Bella

Interesting. I might even watch if the RS info turns out to actually amount to something.

My main issue is clothing fit and the fact that I feel healthier when I'm a few pounds lighter. That's it. Recording my intake is a factor in my not snacking, my Achilles heel.

Here's my "unpopular opinion" on Leah: I really wanted to eat her food. It sounded so good to me! Sleep with Hosea, don't sleep with Hosea, whatever, her food really appealed to me. Her recent NYC restaurant got meh reviews, however, and I don't recall if it's still in business. But if I won the lottery and learned she was making a living as a personal chef, I'd hire her to cook dinner for me at least once a week.

I think this is a YMMV situation. I've never known the bridal party to do the set-up or take-down. I also think the OP makes a good point that there were people already on-site, instead of a 3-hour drive away, who could handle the table duties. Sometimes the bridesmaids really are expected to show up and look pretty, after spending a lot of money to do so.

An 11-day trip to the Southwest = 4.3 pound weight gain. So now I am 9.7 pounds above my goal weight. ::sigh:: The good news is that I can shed 4 pounds pretty quickly. But my body seems to settle in 6 pounds above where my brain and my clothing want it to be.

She needs her own show so that we can set up a forum for her.

Since FN is moving away from food and toward personalities anyway, a show with Danushka is entirely plausible. I'd not only watch it, I'd organize my entire life around it. I'd like to have her be a talk show host, kind of like Andy Cohen on Bravo, except she'd be bored to death with everyone and end up talking about herself. More Danushka!

The more I see of Antonia, the more I like her, so this is welcome news.

Portia, I'm firmly in Dina's camp, but Cig would be a good winner. I just like Dina better overall. Once Drew ripped off the fur, he lost me. Even wet fur, as someone above suggested, would have been better. His sloth wasn't sufficiently slothlike for my tastes. And George's squid was worse. I was baffled by anything the judges praised on either of those two looks until I reminded myself that this is an extended, very public job interview, which the judges probably had in mind all along. This wasn't the strongest challenge for any of the contestants. Dina has a distinct style, and even though she can rise to the occasion for other challenges, she's at her best when she has the option of designing for her style. Cig does, too, and it seems like he does best when there are construction elements - he's very creative in that regard. But he seems like one of those contestants who will do even better without the time pressures of this contest environment. Both of them, and probably others from this season, will go on to have brilliant careers.

We have a forum for it. Tom, Aaron Sanchez from Chopped, and another famous chef all on the same episode.

Exactly. This gig is not going to last forever regardless of its relative popularity now. I could see TLC thinking that the People spreads would bring in more viewers, however.

Maybe if she has only boys, Jim Boob will send poor Jana over to raise them. That is something I do not wish for. Now, if Jana were to escape - oops, I mean marry - I would be thrilled to see only boys in the Dill household.

They had to deliver it in one piece, but aside from the mode of transportation, we saw nothing about cake requirements between the time the racers left the baker and arrived at the restaurant. I thought the bikers were quite clever in thinking that one through.

Speaking of Top Chefs... I just opened my new copy of Cooking Light, which arrived in the mail today. On page 5 or 7, I see the face of a rather handsome young man. He looks familiar, but I can't place him. I look more closely at the page, and it's an ad for the U.S. Postal Service on shipping treats to your loved ones. Then I look over to the left-hand page (4 or 6) and see all this nifty info on how to pack and send your own homemade goodies, with recipes for sugar cookies and gourmet popcorn. I finally look at the upper left-hand corner, and I see the identity of the young man in the photo, who's allegedly answering questions on behalf of the USPS. The young man is . . . Angelo Sosa! First of all, they did something to him. I don't know the limits of PhotoShop and I don't care to know because I couldn't design a simple circle.* But his face is not that wide and he is not that classically handsome, at least not on television when he's moving around and behaving and looking like, you know, a real person. But this photo, we're talking movie-star good looks. Second, I thought he was a really odd choice for this particular ad. Why is Angelo Sosa talking to us about popcorn and cookies? Why is he telling us how to ship said snacks? I realize he's probably a lot cheaper than, say, Emeril or Bobbie Flay or any of the usual suspects. In that regard, this reminded me of a vacation when we went to the sea lion caves in Oregon, and there were three huge sea lions with big harems of 20-30 females, and a barky young stud with three females. Compared to the many other male sea lions with no harems, three was a great accomplishment. But he wasn't one of the big boys yet. Okay, I digress. If anyone else sees this, you'll probably have a similar reaction. His face really isn't that wide! *For the designers among us, and you know who you are, this was a brilliant ad, because my eye went over the entire thing. First, I land on the handsome young man's face. Then I look around on the page to try to figure out what he's selling, and there's just a small box and a logo, which really isn't much, so I look over next to the copy, which I'd skipped (and so much copy is skipped) and I saw pictures and a Q&A-ish column (like!) and recipes. I might not have read every single word, but the message was delivered. This is aside from the fact that I was weirded out by it being Angelo Sosa.

