiguity of modernity, a symptom and consequence of real and perceived time-pressures, increasingly complex social networks, and an ongoing hunger for comfort and security, traditionally sated in home kitchen and encoded in home-cooked food.2 This essay is not about food consumption, per se, but about consumption of food television and what that pattern of consumption suggests about contemporary American culture. I. The Growth of An Industry Television secured its place as the primary site of exhibition in years following World War II (Spigel 1). By 1950, nascent television industry was booming, benefiting from increased spending power of most American families, manufacturing improvements that made televisions affordable to more consumers, and technological advancements that improved industry's ability to provide programming across country. By 1955, nearly two-thirds of nation's homes had at least one television set, completing transfer of spectator amusements from public space of movie theater to private space of home (Ibid). In television's early years, three broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) provided a majority of nation's programming. As audiences grew, America's broadcast networks responded with programming designed to win loyalty of viewers. They succeeded: one hundred million viewers watched final episode of Cheers in 1993 (It's end of world as we know it). As television industry matured, additional networks and cable stations fragmented a nation of viewers while offering seemingly endless special-interest channels to its media-savvy audience. Fewer than seven percent of households in United States received cable television in 1970; in 1975, median household got six channels. By 1995 more than 66% of American households subscribed to cable television, enabling them to choose from more than 30 channels (Samuelson 58, 221). By early 1990s, basic cable, digital cable and satellite service offered American viewers a cornucopia of program choices for modest fees. Given incredible range of viewing alternatives available, television is, more than ever before, about consumer choice and control. …