Horray for Hollywood-decorated cupcakes (image from Food Network Magazine)

What, no ticket to the 2011 Oscar Awards this Sunday? Consider it a lucky opportunity to view the red carpet from the best seat anywhere: your couch. You’re free to heckle the stars (their attire, hair, dates) as you wish, and shout out loud with excitement or disappointment when each winner is announced. And without a slinky dress or monkey suit to starve yourself into, you can enjoy a nominee-themed menu without worry.

Check back here every day this week — we’ll be posting menu ideas for all of the Best Picture nominees so you can eat along with your favorite film, or pick and choose from each to create your own award-winning menu. Today, Black Swan and The Fighter; two movies about battling foes both internal and actual. For tense dramas like these, popcorn just won’t do.

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Giada’s Grapefruit, Onion, Basil Salad

In the Southern portion of the U.S., the fall and winter months are prime time for citrus growing, with orange, grapefruit, and lemon crops at their peak from September/October until June. Despite the colder-than-normal temperatures this year, the USDA still expects Florida citrus trees to put forth around 19.6 million boxes of grapefruit, 4.4 million boxes of tangerines and a whopping 138 million boxes of oranges. Make these fruits the star of your meal — they’ll add refreshing bursts of flavor sure to liven up the drab winter months.

One slice into a juicy blood orange and you will see where these radiant red fruits get their name. Make a sweet-and-tangy, crimson-colored reduction out of them for Food.com‘s Baby Lamb Chops With Blood Orange Sauce.

Giada’s Grapefruit, Onion, and Basil Salad is an inventive twist on the summer fruit salad. Salty black olives and crunchy red onions pair perfectly with sweet balsamic vinegar and tangy grapefruit.

Fresh juice from ripe tangerines add zesty flavors to Food2.com’s Tangerine and Cardamom Glazed Roasted Winter Vegetables. Serve this alongside the Lamb Chops With Blood Orange sauce for an elegant and creative dinner.

To end your meal, try Emeril’s Lemon and Blueberry Tea Cake from The Cooking Channel. This cinnamon-spiked sweet treat is a cinch to make.

Bake Ina's Outrageous Brownies for the ultimate share-able sweet.

Sure, lots of brownie mixes are good, especially when dolled up with special touches. (Paula, Giada and the Neelys all have short-cut, dressed-up mix recipes.) So why bother baking from-scratch, homemade brownies – measuring, melting and mixing with precision? Your brownies will be different. . . in a good way. Just browse recipes and start making choices: cakey or fudgy, bittersweet or semi-sweet, melted bars or cocoa powder, nuts or no nuts, chips or no chips? In a crowd of boxed brownie taste-memories, yours will stand out from the crowd. So get baking!

No need to halve a brownie recipe -- leftovers travel well and are always appreciated.

Our Top Brownie Recipes:

Short-Cut Brownies:

What’s your favorite brownie recipe?

Smoked salmon on a pink hot salt plate makes for a pretty Valentine's Day presentation.

Every Valentine’s Day I try to make an elaborate dessert for my sweetheart, but this year I have been invited to a Ladies’ Valentine’s Day brunch. Instead of bringing chocolate love, I am going to take a savory approach to the food, with beautiful bubblies alongside for sipping.

I am making Blinis with Crème Fraiche and Smoked Salmon from the elegant brunch master, Ina Garten. This petite platter will includes my favorite Norwegian smoked salmon from the local fish market, a dollop of crème fraiche, cucumbers and a green scallion or dill garnish. To dress up the salmon I plan to serve  it on a pink hot salt plate creating a very pretty-in-pink Valentine’s Day presentation that will surely impress the ladies.

A few dazzling daytime sparklers I’m considering that’ll pair well with the foods are Tyler’s classic Cranberry Champagne Cocktails and Giada’s prosecco Bellinis.

What are you making for Valentine’s Day?

—Reena Mehta

Sunny Anderson, Kelsey Nixon and Claudia Sidoti judged all of our nachos, picking their faves.

Some of us like to think of every day as Nacho Day but Super Bowl is a good excuse for a Texas-sized crowdpleasing nacho celebration. We hosted a Throwdown-worthy nacho-off in our Chelsea headquarters Friday, with Food Network, Cooking Channel and Food.com competing, cooking up bags and bags of crunchy, melty, meaty (and some veggie) nachos. Who judged? Sunny Anderson, Kelsey Nixon and the Food Network Kitchens’ nacho expert Claudia Sidoti stopped by, ate all of our creations and huddled to choose the best.

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Dive into Alton's playbook for Buffalo Wings that can't be beat.

For Super Bowl Sunday, try tackling hot wings Alton-style, with a little science in your back pocket and a trick play up your sleeve. You’ll score a perfect touchdown, guaranteed, with these crispy-skinned wonders. Here are some of his hot wing secrets, step-by-step.

Steaming?: First, Alton loads up a steamer basket (yes, the one you usually use for broccoli) with the raw chicken wings and steams them for 10 minutes. Why would you do this? The extra fat will melt off and drip away into the pan, so you’ll be able to cook them at a higher heat later without smoking up your kitchen. And high heat = crispy skin.

Alton links a few steamer baskets together to fit all the wings. You could work in batches.

Drying: The steamed wings get spread onto a cooling rack set over a half sheet pan lined with paper towels, and the whole thing hangs out in the fridge for an hour. The cool air from the fridge dries out the skin completely, so a crisp cook-up is imminent.

Baking: Then the wings are baked, not fried. They contain enough fat to fry themselves when cooked at a high temperature, so no need to heat up vats of hot oil. And yes, they’re baked, but not at all healthy, light or slimmed down.

