I don't watch a lot of it, but when I do happen to turn to a cooking program and then get distracted. I sometimes lose any active awareness of it and don't even remember, for hours, that it or the cooking programs that follow it are on. I don't change the channel. I sit at the nearby computer while, just 12 feet away, chops are being grilled and vegetables sautéed and potatoes mashed. Is this footage not so much exhorting me to the stove or priming my appetite but, in some corner of my brain, simply putting me at peace?