Valerie Bertinelli called Food Network her home for nearly a decade, hosting multiple seasons of Valerie’s Home Cooking and Kids Baking Championship. Now that her time on both series has ended, however, the actress and host says her feelings towards the cooking channel have changed.
According to People, Valerie took to Threads this week to discuss the current direction she claims her former employer is moving in, calling it “sad.”
“I fell in love with Food Network two decades ago because of all the amazing ITK (in the kitchen) shows,” Valerie wrote on Threads, before going on to mention chefs Rachael Ray, Ina Garten and Giada De Laurentis. “I learned so much. It’s sad it’s not about cooking and learning any longer.
“Oh well, that’s just business, folks,” she added.
Until this year, Valerie was considered a Food Network staple by many, hosting 14 seasons of ‘Valerie’s Home Cooking’ and co-hosting 12 seasons of ‘Kids Baking Championship.’
Valerie revealed on social media last year that ‘Valerie’s Home Cooking’ had been canceled by the network the previous summer (2022), though she didn’t share the news with fans until just before the final season began airing in April 2023. She alleged at the time that she had “no idea why” Food Network had decided to end the show.
“Food Network canceled us last summer, I have no idea why,” she said. “And I didn’t say anything last summer because honestly, I was hoping they would change their mind. But they have not. So this is the final season.”
While Valerie had co-hosted ‘Kids Baking Championship’ with Chef Duff Goldman since the show premiered in 2015, she revealed in January that she was “not going to be asked back” to the competition series, citing “budget cuts” as the reason behind her departure.
In an Instagram Story from January 20, Valerie reportedly told fans that the network’s decision “really hurt my feelings” and that “it really sucks.”
According to People, a source close to the show’s production team said Valerie’s return to ‘Kids Baking Championship’ was “absolutely discussed” at the end of Valerie’s contract, however, her team allegedly “decided they wanted more and talks stalled.”
Valerie’s final season of ‘Kids Baking Championship’– Season 12– aired earlier this spring.
The network has yet to announce who will replace Valerie as Duff’s co-host going forward.
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(Photos: Instagram; Food Network)
ALL of the Discovery Network channels took a dump in the learning hot tub years ago. You remember when Bravo would have James Lipton interview prestigious actors and they and A&E showed
foreign movies with boobies in them (early 90s basic cable) and got me hooked on Jeremy Brett as the best Sherlock Holmes of them all. Now, it is just drunk people with plastic surgery and a triple mortgaged mcmansion assaulting each other and showing their poonanner on OF for 30 bux lol. They are sad shells of their former selves. But hey they made money so they are better than all of us tv watching fodder right? That is what separates winners like them from losers like us I guess…
What a bizarre statement – as though she is of any weight whatsoever in the cooking world and her departure signals the network’s downfall. She should thank everyone involved for allowing her to squeeze out the amount of time she did.
I still watch the food network and enjoy it immensely. Ms. Bertanelli needs to get over herself. She is not the first person to be fired from a job and frankly I did not care for her on the network.
Glad she is gone, cannot stand her.
I always thought of her as a washed up actress who barely knew how to cook, who had no place “ITK’ teaching others how to cook, sorry. And on the kids baking show, the very few times I stumbled across it, I thought her irrelevant, uninteresting, and way overrated.