The issue has to do with the Food Network listing “Dark Chocolate” as a snack.  That’s it.  Nothing more.  There were no suggestions about what to make with said dark chocolate; although, there was a serving size suggestion (1 oz for those you who want some dark chocolate).

Essentially, the page was a lazy attempt to snare web traffic, and the Food Network got called on it by their legion of recipe reviewers.  That being said, Ellie Krieger might have gotten away with it if the ladies at Food Network Humor hadn’t caught on.

Not only did FNH highlight the lazy recipe, they also followed up with screenshots of Food Network members’ reviews of the offeding page after their initial post went up.  Needless to say, hilarity ensued, although, I’m not sure Food Network was laughing.

In fact, considering their response — removal of the page completely — it’s safe to say the Food Network was shamed into action.  While the page address redirects to Krieger’s recipe for Cherry Almond Chocolate Clusters, “Dark Chocolate as a Snack” still appears in FN’s search results for the term "dark chocolate" (result number 6), which I’ve screenshot’ed for posterity purposes.

We should extend a warm welcome to the Food Network’s web site as our latest victim of an outspoken, sarcastic Internet crowd.  Fishing for pageviews is all fine and good, just make sure the page doing the fishing is a legitimate offering, otherwise, your audience can (and in many cases, will) swiftly make a mockery of it.

Maybe John McCain’s spouse is a little different than most people worth millions, and enjoys the challenge of juggling pots, pans, and ingredients. Her resource for good old family recipes, published on the McCain campaign website, had a heaping helping of something else, namely theft.

The Huffington Post described how they found out Cindy McCain’s cookbook bore far more than a passing similarity to that of the Food Network:

This past Sunday, Lauren Handel, an eagle-eyed attorney from New York, was searching for a specific recipe from Giada DeLaurentis, a chef on the Food Network. Yet whenever she Googled the different ingredients in the recipe, the oddest thing happened: not only did the Food Network’s site come up, as expected, but so did John McCain’s campaign site.

On a section of McCain’s site called “Cindy’s Recipes,” you can find seven recipes attributed to Cindy McCain, each with the heading “McCain Family Recipe.” Ms. Handel quickly realized that some of the “McCain Family Recipes,” were in fact, word-for-word copies of recipes on the Food Network site.

The lame explanation for this, well, there isn’t an explanation. It’s being blamed on some “low-level unpaid staff” person, meaning whichever volunteer was asked by the campaign to find recipes for the website and slap Mrs. McCain’s name on them has been thrown under the proverbial campaign bus.

Maybe this doesn’t seem like a big deal to people; we’re sure the man who would be President isn’t losing any sleep over this. We’re pretty certain if the potential First Lady really did publish a cookbook, and someone looted it to spiff up a cooking website, she and her hubby wouldn’t accept some BS excuse about a lowly functionary stealing it without anyone’s knowledge.