And yet despite the disdain she shows all too often, Padma is 10,000 times better than Katie Lee Joel or whatever her predecessor's name was.

It's leftover night, so there will be a salad, cheese and crackers, organic red grapes, and squibnocket (scrambled eggs with random items thrown in).

You could rip out pages you don't need to use as toilet paper! Seriously, as the race progressed, you could get rid of parts of it and save a bit of weight for the backpack. But keep it for the trip back to the U.S. and study the visited countries on the plane as prep for that last task that usually involves facts about where you've been. I finally watched last night (I live 2 days behind on my DVR and will never catch up). Jim seemed less like a guy experiencing 'roid rage, so he was okay. Still loving the food scientists most, and sometimes wishing that Adam and Bethany would just get a room already.

I sort of do and sort of don't agree, PinkSprinkles. I was completely outraged by Kristen's elimination, to the point where I quit watching the season until the finale. And the only reason I watched the finale was that I learned on TWOP that Kristen was back in it. So, which did I loathe most: the LCK set-up, or Kristen's unfair elimination? I chose the latter without much question, and I was happy that she played her way back in. Still, I do see these successful returnees who take the whole thing* as needing an asterisk. In Kristen's case, it's unfair, as she should never have been subject to LCK in the first place. But there you have it. *There was also a winner who played back in on Face Off, and I think there might have been one on The Biggest Loser as well.

I will be in Santa Fe soon and will ask our friends there if they heard anything. It's a long-shot, but who knows? La Fonda, the hotel the production trucks were parked near, is my favorite place for lunch in that city just because of the beautiful dining room. The food is great, too, but the dining room is beyond gorgeous.

I was part of a group that toured the New England Historic Genealogical Society main library in May, and they told us that someone with New England roots will have an easier time of tracing their family history than people from other parts of the country, based strictly on the migration patterns into and out of that region. Essentially, both are limited. That's another reason I'm surprised that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck weren't closer.

I think CPKs are clustered in certain parts of the country. I started plugging in random city names and it seems like they are fixated on having 5 in or near each major city. As someone else said above, they diluted their menu and now have a bunch of so-so items. But the pizzas remain pretty good.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who does this. There's a service near here that offers local produce, dairy, and meat delivered to your door. It's all organic, sustainable, humane, etc., etc. When I'm overwhelmed with work, I'll order a box, which can be customized. It's a sanity-saver.

REMINDER: We now have a thread for discussing judges. This is an episode thread. Please take discussion of judges to the appropriate thread. If you want to respond to a post about a judge that is in this thread, take the quote to the judges thread for your response. We're not going to move posts, but we always have the option of deleting those that are misplaced. Thanks!

I can even hear him say "and what does that have to do with your cooking?"* or "well, you still have to feed a trio of seafood appetizers to 300 guests" or something like that. *That may be more of a Padma statement, come to think of it. Said in a voice dripping with disdain, of course.

I loathe NadiaG not so much for the trash talking, which I thought was about what you'd expect from a slight-to-medium-level annoying male contestant. It's that she seems so fake. By contrast, I find that Marcel is more likable with every appearance, while Justin and Malarkey are both ignorable and slight-to-medium-level annoying. YMMV.