annabelle

Chris, be careful not to set any plants in your garden until around income tax day. I've gotten ahead of myself a few times and had to rebuy after a snap freeze. We're doing less this year: Better Boys and plum tomatoes, cukes, eggplant, bell and jalapeno peppers and an herb and salad garden. No corn because we get raccoons. I hope we actually get something this year after last summer's blast furnace!

At least production values have improved over the years. In the '80s there were a slew of crummy cooking shows on PBS and the like that were as bad as home movies. Kathy Cooks, Naturally. Very pretty Hawaiian woman who cooked vegetarian food that was gawd-awful. (I checked her book out of the library and tried a few recipes. Her poor family.) The Urban Peasant. Aging hipster graybeard who cooked a lot of one pot meals in his "studio". There were opening shots of him carrying a brown paper bag of groceries with a bunch of celery and a baguette poking out of the top. He was also tubby, wore sweaters and a beret. It was too precious. A Chinese woman whose name escapes me, Mrs. Something who cooked Chinese food that looked impressive. She could have used sub-titles though, since her accent was very thick. Really, too many to count.

Natalie was the queen of messy. She was also hit and miss as to being entertaining and informative. Usually miss.

Exactly. She talks about her little family and what this contest means to her, not about how Chef X really, really bugs the snot out of her and she wishes with all her might that s/he would go home NOW. Plus, no one else has busted out a wok on a major challenge since Angelo was competing a season or two ago.

Bev seems to be a quiet, competent chef. She's in the zone and not dogging the other chefs or gossiping. If for no other reason than I have never heard her swear or scream at another chef or server, I want her to win. The rest of them? Sarah and Lindsay are both mean girls who will turn on each other before this is over and Paul is a fantastic chef, but is awfully emotional.

Ed signed his own death warrant with the canned oysters. There was a lot of sloppy continuity in this episode. When all the chefs were eating at "their" house, their plates were full, then their plates were empty, then their plates were partially eaten. I wonder how much monkeying the Magical Elves did in that one sequence? Plus, all the boo-hooing when their mentors showed? Yuck. It's probably nerves at this point, but I was waiting for Paul to fall to the floor sobbing. I'm tired of all these people hating on Bev. I hope she creams them all.

Emeril is from Fall River, Mass. Home of Lizzie Borden.

You mean like Natalie Portman, I think it was? "I'm a vegan who is allergic to nearly everything and I need you to fix me a fabulous feast for my friends!"

Send them out here!

You didn't miss anything, g. Pee Wee made everyone make him pancakes. Then he gave them all bicycles that were knock-offs of the one in Pee Wee's Big Adventure and sent them out with backpacks, a hundred dollars and the challenge to cook something in some random restaurant kitchen and transport it back by bicycle and serve it to the judges. It was indeed a shark-jumping moment.

And you know this exactly how?

I've been a Pee Wee fan for ages, all the way back to when he was an unknown. I found this show to be kind of cringeworthy. Hauling Pee Wee out of mothballs as an old man was just creepy. And that was the wrong bike! If these challenges get any dumber, I'm going to boycott Top Chef and just read the reviews here.

I wondered about that, as well.

I know they have. I'm just saying maybe their licensing deal changed with their suppliers OR this is a change they have had in the works for a long time and they are easing everyone into it.

I don't generally shop Ikea for the food section, though it isn't bad if you like Scandi food, which I do not. Their return on investment probably doesn't warrant paying the licensing fees for the amount of turnover they have.

I'd like to see actual proof that people don't cook at home anymore. Just because you may be cooking with convenience foods occasionally, doesn't mean you aren't cooking. Sweeping indictments of "the way most people cook" are not necessarily factual.

There is a snobbishness about not being able to cook that I've never understood. It's almost as if the lack of a vital lifeskill and a means of economy in one's budget is something to be bragged about.

I have no idea. Pretty serious knife, charcuterie, Mexican soup or Indian?

Yup. If it weren't for the evil Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines, my mother would have never baked our birthday cakes. Toliver, when I was ten or so we lived in Bakersfield and the dairy that delivered our milk also delivered bread and doughnuts. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the dairy. This was about 1968, I think. Any idea who it was?

I get what you are saying, Johnny. I wasn't trying to be a wiseguy. I cook from scratch a lot, in fact, most of the time. I also don't begrudge people who don't do so for whatever their reasons may be. I mentioned my mother upthread. She has never enjoyed cooking and now that she lives alone, convenience foods are a life-saver for her. I am heartened that she will prepare a balanced meal for herself, even if it is made up of things that I'd either seldom or never use myself. It's either that or she turns into her scrawny mother who lived on sweets, pastries and coffee in the last years of her life unless someone else cooked for her. I live halfway across the country from her, so I can't run over and cook for her or I would.

Thank you, ermintrude. If I happen to see a Thermomix at a bargain, I might pick it up. They do sound intriging. I have never known anyone who had one nor have I ever used one.

Oh, I'm not making anything out of it. It was just an observation. I've never used a Thermomix and can't comment on its utility in my kitchen. I don't think I'd use it enough to justify the expense, that and having to find room to store it. It's the same way I think of sous vide. It looks interesting and all, but I don't have the money to get invested in it or the room it requires.

I've owned cars that cost less than a Thermomix.

This will all be solved when none of us can afford our utility bills and have to return to heating and cooking by fire. I dislike these kinds of threads since my own mother, now 79 years old, has always hated to cook, but she did it anyway. We ate in nearly every night of the week and went out to a moderately priced restaurant once or twice a week. Still, we had hot breakfasts, packed lunches and a home-cooked dinner every night during the week even after my mother went to work full-time. We also so had a kitchen garden and fruit trees that my brothers and I were to tend to when we were old enough to do so. The "good old days" never were for women like my mother and her sister who dislikes cooking as well, but still did it since she had six children and a husband with a crummy job.

Same here. The rest of them drive me crazy with their grousing.