I am obsessed with the Food Network. I’m deranged. I write down recipes for leg of lamb. WHOLE leg of lamb. I live alone with my husband. What the heck would I do with a leg of lamb? We’d have to eat it for weeks, assuming it would even fit in an L.A. apartment-sized oven. Doesn’t matter. I write it down anyway. I watch with rapt attention while a chef explains the proper way to clean morels. I hate mushrooms. But I take careful notes. I’m sick. I need help.

I don’t even think it’s that I want to cook a leg of lamb. It’s that I want to live in this place called “Food Network” where people do. Specifically, I want to live in the show “Everyday Italian.” It’s hosted by a stunning woman with a name that’s as sexy as it is unpronounceable, Giada De Laurentiis. Her hair is tousled, her clothes are fantastic and she tells you all about spending summers in Italy with her family while she whips up a balsamic vinegar reduction. And when she’s done with that, they’ll play a little video of her going to a gorgeous European-looking coffee shop, sipping espresso and eating biscotti. Then Giada will come back and whip up something with mascarpone. All of her equally attractive friends will come over and make witty conversation while drinking expensive bottles of wine and eating vinegar reductions and mascarpone.

The last time I had people over we ate chili dogs and played poker. And we had good time doing it...but still in my heart, I yearn for biscotti instead of chocolate chip. I yearn for hair that tousles instead of just gets stringy. I want to make leg of lamb in a strappy, sexy tank top instead of an old pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt that used to belong to my husband...when he was in sixth grade. I want to live in this fictional land called “Food Network.”

Oh sure, Giada probably eats chili dogs and wears gym shorts, too, but I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to see her schlepping to the Piggly-Wiggly for a pint of chocolate chunk ice cream and some Oreos. I don’t want to know that those are not her friends, but actors from Central Casting. I don’t want to know that she burnt the vinegar reduction and left the mascarpone out so long it spoiled. I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me. Leave me my fantasies!

Now if you’ll excuse me, the Barefoot Contessa is going to whip up some Indonesian ginger chicken at her beautiful Hamptons estate. I don’t want to miss it.