annabelle

So? The guy has set himself up as an oracle. Harold McGee he is not. Indeed, my fantasy of a GE episode is AB pontificating away and McGee walking on set, backhanding him and telling him he is wrong, wrong, wrong and then explaining why. Sort of a riff on Woody Allen having Marshall McCluan (sp) step out of the crowd in Annie Hall to correct some pretentious know-it-all.

I use my rice cooker all the time. It doesn't take up space on the stove and I can ignore it. I can take the insert out and refrigerate the rice if I am making fried rice later in the day. I have tons of space in my kitchen so it is easy to store and use. I cooked rice in a saucepan for 25 years before I bought a rice cooker and I'm never going back.

I've grown accustomed to Bobby Flay. I dispised him when he was first on teevee. He's constantly clapping his hands and saying "all right!" to the camera (which I know was nerves)in his early shows was awful. I will admit that I want to hide his blue cornmeal and cornhusks from him when he's on Iron Chef. I agree that he's a good loser on "Throwdown", and he has had his ass handed to him a few times. Sara quit. She didn't like the direction the network was going in. And though she is a little vanilla, she is not from the MidWest and her husband is a hip-hop promoter.

The episode about home brewing is a good place to start. Gah!

I never liked this show and haven't watched it more than a couple of times. Alton makes a lot of declarative statements that are just shy of being right and are often dead wrong. I initially thought he would be sort of a Bill Nye the Science Guy in the kitchen and not such a know it all hipster. Not only that, he is the reason that I don't watch Iron Chef America. That show should be dynamite and it's a pale imitation of Kaga's show. Where's Fukai-san and the lame soap opera actresses that I learned to love?

I like Bitchin' Kitchen, too. Her food is approachable and well-made and she is a doll with a wicked sense of humor. The ever changing cabinets with their metal-scapes are an in your face to Aunt Sandy Lee.

That's not entirely accurate. Juan Carlos Cruz of the late, unlamented "Calorie Commando" tried to hire a contract killer to whack his then wife. He is now cooling his heels in the cooler.

The Urban Gourmet. Tragic aging hipster who cooked in "his" loft in the Village and talked down to the audience. Seen on PBS.

@ JaymesWhile I went to elementary school in the 1960's in California, I don't recall eating a school prepared lunch more than once or twice and they were okay. It was more the novelty than the food which I don't remember much about. I know that when we lived briefly in Bakersfield, the hot lunch kids were allowed to eat seconds if they wished to. Many of these children received the only hot meal of their day at school and, sadly, even today, that is still the case in some locales. I would further agree with you that the lack of recess periods and mandatory PE classes is a problem. I don't think that gardening is something that kids need to do at school. (My father-in-law owned an insurance concern and I shudder at the liability issues of kids with gardening tools.) We lag so far behind scholastically as it is, that I don't personally want to see anymore classroom time used for anything other than academics. Give the kiddos a summer project to grow a window box or something similar and report on it in the fall.

We used to pretend the white ones were communion wafers. I remembered another terrible candy: Dots. Like jujubes, only more terrible.

Brach's chocolate bridge mix. I loved it when I was a kid. I bought some a few years ago, ate a few pieces and threw the rest away.

Canning. I was certain I would poison all of my family and friends. I decided to approach it like a research project (my MO since grad school with pretty much everything) and now my garage is lined with pretty jars that look like a jewelry store. Strangely, I was never afraid of puff pastry, yogurt, bread baking or pretty much anything else.

This show is just cringworthy. My attention keeps wondering when it's on and the preview for next week looks like more of the same.

Sis? Is that you?

And why would this awesome bakery that will make you get up at a reasonable hour go out of business because a chain store opened? You can't tell me there are no Dunkin' Donuts, etc, in the city driving them out of business or killing off their quality control. The Walmart Super Center in my little village hasn't eclipsed any business at the local bakery which is run by Germans and is quite excellent. Our Walmart had lovely clementines for $5 a box this week. Very sweet and tasty. Our area has had an influx of Hispanics in the last few years and we now have plantains, mangos and beautiful, fresh cilantro. Yes, the salsa verde is excellent.

I wasn't characterizing the entirity of markets in NYC. I've been in some that were nice. I had a friend who worked as a security guard at a market in the '90's. Theft was a huge problem, especially meats. Anyway, I would think affordable groceries would be something to look forward to.

I don't understand the objection to Walmart building a store in NYC. I know they tried for many years to build a store in Queens. God knows, people can use the jobs and Walmart hires hundreds of people. Indeed, they are the largest employer in the USA outside of the federal government. I haven't lived in a metro city in a number of years, but what I remember of the groceries in NYC, they were cramped, dark, not that clean and had security at the doors. Granted that was 20 years ago, so things may have changed.

Hi. Do you have a citation for that information, Tim? I'd be interested to read it.

Absolutely. Poor people spend a disproportionate amount of their income on foodstuffs. Walmart found a niche and filled it like a cornucopia.

I shop at Walmart at least once a week, and at the big box store Sam's Club quarterly for large purchases of meat and nearly everything else necessary to run my household and feed my family and pets. I find the produce at Walmart to be superior to the Ma and Pa store in town, as are their prices. The local butcher is a fraud, so we buy our meats at Sam's as I stated above. The deli counter is not top-notch, but I don't expect them to cater to my tastes (Strip District in Pittsburgh, PA, anyone?)since they have a business to run and I am only one customer. Our Walmart is clean, well-stocked, carries a wide array of items and boasts many long term employees who are friendly and helpful. I can't say any of those things about the Mom and Pop store. I studied Walmart's business model in grad school and, to my mind, Sam Walton(may he RIP) gets a bad rap. His stores employ hundreds of people in job poor areas and bring abundance to those same areas.

I find Sandra Lee amusing, much moreso than Rachael Ray. That said, I nominate "Kathy's Kitchen". A hippy cookbook, circa 1970's, (vegetarian, natch) that contains a lot of banter from the author (Friend of Kathy's) giving her children a guilt complex about meat eating. It contains such recipes as "Neat Balls" which sound horrid.

It's a knife for cutting up citrus fruits.

I like pitted ripe olives out of the can. I also like mandarin orange segments in light syrup.

He's still an alcoholic, imo. I like Bourdain, but a little goes a long way.

The city of Chicago has only one school district. What this one principal is mandating did not come from CPS. This was a decision by one person at one school. Oh, I was being sarcastic. I'm really glad I only have one child left in school, and he is going to high school next year. My three children are spread out over 14 years, so I have had a child in public or private school for over 20 years. Schools like to talk a good game about teaching the kid's about nutrition, but I have found that they speak with forked tongues. There is the untouched salad bar and bowls of apples and oranges in the cafeteria (which make great throwing objects)and the fried meats and starchy sides on the steam tables. This has been my experience across these United States in California, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. The flip side to talking about eating more healthfully, is to reward the little buggers with candy and pizza when they do well. This starts in grade school and continues through high school. A particularly special treat for the lower elementary school kids is a trip to McDonald's with their teacher at lunch. My boys are slim as greyhounds so this never bothered me. All that said, I would raise hell if my kids were told they couldn't bring thier own lunch because of some random policy change.