Last week, as part of my job, I placed things into microwave ovens that you are not supposed to place into microwave ovens, and then I turned those ovens on until their contents burst into flames and acrid smoke billowed. Outstanding! And soon, Food Network will put the whole thing on television.

I suppose it’s too much to expect continued eligibility for the manufacturer’s warranty?

Meanwhile, bless me, readers, for I have sinned; it’s been many, many days since my last confession, here, and it will probably be a few until my next one. I’ve been in Napa Valley for the Taste3 conference on wine, food and art, in Dallas for Robert Mondavi Private Selection wines, in NYC shooting another pilot, in San Francisco, also for Mondavi, at my Mom’s, in Palm Springs for an appearance, and probably other towns, too—I can’t remember.

But mostly, I’m busy shooting the first season of “Food Detectives”! And while I’ve been delighted for years about the things people will pay me to do on television—like, say, berate chefs for not using enough salt, or splatter a frat house with kimchee and Coca-Cola—I’ve never been more tickled than now.

We’re five weeks into production on the show, and we are cracking ourselves up severely. It’s been shorthanded as “’Mythbusters’ for food,” which kind of explains the mission—but not entirely. “Detectives” really has a look, speed and comedic sensibility all its own. It’s a half-hour show, shooting on-set in our Manhattan studio and on location around town. We use scientific experiments to test food myths, conventional wisdoms, and wives’ tales; we also just tell interesting stories, with a nice touch of quirk. Courageous hench-persons we call the Food Techs serve as my experimental subjects, which sometimes is more fun for them than other times. (Smelling nasty refrigerators, eating insanely hot habañero peppers, deliberately getting nauseated—it’s amazing what young actors will do!) Also, editors from Popular Science magazine regularly join us to help with research and to vet our efforts for scientific rigor. (The PopSci connection is one of serendipitous happiness for me, as my friend Mark Jannot is editor-in-chief over there.) It’s also an interesting new exercise to host a scripted  show—as in, not a reality show.

My favorite line of the season so far, delivered by our staff molecular biologist, Dr. Adam Ruben: “Swab his mouth and let’s see what grows!”

My favorite experiment, which will happen as soon as the producers figure out a way to test it on a “family” network: Are oysters truly an aphrodisiac?

Can you not just smell the Emmy? The Peabody? The Nobel?!

You can’t? Do you need a Claritin?

Anyway, nice to be back here with you. Drop me a line at info@tedallen.net with any burning questions you’ve ever had about food, and we’ll devise experiments to answer the best ones on the show. And please tune in:

“Food Detectives” debuts at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Tuesday, July 29 on Food Network. Re-runs will air on the following Thursdays.

Y’all be good. I’ll write again when I can.

Cheers,
T