Saucing: Alton tosses the baked wings in a simple, classic hot wing sauce of melted butter and hot sauce (my favorite is Frank’s Red Hot Sauce). If you want the sauce to stick to the wings, make sure to do this step right away, while the wings are still hot out of the oven. And don’t worry, the super crispy skin won’t get soggy soon.

Browse more hot wing recipes from Sunny, Guy and more FN chefs.

If you’re searching for the most amazing + easy + classic-tasting hot wing recipe ever, Alton’s is it. But you can also check out top versions from Paula, Sunny, Guy and more Food Network chefs here. Or browse our entire collection of 100 hot wings or even more game-day apps, from top guacs to tater skins.

What hot wings are you making for the big game?

Follow Michael Symon's step-by-step and serve up Iron Chef-style tater tots at your big game bash.

Tater tots are hot this year, the coolest football-watching food for people in the know. And why not? They’re nostalgic, retro and unexpected. So tot it up like an Iron Chef with Michael Symon’s Crab Tater Tots (a recipe from his cookbook Live to Cook), a grown-up riff that’s totally doable with the help of Symon’s step-by-step how to.

Get more of this Iron Chef's best recipes.

Cook up more of Michael Symon’s football party picks:

• Greek Meatballs: Spice up lamb meatballs with coriander, cumin and a touch of cinnamon.
• The Lola Burger: Take burgers to the next level by layering on flavor – cheddar cheese, bacon, a sunny-side-up egg, pickled red onions and spicy ketchup.

More tots to try:

• Aaron McCargo Jr.’s Homemade Tater Tots
• Guy’s Parmesan Tater Tots
• Food.com’s Bacon-Wrapped Tater Tots

The big game game plan: For more tater inspiration, browse Food Network Magazine‘s NFL potato skins, with one skin for each of the 32 teams. Or just dive into our playbook to find more big game snacks.

Texas Chili Potato Skins are team-neutral and just celebrate this super Sunday in Dallas.

What snacks and apps are you planning to make for the big game?

Hopefully you bought a bunch before your store sold out.

Are you snowed in? Hope you’ve got a shovel and have stocked up on ice melt, bread, toilet paper and . . . chocolate chips. With every big storm warning, local stores always sell out of chocolate chips! Is everyone trapped inside making cookies? Let us know what you’re making besides snowmen today; here’s some chocolate chip inspiration to get you started.

With nearly 800 reviews, Alton Brown’s The Chewy is the most popular chocolate-chip cookie on Food Network. Have you made it?

The best-loved chocolate-chipper on Food Network, and possibly, the world.

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Eat a bowl of Chinese noodles for good luck in the new year.

Celebrations for Chinese New Year begin February 3 and continue for 15 days. That gives you plenty of time to cook up lucky Chinese foods at home, from noodles to egg rolls.

Top 5 to Try:
Dan-Dan Noodles: Noodles symbolize longevity, so eat a bowl-full in the new year (but don’t cut them up, which would be bad luck!).

Chinese Dumpling Soup: Dumplings are shaped like ancient blocks of gold or silver, so eat them for prosperity in the year ahead.

Warm up with this easy Chinese Dumpling Soup, a symbol of wealth to come.

Sunny’s Asian Lettuce Wraps: The Cantonese word for lettuce means “raising fortune,” making lettuce wraps the perfect lucky New Year’s food.

Guy’s Off the Hook Egg Rolls: Crispy, fried egg rolls look like bars of gold, so crunch away for wealth.

Guy's Chicken Avocado Egg Rolls fry up to look like bars of gold.

Steamed Fish With Ginger: The Mandarin word for fish sounds similar to the word for “abundance.” Serve it up for good fortune in the new year.

Serve Steamed Fish with Ginger for prosperity.

Find more top foods for Chinese New Year from Food Network. Then check out top picks from Steamy Kitchen’s Jaden Hair writing for Cooking Channel’s Devour.

What are you going to cook up to celebrate the year of the rabbit?

Grill up meaty sandwiches for your big game bash, like this Pittsburgh Cheese Steak for Steelers fans.

Will the Green Bay Packers or the Pittsburgh Steelers steal Super Bowl 2011 away this year? I’m rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers and for good luck I am going to make ferocious Pittsburgh Cheese Steaks for the big game day!

The preferred meat for this recipe is a boneless rib-eye however if you prefer a thinner cut, a strip loin will also work well (although I would suggest popping the strip loin into the freezer for about 30-45 minutes before slicing so it’s easier to cut into super thin strips before grilling). The entire rib-eye can be cooked on an indoor or outdoor grill and then sliced after it has rested for 10-15 minutes.

So what makes a Cheese Steak Pittsburgh-style? It differs from the traditional Philly cheese steak because the toppings include crisp coleslaw, grilled potato wedges and tangy tomato relish. It’s a whole meal in a bun, all the so-called sides piled high. The sweet and sour coleslaw adds just the right amount of bite to cut through the rich meat and cheese, just like the Steelers are going to cut through the Packers!

Of course, for traditionalists (or non-Steelers fans) a great recipe to try is Bobby Flay’s Philly Cheese Steak. This hearty hoagie includes the classic provolone cheese sauce, sauteed onions, mushrooms and mixed peppers and could easily be served without meat for your vegetarian friends. No matter who you are rooting for either of these sandwiches will keep you warm from the recent snowmaggedon sweeping the nation!

What are you making for the Super Bowl? Browse all of our big game mains, from perfect pots of chili to beefy burgers.

—Reena Mehta