hannnah

The variation I grew up on was: 'maters salt white bread make the sandwich, give it a good squashing, and come back to it in about 15 minutes. That's it. If the tomatoes are good enough you shouldn't need mayo.

"How much chicken salad does it take to make a Weapon of Mass Destruction? One scoop...two scoops..."

Hmm. Is turkey in bulk just that cheap? Or is serving it in prisons and mental institutions an attempt to induce mass turkey coma? Friend of mine spent a few days in the local booby hatch a couple of years ago, and says that all they were fed was various iterations of turkey products (turkey sausage, turkey loaf, turkey stroganoff, etc.) and pudding. Apparently the sugar rush from the pudding wasn't enough to counteract the tryptophan from the turkey.

Hey now. It's Pigeon Forge she's trying to spread to the masses, not Branson. PF is *much* cheesier, dadgum it.

Exceedingly appropriate quote from last night's Graham Norton, featuring Gordon Ramsey: "There's bull bollock all over my set!!!" (after hapless audience members were asked to kick various food items into a big pot, including raw chicken, a bag of flour, and the bollocks, one of which exploded into a zillion squishy pieces when kicked.)

Bar just off campus at Univ. of Tennessee: "The Library." Diner in Loudon, Tennessee: "Sam & Allie's" (not Sam & Ella's, but close enough....)

Garnish with bacon rosettes? Cracklings. On the side instead of nuts (friend of mine calls it the "wood chip" presentation). Mmm. Crunchy.

Mind if I tag along? (possibly also the spouse, although not sure about his training schedule at the moment) --Hannah

Sunday dinner.... Broiled bone-in pork chops Cauliflower with cheese sauce (bechamel with dijon and English mustard and cheddar cheese) Squash casserole (mom's recipe: summer squash, garlic, onion, and cheese with egg as binder - generally make it on weekends 'cause it's good as leftovers during the week.)

From the mostly-uneducated viewer perspective, it seems like Discovery Home & Leisure (not available everywhere) is making an attempt to step into the void that FN's leaving as far as showing food someone might actually want to eat (why in the name of all that's holy would someone want to make their own Moon Pie?! BLEH!) Granted, they don't run food programming every day, but over the past 6 months or so I've come across some really fantastic stuff - an English (Channel 4, I think) fly-on-the-wall documentary inside Le Cordon Bleu and another London cooking school, including following one student who was picked up for a work-study at three of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants. They're also running a Great Chefs-alike (World Class Cuisine) that stuck with one chef for three courses - the one I saw was Ducasse, which was a real treat. It's a crying shame that FN, which really did start out well, is starting to aim for the lowest common denominator. Pretty much the only things I watch anymore are Iron Chef, Good Eats, and Cook's Tour, along with occasionally Tivoing Mario (they WILL rerun the episode with the goose liver ravioli one of these days, darn them!) and Jacques Torres. I can't say I'm surprised, though, as HGTV has pretty much done the same thing over the past few years and gone content-light and fluff-heavy; Fine Living (another Scripps channel) will undoubtedly do the same once it has more than 3 programs in its library. Maybe it's the way of all features-ish channels eventually, seeing as how the same thing's being said of Discovery and TLC over the whole Trading Spaces vs. documentary programming debate. Although, that being said, there may be hope. We once got a call from a Discovery market surveyor who yattered on for half an hour with questions about shark-related programming and was told in no uncertain terms that we a) didn't really care about sharks except in their small, manageable, chip-shop-related incarnation as a nice piece of rock salmon, b) really weren't interested in watching anything shark-related, and c) would very much appreciate it if there weren't a Shark Week every other month. It certainly seems like they listened, since there hasn't been nearly as much "shark-related programming" since. Maybe Scripps will do the same - and pay attention to what they're told. Or, since it sounds like they were awfully keen to shoot Matthew as the messenger bearing that same message, maybe not.